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3 Tips to Beat Procrastination & Get Important Stuff Done
I saw this in my Tweet stream this morning:
and I had way more than 140 characters to say about it, so I was inspired to write a blog post about it today. Thanks @alexismadrigal, I hope this helps!
First, I suggest very selective and short-term time-blocking. YOU are the first person you’ll cancel an appointment with, so sometimes time-blocking can be tricky. But there are three rules that help make it more effective:
- Don’t block your time too far in the future, because it’s too uncertain. To get important things done, block time on your calendar today, or tomorrow, but go too far in advance and your priorities will change. and you’ll end up breaking those appointments with yourself. One exception to this: if you have an important deadline in the future, it’s helpful to block some time a day or so before that deadline in order to finish up the project, add final thoughts, or give it one last once-over (or actually do it, if you’re a deadline junkie!)
- Use time-blocking very selectively – only for very important things, and only once in a while. If you try to do it too often, it will just get in the way, and become routine. You’ll start breaking those appointments with yourself, and then you’ll have lost the effectiveness of the technique.
- Don’t make your time-blocks too long. It’s very difficult to block out a whole day, for example. Focus waxes and wanes, things like hunger cause distractions, the desire to “check on things” (voicemail, email, Twitter stream, etc) become too tempting. I find time-blocking works best in 2-hour chunks or less.
Ok, next tip. Even if you haven’t time-blocked, when you decide you are going to spend some time on an important task, ELIMINATE any possible distractions! This seems like a no-brainer but I’m always surprised at how uncommon it is. Close your email client, shut off any Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn (etc) notifications, silence your ringer, shut off the television, etc. If you need noise, play instrumental or classical music. Song lyrics tend to send our brain off in distracting directions, as does the tendency to sing along. Another option: white noise. Turn on a quiet fan, or go outside to the sounds of nature. Small personal rewards can help motivate you as well: If I spend 30 minutes on this, I’ll allow myself 10 minutes of a video game, or blog surfing, or a grande mocha latte, or whatever appeals to you.
One last tip…if you have something important to get done, but you just can’t seem to get your head in the game, grab a piece of paper and a pen and try “stream of consciousness” writing. This helps to eliminate mental clutter and uncover those intellectual gems you know are in there somewhere. Don’t censor yourself, and don’t try to organize as you write. Just write whatever comes to you, and chances are before too long your brain will find its way back to that important thing you’re trying to get done. Or the worst case is you’ll end up with some other pearl of wisdom or great idea. Our brains are much better at creative, strategic thinking and problem solving than they are at remembering details, and if we clear our mind of the minutiae (mental clutter), the “good stuff” often appears.
I hope you found this helpful!
Mastering Control Over Email & Twitter, Step 1
The secret to personal productivity is mastering control. You need control over the information you receive on a daily basis, control over the tools that bring you that information, and control over your own behavior. If you can master control over these three things, you will be the most productive, and the most relaxed, all the time.
The biggest thing I hear people struggling with lately is communication. There are so many ways to receive information now that it’s having a real impact on how people think about their personal productivity. So to learn how to control communication, you need a good process. And by process I mean a real, step-by-step, I-could-explain-it-to-you-if-you-asked, methodology. Taking email, for example: most people’s “process” for managing email is “skim, then skip to the next one.” Does that sound familiar? You need to figure out why it is you are skipping over messages: it’s probably either that:
- you don’t know the answer
- you don’t feel like dealing with it now
- you think it will take too long
- you are looking for “just the important ones.”
So I suggest that the first component in your process be that you set aside time, every single day, to actually “process” your email messages. All of your messages, not just the important ones. During processing, start by allowing yourself at least one whole minute for each message. If you can read it in 10 seconds, and then would normally skip to the next one, allow yourself those extra 50 seconds and I’ll bet you’ll figure out what to do with it (and don’t leave it in your inbox!) The “stopping to think” is the biggest barrier to get over. You won’t actually need a whole minute for each of them, and you may need more than a minute for others. This can help to protect you from the urge to check your email when you don’t really have time. The same is true for your Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. Set aside time each day (how often and for how long is up to you, but I suggest that it should be LESS than you originally think, and you should decide how long you’re going to spend before you log in. Set a timer if necessary.)
So those are just a few things to think about to get you on the road to an actual process for dealing with information, so that you can master control over it. Tomorrow, we’ll talk about step 2: mastering control over the technology. If you have comments or ideas you’d like to share, I welcome them.