I work with lots of people who are booked all day long, 8am-6pm, every single day of the week.  Most of these people complain that they have no time to do any “real” work since they’re “sooooooo busy” all the time.  Yet sitting in a meeting with a laptop open only half paying attention isn’t real work, and most people know that

Still, they let their time get abused left and right and don’t realize that they’re ultimately in control of the situation.  Heck, they may not even identify it as a problem to begin with.  They’re busy right?  Who has time to think about producing, creating, or <ugh> leading anyway?!

When you break it down, time is the purest and most ultimate resource we have for action.  We don’t own many things completely and totally, but time is one of the things that we get to choose how to spend.  And as we’ve discussed on this blog in the past, your life is the sum of what you choose to focus on – so spend it wisely, because you aren’t going to get it back.  How you spend your time is going to impact your life in ways greater than your money, relationships, or job alone ever could.

It’s easy to look at a situation like being booked all week and think it’s unavoidable.  If you’re in a role with a decent amount of responsibility, it’s also easy to assume that responsibility has to equate to meeting attendance and being “busy” all the time.  But of course, it doesn’t… and never will.

Having responsibility for something important means that you’re a decision-maker of some sort.  The best decisions are made based on experience, instinct, and data.  And there are ways to gain practical experience, hone your native instinct, and collect and synthesize data outside of meetings.  In fact, you could make an argument that the more time you spend in useless meetings, the less opportunity you have to gain that experience or practice your craft.

Follow me?

Responsibility means, almost by definition, that your skills are best spent on “top of the stack” problems.  Which means that the more responsibility you have, the more time you should be spending on higher-level (aka more important) problems.  And in order to do so, focus is an absolute must-have in every way.  Because you can’t make a significant difference if you can’t focus on something, right?

To deconstruct it further, you may find that you can only make progress on solving those higher-level problems if you have uninterrupted blocks of time.  Studies have shown that it can take as much as 20 or 30 minutes to “recover” from interruptions.  This means that if you have to spin-down for even just a few minutes, you’re going to have an inordinately hard time spinning back up into flow.

And the harder the problem, the more it requires dedicated time to focus on.

You don’t get uninterrupted time if you let yourself get booked all day, every day.  And if you’re like me and have kids and a life outside of the office, you’re going to quickly find yourself sacrificing the things that make your life worth living in order to get back on track at the office.  It doesn’t have to be this way, I promise.

Here are five simple tips that should help you prioritize your time:

1. Block off time every Friday to kill meetings for the next week.

As part of any good weekly review (see The 3S Approach for more on the weekly review process) you look ahead to the upcoming week.  Use this time to start hitting the Cancel or Decline buttons for things you just don’t have time to do if you want to get non-meeting work done.

Always do this with the goal of having large blocks of uninterrupted time – it’s no use if you’re just grabbing a half-hour here and there to catch-up on email.  Remember: you want to get something done, not just mess around with your email.

2. Frontload your commitments.

This is something I’ve begun doing recently and it’s been great.  See, I’d rather have a couple days each week where I don’t have time to think so long as I know I’m going to have huge blocks of uninterrupted time coming up to do nothing but think. 

Lots of people look at a 40-hour work week and see 40 available slots for meetings, but I find this to be counter-productive to real focus.  It means you’re bouncing around all week and never have time to find flow.

So try this: squeeze all the recurring and one-off meetings you have into Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday (if needed).  Leave Thursday and Friday wide open.  In fact, book a bunch of writing/coding/designing or whatever time on those days just for yourself.  Then protect that time like a mama bear protects an injured cub.

You may find that not only do you get an abundance of time to do “real” work, you also have a buffer for those important meetings that you couldn’t have possibly anticipated at the start of the week.  This way you may have some meetings on Thursday and Friday, but you guarantee they’re the most important ones and that they happen around your commitment to produce.

3. Get outta Dodge.

Plan to be out of the office for at least four continuous hours every couple weeks.  Work from a coffee shop, a satellite office, or your favorite lookout spot.  It doesn’t really matter much, so much as you make a habit out of not being around for others when they are looking for you. 

Of course, if you alert people that you’re planning on doing this, they’ll know to find you before or after your disappearance – and you’ll find that it won’t make one bit of a difference for them.  But it will do wonders for your ability to get stuff done.

4. Start every phone call with “Is this still a good time to talk?”

I picked up this habit from Merlin Mann, web celeb extraordinaire and creator of Inbox Zero.  Starting every call with “Is this still a good time?” does two important things:

1. It gives the person you’re meeting with an opportunity to duck out if they need to.  Important because it also conveys that you feel this is important enough that you expect them to be present and active on the call.  If it’s not a good time to do this, say so now – otherwise we’re diving in.
2. It makes it clear that you’re going to be engaged – that you are going to be an active participant on the call.

Plus, it’s just courteous and respectful of someone else’s time.  Other people face the same overbooked pain as you do, so it’s just the right thing to do.

5. Don’t solve other people’s problems for them.

It doesn’t matter how smart you think you are, shut up.  When someone comes to you with a problem they need to solve or a decision they need to make, you need to quickly assess what your role is going to be in their process.  Sometimes it’s easy to see yourself as the “hero” – the person who’ll solve all the world’s problems in one fell swoop.

But that has two unintended consequences.  First, it involves you directly in the lifetime of that thing.  If there are follow-ups, you’re going to be involved.  You may even end up being in the driver’s seat.  So what may have taken 20 minutes of your time can easily turn into 20 unexpected and unplanned-for hours.  And second, it’s setting a bad precedent and taking a learning opportunity away from someone else. 

You want people to be able to solve their own problems, especially if you’re a manager, and doing the work for someone else just makes it easier for them to ask next time.  And of course, the primary role of any good manager (or co-worker for that matter) is to help those around them learn and grow.  How is that person growing by listening to you rattle on?

Hope this helps!  If you haven’t, checked out what is really part one of this post; Protect Your Time: 8 Ways to Stay Focused on Important Stuff.  8+5 = 13 tips for making the most out of your most limited and valuable resource.

Related posts:

1. Protect Your Time: 8 Ways to Stay Focused on Important Stuff
2. 15 Ways To Get a New Habit To Stick Forever
3. 9 Ways To Stop Overthinking Everything

If you work in the tech industry, you’ve undoubtedly heard the phrase, “Real artists ship”.  It’s a quote attributed to Steve Jobs, the founder and current CEO of Apple, as a motivator for the development team of the original Macintosh computer.

In this context, shipping means getting your product out the door and into the hands of the world.  But it could mean submitting your term paper, completing a big sale, or finishing a year-long boat renovation.  Life is full of projects like these that could go on indefinitely, but ultimately have to ship in order to make a difference. 

If these projects don’t ship, they’re just hobbies.  If they don’t ship, they were just fun ideas – and ideas are a dime a dozen… everyone has good ideas.  But shipping… that’s hard.  And the rewards of shipping are reserved for the few that are able to do it, not the people who first thought of the idea.

The “problem” with starting a project with the expectation that it’ll ship is that it imposes all sorts of constraints.  The technology isn’t where you need it to be, you don’t have the time you need to do everything you want to do, or you don’t have the people or money.  In order to truly think “outside the box” you need a team that’s twice as big with twice as much money and faster computers!  Of course that’s all bogus.

Constraints are why things ship.

If you didn’t have a deadline to submit your term paper, you could tweak it forever.  If you didn’t have customers waiting for the next version of your software or competitors breathing down your neck, you could add every feature you’ve ever thought of.  You need constraints to really think about how to best solve a problem.  Constraints are good.

The most important creations in the world are the ones that have shipped.  Creating without constraint isn’t creating… it’s just messing around.  Michelangelo didn’t mope around in Italian coffee shops instead of painting the Sistine Chapel because the ceiling was too big or he didn’t have enough time.  He shipped it.

Seth Godin has a great quote in his (highly recommended book) Linchpin where he discusses shipping:

Artists don’t think outside the box, because outside the box there’s a vacuum. Outside of the box there are no rules, there is no reality. You have nothing to interact with, nothing to work against. If you set out to do something way outside the box (designing a time machine, or using liquid nitrogen to freeze Niagara Falls), then you’ll never be able to do the real work of art. You can’t ship if you’re far outside the box… Artists think along the edges of the box, because that’s where things get done.

I love that.

I’ve shipped a lot of things in my life, as I’m sure you have too.  And not a single one went out the door, including every post on this site, without me thinking, “Is it really ready?  Did I do everything I could have done?  Yikes, it’s not ready.  I need more time to get it right!”  The times when I pushed through the fear were because I had a plan.  When I had to come up with a plan ahead of starting, I’d already felt this fear once before, so I knew how to deal with it.

This is why it’s important to plan from the start to ship.  To be clear that come hell or high water, shipping something is non-negotiable.  Planning to ship is the difference between you and 99.9% of the world that never ships anything.

It’s critical that your plan to ship is comprehensive.  If your plan isn’t trusted, what’s the point?  You need a plan that you believe in through and through.  Even if the world changes around you, you’ll at least have a framework to deal with it.

A plan proves to your scared self that you’ve already done the research and you’re ready to go. This way, you feel that the path to shipping has been predetermined.  It’s much harder to second-guess yourself or your team when your plan is written down and sitting right in front of you.  The person (or group of people) who wrote that plan were confident – they were sure – that the plan would succeed.  Trust those instincts even if you don’t feel them right now.  Because shipping matters.

Most importantly, planning gets all the arguments (or “thrashing” as it’s often called) out of the way before they matter.  You debate (and ultimately decide) during planning, either with yourself or with others, so you’re not debating in the end game when it’s too expensive to discuss.  With any project, changes are always 10x costlier at the end than the beginning. 

You can always spot a well-run project by how little thrashing there is at the end.  The disaster projects are the ones that look great / on-track until the last 10%, and then they become thrash-fests.

That’s not to say the end is ever easy.  It isn’t.  It’s always hard.  But at the end of the project, you need to be focusing on the little things because the big things were already discussed, debated, and decided long ago.  If you’re still debating the big things near the end of the project, you’re done for.

The two biggest reasons for failed projects: 1) Complete lack of planning, and 2) Poor planning.  Projects with good planning become well executed projects that ship.  Projects that aren’t planned, or are planned poorly, become poorly executed projects that don’t ship – or ship late.

No one will remember the projects that didn’t ship 100 years from now.  You only have a shot at getting them to remember those that did.

We have a phrase we use at Microsoft all the time when a decision is made.  Ship it!  It’s the geek equivalent of saying, “We’ve reached consensus, we don’t need to discuss again, now the most important thing to do is to get it out there.”  It’s also more fun than saying “Yup, I agree”

Ultimately, shipping is what matters!

Related posts:

1. Project Management: Starting a Blog (Part 1 of 2)
2. Make Your Training Harder Than The Real Thing
3. Project Management: Starting a Blog (Part 2 of 2)

Similar to how some people can’t navigate their way out of their own driveway (myself included), some of us just weren’t born with an ability to gauge elapsed or remaining time.  We consistently think we have more time than we actually do, downplaying the reality of the situation: that whatever time we have remaining, even though we think it’s enough, isn’t even close.

We forget about the little things, we assume the best of every situation, and we get caught up in a "right here, right now" mentality instead of making a clean break from the present and moving onto what’s next.  

It’s called time denial.  And you’re living in it.

Time denial isn’t just specific to chronic latecomers, most everyone falls prey to this mentality at one point or another.  Yup, even you my friend.  So stop judging the dude in the next cubicle.

You know the drill… You’re right in the middle of something that has your complete attention, all the while your next commitment is creeping up on you.  You glance at the clock, trying to squeeze in another few minutes to finish that email – or frag that alien with your rocket launcher – thinking that no matter what, you have time because it "only takes" 15 minutes to get to the office. 

By the time you pull away from your current activity, grab your coat, and run to your car, you’re already down to 14 minutes… and you need to get gas.  And of course, traffic has started building up.  Before you know it, you’re not 5 minutes late, you’re 25 minutes late!

Avoidable?  Certainly.  Acceptable?  Most certainly not.  Maybe you can get away with it the first time… if you’re a nice person.  But great things weren’t achieved showing up 25 minutes late.  Trust isn’t built by letting people down, making them wait for you and your bad habits.  Real artists of life don’t show up late all the time.

Real artists of life have integrity.

Look, time management is only as good as your relationships.  If you’re a master at managing your task list but people don’t want to work with you, or don’t trust you to show up when they expect you to, it doesn’t matter how many to-dos you’re checking off each day.  Commitments are the most important thing in business, and are pretty high on the list of "personal life" as well. 

If you find yourself showing up late all the time, you simply need to get a fix on it.

Here are some things you can start to do immediately to keep yourself from ever being late again.

Analyze your behavior

Next time you’re late, figure out exactly why before it leaves your short-term memory.  For me, it’s almost always the time it takes to park in a parking garage and take the elevator.  For whatever reason, each time I’m 5-10 minutes late I can always work backwards from the start time to see that I didn’t budget that last 5% of the travel time.  For you, it could be the time it takes to do your hair or drop your kid off at school.  Whatever it is, you’re better off knowing than guessing.  Learn from your mistakes!

Work backward from the commitment

If you need to get to work by 9am but have dry-cleaning to pick-up and a donut to grab on the way in, start with the end in mind and work backward.  In order to get to work by 9am, you’ll need to be on the road by 8:40.  In order to be on the freeway by 8:40, you need to leave the donut shop by 8:35.  And in order to do that, you’ll have to get there by 8:30… which means leaving your house at 8:20.  All of a sudden, getting to work on time isn’t so difficult.  My wife is a master at this when we have a flight to catch!

Assume the worst

In order to get somewhere on time, you can’t assume that the roads are just going to clear for you.  Similarly, if you need to get a report finished, build in the time it takes to get your errands finished – don’t underestimate the time because you’re assuming rosy circumstances.  Of course, nothing is ever perfect – there’s always going to be an accident on the bridge, or a longer than expected line at the coffee shop.  If you assume the worst and build that into your plan, you won’t have to worry about it becoming reality.  If and when it does, you can just shrug it off.  And if things are perfect, you may even be early!

Prep things in advance

One trick I use all the time is to assume my future self is lazy.  Because based on past experience, I know he is.  Once you’ve accepted the fact that the "you" right now is 10x more motivated to make your life easier than the "you" tomorrow, you start to trick that bum into doing things your way.  You do things like put toothpaste on your toothbrush two hours before you brush your teeth so you have no excuses, you pick out your clothes for the next day and even iron them, you pull the trash out of the can and stick it by the door ready to go.  This of course applies to being late in a fundamental way: if you can anticipate the thing(s) that have the highest chance of making you late tomorrow and can shave minutes off of your routine, you can make things easier for the future you.

Putting it into practice

Tomorrow is the first day I’m dropping my daughter off at school.  We have a baby on the way in a couple weeks and the responsibility of drop-off is shifting to me for a while.  With my 35+ minute commute in the morning, I’m going to have to get serious about getting out of the house on time.  There are simply more things that can make me late now.

