The Thinking Problem

For many, the problem is simply one that is no more than an issue of thinking. In other words, a stressful thought appears in the mind — “I am a procrastinator, and I shouldn’t be.”

The thought is believed to be true, and the feelings that result are stressful and upsetting.

Until that original thought is questioned, and investigated, it continues to be a burden.

If it IS questioned, however, very often the game is up as it’s found to be untrue. A procrastinator is someone who does not act immediately, but in the 2Time management approach, the tactic of trying to act on everything immediately is one that is characteristic of users at lower belts. In other words, the more skilled users know that it’s crazy to try to act on everything all at once, especially without proper planning.

The only difference might be that they don’t call themselves procrastinators. They might instead call themselves smart planners.

In many cases, there is no objective reality to point to that differentiates the “guilty” from the “innocent.”

(For more details on the method used here to separate thoughts from beliefs about thoughts, read any of the books by Byron Katie, or visit http://byronkatie.com)

The Behaviour Problem

What about people who intend to do a task at a scheduled time, but when the moment comes they are unable to execute it at the appointed time for some reason?

They feel a sense of fear that prevents them from executing the task in the moment. It might be related to a fear of failing, or to guilt, but the net effect is the same. Some believed threat is taken seriously. Pain becomes associated with the task, which is then pushed off into the future, until it becomes urgent or critical.

The behaviour is quite a human one, but the practice of calling oneself a procrastinator doesn’t help. Instead, it’s better to look for the offending thought that is causing the fear, and to question that instead. Some examples of the thoughts that might be causing the problem might be:

– this is going to be unpleasant

– I hate doing this stuff

– I don’t know where to start

– I can’t possibly succeed

These thoughts are the kind that create stress and tension once they are believed, but we always have a choice about believing them. We can exercise the choice by simply asking ourselves whether or not the thoughts are true, as a starting point.

The good news is that “solving” the problem of procrastination involves more than simple changing a few habits around - it starts with questioning the thoughts that pop into our heads, and acting acting on the answers. This makes the label of “procrastination” a non-problem, and can direct us towards the real source of difficulty — our thinking.

I have looked around and there is a lot of information on the additional entertainment doo-dah’s, but nothing about the 11 fundamentals that are addressed here in 2Time.

I imagine that there is room for a product that is actually built around the way people capture time demands and then manage them.

Let me know if there is such a site, or if there is a PDA that is being designed in this way.

These courses are the fastest way for me to learn what works and what doesn’t work in the entire 2Time approach, and especially in the programmes offered to  the public.

One insightful question that was put to me was whether or not there I would recommend a Warning system for each of the 11 fundamentals.

I thought about it for a while and thought that the idea would be a fantastic one, except that for a proper Warning system to exist, it must be automated and based on more than a gut feeling.

In each of the fundamentals, I got this far in my thinking in what would constitute a complete warning system:

Warning Signs

1. Capturing – too many items or pages remain in the capture point.  Another warning could be that the oldest item in the capture point is more than a certain number of days old.

2. Emptying –  this might be similar to the warning for Capturing.  One specific warning could be the number of days that have elapsed between bouts of “Emptying”

3. Tossing –  I would set my warning signal for tossing be related to the number of items that exist in my time management system in some way.  If the total number of items became too large, I would relate that to a possible lack of Tossing.

4. Acting Now — if my schedule became too packed with too many items, that might relate to a lack of “Acting Now.”   This would be easy to measure in Outlook if it measured the number of items that were disposed of, but this would mean that an incoming email would have to be tracked and tagged in some way.  This would be useful, but might add extra “bloat” to Outlook in addition to the fat that already exists.

5.  Storing — when I have too many items waiting to be filed or scanned, that is an instant warning that I need to  be doing more Storing.

6.  Scheduling –  I wish that Outlook could do some quick analysis of my schedule to tell me whether or not my schedule was unrealistic, using some criteria that  I could give.  If too many items are scheduled at the same time, or too close together, it should be able to tell me.

7.  Listing — I wish I could tell when lists are getting stale and need to be pruned

8.  Interrupting — this one leaves me a bit lost.  To have a good warning, Outlook would need to measure what happens when I dismiss a reminder.  Perhaps reminders would have to be re-thought completely, and the user should be given a choice of different ways of dismissing them.  One choice could be to “dismiss as complete,” and another could be to “dismiss as irrelevant.”  Then, perhaps the time it is dismissed could tell something about whether or not the reminder is actually working the way it should.

