Some days you feel like absolutely nothing can go wrong.  You’re on fire, unstoppable.  Ideas are flowing, confidence is high, and you’re walking around with your chin up and your back straight.  There’s no better feeling than knowing you’re at the top of your game.  The world is your oyster.  Everything you touch seems to turn to gold and you wonder how you were ever stagnant before.

Until the past few years, I had really only been able to identify these times when looking back.  Now I’m acutely aware of them when I’m in them and I grab onto them and try not to let go when that train is rolling.

But these feelings never last long. Maybe a day or two, maybe a little more. If you’re lucky, you’ll get a full week of this superhuman ability to create things out of nothing without obstruction.  Sooner or later things will return to normal and there’s no explanation why this happens.  You just can’t self-motivate like you were able to the day before.  Ideas are at a distance, just out of reach.  You aren’t feeling flow and a day’s worth of work is taking two full days instead of just three hours.

It’s crazy frustrating when this happens. You try and recreate the environment, the feeling you had, and you just can’t. Your mind has moved on, your thoughts are elsewhere, and your current experience has been altered in some inexplicable way. And you don’t like it at all.

What happened?  Well, nothing at all.  It’s perfectly normal for creativity to ebb and flow like this.  It happens to every single creative person dozens – even hundreds – of times throughout a year. It’s just not possible to keep anything running at its highest capacity all the time.

But are there ways to keep it running for as long as you can?  Maybe.  There are things you can do that will help but only in the sense that they may be able to prolong that window.  There’s no guarantee that these things will work every time, but if they buy you an extra few days or a shorter period in the downswing, it could be worth it.

First you need to realize that any extended period of creativity comes down to the amount of energy you have and are able to apply to your task at hand. Remember that life is the sum of what you focus on, and in order to focus you need to have the energy (and the skill) to be able to do it. Energy is one of our most important assets.  If we have appropriate energy, that foundation will at a very minimum keep us going through the inevitable dry spells – and could even make peak creative output sustainable over the long run.

Tony Schwartz, speaker and author, says in his epic and highly recommended book, Be Excellent at Anything, “human beings are not designed to run like computers—at high speeds, continuously, for long periods of time. When we try to mimic the machines we’re meant to run, they end up running us.”

He recommends a ‘pulse’ approach.

See, our bodies themselves are pulsing all the time. Our blood flow, our brains, our muscles. Virtually every part of the immensely complex human system is pulsing between times of increased output and decreased output, and it’s because of this rhythm that our bodies and minds are able to perform at their best when they need to. This, of course, is assuming you’re working with your body and mind on its natural rhythm and not sabotaging it!

So how does this relate to creativity? Creativity comes down to maintaining energy, and energy comes down to effective “pulsing” – balancing renewal with hard work and making sure to keep some fuel in the tank for later. If you can do this, chances are you’ll be able to eek out a little more of that flow state when your creativity train starts to slow down (as it always will).

Here are three basic things you can do immediately that can work wonders.

Train for your brain every day.

Move your body every single day in some way. This can be through basic movement – stretches or light exercises you do at your desk every 30 minutes, it can be brisk outdoor walks, or more formal gym time. There’s so much research that shows the positive effects of exercise across the board, that it can be almost overwhelming to dig into it (don’t bother, just exercise instead).

Yet the thing that many people still don’t realize is just how important exercise is for your mind itself. Studies with lab mice have shown that brainpower improves when the mice are given the ability to run as freely as they would like. When the mice are pushed to their limits (think: lab technician as personal trainer of mice) the cognitive ability of the mice improved even more.

The same happens with us. We’re able to strongly improve our cognitive capacity – the range in which we’re able to flex our brain muscles – with daily exercise.  If you consider yourself a creative person and you’re not exercising every day, you really should try it.  Here are some specific suggestions to start with:

Exercise for 30 minutes each and every day with an alternating approach. Stretching, yoga, biking, strength training, boxing, gymnastics. They all have their benefits and they’re all worth doing. Remember, think of yourself as an athlete and look at how serious training translates directly to real life. Also, skip the slow-go cardio training and switch to interval training. As a proponent of using intervals for almost 15 years now, I can vouch that it’s the single best way to improve performance, health, and overall fitness when done with progressive resistance. You’ll be astounded at how fast your mind starts working after just 20 minutes of interval training.

Get up and move every 30 minutes. Stretch your arms, legs, and neck if you’re sitting at a desk for a prolonged period of time. Switch to a standing desk if you can, and try to use every opportunity to walk to work (or while at work). As I mentioned last year, I have lots of my 1:1 meetings outside while walking.

Eat small snacks of protein, low-glycemic carbs, and water every 3 hours. While its impact on bodyweight is debatable, this is something I’ve been doing for 15 years as well – and it’s hard to argue with its impact on energy. Maintaining blood glucose is critical to maintaining energy. If you’re subsisting on a muffin and a latte all day, you simply can’t expect to be performing at your best. You need to start treating your body like a high-performance vehicle and fueling it!  Here are some ideas.

Singletask every day.

Remember that multitasking is a total joke, and that it’s impossible to apply real brainpower to two or more tasks at the same time.  What you’re really doing is just switching really fast so that it appears as if you’re doing more than one thing at a time.  And of course, if you’re like 99.9% of the population, both of the things you’re trying to do aren’t being done well.

As I wrote about in Multitasking vs. Background Processing:

We’re not really multitasking, we’re just context switching really fast. Think about the last time you were interrupted in your office as you were deep in thought. You stopped to pay attention to someone and your focus shifted. Then when the conversation was over, you went back to what you were doing. That’s quick context switching, not “multitasking”. Whatever it’s called though, it will impede your efficiency.

