Category: Habits

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Bit Literacy — part 6 — Time Induced Anxiety

reachstar.jpgIn Bit Literacy, the author makes a brilliant insight, which confirms for me that the book is probably 3-5 years ahead of its time.

He quotes a book by Richard Saul Wurman from 1989 titled Information Anxiety: “One of the most anxiety-inducing side effects of the information era is the feeling that you have to know it all.  Realizing your own limitations becomes essential to surviving an information avalanche; you cannot or should not absorb or even pay attention to everything.”

(1989???? That was before the term “internet” was coined, and only a handful of scientists had access to each other’s computers via a handful of modems and dedicated lines long before the world wide web was conceived.)

Bit Literacy and Information Anxiety have hit the nail on the head.

In Bit Literacy, the author lists all the ways that information flows to us, and due to the fact that the book was written in 2007, it hardly mentioned blogs and podcasts, and makes no mention of Twitter, Blackberries or iPhones.  In 2 short years, the volume of infromation has only increased.
He also goes on to say that the natural reactions to information anxiety are:

– to live by reaction, responding to each piece of information that appears and demands attention

– to opt out, which is to avoid the problem entirely by living in an ignorant bliss

– to practice bit literacy, by paying attention to some information, and letting the rest go

What struck me is how true the sentiment is for “time anxiety.”

After all, to rephrase the author: “one of the most anxiety-inducing effects of the information era is the feeling that you have to DO it all.”

Let’s look at that more closely.

Walking by a library does not induce anxiety in the minds of most people.  All that information in all those books does nothing except to sit there on shelves, resting on pages.

Strolling by a hard-drive filled with information doesn’t do anything either.  Carrying a number of USB drives in a briefcase seems not to add to our stress levels.

However, one letter received six weeks ago, a single unreturned phone call or 2 unreplied emails can cause more stress than 100,000 unread books.

The only difference  is a thought that we have in our heads — “we need to give a reply.”

That’s often followed by another thought — “but I don’t have enough time.”

What often accompanies that thought is a feeling of guilt coming from the notion that “I should have enough time.”

What compounds that feeling is a bit of an existential realization — “I’ll never have enough time.  My mental grasp will always exceed my reach.  I am likely to die without ever getting to the bottom of the list of things I believe I should do.”

Or maybe that’s taking things a bit too far…. or is it?

After all, the time anxiety that we feel does not come from the books in the library or the websites on the internet, it comes from us.  As human beings, we are incapable of confronting the sea of information without having some version of the train of thoughts I mentioned above.

The expectation that we place on ourselves that we should do everything that our thoughts tell us we should do, might be a useful place to look for answers.  That might be something that we can change.

According to the Work of Byron Katie, these thoughts that appear in our heads can be successfully questioned, and we don’t need to believe them.  We also don’t even need to become better at managing time demands or Bit Literate, or better at GTD®.

It would be actually be easier for us to implement these techniques if we could free ourselves from the anxiety, guilt and untrue thoughts that creep into our minds incessantly, and we could grasp the fact that at the end of it all, our thoughts are not a reliable guide to what should be accomplished in a lifetime.
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Mission Control Productivity, FranklinCovey, GTD and Getting Things Done are registered trademarks of the David Allen Company (davidco.com.)  2Time is not affiliated with or endorsed by the David Allen Company, Mission Control Productivity or FranklinCovey.

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Not Time Management, Habit Management!

istock_000002003024xsmall.jpgIt’s a difficult case to make — time management is the result of well-executed habits, and people who find themselves stuck in a rut when it comes to this part of their lives will never be able to improve their systems unless they learn to teach themselves new habits.

This is a tough lesson to learn and I am finding that it’s also a tough one to teach.

When we are late for an appointment, or an important task falls through the cracks, some of the typical things that we say to ourselves are as follows:

  • “I need to do a better job of remembering these things”
  • “I have too much stuff going on”
  • “I need an extra hour in the day”

While these sentiments are common ones that millions of professionals utter each day in frustration, there is a good reason why they are likely to keep saying them over and over again whenever they fail to respond to an email in time to hit a deadline.

