Thoughts on the Long List - Making Everything Easy
Monday, October 9, 2017 at 7:00 It would be a quite understandable reaction to what I’ve been writing recently about trusting intuition to ask “Won’t that just result in my doing the easy stuff and leaving the difficult stuff?”
This is a very deep rooted attitude and with good reason. Just about everyone has had the experience of the pressure lifting at work and, instead of using the quiet period to get completely up to date, they have just idled the time away until the pressure returns. So the net result is that they still have the existing overwhelm, but with a good extra dose of added guilt.
The prevailing attitude to work is that you can only get it done by will power and that you have to force yourself to do the difficult stuff. In fact many people need the pressure of an impending deadline to get moving at all.
As for to-do lists, they are a continual reminder of how much you still have to do, and what you still have to do seems only to get bigger and bigger. Eventually you develop resistance to the whole list and are in danger of suffering from complete paralysis.
What if I told you that this attitude to work is completely back to front?
It’s a myth based on two misconceptions:
- Everything on the list has to be done
- You need to force yourself to overcome resistance
The truth is that everything on your list is easy, provided that:
- You feel ready to do it
- You have the habit of doing it
- You work little and often
- You split difficult tasks so they are as small as possible
- You allow your intuition to weed out the tasks and projects that are going nowhere
And just to clarify, when I say everything is easy I am not referring to the level of skill required.
Reader Comments (14)
Real Autofocus sounded like the next iteration of or improvement upon Simple Scanning. The DDD would perform the weeding. Is this correct? Does that mean RAF is a long list system or not? I sometimes find myself resisting even the DDD process so Simple Scanning sounds appealing.
I have read Mark's work since his first book in 2000 (still the best system in my view and like a lot of the contributors here I have tried many since!) and I have not really heard the phrase Simple Scanning till recently. A search for those words on this website did not really produce any relevant hits. If you think RAF is the next iteration on SS then you need to delve into this website and go back through Autofocus (around 2007/8? and in my view the second best system of all), AF2, AF3 etc.right up to RAF. There are a lot of good systems out there created by Mark.
My view on what Mark has posted recently is whilst they all bring something different they also complicate the basic system in some form and he has gone back to SS with a different mental approach rather than a new set of rules. Just my view.
Start with a Big Hair Monster (my word for it).
1. Accept that it's a BHM. Ignore what everyone else calls it.
2. Get as good a look at it as you can. Not a perfect look, but as good as you can today.
- Is there a specific part that's the problem? If so, that's the new BHM, and often it's smaller. Sometimes, though, you realize it's larger, because it's part of other BHMs.
- Is it really causing a problem for you? If so, you have more motivation, but there's more at risk, and you've spent more time being scared of it. For now, choose something smaller.
Build successes before tackling the big important ones.
3. Give it a score, 1-10. Then subdivide it or come up with steps, and give them scores. Keep going until you have something that's a 2-4. For OCD, that might be touching a Kleenex that your parent touched after touching a door handle through a different Kleenex. For a project, that might mean taking out the file, or even labeling a new folder.
Yes, tiny steps, especially for the first few. You need to build successes, not failures.
There's a difference between this and procrastination. With procrastination, you're aimless, and keep hoping to do more. With exposure therapy, there's a firm goal. Small, but firm.
This is not tricking yourself into doing more while the folder is out. This is about taking a step towards the BHM. (If you find it easy to do more, then maybe it wasn't as bad as you thought, or starting was the worst part. If it's not easy, though, don't push it. Build success.)
4. Do the chosen thing. Ride the anxiety wave. Don't fight it, just let it come. Observe it. It will go. Often, fear of the anxiety wave is the biggest hurdle. So, start with waves from small things. (Anxiety is a huge, complex topic. You might have to pause here to work on tools to handle it.)
5. After five minutes and then an hour, give what you just did a score, and compare it to what you anticipated. If it was worse, re-evaluate the other steps and come up with smaller steps. Otherwise, stay with the program.
6. Do something small and successful every day rather than a lot at once. If you didn't succeed, start with something even easier. When starting, it's common to under-estimate the fear and want to go too fast. This is learning, not failure. (Your therapist might have you do more than one while with her, or do a harder one while she can support you. Do not expect you parents to provide the same type of support. They have too much invested.)
7. After several steps, edit the list from your new perspective. Not the perspective you hoped to reach by now, but where you really are. Often, they'll seem easier. If they seem harder, that's ok too. It takes a while to calibrate the system. Come up with more in the 2-4 range.
8. Eventually, once you have built successes, most steps will get slightly lower scores, and you'll feel confident enough to tackle things in the 3-5 range. Try to stick with things you'll succeed at, but don't beat yourself up if you take too big a step. Get back on the horse with smaller steps.