Here are some ways to get out of the habit of multitasking and start focusing on one thing at a time:

Harness the ultradian rhythm. A powerful concept discussed in Be Excellent at Anything, the ultradian rhythm is based on the principle that during the day we oscillate every 90 minutes or so from higher to lower alertness. Which means we should focus our energy on a single thing for 90 minutes, and then stop, take a break, and after some time refreshing, prep for another 90-minute sprint. I know that when I focus for 90 minutes on a single thing, I can get the equivalent of 3 or 4 hours worth of “normal” work finished!  That’s how I wrote this post.

Use RescueTime for a week or two to see just how much you’re switching between tasks every day. This service will literally track what you use on your computer, for how long, and you’ll quickly discover patterns for yourself that you may not like to see. You may think you only use Facebook for 15 minutes every day, but what would you change if you found out that it’s really an hour of usage every day? We fool ourselves – and data is reality.

Get the time wasters out of the way first. This is counter to lots of advice, but it works best for me. If you know you’re going to be “pulled” into email, RSS feeds, or Facebook – then just timebox your usage, allow yourself to do it for that set period of time, then get up, stretch, grab a cup of tea, and settle in for a 90-minute sprint of real work. This structured play time will keep your mind from wondering “what’s happened” in your many inboxes, and instead you’ll be able to focus immediately on your task.

Renew every day.

Pulsing between high levels of output and low levels of output effectively means you need to allow yourself to have low levels of output, even when you’re on a roll. Making sure you have some downtime means that you’ll be better equipped for times of flow when they make themselves available to you.

Meditate using mindfulness. Meditation comes up in virtually every book on happiness, wellness, or even leadership and productivity these days. There’s a reason for this: it’s a vital habit to form if you’d like to become more in touch with your thoughts, emotions, body, and train your brain to stay in the present moment. Just 15 minutes of mindfulness meditation every day is preparing your brain to pay attention to the present moment in a way that’s non-judgmental and non-reactive. It’s literally exercise for your brain.

After just a week or two of mindfulness meditation, you may find that your mood has improved, your energy levels are higher, your work is higher quality, and your relationships have more purpose. Seriously. Check out Mindfulness for Dummies for a crash course (yes, I realize it’s a ‘dummies’ book – but it’s good).

Take your micro-vacations. Creativity is restored with exposure to nature and with downtime. In Take Micro-vacations to Boost Focus, I defined a micro-vacation as “Daily activity lasting at least 15 minutes that can’t be considered “work” by any sane, rational human being; purpose of which is to recharge and increase overall focus for the next few hours”. Aim to take a few micro-vacations every single day, and really strive to get Downtime with Nature while doing so.

Give yourself a “tech-free” hour (or more!) Wow, is this a hard one for me. My time revolves around being connected; I have 6 PCs and Macs, an iPad, a Windows Phone, a Kindle, a Kindle Fire, and about a dozen more gadgets that connect me to the outside world (don’t judge, it’s part of my job!) Yet even I will admit that being attached to the web via a Matrix-like brain implant isn’t the healthiest thing. So every day, I make sure to have at least one tech-free hour. I never take my smartphone with me to the gym, so sometimes this qualifies – but most of the time, it’s the time I spend with my family that I prefer to be most present. This is an explicit goal for me to improve on for the new year.

And of course, I’ve covered sleep before on Refocuser and that’s indeed a big part of renewal. Get your sleep!

Tony Schwartz goes into a lot more detail (352 pages worth) on many of these concepts in his book, Be Excellent at Anything. I had the opportunity to chat with him briefly after a seminar a couple weeks ago and I came away impressed with his approach to human performance – you may too.

Let me know how things go!

No related posts.

While on the island, I’ve been doing everything I can to unwind.  I’ve been devouring scones, French fries, margaritas, Oreos, bacon, Frosted Mini Wheats and other junk I don’t allow myself to even consider eating most of the time.  I’ve stopped tracking my habits.  I’ve exercised just once if you don’t count swimming and chasing my kids; a short run near the beach on our first day here.  I haven’t spent any time checking tasks off of my lists; in fact I had moved them all over to a "Post Vacation" category before we left the mainland so I wouldn’t even stumble upon them accidentally.  I haven’t done much writing, stretching, or flossing, and I’ve had a metric ton of Maui Coffee.  It’s been great!

Yet I’m not too concerned about slacking off, or at least not as much as my Type A personality would suggest.  Though I’m itching to get back into my routine, I’m not worried about what would normally be viewed as a setback.

Planned breaks like these are required to reset my passion meter from time to time.  I try and force myself to "unplug" from my (somewhat) normal intensity to help me remember why I do what I do to begin with.  It’s hard to hit the ‘off’ switch… it’s frankly just as hard as turning it back on again, but I try and view it as sort of like stopping at a gas station before a long road trip; breaks like this fuel me for at least a few months, and after six days of gluttony and objective laziness, I always realize that it’s not the permanent life for me.

But what you do for a few weeks out of the year doesn’t define the year, and it doesn’t define you.  It’s what you do most of the time, not just some of the time, that makes the difference over the long haul.  Have consistency in the fundamentals (modulo a week here and there) and personal growth is inevitable.

Times like these I also do more reading than normal.  Between Audible and Kindle books, or just stopping to think while walking the beach, my mind is still completely active.  Thinking and reading lead to ideas, which lead to goals and objectives, which lead to plans, which eventually may lead to new ways to experience flow.  Even when I’m not doing anything of substance, I still feel like I’m creating.  I jot down more thoughts and learn more new things while on vacation than at any other time throughout the year.  It’s part of what I look forward to about these breaks.  It’s not a surprise that while on vacation I’m also closest to nature (more on that in a minute).

