Obviously the best way to get things done is to do them, but these days we are hit with more information, opportunities and requests than we know what to do with. Emails, phone calls, Facebook, events, birthdays, weddings, family, friends, work, conferences, training sessions, mailing lists, text messages, voicemails, your mum calling to see if you’re still alive, that bit of graffiti that got your attention while you’re on the bus…
I am a chronic over-committer from way back. When I was a teenager I would attend 3+ parties in a night because I just couldn’t say no, and I didn’t WANT to say no. As I became involved in more things I would find more things that I wanted to become involved in…
You can’t do everything, but you can try. Some times you can do more than you think you can, but usually things take about six thousand times longer than you predict they will. So more often than not you’ll get less done than you hoped you would, feel disappointed in yourself and decide to watch Oprah or clean the house… again…
That or you’ve gone on Facebook. In fact that’s probably how you even found this blog. You went on to just write one message, then you had to comment on someones status, started looking at photos from last night and now it’s Tuesday and you haven’t showered since Sunday?
Facebook is where procrastination become socialization which is dangerous territory.
I love Facebook. For all it’s distractions, random friend requests and inappropriate adverts it’s a ridiculous-good way to hear about things (digital-word-of-mouth), catch up with friends and collect memories (read-photos). But just like TV, alcohol and Hipstamatic it’s usually something best used in moderation…
So.
Whether it’s because I’ve always loved lists and organising things (when I was 5 years old I used take ‘minutes’ at meetings my mum went to) or because I just wanted to fit as MUCH as I possibly could into each week I have always had a fascination with task management systems and ways to approach ‘getting things done’.
I’ve spent years and years trying different things and I finally feel like I’m getting a handle on it all. I still make mistakes (just a few months ago I had a near melt-down because I forgot to calendar about 5 things and then spent the next month paranoid that every phone call was about something else I’d forgotten), but I’ve learnt from them, and gradually make less of mistakes than if I didn’t have any systems in place at all.
Anyhow. I’ve shared a few of the techniques I use with friends lately and they’ve found them useful. So, seeing as you were just on Facebook anyhow, I thought you might find them useful too.
This is already a pretty long blog, so I’ve split this into sections so you can skim to the bits you find useful. Also there are loads of great ways of doing things – if you have other suggestions please comment with them (I might even edit them in, with credit to you!)
Here are the headings of what I’ll talk about [so you know how much to scroll]
- THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT ME BEFORE WE START
- PROCRASTINATION – THE DRUG OF A NATION
- OK, NOW FOCUS
- STRATEGIES & TOOLS
- Discipline
- Don’t beat yourself up… too much
- Look at yourself
- Systems (Calendar, Address Book, Emails, Backups, Computers)
- Lists
- Dealing with emails
- Eat the Frog
- Motivation to repeat tasks
- Getting out of the gaol house
- THINGS TO REMEMBER, SO YOU DON’T GO MENTAL
- USEFUL APPLICATIONS I USE
- WOW, YOU REALLY READ ALL THIS?
———————————————————————————————————-
Ok, you might want to get a tea now. I just got myself a coffee.
THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT ME BEFORE WE START
- I love lists.
- I own a Mac and an iPhone [so a lot of the tools I use are Apple based tools, but there are plenty of similar tools out there for PC, just ask your old friend Google]
- I believe tools are useful, but how you use them (and your attitude) is just as important.
- I didn’t invent these systems, they are all things I’ve learnt from other people or from experience. This is just what works for me, it’s not THE way of doing things
PROCRASTINATION – THE DRUG OF A NATION
Procrastination is a form of nerves. When you have something big to deal with, or coming up you get nervous. Procrastination distracts you from whatever you are nervous about and is a coping mechanism so that people don’t destroy themselves with anticipation.
This makes it sound like something useful, but for most people procrastination is a way of avoiding doing ANYTHING useful.
There is a brilliant article by New Scientist magazine that talks about Douglas Adams (author of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy) who was a dedicated procrastinator, he once said “I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.” He was working on another novel (a potential follow up to the incredible Hitchhikers series) and extended the deadlines with his vexed publisher continuously for almost a decade.
And then he died.
Please don’t procrastinate, until you die.