9. Re-evaluate the list, both steps towards the current BHM, and which other BHMs you want to tackle. You do not have to defeat one before starting another, but don't switch too often. Work only 1 or 2 at a time, so you see progress. (Little and Often!)
10. Do not, under any circumstances, ever, let your parents decide which BHM to tackle or how to do it. After you have built successes, you can ask which BHMs would make their lives easier, but they do not get to vote, and they absolutely do not know which BHMs would make your life easier -- it's your life and your BHMs, not theirs.
This is, very roughly, it's been a long time since I read it, taken from Talking Back to OCD: The Program That Helps Kids and Teens Say "No Way" -- and Parents Say "Way to Go , by Marsh.
<< he has gone back to SS with a different mental approach rather than a new set of rules. >>
Correct.
This is very step by step, and has two anciliary advantages: 1) you can read your own notes to keep your thinking straight. 2) It enables you to walk away for a time and come back later to refresh your thinking by rereading your notes, and in particular what small tasks need to be tackled.
This also facilitates the hyperproductivity process of delving deep into a problem for a brief period and then walking away to let your subconscious work on it for a while. When you return, (if you structure your away time suitably), you may be in the perfect mode to tackle the problem hard. Your mind has worked through some of your difficulties and your body is refreshed and ready to go.
What very oftenly bears me down are items, which I perceive as necessary to achive an aspired change (e. g. "I _did_ my taxes") but the process of executing those items ("Doing my taxes") seems unattractive, tedious, mandatory and sometimes even not acomplishable. I am caught in flipping constantly between "You have to do this to achive X." and "But I don't want to be doing it". In the end I would not like to strike those items out because then they would be creeping around in my unconsciousness.
So, having a list of pleasureful options only sounds very attractive to me -- but unrealistic, too.
What I have to solve is my ambiguous attitude to those type of to do list items, not to the list as such, I fear.
It doesn't matter what system you are using, the way to get your taxes done is "little and often".
1. Start on your tax return as soon as you can, i.e. immediately after the end of the financial year.
2. Work on it every day. It doesn't matter how long for, five minutes or five hours.
3. Where there are reports and certificates you have to wait for, start work on them as soon as you receive them.
4. If you are already too late to do 1 above, start at 2 TODAY.
For me 2 approaches that "break the ice" or move me to a "tipping point" are:
1. if I have something to write that I fear then I say to myself "Just do one sentence" (similar to Mark's "just get the folder out")
2. I doodle or sketch an issue - "free drawing".
If neither of those are going anywhere I just write or draw whatever ideas come into my head! I think that process has been labelled "moodling" http://writingprocess.mit.edu/process/step-1-generate-ideas/instructions/moodling
I believe these tactics work for me because I have often been over-reliant on the linear rational wordy part of my mind and these compensate for that attitude.
If I may one other advantage of using Long list method (currently I am trying Simple Scanning) is that how fast and quickly the task, thus selected by 'standing out', gets done.
I think the 'guilt' or 'anxiety' of waiting over the task - until it stands out is worth the gamble.
True story:
Just one hour before, I purged my 'Resources/ Readings' folder in my laptop - I organized stuff, deleted that I didn't need. I had a 'To be sorted' folder for almost a month and it just got sorted. Now, I have created a 'Delete' folder where I put some documents which I am not sure yet to delete or not. As a bonus I also cleaned by 'Downloads' folder
And why I am writing this now...
I was searching on Mark's post how this actually happened and came across this post :)
Sidenote:
The idea of 'Trust your intuition' seems to be quite esoteric or uncomprehensible for many. I highly recommend reading Mark's other book 'How to Make Dreams Come True'. It gave me a far better understanding of it.
God bless!
<< one other advantage of using Long list method (currently I am trying Simple Scanning) is that how fast and quickly the task, thus selected by 'standing out', gets done. >>
That is a very good point. It is as if the resistance one has to doing the task vanishes when intuition gives the "go" signal.
Or as we Catholics say: "When God tells you to do something, He gives you the Grace to do it".
"Catholics say: "When God tells you to do something, He gives you the Grace to do it"."
The more I try to understand about 'intuition' or simply figure out a way to do what I want to do in my life, the more I find similar thoughts in various religions particularly Christianity, Taoism, few parts of Hinduism, among others.
I believe that you have a very good understanding of Christianity especially with your conversion from atheism to agnoism to Christianity. Unfortunately, I (from India, with little or no exposure to Christian thoughts) have exposure to such messages.
Would it be possible for you to try to curate few such thoughts that seem to have parlance on such a notion?
There are plenty of Catholics in India. Kerala and Goa spring to mind. In my church in England we have many people of Indian origin, and even have regular Masses in Malayalam.
But I don't want to have a religious discussion on this website (the last one was a disaster!). So I suggest you email me ( markforster@aol.com ) and we can discuss this away from this blog;