Recreation, or "creating and bringing forth again", is an essential part of leading a full life.  It’s no surprise then that recreation means ‘creating again’.  Without time to reflect, unwind, and just plain BE, it’s hard to maintain any sort of pace in your normal life. Creativity is sapped if you’re not detaching every once in a while.  Whether it’s fifteen minute micro-vacations or weeklong actual ones, human beings can only thrive when they have regular periods of downtime.

As discussed in the past, focusing attention is a lot like exercise (what isn’t?) – after enough directed attention, you just can’t focus any longer.  You’re sapped.  Your willpower and focusing abilities weaken to the point of being utterly ineffective.  This state as it relates to attention even has a name, it’s called Directed Attentional Fatigue (DAF) and it’s described as a "temporary fatigue of the inhibitory mechanisms in the brain.”  The symptoms of DAF include feelings of distraction and even forgetfulness, leading to poor judgment and an increase in stress levels, high blood pressure, and irritability.  It’s what happens when you wait too long to relax.  Hit this state too often and you’ll eventually burn out.

Taking time out to regain perspective and recharge your batteries is critical.  Fifteen minutes here and there make a huge difference, and of course longer periods of time help as well.

While it’s important to take this time when you can, you’ll also benefit greatly by feeding your innate biophilia, or ‘attraction to living systems and natural settings’.  When you picture your perfect place to be, all other things being equal, chances are you are NOT picturing a packed New York City subway car.  It’s probably some place deep in nature surrounded by water, trees, a breeze, and the scent of nature uninterrupted.  We’re hard-wired to be one with nature.  Returning to it can make a difference.

Nature’s ability to restore is backed by science as well.  Marc Berman and his colleagues at the University of Michigan have found that even short periods of exposure to a metropolitan street can affect one’s ability to focus, but spending time in a natural environment – or even just looking at pictures of a natural environment – can help restore attention (a 20% improvement!).  I guess it’s not surprising that so many people have the ocean and trees as their PC desktop backgrounds. 

The Japanese have a term for this focus on nature as restorative.  It’s Shinrin-yoku, or forest bathing.  A short, leisurely visit to a forest to help improve or restore attentional powers.  Related to the benefits of natural aromatherapy, forest bathing has also been shown to boost immunity, lower blood pressure and resting heart rate, and help reduce stress due to "phytoncides, the airborne chemicals that plants emit to protect them from rotting and insects".  Being around nature even increases neuroplasticity, or the brain’s ability to form new connections (strangely enough – or maybe not – that’s another post I wrote while in Hawaii!)

Attention Restoration Theory, developed by Rachel and Stephen Kaplan also of the University of Michigan, asserts that concentration improves with exposure to nature as well.  Shifting into a state of "soft fascination" as the Kaplans call it, seems to help the most to restore focus and attention.  Soft fascination – cloud gazing or just strolling on the beach or in the woods – is in stark contrast to “hard fascination” where your attention is overwhelmed by stimuli.  Yet people tend to turn to things that require directed attention in order to “relax”, like sporting events or television, without realizing that they’re not restorative.  Getting out into nature, however short the time may be, is a great way to return to your normal, focused self.

This doesn’t really feel like something we should need science to tell us, but like so many things, proof serves as a reminder.  Recreation and time spent in nature don’t require long trips to tropical locations of course, just short daily walks outside in a natural environment close to home or work can help restore energy and vitality.  Give it a try for yourself!

Back to the beach…

Note: One of the things I’ve realized while overloading on white carbs and drinking a bunch of empty calories is that I want this blog to be a little more… well, personal.  Looking back over the last two years (by the way, happy 2nd birthday to Refocuser!) the entries I’m most proud of are the ones that relate concepts back to my personal reality.  The entries I’m least proud of feel like my old Psychology textbooks; impersonal, bland, and preachy.  So I’ll be working on this more as Refocuser enters Year Three.

Related posts:

1. Focus: How Rapt Attention Changes Who We Are

If you don’t know what I mean by shipping, you might want to read Real Artists (Plan to) Ship first.

Shipping is hard.  It’s especially hard if you’ve never done it, or simply haven’t done it often enough to know what it feels like.  You suspect that ‘inspiration’ will pull you through it, yet in reality inspiration usually doesn’t last more than a day or two.

Inspiration is an ephemeral feeling that tricks you into thinking it will always be there.  Of course, it can’t be… and won’t be.

Inspiration has never shipped anything.  Grit is how you ship. If you think you’re always going to be inspired and that you can just “lean on” that feeling everyday to power you, you’re going to fail.  It doesn’t work.  Inspiration will disappear as soon as the caffeine leaves your blood stream, you get distracted, or you wake up with a headache.  You need a model for shipping, something that helps get you through the emotional dips you’re bound to experience.

When you’re inspired, you don’t expect to have dips in your motivation.  You’re above that.  You’re made of steel.  The feeling will last forever.  People who ship know better.

The art of shipping is the same the world over, no matter what the subject is.  Paint, code, words, chords, clay, whatever. If you’re creating anything from nothing and expect it to see the light of day, you’re looking to ship something. Creating something without delivering it may still be considered art by some, but it’s not shipping.

When we hire new program managers at Microsoft, one of the most important things we look for is people who are good at all phases of the product cycle.  We expect people to be strong at the beginning, coming up with creative ideas and unique approaches to solving tough problems.  We look for strength in the middle, people who are able to execute and get the team through the grind without giving up.  And we want people who can pull the team all the way through to the finish line, dealing with the (very hard) act of pushing something real out the door to a few hundred million users.

