Procrastination
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Procrastination

05 Mar

Posted at 09:01h in Planning Tools, Procrastination, Productivity for How You're Wired, Time Management

What if you could set yourself up to do your focused, deep, important work successfully?  What does it take for you to get into flow?  Why is it so hard to get started?

Deep focused work carries a fairly heavy cognitive load. To get results, you need to be fully present. That doesn’t just happen. Many productivity pros say it’s critical to do this work at the time your mind is sharpest. But THERE IS SO MUCH MORE! 

As important as it is to understand your body clock, it is equally, if not more important, to identify the conditions YOU need to be successful doing your Focus Work. Being specific and identifying and integrating these conditions will help you get into flow. 

What are Your Conditions for Success?

Timing

  • You don’t have to wake up early! Embrace your body’s natural rhythms and maximize your best times. If you are an early-bird who likes to wake early, great. However, if you’re a night-owl, don’t feel badly about it and don’t push yourself to be someone you’re not. The people who say “to be successful you have to wake up at 5 a.m.” are people who like to wake up at 5 a.m. 
  • If you do your best work at the crack of dawn, or 4 p.m., or 11 p.m., it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you own it and PLAN to do your Focus Work when you can get it done! 

Other Work

Do you need to jump in when your mind is clear and uncluttered, or do you need to clear the decks in order to focus? Consider the following:

  • Loose Ends – Do you need to tie up any loose ends that will take you off task prior to beginning your Focus Work?
  • Email – Are all important emails addressed? Would it be helpful to schedule email time before or after Focus Work to support turning it off during?
  • Social Media – Would it be helpful to schedule social media time before or after Focus Work to support turning it off during?
  • Information and Data – Do you have all the information you anticipate needing so you don’t have to stop as often? Every time you go to the internet to look something up, you are opening yourself up to the temptation to go off task. 

Audio Interruptions

  • Notifications – What if you turned off all notifications, pop–ups, and interruptions on your computer? There are apps that limit web–surfing and social media if needed.
  • Phone – Can you silence your phone or put it on do not disturb? Better yet, can you put it out of reach?

Environment

  • Digital Clutter – Can you close windows, apps, and other distracting technology?
  • Physical Clutter – Would you be less distracted if your workspace was cleared of clutter? 
  • Music – Would you be more attentive if you played music?
  • Location – Do you focus better in an environment where you won’t be easily interrupted, or in settings with background noise and activity?

Self–Care

  • Movement and Meditation
    • Will exercising or meditating before starting your Focus Work result in better outputs? (Test it!)
  • Sleep 
    • Are you rested? How much sleep do you need? Are you getting it?
    • What do you need to do to ensure enough sleep? Schedule bedtime? Limit screen time? Set a reminder that it’s time for lights out?
  • Nutrition and Hydration
    • What foods help you concentrate?
    • What foods give you brain fog?
    • Does coffee help or hurt? How much? With or without sugar?
    • Do you have healthy snacks or chewing gum handy to keep the brain online?

Breaks 

  • Will a walk, nap, or meditation support your outcome?
  • Are you more effective taking a break after a certain amount of time or would it be more effective for you to take a break after reaching a certain target in your work?
  • Is it helpful to schedule breaks using an app so you know you can’t stop working until the outside tool says you can?
  • Would you benefit from an app that tells you to get up and move?

Communication

  • How can you signal to your coworkers you shouldn’t be interrupted? 
    • Can you put a sign on your door or cubical? 
    • Can you wear headphones?
    • Can you inform your colleagues you are doing Focus Work and not to interrupt you unless it is really important?
    • Is there any good reason to NOT show your calendar as busy?


There are many variables to consider. The sooner you learn your personal conditions to do your important focused work, the better chance you have to actually do it!

This is an excerpt from Chapter 11 of my new book Productivity for How You’re Wired available on Amazon. Many templates are included via the time tools link discussed in the book.

19 Feb

Posted at 08:38h in Planning Tools, Procrastination, Productivity for How You're Wired, Time Management

Planning Facilitates Action

The most valuable thing about planning is that it forces you to slow down and think! There are lots of proverbs about planning:

  • People who plan like to plan but they don’t
  • We plan, God laughs.
  • Life is what happens when you’re busy planning.

And the famous Dwight D. Eisenhower quote “In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”

From a productivity perspective, planning is indispensable. Are plans useless? Probably not. The question is how to plan most effectively.

For some, identifying individual steps is enough. They gain the greatest benefit from thinking through the plan. Others benefit from regularly referring to the plan. Still others like to refer to the plan and document their progress along the way.

Planning project steps makes the execution so clear that your move into action is logical and easy.