Here’s how I’m implementing these ideas right now for tomorrow morning:

• When I’ve been late in the past, I’ve underestimated traffic and how long it takes me to get my morning espresso.  Now I’m going to assume the worst.
• I have a dentist appointment in the morning, and I know that getting there involves local street traffic that’s worse than my normal commute to work.  So I worked backwards from the start time to give myself enough time to get there on time.  
• I know I want to publish this in the morning, so I’m going to get it ready for a single "Publish" click so I don’t waste time word-smithing it more in the morning.
• I need to get gas!  So I actually did it tonight instead of watching TV since there’s no way I’d make it on time if I had to make another stop on the way.
• I know I’ll need my laptop for my first meeting, so I’ll charge it right now.
• I’ll pack my gym and laptop bag tonight before I go to bed and leave them by the door with my coat & keys.

Like so many "secrets" in life, none of this should be a surprise to anyone.  The ideas aren’t what’s important here though, it’s the execution of those ideas – the formation of positive habits that improve your life step-by-step, little by little.  You aren’t going to get a wish granted by a genie anytime soon (and if you were, "never being late" shouldn’t be what you pick) so the next best thing is to be the change you want to see in yourself.

Related posts:

1. 9 Ways To Stop Overthinking Everything

So much has been written about the Weekly Review as a part of David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) system that it feels sort of ridiculous to even entertain writing about it.  I pride myself in making this blog different – not just another GTD/life hacks wannabe poser blog thing – but at the same time, a lot of the best practices in productivity fit under the GTD umbrella.  So there will be times I feel compelled to write about GTD in all its glory.  This is one of those times.

If you’re new to GTD, this post really isn’t the best place to start as it’s only covering a small piece of what GTD is all about.  You should dive in and read the official book.  If you’re the type of person who can’t stay on top of the most important things in your life, you won’t be sorry.

First a few words about GTD.  GTD isn’t a panacea by any means.  It’s just a framework for “thinking about thinking”.  It’s updated software for your brain that will help you make sense of all the inputs and outputs in your life.  It’s also a set of habits that for some people can be hard to get into, because they require a change in behavior.  But hey, it’s ultimately just “advanced common sense” as David Allen puts it, so there’s really no excuse for not giving it a shot if you feel you need it.

The funny thing about GTD is that people tend to get so fixated on the “how” and not on the “why” of the system.  Whether you use post-it notes, Microsoft Outlook, a Moleskine notebook, or your pet hamster to track your work isn’t the important thing – the system is adaptable and should be used in the way that works best for you.  In other words, the implementation details aren’t what matter, but the way the system is used at the macro level does.

In a lot of ways this reminds me of Bruce Lee’s unique approach to fighting, Jeet Kune Do.  Stay with me for a second; other than just being three-letter acronyms, JKD is actually quite similar to GTD.  One of Lee’s most famous quotes about JKD is:

I don’t believe in different ways of fighting now, I mean, unless human beings have 3 arms and 3 legs – then we will have a different way of fighting. But basically we all have two arms and two legs so that is why I believe there should be only one way of fighting and that is no way.

In other words, there’s a reason why the best fighters in the world learn to throw a jab and execute a choke the same way.  While there are subtle differences in their own personal styles, and certain techniques that work best for some people, they’re still fighting using the same basic systems.  Chokes may be executed a little differently from person to person, but there’s a “right” way to choke that everyone starts with. 

GTD is the same way.  There are differences in people’s approach to GTD, but the foundational physics of the system are the same.  Show me a super-productive person and I can point out how that person is implementing GTD – even if they don’t know it.  It may not look exactly like the next person’s GTD (just like fighting) but the core pieces are almost always there.  And if they aren’t, well, there are likely improvements to be made!

One of the most important pieces of GTD is the weekly review.  The weekly review is the “backbone” of the system and is an absolute requirement for doing GTD.  If you aren’t doing something that resembles the weekly review, you aren’t really doing GTD!

What is the Weekly Review

Once a week, for as long as it takes, you need to take a step back and get the bird’s eye view of your tasks, projects, goals, and vision.  This simple step – which can take anywhere from 20 minutes to 2 hours or more – helps you achieve (or maintain) that Zen-like state that comes from being in control of your world.  You’re further reducing friction in your life by clearing your inboxes, making sure your projects all have next actions identified, and clearing all mental and physical clutter out of your life.

Here are some ways to think about the weekly review:

• It should take as long as it takes
• …But to make sure you do it, you need to make time for it.
• The best time is “when you’re most likely to do it”
• …But Friday afternoon, Sunday, or Monday morning can work well for Mon-Fri workers.
• Do everything you need to do to feel like you have a grip on your life
• …But sometimes leaning on a little bit of structure can help.
• It doesn’t have to be weekly
• …But let’s start there since it works well enough.

In general, the weekly review is something you won’t be immediately penalized for skipping.  You could go weeks on-end without really “laddering up” and looking at your life.  But just like any other maintenance task (flossing, exercising, showering, oil changing) you’ll pay the price in the long run for your avoidance.  Things will start to slowly unravel at the seams and you’ll find that you’re not able to keep all your plates spinning all the time.  Your system will simply atrophy, and it won’t be obvious that it’s not working until you start recognizing those nagging feelings inside you screaming, “something’s being missed!”

Waking up in a cold sweat is also a clear sign that you need a weekly review.

The good news is that there’s usually a simple fix to this problem: just do the equivalent of the weekly review immediately to get yourself back on track.

What Do I Do?  (The “3S” Approach)

The weekly review is easy to avoid if it’s amorphous.  I’ve spent the better part of my work life not doing the weekly review and still thinking I had everything under control.  As soon as I discovered what I was missing however, I reached a pretty fantastic state of bliss when it comes to my workflow.  The weekly review can really bring confidence and clarity to a chaotic world.

Until I settled on the “3S” approach for myself however, I still couldn’t always get into the rhythm of the weekly review.  I didn’t know what it was I was supposed to do during the time I set aside – and I wasn’t good about keeping that commitment with myself.  So without further adieu, here are the 3 S’s.

1. Schedule it.  If you live by your calendar during the week like I do, you do things if you both a) have the time to do it and b) you’re reminded to do it.  Adding it to your calendar and protecting that time addresses both.  I do my weekly review every Friday afternoon but if I have something else going on during that time, I’ll catch up over the weekend.  Friday works well for me because I enter the weekend with a totally clear head, and that’s an invaluable thing.

   The important thing is that it gets done.  Which means you need to treat this appointment just like you would any immovable appointment on your calendar.  It’s not something you can sacrifice indefinitely.

    

2. Structure it.  If you don’t know what to do, what happens when that reminder bell goes off to do your weekly review?  The weekly review needs some structure to make sure you’re not flailing or running in place.  Once you get into the habit, you may be able to back off on the structure, but that’s a slippery slope.  After years of doing this, I still find myself referring back to this list of “make sure I do this”. 

   Here’s a basic 5-step plan you can use:

1. Collect all loose papers and notes from the week.  Process them for next actions or file.
2. Get all inboxes to zero.
3. Review all previous and upcoming calendar appointments.  Process them for next actions.
4. Review & update all project lists, goals, vision, and personal habits/task lists.  Make sure everything is where it needs to be.
5. Empty your head completely by walking through the incompletion triggers list (external link – great resource!)
3. Stop it.  Sometimes the hardest part about the weekly review is finishing.  There are always things you identify for follow-up that you feel you should be doing ASAP.  It’s quite easy to let your mind wander down various paths (“maybe I’ll just get this report done now” ) instead of staying focused on the weekly review for the time you’ve allotted. 

   And then of course letting it all go the second you’re finished in order to focus on what’s important: living, being, and doing, not planning to live, be, and do.  That’s why I do it on Friday – I could keep my laptop closed for the weekend and not feel the teeniest bit of guilt for doing so (though I usually don’t – because I love my job!)  But make sure your weekly review doesn’t degrade into an hourly hell of overthinking all week long.

The weekly review is a lot like exercise: you don’t always immediately miss it or recognize the value it adds to your life when you slack a bit.  But as soon as you get back on the wagon, you find yourself wondering how you ever got by without it.  It’s a critical piece of GTD and highly recommended for folks wanting to get a stronger grip on their life.  Even if you’re already a black belt in this stuff, a good weekly review can still help take you to that next level.

Let me know how it goes!

Related posts:

1. 5 More Ways to Protect That Time!
2. How to Beat Procrastination One Step at a Time!
3. 12 Goals: Define and Track Your Habits & Tasks (Step 3)

“Every year, hundreds of New Yorkers congregate on Tax Day at the 24-hour post office at 34th and 8th Avenue, polishing off their 1040s, filling out their registered mail slips, and sealing their envelopes. The lines snake up and down the cavernous interior of the building and most of the people are more tired than anxious. (With the exception of the few still filling out their forms.)”

Photo and description by Amit Gupta.

Last weekend I had the unenviable (yet unfortunately inevitable) task of getting our 2009 taxes prepared.  I stopped actually doing our taxes about 10 years ago, but that doesn’t mean I’m completely off the hook here.  There’s still just as much preparation involved to make sure everything is tracked and reported, and that my accountant has all the information he needs in order to file.

There are far worse things in the world, I know.  But I definitely don’t look forward to this time of year.  In fact, it’s probably the most postponed thing on my to-do list.

Let’s see… I could play with my daughter or sit in my home office surrounded by arcane forms.  We could go for a walk down by the waterfront as a family or I could scan and shred documents instead.  My wife and I could watch an episode of Friday Night Lights or read in bed… or I could sit at a computer adding up real estate taxes and 1099/W-2 forms.  You get the picture.

I decided to take a different approach this year.  Instead of dreading and postponing the project from week to week, I’d learn from it.  I knew I didn’t want to do this, but I knew I had to.  So I decided to use it as a sort of test for overcoming procrastination – how would I get myself to move forward despite knowing it wouldn’t be any fun?  At the very least, I could write up my experience on Refocuser and see if the process helps others.

So I documented my thoughts throughout the week in my online notebook – and simplified it down to a pretty straightforward process for powering through unpleasant things.  Just like everything else, this may not work for everyone, but now that I can articulate the steps I followed, I recognize it as a pattern that’s worked for me for a long time.

But before going further, it may help to figure out what kind of procrastinator you are.  The type that puts things off and never does them – or does them super poorly – or the type that does eventually get things done, albeit with a bunch of unnecessary anxiety.

This article (thanks Steve!) does a great job of describing the difference between a “procrastinator” (the first type) and an “incubator” (the second):

Incubators were the only students who had superior-quality work but who also worked at the last moment, under pressure, motivated by a looming deadline.

This set them apart from the classic "good students," the planners who strategically start working long before assignments are due, and from the procrastinators, who wait until the last minute but then hand in shoddy work or hand it in late.

For most incubators, having a label that is less pejorative than "procrastinator" can be a breath of fresh air.

Everyone has the list of boring things they dread need to do.  Clean the gutters, do your homework, write your dissertation.  If you’re a true procrastinator, you may never get these things done – so this process may help you quite a bit (although you should also consider some more radical change). 

If you’re an “incubator” then you know you’ll eventually get them done, though you’ll beat yourself up every step of the way.  This process may help you structure the way you respond to a looming deadline.  Regardless of which type you are, there’s an easier way.

Here’s the simplest way I’ve found to overcome procrastination, step-by-step:

1. Get into the right mindset

If you think you’re doing something forced upon you, you’re not going to want to do it.  But if you feel like it’s something you’ve chosen – or something you can benefit from – you may find yourself a little more motivated to get through it.

For me, it was helpful to reframe the task in my mind from something I had to do (mundane busy work) to something I wanted to do.  I reminded myself throughout the week that the sooner I get it done, the sooner we’ll have a tax refund deposited.  In other words, I was training myself to think about the outcome first and the process second.  It helped motivate me… ever so slightly. 

So try thinking about things a little differently – no more “have to”, more “want to”.

2. Give yourself enough time to get it done easily

This of course is important – this practice won’t work if you have a deadline tomorrow.

I knew I had some time to get it done because I started thinking about this project well in advance of the deadline.  It was only the first week of February and I had until April 1st (or so) to get this project finished.  In other words, I had enough time to break up the project into tasks I could actually imagine myself doing easily. 

If you aren’t the type of person to plan ahead, you’re going to need to try and become one.  At least to the point that you aren’t putting planning off until you no longer feel comfortable with the time you have left.  Just a little bit of upfront planning makes the entire project a ton easier.

Anxiety may help motivate you, but there’s still a better way.  Zero anxiety beats even the smallest bit of anxiety any day.

3. Break out everything you have to do into a bulleted list

A common theme in a lot of the things I write about (see 12 Goals) is to get specific.  If you don’t know exactly what you need to do to finish the project, you’re going to look at it as an amorphous blob of face-eating hell.

“Finish my taxes” is a lot scarier to your psyche than “Collect all the forms from the filing cabinet and kitchen counter”.  So break the project into logical chunks: collect all the forms, sort them, scan them, figure out which to keep and shred the others, and so on.  All the way down to “Put it into an envelope and walk to the post office”. 

Keep the tasks relatively small (30-60 minutes of actual focused work) and put the list somewhere you can reference it easily.

4. Commit to a single task for the first day, not to exceed 60 minutes

Commit to just one task for the first day.  Something small and easy, realizing that most of your project is probably small and easy when looked at in 30-60 minute chunks.  As David Allen describes, you want to reduce everything to a “crank the widget” sized thing so you don’t even have to think about it when the time comes to do it.

So just do the single task… start to finish.  If you don’t want to continue once that task is finished, you don’t have to… because you have time for the rest.  But no matter what, you’re going to get this one, simple, easy, widget-cranking task finished.  And when you do, you’re going to check it off the list and give yourself a nice little “task completion high”.

If you still find yourself trying to talk yourself out of it, try combining the task with something you actually enjoy doing.  For me it’s listening to music or watching a movie.  Since I don’t usually sit around listening to music by myself very often, it’s something I can look forward to – even if I’m sorting documents or doing research at the same time.

5. Allow yourself to continue.  Or just do the next thing tomorrow!

This is where things usually get interesting, thanks in part to that Flow state.  You’ve gotten yourself to start, but you aren’t forcing yourself to finish it all right now.  You’re setting yourself up pretty nicely to get into a zone where you lose track of time and just move easily from step to step.  Now that you’ve gotten yourself going, give yourself time to continue on.  Allow yourself to get the next task done if you’re motivated at that point to do so.

Success breeds success.  If you finish step 1, you’re more likely to do step 2.  Especially since it’s been broken down into its smallest possible form, and is presumably something that builds on the first step.  In  my case, if the tasks are small enough, I can usually get myself to move onto the next thing right away because I’m happy to be making progress, and feel good about what I’d just accomplished.

The more you do, the easier it is to picture yourself finishing the project.  The finish line isn’t off in the distance anymore.  It’s amazing how motivating checking things off can be – you can make a lot of progress just by starting!

If you find yourself anxious about continuing onto the next step right away, don’t!  You always have tomorrow.  Put it off – you can afford to since you just got a critical piece done.  There’s something freeing in knowing that you don’t have to do anything at this point – you may choose to, but that’s entirely up to you.  This alone can help beat that feeling of dread away.

In short: start early, break things down, commit to a small single thing, continue if you find yourself in the zone to continue, or move onto something else and continue tomorrow.

Have fun!  Even though I know this post is really about doing things that aren’t necessarily fun   If you’re still having trouble getting started, you may want to read Just Do Something: 6 Ways to Unblock Yourself & Get Moving.