This means that the best people are the ones who can decide what to do, figure out how to do it with the team, and then start it, drive it, and ship it.

Anyone can have an idea.  And just about anyone can write a strongly worded email or document about how “obvious” that idea is and how everyone who doesn’t “get it” is an “idiot”.  But the people who are able to sell the idea, line the people up, and bring it all the way to the finish line, imperfections and all, and then do it over and over again are the real stars. 

The funny thing is how these people usually aren’t the same people who think they’re superstars just because they have some ideas.  The best people are too busy shipping to care what you think.

One of the first steps toward shipping anything is to plan to do so.  But you have to be ready for the ups and downs.  The emotional cycle of shipping is essential to understand, otherwise you’re going to quit with the first emotional dip.

If you can’t relate to how the “downs” of a project are going to hit you emotionally, you aren’t going to last through the peaks, valleys, and huge psychological trips you’re going to experience.  Your mind is going to continually try and get you to give up.  Fight or flight.  So you need tools in your arsenal to push back.  To think, “I know this feeling, I’ve felt it before, and I’m not going to give up on this.”

The following is a quote from Chip and and Dan Heath’s book, Switch: How to Change When Change is Hard about how IDEO, a top design firm, looks at shipping new things (emphasis mine):

Tim Brown, the CEO of IDEO, says that every design process goes through “foggy periods.” One of IDEO’s designers even sketched out a “project mood chart” that predicts how people will feel at different phases of a project.

It’s a U-shaped curve with a peak of positive emotion, labeled “hope,” at the beginning, and a second peak of positive emotion, labeled “confidence,” at the end. In between the two peaks is a negative emotional valley labeled “insight.”

Unfortunately this mood chart is nowhere to be found online.  The closest thing found is from the Kanban blog which is a very similar cycle, though might overemphasize the second dip.  I’ve found the reality to be pretty close to this however:

Knowledge is power, and knowing that you’re going to go through these kinds of fluctuations can help you prepare yourself or your team for them.  One of my own personal tenets is that things are never as good – or as bad – as you think they are.  This model emphasizes that.  When you know you’re going to feel a certain way, you can get ready for it in whatever way works best for you.

But the truth is: there’s nothing better than shipping.  Which is why enthusiasm runs highest at that point.  Very few things compare if you consider yourself an artist of your craft.

Related posts:

1. Real Artists (Plan to) Ship
2. Protect Your Time: 8 Ways to Stay Focused on Important Stuff

If you think there won’t be speed bumps on the road ahead – if in fact, you don’t plan for them – when you hit one, the wheels are going to come flying off.  You’ll be done for.

When you look at self-control, or having the discipline to do the things you don’t necessarily want to do, there’s an expectation that it’s either on or off.  You’re either exercising self-control or you’re not; hot or cold, black or white, Reagan or Clinton.

The problem with this approach, as I wrote about in The Exercise and Science of Self-Control is that self-control is exhaustible.  Which means if you’re always on, you will eventually be off because your muscles, your self-control muscles, will become exhausted. 

If you know this, why not plan for it?

Lots of times these aren’t predictable dips in your self-control momentum.  They’re unplanned, unexpected, and unwelcome.  It’s the cinnamon roll instead of the gym, the Rocky marathon instead of Excel, the impromptu party instead of laundry and dishes, and so on.  It’s the feeling of failure – or just disappointment – that you weren’t able to hold true to the promise you made to yourself.

You spent all that time getting your self-control built up, just to have it come crashing down with a single mid-day cinnamon roll.

And if you’re anything like I am, once you break one or two promises to yourself, you might as well break them all.  For months on end.  It’s so easy… you’ve already proven that you’re not trustworthy.  That you aren’t strong enough to hold up your end of the bargain.  You’re weak and not worthy.  So why bother trying anymore?

It’s so much easier to let things go, to give up on maintaining that discipline, and to go back to mediocrity with the rest of “them”.

Of course, it doesn’t have to be this way.  Instead of forfeiting the game entirely, get your head straight to compete in the next inning.  It doesn’t have to be too tricky, it just has to be thoughtful.  You need to go in eyes wide open, knowing that you aren’t perfect.

Start with the assumption that setbacks will happen.  You don’t have to like them, but you need to have a strategy for dealing with them.  This sounds obvious but it took me 15 years of experimentation for me to finally figure out exactly what my strategy is, or that I needed one.  When you find yourself deviating from the path, figure out what it takes to get back on that path.

Sounds great, but what does a setback strategy look like exactly? 

It’s really not complex.  In fact, by the end of this post, you should have some basic tools to work with.  According to Heidi Grant Halvorson in her fantastic book Succeed: How We Reach Our Goals, “Planning when, where, and how you will take the actions needed to reach your goal is probably the single most effective thing you can do to increase your chances of success”.  Planning ahead is an imperative.

If This… Then That (“Action Triggers”)

For all you computer programmers out there, successful long-term self-control comes down to simple IF-THEN statements properly executed.  Just like any machine that interprets code, your brain will hit the conditional statement and say “if this… then that” and the response you insert will become automatic over time.  This is the core of your setback strategy.

It will become programmed.  You want it to become programmed. 

Similar to precommitment, a closely related concept, you’re preloading behavior in the deep subroutines of your mind.  This isn’t voodoo, this is possible and pretty simple to pull off – it’s backed by hard science – and it’s one of the best ways to keep from falling off that wagon, and for getting back on when you do.

