Four-Eight-Four [dot org]

Yesterday, the Times Free Press published an article about a ten-year study on procrastination (unfortunately, I can’t find the article in their archives, so I’m linking to the USA Today version of the article).

I found the article particularly interesting because I’m an admitted procrastinator. To give you an idea of exactly what kind of procrastinator I am, back in college I was the guy who started on his papers 1-2 days before they were due.

The problem was … back in college, I had absolutely no incentive to change my habits. I was really, really good at writing papers (or doing just about any kind of assignment). I could have 25 books and journal articles stacked beside my desk and generally be able to scan them all in the time period and pull out relevant information and quote it if necessary. Despite only spending 10-12 hours on a 10-12 page paper, the lowest grade I can remember getting on one in my college years is a 93.

According to the article, I’m in good company (though I doubt most people experienced the kind of success with papers I did) … and the group I’m in is growing at a tremendous rate. Back in 1978, only 5% of the folks in the US of A were willing to admit they were procrastinators. Today, it’s more like 26%. Just to give you an idea how many people that is, in July of 2006, the estimated population of our nation was 298,444,215. That means 77,595,496 people are admitted procrastinators. That’s right … 77.5 million people. That’s a lot.

I think that there is a reason why there are so many more procrastinators today than there were 30 years ago … and David Allen discusses the issue in Getting Things Done. The problem is that our work is increasingly not delineated by physical tasks (like building a house or assembling a piece of furniture) … but becomes more and more “mental” each year. So, we end up with more and more tasks that we can’t actually see … and if that wasn’t bad enough, we have more to do to boot. On top of that, we’ve got more to distract us. Hands up … how many of you haven’t ever been distracted by the internet at work, if your job gives you internet access and a computer. Come on now, speak up.

That’s what I thought.

Unfortunately, the article doesn’t really deal with the ‘real whys’ of procrastination. Sure, it talks a lot about the symptoms of the problem … distraction, etc. … but trying to ‘fix’ procrastination by attacking those problems is a bit like treating cancer by prescribing aspiring. It might help the pain, but the real problem is going to keep eating away at you.

I’ll cut to the chase. I think that Allen’s GTD methodology is the answer to the problem. It’s been the answer to my procrastination problem, and I have a sneaking suspicion that a lot of those 70 million people who have shown up in my group since 1978 are very much like me.

Let’s go back to tasks being increasingly mental. If I were working at the Ford plant in Detroit on the engine assembly line, figuring out what to do would be really easy. Each time and engine arrived in front of me, I’d need to attach water pump, and send it along to the next person on the line.

I would be incredibly productive, as long as I focused on my task, because I’d already know what I needed to do next, I’d know I could accomplish it, and I’d have a sense of immediacy when the engine arrived in front of me because I’d know that by delaying, I’d hold up the next guy down the line.

Now … check out this quote from the article:

The causes of procrastination combine temptation, sense of immediacy, the value of doing the job, and whether you believe you can get the work done ... (emphasis mine)

For those of us who work with information, whose tasks are primarily mental … we don’t have either of those two things I emphasized. We don’t have a sense of immediacy, because we don’t have something physically sitting in front of us that isn’t done. We don’t know whether we can do the job, because we look at a big project (”create a e-commerce site for client X”) rather than its individual parts … and the result is that the big project looks really, really big.

GTD addresses these two problems.

First, it helps create a sense of immediacy. By filing things into my “inboxes” and processing them on a regular basis, I create a sense of immediacy because I now have a physical, viewable task list to remind me of what I haven’t got done. Every time I look at my task list, I’m reminded that I haven’t worked on importing new items into client X’s web site database, that I haven’t created the photo gallery for client Y’s web site, and that I haven’t worked on converting my e-commerce package to PHP5.

Second, it helps me believe I can get the work done. For the last example above, “convert the e-commerce package to PHP5,” in my task list, I’ve broken it down into small steps that are every do-able … delete Propel for PHP4 libraries, add Propel for PHP5 libraries, re-build Propel runtime libraries for my database, etc. When I look at my project task list for that project, I see a series of things I can complete in a short period of time. It reminds me that the task is do-able.

The article also mentions distractions, such as surfing the ‘net and that blasted “ding” that you hear every time you get a new email message, as contributing to procrastination. Once again, GTD offers a solution to these problems.

