Discussion Forum > One thing at a time vs. Little and often
Martin:
I certainly wouldn't recommend dropping either principle. To do so would be like using only a knife to eat because you think a knife and a fork are incompatible because they do different jobs.
Both principles are true :
1) You will get more done, more quickly and more effectively if you concentrate on one thing at a time. This applies at both the macro and micro levels.
2) The human mind and body respond better to relatively small input at regular intervals, rather than to huge isolated efforts.
I think a lot of your problem is that you are interpreting "little" in "little and often" too narrowly. A concert pianist adheres to the "little and often" principle when practising. They wouldn't practise once a week for 24 hours. They would practise every day for 4 hours. In that case their "little" is 4 hours, which the rest of us would regard as a heck of a lot!
A concert pianist is also a good example of someone who is concentrating on one thing, to the exclusion of just about everything else.
I hope this helps you to see that the principles are complementary rather than incompatible.
I certainly wouldn't recommend dropping either principle. To do so would be like using only a knife to eat because you think a knife and a fork are incompatible because they do different jobs.
Both principles are true :
1) You will get more done, more quickly and more effectively if you concentrate on one thing at a time. This applies at both the macro and micro levels.
2) The human mind and body respond better to relatively small input at regular intervals, rather than to huge isolated efforts.
I think a lot of your problem is that you are interpreting "little" in "little and often" too narrowly. A concert pianist adheres to the "little and often" principle when practising. They wouldn't practise once a week for 24 hours. They would practise every day for 4 hours. In that case their "little" is 4 hours, which the rest of us would regard as a heck of a lot!
A concert pianist is also a good example of someone who is concentrating on one thing, to the exclusion of just about everything else.
I hope this helps you to see that the principles are complementary rather than incompatible.
September 12, 2008 at 10:44 |
Mark Forster
Mark Forster
Dear Mark,
Thanks for the reply. I certainly agree that if doing something for 4 hours a days can count as doing it "little and often", then there's no conflict between the two principles (at least, given the circumstances of my own work). I do think that the word "little" is a bit misleading in that case, however. For example, it's well documented that the majority of successful full-time writers typically write for about 4 hours a day and no more, rather than indulging in marathon sessions for a few days at a time. Such writers don't regard 4 hours of a writing as a "little writing", however - they regard it as a full, and relatively draining, working day. Similarly, my guess would be that (even) the concert pianist wouldn't say that she'd done "a little practice" after a 4-hour session (unless she were engaging in a bit of understatement).
It seems that the underlying idea is just that it's better to work on projects that don't have a deadline regularly and to spread the work out so that it comes in equally-sized chunks, rather than squishing it all together, so to speak. I don't know what a handy slogan for that would be, however.
Anyway, this is just about the best choice of words for formulating the idea. Now that I understand how you mean the "little and often" principle, I see that there's no incompatibility between it and the "one thing at a time" principle.
Thanks again,
Martin
Thanks for the reply. I certainly agree that if doing something for 4 hours a days can count as doing it "little and often", then there's no conflict between the two principles (at least, given the circumstances of my own work). I do think that the word "little" is a bit misleading in that case, however. For example, it's well documented that the majority of successful full-time writers typically write for about 4 hours a day and no more, rather than indulging in marathon sessions for a few days at a time. Such writers don't regard 4 hours of a writing as a "little writing", however - they regard it as a full, and relatively draining, working day. Similarly, my guess would be that (even) the concert pianist wouldn't say that she'd done "a little practice" after a 4-hour session (unless she were engaging in a bit of understatement).
It seems that the underlying idea is just that it's better to work on projects that don't have a deadline regularly and to spread the work out so that it comes in equally-sized chunks, rather than squishing it all together, so to speak. I don't know what a handy slogan for that would be, however.
Anyway, this is just about the best choice of words for formulating the idea. Now that I understand how you mean the "little and often" principle, I see that there's no incompatibility between it and the "one thing at a time" principle.
Thanks again,
Martin
September 12, 2008 at 13:37 |
Martin
Martin
I am still in the middle of the DIT book (it took more than a month to arrive in the USA). But I had the same thought as Martin (though he expressed it with much greater precision than I would have been able to at this point). Mark's answer cleared this up wonderfully. Thanks to both of your for this dialogue.
September 16, 2008 at 18:43 |
moises
moises
This is about an apparent conflict between two of the seven principles laid out in chapter two of "Do It Tomorrow." At least, I think a conflict arises between the two principles for people who have a certain sort of work situation, one that I imagine is not uncommon.
The principles in question are the second and third: "One thing at a time" (OT) and "Little and often" (LO). In one of your July 17th replies to Leon in the thread entitled "What about GTD's 'two-minute' actions?", you make it clear that in DIT, the OT principle is intended to apply only to projects that don't have a deadline, and refer to the article "Projects that don't have a deadline." There you recommend working on projects that don't have a deadline one at a time ("Stage Four: Action the Items One by One") - the OT principle applied to projects that don't have a deadline. You also referred me to that article when I first raised this question in my "Dreams vs. DIT" posting. I don't think the article addresses the problem I have in mind, however. I'll try to explain.
Imagine that most of Sam's projects have no deadline. (That's more or less true of me, most of the time.) Sam only needs to spend one hour a day working on projects that have a deadline, and another hour on projects that go on for ever, let's say. (That's an exaggeration in my own case, but it'll do as a simple example to make the point.) But Sam has lots of projects with no deadline. One thing Sam could do is take the approach you recommend in the article you cited (and recommended by the OT principle as it appears in "Do It Tomorrow") - work on just one of those projects at a time. So he starts with project A, and won't start on project B until A is finished. So far, so good. But here's where the problem arises: if he *also* applies the "little and often" principle, then he's only going to work a little on project A each day. So each day, he's only going to do the hour of work he needs to stay on top of projects that have a deadline, the hour he needs to do on projects that go on forever, and a *little* work on project A. So he's not going to be doing much work, and he's not going to get much done per week. He's also not going to make progress very quickly on his projects that have no deadline, which, in Sam's case, make up the bulk of his work (or ought to!). So that's clearly not a good approach.
Sam could do lots of work on project A each day until it's finished, and so drop the "little and often" principle; or he could work in a little-and-often way on a number of projects-that-don't-have-a-deadline each day, and so drop the "one thing at a time" principle. What I don't see is how he could observe both principles and still be productive.
The question at the end of all this, I suppose, is: Which principle would you recommend dropping given that there's a conflict between them? (At least, given that there's a conflict between them given a work situation which some people, including me, and perhaps many others, are in.)
I'm sorry this is such a long posting, but I wanted to another stab at getting my point across.
Best,
Martin