Mike Vardy's Blog, page 88

The Two Minute Warning: Why Two Minute Tasks Don’t Work

“If it will take less than two minutes to do it, then do it now.”

This is a phrase I’ve heard countless times. If you have a task that comes your way and can be done in two minutes or less, then get it done and out of the way. It seems like a good idea. I’ve even offered it as productivity advice in the past.

But here’s the thing: Two-minute tasks don’t work.

Why? First off, we have so many tasks that come at us every day and a lot of them might appear to fit in that category of “less than two minutes.” But then we get into them and the wind up taking up more time because we misjudged them. Things like “Call Jim” or “Email Jane” go from two-minute tasks to thirty-minute time vampires. It won’t happen for every task, but it will happen more often than you’d expect. It’s almost like an inverted version of Parkinson’s Law.

Secondly, since so many of these tasks land in our laps every day, they have a high tendency to distract and disrupt us. Even if we do manage to knock them out in the allocated time, they can lead us down a path of diversion that pulls us away from what we were working on. Getting back on track from a two-minute task is not as easy as it might sound. For those tasks that wind up taking longer than two minutes, it is even more difficult to get back on track once you’re done dealing with the disruptive task.

I think of two-minute tasks like the two minute warning in the NFL. The last two minutes of any NFL game takes far longer than two minutes. In fact, the time each game takes will vary. Sometimes the last two minutes can last ten minutes and sometimes it can last thirty. It all depends on other variables in the game. How many timeouts does each team have? What’s the score? Is it a close game or is it a blowout?

And that’s just for the spectator. Other variables are specific to the players and teams on the field. What are the current field conditions? Is it raining or snowing? Is the team on offense or defense? How many downs are left? How many yards to reach the end zone? What about field goal range? Should they run or pass? Should they blitz or play coverage? All of these things are taken into account throughout the game, but in the last two minutes everything seems to be amplified.

Two-minute tasks are eerily similar as they can take longer than two minutes to complete because of other variables. Some of these variables are internal or personal. For example, if you’re not skilled at something, then it will take longer. If you don’t have the resources at hand, then it will take longer. If the person you’re working with on the task has anything to add (or subtract) from what needs to be done, then it will take longer. Yes…even if something is subtracted there will be time needed to adjust and clarify. That takes time.

So…if you’re not using two-minute tasks then what should you use in order to knock out smaller tasks in a way that allows you to keep moving them forward?

What if instead of two-minute tasks, you started thinking in five-minute chunks? That’s what I’ve done…and it’s made a huge difference.

Five minutes seems more reasonable to me. Time divides easier into five-minute chunks. If you have 15 minutes between meetings, then what seems more reasonable to achieve during that timeframe: seven tasks or three tasks? While the higher number might sound more appealing at first blush, let’s keep in mind that productivity is just as much—if not more—about quality than quantity. And if you still think quantity trumps quality then look at it this way: five minutes of focus is more than two minutes of focus. That’s definitely worth considering, especially if you want to take whatever you’re doing in your life to the next level.

I’ve given up on two-minute tasks. And I’ve started to encourage others to do the same. There’s a song by the Canadian band Trooper called “Three Dressed Up As A Nine” and I firmly believe that more of our tasks are “fives dressed up as twos” than the other way around.

One of the easiest ways to start giving the five-minute task a try over the two-minute one is to do the following two things:

Make a quick list of all the tasks that already align themselves with a five-minute duration. I’ll get you started: Writing an entry in The Five Minute Journal, steeping many types of tea, the break between ‘pomodoros’ in The Pomodoro Technique, or anything that my friend Craig Jarrow at Time Management Ninja suggests here. Create a tag, label, or context in your task management solution that indicates tasks that will take five minutes or less. Popular iterations are: lessthan5, 5orless, 5min, etc. Avoid using the “

I realize that cutting the two-minute task out of your life is going against the grain of the popular GTD methodology created by David Allen, but if it isn’t working for you then shifting away from it isn’t just ideal–it’s crucial. I encourage you to look at the five-minute task your new lowest common denominator when measuring your time. It’ll help you stave off overwhelm and improve the overall quality of what you deliver…no matter what it is and how long it takes to do.

The post The Two Minute Warning: Why Two Minute Tasks Don’t Work appeared first on Productivityist.

