Get Everything Done

To avoid step 6 of DWM:

"All tasks which are on pages earlier than today’s date have expired. They are dead, done for, dismissed, deceased."

One can take some action a.k.a "Little and Often" (L&O) to avoid expiration.

Do you have a bare minimum of work that qualifies?
Would glancing at the project/task qualify as L&O?
How about 30 seconds of work?

I'm thinking 5 mins of work would suffice to keep the task/project alive.

Thoughts?

Depends on the task. For reading, at least a few pages. Glancing at a project does not qualify in my book, but that doesn't mean I've never done that...

I guess 5 minutes would be about right in most cases.

I've given myself permission to not care about the amount of time spent. Much more interesting to me is whether I've actually moved it forward.

For some things thinking and reaching a conclusion is enough. If it's a task I'm highly resistant to (like keeping accounts) doing one thing is enough, e.g. enter one transaction which takes me about 30secs. The stuff I enjoy doing isn't a problem anyway.

I'm finding that this approach for me is highly motivating because tasks & projects that didn't move for months are progressing.

For me, the action could be "just get the folder out" (A Mark Forster oldie but goodie). A single physical action. That may be enough to get the snowball rolling but it's all I commit to.

Interesting. I guess the combination of "little and often", plus a 31 day dismissal morphing into a 7 day dismissal, provides enough motivation to get the ball rolling.

Mark's DIT book changed my life. And the part that had the most effect was the L&O principle.

The way I interpret L&O, Avrum, the key idea is exactly as Mike Brown just expressed it. I am not saying it's easy. Even with DWM I still experience resistance to some tasks/projects that I build up in my mind as just too daunting to even get started on. But I keep telling myself, "I won't reconcile the account now, I'll just," and then, as Mike Brown said, describe some physical action. It might be get out a paper clip, or read a paragraph, or write a sentence.

For me, specifying minimal amounts of time does not work. That is, it wasn't useful to commit that I would work on this project for the next 25 minutes. That might just encourage me to delay starting it even more. What does work for me is to use Mark's idea and merely tell myself that I'll photocopy the document or do some other trivial, physical task.

I think that if there is a superior form of DWM, it would somehow be able to adjust the expiration dates, so that some tasks really would expire more frequently than once a week. But I don't know if that is necessary.

I think that there are at least 2 psychological principles that are responsible for the effectiveness of L&O:

1. The Principle of Inertia
An object in motion tends to stay in motion. An object at rest tends to stay at rest.
When I am working on something, I've got that thing in motion. I tend to continue working on it. That's why I complain about interruptions. Interruptions disrupt me when I want to continue working on whatever it is I am doing.
When I am not working on something, I am at rest with regard to that thing. I tend to continue avoiding working on it. I need something to get me to overcome the inertia. I need something to make that something seem to me to be urgent. Expiration dates create urgency.

2. The Zeigarnik Principle
As loosely interpreted by me, this reminds me that I have a strong desire to get the status on tasks and projects to "complete" and I will feel some degree of suspense or discomfort as long as they remain incomplete.

With DWM, I end up working on most items at least once a week. Once I begin work, I have a tendency to continue working on them based on inertia. Once I stop work on them, I have the mild force of the Zeigarnik principle to get me started again. If Ziegarnik is not sufficient to overcome inertia, then the expiration date should be.

Moises - great comment. Very helpful.

My criterion: "Would I be ashamed to call this progress?"

moises: for me some stuff _seems_ to expire more often. I mark the first page with open items (some page between today and +7 - simplifies the jump back to the first page). So even if my first open item is on the page some days in the future, I'll try to close that page - which means that most of the stuff gets worked on more than once a week.

Great post, moises. My mantra with L&O is "keep getting started".

As long as I can keep getting started, I will eventually finish.

I'd never really thought about it... For me, just thinking about something doesn't count because I THINK about stuff all the time and that doesn't necessarily move anything forward. It does depend on the type of task/project...

Making notes in a project list about next actions counts.
Doing some small action that will facilitate the greater whole counts (like putting the drill batteries on the charger so I can do some minor home repairs).
Moving something to a project list counts (but then the project gets (re)added) - like my errands list or the list I have sitting right here with the names of all the students I need to e-mail.
Printing something I need to edit sometimes counts, depending on my level of resistance to the task.

'As long as I can keep getting started, I will eventually finish'

Nice sentiment. Unfortunately it doesn't really apply in a lot of cases. In the real world, your previous efforts to 'get started' may be irrelevant by the time you get around to 'getting started' again.

It's like painting the Forth bridge, if you want a Caledonian example. Or imagine a daily newspaper which never came out because each day the editorial staff just managed to get started (again)!

I prefer Dan P's criterion. And if you're honest with yourself, you know when you've actually made process and when you've 'gamed' the system. The second path only leads to trouble in the end - it's usually better to let items drop rather than rescue them in a superficial way.

In the book 59 Seconds, by Richard Wiseman, there is a brief discussion of the Zeigarnik effect on pages 92-94. Wiseman describes it as a feeling of anxiety that lingers until a task is completed.