The article also discusses people who say they work better ‘under pressure’ and that’s why they leave things to the last minute. There was a study done (with statistics noted in the article) where it was found students who prepared and completed work in advance actually did significantly better than those who left it to ‘last minute’. Particularly as once they’d finished a draft or version of work they had time to go back and revise it.
If you work better under pressure, find ways to put pressure on yourself before the due deadline. I find working with other people helps with this – there’s nothing like working alongside someone who is typing furiously to motivate you to get on with your own stuff, even if you find out later they were just googling types of biscuit (Laura Davis I’m talking to you).
I also highly recommend reading the New Scientist Article (but unfortunately you need an online subscription), I often remember it whenever I feel myself procrastinating.
OK, NOW FOCUS
There was a time when not everyone had a phone, when you didn’t receive 50+ emails per day, you sent postcards not text messages and Tweeting was what birds did.
We cope with an enormous amount of interruption and distraction in our daily lives, and sometimes you have to block it out to get real work done.
If you have a particular project, task or letter (email) you need to deal with then you need to give yourself time to focus on it. It takes approximately 20 minutes without any interruptions for your brain to reach it’s full capacity and an effective level of concentration.
Every time you have an interruption (a phone call, a colleague talking to you, an email arrive…) your brain resets and if this is happening all day it means you are never working at your best level.
If you really need to focus on getting something done, and done well, then make sure you:
- turn off your phone (even just for an hour or two)
- close down your email
- put headphones in if colleagues often chat to you (so they know you’re focusing on something important)
- put the document you are working on into full-screen mode so it’s all you are looking at on your screen (with Apples new Lion Operating System there is a whole full-screen function for most applications now).
- make sure you get to at least 20 minutes without getting yourself a tea, answering the phone etc and you’ll notice you’ll usually be so focussed on the task that you’ll spend an extra hour on it till it’s done
STRATEGIES & TOOLS
Discipline
If you really want to improve the way you work you are going to have to set up systems for yourself and stick to them. Sure you’ll trip up now and then, or overload yourself from time to time, but you should always try to stick to your systems as much as possible and come back to them even when you find yourself flailing and running in circles (flailing is often done whilst running in the circle motion).
Be firm with yourself.
Systems only work if you use them.
Don’t beat yourself up… too much
If you do mess up of course you’ll feel bad, but don’t spend the rest of the day beating yourself up. Or at least try not to. Take the time you normally spend sobbing in the shower, or crying over spilt milk and replace it with sorting out your problems instead and you’ll feel better for it.
Look at yourself
We all work differently. Take this into account when you’re planning, eg. if you work better in the morning make sure you schedule tasks for then and meetings in the afternoon (as you’re often not that productive in meetings, you’re just discussing ideas rather than doing them).
If you get distracted easily find ways to catch yourself, eg. if you find yourself getting lost on the internet when you should be working set a timer anytime when you go on YouTube, Facebook or anything beginning with www…
Systems
Are you asleep yet? A system is just a way of doing things that you can use again and again. You have systems in your life already. There are bad systems (like how you never have anywhere to put your teabags so they drip on the floor on the way to the bin) and good systems (when your housemate puts the teabags on a plate and then carries them to the compost).
Often we are so busy doing things we don’t look at how we are doing them. So look at how you manage your tasks and see if there are any ways to improve. Also, once you’ve set up your own systems, look at them again at some point in the future to see if you can do it any better.
Here are some ones to think about:
Calendar/ Diary
- Do you use one? Should you?
- Can you export events and email invites into it directly?
- Are there people who need to know what your commitments are?
- How are you sharing this with them?
- Do you have different colour coding for different projects / calendar commitments?
- Do you look at it regularly enough?
Address Book
- Do you have all your addresses categorised?
- Are there people you email regularly that you can put into mailing groups?
- Can you find people according to key words/ past history as well?
- Does this sync with your phone/computer/other places you have addresses?
- Have you got multiple contacts for the same people that can be combined?
Emails
- Do you keep all your emails?
- How do you file them?
- Do you separate business and personal?
- Do you add emails to your address book so you can find them again (if your computer ever dies and all you have is your backed up address book).
- Do you use a program like Mail, Entourage, Outlook to manage your emails? If you have more than one email address then you can manage them all from the one program (especially useful for freelance workers or people that wear lots of different hats, you know – like the Queen)
Backups
- Do you backup your data?
- Figure out how to now.