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Book Review: Zero to One

There are two qualities to good advice, but good advice rarely satisfies both. It should either be so specific, it’s only relevant to a handful of people in a handful of situations (“Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. Red sky in morning, sailor’s warning”). Or, it can be so general that it applies to everyone all the time (“Guests and fish both stink after three days”). Peter Thiel has written a book where he hopes to bridge the gap between specifics and generalities – a book that applies as much to a business owner in Iowa as a San Francisco startup.

Zero to One: Notes on Startups or How to Build the Future encompasses Thiel’s beliefs about what might be coming next, what might be valuable then, and how you and I can put ourselves in the right position for both. To truly understand the book, you first must understand the title, which gives a lot of insight to Thiel’s thoughts. Going from “Zero to One” is to create something entirely new. It’s not creating a filtered photo app, an email inbox program, or another smartphone.

Easter is coming up and I’ll be taking my daughters to an Easter egg hunt. We went to one last year and the year before and I suspect that this year’s will be the same. There may be some changes, more colored eggs, new candy, or someone in an Easter bunny costume. These are all incremental improvements on an Easter party. In Thiel’s terminology these are iterations from 1 to 2. However, we could show up and see a huge buffet on picnic tables (Martha Stewart or Mario Batali catering), and there’s a live band and a play about the local history of the area and what people did a hundred years ago this time of year. That would be something closer to 0 to 1. To find those zero to one ideas Thiel suggests we ask, “what important truth do very few people agree with you on?” and “What valuable company is nobody building?”

It’s difficult to find these things, but you can help yourself at the start. Thiel writes:

“Every startup is small at the start. Every monopoly dominates a large share of its market. Therefore, every startup should start with a very small market. Always err on the side of starting too small. The reason is simple, it’s easier to dominate a small market than a larger one.”

The book was created based on a class Thiel taught at Stanford University and at some points it’s a bit prickly. Thiel has a section on luck he titles, “you are not a lottery ticket” that I thought was a bit airy because the conclusions in that section didn’t have the same logical concreteness of the other sections. He also had a chapter about startup founders which included references to Steve Jobs, Britney Spears, and Howard Hughes that I had to read twice to try and understand what exactly he was saying. Beyond these though, the book is very concrete, especially the “seven questions every business must answer.”

Can you build something that’s a breakthrough rather than something that is incremental? Is now the right time for this business? Are you starting with a big share of a small market? Do you have the right team? Can you sell, market, and deliver it? Can you defend our market position? Can you defend it in twenty years? Have you found an opportunity others don’t see?

The book is very good, but you may not be as interested if you don’t like walking the bridge between startup specifics and general philosophies. It is also full of interesting quotes, rich parallels, and a quick read too. The blurbs on the back are from Nassim Taleb, Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk, which should give you some idea about who might enjoy this book.

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Why I’m Not Getting An Apple Watch

With the Apple Watch hitting the market, you’d think that someone involved with productivity – or, more specifically, time management – would be chomping at the bit to pick one up. While the Apple Watch would be the natural choice for me (all of my devices are Apple-oriented), there are other smart watch options out there. I even reviewed the Galaxy Gear when it first came out.

But I’m not getting an Apple Watch anytime soon. In fact, I’m not getting a smart watch of any kind in the near future, despite the fact that I do write and speak a lot about time.

Why?

Because it doesn’t fill any gaps in my workflow. By adding an Apple Watch to the mix I’d be disrupting my workflow far more than enhancing it.

Sure, a smart watch may eventually prove to help me be more productive. But I doubt it. I mean, the approach is far more important than anything else in my mind, and a device will only take you as far as your approach allows. With devices of all sorts in my arsenal (I’ve actually gotten rid of a few in recent weeks), the Apple Watch doesn’t fit anywhere. No smart watch does.

There is, however, another reason why I’m not purchasing an Apple Watch when it launches or buying a smart watch currently on the market. I think it would alter how I currently think about time in a way that is counterproductive.

Let me explain.

I am a big believer in focusing on task over time. I gave a short talk about this at TEDxVictoria in 2013. I feel as if adding a watch to my wrist will put time at the forefront, which isn’t what I want. And not just the current moment – which I actually think is important to keep in mind – but the minutes and hours beyond that. It’s the future moments that would rile me up and push me back into worrying about how much time I had to do something instead of being as proactive as I tend to be.

