I apologise for the recent break in transmission: I’ve been coming off my SSRIs (very very slowly), and am getting all sorts of weird and un-wonderful withdrawal effects. Honestly, I think I’d rather hit myself repeatedly with a hammer than go through this, but I’m making a big effort this year to get my life in order, so I’m sticking with it. Floaty brain, brain shocks, fear, and fainting, not to mention the conniptions of my GI tract - it’s all a bit much.
So I’ve not been keeping up the blog. Many apologies. I’m hoping that the symptoms will moderate over the coming months - very much hoping, considering that I’m only half-way there and have been getting these symptoms for a month or so, and am well tired of them.
So stay tuned, and with luck there’ll be more news to hand soon. Oh, actually, there is some news: I’m planning to start writing a book later this year (once my head stops whizzing about and pitching me onto the carpet). More on that later too.
When we’re young, we have all sorts of plans and schemes, and think the world is going to be our mollusc. But then you wake up one morning and discover that, for the last 10 or 20 years, the habit gnomes have been rubbing bad habits into your scalp while you sleep. How does that happen? More importantly, how can we change it?
The short answer is: slowly. One habit at a time, one step at a time, and at least 30 days for each step. Think of it as training: if you want to run a marathon, you don’t get up from a lifetime of sloth and go out for a 10-mile run. A friend of mine tried that, and for the next 3 weeks he couldn’t walk without whimpering. So be told.
Here’s some tips about how to change your habits for better ones. Since a lot of bad habits involve addictive substances like coffee, chocolate, and cigarettes, and the hand-to-mouth habit, I’ll use those as most of the examples for the bad habits. Interpret the suggestions for your own bad habits.
Breaking bad habits
Substitute - replace your habit item with something more benign. So replace your coffee with juice, your chocolate with acid drops, and your cigarette with chewing gum. Get the addictive substance out first, then deal with the hand-to-mouth habit.
Reduce - cut down the time you watch TV. Cut down some of your cigarettes. Have smaller portions of chocolate. Whittle your habit down bit by bit.
Don’t beat yourself up if you weaken. Being naughty after 15 days of being good doesn’t mean you’re useless, it means you know you can go for at least 15 days. Start again, and try to get further this time: if you make 16 days before you weaken, you’re improving again. Keep at it.
Making good habits
Do it at the same time every day. It helps if that’s a ’starting’ time - when you get up, when you get to work, when you get home. It’s easier to throw yourself into something straight away, rather than trusting that you’ll notice the time, and it’s easier to embed a habit when it’s tied to a particular time.
Start small, as Leo Babauta of Zen Habits did - he wanted to do more running, so his goal was to get himself dressed and out the door every morning. That’s it - as long as he got dressed and out the door, that counted as a win. Doing it this way reduces your resistance (you don’t think, “Argh, I’ve got to run a zillion miles before breakfast”) and your guilt, and you often find that once you’ve done that small step, you’ll continue. Even if you don’t, you’ve started building a habit.
Once you’ve got the first step embedded, build up slowly. Maybe for the second month your goal might be getting dressed, out of the house, and walking around the block. Maybe, if you’re working on your GTD, and you’ve got the collection habit under control, you want to work for a month on your processing.
Not many points there, really. It’s not rocket science. All it takes is patience, determination, and a willingness to take it one small step at a time. Maybe you’ll end up with one giant leap for mankind.
I’m going to have to become erratic in my posting for a while, as things are going rather pear-shaped at the moment (for those who weren’t brought up on English television, that means stuff’s going wrong).
So I won’t be posting every weekday for a while: I’m not sure how long, but I’d like to think I can get back to it later this year. I’ll post now and again, when I get a chance, but I just can’t commit to every day for a while.
In the meantime, and as a sort of musical apology, here’s a golden oldie: Bill Wyman singing “Je suis un rock star”. Nice mindless fun.
Sorry about my disappearance last week - I had some urgent personal Stuff to attend to.