Something to keep in mind: February is a short month.  It’s over next week.  Which means you have just over a month to get those taxes done!  53 days from today to be exact.  Now’s the perfect time to attack that specific project if you haven’t already.  And if you have, what are you doing still reading this anyway?

Related posts:

1. 12 Goals: Define and Track Your Habits & Tasks (Step 3)
2. The “3S” Approach: The Lost Art of the GTD Weekly Review
3. Project Management: Starting a Blog (Part 1 of 2)

Happy Monday!

This happens to everyone… at least once!

The key to good time management is to protect your time from the unimportant in order to focus on the important.  It’s really that simple.  But in practice, it can be difficult.  Because it sometimes means being a jerk.  Or at least coming across like one to people who enjoy time-wasting activities because it’s the only way they know how to work.

We have a word at Microsoft we use when our time is wasted: randomize.  I was randomized by him.  Please don’t randomize me.  This meeting is going to be randomizing, we can do this over email.  What a randomization! I’m not exactly sure where it came from – likely from the comparison of wasting time to a random number generator – but the basic idea is that if something is randomizing, it’s to be avoided at all costs.  I suppose it’s nicer than saying “you’re wasting my precious time”, especially for people who don’t know what the word means in context.

Don’t be randomized!

The single biggest time-waster in the corporate world is the all-too-prevalent meeting.  Most meetings are 50 minutes of people hearing themselves speak and 10 minutes of useful dialog or conversation.  You may not be able to avoid them completely, but you can sure as hell try.  More important stuff happens outside of meetings than in them.

As you may have read in My Day: The Way I Work, Rest, and Play, my workday can easily be filled from 9-6 if I’m not careful.  This certainly isn’t unique to my situation; it applies to lots of people.  Many people end up using evenings and weekends to “catch up” instead of for much-needed downtime.  Not fun.

Worse, they’ve convinced themselves that their job is to go to meetings.  I don’t know anyone whose job is just to attend meetings – or just read email for that matter – no matter what role they’re in… and for those who think it’s their job, my guess is that they’re filled with guilt because their contributions are severely limited.  They’re not actually doing anything.  Also not fun.

No matter what you do, you want to maximize your contribution.  You want to spend more time creating and producing than consuming.  You want great output.  You want to be someone who pushes the boulder another foot up the hill each and every day.  You don’t want to run in-place like the people around you!  Unless you’re a full-time hole puncher with 30 years of experience, you have something unique and significant to contribute.  Useless meetings take away from that.  If they’re not wasting your time directly, they’re still breaking up valuable opportunities to find flow in your work.  Meetings aren’t where you’ll make your mark.

It’s important to look at meetings – including phone calls – in terms of their opportunity cost.  An example of opportunity cost from Wikipedia: A person who has $15 can either buy a CD or a shirt. If he buys the shirt the opportunity cost is the CD and if he buys the CD the opportunity cost is the shirt.  The same logic applies to meetings.  If you attend that 60 minute meeting, what else could you have accomplished in that 60 minute, uninterrupted period of time?  That output is the opportunity cost of attending the meeting.  You need to determine if it’s worth it.  Sometimes it is.  Many times it’s not.

What I’ve found is that most 30 minute meetings can be handled over email if you can anticipate the outcome of the meeting ahead of time.  Most 60 minute meetings can be done in 20 minutes or less.  Just like work, meetings will fill the time allotted.  If a conference room is booked for 60 minutes, most people don’t start standing up until their 60 minutes have been used up.  It’s a strange territorial thing, like a pack of lions protecting their turf.  “I’m not going to get up, it’s still my time!”

Of course, the same can be said of the inverse – sometimes a 15 minute conversation can save 60 minutes of back-and-forth via email.  It takes practice to figure out the right balance.

Before getting into the tips, let’s start with a basic “what if” exercise.  When you look at a meeting on your calendar, ask yourself, “What if I didn’t attend this?  What’s the worst that could happen if I delegated, cancelled, or declined the meeting?” Are you OK with the expected outcome?  If so, don’t go – ask for the notes or a quick verbal summary once the meeting is over.  If you still feel you need to be there, ask yourself, “what could I do to minimize the impact of not attending?”  Sometimes this involves writing a quick paragraph to outline your perspective and what you hope to get out of the time.  Give people time to respond over email first and you may not need to meet at all.  If you still need to meet, you may at least be able to shorten the time you need to spend.

Here are some proven ways to protect your time:

1. Ask for an agenda before agreeing to meet with anyone

Getting into a room to define an agenda is a waste of time.

Meetings should be about bounded problem-solving, not about determining what’s wrong – that should happen ahead of the meeting.  Lots of times you can take a look at the agenda and produce the same outcome without the meeting.  I’ve started to use a standard template for most meetings (apologies in advance if you’ve been one of the recipients):

”Could you send over an agenda for the meeting so we can make the most of the time?  I want to make sure I’m prepared, so please let me know want you’d like to cover and how I can help.”

Word of caution: sometimes people take offense to this.  But it’s perfectly appropriate to ask people to think about how they’re going to use their time before they actually do.  You have other things you could be doing, as I’m sure they do too.  When they send the agenda over, you can determine if the time is actually required.

2. Propose a new time for all meetings that are set for an hour

An hour is a long time.  Break down your workday, subtracting lunch, other meetings, and commute time, and you probably only get 2, maybe 3, hours each day to do stuff.

If you accept too many hour-long meetings, you’re going to be one of those people complaining that they don’t have time to do their job.  As mentioned earlier, lots of people will fill the scheduled hour because they think they have to – after all, it’s on the calendar.  Use time as a forcing function – schedule it for less time than you think it should take and see if you can do it.  Here’s how I usually do this:

“My day is slammed with meetings and other commitments.  Let’s see if we can do this in 20 minutes – I promise to be on-time – and if we can’t get it done, we can always follow-up over email or schedule another quick sync.  Would 10 to 10:20am work for you?  If not, I’m also free from 3 to 3:20 or 4:40 to 5.  Thanks!”

The word of caution from above applies here too.  I remember the first time someone did this to me years ago, I felt dejected.  I got over it the minute I realized I needed to do it too.  Expect others to as well.  Your entire company can learn to work smarter.

3. Batch meetings together so you have time to complete real work

To do anything of value, you need dedicated, continuous time.  Time to get ramped up, into a zone, and time to finish.  Creative work is hard and isn’t usually done in 10 minute intervals.  It can take 30 minutes just to figure out what you’re going to do sometimes.

The solution to this: leave continuous blocks of time unscheduled each day.  This means proposing new times for meetings others have setup and taking a close look at your calendar before setting up a meeting to begin with.  Which day do you think would be more productive?

or…    

Imagine how much you could get done just by being proactive about this?

4. Setup quick standing meetings instead of seated meetings

It’s amazing how quickly meetings can go when you can’t get comfortable in a seat.  Whenever I can avoid it, I don’t schedule seated meetings.  When you’re standing, you’re constantly asking yourself “why am I standing?” and the motivation to sit can help push the meeting along.  It’s funny watching people go through this thought process in a meeting.

Along the same lines, you can schedule your standing meetings in a small, cramped space instead of a spacious conference room filled with snacks and projectors.  Use someone’s office or a shared open space instead of a place where people just “settle in and get comfortable”.  Most people will understand the motivation if you explain it.

I’ll take a 15 minute standing meeting in a small office over a 60 minute seated meeting in a conference room any day.

5. Avoid recurring meetings (without a clear agenda each time)

Recurring meetings have three possible states in my experience:

1. They recur too soon (~50% of them)
2. They recur too late (~40% of them)
3. They recur just at the right time (~10% of them)

The majority of recurring meetings are just ways to book time on people’s calendars so you can get them together.  Lots of time, at least at Microsoft, if you try and only book a meeting as-needed, no one can attend because they have other meetings already scheduled.  Recurring meetings keep that time on their calendars booked just for you.

This means that recurring meetings either recur too soon (nothing to discuss) or too late (you should have already met – and sometimes have).  In rare occasions, the timing is just right.  Depending on where you work, you may not be able to get out of all recurring meetings – but you can try and make sure there’s an agenda sent ahead of time, or that they’re done standing in a small space   At the very least, you can quietly excuse yourself if you don’t find the meeting useful.

6. Kill two birds with one stone

I’ve scheduled meetings during time I had scheduled to pack up my office or walk to the post office.  I’ve scheduled meetings over lunch and commute times, even picking people up at their home to have a meeting while driving to work.  I’ve scheduled meetings in a racquetball court or during planned social events.  People usually understand – everyone’s busy.  What’s the difference where the meeting takes place so long as we’re both committed to the outcome?

As mentioned in my previous post, I like to combine at least one meeting each day with a quick walk outside.  Not only are we exercising our bodies at the same time as our brains, but it usually results in more engaged, creative conversation.

Meetings that serve a dual-purpose can really make a difference to your schedule.  Another way this comes in handy: instead of having single 1:1 meetings with folks, get a few of you together to save the trouble of passing the results on amongst the group.

7. Minimize back and forth responses in email.

Sometimes 2-word responses to emails can just invite a back-and-forth exchange.  “No” is almost never as good as “No” and here’s 2 sentences why not.

Email isn’t instant messaging.  It’s meant to be “asynchronous”, not real-time.  Frequently someone will ask me a yes/no question via email that I could easily just respond with a single word.  Of course, if I’m able to anticipate their reaction, or if I know their motivation to begin with, a little extra information in a single email can save us the back-and-forth.  For example:

”Yes, that’s the way the product is designed.  We decided to do it this way because the data we’ve collected shows that people only use this feature in 0.05% of user sessions.  For more information on the exact implementation details and detailed justification, you should check out the specification (here’s the link).  After reading through, if you still have questions, please feel free to email.  Thanks!”

This applies to setting up time to get together as well.  Saying “I’m free at 4” is never as effective as “I’m free at 4.  If you’re not free at 4, could you give me a few options so I can choose the best time for both of us?”  You can save at least three emails that way.

8. Get out of the habit of answering your phone when it rings

Respond to all phone calls with an email or text so you can work when you want.  A great response to a missed call or a voicemail could be something like the following – concise with no wiggle room for follow-up:

“Hi Bob, I saw that you called.  Sorry I wasn’t available.  If this is about the trip on Friday, I’m currently booked on Alaska flight 416 and plan to get to the airport at 3:30.  I’ll wait for you by the gate and I’ll have the documents we discussed.  See you then – pls. email me if you have any questions.  Thanks!”

Unless it’s a member of my family or a close friend, I don’t answer my phone if I’m in the middle of something.  My voicemail asks people to send me a text or an email instead of leaving a voicemail (which takes time to listen to).  But if they do leave a voicemail, I almost always follow-up with email or text.  It forces people (including me) to be concise and keeps us from having to be available at the same time.

…ultimately, try shifting your mindset

Lots of people work this way: “I automatically accept meeting requests sent my way.”

It’s just a bad way to be productive.  Try this instead:

“If a meeting is the most efficient way to get this done, I’ll accept the request… once I’ve confirmed that for myself… and then tried to shorten the length.”

Some of this stuff may sound crazy.  Or it may be common sense to you by now.  The bottom line is that your time is the single most important resource you have in order to contribute to the world.  Don’t let time vampires or their meetings suck your blood dry!

Good luck!

Related posts:

1. 5 More Ways to Protect That Time!
2. Staying Focused With Microsoft Outlook: Email
3. Backup: The Most Important Thing Your Computer Can Do

I thought it would be fun to write about “how I work” as well, and expand on it a little to include play.  It’s a question I get asked a lot as a manager at Microsoft, and it certainly fits within my goal to make Refocuser more personal this year.  Instead of just writing generic “how to” articles and checklists of stuff, every once in a while I’ll dig into something a little closer to home.  This started in November with My Happiness Interview and continues here with this post.

I aspire to wake up at the same time each day, around 6:30am.  The exact time is dependent on whether or not my daughter has a cold (like she does now) which makes it a little earlier – or later if she had me up during the night.  I recently bought a wake-up lamp for Seattle winters which has made waking up much easier for me.  I’ve always been a night person.  But gradual increases in light coupled with soft chirping bird sounds is a much more pleasant way to rise than jumping out of bed from the sounds of a beeping alarm clock.

After showering, getting dressed, and quickly making the bed, I meditate in a quiet, dark room for 15 minutes.  If I did this as soon as I woke up, I’d probably just fall right back asleep.  This is time I need to start the day; getting myself into the right frame of mind.  Once the 15 minutes are up, I prepare my daughter’s breakfast along with my own, which is usually a bowl of Kashi GOLEAN cereal with fresh blueberries and 32oz of water.  I use breakfast time to quickly catch-up on email, Twitter, and RSS feeds.  I try to power through my work inbox from the night before to bounce at zero before the day officially begins.  Once we’re finished with breakfast, I spend some time playing with my daughter before she leaves for school.  I always let her choose the activity.

My drive to work takes about a half hour, not including a stop at the local coffee shop for a short cappuccino.  I know everyone who works there at this point, and it’s fun to see them everyday.  They know more about me than a lot of the people I work with everyday.  I use my car as a rolling classroom for both ends of my commute.  Depending on my mood, I listen to either audiobooks or podcasts, and on rare occasion, some music if I want to relax my mind.  Spoken word audio has really helped me to enjoy things I used to try to avoid… like shopping.

I usually get to the office between 9 and 9:30 most days, and hit the ground running with meetings and interviews.  I work hard to balance my schedule over the week so that I only have about 4 meetings each day.  This way I have time to focus on things as they come up (which they always do) and I’m able to walk the halls or have impromptu chats with people on the team.  I also like to use non-meeting time to work with my team on feature design or anything else that needs some work that week, and to catch up with our internal partner teams on work we’re doing together.

I try not to take a laptop to meetings, a habit that most people at Microsoft can’t break.  I figure if I’m not going to pay attention, there’s little point in attending.  Of course there are a few meetings each month which are exceptions, and even without a laptop I do still glance at my smartphone once or twice to see where I’m going next and to make sure nothing has blown up.  Given a meeting-happy culture, I try hard to protect my time by scheduling 15 or 30 minute meetings (instead of an hour) and pushing to get the time back if the meeting isn’t productive.  Inefficient meetings can easily fill the day if you’re not careful.

Our job at Microsoft is to help people organize and tell stories through their digital memories (photos and videos).  With over 1 billion people using Windows around the world, it can be a big, scary mission.  But it’s what I’ve wanted to do for as long as I can remember, so even when I have to deal with the not-so-sexy parts of the job, I try and keep it all in perspective.

Two things I do everyday: eat frequently and get outside.  At 10am, 12pm, and 3pm or so, I make sure to eat – usually greek yogurt, almonds, string cheese, or an apple (see focus snacks) along with a clean lunch.  This keeps my brain working when I need it, otherwise I’d be a walking zombie.  I also go on short walks instead of sitting in my office, usually with my direct reports or peers during weekly 1:1s.  If the meeting doesn’t need a screen or a whiteboard, we’re not doing it sitting down.  The campus has some great places to walk to, and a little fresh air can really help in the middle of the day.

On a busy day, I can easily rack up a few hundred emails.  I’m diligent about having dedicated email bursts throughout the day where I go through my inbox deleting, filing, or replying.  I never read an email twice if I can avoid it.  I also try not to send as many emails as I receive, because that’s just asking for trouble in a place where email is as ubiquitous as Diet Coke.  During the day I try and maintain fewer than 10 emails in my inbox most of the time, and I almost always clear those out before walking out the door.  Getting to zero a few times each day is important to me.