IF-THEN statements or “instant habits” according to Peter Gollwitzer, one of the originators and primary researchers in this approach, “protect goals from tempting distractions, bad habits, or competing goals”. (If you want to learn more about research in this space, search for Peter Gollwitzer’s work or read about implementation intentions)

Chip and Dan Heath discuss in their book, Switch: How to Change When Change is Hard, how these “action triggers” almost tripled the chance of success–goal completion.

Here’s what you want to do:

1. Start with four or five “If This… Then That” statements.  Examples could be, “if I go to a Thai restaurant, I will eat the chicken and vegetables, not curry and white rice” or “If I find myself tempted by bread, I will drink a full 16oz of water”.  Those are ‘proactive’ (true to the research) but they could be ‘reactive’ as well; “If I miss a day at the gym, I will go before breakfast the following day” or “If I wake-up late and miss my time to write, I will write at least 300 words during lunch”.  These help systematize getting back on track – you don’t have to think about it.
2. Write them down and refer back to them until they feel automatic.  Memorize them until you act on them.  Make them a part of your daily programming.  Until they are, make sure you look at them daily – or when you feel yourself slipping – and start putting them into real action as soon as possible.
3. Use these action triggers as part of your everyday self-talk.  If you’re able to change the way you talk to yourself, you can change the way you act.  These IF-THEN statements, once they’re a part of your self-talk, will keep you from falling victim to the “I suck!” type of self-talk and instead replace it with something constructive.
4. If you find they’re not effective, change the wording up.  Research has shown that the right wording alone can result in way more success with triggers.  Try making them more specific, more personal, or just simpler!  Convert reactive triggers to proactive triggers if you need to.  It shouldn’t take a lot of words to get your point across; the wordier they are, the less likely you are to make it automatic.

There are big benefits to this type of upfront planning.  You’ll find your actions will be more structured instead of based purely on impulse, and you’ll keep that self-control muscle from becoming more tired than it should be.  This means your fall off the wagon won’t hurt as much, and you’ll be able to rebound more quickly!

By the way, this post is an example of minding the gaps.  I’m writing this on a train, working off of a “Next Posts” notebook in Evernote.  I didn’t know what I’d want to do on the train or what my options would be, but I figured I’d be writing something once onboard.  I knew I had a bunch of research queued up in Evernote and with the time I have, I’m cranking one out in the “gap” between Seattle and Portland!

Related posts:

1. The Exercise and Science of Self-Control
2. Does Goal Setting Hold Us Back?

It’s just so much easier to give in, isn’t it?  Hell, it takes real effort to fight the urge, especially if restraint isn’t something you’re used to.  More on that later, but first let’s take a look at exactly why self-control is important.

“Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.” — Jim Rohn

Self-control is the basis of all change; nothing can be transformed without first determining what needs to happen, and then being consistent and predictable in implementation over time.  It is, in fact, the most important skill to have when it comes to achievement.  Self-control is really the platform in which achievements are built upon.  It’s an essential ingredient in any high performer’s personality, just as impulsiveness and “action without consequence” is central to the self-defeatist.

If you want to start modeling success, the most important thing you can do is to start exhibiting self-control. 

Show me a successful person who doesn’t have a superhuman amount of mastery over his or her daily actions and I’ll show you someone who has benefited only from chance and circumstance – and that type of success is not repeatable or transferable.  Anyone can win the lottery or sign a book contract, but it takes true dedication to be able to maintain success over time.

Many people believe they are born with self-control (more commonly called willpower) or lack thereof, and this inborn trait determines their ability to focus for a lifetime.  The truth is (absent diagnosed medical conditions like ADHD) that self-control isn’t something you have to accept as something you don’t have.  And in fact, you shouldn’t. Self-control isn’t something that some people have and others don’t, and the very act of believing that it isn’t a learned skill hinders your motivation to learn how to harness it.

So first things first: drop the limiting beliefs as they’ll just hold you back.  And if there’s ONE thing you can’t afford to be held back from, it’s improving your self-control.  Everything else comes later.  Because once you have self-control at your side, you can make anything happen.

Self-control can be learned…

It turns out that self-control is actually a lot like a muscle, and it can be exercised just like one.  Research by Mark Muraven at the University of Albany demonstrates this (relevant studies are here, here, and here).  After two weeks of abstaining from candy and performing hand gripping exercises (with something like the Gripmaster referenced in my Home Gym post), Muraven found that self-control had actually increased across the board.  The simple act of being consistent with one thing helps ‘pick up’ other things around it.

In similar fashion, research over the last few years has also shown that the act of monitoring what you eat, keeping a close eye on your finances, or even just sitting up straight can have positive effects on your overall ability to exercise self-control.  In one study, students at a university who started an exercise program and stuck with it found themselves doing the dishes more often, and even spending less money on things they didn’t need!

So in many ways, you can think of self-control as contagious across your habits.  Each time you strengthen your self-control over one thing, other things benefit as well.  So the verdict is clear: if you work your self-discipline like a muscle – often enough – performing small, basic activities that require self-control, you can develop the strength to have that self-control spill over into other areas of your life.

This is one of those ah-hah realizations that is immediately actionable. Having trouble quitting smoking?  Try stopping the nail-biting.  Want to work out regularly?  Floss each morning and night for a month.  Want to stop snapping at your kids?  Eat a high-protein breakfast every single day.  It sounds crazy, but it actually works.