Anyway, back to our story. Sometimes it feels as though we’re only reacting to what gets flung at us, rather than being all dynamically proactive. Yes, we’d like to think of ourselves as high-achieving go-getters, but sadly, we don’t often feel that way: we spend much of our time fighting fires rather than doing the exciting stuff we plan.
Not literal fires, of course, although sometimes I think my office could be improved by a small fire in my filing cabinet. I mean metaphorical fires - dealing with problems that get thrown at us, by our bosses, workmates, or the bored bureaucrats at the phone company. And sometimes it seems as though we spend all our time doing little Stuff and never get a chance to sink our teeth into the big Stuff.
So here’s a simple way to start to feel more in control: I’m not promising magic and ponies, just a system that may help you to get your life and work under control.
Do some mundane Stuff - anything that doesn’t require intense focus
If you lose enthusiasm/consciousness, try running a dash
Tidy up and pick tomorrow’s Big Rocks before you go home.
This system has a few big advantages:
It’s dead simple
It guarantees that you make some progress on your Big Rocks
It builds habits so that you can start being proactive
It gets the thinking work done in the morning, when your brain is fresh
One word of warning: don’t start your day by checking email. I know what a temptation it is, but if you can leave it until the afternoon, you’ll get a lot more done.
And that’s an old joke from Monty Python in the sixties, I think. That’s about as far forward as I can manage right now - it’s been a rough couple of weeks, so I’m wimping out tonight and just giving you music. Which is also from the dim past: the 70s, in this case, and from an appearance on Kenny Everett’s show. It’s one of the most bouncy, infectious songs I know of, with the added bonus that they were performing it live. Enjoy!
It seems like everyone is overwhelmed these days - I can hardly cross the street without hearing someone wailing “It’s all too much!” I feel it too, which is one of the reasons for this blog.
There are a whole lot of different causes for the feeling of overwhelm, though, and the best solution depends on what’s causing your problem. For instance, you might be feeling overwhelmed because:
Your system is too complex
You don’t have a system
You’ve got too much to do
The first problem is very common to GTD-ers and other users of similar systems. If you invest too much time and effort into tinkering with your system and making it perfect, you’re likely to make a baroque masterpiece that rivals the Special Theory of Relativity - gorgeous, and all-powerful, but impossible to use unless you’re Einstein (and so few of us are). That’s why I mostly recommend paper implementations - it stops people creating something that’s too arcane, and it’s easy to start up and simpler to run.
The second problem is ubiquitous - there’s boggins of people wandering around who don’t realise that keeping a few simple lists will clear their heads surprisingly well. If you usually ‘try to remember to do’ something, instead of writing it down, this is probably you. In this case, you could benefit a lot from developing the collection habit, and you might find particular benefit from the UCD (Ubiquitous Collection Device) - it can be a whole system in itself.
The third problem is often hidden: if you don’t have a system, or the system you have is too complex, you probably don’t realise that you have too much to do. However, once you get a good system for Stuff-management happening (GTD or something similar), you’ll soon realise that you’re trying to do what would normally require a dozen people to do. And that’s when you can start slashing your commitments.
Mind you, you could slash your commitments at any time, and you’ll always get benefit; just sit down with a sheet of paper and write down everything you can think of that you’re responsible for, and all the tasks you have to do. Get it all out of your head, and then ask yourself what would be the first 3 things you’d drop if you had to move interstate. Could you survive without them? Then go ahead and drop them. Wash, rinse, and repeat, until you’re feeling whelmed.
One of the main blockages in GettingThingsDone is right at the entry level - just about everyone has had, at one time or another, an In Tray laden with stale Stuff. The key to getting past that, as with any blockage, is to work out why it’s happening.
Yes, I know, you could choose to ignore why it’s happening and hope real hard that the In Tray pixies will clear it, but you’ll be waiting quite a while.