- Buy yourself a hard-drive. If you have a Mac use Time Machine (it does all the thinking for you)
- Ok, you’re still reading…
- At very least create a free account with www.dropbox.com and put your important files on there.
Your computer
- Do you know how to use your computer?
- Are there shortcuts to accessing documents?
- Ways to right-click and save time?
- Look at how other people use their computers and cut n’ paste what works for them and make it work for you
Lists
Start making lists, and using them. Ideally you should have one list with ALL your tasks that you need to do (and having emails in your Inbox is not a good way to keep a list which I’ll explain in ‘Dealing with Emails’ below). Then these can be organised (and re-organised) according to upcoming deadlines, time available and new projects that you take on.
You will find yourself making sublists, on your note pad, in your phone – this is fine, but make sure all these tasks make it back to your MASTER list somehow (and regularly).
Dealing with Emails
We get a lot of emails every day. Some of them are important, most of them are not. You probably get a lot of emails already, and this will probably just increase, especially once your parents discover it and begin sending you all the joke forwards ever created (sometimes my dad even prints them out to show people in case they didn’t get the email).
Discipline yourself when dealing with emails, or you will find yourself reading the same email again and again and again and again (have I made my point?) and thinking ‘I should respond to that’, then you leave it in your inbox and then re-read it again the week after and think ‘I should respond to that’.
In short, here’s how:
- Allocate some time to deal with emails regularly (eg. at the beginning of each day)
- Don’t spend more than 2 minutes on each email when you first go through them
- When you get an email you can either read it, reply to it, task it, file it or trash it
- Keep this approach for any additional emails you receive throughout the day/night (depending on when you work best or tackle the new ones the next day.
Why this is important:
- Moving emails out of your Inbox prevents you creating a second ‘task list’ in your Email Inbox, all your tasks should go onto your master task list so you have a realistic picture of all your deadlines coming up and can plan how to attack them best.
- READ IT – if you can read the email, take note of the information and then file/delete it within two minutes do it [if two minutes is too short a time, you can give yourself 5, depending on how many emails you get] if the email requires more than 2-5 minutes to read (and doesn’t require a reply, eg. a newsletter) you can even create a whole folder of emails marked ‘To Read’ and then give yourself time each week to go through them and take it all in.
- REPLY TO IT – if you can reply to the email within 2-5 minutes then do it straight away.
- TASK IT – if the email requires more time (10 minutes to a few hours) or additional documents/ information that you don’t have yet (so you can’t reply straight away) then make a task and add it to your ‘master task list’. Then FILE the email somewhere you can find it again, or if put it in a ‘Messages to Process’ folder in your email (at least then it’s out of your Inbox)
- FILE IT – if you have read/replied to the email then file it in an appropriate folder. If there isn’t an appropriate folder just put it in then make one. Filing is just putting things in places where you can find them again. It’s like cleaning your room or house, sometimes you need a draw for all the odd things, so they don’t end up on the floor-filing-system instead (what my dad used to call my very-messy-room when I was 15).
- TRASH IT – if you’ve got everything you need from the email, then trash it. Feels good huh?
- YOU CANNOT LEAVE IT IN YOUR INBOX, moving things out of your Inbox stops you from re-reading the same emails all the time (because you have already replied/tasked it/filed it/ deleted it)
- Yes, this is really, really, really hard to do. But the more you practice it the better you get.
Eat the Frog
This is a common term for getting on with the unpleasant tasks you don’t want to do, like eating a frog. This is a flawed term because unless you’re French you probably won’t be eating any frogs, and even then you’d probably enjoy it.
But the concept is valid. When you start your day try to get the task you REALLY DON’T WANT TO DO, done first. Once you’ve gotten through it you’ll feel better and all your other tasks will seem easy in comparison, making you more productive.
Motivation to repeat tasks
Sometimes there are things you need to do regularly or every day. For me it’s write jokes (which I am still finding hard to do make myself do regularly), if you do music it could be to practice your instrument, or go to the gym, make your lunch for work etc etc. If it’s really something important that you want to stick to then Seinfeld has a great technique that he uses to keep himself on track (and is a common task management technique).
He gets a month long calendar, then every day that he writes jokes he puts an X on the day. After a few days he will have a chain of X’s.The goal is to keep the chain of X’s going and the more you have the more motivated you are to keep writing / doing whatever you need to do.