Additionally, the notifications of the Apple Watch would drive me nuts. I already pare them down on my phone, and I think that getting pinged by my watch would serve as a constant source of distractions. That, in turn, would not serve me well in terms of productivity. I’d want to mitigate those distractions and the best way to do that right now is to simply not invite them into my life through another device.

The Apple Watch (or any smart watch) will fill a gap for some people and they’ll want it for that reason. Others will want it because it is the hot new technology. A smart watch doesn’t appear to solve any problems for me. Instead, I’d suggest it may actually create some. I’m not “against” the Apple Watch because I do think it will work for a lot of people. But I’m not exactly “for” it, either.

So while I continue to work with the approach I use and the tools I have, I’ll keep an eye on developments with the Apple Watch (and smart watches in general). Maybe one day I will get one but until then I’ll be happy to wear the “watch” I picked up from The Timebandits, which is a far better timepiece option for me at the moment based on where I’m at and what I’m doing.

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To Produce, Consume, or Just Leave My Phone in My Pocket

At the start of his podcast, Tim Ferriss’s introduction mix goes like this, “optimal mental performance…at this altitude I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.”  Then Tim goes on to have a one-of-a-kind interview with a one-of-a-kind person. Even if you aren’t a fan of Ferriss’s approach and presentation, his interviewing skills are some of the best in the digital world of podcasting. But it wasn’t so much of what he said, as what one of his guests said.

In an interview with Tim, Kevin Kelly said that he can go a week without checking his email in the states and weeks if he’s abroad and internet access is spotty to being with. Ferriss too said that he has a day each week he goes without checking a screen. Wow, I thought. How can these two people with thriving, huge, iconic (again, in the digital world)  businesses and workings go without email? I don’t have nearly as many juggling balls in the air as they do, but this idea seems incredibly foreign.  Then Kelly and Ferriss agreed on something I hadn’t thought of, their phones are poor input devices. It isn’t easy to produce something on our phones, so why focus on it when you can do better work someplace else?

My initial listen of this interview occurred right after I had spent a week trying to use my iPhone as my only device. I connected a Bluetooth keyboard, downloaded some new apps, and it mostly worked for drafting blog posts, rough drafts, and replying to emails. But then my system sagged. I couldn’t search online nearly as quickly, I lacked the efficiency of keyboard shortcuts, and my phone was starting to lag.

Okay, so using my phone as an input device didn’t work – but that was only one side to the coin. If I couldn’t spend more time producing on my phone I could spend less time consuming. After communication, it’s almost all consumption; Feedly, Twitter, Facebook, Messenger, Reddit, Instapaper, Kindle, Downcast. These were all apps that I would look to refresh, read, and redirect my glance every chance I had. Okay, I reasoned, let’s delete these apps and see what happens. In the words of Mike Vardy I was failing to “mind the gap” in the way I invested small parts of my day. This is what was happening:

Day 1: Oh, this feels so free. I love the peacefulness of no notifications. La de da. Wait, don’t I have a blog post going up today? What if someone has a question about it. Let me log in via my mobile browser. Okay, no questions. (An hour passes) Okay, maybe now there is a mention. Oh, good! Someone retweeted it. Let me thank them. “:)” (Half an hour passes) I better check again.

And that’s how it went, on again, off again, on again. Unlike a rom-com romance, this was not going to work out well in the end.

Day 2: I reinstalled all the apps where I logged in with my mobile browser (Facebook and Twitter) but left the others (Feedly, Reddit) off. Then I relegated them to a folder on the very last screen of my phone. Now I wouldn’t miss a notification, but checking in wasn’t easy.

You may be thinking, Well, it’s still on your phone, how do you stop from checking it? Swiping through four pages and then tapping on a screen isn’t much resistance, but it’s enough. In the cookie post to productivity, I wrote, “secretaries who were given candy in transparent bowls ate more than those with candy in opaque bowls. It was an empirical example of the oft-cited adage, out of sight, out of mind.” Now I’m the secretary and rather than having those apps on my home screen (in a transparent bowl), I’m putting my treats in an opaque bowl (fourth screen, in a folder) so that I snack on them less.

What can you take away? The point of this post, or anything you read online, should be to encourage your own thinking in a new way. Create an experiment for yourself to try that can tweak what you are doing. If you find one, let me know about it on @mikedariano. If you want to try a reading experiment, I’m running one starting in April of 2015. Here’s more information about that.

