Three things in two days. First, I loose contact with my phone. Second, my MacBook Pro dies. Then, in a third and final twist, traffic on the blog increased by 2000% (yes, two thousand) and I get locked out of WordPress. Coincidence? Of course. I got a free lesson in personal productivity in the process; How do you survive when your options are shut down?

Day One

On day one, I headed into London, having agreed to phone everyone I was meeting when I located a suitable coffee shop to gather in. I arrived and reached for my phone. No phone in my pocket. No phone in my bag. Generally, no phone anywhere. How did we survive before we had a phones in our pockets? Perhaps we were more organized, perhaps we just wondered around lost. We only had certain opportunities to communicate, so we planned a little more and were a little less spontaneous. We certainly weren’t sending a text when someone was trying to talk to us! When we got opportunities to communicate, we made the most of them.

There I was with one pound in my pocket. Now, the way the dollar is going, one pound may be worth about $5 at the moment, but it still only gets you one phone call from a UK phone box. As I stood in the pouring rain in central London, staring at the phone box, I didn’t know who to call to sort out the mess. Miraculously, it all worked out fine. I was still glad when I got my phone back later in the day.

Day Two

On day two, I flipped open the lid of my trusty MacBook Pro to do my semi-regular backup and… Nothing. Bright light on front, but black screen. 18 months old and it was dead. Cue raised blood pressure and a trip to the Apple store. Despite mouth-to-mouth from the man at the genius bar (note to self: they really don’t like it when you call it the geek bar), there was no getting any sense out of the thing. The result? A very productive day of phone calls and ticking off items on the to do list that had been left undone because I’d been caught up in email, slide creation and the wonders of the Internet. The MacBook story is to be continued… For now, my trusty G4 is helping me through, sans Microsoft Windows.

The Psychology of Happiness

So, a little bit of Psychology, to fuzz up your day, specifically the psychology of choice and of happiness. Two gentlemen, Barry Schwartz and Dan Gilbert, have made these topics more accessible via their TED talks last year. To summarize and synthesize the two: The more choice we have, the less happy we are. When we do get choices, we don’t use them well, and when we make mistakes, we rationalize them to ourselves, but still we worry that we didn’t do the right thing.

And Finally

We are at our most happy when we aren’t given too many choices, because choices cause stress. Despite that, we always want the ability to have lots of choice, we call it freedom. We want the freedom to keep our options open. Together that creates some interesting insight into why all of this technology causes us to procrastinate. Technology creates so many different possibilities, and with it a whole range of new decisions for us to worry about.

See also: 5 Ways to reduce stress, by reducing choices.

Related Posts

• Why Don’t You See What You Can Do in an Hour?
• 5 Ways to Reduce the Stress of Choice
• The Now Habit – Dealing with Procrastination
• Watch out for the frogs!
• Culture or Technology in Business 2.0

How often do you have a task that seems insurmountable or indigestible? Do you find that you just can’t get started on it? There is a phrase we use around our here, “have you eaten your frog yet?” Frogs are the things that you need to do, but don’t want to do, for whatever reason (for a bit of background see Watch out for the frogs and Frogs, Gnats, Butterflies and Gems).

These things get put off, because they are seen as impossibly hard to swallow. At the start of each day, pick the ugliest one and get working on it, so it doesn’t hang around.

Planning can be a form of procrastination

I used to approach things by carving out half hour slots in my diary, and scheduling various tasks across the day or week. The problem with that approach is that it creates a lot of pressure to perform, and it increases the likelihood of procrastination. Every little distraction and interuption becomes an excuse to put off doing the scheduled thing until later. By mid-afternoon, that hour’s commitment is starting to feel like a mountain to climb. We are aware when we get off-task like this, but it doesn’t help with getting back on track. So what is to be done?

Take a bite of the elephant

I hope that no-one would actually eat an elephant, but it is a common phrase and a strong image (see Chasing Mice and Eating Elephants for one discussion). The way to deal with a monster task is to take it one little piece at a time. Pick the task or project and say “Let me see what I can get done on this in the next hour.” Commit to starting on the task, and working only that task for the next hour. No more, and no less. You might even plan a reward for yourself at the end of the hour. It might be a drink, a walk or a bit of random procrastination of your choice, like a quick bit of web surfing.

Pick the task, and shut out any other distractions. Create focus for yourself. Look at the clock, note the time and set to work. Remember, you aren’t committing to an outcome or an achievement, you are just investing an hour into a task to move things forward.

At the end of the hour, let yourself loose, but first look back at what you have achieved. I guarantee that you will be amazed at the results. Celebrate the achievement. That success creates forward momentum and boosts your productivity, you’ll want to get going on more things.

Amaze yourself and let the pressure off

Note that it isn’t “I must work on this for an hour”. You are not beating yourself up or trying to put yourself under pressure. You are choosing to be creative – “let me see what I can do” – playing a game, having a little race. Say I will do what I can do, and all that will be enough. Set yourself up for success. Anything that you get done is bonus. Rather than “I must do x” which sets you up for failure and is going to trigger fear and stress responses.