A friend of mine has taken this to the next level by colour-coding different tasks and marking a calendar with different lines (and then aims to keep the different lines going eg. pink – practice guitar, blue – exersize, green – write etc)
If there are things that you want to do weekly then you could also start a chain going DOWN the calendar… so all the Mondays are coloured in if you keep it going… As long as you don’t spend all day colouring in the calendar this is a really useful system.
Getting out of the gaolhouse
Sometimes working in the same environment all the time will mean you get into bad habits or just get worn down. If you can it’s good to change it up from time to time, swap desks with someone, work from a cafe with your laptop, write in a library (Alexander Library is an excellent place to get serious work done because you get free internet, free power points and you can’t use your phone so no distractions).
THINGS TO REMEMBER, SO YOU DON’T GO MENTAL
- Things often take 3 – 6 times longer than you think they will, so be realistic about how much time you give yourself to do something.
- If you can try to schedule when you’ll do your tasks the day BEFORE you have to do them (at the end of each day is a good time). This means when you start the day you can deal with emails/phone calls first and add them to your task list and have a clear idea of what needs to be done most urgently and what is most important.
- Sometimes there is just too much to do and no amount of task management will save you, but it will make it easier to cope (like sandbagging before a flood) because ‘when it rains, it pours’
- Give yourself time out or rewards (tea or coffee is the most common) when you’ve gone through a decent stack of tasks
- Sometimes if you’re too organised you can end up scheduling every day, hour and minute with something that you need to get done (I know because I’ve done it), try to schedule some time where you can CHOOSE what you want to do. Or maybe even consider having a day off from time to time.
- Don’t forget your friends and family, if you really get addicted to organising things just make them part of your task list…but don’t forget them.
- If you are working for someone else they will put deadlines and pressure on you. If you are starting your own project it’s much easier to move the deadlines or not give yourself time to focus on it properly (and it never happens). If you have a project you want to start then allocate 2-3 hours and BLOCK IT OUT in your calendar so you can have time to consider how to approach the project, what’s required and where to get started. Once you’ve given yourself the time to consider a project properly all the tasks will start collecting in front of you, the deadlines will seem real… and then you’ll actually do it.
USEFUL APPLICATIONS I USE
iProcrastinate – Free app from the Apple Store (Mac & iPhone) that organises your tasks according to subject, lets you create sub-tasks and is generally lovely to work with.
Dropbox - An amazing (and free) cloud service that syncs your documents across your phone, computer(s) for both PC and Mac. It’s especially great when you are working on a project with other people, every time anyone updates a document the changes are mirrored across everyones computers and phones!
Camcard – App from the Apple store for iPhone – you can take a photo of business cards, it will automatically detect the contact (and then you can edit it) and attach to the contact card in your phone.
Scrivener – Excellent for creative writing – organising ideas, planning shows – you will need to read the instructions on how to work it, but once you have the hang of it Scrivener makes re-organising creative or fiction writing much easier!
Mail - Free Apple program on your Mac that will manage your outgoing and incoming email for you – and mean you always have a copy on your computer (even when you’re not on the net) and you can draft emails which will just send as soon as you connect to the internet.
iCal- Free Apple program on your Mac that will sync to your phone/other devices (with iCloud being released soon) and automatically import Facebook events (if you export them to your email through Mail).
Address Book – Free Apple program on your Mac that will sync to your phone and email so you have all your contacts where ever you are.
WOW, YOU REALLY READ ALL THIS?
Congratulations if you read all this, if you have that kind of focus you can definitely find ways to organise your life/work/CD collection better.
That’s it for now. Of course there is more stuff I could say about ‘managing variance’ and ‘important tasks’ vs ‘urgent tasks’ but if you’re keen to know more just email me and I’ll be more than happy to up the geek levels for you.
In fact email me if you have any questions, have suggestions of other ways to do things or want to tell me how much you love lists too (although you better write THAT email in list form or I’ll know you’re a fake).
And good LUCK*!
(* LUCK is hard work and opportunity meeting (thank you John Robertson for that quote), so if you keep working at whatever you’re doing you’ll be able to make the most of opportunities when they come up and feel very lucky when you do)
NB: John Brown suggested ‘AutoHotKey’ as a useful tool for PC users too.
You can read more about it here
http://www.autohotkey.com/