 

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Measuring The Right Things

While on a recent run I realized this lesson, mostly accidentally.

My goal was to run for two hours and listen to podcasts while my Nike+ app tracked my distance. Things started out fine but around the one hour mark I noticed that my battery percentage was hovering around 50%. “Hmm,” I thought. “I can’t let that run all the way down.” I’m the primary contact for my daughter’s school and to tell my wife that she had to leave work because I was listening to Mike Vardy wasn’t going to be good. If I thought I was in a lot of pain from running – oh boy – I’d have a lot to learn.

I turned off the podcast and slogged away the final hour in silence, thinking about why the battery ran down so quickly and making a mental note to check on that.* Arriving home I noted that there weren’t any background apps that were running, that the GPS signal had been strong, and that there was nothing to note in the podcast. I let it go, assuming there was some technical specs I was just missing and that my long runs would be silent runs – at least in the second half.

Fast forward to a week later, another long run, and another half way point. I noted that then that my battery life had only gone down to 85%. That didn’t make any sense to me.

And then I realized it. The screen had been off.

My app sequence during my first run was podcast then Nike+, which leaves the screen on for a runner to see their distance, pace, and other metrics. This second run I did things in the opposite order: Nike+, then podcas,t and the screen turned off. My initial equation of GPS + audio = low battery was amended to be GPS + audio + screen = low battery.

So what does running have to do with productivity?

It matters because if we aren’t measuring the right things (and all the things) we get erroneous conclusions. Take for example, your email productivity. If you have a system think about what makes that system work properly. If you don’t consider this, what would happen if you processed all your email at once. If you switch from a Groupon advertisement for frozen yogurt to one about a work attachment you’re probably missing some efficiency. David Allen talked about this with Mike Vardy on The Productivityist Podcast.

“Your brain cannot multitask and your switching costs are absurdly detrimental.” – David Allen

In that interview David Allen is talking about multitasking, but that body of work rests on the same chassis as anything. You could measure how many emails you get through in a day or how many pages of reports or how often you submit an assignment but you need to make sure it’s comprehensive to the things that matter. If, like me and my runs, you miss one of the key ingredients, then you may miss the real reason.

On my iPhone I mostly knew what could be using the battery but in work it’s a bit harder. You need to think about your core work, those most important things that need done as a form of measurement.

*Note: I’ve since started using the GTD philosophy with Todoist and made a note later in the day.

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Start From The Edges

When you begin to assemble a jigsaw puzzle, you are faced with a slew of pieces scattered randomly. The first thing you’ll want to find are the ones that have smooth edges – the edge pieces – because they will allow you to build the puzzle faster.

Sure, there may be a few pieces you find during the process that don’t fit that description, but even if you manage to put two or three of them together, they don’t have anything to tether them to the puzzle as a whole. Not until the edges are in place. Once you’ve created the frame from all of the edge pieces, then you can start to build out from there.

Building your own workflow is no different.

In order to fit your workflow (or work style) into whatever it is you’re trying to do – whether it be for an organization, your own company, or even for your family, you’d be better served to put the edge pieces in place first. They’ll give you that framework you’ll need to put things together faster and better.

So…what are the edges in your work and life? The easiest ones to identify are keystone habits. Routines that you keep every day that bookend your day. The things you do before bed and the things you do first thing in the morning. Those are your edge pieces. They help you put things together every day because even though each day turns out differently, you’ll always have those routines to mark the day’s beginning and end.

If you’re trying to make improvements on your productivity, try starting from the edges. No matter what approach you take or app you use, those edges will help keep you anchored and give you the best chance for putting the puzzle that is your day together more effectively and efficiently.

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Meaningful Reading (And An Opportunity To Do Some)

We’re big fans here of Cal Newport’s book, So Good They Can’t Ignore You. The book centers on figuring out what follow your passion really means. It makes a strong case that following your passion isn’t quite the right framing for how to do good work and makes suggestions about what is. Have you read it? Did it change your thinking? What about your actions?

That’s the key part to consuming anything: Does it make a meaningful change in how you act?

The thinking part is good but until your actions are changed, even in the slightest way, there isn’t a whole lot of reason to consume something. And there is a lot to consume.