Once the frog is gone, it is gone

The one hour approach makes those frogs easier to swallow. If you know the frog eating is only going to last an hour, and you are only going to eat what you can, it is that much less pressured.

The feeling of having that tasks out of the way is a wonderful boost to productivity for the rest of the day. If an hour seems like too much, try the beginners version and go for a very focussed 20 minutes. This technique has worked wonders for me, let me know how it works for you.

Related Articles: Too Much Choice – Too Little Happiness (how choice causes procrastination), Watch out for the frogs! (understanding different types of task) and The Now Habit – Dealing with Procrastination (overview of Neil Fiore’s excellent book).

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• Too Much Choice – Too Little Happiness
• The Now Habit – Dealing with Procrastination
• Watch out for the frogs!
• Culture or Technology in Business 2.0
• Broadband Maslow and the Hierarchy of Human Needs

Procrastination isn’t ‘not doing things’, it can be ‘doing the wrong things’ rather than the right things right now. If we are honest, the majority of us procrastinate to some degree or other. However, highly successful people generally don’t. That makes procrastination a prime issue to tackle on many people’s self-improvement journey. I am no exception.

Procrastination is touched upon in so many books, but it is a very hard thing to deal with. A good remedy seems hard to find. So far my favourite book has been The Now Habit: Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-free Play by Neil Fiore, Ph.D.

I had not read one of Neil Fiore’s books before, but “Dealing with the Emotional Side of Cancer” had been recommended to me, so I purchased the Now Habit. Perhaps I was procrastinating?

The Now Habit isn’t perfect as a book or as a system, but nothing is. However, I and many other people have found The Now Habit remarkably helpful. It was written out of Neil’s own struggles and his work with clients.

Here is a brief overview, but there is no substitute for reading the book in full. Hopefully this will provide some encouragement to you, running through the content of the chapters:

Introduction to The Now Habit

Starting with a Maslow quote, the introduction sets out a positive philosophy for dealing with procrastination – The Now Habit. How to move from being a procrastinator, to being a producer.

1. Why we procrastinate.

The warning signs:

• An impossibly long “to do” list and talking to yourself in “have to’s”
• Being unrealistic about time and vague about goals and values
• Feelings of depression, low self-esteem and fear.

Our worst critic is ourselves. We judge ourselves a failure, before we have even started. Procrastination is inherently rewarding – you escape the object of your fear and do something that you ‘want’ to do, rather than something that you ‘have to’. Sometimes the object of the procrastination even goes away, because circumstances change, or because someone else deals with it. Procrastination is a self-reinforcing, vicious circle. It can express resentment, or it can defend against fear of failure or the fear of success. A really helpful productivity quote:

“The drive for success involves setting a goal, making it a high priority, and then investing time and energy towards its achievement.”

2. How we procrastinate

Explaining and understanding how procrastination happens, with the procrastination log. Neil suggests you just carry on procrastinating for a week, but keep a log of how you do it. This is actually a surprisingly hard exercise to do! It is always a good idea to keep track of how you use your time. Those with a background in time-billed professions are good at this, but the rest of us have a bit to learn. Start by creating safety – This is the first step out of procrastination. We naturally avoid doing ‘dangerous things’, the way to get them done is to make them less dangerous. The book gives some powerful illustrations.

3. How to talk to yourself

Avoid counter productive messages:

• “have to’s” send messages of stress. Contrasting the language of the procrastinator with that of the producer: ” “I choose”, “I decide”, “I will”.
• “should’s” are messages of depression. should looses its original meaning and instead focusses on resentment and anger, disappointment. Just like “have to’s” it is out of line with the “choice” of the producer.

The power of choice – moving from resistance to commitment. Start learning how to say no. Five self-statements that distinguish procrastinators from producers, with ways to transform your self-talk:

1. The negative thinking of “I have to.” Becomes “I choose to.”
2. The negative thinking of “I must finish.” Becomes “When can I start?”
3. The negative thinking of “This is so big.” Becomes “I can take one small step.”
4. The negative thinking of “I must be perfect.” Becomes “I can be human.”
5. The negative thinking of “I don’t have time to play.” Becomes “I must take time to play”

4. Guilt-Free Play, Quality Work

Procrastination leads us to put off living, and this is a huge tragedy. Procrastinators and workaholics have much in common. Neil introduces the ideal of the Pull Method of Self-Motivation. A sense of mission is the ultimate in the pull method. We work productively when we can anticipate pleasure, rather than just pressuring ourselves into doing things. Play is important. Guilt-free play leads to quality work. My personal version of this is to play the game of seeing what I can do in a hour.

5. Overcoming Blocks to Action

There are three major blocks to action:

1. The terror of being overwhelmed
2. The fear of failure
3. The fear of finishing.

These are three tools to tackle them:

1. Three-dimensional Thinking, the Reverse Calendar.
2. The work of worrying, worry constructively and have it over with.
3. Persistently starting, just keep on starting.

6. The Unschedule

This powerful concept gets you to look at what you are not going to do and to firmly book in play (leisure, socialising, …), to make it guilt-free. There is lots of comment on this around the blogosphere:

• On DirtSimple.
• and on Jim Gibbon’s blog in a great post on the Top 5 Productivity Tips of 2006.