(I appreciate that if you are not a heavy Outlook user that this won’t make much sense to you.)

9.  Switching — this is getting more difficult with these advanced fundamentals… Maybe a valid warning in Switching might be  the number of ignored reminders, as a sort of rough guide as to whether or not the schedule is being consulted before action is taken

10.   Warning — the number of automated warnings that are consulted (or not ignored) can be used as a possible warning for Warning!

11.  Reviewing — If Outlook had something like a formal review that showed statistics telling me how my time management system is working, that would be a start.

These Warnings would be a good start, and if I were to rethink the programme I would do it along these lines.

For example, I have vowed never drink lots of sugary beverages, or to allow my email inbox to grow to contain tens of items.  These are habits I am eager not to include in my life again.

But a Not To Do List could include much more than  habits that need to be broken. It would also include things that happen in life that I would never allow to happen again. These include:

- To allow my mother-in-law to use guilt to get me to do anything

- To ever mow the lawn

- To wash my car again

- To visit Bob at this home, when his wife is there

- To attend a party that ends after 3am

- To allow my son to drive anywhere after 10:00pm

This is clearly an example of a “psychological list.” Its purpose is to give the user a break from doing things they don’t want to do, freeing up energy, time and mental space.

Here is the link to the post on the Productivity 501 blog.

Their effort comes as statistical and anecdotal evidence mounts that the same technology tools that have led to improvements in productivity can be counterproductive if overused.

The article describes one study that shows that some 28% of a professional’s day is spent deal with interruptions by things that aren’t urgent or important.

This seems all well and good… until they give the example of “unnecessary email.”

That made me pay attention, because I know from experience that the problem isn’t the technology, but instead it lies in people’s habits. In others, don’t blame Microsoft Outlook for the habit of checking and acting on email ten times per day.

Not surprisingly, the article cited the example of Intel workers who were encouraged to “limit digital interruptions” and were way more effective as a result. No surprise there! Limiting the interruptions allows for a greater opportunity to enter into the flow state, which is one of the goals of the 2Time Management system.

On engineer has apparently introduced a tool that will prevent a user from having access to his/her email inbox! I thought this was funny at first, because it’s a little like freezing one’s credit cards in a block of ice to prevent impulse purchases. It works, but it doesn’t really change the underlying habit.

The effect of poor habits is now being seen as quite costly:

A typical information worker who sits at a computer all day turns to his e-mail program more than 50 times and uses instant messaging 77 times, according to one measure by RescueTime, a company that analyzes computer habits. The company, which draws its data from 40,000 people who have tracking software on their computers, found that on average the worker also stops at 40 Web sites over the course of the day.

Amazing.

Right at the end of the article a typo caught my attention that stopped me in my tracks altogether…

Correction: June 18, 2008
An article on Saturday about efforts to cut down on information overload in the workplace, using data from the research firm Basex, gave an incorrect estimate in some editions for the annual cost of unnecessary interruptions at work. It is $650 billion — not million.

Ever since I read the book Flow by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, I have been a believer in the power of focusing on a single task at a time.

At the same time,  the manufacturer’s are churning out more and more reasons to be distracted during every waking hour, and are busy adding on entertaining distractions to what used to be productivity devices.

The author describes  his visit to the classroom of a favorite professor, and what he found — students hardly paying attention but instead doing everything but listening to the lecture.

It’s a provocative read.

What does that mean?

Most people start to think about time management when they become overwhelmed by some life change, such as getting married, having a child, being promote, being given additional responsibility, adding a new hobby or making a New Year’s resolution to lose weight.

As they take on new time demands they become acutely aware that their system is out of synch with their needs. Either one of two cases occurs.

Case #1 — Too Much New Stuff

The first mismatch happens when a user finds that their old practices don’t work, and that they simply are not keeping up. Time demands fall through the cracks, and if the job is an “important” one, they may have other people getting upset at their inability to deliver. They might even get upset with themselves, and blame themselves for either being lazy, procrastinating too much or having a bad memory.

Case #2 — Too Much of a System

In the odd case, users may either retire, get demoted or become disabled to some degree, and find themselves with a system that is geared for ten times as many time demands as they have at this moment in time. They might stress themselves out by trying to maintain a time management system they no longer need, with practices that are no longer necessary, but have become habitual.