For distractions like surfing the net and playing games, my task list provides a constant reminder that I have real work that I need to get done. It also provides a list of “next actions” so that any time I complete a task, I can almost immediately move on to the next best task I can complete based on the amount of time I have, my priorites, and other factors … so I don’t have the time to even think about reading Slashdot for the umpteenth time, or playing a quick game (or fifteen) of solitaire.

When my computer alerts me that I have new email, GTD helps because I know that I will process those new messages in the next few hours … so I can ignore them and wait until my processing time arrives to deal with them. That way, something that comes in can’t distract me from the task at hand. When the time comes, I’ll carefully consider each and every new message, and decide rationally what to do with and about them. My email inbox becomes something I control, rather than it controlling me.

At the very beginning of this article, I noted that I had never suffered because of my procrastination, so I didn’t have any reason to try to eliminate the problem from my life. However, the article notes that procrastination does have ill effects.

“People who procrastinate tend to be less healthy, less wealthy and less happy …”

If I’m honest with myself (and you, my audience), I have to admit that procrastination did cause me problems, even in college. When I started on a paper 2 days before it was due, I inevitably ended up staying up all night the day before it was due so that I could finish it on time. Sleep deprivation isn’t good for you, and neither is the resulting stress I encountered as the deadline moved ever closer and the paper wasn’t done.

Of course, those same problems followed me into my work life. Yes, I completed my tasks (though more recently it happened that they got done after the deadline rather than before) … but the stress was still there. But that wasn’t all …

Since my work basically involves sitting at the computer and working, I get very little exercise. Coupled with my procrastination, that means I spent long hours at the computer and very little time actually being active. For the most part, when I worked, I spent lots of time thinking about what to do next, or goofing off until I was a point when I could do something mentally. At the end of the day I’d find myself with very little time before midnight, and quite a lot to do, and then I’d end up staying up late finishing things up. That left me with very little time do take a walk and do anything even resembling exercise.

Now that I’ve starting applying GTD to my life, I’ve found more and more free time to do things around the house, and more time to do things like play the part of Joseph Hewes in 1776. Next week, I’m going to the Y up the road from my house and joining, and I’ll make the most of some of this free time by spending time there regularly. I want to no longer be obese by the end of 2007.

So, there you have it procrastinators. You know you have a problem. I believe that GTD provides an answer. If you’re one of those 77.5 million in my group … give it a try. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

Read More: Scientists research why procrastination is getting worse

Tags: GTD, Getting Things Done, procrastination

Today was the first work day wherein I tried to seriously implement the "Getting Things Done" methodology from the very start. Yes, that’s right, I was working on a Saturday … mainly because I lost a good bit of time during the week while we had guests, so I spent the day catching up. That means I lost most of my Saturday, but it’s really okay with me. After all, I got to spend several hours with my cousin Michael, who I haven’t seen in three years now, and my parents, who I don’t get to see very often. So, in a sense, I had my Saturday all through the week.

Actually, I didn’t just use the GTD methodology for my work. I started off the day and did a number of tasks I had put in my "next actions" to-do list, and made my wife very happy … mainly because I had been forgetting some of them for weeks now. Next Saturday I should be able to finish the others, and by then she’ll be ready to buy me enough mead to keep me happy for months.

Anyway … my reflections:

1. Clearing up the "open loops" and "stuff" in your life really does clear your head.

As I mentioned yesterday, I spent a good bit of time in the afternoon cleaning up my office … shredding old documents, throwing stuff away, and filing stuff I might need but don’t need in the office somewhere out in the garage where I can find it again. Today I continued that … I cleaned up my email inboxes, culled through the stacks of printed documentation on my desk and filed some away for future reference and tossed other bits that weren’t relevant any more or were completely outdated, and generally made things neat. Most importantly, as I went through the notes and such on my desk, I entered pertinent information into the Inbox app I bought yesterday. Now, when I sit down, there isn’t as much stuff distracting me.

Yes, I knew before that having my office clean was a good thing, and generally surrendered the the impulse to clean things up every 3-4 months … but now I understand why the clutter distracted me, and why things didn’t really get any better. When the office was cluttered, there was a constant reminder of all the "stuff" that was up in the air in my life. So, cleaning it up helped … because I lost the reminder. But … I still wasn’t filing the useful information away somewhere I could find it again … somewhere I could then decide how to act on it, and look at all of my action items at once and determine what my next best action was. I’ve fixed that problem now.

