Get Everything Done

Hrm...interesting.


There's a lot of strength in commitments. For me, I grew up with Covey, and thus, the concept of commitments, and thence GTD, where the idea of capturing your commitments and being able to "stay on top of them" was a big deal. I found that what I really needed over time was the ability to accept that a commitment might not be right even though I made it, and to have the humility to renegotiate that commitment. That has always been hard for me, but it made things a lot easier.

Now, I find that I am much less stressed when I create more space, rather than more commitments. It's easy to push yourself to the ragged edge with commitments, and I have to actively push against that for myself.

However, along this same vein, when it comes to doing one thing, I've found that working on the idea of doing "nothing" paradoxically helped me do one thing better than most other methods. That's because when doing one thing, I tend to struggle with wanting to do something else, questioning whether I'm doing the right thing, and being overwhelmed with the possibilities of what I could do.

Working on creating space can help with the fatigue that one can build up from a no-list that goes from thing to thing rapidly. Instead of going from thing to thing, you can pick one thing (it doesn't matter what), and then when you're done with that thing, you close it off in your mind, and take a breather (I got this idea first from HPX in the form of transitions training, and then from Time Surfing). You give yourself space to do nothing, and then you release your mind from having to think about the next thing. I find it's a lot easier to think about things at that point. If you're still caught up in your last thing, you continue doing nothing until you are able to let go.

I find that doing things like this and allowing yourself to continue to do nothing and not fret over that, ironically frees up something in my mind so that I can choose the next thing more easily. And if I practice that, I find it somewhat easier to also accept what I'm doing in the moment, because I've given myself a little space and time to settle into the decision instead of feeling like I have to jump right to the next thing.

The release of obligation to choose something "right now" seems to help me unlock my brain and helps me to reduce that procrastination and overwhelm about having too many things to do.

I think this ties in with the overall idea that humans have traditionally lived lives that are cyclical, and the constant drive to go from one thing to the next in rapid succession isn't particularly natural. Alternating from doing something to doing nothing and then back again in a cycle seems to make a huge difference.

I really like Cal Newport's take on this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZwPyB20lxg

There are so many interesting threads of ideas here!

I really like the principles that Newport expresses in his works, but I've never been a huge fan of his time blocking methods. However, in the three ideas he espouses in the above cited Slow Productivity video, I think he really captures a fundamental issue with how we tend to try to live our lives today. The advice of fewer things at a natural pace with obsessive quality hits home for me. Underpinning those principles is a general concept of patience. Honestly, patience (or a lack thereof) is probably one of the biggest problems I have, and I found that aspect most resonant with me when I read Parker's book. If you don't have the patience to do things, that can really create a lot of procrastination and stress.

However, I have come to find that I *really* like the accomplishment of tasks more than the use of time blocking on a bunch of things. I think Time Blocking is *very* useful if you are in a situation like a professor's, where you've got everything and everyone trying to pull you in all sorts of directions, and there's always a way to spend too much time on something, with very little guard rails to keep you on task, and where the tasks are very ill-defined.

Nonetheless, I have never found working in arbitrary time blocks to be even a helpful planning tool. I will give Newport a lot of credit here for making time blocking about intention more than about scheduling. I think a lot of people associate Newport's time blocking with the time blocking that other's do, but Newport really emphasizes not being bound to the time blocks, ironically. He has always said that his use of time blocking is more about setting a sense of control and intention for a given day that is cognizant of the time available, as a feedback tool, rather than a scheduling tool. To that end, he's the only one I've ever seen in the time blocking space to consistently dedicate most of the space in his planners and methods to "rescheduling" his time blocks. In his planner, for instance, he essentially dedicates enough room for something like four complete schedules per day, under the assumption that you will reschedule any time you need to do so, and without guilt.

But notwithstanding this flexibility, I still think that the "Control" element of Newport's systems (I think he uses something like Capture, Clarify, and Control as his framework principles) is something I've learned to get away from for my own good. I like control too much, and if you combine that with natural human fallibility, it's just a recipe for burnout and procrastination and dissatisfaction for me.

I think the most appealing element of Time Surfing from a principles PoV is its intentional emphasis on Calm -> Control vs. Control -> Calm. That's very pertinent to my own situation, and I find that shift in focus to be really valuable for me. Thus, any system that is driven too much by a Control -> Calm approach isn't as effective for me.

I read through Parker's book and found it interesting. I am glad that he made it short, but I think it wasn't short enough. I think there was a lot of stuff there to provide too much detail for people, when I was already "on board" early on, and so I didn't need all the extra discussion.

I think Parker hits a very good point about procrastination, which is centered around the idea of avoidance of discomfort/fear. I think that his J.O.T. method is very well designed for addressing the specific thing he's working against, which is a pathological form of procrastination. Mark Forster has mentioned many of the same techniques, but I don't think he has framed a specific system that was as laser focused on this one element as Parker has.

There are a few things that I think are worth highlighting in Parker's method. He emphasizes:

* Starting *and* finishing any given task
* Paying very close attention when you aren't able to start a task
* Not worrying about choosing any specific right thing, but just picking the first procrastinated task on your mind

In the context of systematically addressing procrastination over time, i think Parker's method is really sound. As he mentions in the book, the goal of his method has nothing to do with actually "getting things done" at a micro-level. It's rather about practicing and building up a counter-habit to the procrastination habit that has been engrained. Thus, there's a huge focus on not just working on some things, but *finishing* and executing something, anything at all.