Self-control is also exhaustible…

Most of our daily actions don’t require self-control.  Normal, everyday life is pretty routine – waking up, taking a shower, getting dressed, driving to work.  Lots of mindless action.  None of these things require any deep-seated ability to focus attention… which is a good thing.  If they did, they probably would probably only get done once a month.  But we also do things that require buckets of self-control whether it’s running a large meeting, resisting the pizza temptation, or keeping yourself from snapping at your kids.  Each of those things decreases your overall self-control reserves.

Think of exercising self-control as the equivalent of doing curls at the gym.  When you start off, your muscles are fresh and there’s no struggle at all.  But as you start to become fatigued, your arms start to shake and eventually you can’t do any more curls.  Self-control is the same way.  There’s not an inexhaustible well of the good stuff – so push yourself too hard in any one area and expect others to suffer.

Exercising some self-control, even in small amounts, can be draining. And just like any muscle, self-control itself can be exhausted. Following the contagious comment above, give in to the donuts today and expect to skip the gym tomorrow. Let your email inbox fill up and expect the same thing to happen to the interior of your car. Just like upswings in self-control can help other areas, downswings can actually hurt them.

So what can you do?

First of all, start with the assumption that you can train your self-control.  You aren’t predestined to be a useless sloth any more than someone else isn’t predestined to be a self-mastery machine.  Start putting a training program in place immediately (it takes about 30 seconds to decide to do this and put the pieces in place) and dedicate yourself to it.

As part of your new self-control training program, pick one small thing to go with one big thing.  Don’t pick multiple big things!  If you want to do start eating right, commit to doing 10 push-ups every 4 hours.  You’ll be surprised at how much these two things will feed off of each other.  And, with this example, you’ll actually make more progress towards a fitness goal.

Be careful not to group activities that require a lot of self-control together.  If you can avoid it, don’t schedule a workout immediately after leading a 3 hour meeting in a room filled with cupcakes.  If you’re like most people, by the time you get to that workout time, your self-control will be so depleted you’re going to end up eating four cupcakes and crashing on the couch watching Dexter until 2am (going to bed early requires self-control for most people too!)  At a minimum, find a way to pre-commit if something is important to you and you think your self-control will be depleted when the time arrives.

Try and find ways to refill your reserves periodically.  This means different things to different people – you need to find what works best for you.  This recharge probably involves a break from any sort of activity that requires self-control… so if you find yourself giving into temptation more today than yesterday (and thereby not putting your self-control powers to use) you need to get away from those temptations and start filling your self-control well back up.  If you’re a gamer, think about this as your ‘health meter’.  Your health meter won’t go up if you keep getting attacked from all angles.  Run the other way and fast.

And finally, see if you can identify your master habit.  The master habit concept has worked absolute wonders for me over the years (mine is physical activity) and there’s no better way to get going than to follow the four steps in Your Master Habit: Get One Thing Clicking, Watch Others Follow (if I say so myself!)

Hope this helps and that you enjoy being more in control!

“Self-discipline is the ability to do what you should do, when you should do it, whether you feel like it or not.” – Elbert Hubbard

Related posts:

1. Action Triggers: Getting Back on the Self-Control Wagon
2. 7 Tips to Make Exercise a Habit (and Keep It That Way)

You hear it everyday.  People want more balance in their lives.  They’re tired of having to work long, hard hours without recognition or reward.  They end each and every day exhausted beyond belief and dream of spending their days diving the Great Barrier Reef.  They want more ‘balance’ (which usually equates to more television – sorry, can’t help the snark!) yet when you push them on what ‘balance’ means to them, they really mean “I want to work less”.  They probably don’t talk about wanting to work more while sitting on a beach in Tahiti counting the waves.

In today’s world, the work/life balance of the 1950s desk jockey is a pipedream.  Sorry, it doesn’t exist anymore no matter how hard you wish for it.  Pulling in your driveway every night at 5pm after a day of slow work for a supper prepared for you isn’t going to happen for most people.  The business world is more competitive than ever, we’re connected to the office via “direct neural interface”, and change is happening on a daily or hourly basis.  The pace has quickened to a dizzying point and we’re expected to keep up or get off the train.  And getting off the train means greater sacrifices than most people are willing to make.

How many emails do you receive away from the office?  How many tweets, texts, news items, calls, or meetings are you dealing with outside of normal work hours?  You know, during that time that you should be ‘living’ and not working.  Probably lots – and it’s just going to get worse, my friend.  Of course we won’t count the life stuff you do while at work, right?   People tend to conveniently forget that!

Regardless of what we do or who we work for, we should just stop talking about balance entirely.  Ultimately contentment isn’t about balance.  It’s about feeling important again.  And it’s ultimately about having control and perspective over everything in your life and work.

Here’s the thing all those self-help experts don’t tell you when they say “work smart not hard”: True balance is contrived and results in mediocrity.  Achieving a 50/50 balance between work and life is never going to happen if you want to actually achieve anything.   It implies splitting your time, energy, and effort down the middle arbitrarily – neither should ever encroach on the other – and compartmentalizing your life into a block known as ‘work’ and another block known as ‘life’. 

This of course means that work will suffer at times… and your personal life will suffer at other times… because while you expect your work and life to fit into a puzzle with equal sized pieces, it’s just never the case unless you have the most mindless work imaginable.  And you’re then filled with regret and resentment towards your work most of the time… and the cycle continues.

The truth is: Sometimes you simply need to work more.  Sometimes you need to play more.  Sometimes you need to work less and frankly, sometimes you need to play less.  Sometimes work will impact your life (a long, hard week or month) and sometimes your life will impact your work (an extended trip for the holidays).  It’s a lot more fluid than people realize.