I finished watching the third season of House of Cards and after my hour long shower to feel no-quite-so evil after realizing who I was rooting for, I went on with my day. There’s nothing from House of Cards (hopefully) that I’m bringing into my life. For other things though, I want a deeper knowledge and appreciation for what to do. Posts about the The Pomodoro Technique are great, but they fit in the House of Cards-like bin until I act on them. Until I set a timer, dive into the work, and use that actual technique it’s a bit useless.

Not everything has to be an explicit action like this. It can be small thoughts that nudge our behavior. In How to Invest Your Time Like Money, Elizabeth Saunders introduced the INO framework which encourages people to think about how they are spending their time. Is each activity one that you can Invest in, Neutral and takes the time that it takes, or one you can Optimize by efficient layering (multitasking)? This mental model has changed my workflow in small ways. It made me realize that trying to add 100 words to a blog post while waiting to pick up my daughter from school didn’t bring much value. But cleaning out my inbox did. It was like doubling down on a questionable mining stock rather than buying a sliver of Apple stock instead.

This all circles back to Newport’s book. I’m starting a book club. It’s more like an enhanced reading experience, but book club is easier to tweet. Over the course of April we’ll be reading the book at about the same pace and I’ll be emailing people five updates. Each update will include a summary of what you read and bonus material. For example, the very title of the book is from a Steve Martin quote and there are a few additional resources, like Martin’s talk with Charlie Rose that are incredibly interesting. That’s the sort of stuff that will be in the emails.

But (you’re thinking) I don’t have time to read. You make time to read like you make time to eat, sleep, work. Charlie Munger wrote:

“In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn’t read all the time — none, zero.”

Perhaps you’re now thinking I’ve already read it. That’s great, but this will be a deeper experience. The way that we build our understanding of things is through regular, repeated exposure. We have to revisit things to understand them deeply, a very idea from the book.

If you want, you can sign up and get each email. The “live” version will be free and if you find this after the spring of 2015, a paid version will be available to purchase. If you have questions, let me know in the comments or on Twitter, @MikeDariano.

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Mind The Gap: 2 Ways To Find The Holes In Your Productivity

I was listening to an episode of Talk is Jericho where Chris Jericho’s good friend Lance Storm was talking with him about his early wrestling years. One of the things he said stood out in my mind:

”When you’re starting out, you see your holes. Because the only way you’re going to get good is to see your shortcomings and improve on them.”

Whenever you’re starting something new – no matter what it is – if you want to get better at it then it’s important to see the gaps. You need to first recognize where the holes are in your game and then do what you can to fill them. Whether you fill those gaps up with new approaches, tools that can handle them, or bridging them with existing approaches and tools, you need to fill them in order to improve.

And your productivity is no different.

If you’re trying to get things done and you spend a lot of time on the road, but the digital task manager you use (either by choice or by force) doesn’t cover you while you’re out there, find a way to fill the hole left as a result.

Maybe it’s by using a notebook and transferring items to digital later. Maybe it’s by emailing tasks to your task management. Maybe it’s by picking a new app altogether.

No matter what it is, mind the gap and then fill it as best you can.

If you have too much on your plate every day and can’t get move things forward effectively and efficiently enough, look for something to close that gap.

Perhaps you can hire a virtual assistant to handle certain tasks. Perhaps FancyHands can help you out. Perhaps you can time chunk and theme your days so that you better allocate your time rather than try to cram everything in every day (and defer things regularly as a result).

Regardless, notice where the holes in your game are and close them.

Not sure how to do that? Here are two things you can start doing now to identify your holes and begin the process of closing them.

1. Journal

The most impactful of the two things that will help you see the holes in your game better is journaling. I journal every night before bed. Why? Because I want to acknowledge what worked and what didn’t during the day. I also want to pay tribute to the highlights of my day and also draw some attention to the lowlights. Ultimately, I journal because I want to chronicle my life in some small way so that I can improve it along the way.

And it’s working.

You can use a notebook or an app to journal. Some people use Evernote. Some people use The 5 Minute Journal. I use Day One. You can journal every day, twice daily, or as frequently as you like. The important thing is to start doing it and then make it part of your regular routine. It’ll make a huge difference across both your home and work life.

2. Review Regularly

Oddly enough, by journaling regularly you wind up doing this in a small way. But this kind of review is much deeper. You review everything on your plate, all incoming information, and so on. Whether you want to process a GTD Weekly Review as per David Allen or some other method, a regular review will help clear the mind and get you back to a place of calm and less overwhelm.