The Answer

In both cases the answer is the same. Their time management system needs to be re-created to deal with the reality they are now dealing with in their lives. When the 11 fundamentals are known, this is not a difficult task.

A time management system that lasts a lifetime is easy to accomplish when users understand the fundamentals, and have mastered the practice of “Reviewing ” on a regular basis. The result is a flexible approach that allows them to evolve their system whenever their situation changes.

In this way, their time management system lasts a lifetime, as long as they are willing to do the work to make it current.

It’s the kind of phrase that a novice in time management (or White belt) often says in response to one of those daily situations in which yet another one of their time demands has fallen through the cracks.  In their minds, it’s not a problem, because they are better at remembering the more important things.

This is a myth, but why so?

In the first place, the speaker doesn’t realize that they are over-depending on their memory to get stuff done.  They think that their ability to execute depends on their ability to remember, rather than the quality of the practices in their time management system.  They don’t know that the very way in which they conceive the problem they are facing is fundamentally flawed.

Secondly, it’s true that they remember the important things, because those are the things that loom large in front of them, and therefore get the most attention.  It’s more accurate to say that they get the most urgent things done, because the items that are not urgent are gradually making their way to the cracks because they are not on their immediate horizon.

The inevitable result is that a person comes to feel haunted and overwhelmed, simply because the combination of their memory and their  attention does not provide enough capacity to get everything done.  The haunted feeling comes from knowing that while I am busy on this urgent item in front of me, somewhere else I am forgetting to do something of importance that  I will only find out about when I get into trouble.

This happens  to everyone in their career at some point. Some get to this point earlier than others, simply because they either can remember more items (some people are truly gifted,) or because the number of time demands remains at a low level for some time.

All this is not to point the finger at White Belts, because we have all wanted to feel as if we are not screwing things up that badly… because “at least we get the important things done.”

Jim — May 29, ‘08 – 10:17 PM

“Another effect of reading and replying to e-mail frequently is that you don’t allow others responses to build up. Which means you may cover the same ground they do (costing you time you didn’t need to spend), or jumping into a thread early may prolong it (and sometimes lead to flamewars), again costing you time that either/both waiting to reply or waiting to read at all can reduce.

(Of course, replying sooner when you have the actual info can save time for everyone. It’s the jumping in with opinion rather than fact that is more likely to expand the time requirements, I think.)”

This is such an interesting email. He’s not saying something as simple as “the more email you reply to, the more you get.”  That doesn’t seem altogether true.

However, the more  trivial the email, and the more pure opinions are shared, and the less hard facts are used… now that creates a lot of email volleying back and forth, especially from people who just can’t resist the temptation to tell others their point of view.

I also like the idea of waiting until the dust settles.   I understand that Ronald Reagan did this — allowing opinions to be shared back and forth before weighing in.  This has a lot to do with timing a response for when it can have the greatest impact.

Or in other words, for a moment when it creates the least unnecessary new time demands.

This seems to be a worthy goal — to act in a way that creates the least number of new and unnecessary time demands.  I wonder what the impact of having mobile email has on expanding the amount of superfluous email that is sent around?

Q. What lead to this particular bout of insanity?

A. Well, in a word it boiled down to “convenience.”

I resisted the temptation to buy the aging (but much newer) Tungsten T|X. The price of US$299 had something to do with it.

I also found a way to withstand a purchase of the new iPhone. I read over the reviews carefully, and after I assess the way in which I would use my PDA, I concluded that I didn’t really want to change any of my current habits without a damned good reason. The iPhone, Tungsten T and all the other PDA’s out there that I could find were more about adding features that had nothing to do with being more productive.

That is, unless you count being able to surf the internet and send and receive email on the train as a sign of greater productivity. Or listen to music. or figure out one’s latitude and longitutde.

In other words, I couldn’t find a single PDA that would help me execute the basics of time management and productivity even a little bit better. I could do a lot of other new things with greater speed, but nothing I really cared that impacted my peace of mind would actually change.

For that reason, in the absence of proper feedback on this dimension, I chose the option of continuing to use my spare batteries, add-on programs, chargers, Palm wallet with notepad, screen protectors and portable keyboard. If the new devices are’t able to improve my execution of the fundamentals then they just aren’t useful to me.

And until a “PDA Designed for Productivity” comes out, I expect to make more decisions such as this one.