He cites research (I only have access to the abstract, not the full journal article) showing that working on an activity for "just a few minutes" gets people to overcome procrastination, in part by using the Zeigarnik effect. "Those few minutes of initial activity create an anxious brain that refuses to rest until the job is finished."

Here's the abstract:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V9F-47VYHHV-G&_user=10&_coverDate=11%2F30%2F2003&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1386791072&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=b40f20915f4808c7f196599c135c3201

Please post the title of the article. The above URL doesn't work for me but my institution subscribes to Science Direct so I could get the article if I knew what it was titled.
Thank you!

Individual differences in academic procrastination tendency and writing success

The lead author is Fritzsche.

Personality and Individual Differences
Volume 35, Issue 7, November 2003, Pages 1549-1557

Thanks.

I take procrastination as the unwillingness to submit to time as the ultimate authority figure. In mythology Father Time is Cronus (Saturn), who devours all of his children. There is a pretty horrifying painting by Goya depicting this. One treatment for this escapism is the decision to submit to Time, if not for a long time, at least for 5 or 10 minutes with a kitchen timer. The willingness to submit can then grow. We grow in accepting our mortality, and may be more motivated to make the best of however many days we have. Buddhists are encouraged to contemplate their own finiteness in order to motivate their own efforts.

Personally, what I do derives from the DOIT method. ( http://www.simple-time-management.com/ ).

I think of all tasks as having an end state, and a current state, and I define the gap between the two as missing Resources. I think of Resourses as:

Capitol (Actual physical stuff)
Competence (The ability and knowledge to do something)
Contacts (Other entities who can help you get the missing Capitol and Competence)

So the difference between where I am and where I want to be on a given task, can be thought of as missing Capitol, Competence, and Contacts. If I get all the right Capitol, Competences, and Contacts, then I can complete the task.

Given this definition, I believe that I have done enough L&O, when I can point at a Resource that I have gained.

For Example: Say I'm working on the task "New Deck Built" for my back yard.

I dot the task and I "get the folder out" that has all my plans in it. - Is that enough? What resource did I get? The Folder? No. I already HAD the folder, so not enough.

I open the folder and review my plans thus far. - Is that enough? What resource did I get? Nothing that I didn't have already, so not enough.

I then realize that I have no idea what needs to be done next (probably why I've been resisting this task). So I decide that the next thing I need to do is get expert advice. I had already picked out a contractor, and his business card is in the folder. I get his business card out. - Is that enough? What resource did I get? Again, I already had the business card, and I gained no additional knowledge or ability to do anything.

So I call the contractor and set up an appointment with him for this friday at 2:00 pm to discuss my options. - Is that enough? What resource did I get? I got an APPOINTMENT. The state of the "New Deck Built" project has advanced by one appointment. Sure, it's not leaps and bounds, but it is undeniably progress. I cross the task off, and re-enter it on my list.

In short, for me the minimum amount of work on a task is the amount of work necessary to gain a resource that I did not have previously, no matter how small that resource.

My bare minimum (responding to the original question) is wether I have made a substantial thought on the subject. This corespondece to the "process" step in GTD. Normally, once such a processing thought step is made, I can re-enter the task with a better wording. I made a step towards "clarifying the outcome" in GTD terminology.

Here is an example from my current list: originally I wrote "sort out ye olde browser bookmarks" and after skipping this task a couple of times it wandered to the forefront of my brain and today when I was bookmarking a page I had a little epiphany or better yet, made a deicision in my gut and the next time I saw the task on the list I re-entered it as "implement DWM-like browser bookmarks structure".

Good point, Mark. I find that there are often situations when I feel that I have done enough on a task when I do little more than rewrite it at the end of my FV list. It may be that I simply do not feel interiorly ready to do more than this. Or the weather makes the task unsuitable to do today and putting it at the end of the list at least freshens it up for action at a more suitable time. Even very tiny gestures at least keep the project alive and within my field of vision. If I "often" take a quick look at a project, at least I prevent it from dying or going completely off my radar.

Mark, et al

Ah - So Little and Often, as you intended it, is the same as "Get the Folder Out." That makes sense. Pardon my misunderstanding, but I mistook L&O as something else. I considered it more like incremental appreciation... Or didn't you write something about progressive revision? I don't recall if you called it progressive revision. But you wrote an article about writing a few sentences on a topic, leaving it for a while, coming back and revising what you previously wrote, leaving it for a while, revising and writing more etc... Each successive revision built on, and added value (and likely volume) to the previous revisions.

So to be clear, I have two concepts in my mind now:

Little and Often (L&O) - which is getting the folder out or standing on the treadmill for a few minutes for the purpose of wearing down resistance. This is the Little and Often that Mark has been writing about.

What I'll call Incremental Appreciation (IA) - which is making appreciable progress (as in "increase in value," not "progress that you're grateful for" per se) on one tiny increment at a time. This is what I previously thought Mark had meant by L&O.

In the end, I find great use for both of these. IA naturally feels (at least, to me) more like a criteria for having "worked on a task enough" per virtually all of Mark's systems. Hence, it is my answer to the question posed in this post. But I use a series of tiny L&O tasks to get me to that smallest appreciable increment.