It’s human nature to want to impress…and improve. The only way you can do both of those things is to pay attention to your shortcomings and work on eliminating them or masking them by levelling up in other aspects of yourself so that they aren’t as glaring as they may be. If you want to be an elite performer in work and in life, you need to see the holes and work hard to get rid of them. There are plenty of tools out there that can help, but they can’t do it for you. Only the approach you take and the effort you put in can do that.

The term “mind the gap” often refers to the audible or visual warning that rail passengers in the United Kingdom are given when boarding or disembarking from the train, but in this case it applies to you. Mind the gap (or gaps) in your productivity and fill them so they no longer adversely affect you. It won’t be easy – taking things to the next level rarely is – but it will be rewarding.

 

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Book Review: How To Invest Your Time Like Money

Elizabeth Grace Saunders has written a time management book that values your time. Time management may be the wrong category for what this is. It’s more like strategic time investment – hence the title.

Saunders’ connection to investment isn’t robust, but the information in the book is still very good. She lays out five steps toward better time investments:

Take control
Identify your time debts
Create a base schedule
Set up automatic time investments
Maximize your ROI.

What makes her book a good investment is the focus and efficiency of those sections. Saunders’ instruction for time management is the IKEA manual for building a better schedule.

To get started, Saunders suggests you objectively identify where you are spending your time. To use her analogy, if you’re house rich, but money poor, you need to admit it. Ditto for any shoe, coffee, or rare pen habit you may have. It’s harder to do this with time because there’s no monthly statement. My bank sends me a monthly statement, my time does not. To really get started with an overhaul then, you need to begin tracking how you spend your time. To get started:

Listen to Patrick Rhone talk about being intentional with his time.
Check out some of our favorite digital tools.
At the very least, you’ll need a spreadsheet to mark where you’ve been spending yours.

After you accept ownership  of the good and bad, you need to tally the ledger. Saunders provides the handy formula:

External Expectations + Internal Expectations =,>, or < 24 Hours – Self-care

For many people that equation will be out of whack. If it is for you then you need to look at which variable needs adjusted because as the saying goes, there’s only 24 hours in a day.

To adjust external expectations means to look at what other people expect from you and see if that can change. One handy question from the book is to ask, “could this meeting happen if I were sick?” If you answer yes, that is the type of thing you can begin to trim.

To rebalance your internal expectations think about what parts of exercise, hobbies, or travel are most important to you. In an interview Shane Parrish, writer of Farnam Street, notes that he walks to and from work rather than exercise. For him, the internal expectations are higher for mental than physical fitness.

A handy heuristic that Saunders uses is to optimize the time she spends on this things by layering. Layering is the idea that we can multitask, but with different types of activities. You can listen to the Productivityist podcast while you run on the treadmill, for example (though people may wonder why you’re smiling so much).

Layering brings us to what I thought was the most valuable part of the book, INO thinking, which stands for “investment,” “neutral,” and “optimize,” and is a way of relating financial truths to time. Returning to her investment angle, this is a portfolio balancing strategy. You want some of your money to grow, some to be safe, and some to be able to spend. This trinity can also work for your time.

Investment activities are ones where more time in, means more gains out. The more projects you work on, the more value you bring.
Neutral activities “More time doesn’t necessarily mean a significantly larger payoff.” Saunders says that meetings you must attend are like this. Ditto for email.
Optimize activities are ones where you can tweak to bring more value, mostly by layering, but need to be done.

How to Invest Your Time Like Money is a good quick read for someone looking to restart resolutions, anyone looking for a fresh perspective on using their time, or someone who wants to start using it better. It’s probably not for anyone already highly optimized. You may like it if you enjoyed 168 Hours by Laura Vanderkam

One last quote from Saunders:

“Deadlines are like train stops, where it’s essential you arrive on time or ahead of schedule, whereas most other activities can have the more relaxed flow of a canoe trip. As long as you reach your destination by nightfall, where you stop for lunch along the way doesn’t make a big difference.”

If you want to see the template that she uses in the book, I’ve made a version on Google Drive.

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Start Taking Action: 12 Steps to Beat Procrastination and Finish What You Started

Timo is a blogger , author, and speaker who helps work-at-home professionals get stuff done fast so that they have time for living. To make this post even more effective, you can grab a special list of procrastination-busting tools right here!