Plan to Plan

Assuming that planning will happen without intention will set you up for not planning. The first step is to plan to plan, and that means adding the action of project planning to your task list. Then when it’s time to create your plan you can follow my easy 6-step process.

Ellen Faye’s 6–Step Project Planning Process

  1. Grab a stack of sticky notes – Write down each task associated with the project on its own sticky Don’t worry about writing them in any order, just write as fast as the ideas come to you. Be sure to use a new note for each individual task.
  2. Put the sticky notes in order – Consider what has to come before another step and the most logical order to do the work. During this process, you may think of extra steps. Create sticky notes for those steps and insert them into the process. Try organizing your notes on a vertical surface like a window or blank wall. You will be able to see how things relate and be able to easily move your notes around.

post it planning

NOTE: Sometimes these first two steps are enough. If others are involved, it’s time sensitive or very complex consider adding in steps 3 to 6.

  1. Assign a length of time to each step – Jot down on each sticky note your projection for how long the step will take, be it 15 minutes, an hour, or a week. When making your time estimates be sure to include thinking time, ramp–up time, interruption time, and break time. A good rule of thumb is to double your initial time projection.
  2. Assign due dates – If you have a deadline, start with the last sticky note and write the deadline on that note, then using the time projection, work from the last note backward. Date each note with the day it is due. If you can’t make the deadline as projected, look to see where you can adjust your timing, or if the deadline can be extended.

If there is no hard deadline, start on the first sticky note and assign due dates moving forward.

  1. Assign responsibility – If more than one person is working on the project, it’s helpful to identify who is responsible for each specific task and write it on sticky note.
  2. Place for easy reference – Transfer the information to your Priorities Task List, share with your team, copy to your planner, or simply leave the plan up on the wall.

For some, the tactile act of writing out the tasks and moving them around on sticky notes brings the project to life. Others are more comfortable doing this electronically on a simple spreadsheet.

project planning template

Regardless of the tool, following the steps compels you to think things through, and that is the real value of planning.

This is an excerpt from Chapter 11 of my new book Productivity for How You’re Wired available on Amazon. The Project Planning Templates is included via the time tools link discussed in the book.

10 Nov

Posted at 11:19h in Procrastination, Productivity, Productivity for How You're Wired, Time Management

Why Am I Procrastinating

Why Do You Procrastinate? You aren’t the only one asking yourself that question! Without an understanding of why you are procrastinating, it’s hard to figure out what to do about it.

I realized this when I studied my own procrastination tendencies. I learned I usually procrastinated when I needed more information for the next step. Once I understood that behavior, it became easier to figure out how I could learn what I needed to know. Procrastination would also occur when I need more time to think before moving into action. Now that I understand my “why,” my procrastination is manageable.

Read through this list and consider which of these causes explain why you procrastinate. It is often more than one.

What Is Your Why?

Self-doubt — Lack of confidence is a real stopper. It makes sense that it is hard to move into action if you don’t believe in yourself, or you don’t believe what you’ll deliver is going to be good enough. You are probably really hard on yourself. It can be helpful to realize everyone has a degree of self-doubt. It’s what you do about it that drives outcomes.

Need more information — It’s hard to do something when you don’t know how to do it. On the other hand, doing too much research is procrastination in itself. The goal is to find the right balance of information to move you into action. Awareness and asking yourself “what else do I need to get started?” is helpful.

Need processing time — Sometimes you just need time for things to percolate. That good idea you had in the shower this morning? It probably wasn’t a new idea. You were creating the space for that idea to come to fullness. Do you do a better job solving the problem after you “sleep on it?” That is good procrastination!

Need stress — Many people use deadlines to create enough stress to move into action. In last month’s blog post on stress and productivity, we learned about the correlation between stress and performance and that without enough stress, we don’t move into action. Deadline stress can be your solution to getting work out the door. If this is your choice, stop beating yourself up and accept who you are. One warning here: Do you hear yourself saying, “I just didn’t have enough time to do the job I wanted to do?” Some people use procrastination to self-handicap. Delay becomes an excuse for not turning in their best work, or even a way to avoid feedback.

Lack of clarity  —When you’re not clear what is important, you end up spending time on low-value tasks and putting off or not doing important work.

Distaste for the task — It’s hard to be motivated to do a task that you hate doing. If this is the case, consider alternatives. Can you delegate this to someone on your team? Can you pay someone else to do it? Can you take it off your list?

Perfectionism — Does the need to be perfect keep you from doing what needs to be done? We’ll look at this in more detail in future blog posts, but remember – perfect is the enemy of done.

This is an exert from Chapter 4 of my new book Productivity for How You’re Wired available on Amazon.  Next post I’ll share strategies to help overcome procrastination.