Another alternative is telling yourself you’re lazy/stupid/incompetent/whatever, and trying to kick yourself enough that you spontaneously clear it every day, but generally the only result of that is to make you hate the sight of it, and possibly to drive you to bury your In Tray in the back yard (if you use it as a bird feeder, that’s considered a win). In general, don’t ever put yourself down as a means of motivation - it’s more likely to trigger aversion than motivation.
So, sit ye doon and think about whether any of these problems are causing your blockage:
Filing system’s a mess
Don’t have a system for doing Stuff in stages, so it has to stay there until you can do it all at once
Have a system, but not confident that Stuff won’t get lost
Don’t want to think about any more Stuff
Just never remember until it’s overflowing into the hallway
If you think that your problem is one of these, then try these handy solutions:
Purge and re-organise your filing using these hints
Polish up your GTD system - if you don’t have a system, start here
Sit and think about why that part of your system’s not working
A tough one. You really do need to start dealing with your Stuff, or at least working out what you can ignore, what you can delegate, and what you have to do. A system, particularly one like GTD, really does help
Focus on building just that one habit - here are some tips on building habits
Once you know why things aren’t working, you’re halfway to fixing the problem. After all, car mechanics don’t just open the bonnet and whack the engine with a spanner: they do various tests until they know what the problem is, then they fix that.
This month, I’m going to focus on getting things done. If you’re a GTD-er, that means improving your GTD. If you’re not a GTD-er, it means working out what’s getting in the way of you getting things done, and possibly learning a bit of GTD (which stands, not surprisingly, for Getting Things Done).
You might want to improve some of your habits this month, such as:
Or you might want to improve the way you get things done, or actually just get some things done:
Purge and reorganise your filing cabinet
Try 2 different types of context lists
Empty your In Tray
Get started on that pile of StuffToDo that’s been lurking behind your bedroom door
Whatever you want to do, set yourself a goal and get to it. You might want to look back at yesterday’s post about SMART goals, to make sure that you’re setting yourself goals that you can actually achieve (unless setting impossible goals is part of your cunning plan to avoid having to do anything).
Remember that each month should help you improve your life, little by little, in a different area. I’m going to try and throw together a mix of posts, so there will be some good stuff for the GTD-ers as well as useful stuff for the non-GTD-ers. So sit down, have a think, and come up with a couple of goals for this month, and stay tuned!
If you want to get things done, you have to set goals for yourself - even if it’s just “I really want to get through that damned ToDo list!”. But some goals work better than others, both in motivating you to do them and in letting you know when you’ve completed them. So here’s my variation on the traditional SMART goals:
Specific
Measurable
Action-based
Reasonable
Timed
Specific - if your goal is vague and wiffly-waffly, how will you know when it’s done? For instance, compare “Handle money better” with “Prepare a budget and stick to it”: one tells you what you need to do, while the other’s just a vague wish.
Measurable - if you can’t measure it, how can you know how much is enough? Compare “Get a better job” with “Apply for a job which earns at least $5,000 more than my current job”.
Action-based - this is my own suggestion, as most other authors suggest “Achievable”. I think that’s covered by “Reasonable”, and I think it’s also very important that you formulate your goals in terms of what you’re going to do. Compare “Get 30 minutes of cardio exercise daily” with “Lose 10 kilograms”: you have far more control over the first than over the second. That means you’re far more likely to achieve the first than the second (whether the second is reasonable or not), because it’s telling you exactly what you will do.
Reasonable - of course, you could set completely unreasonable goals such as “Win $1 million dollars”, but you’d have bugger-all chance of achieving them, so what’s the point? Start easy, and build up.
Timed - crucial for anyone who tends to let things slide. If you don’t set a time limit on your goal, you could be working on it until the heat death of the universe. Set a time frame, and try to stick within that.
Hi all. Sorry to be unreliable, but I’m going to have to take a few days off. I’ll be back either this Friday or next Monday.
I’ll leave you with the Sanctus from the 1965 Missa Luba - I first heard this while watching Lindsay Anderson’s If (and no, not at the time it was released!) and it’s haunted me ever since.