No matter how productive you are, we all have one trait in common: we all procrastinate.

But things start to become serious when you fail to take action on important habits and tasks, start missing deadlines, and never reach the goals you have set for yourself.

Before I share my favourite strategies for overcoming procrastination, let’s take a look at a typical task.

A cross-section of a task

If you look at any task, this is how it breaks down:

Planning phase: All the necessary planning and preparation Execution phase: Making sure you actually pull through your task Finishing phase: Making sure that it’s 100% done

Sounds simple, right? However, there are more steps involved like the ones I just mentioned. In fact, there are a total of 12 sub-steps that help you to get started, keep the momentum alive, and finish your work.

1. PLANNING PHASE

Before you start a task, you need to do some planning to guarantee its smooth execution. Of course, if your task is just a simple one (like drink a glass of water), then planning for it may be overkill.

Make necessary preparations

What is the task you are about to do? What resources, people, and equipment are needed in order to successfully start, execute, and complete the task? Take some time to figure all this out in advance, so that you don’t encounter surprising roadblocks during the execution phase.

For instance, if your plan is to write a sales report the next day, you might need things like the sales data from the previous month, Jim’s comment regarding why the sales volume has dropped down in the Far-East, or the notes from the last sales meeting.

When you do some prep work in advance, you stop wasting time and are able to get started with your work right away.

Understand the outcome – both positive and negative

Planning and preparing are fine, but sometimes that is not enough. In addition, you may sometimes have to motivate yourself and find a reason for getting started.

Understand that there are two equally important parts that can motivate you:

Positive Negative

Let’s take a look at the former motivation first.

For instance, when your task is done, you could be closer to accomplishing a dream of yours (like starting your own business that earns you a nice income.) The reward could also be a very concrete one and happen sooner, like finishing your work early so that you can get back home and spend time with your family.

Create a mental image of what happens if you postpone your task versus if you don’t get it done in a timely manner. In the former, this could be you being stuck in your day job for the next two years (compared to running your own business). Or in the latter, working overtime during the weekend (compared to spending fun time with your family).

Once the preparation part is over, it’s time to actually get started with your task! Use the following techniques to make the starting easier. The starting part is – after all – the phase that many people struggle the most.

Use action triggers

Hoping to do something is very different than actually doing the work. This is also what researchers Peter Gollwitzer and Veronica Brandstatter found in their study.

They asked students to submit a report by December 26th, to earn more studying credits. Only 33% of the students returned the work in time. However, 77% of those who defined action triggers submitted the report in time.

In essence, an action trigger defines when and where an activity takes place. For instance, you could say:

I’ll run 2K in the park after I have picked kids from kindergarten I’ll write a report in my home office right after finishing breakfast I’ll clean the kitchen as soon as the guests have left the house

According to Gollwitzer, action triggers “protect goals from tempting distractions, bad habits, or competing goals.”

Besides, think to yourself, what is more effective: saying to yourself that you will work on a task sometime next week or define the exact time and place with an action trigger?

Break the task into smaller pieces

The next thing you want to do is to take an overview of your task and figure out how you can break it down into smaller parts. When you realize that a task is actually a series of smaller steps – rather than a huge big “lump” – starting and taking action becomes easier.

For instance, if your task is titled as “paint the home office ceiling,” the description is just too vague. Instead, figure out all the sub-steps that have to be completed first in order to finish a task. Perhaps you have to …

Decide on the color of the ceiling with your wife Buy two buckets of paint from a hardware store Decide on the date when you actually paint the ceiling Empty the home office and cover the furniture

As you can see, a task that seemed like a single entity at first has just revealed four different sub-tasks. Once you have split the task into pieces, the task becomes more manageable and easier to start.

Apply a 5-Minute Rule

One very powerful way to break the invisible wall (aka the procrastination) between you and the task is to use a technique called “five-minute room rescue.”

This rule, originally created by the home organising wizard FlyLady, helps people with their organising and cleaning efforts.

The idea is very simple: rather than overwhelming yourself with a huge and daunting task, you promise to clean or organise your room for only five minutes. What happens in most cases is that you actually do more work than just five minutes.

