Maxims

Lately I’ve read a lot of articles and spoken to a few people about productivity.  A few common themes keep popping up.

First, Go Directly To Work.

Don’t start your day by checking your email.  You get dragged into someone else’s priorities, or you allow yourself to indulge in lengthy personal conversations.  Instead, start your day by opening your most important task first.  And “a quick win in the morning sets the right tone for the rest of the day.” (Jonathan at Illuminated Mind)  This is a great habit to develop.

Just Start

Starting is often the hardest part of a task.  Just starting, without over-thinking things, moves you past the anxiety that you’re holding for that task, and gets you immersed in the project again.  Once you’ve started, things are clearer and less scary.  I am hearing this advice from a lot of different sources lately, and it’s good advice.

Resolving to finish something is a big scary goal.  Just resolve to start.  Then start.  Then keep starting – it gets easier – until it’s finished.

The Power of Focus

Forget multitasking.  Constant distractions and task-switching leads to shallow thinking and makes creativity impossible.  Spend as much of your day as possible on your #1 priority.  This doesn’t mean don’t take breaks – just don’t spread your energy around.  Make sure your breaks are actually rejuvenating.

Actively control distractions.  Change your environment if you have to.  Lock out access to Facebook and other highly-addictive entertainments.

Goals

I should have specific, clearly-defined, prioritized goals.  With deadlines.  And plans.  I don’t have these.  Why should I have these?

Visualize

Imagine yourself living by the habits that you most want to cultivate.  Don’t imagine yourself as rich and successful, that can lead to disappointment.    This is about how you live and work, day to day.  And remind yourself every day about your long-term goals, and how today’s tasks serve those goals.

“I try to spend the first few minutes of my day thinking about the life that I’m creating, the people that I’m serving and why I care about what I do. Keeping those things in the front of my mind helps me stay synced with my reason why.” (Jonathan at Illuminated Mind, again)

A Quick P.A. Meeting With Myself

I’ve been all over the place lately, I need to check in with the local chapter of Procrastinators Anonymous.  That’s me and you.  This meeting shall now come to order.

What have I learned?  That:

• when I stop using the timer and filling in the Unschedule, my work habits and productivity suffer precipitously.
• I procrastinate when a project hits an unexpected road block, when a difficult decision is required, or when I discover that more work than I had planned on is required.
• When “important” non-work things (like blogging about election issues) creep into my work day, they quickly become permanent additions to my routine (because they’re more fun than real work) and take up increasingly more of my time.
• When I “fall off the wagon,” I can’t expect to just snap back to the level of productivity that I had attained before, I may have to start again at the beginning and work my way back up.
• If I spend my “work” and “guilt-free play” periods all at the computer without getting up, I get lethargic and dopey and lose the will to be productive.  No matter what my guilt-free play entails, I should get up and re-invigorate myself every 30mins or so!
• Daily exercise is great for avoiding headaches and getting quality sleep.
• BEFORE I sit down at the computer, I should decide what I’m here to DO, and then start the timer (even for play).  Otherwise, I can waste hours on email, FB, newspaper sites and websurfing before I even look at my to-do list.
• Important personal projects, if I’m going to get them done, should switch between “guilt-free play” activities and “work” activities depending on my level of enthusiasm/procrastination for them.  Most personal projects start out as the former and morph into the latter before completion.

Further thoughts:

• When “important” non-work things come up and have to be done in the work day, I should treat them as either work or guilt-free play: in either case, using the timer, and taking care to balance priorities.  This will allow me to maintain those good habits, and not accidentally vasta the diem.  ;-)

-J

Bring a Little Imagination to Your Work Planning for a Motivation Boost

Great little article on Lifehacker, I had a lightbulb moment when I read it.

Bring a Little Imagination to Your Work Planning for a Motivation Boost

It’s a summary of a longer article just published by Psychology Today, which you may also read (link in the Lifehacker article).

Briefly: it’s hard to motivate yourself when you are expecting boredom or other unpleasantness from the task before you.  Instead, imagine the good feelings that you will have when the task is complete.  Relief, pride, the joy of getting paid, a day off, whatever is your light at the end of the tunnel.  Take a moment, imagine it, feel it, associate it with the task at hand.  Feeling a little more motivated now?

-J

The Now Habit – Review

The Now Habit by Neil Fiore.  1½ thumbs up.

Bottom line: I plan to implement this method and can’t wait to get started!

I can see why this is one of the seminal works in the psychology/self-help/procrastination arena.  Dr. Fiore has focused his career on researching and treating procrastination, and in this book he distills all the then-current theory plus his experiences with thousands of patients into one how-to book for the lay reader.  It is interesting, authoritative, and rings true.  His characterization of procrastination as a reaction to anxiety/resentment associated with work explains why deadlines and threats rarely work on us procrastinators – they just amp up the anxiety.  The book makes a lot of sense, and made me a believer that Fiore’s method will work for me.

My only complaint with the book is that it is almost all prose.  There are very few tables, diagrams or step-by-step instructions.  I got to the end of the book and thought: “Great!  Now what do I DO?”  I had to go through again and make my own point-form notes to follow.

When Fiore described the worker who never takes time to enjoy personal pursuits and yet wastes hours per day goofing off at his desk, I had to look behind me for the hidden camera!  Apparently, this is a well-trodden path.  The urge to goof-off at work is, he proposes, rooted in the belief that I don’t get enough “me time” because work is taking over my life. (Self-fulfilling prophecy: as my productivity dropped, I started working weekends and cancelling vacations.)  If I would only schedule some guilt-free play into my week, then that feeling would fade away along with the associated anxiety and resentment.

It’s not as simple as that, but this was the big light-bulb moment for me.  Methods for defeating the other primary causes of procrastination are also presented.  I now feel like I have a whole box of tools at the ready for tweaking the procrastination out of my work habits, bit by bit.  I’m looking forward to applying them, starting Monday.

-Johnny 0.

The Big Picture

I’m going to shamelessly re-post one of the comments from that article I cited in my previous post.  This respondent points out that any system will only work if it’s part of a right-thinking approach to work.

This might just be the best summary of anti-procrastination behaviour ever:

First, it is crucial to understand that [this method assumes] that you want to organize your non-committed time, that is: time which is not fixed in appointments, meetings etc.

Second, if you are a person who seeks the “best” way to organize tasks: don’t do it! You will spend most of your productive time sorting lists, finding software for your lists, choosing Moleskins and pens etc.

Ultimately, you need these things:

Hack The System

Psychologists have determined that there is an evolutionary basis for procrastination. Call it instinctive prioritizing. In pre-historic times, it kept us alive. In the artificial world of work, it gets us into trouble. Trying to un-learn procrastination is an effort to outsmart your caveman self. It’s attempting to hack a million-year-old system.
Enter Lifehacker.com. This website publishes lots of interesting articles on procrastination, time management and related topics. They don’t form a coherent approach, but they are a great source of tips, tricks and ideas.
Articles are organized by tags (categories are for cavemen).  Check out:

Lifehacker.com/Procrastination

Lifehacker.com/TimeManagement

Lifehacker.com/TaskManagement

Lifehacker.com/GettingThingsDone

Lifehacker.com/Productivity

For your reading enjoyment.  But get your work done, first!

If you come across an article that’s particularly insightful for you, let us know here!

Productively yours,

-Johnny 0.