7. Working in the Flow State

Learning to focus and relax, to work productively. The whole area is a massive topic in its own right, this is a great introduction.

8. Fine-Tuning Your Progress

Plan for setbacks – accept that you will fail sometimes and make a plan to get you back on track, to give you resilience.

“Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task” – Willian James.

9. The Procrastinator in Your Life

Now you are cured, the book runs through some tips on how to deal with those other procrastinators in your life.

The Now Habit – In closing…

The Now Habit is a fantastic book, well worth reading. We can feel that procrastination protects us from others judging our efforts, or from change, but actually it just holds us back. I think the net net for me is this: The secret to busting procrastination is to understand the truth, the action reality of each situation. Realise when you are procrastinating. Realise why you are procrastinating. Then confront those reasons with the truth of the situation. Also that it is ok to fail, it is ok to be human. It is OK to succeed too. And lastly, that it is OK to have things change. You have a choice, don’t be afraid to use it.

Related Posts

• Watch out for the frogs!
• Too Much Choice – Too Little Happiness
• Why Don’t You See What You Can Do in an Hour?
• Culture or Technology in Business 2.0
• Broadband Maslow and the Hierarchy of Human Needs

Something I keep stumbling across is the idea of eating a frog for breakfast! It really isn’t as bad as it sounds. At home we even have a poster above the breakfast table that is a big picture of a frog with the caption “What’s your frog today?”. Eating frogs is all over the blogosphere:

- On Matt’s Idea Blog, right here (I love reading it).
- Over at 43Folders, here.
- And on the CEO Blog – time leadership.

Brian Tracy’s book Eat That Frog! 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time being a whole book on it, well reviewed on Amazon. All of this is based on an old saying:

“If the first thing you do each morning is to eat a live frog, you can go through the day with the satisfaction of knowing that that is probably the worst thing that is going to happen to you all day long!”

Thankfully there are more than frogs to eat in a day. Understanding the types of things that need to be done results in effective action. Tasks are a multidimensional problem space, but you can start by examining just two key dimensions:

The desirability of the task – do you want to do it? The necessity of the task – do you need to do it?

Placing tasks across each axis gives four quadrants – boy, do I love quadrants – or types task:

1. Things you don’t want to do, and actually don’t need to do.
2. Things you don’t want to do, but actually need to do.
3. Things you want to do and actually need to do.
4. Things you want to do, but actually don’t need to do.

Each has it’s own particular challenges.

1. Things you don’t want to do, and actually don’t need to do.

These are easy, don’t do them! These are ‘Gnats’, don’t get pushed into doing them by others. Squash them, bat them off, just say no! This is usually easy to do, because we are motivated to stay away from them and can see that they don’t need doing. It is generally other people that pressure us to do these things, or we accidentally commit ourselves to them. Remember that a fast ‘no’ is much better than a ‘yes’ that really means ‘no’. It avoids guilt for you and disappointment for the other person.

2. Things you don’t want to do, but actually need to do.

These are the ‘Frogs’. The ugly, distasteful things that need to be done, but tend not to. You aren’t motivated to do them, leaving them victim to procrastination. Frogs need structure around them to ensure that they actually get done. Create the motivation to make them happen, either by transforming them into something desirable or by making them subordinate to a strong habit. Eating your frog at the start of the day is just such a habit, but it is even better. Making sure frogs are the first thing that gets done leaves you free to do the things that you enjoy doing. The habit creates an inherent reward. Either way, give yourself a reward for eating the frogs, otherwise they will just sit there watching you and croaking! “If you have to eat a live frog, it does not pay to sit and look at it for a very long time!”

3. Things you want to do and actually need to do.

These are the ‘Gems’. They always appear more rare than they should be, but they are there. If you’ve eaten your ‘Frogs’, then dig out your gems. Make sure that you are being honest – are they things that really need doing? Or are they…

4. Things you want to do, but actually don’t need to do.

The ‘Butterflies’. You want to do them, because they look like fun. You chase them, because they are pretty. The challenge is that time spent butterfly chasing is time that isn’t being spent doing the things that really need doing. They are a self-justified form of procrastination. Butterflies are pretty, it is easy to see them as gems. Understand that they most certainly are not. They don’t help you with what really needs doing.

I am finding that in quickly identifying the nature of the beast before starting helps in using time effectively and it leads to a shorter to-do list, because things get crossed off.

Get to it!

- Brush-off the gnats quickly, just say no and let them go.
- Eat the biggest and ugliest of the frogs at the start of the day, then it is done.
- Mine the gems and revel in the fun and effectiveness.
- And if you find yourself chasing butterflies, catch yourself and get back to mining those gems or eating that frog.

Have a great day, right after you’ve eaten that frog for breakfast!

Related posts: How to Deal with Being Overwhelmed at Work, Frogs, Gnats, Butterflies and Gems, and Chasing mice and eating elephants.

Related Posts

• The Now Habit – Dealing with Procrastination
• Too Much Choice – Too Little Happiness
• Why Don’t You See What You Can Do in an Hour?
• Culture or Technology in Business 2.0
• Broadband Maslow and the Hierarchy of Human Needs