This same can be applied to anything, not just to organising and cleaning. So if you feel helpless in front of a big task, why not promise yourself to work on the task just five minutes? It sure makes the task easier to deal with.

2. EXECUTION PHASE

• Don’t Break The Chain

Starting a task is one thing. But you should also make sure you keep the momentum alive and work on the task as long as necessary. This is especially true if your work spreads over to many days (or even if your goal is to do a certain task every day).

This is where a technique called “Don’t break the chain” comes into play. It was originally invented by comedian Jerry Seinfeld.

He wanted to become a better comedian, so he set a goal to write every day. And to motivate himself to writing, he invented a nifty technique which helped him to reach this daily goal.

The solution was a calendar, where the whole year was presented in one page. When he managed to accomplish his daily writing goal, he marked a big red X to the calendar.

Eventually, when there were enough Xs on the calendar, they started look like a chain.

Once the chain was formed, it became harder and harder to skip over one day, since you had to start forming the chain all over.

Limit your time

Have you heard of the Parkinson’s Law? According to Wikipedia, it means “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”.

In other words, if you give your task two weeks to finish, it will most likely take that two weeks. Then again, if you give your task just three days for its completion, it will be finished in that shorter time frame.

When you shorten the amount of time you allocate for a task, you are also building pressure on yourself to finish it in time. Besides, if you can really get the task done in three days, why would you give it more time than necessary?

Limit your distractions

Distractions can lead to procrastination too, especially if the task you are doing is challenging and tedious. These sources of distraction could be things like:

E-mail Phone Instant messaging Internet Other people

Anything in your sight that catches your attention (movement coming from outside through the window, a flashing web page on your other monitor, an incoming call which activates your phone’s screen)

Sometimes the distraction can be helpful, however. For instance, many people like to work in coffee shops, since the background noise can help them to focus better.

To deal with distraction, understand the nature of your task first. Then make sure to either cut out the distractions or let it help you to become more productive and focused.

Take breaks (aka perfect your work rhythm)

To make the work more enjoyable and effective, make sure to schedule breaks into your workday. It has been proven by certain studies that breaks do improve our productivity.

So what kind of breaks should you have? There are many ways to set the rhythm of your work, ranging from Pomodoro Technique to Ultradian Rhythm. For instance, I have just started testing the latter and so far I have found that it helps me to focus better, thus avoiding unnecessary procrastination.

All you have to do is to test different techniques and see which fits you the best (and then stick with that strategy).

• Review your daily work

A daily review gives you valuable feedback on your progress. So after you have finished your workday, do the following kind of examination:

What tasks you worked on? Why you were/weren’t able to accomplish a task? How are you making progress related to your goal(s)?

Take five minutes to review this information and write it down in a journal. This helps you to understand how you day went and see the lessons you learned. With this information you can:

Have a better plan for the next day Adjust your future actions, so that you get closer to your goals Help you feel grateful towards your work, towards the lessons you learned, and towards the progress you have made

3. FINISHING PHASE

You are now in a final stage of a task. If you manage to pull through this phase, your task is done and you can move on to something else. And by the way, when I talk about a finished task, I’d like to quote my former boss who said it best: “A task which is almost finished is NOT finished.”

Beat perfection

If there is one thing that can lengthen the completion of a task, that’s perfection. In other words, you keep tweaking every detail of your assignment, until it’s 100% ready.

Not only you are unable to finish your task, but you are also in a never-ending loop: even if a task is perfect right now, something will always come up that could be improved further.

To escape this vicious cycle, create a checklist that lists the most important criteria that have to be met. Once the criteria are met, you can move on to the next task on your list.

Offer a price

You are now close to finishing a task. To help you to travel the last mile, create a compelling reward that you can claim once you are finished.

The reward should match the complexity of the task you want to finish. So booking up a trip to Bahamas could be fine when you have finished writing a 200-page book. On the other hand, this kind of reward might be bit extravagant if you just mowed the lawn.

Tools that help you to beat procrastination

There was plenty to go through in this post, but I hope that I was able to give you strategies that help you tackle procrastination. But this wasn’t all!

I have created a list of tools that make you even stronger in a battle against procrastination. If you want to defend yourself from this unfortunate trait, click here to download this free report today. It contains 15 tools that can be helpful in your daily work.

The post Start Taking Action: 12 Steps to Beat Procrastination and Finish What You Started appeared first on Productivityist.