"I'm not going to set an appointment with the contractor, I'll just get the project folder out."

... Though in writing this - I find note an inconsistency in my reasoning above that could be what Mark has been trying to tell us.

So Mark: Is L&O, as you've been writing it, defined by not only the innocuous task itself (eg: "Stand on the treadmill for a few min a day"), but also defined by the length of time between each such task? In other words "Standing on the treadmill" is the "Little" part of L&O. But let's say it were immediately followed by "Walk 5 paces on the lowest setting", and then, "Okay fine, I'll walk 5 more this time but then I'm done for today." Would that constitute "Often"? Or did you more have in mind, "Stand on the treadmill," and then the exact same task again after a day had passed?

I'm probably analyzing this too far into the details, (I tend to do that) so thanks for your patience with me. This matter will trouble my thoughts until I come to my own conclusion. And I assure you that I WILL come to my own conclusion in due time (that I also do), but your perspective, and the perspective of the Get Everything Done community, would mean a lot to me while puzzle it out.

Thanks!

Interesting post.

Miracle, I see 'I'll just get the file out' as being a specific tool in the toolkit that is 'Little and Often'.

My understanding is that Mark's idea of 'I'll just get the file out' is a tool for beating resistance to a daunting task or project: taking out a file is easy and non-threatening; it is the tiniest baby-step towards that daunting task or project. Then once the file is out and you take a look at it, you have the option to do some actual work on it. You may still be scared to take that option, but you could then tell yourself 'I'll just read through the first few pages'. You may end up doing a substantial amount of work on it just be sneaking up on it in baby-steps. The hope is that you'll then have broken some of the resistance to actioning the task next time you come to it, and will be able to work on it 'little and often' if that's appropriate to the task.

So just standing on the treadmill without walking wasn't the point of the exercise (excuse the pun) - the point is to find an easy and non-threatening baby-step that will hopefully lead to the desired result, and in this case it worked very well.

Most tasks and projects with a specific deadline are better achieved by using 'Little and Often' rather than waiting until the deadline is looming (e.g. organising yourself so that you practise playing the piano for about 20 minutes a day rather than for 2 hours on the day of your next lesson). This applies whether it is an enjoyable task/project or a daunting one. If it is a daunting one, you can apply 'I'll just get the file out' tool (in this case, I'll just sit on the piano stool for 2 minutes' - and very likely you'll end up doing some practice).

That's my understanding of it - hope this helps.

Best wishes to all.

Mark, Margaret1,

So based on your feedback, the answer to my question is clear to me.

I asked if several little "Get the Folder Out" (GTFO) tasks in rapid succession would itself constitute "Little and Often" (L&O). And the answer from both of you is "No." To illustrate: If I wanted to study for an exam, (a task I resist with great zeal) I would use a succession of GTFO tasks to trick my Lizard Brain into studying.

"I won't study - I'll just get my textbook out."
"I won't study - I'll just get my lecture notes out."
"I won't study - I'll just check the syllabus to see which chapters the exam covers."
"I won't study - I'll just remind myself what Ch. 1 was about by skimming my lecture notes."
...And so on...

I wanted to know if this rapid succession would count as L&O. If I read your answers correctly, then the above DOES count as L&O in the sense that GTFO is an application of L&O. However, the above would NOT count as L&O if I did all these GTFO actions ON THE MORNING OF THE EXAM. For the above to count as L&O, I would have to take the above GTFO actions repeatedly (eg: daily) during the weeks prior to the exam. This gives me the definition of "Often" that I hoped to ascertain by asking my question. "Successive" does not equal "Often."

So I now understand L&O as:

1) "Little" = a small task. This includes both tasks which accomplish some incremental progress toward the overall goal, which Cricket and I prefer (eg: 10% of a backlog), and tasks which erode resistance by accomplishing nothing of consequence (eg: GTFO). The bare minimum is the latter of the two. Hence the answer to the original question of this thread is a GTFO action - just as Mark stated.

2) "Often" = frequently. This means periods of working on the task, separated by periods of not working on the task, for a sufficient number of repetitions to have eroded all resistance AND accomplished the overall goal, or at least appreciable progress toward it.

Have I hit the nail on the head this time, or am I still bruising my thumb?

Mark

Hah! Still bruising my thumb.

Given my over-analysis, I'd like to thank you for following me this far into the thicket of detail. You've been very patient, and you've given me more than enough to go on, so I'll work through the remainder of my unsettled mind on my own.

I re-read your original post on GTFO, to which you linked in your latest comment. I do see the difference in the way you intended it, and the way I stated it in my previous comments above. Specifically, I described GTFO as a series of innocuous actions, whereas your original article describes it as a single action followed by a choice. To quote your article, "...you can either put the file away again, or you can do some work on the report."

And as I promised above, I'll reconcile those differences for myself.

Thanks again for your perspective!

Miracle

You just made my day! I just love your gracious way of listening and and feeding back your understanding of other's postings. It is so easy for us to become argumentative and stubborn on these online forums. You have shown me how to be courteous and sensitive in the way you engage.

Thanks for saying so Jim! I do try to maintain a certain "forum decorum."

(har har!)