So instead of fixating on a clean separation and a pure equal balance of our time, we should be talking about “smart integration”.  Integrating work into your life in a way that doesn’t raise your blood pressure, giving you ample time to produce, while keeping you in-tune with the things outside the office that recharge your batteries and also giving you purpose (side note: your work should fill you with purpose – if it doesn’t, you should find a new job!)

By thinking about work and life as an integrated whole you’ll feel less resentment about your work when it impacts your life, knowing that your life will inevitably impact your work too.  Don’t think about it being a balanced scale that you judge on a day-to-day basis, think about it as a marathon – sometimes you run fast, sometimes you run slowly, and sometimes you run slowly just to run fast later.  It’s not clean, but it’s reality.

By the way, I’ve worked for small companies, large companies, and for myself at various stages of my career.  And in all of those circumstances I’ve been expected to “keep pace” with everything around me whether it was a startup, a large corporation, or just me alone in my jammies in a home office.  Pretend all you want that it’s “different” if you find the right formula, but trust me, it isn’t.  There’s always work to be done if you want to achieve anything!  And that’s a good thing otherwise you wouldn’t be able to differentiate yourself.

So what are some things you can do?

• When work is slow, take time for your life.  Catch up on things you needed to do but couldn’t.  When life is cruising along, dedicate yourself to your work and clear the path to make it easier to traverse later.  Leverage your time best by identifying the ebbs and flows in your work and taking advantage of them.
• Stop overestimating the amount of time things take you to do.  I do this constantly – procrastinating because I suspect things will take a long time to spin up and finish.  When I do end up starting something, I almost always realize that it wasn’t worth the worry – so now I’m training myself to just stop worrying about unfinished things when I’m not in work mode.
• Don’t fret about staying connected on vacation; just make sure you exercise self-control.  You may find it’s more stressful being completely disconnected than if you check-in for 15 minutes each day (I do)… or you may find you operate just fine being disconnected.  Your answer may be different from mine; determine which type of person you are and then don’t beat yourself up for being that way.  Note that one thing you should do if you completely disconnect for a period of time is book a whole day for yourself to get caught back up when you return, otherwise you will be underwater for weeks.
• Read Controlled Bursts of Focus to Leap Ahead and Find Balance.  The recommendations in that post apply here as well, especially the notion of emergent focus and limiting the things you’re focusing on to the most important.
• Mentally invest in a ‘tracking system’ to monitor all of your outstanding items at work.  This is critical to finding peace while away from the office.  You need to know that you have control over your work in a deep and meaningful way such that when you’re away from it, you aren’t continually spending cognitive cycles worrying about it.  Close the laptop lid and walk away knowing you’re on top of things, and you have the appropriate amount of time dedicated to it later.  It can be blissful.
• Don’t sweat the small stuff at work.  Stop trying to be all things to all people; that’s how you get into trouble!  You don’t have to answer every single email that crosses your inbox, and you don’t need to be involved in every single decision.  Figure out what’s most important for you to focus on and then dedicate your time and energy to that.  Reminding yourself of the 80/20 rule (aka Pareto principle) every so often is a good thing to do.

Hope this helps – please comment below if you have thoughts or questions!

Related posts:

1. Use Controlled Bursts of Focus to Leap Ahead And Find Balance
2. Bouncing at Zero – “ZBB” in Life
3. My Day: The Way I Work, Rest, and Play

I tweeted a version of that a few days ago and it pretty succinctly sums up my approach to "time management".  In essence, it’s saying do what you do and be 100% there… and do so in a way that isn’t randomly wasting precious time in the present moment due to sloppy planning or weak preparation.

How much downtime did you have today if you counted up the minutes?  10 minutes, 60 minutes, more?

If your house is in order you can use every minute to your advantage, whatever that means to you at that time.  You aren’t passing up the opportunity to use that time just because you don’t know what’s next or what you need to do – you can just seamlessly move from one thing to the next at a deliberate pace doing high-quality work or enjoying needed downtime.

Ultimately this approach goes back to having the right system for knowing what the open threads are in your life.  Getting Things Done by David Allen is one such system, hugely popular and very common sensical and intuitive, but there are others.  Assuming you’re already on your way to productivity black belt status and at any given moment can identify what you need in the moment, one of the best things you can do to act on this data is to start living in the gaps.

Gaps are those small 5-30 minute "in betweens" throughout the day that offer you some level of personal sanctity.  They’re part of your daily rituals – your commute, an afternoon walk, a 20-minute wait in the doctor’s office, time between meetings, the 30 minutes your spouse or partner is watching the kids, and so on.  They’re time periods in which you could choose to be productive or time you could use to disconnect and recharge.  Ultimately it’s up to you how you use it.

Time is personal.  If your life is full of work, family time, or other non-personal time, these gaps may be the only time you can hear yourself breathe.  Yet it’s natural to just view them as "too short to be meaningful" instead of what they are: time for you.  They’re really not idle time – the more control you get over your system, the more you realize just how much you can get done in three or four 15 minute blocks of time each day.  And once you do, it’s hard to ever look at them the same way again.

You could clear your inbox, write a couple paragraphs, do push ups, stretch, listen to a chapter of an audiobook, go for a quick walk, send flowers to a friend, order something online, call your parents, or straighten up around you.  You can almost always check some things off your list assuming you have one handy!

In order to get the most out of these time gaps, you need three things:

1. The list of what’s next
2. The means to relax, learn, or be inspired
3. The means to get work done

And you should have all three of those things all day, every day. 

If you don’t know what’s next, you’ll spend valuable time trying to figure it out, sometimes without the context of everything else you could be doing (i.e. the rest of the list). 