Because I’m usually hopping around from meeting to meeting throughout the day, whenever an idea pops into my head (no matter what the context) I capture it in my task list or my note-taking software.  I don’t have the ability to store and manage everything in my head, so I rely on this habit more than any other to keep me from forgetting important things.  I do regular sweeps (usually at the end of each day) where I’ll go through my tasks and notes and make sure things are heading in the right direction.  Collecting my thoughts doesn’t get me very far unless I actually organize and process them.

A couple nights each week I’ll hit the gym in place of sitting in traffic, with an even split between strength training and cardio work.  I spend no more than 50 minutes in the gym; my goal is to get in and get out so I can get home to my family.  On the nights I don’t go to the gym, I use this extra time to get ahead on work for the week, or if the traffic is light, I’ll get an extra hour or so in with the fam that night.  Of course, my car speaks to me on the way home too with tech commentary or Audible books, so no matter how long it takes, it’s productive and fun.

Once home, I spend as much time with my daughter as I can before she goes to sleep.  Playing, reading, eating, “flying” around the house.  Once she’s asleep, some nights my wife and I watch a little TV – no cable or commercials, strictly Netflix or Xbox video on demand.  We almost never watch more than a single episode of whatever we’re currently addicted to.  Some nights I write or work on blog-related things instead like coding or planning new features for the site.  I almost always check-in with work email to get back to zero during the evening as well – just not right before bed – as I’ll then be stuck in “work mode” while trying to fall asleep.

I read for about 30-60 min on my Kindle every night before going to bed.  I really do love consuming information and find it hard to stop reading in order to go to sleep, frequently reading past my self-imposed deadline.  Reading fiction or psychology before bed has been better for keeping my attention lately since I’m thinking about business and technology all day long.  Once ready to sleep, I “switch off”, get comfortable, and start my pre-dream routine.  I’m usually asleep within 15 minutes.

Weekends are dedicated to friends & family with the exception of quick morning workouts, and writing on Sunday during my daughter’s nap.  We spend a lot of the weekend together as a family.  My wife is our social coordinator and makes sure we’re also getting in quality time with people we care about.   We also try and get out, just the two of us, a few times each month to pretend we’re not old homebodies.  But many weekend nights we just relax at home with a movie.  And at some point during the weekend, I usually find myself a cupcake

We also try and travel as much as we can.  While we both love our jobs and our life in Seattle, in order to really appreciate it, we need to maintain perspective.  We’ve found that getting away can really help with that, even if it’s just a long weekend somewhere local.  I’ve discovered that I’m exponentially more creative when I change up my environment, especially when surrounded by the ocean or trees.  So while pure relaxation is fun for a while, I usually find myself using that downtime to explore things I would never think to do otherwise.  I love it.

Related posts:

1. 5 More Ways to Protect That Time!
2. Protect Your Time: 8 Ways to Stay Focused on Important Stuff

Forget “Just Do It”… the procrastination-defeating rallying cry of this new decade is “Just Do Something!”

Procrastination is a funny word.  It’s a long, strange sounding expression that strikes fear and a knowing empathy in the hearts of people around the world.  Putting things off until a later date, even important things, is what humans are best at.  You have to assume that even our biggest accomplishments and creations as a species came with equally large bouts of “I’ll just do it later” sentiments.

Could the Egyptian pyramids really have been completed without an architect taking one look at the enormity of his day’s work and saying “tomorrow… I’ll do it tomorrow”?  I doubt it.

Assumptions that we can “just do it”, or that we’re supposed to get things right on the first try don’t help us.  In fact, I’ve found that the reason so many people can’t get past their own thinking relates to a misunderstanding about the people around them.  People frequently overestimate the talent, dedication, and circumstances of others while underestimating their own.  They actually believe that the people who have been able to “do it”, did it without the same level of internal battles of procrastination that they themselves have.  That these people either got lucky or got it right on the first try.  And of course, that they don’t have the same ability to do so as these more capable people – that they’re either too lazy, stupid, or just aren’t in the right place or right time.

That’s ridiculous.  The first step to overcoming procrastination or it’s close cousin, perfectionism, is to believe – to really know – that what you have is good enough, and in many cases better, than what you perceive to be required.  In other words, believe in yourself, wouldja?

What is Procrastination?

First, a definition of procrastination from Niel Fiore’s The Now Habit which I find to be a good one:

Procrastination is a mechanism for coping with the anxiety associated with starting or completing any task or decision.

You can think of procrastination as being the single biggest roadblock to an individual’s success or achievement in any realm.  It stems from an innate belief or understanding that tomorrow will always be a better day than today for doing what you need to do.  At its very core, that’s all procrastination is: the inability to see today for what it can positively bring, and an equal inability to see tomorrow for what it can negatively bring.

If tomorrow were always better, doesn’t it stand to reason that all tasks would always be delayed just a single day – not months or years?  Of course, that’s not what happens when people procrastinate…. in the real world, things get postponed to tomorrow a dozen times before, begrudgingly, the task (sometimes) gets done.

Timothy A. Pychyl and Bill Knauss, two experts on procrastination, believe that “self-awareness is a crucial first step in learning to change your procrastination habit.”  Timothy contends that this assumption that tomorrow will be better than today for you is actually a testable hypothesis:

The next time you put off a task until tomorrow, telling yourself tomorrow (later) is better, then simply note the next day whether you now believe that tomorrow is better.  Chances are, it’s not. If anything you may feel more guilt and pressure related to the task at hand and yet not have any more motivation to do the task.

I love that.  It speaks to your ability to track and monitor your own progress and to be real with the results.  If you’re being honest with yourself, you’ll likely discover that your habit of putting things off until “tomorrow” isn’t actually helping you get to where you want to be.  It isn’t working.  In fact, our tendency to downplay the importance of today – ignoring that “today is as good a day as any” – keeps us from moving forward.

So what can you do?

How to Unblock Yourself

Below are six ways to unblock yourself and get moving in the right direction that I’ve found helpful:

1. Overcome your fear of embarrassment, failure, or success.  This is a critical step in many posts on this site, primarily because fear drives so much of what we do (or don’t do).  If we knew we couldn’t fail, what would we do?  The single biggest take-away from fear management is this: picture the worst thing imaginable, the thing you’re most scared of, if you were to complete your task.  This could be embarrassment, loss of money, or even loss of anonymity if you’re successful.  Then picture it happening, develop your own coping strategies, and accept it.  Once you realize that it won’t actually be as bad as you think it’d be, you’re free to start.
2. Allocate “fun time” in advance of starting.  One of the reasons so many people can’t get moving is because they think they’re doing something “unfun” in place of something fun.  There’s a nagging feeling that instead of studying, writing, or working there’s a dozen things that they’d have more fun doing.  It’s partially a present-hedonistic desire – solving for right now instead of the future.  Here’s one way to help: give yourself as much time as you need to fulfill those desires on a regular basis.  If you’d rather be reading than writing, before you sit to start writing, block off time later in the day when you know you can focus 100% on reading.
3. Reduce all distractions.  All of them.  Distractions of any sort give you excuses to stop, and require you to regain your momentum in order to get going again.  If you really want to get something done, you’re better off setting yourself up with a distraction-free environment (no kids, no dogs, no Internet) for a length of time long enough to get into a flow state.  Two hours of dedicated focus is always better than six twenty-minute blips.
4. Prep your environment.  Get comfortable in your surroundings, creating mini-rituals that put you in the right mindset.  This could mean putting on the right music, lighting candles, cleaning off your desk, putting on comfortable clothing, or even just doing some physical warm-up (stretching, yoga, jumping jacks) before getting into it.  This tip isn’t a common one, but I find it to be pretty important if you’re going to hit that flow state frequently.
5. Set a deadline with someone else.  It isn’t enough for many of you to just make a promise to yourself.  It isn’t real if it’s inside your own mind.  So tell other people when you plan to get something done – use Facebook, Twitter, email, or do it the old fashioned way: tell them in person.  Broadcast your plan to get something done and you might find yourself even more motivated to keep from letting others down.
6. Most importantly, lower your standards!  Too many people get tripped up trying to make things perfect instead of just getting something done.  Think about whatever you’re doing as a “first draft” of whatever it is you want to create, not the final thing.  And think of yourself as a perennial “starter”, as it’s usually easier to start something of low quality than it is to finish something of high quality.  Changing your internal monologue to be more like “I want to start that project” vs. “I have to slog through it” can help reignite the senses.

Seth Godin recently gave a fantastic talk on what he calls the “Lizard Brain” – and really speaks to the heart of #1, overcoming your fear.  Check it out (via Merlin):

Seth Godin: Quieting the Lizard Brain from 99% on Vimeo.

Procrastination is a tough nut to crack.  But when you find yourself continually putting things off – and not being completely honest with yourself about why you’re doing it – remember, that the single most important thing you can do is just do something.  Get started.  Get moving.  Just do something.

Related posts:

1. 15 Ways To Get a New Habit To Stick Forever
2. How to Beat Procrastination One Step at a Time!
3. 5 More Ways to Protect That Time!

• 8 productivity experts give their productivity messages for 2010

Since I wanted to cross-post the snippet here for my readers, I waited a few weeks before doing so… since technically, I wrote this for Jack’s blog:

If I were to pick my most important message for 2010, it would boil down to one word which can set a tone for the year ahead: CHOICE.  There’s a big difference between people who CHOOSE what they want their life to be about and people who let others – or their circumstances – decide for them.  This “power of choice” is something each of us have – it’s part of our human nature – yet so few people make their own choices about who they want to be, how they want to contribute to the world, or what things matter most to them.

Many times this apathy is related to fear, lack of information, or ingrained limiting beliefs about their potential.  Lack of information leads to fear of the unknown, which in turn leads to a victim mentality and an inability to see yourself for the person you could be… and so the cycle continues.  The end result is someone who never chooses to take ACTION and instead justifies inaction through statements and behaviors motivated by fear (usually fear of humiliation).  The key is to get out of that dangerous spiral by taking control of the fear and gathering as much information on the thing you’re most frightened of.  People who LEARN and have experience with something are rarely afraid of it, and once they realize that the worst possible outcome isn’t that bad at all, light bulbs go off about what’s POSSIBLE for them.

That’s how you start to make choices and change your life one bit at a time.  We all have the ability to influence the world around us and how we perceive our place within it.  It starts with CHOOSING to do so (and a little work!)… so make 2010 the year you start making your own choices.

Check out the rest of the messages on Jack’s blog if you’re curious about what others chose as their 2010 message.  Many of these names were new to me, though I’ve since started following them to see what else they write about!

Related posts:

1. My Happiness Interview: Bookstores, Hugs, and Making Movies

My family went completely paperless last Fall.  The only paper we have in our house right now: books, my daughter’s artwork, and a few important documents locked up in a safe (birth and stock certificates, wills, and so on).  The thought of going paperless can be a little overwhelming – especially if you’re a trained packrat – but after a little work, it’s totally freeing.  Not having paper waiting for you on every surface in your home means you can focus on the things that matter, instead of shuffling paper from place A to B.

Like most things, the first thing you need to do is mentally and emotionally prepare for the shift.  This shouldn’t be difficult, but it’s a necessary first step.  Otherwise you’re going to find yourself fighting the process each step of the way.  This means you have to detach from the concept of “it isn’t real unless I can touch it".  It’s a process similar to the one you may have gone through with the switch from CDs to MP3.  After a while, you come to realize that not holding something doesn’t mean you don’t have it.

There are many benefits to foregoing paper and making the shift to digital.  Here are a few:

1. It makes everything searchable.  If you need to find proof of a charitable donation, you just need to search your hard drive for the name of the organization (using Windows or Mac OS X).  If you want to get fancy and find all references to your mortgage loan number, it’s a split second away. 
2. It means you’ll never lose it.  Now that you have everything you need in digital form, you can make sure you always have it handy.  It will forever be safe from fire, burglary, or misplacement.  Backing up your data is in (serious) need of a longer post, but for now check out the recommendation to backup to an external hard drive, a Windows Home Server, and an online service like CrashPlan from 12 Steps to Simplify Your PC (with Windows 7).
3. It keeps your documents secure.  You can’t encrypt paper, and locks can be broken, but with the right digital encryption, you can keep your files safe from prying eyes.  The easiest way to do this is to use the built-in security features of Windows Vista, Windows 7, or Mac OS X.  On Windows PCs, the feature to look for is Bitlocker which will automatically encrypt hard drives for you (including external drives with Windows 7).  On the Mac there’s a similar feature called FileVault.  Part of going paperless is minimizing the amount of mail you receive as well, which drastically reduces the probability of identity theft.
4. It frees up physical storage space.  Do you currently have a massive file cabinet full of paper?  Does just looking at it make you cringe because you know opening it would lead to paper strewn all over the floor?  Going paperless means you can get rid of that old filing cabinet for good – you’ll never need it again.  Replace it with a Zen garden or a piece of artwork!
5. It unclutters all of your surface tops.  There’s no need to have designated areas for paper accumulation in your home when you could replace those areas with flowers.  Break out of the pile habit and start to free yourself.
6. It unclutters your mind too!  Especially if you’re like me and stacks of paper calling out to you keep you from getting into flow.  Having an organized living space (and workspace) is a central component to focus.

The process itself is actually a pretty simple one, it just takes a little time and a lot of recycling bags.  You could end up spending anywhere from a few hours to a few days in total to make this work, but the payoff is worth it.  One thing you have to be aware of before you start is that this will likely be a broken-up process – it’s not something you can do in a single sitting.  You’re going to have to spread it out over multiple days if you have a few years of paper built up.

Step 1: Collect all your snippets

Collecting all your documents to go digital is either a two minute task or a two day task depending on how organized you are.  First cull through your filing cabinets and existing piles, pulling everything out onto a large open floor.  Do a pass through the pile for “to scan”, “to shred”, “to recycle”.  The difference between “to shred” and “to recycle” should be based on whether or not you care who sees these documents.  If your social security number or other personal information is included on the document, it’s certainly worth shredding over recycling.  But if it’s just a brochure for a spa, shredding isn’t worth the hassle.

During the sorting process, also keep a running list of the “types” of documents you’re coming across to make Step 2 a little easier.

Before you get started, I’d recommend pulling aside any original documents and putting them in a separate pile (“to keep”).  This includes birth and death certificates, stock certificates, original versions of your estate paperwork, and other unique original documents.  For most legal documents, a scan is just as valid as the paper itself, but if you’re worried about shredding something, it’s worth researching online first.   (Don’t just assume you can’t do it – you’ll be surprised how many things you don’t need to keep!)

Put your entire “to keep” pile into a fireproof safe in a secure location and then stop thinking about it until you need to.  Put your entire “to recycle” pile into garbage bags and… recycle them.

Once you have your 2 remaining piles (“to scan” and “to shred”), you can get going on the next steps.

Step 2: Setup your digital filing system

As your documents are scanned and enter the digital realm, you’re going to want to have a way to file them.  It’s best to set this up upfront so you aren’t left reorganizing everything halfway through – that’ll take at least twice as long as it needs to.  Only you know what kind of documents you’re going to want to keep and how you’re going to want to organize them.

