"Dreams" - the underestimated book

Some people consider How to Make Your Dreams Come True to be my best book. Others can’t stand it. This ambivalent response probably explain why the sales have never been as good as my other two books. Personally I think it is at least as good as many top selling self help books and a good deal better than many!

But you don’t have to take my word for it. You can find out for yourself very cheaply because it is only £5.99 on Amazon UK at the moment. And to whet your appetite I plan to run a series of articles on this blog over the next few weeks on themes from the book.

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Caffeine Consumption: Day 2

I’ve just finished the day after midnight drinking my nineteenth cup of tea - truly a revolting experience!

The trouble is I don’t really know where to go from here. I certainly don’t feel at this precise moment that I ever want to see another cup of tea again, but will I still feel like that in the morning? And even if I do, how long will it last?

I think what I will do tomorrow is drink as much tea as I want naturally and record how many cups I drink. We’ll see whether the last two days’ exercise has had a beneficial effect or not.

Related posting:

Caffeine Consumption: Day 1

Getting Going Again: Day 8 Update

I finished today at about 4 p.m., though I carried forward a few items in the Task Diary to tomorrow to spread the load a bit. I’ve got all day tomorrow to get the Will Do list finished so that shouldn’t be a problem.

One of the tasks I’ve set myself for tomorrow is to write an article on “Friction”, which is the difference between the beautiful smooth-running day that we plan to have and the reality of the chaotic day we actually have!

Overwhelmed by Your To-Do List? Go With a ‘Will-Do’ List Instead

Luciano Passuello  has a useful article about Will Do lists, based on my ideas but adding some of his own, on his blog Lite Mind. The comments are worth reading too.

Related article:

To Do Lists - How We Hate Them!

Caffeine Consumption Day 1

I finished Day 1 of my experiment on reducing caffeine consumption having established a benchmark of 19 cups of tea - yes, you did read that right: 19 cups of tea.

Frankly this morning I find the idea of having to consume 19 cups of tea today revolting in the extreme. So perhaps the technique is working!

Update on Wednesday, February 27, 2008 at 15:45 by Mark Forster

Urgh! Nearly 4 o’clock and I’ve still got another nine cups of tea to go.

The things I put myself through for my readers!

"Do It Tomorrow" Sales Ratings

As of this moment, Do It Tomorrow is ranking 203rd in the Amazon UK overall sales ranks and is 1st in the Time Management category. It is also 9th in the Self Help category. This is quite an improvement over the last time I reported on its ratings.

I’m really pleased to see that the book’s sales are beginning to rise, as my own personal feeling - and more importantly that of the 20 people who have given it five star reviews - is that it is one of the very best books out there on time management.

If you haven’t bought a copy of Do It Tomorrow yet, then why not do so?

And if you already have bought a copy, then why not come on one of my seminars for people who have read the book and want to take it further?

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Update on Wednesday, February 27, 2008 at 15:41 by Mark Forster

As of now, Do It Tomorrow has moved up to 125th place. Keep buying!  :-)

Getting Going Again: First Week Update

After just one week of getting back on the Do It Tomorrow system, I can’t believe how my life has been transformed. I’m experiencing renewed energy and am moving forwards on all fronts. And as always seems to happen when one starts to move forward, opportunities have begun to open up in front of me.

Specifically I have got rid of all backlogs and so am completely up-to-date. I’ve rejuvenated my blog, got going again on my newsletter, started to develop ideas for new products and generally feel that I’m in the driving seat again.

And I’ve done all this without working later than 3.30 p.m. any day this week. With one exception - today!

Today my computer started playing up badly in the morning and I got the “blue wall of death” twice. However I couldn’t do much about it then because I had a meeting at 11.45 a.m. When I got back from this at 3.30 p.m. I was able to sort the problem out fairly comprehensively but it didn’t leave much time to finish my Will Do list for the day. Bear in mind that in Do It Tomorrow terminology a computer breakdown is an “Immediate” task, since it prevents one from doing any other work.