If you don’t have the means to relax, learn, or be inspired, you may end up feeling like you have to get work done – which imposes a sense of obligation.  And you won’t be able to recharge when you really need it.

If you don’t have the means to get work done, you’re frankly not getting ahead and making things happen.  Of course “work” doesn’t have to mean strictly work, it could mean anything from buying a gift for Mother’s Day to calling the credit card company about an invalid charge on your statement.

What these three things mean to you will be an individual choice.  I choose to keep all three things in a smartphone – my to do list and projects for what’s next, podcasts, audiobooks, and music for relaxation, and email and phone calls for getting work done.  It means I’m never without the means to fill the gaps when there’s time.

For you, it may mean carrying a book, newspaper, notebook, or folder around.  Or it could mean always having a laptop handy.  No matter what you decide to do to fill that time, just make sure you’re being deliberate – you shouldn’t be caught letting time slip idly by without taking advantage of it… in one way or another.

Related posts:

1. Use Controlled Bursts of Focus to Leap Ahead And Find Balance

If you’re reading this blog, chances are you fall into one of two camps:

1. You think you’re a great multitasker and thrive on juggling a million complex tasks at the same time
2. You know better

Folks in camp #2 should probably just move on to reading something else (here are some recommendations!)  If you’re in camp #1, I’d love a demonstration

Multitasking is a catch-all phrase that’s used for a lot of different work styles and concepts.  First a few words about what it isn’t.

Multitasking isn’t having different areas of focus (family, career, health, and so on).  Multitasking also doesn’t incorporate doing unrelated (or somewhat related) things at different times of the day (moving from email to meetings to writing to reading).

Both views of multitasking are fine in that they’re normal behavior; stuff you won’t get penalized by the efficiency gods for excelling at.  If you didn’t have different areas of focus, you’d be a robot, a dog, or a Perl script without any emotional attachment or ability to "let go" of a single area.  And if you weren’t able to switch tasks to some degree throughout the day, you wouldn’t be the least bit effective at work or at home.

We need to be flexible, but we also need to be focused.  And like most things in life, there’s a fair amount of nuance in there.

Multitasking as I’ll define it here is when you attempt to apply real brainpower to two or more tasks at roughly the same time.  Note that I didn’t say “during the same day” or reduce it just to "doing two things at once".  There’s a time and a place for doing two things at once… we’ll get to that.  Multitasking is really when you try and spread your brain too thin by having multiple destinations for your attention over a short amount of time.

The funny thing about multitasking is that it’s derived from a term we use in the tech industry to describe the ability to run more than one application (or process, service, etc.) at the same time.  The CPU isn’t really doing two things at once – just like humans, it can’t do that – it has a complex scheduling algorithm that gives the illusion that multiple programs are running in parallel (yes, we could also discuss multicore machines, but we won’t here).  So it’s switching from one thing back to the other fast enough that it appears like things are happening at the same time.

This is similar to humans as well.  We’re not really multitasking, we’re just context switching really fast.  Think about the last time you were interrupted in your office as you were deep in thought.  You stopped to pay attention to someone and your focus shifted.  Then when the conversation was over, you went back to what you were doing.  That’s quick context switching, not “multitasking”.  Whatever it’s called though, it will impede your efficiency.

This is the basis of the term switching costs.  It costs us mental energy each time we have to shift our focus, which results in an overall slowdown.  We think it comes for free but it doesn’t.  Each interruption or context switch reduces our efficiency on our main task by a measurable amount.

Now, background processing on a computer is just a form of multitasking (for instance, downloading a document while you edit another) but for us humans, it’s a far more efficient way of operating.

While it’s impossible to direct your attention to writing three documents at the same time, and it’s harder to finish something while engaged in context switching, you can effectively listen to classical music and write.  Or listen to audiobooks while you drive or run.  Or open a banana while discussing politics.  Or knit and listen to the news.  And so on.

The key is to limit the things you try and do at once to a single thing requiring your brainpower, and a single thing you can already do without thinking about it.  These are the things you do passively without spending any brain cycles on.

I’ll call this, just for fun, the 1+1 Rule of Multitasking.  1 cognitive task + 1 background task.  No more.

Try and do two or more things requiring cognitive load (like balancing your checkbook while taking notes on an important documentary movie) and you’ll either fail at one, or do one or both poorly and inefficiently.  Yes, you may still get them done – but it will take twice or three times as long and be lower quality. 

Try and do multiple background tasks while focusing your mind on one cognitive task and things start to break down as well.  Limit it to one and one.

Now, lots of people call multitasking a "myth"… but for me that’s just too strong of a word.  If you consider the layperson’s definition of multitasking as fast context switching, then it’s no more myth than people who have 3,543 emails in their inboxes who claim they’re on top of things   People do it, they just don’t realize the costs.

People can context switch (or “multitask”) in only one of two ways:

1. Very inefficiently.  Things will still get done but far less efficiently and at lower quality.
2. Using background processing while maintaining undivided focus on one major task.

Ultimately you’re going to have to decide for yourself if the time you’re spending is efficient enough by thinking hard about where your focus lies.  It could mean the difference between getting things done quickly and well or taking twice as long and still not being proud of the result.

Your choice!

No related posts.

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. Always Late? Stop Living in Time Denial

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. How it Feels to Ship Stuff
2. Make Your Training Harder Than The Real Thing

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. Protect Your Time: 8 Ways to Stay Focused on Important Stuff
2. 5 More Ways to Protect That Time!
3. 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!

No related posts.

“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)

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. Always Late? Stop Living in Time Denial

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. Give up on Work/Life “Balance” Now

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.

No related posts.

• 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:

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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…

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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.

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