Storing these documents in your Users folder (in Windows) or your Home folder (on the Mac) is the safest bet, as these folders are associated with your user account and are the most important folders to backup.  It’s a matter of preference whether or not you store all documents in the Documents folder here, but it’s a pretty obvious choice.  Underneath your Documents folder, you’ll likely want to have separate folders for the types of documents you’re going to have (Auto, Home, Marriage, Kids, etc.)  Even though search makes filing a little less important, it’s still nice to know exactly where certain files are going to be if you need them.

Step 3: Scan/shred and print to PDF

Prerequisites: a good paper scanner and a decent shredder.  I strongly recommend the Fujitsu ScanSnap 300 and the Fellowes Powershred shredder (although there are less expensive shredder options out there).  Without the ScanSnap, this entire process may be too onerous if you’re using an old-fashioned scanner – but this little gem makes it fun.  The key is to make sure you check the box for “Make searchable PDF (OCR)” so that each document you scan is made automatically searchable by your operating system.

Take your “to scan” pile and get started!  While you’re scanning from one pile, you can start shredding from the other.  I found that the shredding can easily take as much time as the scanning, so instead of doing everything sequentially, you should look to do it in parallel.

Once you have your scanned, searchable PDF, you should immediately drag and drop it into the right specific folder from Step 2.  Don’t leave anything in the “My ScanSnap” folder (in fact, I set the ScanSnap to save files on my Desktop so I always have a visual reminder to file it, and could just easily move them from there)

Also, from now on, instead of printing to paper when you come across something, you should just print to PDF and save yourself the scan/shred step!  You can do this using Adobe Acrobat or a free product called CutePDF for Windows (Mac OS X has it built-in) which makes a virtual PDF “printer” show up as a printer in the Print dialog.

Lifehacker has more about the life-saver that is the ScanSnap.

Step 4: Automate your money

Automating your money is a big step in going paperless.  If you were to analyze all the paper in your life, you’d probably find that the number one source relates to finance.  I’d say that a full 80% of the documents I scanned and shredded last year had to do with money – and while the majority of our finances were already digital, I realized we could do even more.

First things first: setup direct deposit.  if you don’t have direct deposit setup, it’s a huge time saver.  Not having to go to the bank every other week saves a fair amount of time and, of course, saves paper.

Next up: minimize the number of accounts you have to optimize your financial flow.  If you have multiple credit cards, a few brokerage accounts at different banks, and bank accounts out the wazoo, you’ll likely have a tough time staying on top of everything.  Getting this down to the basics (1 checking account, 1 service for investment accounts, and 1 credit card) can help minimize statements and simplify your finances.

For each account you have, turn off paper statements and enable email notifications.  If you’d prefer not to receive statements at all (like me) then you can automatically filter those statements to a specific folder or label.

Next: Centralize your tracking.  My favorite service for this by far is Mint.com, though I also use Microsoft Money for reconciling transactions.  Mint is a service (now owned by Intuit, the folks behind Quicken) that aggregates and analyzes all of your accounts in a single place.  Yes, you have to give them your usernames and passwords, but the tradeoff is a good one.  As Gina Trapani said in Why I Stopped Being Paranoid and Started Using Mint , “Mint actually keeps me safer from identity theft or break-ins because it can alert me the moment a big withdrawal, purchase, or deposit happens on any one of my accounts”.

Finally: take advantage of online bill pay through your bank.  I’ve written a total of (maybe) two dozen checks over the last decade since I started using online bill pay, and there’s no way I could ever go back to it.  I distinctly remember my parents spreading the monthly bills out on the kitchen table and painstakingly handwriting checks, finding stamps, licking envelopes, and driving by a mailbox.  Ugh!  When you receive a bill or anything else requiring payment, do it the next time you’re sitting at your computer.  It’s that easy.

Step 5: Reduce your paper mail

For $20/year, you can have a cleaner mailbox in 90 days through MailStopper.  I used MailStopper a few years ago (when it was called GreenDimes) and found my mailbox a little emptier each day compared to what it was like prior to MailStopper.  It’s an important step in going paperless as a huge amount of paper, at least in my home, comes in through the good ol’ mail service.

You can also use OptOutPrescreen to opt-out of credit or insurance offers via mail.  But ironically you have to print out and mail a form in order to do it.

Step 6: Keep it up!

Now that you’ve made the switch from paper to paperless, the key is to keep at it. 

Keep a physical inbox right next to your scanner, and throughout the week, add documents to the inbox that you’d like to scan at the end of the week.  Give yourself a weekly task or appointment to scan/shred any important documents in your inbox – it should take more more than 5 minutes tops (unless you just bought a house! )  Always ask yourself “do I really need this paper hanging around?”  99 times out of 100, the answer is no.

If you receive a bill, utilize the 2-minute rule and pay it immediately, then shred it.  I do this for scanning/shredding as well, since I only need to do it a few times each month.

Gong paperless takes a little elbow grease and a little know-how (like most good things) but it’s achievable.  And once you’ve done the hard part, sticking with it is simple.  Then it becomes harder to ever look back once you have an uncluttered home, a simple process in place, and everything you need safe, secure, and at your fingertips.  Enjoy!

Related posts:

1. 12 Steps to Simplify Your PC (with Windows 7)
2. It’s Hard To Focus If You Can’t Find Anything
3. Bouncing at Zero – “ZBB” in Life

I’ve recently started reading Rapt by Winifred Gallagher (book number fifteen on my annual goal list of eighteen relevant books).  While the book has a set of good and bad reviews on Amazon, I found the description and the Kindle Sample interesting enough to buy and read it.  It’s no secret I’m interested in learning as much as I can about attention and focus, so anything that could help improve my understanding of the area even a little bit is worth the $10 investment.

So far, I’ve been quite pleased.  The introduction section of this book has one of the most accurate descriptions of focus and attention I’ve read to-date – and given Refocuser’s subject matter, I thought it would be fun to relay what I found to be the key takeaway from Rapt’s introduction: the grand unified theory of positive psychology.

In physics, the notion of a “grand unification theory” or “grand unified theory” is the holy grail of research, and has been for many years.  The idea is to merge all disparate theories into a single theory that describes everything in the universe – gravity, quantum mechanics, relativity, and so on.  It’s clean and simple, and scientists like structure and order.  When it comes to positive psychology, you could say that a similar unifying theory would help crystallize things into something more approachable for everyday people.  There are thousands of interesting studies to draw upon, and thousands more sources to pull from, but because of this explosion of information, it’s hard to grasp onto it.  People speak often of the many of things you can do to increase the quality of your life, but maybe there is actually a single statement or line of thinking that wraps everything up with a bow; something that everything else hangs off of.  This proposal from Rapt is as close as I’ve found:

Your life—who you are, what you think, feel, and do, what you love—is the sum of what you focus on.

It is pretty simple, isn’t it?  But it has broad implications.  It suggests that your internal experience is entirely forged by your external experience, specifically the things which you choose to apply your attention to.  And that you have control over it.  You can create your experience by learning how to focus your attention on the things that matter the most to you.  Maybe it’s not easy or natural right away, but it’s possible.  I love that thought.

Attention has gotten you this far.  It’s created the self you know yourself to be.  The time you’ve spent directing your attention throughout your life – from the first moment you were aware of your actions to this very moment spent reading this post – has created a very unique filter for your experiences.  You see things a certain way, based on what you’ve focused on in the past, and that will help determine what you do and who you are in the future.  Everyone internalizes experiences differently based on their own specific filter.

It’s a physiological fact that the things you decide to focus on – whether it’s another person in conversation or building an IKEA desk – are registered by your brain as unique “targets”.  It isn’t pseudo-science.  Subsequently, the things you implicitly choose to ignore (like the cat sleeping behind the desk) by applying your focus elsewhere literally don’t exist to you.  Your brain doesn’t know the difference between non-existence and just-not-focused-on.  This implies that simply by choosing to direct your focus on the right things, and choosing to ignore the wrong things, you’re able to change your perspective to positive effect.

In short: your life is the sum of what you focus on and you can self-direct your focus.  If you’re able to apply your focus like a laser beam, your life would “stop feeling like a reaction to stuff that happens to you and become something that you create: not a series of accidents but a work of art.”

The key to this is learning and then practicing how to do this.  The introduction to Rapt is chock full of down-to-earth explanation for how focus changes who we are, along with some great quotes.  The rest of the book, presumably, will give more specific guidance on what we can do.  Things I’ve talked about here like learning to avoid perfectionism, minimizing overthinking, finding the flow state regularly, and picking your top areas to focus on ahead of time will help significantly. 

But is there more?  Stay tuned…

Related posts:

1. Pick Your Top 3 Focus Areas… and Drop Everything Else
2. Take Micro-vacations to Boost Focus
3. How the Psychology of Time Can Help Channel Focus

Do something enough times and it becomes a part of you – perhaps to a fault – and from that point on, it can be harder not to do something at all than to do it.  In truth, most of our lives consist of habitual action each day.  Have you ever been driving along and realized (too late) that you’ve gone in the completely wrong direction, because you habitually started driving to work even though you were originally planning to go to a friend’s house?  Your conscious mind shut-off the second you got into that car and was on auto-pilot until you realized you were heading in the wrong direction.  I don’t know anyone that hasn’t happened to.

Forming positive new habits (and replacing negative old ones) is the only foolproof path to achievement there is.  Your habits “accumulate up” to your goals – there can’t be real triumph without small wins along the way.  You don’t just wake up one day as the president of your company, or as someone who exudes positive energy and contentment, without taking individual small steps to get there.  This is the subtlety that’s lost on those people we all know who insist that good things don’t happen to them; not everyone realizes that it’s not just handed to you

One interesting thing about habit forming is that recent research has shown that each time you repeat a behavior, the context in which it occurs is linked in your mind to the activity itself.  Context in this example refers to the things happening around the activity – the time of day, the music that’s playing, whether you’re in your car or sitting in your favorite chair, and so on.  As explained by psychologist Wendy Wood and her team in Changing Circumstances, Disrupting Habits, an article in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, “habit associations are represented in learning and memory systems separately from intentions, or decisions to achieve particular outcomes. Thus, walking into a dark room can trigger reaching for the light switch without any decision to do so.”

In other words, habits benefit from having similar context in order to be successfully maintained.  At first, people start with an explicit intent to change some aspect of their life.  As an obvious example, someone might have a goal to lose 15 pounds prior to their wedding day.  This eventually translates into action (if this person is serious about the goal), and most times this action is ongoing (daily or close to it).  With this repetition, associations are formed between the context of the action and the action itself.  Eventually, these cues can help trigger automatic repetition of the activity and the original goal itself is used less in terms of personal motivation.

It becomes more about just being “what you do when you do it” than about doing something solely based on reason.  You become like a computer executing a program step-by-step without much in the way of decision-making.

There are ways to form this active association between context and habits as a shortcut to form positive habits.  Here’s the idea: surround the habit you’d like to form with corresponding positive context, forever linking your new habit with an environment or situation you enjoy. You may need to experiment a bit with this a bit to determine which things help the most (for me it’s music and scents).  Here are some examples from my life:

• In order to get into the habit of writing, I combine classical music and the smell of (good) espresso – now whenever I hear the music no matter where I am, I’m immediately ready to pour my heart out with a keyboard. 
• Getting into the habit of going to the gym early in the morning years ago required a daily ritual of Rocky music as soon as I got out of bed.  To this day every time I hear Burning Heart from Rocky IV I’m ready to exercise. 
• And as odd as this is, in order to get into the habit of flossing every night, I first had to reorganize my bathroom.  Seeing that the bathroom is organized how I like it as soon as I walk in reminds me that I need to floss!

The key to doing this is to combine something you already enjoy with a developing habit that isn’t yet second-nature.  The association between the two can be enough to ingrain that habit a little more quickly.

Give it a try!  The importance of the things happening around your behavior, positive or negative, is something that isn’t always recognized by people – but it’s important.  In order to switch your behavior from manual to auto-pilot more quickly, associate happiness-inducing experiences with your new habit until it becomes something you do instinctively.

Related posts:

1. Neuroplasticity: Your Brain’s Amazing Ability to Form New Habits
2. Guarantee Success By Tracking Your Habits with Joe’s Goals
3. 12 Goals: Define and Track Your Habits & Tasks (Step 3)

The reason I started this project (Refocuser) in 2009 instead of 1999 when I first had the idea is because I spent 10 years fighting with myself about how to make it perfect, all the way down to how I’d organize the site’s content on my hard drive.  Ugh!

Naturally, striving for your best work isn’t a bad thing… most people would never want to swing to the other extreme where quality and pride in the work are void, because that’s a real slippery slope to mediocrity.  But I’ve found that for me, that’s pretty much a non-option given my personality.  Keeping my perfectionist tendencies in check doesn’t have to mean that the quality of my output is going to suffer.

What I focus on instead of perfection is doing enough to get the most out of my efforts.  The second I start trending towards the familiar “over-focusing”, I force myself to stop in my tracks and self-evaluate.  More time spent on an activity very rarely equals higher quality in the kinds of projects I do – in fact, many times, it ends up being counter-productive – so not being a perfectionist can actually improve my work.

More is lost through indecision than wrong decision – Carmela Soprano

In his great book, The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less, Barry Schwartz describes research as it relates to consumerism – and the findings indicate that people with perfectionist tendencies often have higher stress levels and are at greater risk for depression.  Schwartz describes two types of people with respect to buying behavior: Maximizers and Satisficers and how their approaches differ.

Maximizers go to extreme lengths to make a purchase decision – they research for days, they compare all the models, and then get second and third opinions from friends before making what they believe to be the perfect decision.  They’re caught up with unrealistically high expectations resulting from their output.  Satisficers know what they need in order to be content, and once they feel those needs can be met, they take action.  This can sometimes be the very first option that meets their criteria.  But the key is that they make a decision and they don’t second guess it.

What’s interesting is that Satisficers rate their overall happiness with life significantly higher than Maximizers.

Schwartz makes it clear that a Maximizer isn’t a true perfectionist.  In his view, a true perfectionist is always looking to get better but realizes that perfection is unattainable.  The example he gives is Tiger Woods.  Tiger is continually striving to up his game, but doesn’t put off playing in a big tournament because he isn’t getting holes in one consistently.  These “perfectionists” strive for good enough.  Unfortunately, this isn’t the same definition everyone else has of a perfectionist, which is generally looked at as a bad thing to be.  To me, a Maximizer as it’s described is the same as a perfectionist as we all understand it to be.

Dr. Paul Hewitt, a researcher who has spent 20+ years researching perfectionism at York University, agrees that there’s a difference between “the desire to excel and the desire to be perfect.”  The former can be healthy so long as it’s mapped to life goals (the Tiger Woods example) while the latter is a “vulnerability factor for unipolar depression, anorexia and suicide”.  The research backs this overwhelmingly.