So I’ve finished the working day with a whole load of tasks to carry forward to tomorrow. That is absolutely nothing to worry about. It is bound to happen from time to time, and is only a cause for concern if one can’t catch up after 3 or 4 days.

Finally, here’s my “What’s Better?” list for my new Current Initiative - sorting out my office:

• Wrote blog entry on the subject
• Moved books back onto shelves
• Made a start on sorting out books
• Tidied area around shredder of bits of paper

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New Current Initiative

Having cleared my paper backlog yesterday (hurrah! hurrah!), I am starting a new Current Initiative today. This is to sort out my office. If I do it properly (as opposed to just a surface clean and tidy) it is a big job because it involves sorting out such things as the best locations for the furniture, computer, printer, phone, fax, etc, and also weeding and revising my filing system, and moving things to storage or dumping them altogether.

There are several ways I could tackle this:

• Empty everything out of the office and start again from scratch.
• Break the project up into a series of smaller areas and deal with each of them as a separate Current Initiative.
• Pay someone else to do it for me

But the way I am actually going to do it is using a “What’s Better?” list. This is a technique from my book How To Make Your Dreams Come True. All it involves is writing out a list of everything that is better about my office today. I ignore things that are worse or the same. The idea is that doing this focusses one’s mind on the growth points. And on the principle that what you pay attention to grows, those growth points will then grow further and faster.

In the book it is used as a way of measuring one’s progress during the day in general - and I know from experience that it is a very powerful way of moving forward. Will it work for a specific project like this? I’ve no idea. The reason I chose this method is precisely because I wanted to see what would happen.

Anyway I’ve got one thing that can go on my list already: I’ve written a blog entry about it. That must be something that’s better!

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Reverse Psychology: Cutting Caffeine Consumption

A reader’s comment on one of my articles reminded me of a technique for giving up smoking which I had read about somewhere many years ago. The idea was to stop smoking being a pleasure and make it into a chore by giving oneself the compulsory task of smoking a certain number of cigarettes during a day.

As soon as I remembered this, I thought that I’d like to try it out. Since I gave up smoking over thirty years ago, I can’t use it for that purpose. But there is something I want to cut down on (or perhaps even cut out altogether) and that is caffeine. I don’t drink coffee, but I do drink endless cups of tea. I wonder if it’ll work for that?

So tomorrow I have the task of drinking as much tea as I like - without restraint. And then the following day I HAVE to drink the same number of cups. What happens after that? I’m not quite sure… I’ll have to make it up when I get there!

Tomorrow evening I’ll report back on how many cups I drink tomorrow - and it’ll be a lot!

Getting Going Again: Day 6 Update

My declared aim today was to complete the clearance of my paper backlog. I took each item in the backlog strictly in order and worked on it steadily and methodically as if it were the only thing I had to do all day. The result was that the backlog was cleared by 9.45 a.m. (I had started work at 8.30). That was much quicker than I had anticipated, which just goes to show how fast things will move if you really get stuck into them.

The rest of the day felt much lighter once the backlog had been cleared, so I finished work by 3.30 p.m.

Tomorrow I will have completed a week back with the system, so I will do a summary of what I have achieved during the week. Another task for tomorrow is starting a new Current Initiative. My standard advice on the Current Intiative is that after clearing backlogs the highest priority is to sort out systems. So following my own advice, I am going to do a thorough sort-out of my office and its systems. That will make working a lot quicker and easier.

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Getting Going Again: Day 5 Update

Yesterday was Sunday, so I did no work at all and only switched my computer on in order to watch a downloaded TV programme. So no Will Do list - no Task Diary - though a few ideas did occur to me during the day which I added to the Task Diary for tomorrow. Having somewhere to stash ideas meant that I wasn’t tempted to do some work on them since I knew that I would be able to deal with them on Monday. So today (Monday) I have two days worth of email, paper and voicemail to deal with. That shouldn’t be any problem as long as I get on with it.

Although I gave myself a rest from the DIT system on Sunday, I went through the day using the method for preventing resistance which I described a couple of days ago in my posting Structure v. No Structure. It worked extremely well.