Time Surfing's first rule of "Do One Thing at a Time, and Finish What You're Doing" is a little bit different, both in design and intent, but I think they're very similar. The net effect is one of increasing the sense of accomplishment and engagement in the moment, to get yourself away from negative ideation of all the work you have to do, and get you into a sense of action.

Mark's approaches have also always had a strong bias towards action, and in that sense, i think they all belong to a similar classification of action-biased methods. I've found these sorts of methods more helpful for someone like myself who is already really good at planning and strategizing, but less good at doing.

Another element of Parker's method is how much that one thing really forces a direct confrontation with the "doability" of any given task. Rather than giving up on a task when you fail to do it, you are expected to rewrite the task, and continue to rewrite it into a smaller and more granular step until you can do that one thing. This is a little brutal, but I think it would be highly effective (actually, I know it is highly effective for some people). This is a really nice, mechanical method of applying things like David Allen's Next Action principle, or Mark Forster's Little and Often principle.

I think the difference between this and Mark's Little and Often principle is the idea of rewriting a task until it is so simple and doable that you can finish it in one go. This is fundamentally less efficient than Mark's Little and Often approach of re-entering tasks after having done a little bit of work on them, but I think for people with excessively chronic procrastination problems, especially who have strong executive dysfunction, this is a huge element. The ability to *finish* something is huge for some people. I would probably include myself in this, and this is probably why I find working off of tasks that I can finish is better for me, because I have such big picture tasks and goals as the only anchors in my life that I *have* to have something more concrete to work from or I'll live for years with "tasks" that are "never done", which can be really demoralizing.

Mark H's observation about whether you can refer to an external list or the like, I think Parker's method is along the same lines of Mark F's No-List methods. But in the case of Parker's method, the whole point is about practicing taking action instead of avoiding your work. It's fundamentally a method for clearing your head and rewriting your action "circuitry". In that sense, the idea is to not let yourself get into the habit of speculating about the future, and a to do list or master list is something of a speculation about the future, which, in the case of this chronic procrastination Parker is dealing with, is something that he needs to get away from. Instead, finding the thing that's taking up the most space in your head (something David Allen has pointed out as a good technique) and working through that with the method is a way of building that momentum up.

This also means that at the beginning it's not about trying to optimize what you're doing in the moment, because you're just looking for *anything* that you can do. The idea is that you build up your ability to take on tasks, and once you are able to actually take action, then you can start asking yourself things like First Things First (which Parker mentions later in the book). But at it's core, the way I read it, the J.O.T. method is essentially a training ground for learning how to deal with task overwhelm and discomfort by taking action and succeeding in taking that action. In this sense, succeeding at doing a procrastinated task that is simple, but that you succeed at, is better than a theoretically more valuable task that you aren't yet able to succeed at.

I think that having a master list would be fine at some point in the future using J.O.T. if you've become more comfortable with your ability to do things, and that task list doesn't become a source of stress for you. At that point, you're also probably able to start making better decisions about what is more important to do from among options, but until you can get to that point, the J.O.T. method without a master list is probably better, because it will naturally target the things that can be addressed that are taking up space in your head.

Re: the worry about that you might never get to doing some things, I think that the idea behind J.O.T. is that you will slowly build up your ability to act effectively, and as you do that, you'll be able to face things that were beyond your emotional capacity with more confidence. Thus, the method isn't about squeezing the most amount of things into a given time block, or making the "most" out of your time, but rather about building up the best ability to tackle tasks over time that would otherwise scare you away/cause procrastination.

In the J.O.T. method, he does say that you should pick something you're procrastinating on, or that you need to do (I think he phrases it as the first thing that comes to mind). However, I agree with Mark H's speculation that there are other ways of getting at this problem. In some sense, the J.O.T. method is an indirect, action-driven training ground for the mind, whereas I have had some good degree of success with a more contemplative approach such as that suggested by Time Surfing, in which you *don't* commit to action, but rather, visualize and play with a given task that you're procrastinating on, doing work to get it down to the next action level, and try to do the work of playing with your own emotional feelings around a given thing.

I have found the Time Surfing method of dealing with procrastination quite effective, but I also have to admit that I've been doing and playing with that kind of "Zen practice" for a long time. There are a lot of people that I know for whom it would be quite challenging and probably inaccessible to try to get into that sort of thing right away. In the Time Surfing approach, that method of dealing with procrastination is a fairly long way down the list of rules to implement, with many of the earlier rules expected to be in place before you take that one on.

In contrast, the J.O.T. method captures Rule 1 of time surfing (do one thing, finish it) really well, and creates a physical anchor to the action which helps to begin embedding rule 2 (be aware of what you are doing and accept it) into one's daily life. In addition, the requirement to continue rewriting and working with a given action forces some of the same sort of questions that Rule 5 (the procrastination rule) in Time Surfing bring up, but through a more indirect route.

In this sense, I think this sort of practice, whether Mark's Simplest No-list Method, J.O.T., or even maybe a What's Better list from DREAMS has a lot of power to attack procrastination.

Wow, that was quite a brain vomit. :-)

Mark F:

<<I haven't read the JOT book, but is this basically what it recommends?>>

Yes, it's basically a longer winded and more heavily justified and contextualized version of your Simplest No-list Method. The J.O.T. stands for "Just One Thing" with the pun of Jotting things down.

i'd say that the main distinction between J.O.T. and what I've read of your own stuff is the insistence on finishing the task, and on rewriting the task until you can do it and have confidence in finishing it.

avrum:

I really liked that interview with Oliver Burkeman!