Now, tips for perfectionism is a broad topic, but here are 11 things I’ve learned about it recently:

1. Perfectionism doesn’t have to conflict with “sweating the details”.  It’s natural to assume that just giving up on perfectionism means you’ll no longer have any attention to detail.  But that’s absurd.  There’s a difference between awareness of detail and expecting perfection in order to finish something.  It’s still possible – in fact desirable – to stay on top of things to the level in which you need to in order to ensure a high-quality output, but this doesn’t mean you get to be unreasonable with respect to the overall outcome.
2. Striving for perfection means you’ll only do 10% of the things you want to do.  When you focus on finishing one thing before you can start another, you’re bounding your creativity and productivity.  If you spend too much time “perfecting” something, you’re likely doing it at the expense of moving on to the next thing.
3. Perfectionists have higher blood pressure, anxiety, and mental health problems.  This almost goes without saying and has been backed up in numerous studies, but if you expect perfection, you’re going to have higher stress levels which will affect your overall mental and physical health.  Relaxation, meditation, and “slow days” are hard to come by for people who are always pushing to make everything perfect.
4. Just doing something over nothing puts you in an elite group of people.  In so many cases, just doing something is enough.  Signing up for a class even if it’s not the perfect time, turning in an assignment even though you know you could have done more, etc.  There are hundreds of examples where the majority of people will agonize until things are perfect and never do anything at all, while you can get something “good enough” out for the world to see.
5. Perfect is the enemy of good.  I love this Voltaire quote and use it in software development all the time.  It’s too easy to strive for perfection and lose sight of the fact that you’re, in many cases, doing this at a huge overall cost.
6. Failing fast can shorten your learning cycle.  Sometimes it’s best to take an iterative approach and ignore perfection as a means to learn.  “Fail fast” is a famous Silicon Valley maxim when it comes to new businesses, because if you’re going to fail, it’s best to do it early at a time when you have the resources to turn it around.  If you’re striving to be perfect, you could fail when it’s too late to anything.
7. Focusing on perfectionism takes your focus away from the things that really matter. If you’re doing anything you can to perfection, you could be missing out on your top three focus areas completely.  Balance is a good thing.
8. Just doing something will start to expose shallow fears.  Similar to failing fast, you may not know what you fear until you give something a shot.  You thought you were afraid to fail, but maybe you’re really afraid to succeed.  The sooner you can identify your fears you can put measures in place to work through them.
9. Collaboration and perfection don’t mix.  Have you ever tried to work with other people on something but first demanded your contribution to be “perfect”?  That’s a sure-fire way to a failed partnership.  Collaboration requires iteration and being open to feedback in both directions – if you’re shooting to be perfect, or if you believe you are, you’re not going to play well with others.
10. It isn’t what you do all or some of the time, it’s what you do most of the time. Something I live by which I first read in Body for Life by Bill Phillips.  There’s never a “perfect time”, and you can never execute something “perfectly”.  But if you’re able to perform well most of the time, it can make up for the times when you’re not “perfect”.  Perfection isn’t possible, but spending more of your time doing something well is.
11. Perfection is impossible.  Every physical thing is in a constant state of change, so even if you think something’s perfect, it won’t be perfect for long.  Give it up.

Are you a perfectionist?  Do you have any other tips or tricks on perfectionism?

Related posts:

1. 9 Ways To Stop Overthinking Everything

The simplest way to think about this: your personal vision is your “ultimate goal”.  It’s an inspirational but achievable future state of mind and being that indirectly influences your decisions and guides you down your best path.  Your goals are interim milestones that contribute to fulfilling that vision – these are measurable and realistic targets that you use to base many of your actions.  And your habits are the small steps you take every single day that bring you ever closer to your goals.  This means they are the foundational element that everything builds on – your goals and your vision aren’t possible until you form the right habits.

Since many of us are visual, here’s a basic diagram showing how habits form the “bottom of the pyramid”. 

Unfortunately, It’s not abnormal to get into a funk when it comes to your daily habits.  One day “off” can easily snowball into 5 days or 5 weeks.  It’s always easier to convince yourself that slacking off with a specific daily habit isn’t going to make a difference than it is to just do it.  It’s amazing how powerful our internal motivation for slacking can actually be!

I’ve found for myself and for many others that the best way to return from a funk is to put the following two things into place:

1. Track your habits daily (not weekly or monthly)
2. Let other people see your progress

For the past few years, I’ve been using a (free) site called Joe’s Goals to track daily habits that’s helped accomplish both #1 and #2.  It’s based on a strategy used by Benjamin Franklin who developed a list of his Thirteen Virtues at age 20, and used pen & paper to track his “progress” against these virtues every day.  According to the Art of Manliness:

Franklin carried around a small book of 13 charts. The charts consisted of a column for each day of the week and 13 rows marked with the first letter of his 13 virtues. Franklin evaluated himself at the end of each day. He placed a dot next to each virtue each had violated. The goal was to minimize the number of marks, thus indicating a “clean” life free of vice.

Franklin would especially focus on one virtue each week by placing that virtue at the top that week’s chart and including a “short precept” to explain its meaning. Thus, after 13 weeks he had moved through all 13 virtues and would then start the process over again.

This is how I use Joe’s Goals to track my daily habits:

First, I look at my annual goals and determine which behaviors need to change or which specific daily activities I need to perform in order to achieve them.  While this does vary a bit year-to-year, most of the things on my daily list are things I have had on the list for years, and expect to have there for years to come. 

Once I have the list of trackable habits, I enter them into the site as “goals” (even though they’re actually habits).  While most are daily, some of them occur less frequently (such as posting to this blog) and for those, I just identify the days those occur.  From this point on, all that’s left is to actually start checking off the habits on a daily basis!

In order to remember to do this, I’ve done two pretty basic things to remind me to track these habits every day.  In my web browser I’ve added a link to Joe’s Goals to my Favorites Bar so that it’s front and center as soon as I open the browser (along with other sites I visit frequently).  To do this in Internet Explorer 8, you just need to make sure your Favorites Bar is shown by going to Tools –> Toolbars –> Favorites Bar (it’s shown by default).  Once it’s shown, you can add any site to it just by clicking the “Add to Favorites Bar” button:

(In Firefox 3, when you add a bookmark using the Bookmarks menu, just place the site in the “Bookmarks Toolbar” folder.)

The second thing I’ve done is to add a link to Joe’s Goals to my home screen on my iPhone.  This is straightforward as well – just navigate to www.joesgoals.com in Safari and then click the “+” icon to add the page to your home screen.  Unfortunately there isn’t a better mobile experience, but given that the site is so basic, using the browser should work pretty well on most smartphones.

Then it’s just a matter of checking off the habits daily as I perform them, and making sure to hold myself accountable.  I use the “Current Chain” indicator as a motivator.  This number shows you how many days in a row you’ve checked off that habit (the chain).  I’m always surprised at how well this strategy works to keep me honest; I hate breaking the chain.

One other great feature of Joe’s Goals is the ability to share your badge with other people through your blog or website – this can help push you just a little harder, knowing that other people have access to your progress chart.  For years I had this chart on my personal blog.  There’s no better motivator than questions or encouragement from friends about how well you’re doing!

Check out Joe’s Goals (and no, I don’t know Joe or own the company!)  It’s a fun site full of potential – and it’s simple to use.  You can get up and running in less than a few minutes.  Tracking your habits every day can make a material difference in your ability to stick to them, and Joe’s Goals is one of the easiest ways to do it!

Related posts:

1. 12 Goals: Define and Track Your Habits & Tasks (Step 3)
2. The Beginner’s Guide to Self-Tracking & Analysis
3. 12 Goals: Tools You Can Use

Spontaneity is what happens when when you have a grip on everything else.

Spontaneity is defined as behavior that is natural and unconstrained and is the result of impulse, not planning.  In this context, it’s easy to jump to the conclusion that spontaneity is both “unconstrained” and is only made possible through a lack of planning.  But there’s a subtlety here that may not be immediately apparent.  Spontaneity (as defined here) implies that the behavior exhibited is the “result of impulse”, but not that the behavior couldn’t be better supported through a lack of planning.  And defining spontaneous behavior as unconstrained is, in my opinion, invalid.  There isn’t any human behavior that’s truly without constraint – everything we do has constraints, whether avoidable or not.

In truth, spontaneity is inherently constrained and while is the result of impulse, is actually enabled through proper planning around it.

Let’s walk through two different examples to see which one appears to have more in-built flexibility:

• Frank has never been a planner.  He doesn’t keep a schedule, a to-do list, and has never defined any goals or documented any of his aspirations.  He has a general idea of where he’d like to be in five years, but has never really taken the time to break it down.  His email inbox at work is a mess – there are 375 unread items and the total count is approaching 10,000 from the past year.  His personal account is worse.  He knows he might be dropping some stuff on the floor, but doesn’t really mind.  “If it’s important, they’ll write back” he says.  Frank prides himself in the flexibility in his schedule – he never knows where he’ll be on any given day, he just does what inspires him in that moment.  He loves to keep his options open just in case something more interesting comes along.
• Julie likes to stay on top of things.  She’s always been a goal setter, and has taken the time to write down her core values, her personal mission statement, and the long and short-term goals that flow from them.  She takes a day each year to break her goals down further into individual tasks, and she keeps them in a small notebook in her purse.  At least once every day she reviews her to-do list, checks things off, and makes sure to add to it as new things pop up (as they always do).  She’s diligent about tracking everything in her online calendar from her hair appointments to her vacations so she always knows what she’s committed to – both to herself and to others.  She maintains a mostly empty inbox – every once in a while it may spike, but it never gets higher than about 30 items unless she’s on vacation (and she almost always stays disconnected).  She always knows where she stands on her projects, both personal and professional.

Frank and Julie are polar opposites with respect to personal organization.  Frank the spontaneous drifter, Julie the buttoned-up planner.  Who do you think would adapt better to a last-minute trip to Vegas?  Or an afternoon playing hooky?  Or an impromptu trip to the wine region for an all-day taste fest?

Naturally Frank would think he’d be better prepared.  But what about all his “open loops”?  The people he hasn’t responded to, the haircut he needs to get before the trip, or most importantly, the things he doesn’t even know he’s not doing but was supposed to?  He may not feel anxiety about those things right now, but that may change when he’s sitting in the Bellagio and one of his projects is on fire back at the office. 

Julie on the other hand would know exactly what the next couple days have in store for her.  She might have to send an email or make a phone call or two, but there’s no question about what she’s not getting to.  Stress around spontaneity is almost non-existent for people like this because they just need to “connect some lego blocks” and everything’s fine.

Of course, it’s hard to say that planners actually desire spontaneity.  In fact, many loathe it.  But they’re constantly working to reduce the unimportant spontaneity in their lives, so they can be more agile about the things that matter.  It’s this consistent chipping away and structure that produces freedom.

Have you found yourself to be more spontaneous when you’re organized?  Or do you think you can be spontaneous without being organized, and still do it stress-free?

No related posts.

Think back to a time when you felt everything was in order in your life; you felt great in your relationships and with your family, your job was something you looked forward to each day, your finances were on a positive trajectory, and you were getting regular exercise.  Heck, you were even flossing every day, making your bed, and staying on top of the laundry.  Every night as you drifted off to sleep the only thing you were thinking about was counting sheep.  Minimal stress, maximum smiles.

Compare that to how you feel right now – do you have that same sense of control over things?  Do you find one or more areas lacking?  How many things would you change if you could?  If you’re sitting there thinking that something’s lacking, this post may help get you back on track.  Yet thinking about the level of effort involved in getting everything going at once can be pretty overwhelming.  Where to start?

The key is to stop beating yourself up about all the small things you’re not doing, and focus on getting just one habit back on track first. 

In a series of studies performed by a social psychologist named Roy Baumeister, it’s been suggested that “improving self-regulation operates by increasing a general, core capacity. That is, as the person performs exercises to improve self-regulation in one sphere, he or she becomes better at self-regulating in other spheres.”

What does this mean?  It means that if you get just one thing clicking, other things will follow.  It means that self-regulation builds on itself, and if you’re able to make progress with just one thing, you’ll find that you’ll end up making progress across the board. 

Need some proof?  Here’s a quick synopsis of some studies in the space:

1. Posture study.  In a recent study, college students were asked to improve their posture for two weeks – straighten up whenever they’re aware that they were slouching – and at the end of the two weeks, those students tested higher for self-control.
2. Exercise study.  In this study, college students were taught an exercise program consisting of weight training and cardio, and were asked to maintain it for 2 months.  At the end of the two months, the students had improved their eating habits (less junk, caffeine, alcohol, and cigarettes) and even saw improvement in areas unrelated to health – they were getting better grades, watching less television, and doing more household chores.
3. Money study.  In this study, students were asked to manage their finances for four months using a specific system.  You can probably guess what was seen at the end of the four months?  Yup: better study habits, fewer cigarettes, increased positive behavior, and so on.

While these studies focus on some specific behavioral changes, I’d postulate that the odds of success increase by starting with a single habit that aligns best with someone’s core values and interests.  A biker who’s two months out of practice may find it easiest and most fulfilling to hop back on the bike.  That single action may have a greater impact on his or her ability to translate success than, say, flossing would.  Which is why I’d recommend focusing on something I’ll call a “master habit” first, and then monitoring how success carries over.  Your master habit is a habit you’ve had success with in the past, and something that aligns directly to the person you aspire to be.

If you’re interested in giving this a go, here are some specific recommendations.

1. Find your master habit by researching your past

Chances are you already know what your master habit is because you’ve seen it work its magic before.  It’s probably no surprise to you that by getting this thing going again, other things will start to improve.  But if you’re not sure what your master habit is, you should spend some time looking back at the past few years to see if you can identify it.  When were your stress levels the lowest?  When did you feel most in control?  This may involve digging through old emails, or asking friends and family members for their thoughts.  If you’ve kept a journal, diary, or blog, that would be a good source to look into as well. 

If you still come up blank, you should revisit your core values and goals.  Run through some simulations in your mind to answer this single question: “If I can only do this one thing for the next 4 weeks, is it going to bring me closer to the person I want to be than any other single thing would?”

2. Put yourself back into the mindset of someone who is an expert

Before doing anything – before even taking another step – change the way you think about yourself in the context of this habit.  This may involve becoming aware of your self-talk and adjusting it accordingly, or it could be something as silly as wearing clothes that help put you in the right mindset.  The key here is to make sure you’re thinking like someone who’s already consistent with this habit – as you have been in the past – and not someone who isn’t.  Start thinking about yourself as “already there”.

3. Start slowly incorporating your master habit back into your routine

Try these two things: 1) starting slowly with simple steps, and 2) doing those things every single day for a while.  For example, if exercise is your thing, you may start doing 30-minute walks everyday before moving to 45 minute training sessions 4 days/week.  If your master habit is keeping your house in order, you may start with a single room – again, making sure to straighten up daily. 

If you start with a 3 day/week routine, you may find it harder to adapt than you would if its an everyday habit.  And of course, building on success by starting small and accumulating small wins can help you make a real lifestyle change instead of a one-off, short-lived one.

4. Give yourself at least 4 weeks before you worry about anything else

While you may start to see positive change in other areas in your life, it’s not worth stressing about it if you don’t.  If it’s not happening, that’s OK… give it time!  But if you find yourself inspired to start stretching every morning because you’re now eating right, or if you find your work output increasing because you’re exercising, embrace it!  Even though you shouldn’t strive to change too many things at once, it’s OK if those things start to change for you.  That’s the magic of self-regulation.

Before going further, I’d also recommend reading this post: 15 Ways to Get a Habit to Stick Forever.