The one thing I would really like to achieve today is to get to the end of my paper backlog. So I am going to concentrate on getting that finished, even if it means that I don’t get through everything else.

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Getting Going Again: Day 4 Update

My intention today was to only work in the morning, which I didn’t quite keep to. I had to do another 20 minutes work after lunch (including this blog entry) in order to finish my Will Do list. Not too bad… now we’re off to walk round the gardens at Polesden Lacey, one of my favourite spots in the entire world.

Tomorrow (Sunday) my intention is not to switch the computer on all day. So no update until Monday.

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Most Popular Articles

I’ve just updated the Most Popular Articles item in the sidebar for the last month. They are:

Getting Going Again

“Do It Tomorrow” Chapter One

Goalless Living?

How to Have a Great 2008!

My favourite time management tool

“Do It Tomorrow” readers reviews

DIT and GTD - Can They Be Integrated?

Google Notebook v. Diigo - Update

Top 10 tips for keeping your life moving

To Do Lists - How We Hate Them!

Dieting Update

I wrote this at the beginning of the year, but didn’t dare publish it until now. I’ve successfully lost half a stone (7 lbs for those of you who don’t speak British English) since I wrote it, so feel that I’ve made enough progress to go public!

Full details of the diet I have been following are given in my article Can I Improve on the “No S” Diet.

Looking back over the figures, I started this year 6 lbs heavier than I was at the beginning of last year!

So it sounds as if the diet wasn’t a great success.

But wait, it’s a bit more complicated than that. A couple of weeks before Christmas I was several pounds lighter than a year before. So what made the difference? A year ago I was on the diet over Christmas, and this year I wasn’t.

In fact what put paid to the diet last year wasn’t any fault in the diet itself. It was holidays!

A week in Sicily and a month in Canada were disastrous.

In fact there is a problem with the diet whenever I can’t weigh myself. So the obvious solution is to travel with my scales. My scales aren’t that heavy or bulky so it shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

Next time I travel it will be with my scales!

Anyway I started the diet again with effect January 1st. Wish me luck!

Getting Going Again: Day 3 Report

Today I finished my work by 3.45 p.m. which was just as well as I have an engagement at 4.30 which will take out the rest of the day. So far I have succeeded in sorting out quite a number of outstanding matters and, as you will have seen, getting the blog going again. I have a far greater sense of being in control, but there are still many things which need sorting out - especially the state of my office! That will be my next Current Initiative once I have cleared my backlog of paper, which should only take a day or two more.

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Structure v. No Structure

I’m getting back into the swing of things now by using the Do It Tomorrow methods, but it’s brought back to me that there is a definite tension between having a methodical system for one’s work and being spontaneous and creative. It’s very easy to become a ‘prisoner of the system’. That is in fact the reason that I have spent the last year or more trying to find a more intuitive and spontaneous way of working. The fact that I failed shows how necessary it is to have structure in one’s life.

Nevertheless it is immensely important to preserve the creative aspects of working without preconceived structure. So the solution is to wear the structure lightly, but also to be able to avoid doing nothing more than drift when the structure has been relaxed. How can we do that?

In my article Feeling Good I wrote about how using a simple method to monitor one’s state of mind could have a major effect on one’s productivity and effectiveness. Basically it consisted of asking oneself at regular intervals “How good am I feeling right now?” and then marking oneself out of 10. I described in my article how I even succeeded in curing myself of a fear of flying by using this technique.

I’ve discovered an even more powerful question to use in this way. The question is “How much resistance am I feeling right now?” Just as with the “feeling good” question, you mark yourself out of 10. However in this case you are aiming for a low score rather than a high score!

What does the question mean? You may be saying to yourself “resistance to what?” The answer is resistance to whatever your mind is subconsciously telling you would be the best thing for you to be doing at this precise moment. You are either doing it, or resisting doing it.

So for instance this morning instead of getting on with the next item on my list I started following up a thought I had just had by googling it. Instantly my resistance went up from 0 to 7! And it took a while to fall back to 0 even after I had stopped surfing. By contrast when it was time for lunch I felt the resistance grow because I was working instead of relaxing.