2. Processing my inbox really does help me feel more "in control" of my tasks.

As I mentioned earlier … I spent a great deal of time processing the information in my email inboxes. I also have now processed the information in the Inbox application three times (I’ve resolved to do so twice a day), and taking all the incoming information and determining what my next action will be for each item makes a big difference. Now, I can switch to Inbox, switch to the Review task, and immediately view everything I need to do.

I started out my work day by doing that, and I’ve already marked five items off that list. The feeling of doing that is nice … but the real benefit is that as soon as I complete and mark off one action item, I can easily scan all my tasks and make a quick decision about which one is the best one for me to do next based on time constraints, deadlines, etc.

I can’t say enough about how much more productive I was today because of that. Generally when I completed one task prior to GTD, I had to determine what to do next by reviewing things in my head (I never did keep to-do lists on a regular basis because they didn’t do much for me), and that took time … time to try to remember things I needed to do, etc. Invariably, there were certain important things I never thought of … and then a client would call me up and ask about the task, and then I’d have to scramble to complete it quickly. I can see that those days will be a thing of the past if I stick to the GTD methodology.

3. Using the GTD methodology has already made me focused on keeping "stuff" and "clutter" out of my life.

During the day today, five times I found myself thinking about places in my office where clutter still existed … and each time, I created a note in my Inbox about the area. Then, in the early afternoon, when I created actionable items, I made processing those cluttered areas my top priority … and took care of those before going back to work. Never before have I been so motivated to do that … previously, I’d just have left clutter like that alone, until I couldn’t stand it any more.

4. Doing things that take less than two minutes NOW really is a good thing.

One thing that Allen recommends (that I don’t think I’ve mentioned before) is that when you process your Inbox, if there is an item that you can take care of in two minutes or less, you go ahead and do it right then. I’ve started doing that, and once again, I find that it helps me feel in control of my to-do list.

Why? Well, previously, I’d put those things off … because I was busy doing "important" things … invariable big projects that needed to be done quickly. So, I’d put off those little items over and over and over again until they piled up and became unmanageable and very distracting. Then I’d feel like I needed to do them, and spend lots of time trying to figure out which ones to do first, and rushing through them, never quite completing all of them … all the while feeling like I was getting further and further behind.

In short, I felt like I didn’t have time to do them when they came up. That’s not true … not only do I have time to do them ‘right now’, if I do them immediately, then they don’t bother me any more, and I’m more likely to complete them in a satisfactory manner than I was if I put them off until I couldn’t stand it any more.

So, there they are … four reflections on GTD, based on only trying it out for a day and a half now. And heck … I’m only slightly into chapter two now. I can’t wait to get further along …

Tags: GTD, Getting Things Done

Steve Pavlina has just posted a great article chock full of tips on how to reliably get yourself into a super-productive state. Often I find myself in the “creative flow state” he refers to; other times I can’t seem to focus and get in that state and I end up spending lots of time getting next to nothing done. I’m going to start implementing some of these ideas this week and see how they work.

For me the creative flow state is a common occurrence. I usually enter this state several times a week, staying with it for hours at a time. I�m able to routinely enjoy the flow state as long as I ensure the right conditions, which I�ll share with you in a moment. My first memories of habitually entering this flow state date back to the early 80s when I was learning BASIC programming. After school I�d rush through my homework in order to spend hours in front of my Atari 800 writing, testing, and tweaking programs just to see what the machine could do. Sometime around 8pm I�d notice my hunger, realize that the family had already eaten dinner, and ask my mom, �Why didn�t you call me when dinner was ready? I�m starving!� She�d invariably claim to have called me 3-4 times, usually with me verbally acknowledging, �I�ll be there in a minute.� Either I had no recollection of this happening, or it was like trying to recall a fuzzy dream memory. Did she really call me, or did I imagine it? I was so engrossed in my creative hobby that I became oblivious to what was going on around me. If I did acknowledge my mom, it must have been an unconscious reaction.

Mmm … the Atari 800. That’s what I learned to program on. What a great machine …

Read More: 7 Rules for Maximizing Your Creative Output

Tags: GTD, Getting Things Done, Steve Pavlina