In closing, increasing control over our life by focusing on just one positive master habit can have a serious domino effect.  An increase in control can lead to a decrease in overall stress and other hindrances that hold us back from achieving our goals.  Baumeister agrees, “Look at just about any major category of problem that people are suffering from and odds are pretty good that self-control is implicated in some way.” 

Thoughts?  I’d love to hear them.

Related posts:

1. 15 Ways To Get a New Habit To Stick Forever
2. 7 Tips to Make Exercise a Habit (and Keep It That Way)
3. 12 Goals: Define and Track Your Habits & Tasks (Step 3)

Sometimes it’s hard to even realize that this is what’s happening to you.  It sounds a little crazy, but some people are so used to not being organized, they think it’s normal to spend 30-50% of their time just gathering what they need instead of actually doing the thing they set out to do.  Naturally this means the effort either takes 30-50% longer – or worse, is rushed… sacrificing quality in the process.

Speaking from personal experience, at some point years ago I got so frustrated with forgetting things that I put some systems in place to prevent this from happening again.  Of course it does still happen every once in a while but it’s far less frequent these days than it used to be.

Look, it’s just far easier to stay organized than it is to deal with the ramifications of not being organized.  Having a base level of organizational ability will “grease the skids” and make any effort far more effortless.  But like anything else, it requires a little effort to first know what to do, and then secondly form a long-term habit to make sure it sticks.

Here are some of the things you can do to keep yourself from getting caught in friction.

Everything should have a home

Every single physical or digital object in your life should have a home.  When something isn’t in its home, it should be because it’s on your person – or because it’s being used in some way.  This means that at any given time, your keys aren’t sitting on top of the television (unless that’s where they always go) and your remote control isn’t in your coat pocket.  Things should leave their home for use and then be placed back where they belong when finished.  If this can’t happen right away, you should look at this as another thing to “bounce at zero”, trying to get things to their home every 24-48 hours.

Here are some examples:

• Always keep your keys by the front door.  Get into the habit of placing them there as soon as you unlock the door and walk into your home.  This way they will always be there when you’re ready to leave, and other members of your household will know where they are as well.
• Place your purse or bag in the same spot when you enter your home.
• Every time you get undressed, empty your pockets onto a single surface.
• Get a charging station and setup everything you need to charge.  No more forgetting one thing if they’re all sitting right next to each other.

Of course, this same thing applies to computer files as well.  While desktop and email search has improved quite a bit over the last four or five years, it’s still useful to keep your files organized in a way that you can always find the thing you’re looking for when you need it.  On Windows Vista and Windows 7, this means keeping everything in your “C:\Users\Your Name” folder in the right spot (Documents, Music, Pictures, Contacts, and so on).  The Mac has an equivalent folder structure with Home folders.

The folder you’ll likely spend the most time in is Documents, which means it should be broken down further.  I prefer to do this by “type” of document, so my Documents folder looks something like this:

• Business
• Finances
• Goals and Plans
• Health, Fitness, and Martial Arts
• Messages
• Notebooks
• Parenthood and Pets
• Software Development
• Weblog Posts

However you choose to organize your files, just remember that everything should have a home!  And unlike physical objects, you don’t actually have to remove something from its home just to work on it.

Here’s a fun way to remind yourself of this one (from Happy Gilmore – audio isn’t safe for work!)

Pull important information out of its source and centralize it

If you’re storing important information in a pile on your counter or deep within email you’ve received, there’s no way you’ll find it when you need it.  Yank it out and centralize it someplace you’ll always have with you, ready to go.  I do this using Evernote but there are dozens of viable solutions for this (paper notebooks, online services, etc.)  Some examples of this:

• Copy important information from the web into a digital notebook like Evernote or OneNote instead of using Favorites/Bookmarks.  If you bookmark something, it’s impossible to know what it is you bookmarked it for at a glance, which means you’ll have to read it again!
• Tear magazine articles out to take quick notes on the article (or just to find it online) – then throw it out.
• Keep a notebook near the book you’re reading to jot notes down immediately, which you can then put into your centralized notebook each week (if you have a Kindle, this is a lot easier).
• Take pictures of things you want to remember with a cameraphone (i.e. drawings on a whiteboard) and send them to yourself to file in your notebook – or just add them directly if you can (the reason I use Evernote).

Doing this, you’ll never forget that one important thing – because all the important information is always with you, even if the source material isn’t.

Digital files should be available wherever you are

Your files should roam with you so that you’ll always have them when you need them.  Us geeks call this “placeshifting” because location isn’t important – what matters is that you’ll never worry about being without your files.  There are a few ways to make this happen: 1) Store the files you need on an online service like Windows Live SkyDrive (25GB free), 2) Carry around a thumbdrive with your most important files, or 3) Synchronize files across your machines automatically or on-demand.

Storing files online doesn’t work well for me because it presupposes that you know what you’re going to need.  Online storage is expensive (very expensive) for service providers, so you probably won’t have enough space to roam everything you need to access.  The thumbdrive plan has the same drawbacks: if you didn’t grab the right file upfront, there’s not much you’ll be able to do about it.  This is why sync works really well.

My service of choice is Windows Live Sync.  You install a small utility on your PCs or Macs and setup folders to synchronize automatically across them.  You can even browse your PCs remotely if you forgot something and either setup sync immediately or just grab that one file.  Your files will always be available!  This service has always felt like magic to me: make a change to a file on computer A and it will be available seconds later on computer B.

Disclaimer: I work at Microsoft on Windows Live.

Hope this was helpful! Remember: you can’t get into deep focus if you don’t have everything you need handy!  You’ll expend effort getting things organized instead of getting things done.  Follow a few simple steps and make sure you can always direct your energy to the task at hand.

Related posts:

1. Going Paperless at Home in 6 Easy Steps
2. 12 Steps to Simplify Your PC (with Windows 7)
3. Take Micro-vacations to Boost Focus

But what does balance really mean – and couldn’t it mean different things to different people?  When people talk about balance, they’re frequently referring to work/life balance.  A quick search on “work life balance” yields a number of results seemingly indicating that work/life balance means working a 9-5 job and then “shutting off”, compartmentalizing your work and home life.  When you’re at work, you aren’t thinking about your home life – and when you’re at home, you definitely aren’t “worrying” about work.  There are steps you can take to protect your personal time such as refusing to answer email off-hours, setting expectations up-front with your employer that you’re offline as soon as you walk out the door, planning recreational activities and sticking to a schedule, and so on.

Naturally I’m a big believer in embracing the present moment.  But what if pure compartmentalization can lead to mediocrity?  What if in the struggle for daily balance, you’re missing out on long-term accomplishment and complete contentment?  If every single day contained a healthy balance over the course of a lifetime, would you meet or exceed the goals you set out for yourself?  Would that make you happier or more content, or would it leave you feeling empty?

Years ago while still in college, I helped start a company with a couple good friends.  It was an incredibly busy time for me; I was in my final year at Cornell University and was working to balance my class schedule to give myself enough time to focus on our new venture, while at the same time making sure I wouldn’t fail to graduate at the end of the year.  I was in a serious relationship.  I was also going through the job hunting process to make sure I’d have a job after graduation in the (very possible) chance the company didn’t succeed. 

It was during this time I remember first really struggling with balance, and I spoke to a friend of mine about it.  I’ll never forget what he said when I mentioned I didn’t feel rested and hadn’t exercised in a few days (an anomaly for me back then) because we had all been working so hard:

Finding balance doesn’t always have to be an everyday thing.  You need to make sure you’re finding balance at a cadence that works for you – maybe that’s weekly, maybe that’s monthly, or maybe it’s annually.  Look at finding balance in the aggregate and don’t worry about the details.

Since then, I’ve tried to leverage controlled bursts of focus to help me find balance in the aggregate, while at the same time accomplish the things I want to accomplish and feel content with the progress I’m making.

A controlled burst of focus can be defined at the highest level as a disruption to daily balance.  It’s the string of nights you spend working on a project, or the few weeks spent sampling six different fitness classes.  It’s also the vacation when you do nothing but read and spend time with your family.

It’s extra time and energy devoted to something that helps you make materially more progress than you would during a normal, balanced routine.  If you plan to breakthrough mediocrity, controlled bursts of focus are a requirement.  You won’t find many accomplished people who’ve always had a perfectly balanced day each day of their lives.

However, there’s a fine line between controlled bursts and an unhealthy, prolonged overemphasis on something.  Before going too far with controlled bursts, check out these tips:

1. Make sure your focus isn’t distracted because of something that ultimately isn’t important to you.  Pick your top 3 focus areas and drop everything else.  If you find yourself sacrificing too much for something that doesn’t resonate with your values, it’s doubtful this will result in contentment.  Instead it will just result in resentment.
2. Embrace emergent focus by applying all of your attention to the thing you’re most interested in at that exact moment… without guilt over what you’re not doing.  In other words, if you find yourself in a groove at work with double the productivity and passion you normally have, use it!  It’s a gift.  This is frequently how ‘peak experiences’ come to be.  So even if it means a little less balance on a day-to-day basis, it may be worth it.
3. Kick start your interest in other areas if you find yourself unmotivated to break free from a burst.  This will help you from getting carried away with a single burst, and let you get back to an overall balanced state over the long haul.
4. Control the burst of focus and measure it if you have to.  Make sure you don’t get sucked into an unhealthy state and start letting other important things hit the floor.  If it helps, use a time log or a journal and make sure you’re not getting sucked into something at the expense of everything else.  Give yourself a deadline when you’ll “snap out of it” and get back to a more balanced routine.
5. Use a visual to help justify your energy investment.  The visual that helps me the most is a surface chart of my focus areas for the year.  Ultimately, I want the total surface area of each to be approximately equal (note that this isn’t time spent, it’s just a subjective estimate of focus applied to each area).  Here’s a sample surface chart using my three focus areas (it isn’t using real data). 

   As is probably expected, some months have more dedicated focus on certain areas than others:

Bottom line: Controlled bursts of focus can help you leap ahead and achieve balance in the aggregate.  So long as you’re honest about what you’re sacrificing and why, bursts can be an indispensible tool for overall, long-term focus, accomplishment, and contentment.

Thoughts?  I’d love to hear them.  Comment below!

Related posts:

1. Pick Your Top 3 Focus Areas… and Drop Everything Else
2. Focus: How Rapt Attention Changes Who We Are
3. Take Micro-vacations to Boost Focus

Forming new habits is hard.  But it’s absolutely possible for everyone due to the plasticity of the brain and the core of human nature.  If we are what we repeatedly do, then it serves to reason that our habits are somehow a part of us.  What we focus on from minute to minute and day to day has a large part to do with who we are – and more importantly who we want to be. 

It’s not uncommon to see people with ambitious goals and aspirations who haven’t formed any of the required habits to achieve them.  For 23 hours and 59 minutes each day they’re mired in bad habits, struggling to understand why it is they just can’t get motivated or can’t make progress.  The 1 minute each day they spend thinking about and focusing on their goals can’t help overcome the inertia of their habits.

Habits are the single most important ingredient to achieving real focus and real growth.

Social psychologists have been studying the process of habit forming for quite some time.  In the late 1970s, researchers James Prochaska and Carlo DiClemente came up with a model to help frame the various “Stages of Change”.  While this model was formed out of a desire to cure smoker’s addiction, it’s useful to help identify which stage someone is in with respect to one or more of their habits, good or bad.  People are often unwilling or resistant to change during early stages, but eventually become more proactive and committed to forming or replacing habits. 

Here are the 5 stages:

1. Precontemplation.  In this stage, “ignorance is bliss”.  There’s no motivation to change and in many cases, there may not even be an awareness of a problem or opportunity.  At this point, it’s important to put off taking any major action until you understand the benefits (or the risks) and are able to successfully evaluate your own behavior.
2. Contemplation.  “Sitting on the fence” without motivation to consider change for the next month.  It’s likely a “someday task”; no commitment has been made.  If you’re in this stage, you recognize the need to change but may not understand all the pros/cons of it.
3. Preparation.  “Testing the waters” and are ready to take action within the next month or so.  Ready to take small initial steps towards change.
4. Action.  Practicing the new habit or behavior for 3-6 months.  To get to this point, real time and energy has been given to the process and you’re “in the thick of it”, although there’s still the possibility of “relapse” if you stop paying attention.
5. Maintenance.  Habits are ingrained.  Usually takes a full 6 months to really sink in.

Wait a minute… does it really take 6 months to get to the final maintenance phase?  Yes and no… or maybe.  It really depends on you and how quickly you’re able to internalize change.  Everyone’s different.  And every habit is different.  It’s far easier to add a simple habit like flossing before bed to your nightly routine than it is to kick a 30 year smoking addiction (although this is totally conjecture – I floss but have never smoked!)  The key with this is to make sure you don’t have self-limiting beliefs with respect to what it will take, but that you’re realistic with yourself at the same time.  Focus on your habits day to day and don’t worry about how long it will take (what’s the point?)

Now the “Stages of Change” model can be a great way to frame habit forming and give you a mini-barometer to help indicate which stage you’re currently in, but it doesn’t really help you determine a next action.  Once you’re placed yourself into a stage and are ready to take action, it’s time to get to business.

Here are the 15 tips in no specific order:

1. Don’t start today, give yourself time to plan first.  The absolute worst day to start is today because you haven’t prepared yourself mentally, physically, or emotionally yet.  The second worst day to start is tomorrow.  Give yourself enough upfront time to plan out your approach in detail before jumping in headfirst.  You’ve waited this long, another few days won’t hurt!
2. Give yourself a positive goal.  Always frame your goal in a way that inspires you and motivates you to greater heights.  If your goal is to exercise everyday first thing in the morning, you could write “Wake up energized and ready to exercise for at least 30 minutes” instead of “Force myself out of bed to get to the gym”.
3. Start small, focus on one at a time, and build on successes.  Take on one habit at a time and always start off small.  If your goal is to lose 80 pounds, start by focusing on your first 5 pounds – and don’t worry about the 7 other habits you’re ready to change or adopt.  What’s important is that you get this one right first before moving on.  Spend the time to get it right.
4. Dream big but look to kaizen.  Never limit the dream your habit change can bring – dream as big as you can, write it down, and go for it.  But you should utilize the kaizen principle of incremental progress.  This is when you challenge yourself more each day to strive for “continuous improvement” using smaller than normal increments.
5. Be OK with the awkward phase.  Many new habits have some level of awkwardness involved.  You don’t know what to do or how to do it.  Everyone goes through it, you’re not special!  Just move through the awkwardness knowing you’ll come out OK on the other side.
6. Create systems to make yourself more efficient.  This is critical.  If you’re fighting yourself every step of the way, forming a habit is going to be hard.  You need to “grease the skids” by creating systems to help you out.  Example from a previous post: get in the small habit of packing your gym bag the night before to keep you from having an excuse for the big habit (exercise). 
7. Reframe your negative self-talk.  Don’t identify with negativity!  Whenever you have a moment of weakness, think, “Those thoughts aren’t me, they’re just passing through.  I don’t actually believe that.”  There’s more detail about this in my series on Flow.
8. Allow for imperfection; realize that not everything will be perfect.  “Striving for excellence motivates you; striving for perfection is demoralizing.” (Harriet Braiker).  There’s never going to be a perfect time to start, and there’s never going to be a perfect implementation.  You need to take what you can get, and most of the time that’s not perfection.
9. Compliment your lifestyle.  Do you like to stay up late or wake up early?  Chances are it isn’t both   You need to understand if you’re a morning lark or a night owl, and schedule your habit at the appropriate time for you.  This isn’t pseudo-science – it’s been shown that people can have strong tendencies, even though many people don’t.  If you do, leverage it.
10. Be in it for the long-haul.  Never start something with the expectation that it will be short-lived.  There’s no way you can possibly motivate yourself knowing that something is so short-term as to not be a real life change.  Do it for you, and do it for life, even if it involves some subtle changes to your approach.
11. Create contingency plans.  Adversity will hit, it always does.  If you’ve prepared for it ahead of time, you can be in a better position to continue making progress over the long haul.  At Harvard Business School they teach a thing called scenario planning – this is a micro version of that for risk management.  Always know where your slip-ups may come from and you can have a plan to get through it.
12. Schedule priorities rather than prioritize schedules.  In other words, make time for it!  If it’s important to you, don’t let your schedule get in the way.  That’s just starting off on the wrong foot.
13. Tell other people and hold yourself accountable.  It’s always a smart thing to tell people what you’re doing (other than your own ego) .  Ask them to ask you how you’re doing with it from time to time knowing that you won’t always be as motivated to change as you are at that moment.  People who have a support system almost always find it easier to make things happen.
14. Start off doing it every day for 21 days.  Studies have shown that lasting habit change can occur in as little as 21 days (and in some cases fewer).  In order to get the most of it, even if your habit isn’t something you ultimately will do daily, start off doing it every single day for 21 days.  It should be much easier afterwards.
15. Write it down and track it.  This accountability trick works wonders to keep people on track.  When you know you’re being watched, even if only by a piece of paper or an Excel spreadsheet, you may have a stronger sense of commitment.  Speaking personally, if I can’t track and measure it, it usually doesn’t happen for me.  This is a real motivator.