Like the Feeling Good method, it is important you don’t try to force this. The idea is simply to monitor your level of resistance and let it adjust itself. The process of monitoring itself will cause the resistance to fall overall. You will soon begin to discover what sort of things make it rise and make it fall. You will also discover that they will be different things according to the time of day or the circumstances.

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"Do It Tomorrow" Rankings

I’m pleased to see that Do It Tomorrow has advanced to 230th in the overall Amazon UK sales ranks, and is 16th in their Self Help category, and 3rd in their Time Management category. The two books leading it for Time Management are Ken Blanchard’s One Minute Manager (is that really a time management book?) and David Allen’s Getting Things Done. I don’t wish to knock David Allen’s book in the least because it’s the only time management book I recommend other than my own, but I don’t think I could have got going again with my business anything like as quickly with his system as with mine.

7th in the Time Management category is my own Get Everything Done and Still Have Time to Play. So I’m feeling quite well represented!

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Getting Going Again: Day 2 Report

I finished my Will Do list today at about 12.30 p.m., just in time for lunch. Everything has been pretty effortless so far, which is encouraging.

The most important thing I did today was the item “Think about the future of my business”. That actually only took me about ten minutes, but generated a whole stream of other “Think abouts”, including:

Think about:

how to blog regularly
new subjects for seminars
collecting subjects for future articles
subjects for another book
increasing sales of existing books
using audio/video/teleclass formats
touring
publicity
joint projects
increasing website circulation
monetarising my website

I’ve scheduled these forward over the next two weeks in my Task Diary, and added at the end the all-important “Think about the future of my business again”.

The great thing about the Do It Tomorrow system is that it enables one to keep the momentum going.

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Project Management

There’s been quite a bit of discussion on this site in the Comments and the Discussion Forum about the best ways to manage projects using the Do It Tomorrow techniques. The word “project” covers everything from writing an article about fly-fishing to building a bridge from the English mainland to the Isle of Wight. Do It Tomorrow is not intended to be a project planning manual, and so much of what is involved in a major project is far beyond its scope. What it is intended to address is how you manage yourself within a project - or multiple projects.

The key to managing yourself within projects is your Task Diary. You can use it for all sorts of project related activity, especially for keeping track of when actions fall due (which is not the same as the deadline for completing the action).

One very important aspect of using the Task Diary is that you need to put plenty of “project management” type tasks in it. It’s a great mistake to use it only for concrete actions such as “Call Pete”, “Place monthly order for supplies”, “Draw up budget”.

The sort of tasks I am talking about here begin with these sorts of verbs:

Think about…

Investigate…

Discuss… with …

Plan…

Review…

List…

You can probably think of more for yourself.

When I blogged yesterday about getting my business going again, the very first action I put in my Task Diary concerning it was “Think about the future of my business”.

Remember: Thinking is the most important action a manager does, and using your Task Diary allows you easily to translate that thinking into action.

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Getting Going Again - Day 1 Report

I left my last posting on Getting Going Again at 8.40 a.m. with the question of how long would it take to finish my Will Do List today?

Well, the answer is that I finished it at 11.15 a.m. That included a good half-hour wasted because my computer was playing up.

Lots of things have sprung into my mind though to go into my Task Diary for tomorrow - including the all-important item “Think About Future of Business”. I’ve written before on how important it is to include project management items in one’s Task Diary. “Think About X” is one - it may be followed by “Investigate X”, “Discuss X with Y”, “Plan X” and so on.

Also I have added a couple of items to the Will Do list: “Read Blogs” (that is to say other people’s blogs) and “Reply to Comments” (on my own blog).

The most important thing to avoid here is to add too many things to either the Will Do list or to the Task List. I must keep my projects and activities well audited.

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Update on Wednesday, February 20, 2008 at 15:32 by Mark Forster

I thought I had written an article on managing projects for this website, but I can’t find it. So I’ve put a task in my diary for tomorrow “Write article on managing projects”

And here it is!