These 15 tips will get you 95% of the way there, but there’s still the possibility of your mind sabotaging your progress in various ways.  Here are a few things you need to look out for throughout the process of forming a new habit and some ways you can mitigate their power.  You can’t let these things affect you!

Attributing Superpowers

When you attribute superpowers to someone else, you’re taking power out of your own hands and jumping to an unproven conclusion.  This is common when it comes to forming habits.  “Of course Sally is able to do it, she’s always been the smartest person around – I could never be like her, she’s different”.

Generalizing

When you generalize, you’re taking a single situation and applying it to all situations.  “I wasn’t able to do this yesterday, I guess I wasn’t meant to do this after all”.

Black or White Thinking

This is thinking that there’s no middle ground.  You either succeed or fail, there’s nothing in the middle.  “There are only winners and losers – there’s no way to win if you don’t do it all right, all the time”.

Excluding and Filtering

When you’re excluding, your invalidating or disqualifying your progress.  This is often “putting yourself down” or not giving yourself the credit you’re due.  “I may have gotten this far, but 6 weeks is nothing – it won’t matter until I hit 6 months consistently!”  Filtering is when you only see negatives in a situation and no positives: “I didn’t make it to the gym 6 times last month!  Sure I went 24 times, but so what?”

Overreacting and Dwelling

You’re overreacting when something small becomes something major.  “I can’t make time to write today because I have a board meeting.  This is the worst possible thing that could happen to me right now!  It’s horrible!”  You’re dwelling when you do this for an unhealthy period of time.

Hope this helps!  Remember the ice cube tray analogy; if you already have something that works, that’s great!  If you use some of this information to fill in some gaps, that’s great too – and if you’re new to habit forming and want to get started, hopefully this information is enough to get you going.

Related posts:

1. Your Master Habit: Get One Thing Clicking, Watch Others Follow
2. Form Positive New Habits Through Active Association
3. 12 Ways to Make Your Goals Smarter

Since 1997, Microsoft Outlook has been my email program of choice.  Sure I’ve dabbled with web mail like Hotmail and Gmail for my personal account, but for anything “serious” I always come back to Outlook.  Of course it doesn’t hurt that I work for Microsoft and therefore couldn’t escape Outlook if I tried, but I continually find Outlook to be an absolute gem for email and for productivity in general.

Part of this is due to the fact that email, calendar, notes, to-do items, a corporate directory, and umpteen other important “modules” are available in a single application.  Another big factor is comfort of course – 12 years in a single program means there isn’t much I don’t know about it at this point.  But for all intents and purposes, I love using Outlook and always have.

This post is about dealing with email overload in Outlook.  It assumes you’re likely in a corporate environment with Microsoft Exchange and that you know a thing or two about Outlook already.  It also assumes email has a chokehold on your life, and you want to learn how to escape with your sanity.

The principles and techniques in this post are things I’ve learned and used over the years and have taught to hundreds of others at Microsoft through “brown bags”, 1:1 coaching, and seminars.  Special thanks go out to Omar Shahine, Michael Affronti, and Trevin Chow for lots of brainstorms and conversations about Outlook email – much of this comes from them.  Omar’s actually my partner in crime as we’ve given talks on Outlook together a few times.

Before getting into the nitty gritty, let’s start with 7 basic email principles which aren’t specific to Outlook use:

1. Reserve your inbox for important items.  Any distribution lists or other types of email you receive that are just of the “FYI” variety (shopping receipts, Netflix shipping reminders, Facebook notifications, etc.) should be filtered away from your attention automatically.
2. Deleting and archiving email should be a one-step (or one-click) action.  Delete without prejudice and archive anything you think you’ll need to refer to at some point, but don’t worry about having deep, nested folders.
3. Never read an email twice.  When processing your email, every time you open a message use the 4Ds discussed as part of David Allen’s Getting Things Done.  Delete it immediately, Do it immediately, Delegate (or forward) it, or Defer it by converting it to a task or appointment.
4. Emails that need follow-up (either by you or by others) should be converted to Tasks or Appointments.  Convert an email to a task with a due date if you want to do it on that date, and convert it to an appointment if it’s time-based (i.e. pick someone up from the airport).  If it’s mandatory that something get done on a certain day but it doesn’t matter what time it’s done, I usually book time for myself on my calendar anyway just to make sure it happens that day.
5. Tasks should be broken down into two important categories: “Next Actions for you” and “Waiting on from others”.  While there are other categories and lists you can use in Outlook, these are the two most critical.
6. Bounce your inbox at zero as often as you can – ideally a few times per week.  This means “seeing the white” in your inbox and knowing 100% of your email has been processed.  See Bouncing at Zero for more information about this.
7. Bounce your daily task list at zero everyday.  Your entire task list will never be empty, but every single day you should know what you’ve accomplished and rebalanced your items for the future (i.e. don’t just ignore them!)  Again, bounce at zero!

There are a dozen more principles I could list, but I want to keep this post a) short and b) more about making things happen than about platitudes.  As Bruce Lee said, “Knowing is not enough, we must apply”.

Now that the high-level principles are out of the way, let’s talk about how best to setup Outlook for massive focus.

Declare Email Bankruptcy and Start Over

If your Inbox currently has more than 100 messages you don’t think you’ll have time to get to, you have a hard choice to make.  You can either a) set some time aside to get through each and every message individually using the 4Ds described above, or you could b) just declare bankruptcy by archiving all your messages and starting fresh.  Choose one now.

If it’s important, they’ll seek you out again.  You can either live underneath a mountain of guilt and shame or you can take an important first step in getting a grip on your email.  I vote to start fresh.

Turn Off All Notifications

Before going any further, if you really care about focusing on what’s important, you should turn off the notifications Outlook generates that are guaranteed to drop you out of flow.  There’s nothing worse than being in the middle of writing an important document when an alert that a family member has forwarded a chain letter from 1996 pops up.  To turn off all notifications, go to: Tools->Options->Email Options->Advanced Email Options… and uncheck any of the options in red you’d like to turn off.

View By Conversation and Color-code Items

If you receive a lot of email that goes back and forth between people (like I do) then turning on conversation view is the next thing you should do.  “View by conversation” will group all messages in a conversation together so you can easily delete, archive, and find the latest message in a long thread easily.

It will probably take you at least a week to get used to this new view.  It’s pretty different, but the time spent is worth it.  You’ll find yourself to be a lot more productive once you get over the hump.  One thing I like to do in a thread of more than a few messages is to quickly delete all the messages leading up to the last one – and then I just read/archive/respond to or delete the last message.  That alone can cut a 100 item inbox down to 30 or 40 items pretty quickly.

To turn on this view, just go to View->Arrange By->Conversation:

Once you have conversations setup, another good thing to do is to color code messages sent directly to you.  I use maroon but you can use blue, green, or any other color.  To do this, you have to setup automatic formatting:

• Go to View->Current View->Customize Current View
• Click Automatic Formatting…
• Click Add and call the rule “To Me”
• Click Font and select the style you’d like to use
• Click Condition and then select “Where I am on the To line with other people”

Once you have this setup, you could do the same thing with a different color for the CC line.  This one trick will help you if you only have 10 minutes to catch-up, but you have 50+ emails waiting to be processed.  You can quickly see which ones are important (!) or just the ones sent directly to you.

Set up Rules

If you receive email you don’t need to see right away, you’re a prime candidate for rules (or filters).  In general, I would setup a rule for email if you’re 95% certain there isn’t going to be any email caught by the rule you’d need to see immediately.  Setting up rules is quite easy in Outlook and it’s powerful enough so that you can do things like “send this message to a special folder unless I’m on the To or CC line”.

To setup a rule, find a type of email you’d like to filter out of your Inbox permanently, right-click on the email and select “Create a rule”:

From here you can automatically filter email from specific people, with a specific subject, or sent to specific people.  If you want to get more advanced, you can click “Advanced Options…” and enter the Rules Wizard which gives you all sorts of great and easy to use options:

Every single time you find yourself reading an email in your Inbox that you don’t feel should have ended up there, setup a rule and get it – and all future emails like it – as far away from your Inbox as possible.  Of course, if you’re at all interested in the content, you should check-in on these folders from time to time as part of your overall workflow.

Simplify Your Folder Hierarchy

Merlin Mann’s Inbox Zero (which is fantastic!) has forced thousands of people to reevaluate their email archiving strategy.  Instead of having 50 different folders for filing, Merlin recommends having just one folder called “Archive” or “Everything” and filing items there.  Once they’re in a single folder, you can use Outlook search to find anything you need in less than a second (more on this in a bit).  This will cut down significantly on the cognitive overhead each and every time you receive an email.

Once you’ve created this folder and removed all the other cruft from your mailbox, you can start to make use of keyboard shortcuts for referencing your archive and for archiving email.  These two keyboard shortcuts are invaluable when viewing messages:

• CTRL-SHIFT-V.  Use this to file email in your Archive folder.  It will remember the last used folder, so your workflow will become almost automatic (CTRL-SHIFT-V, Enter, CTRL-SHIFT-V, Enter, etc.)
• CTRL-SHIFT-Y.  Use this to jump to your Archive folder or back to your Inbox.

If you’re not a keyboard fan, you have another simple option.  Look in the toolbar for this button which will make it even quicker to archive items:

Use Search Shortcuts

Instant Search in Outlook 2007 is a life-saver, especially if you’ve simplified your folder hierarchy by going to a single Archive folder.  You can search any folder just by typing in the search box below the Inbox header.  Here are just a few examples of how search can work for you:

• Search for “bobby”  to find any emails containing Bobby.
• Search for from:"bobby moore" to find any emails sent from Bobby Moore.
• Search for from:"bobby moore" about:”status report” to find any emails from Bobby Moore where the words status report appear in the subject, body, or attachment contents (cool!)
• Search for subject:status to find any emails where status appears in the subject
• Search for subject:status received:May to find any emails where subject contains status and the message was sent in the month of May of any year

You can read the rest of the search query syntax on Microsoft’s Outlook site.  I’d recommend printing it out and having it handy as you get used to it.

You can do a lot using the search form too.  Learn more on Microsoft’s Outlook site.

Simplify Your Default View

Another benefit of reducing the number of folders you have is that you can get a lot more space back to see your email list and the contents in the reading pane – because you no longer have to view all of your folders, all of the time!  To do this, minimize your navigation pane by clicking the minimize button in red:

This is what your Inbox looks like before minimizing the navigation pane:

This is how your Inbox will look after

Lots of space saved!  Once the navigation pane is minimized, you can add your Archive folder (or any others you want) to the minimized navigation pane for quick mouse access – you can see this in the screenshot above.  You can do this by right-clicking on a folder in the expanded folder list and then clicking “Add to Favorite Folders”.

Create Buttons for Next Actions and Waiting For Tasks

This is a little more complicated than some of the previous recommendations, but it’s worth doing.  It won’t take more than a couple minutes to do if you follow the instructions.  Note that there are other ways to do this using Flags in Outlook, but I don’t recommend it – it’s far nicer to use Macros because they create “real tasks” in Outlook, complete with subjects and mobile device synchronization.  And they force you to look at the subject + due date during the flow.

(View the macros now)

These macros will:

1. Take one or more email(s) and attach them to a task
2. Automatically file the email(s) in your Archive folder
3. Set the due-date to tomorrow (including jumping over the weekend if it’s a Friday – thanks Trevin!)
4. Set a reminder for the task
5. Pop-up the new task immediately so you can modify it before saving

Here’s what you need to do to enable this – don’t worry, it will just take a minute:

1. Start Outlook
2. Go to Tools–>Macros–>Security and make sure macros aren’t disabled
3. Go to Tools–>Macros->Visual Basic Editor and double-click on This Outlook Session on the left (if it’s not visible, you need to expand the tree) which will open the code window on the right
4. While in the code window, copy and paste the macros from this page and replace YOUR NAME with your actual name.
5. Close the window and restart Outlook, opting to Save when prompted

Now that your macros are ready to go, you just need to add buttons and keyboard shortcuts.

1. Start Outlook
2. Go to View–>Toolbars–>Customize
3. On the Commands tab, click Macros on the left-hand side
4. Drag the Next Action macro to the toolbar (I like it next to the “Send/Receive“ button)
5. Right-click on the button and change the Name field to “&1-Next Action” and the button image to something catchy
6. Follow steps #4 and #5 for the Waiting For macro also (and call it “&2-Waiting For”)
7. Click Close

What you’ll have:

What to do now:

When you come across an email with an action for you, click “Next Action” to create a task with a subject, due date, and the email attachment.  Type a VERY clear task name – i.e. “Talk to Rob about something important” so you don’t have to think too much when that day arrives.  You can also use ALT-1.

When you come across an email with an action for someone else, click “Waiting For” to create a task with the person’s name, due date, and the email attachment again.  You can also use ALT-2.  This is sometimes best used from the Sent Items folder since you’re probably tracking something you’ve sent to someone else.

One fun trick: you can use natural language in the date field.  So instead of using the mouse and finding a date, you can type “tomorrow”, “2 weeks”, “today+4 days”, or “a week from Monday”.  Lots of things work that you wouldn’t expect – it’s cool!

Give It a Try!

Hope this has been helpful!  Be on the lookout for more Outlook tricks and tips over time!

Related posts:

1. Protect Your Time: 8 Ways to Stay Focused on Important Stuff
2. Writing in Microsoft Word Without Any Distractions
3. Spontaneity: Enabled Through Order and Organization