To put it simply, saying these things are a waste of time.

Developing a better memory, changing situations and magically having an extra hour in the day don’t make a difference.

There is only one thing that makes a difference to the things that users say they really want in time management.

That something is new habits, and a user’s ability to create them at will.

Millions of people look in the mirror each morning and say to themselves “I wish I could lose a few pounds.”

The reason that they are unable to do so, is that they don’t know how to take a good idea, and turn it into a regular habit.  The result is predictable — the weight stays on in spite of the best  running shoes,  gym memberships and supplements that money can buy.

In time management, there are lots of lists floating around with seductive titles such as “101 Time Management Tips.”  The tips themselves may be world-class, but they are entirely useless to someone who does not know how to implement new habits in their lives.

To compound the difficulty,  each person’s habit-pattern is different, and one cannot simply copy another person’s approach to changing habits and hope to be successful.  We each have unique habit patterns, and getting rid of old habits and learning new ones takes a certain degree of self-knowledge to be successful more often than not.

For example, I have found that I respond well to a daily checklist that I do each morning.  I don’t respond well to a post-it note attached to my computer monitor.  About a year ago I switched to becoming a regular flosser by tying my floss to my razor with a rubber band, and I learned that I could physically tie one action to another and teach myself a new habit.

On the other hand, someone who nags me each day to learn a new habit is not an effective method for me.

You may respond well to piece of string tied on to your finger, or to the support of a good friend who is also starting the same or similar habit.

Others may respond well to being part of a live support group that gathers each week to discuss progress and receive coaching.

There is no perfect formula.

Knowing the right formula for you, however, makes all the difference in the world between having a knowledge of 101 tips while implementing none, and successfully creating a new practice that continues unstopped for several years.

All this makes me think that writing a blog on time management is a bit misleading, because good time management at Yellow, Orange and Green belts is all a matter of the habits that one practices, and little else.  I’d probably do anyone who wanted to improve their time management skills a favor by telling them to forget about the topic, until they discovered a way to change their habitual practices at will.

This is personal-mastery at its best, and an essential aspect to every time management program that exists.  Whether a user picks up a new time management book, or takes the MyTimeDesign program online or a live program for 2 days it doesn’t matter.   They simply cannot succeed in changing their lives without having an effective way to work on themselves.

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Low Adoption Rate of Time Management Techniques

I came across the following post from the Success Making Machine website that refers to a podcast by David Allen in which he describes the low adoption rate of time management.  It’s titled (in part) David Allen on GTD®’s Low Adoption Rate.

In the podcast, Allen admits that there’s a very low adoptation rate of people who start with GTD and end up using it. They include:

Not easy to get started- Try to put yourself in an environment where the GTD language is spoken.

Getting more dimensions– Keep learning. Keep rereading. One answer he gives is GTD connect.
High level issues (20,000 & 30,000 & 40,000- feet)- if you don’t address your high level goals “your system will become flat”.

Here is the actual quote: “My first book sold over 1 million copies in 28 languages.. I have never had one piece of feedback that anything in … GTD is inaccurate, or that didn’t work.  I have had a zillion people tell me – It works… I don’t work it.”

This is pretty interesting to me.

I think that all prescribed time management systems have a fatal flaw — they are built on the assumption that users are able to apply the ideas in the way that the author intended.  This is quite different from the notion that users are actually developing their own time management systems, using bits and pieces of systems, in a haphazard manner.  The results are therefore unpredictable.

However, even those users that desire to follow someone else’s system are no more successful, and it’s not because GTD, Covey and other systems don’t work. As Allen imples, he has never had anyone tell him that there is anything wrong with his system.

The problem in this case is the major problem — people have a hard time creating new habits, and when the habits are foreign to their everyday practices, it gets even harder.

Allen and others offer users and readers entire systems of habits, and they have a hard time changing their behavior for the same reasons that they don’t follow their New Year’s resolutions to lose weight.

They simply have an inadequate approach to implementing new habits.

The latest research on quitting habits such as smoking advocates a level of self-knowledge that people don’t have. To be effective, they must be come to know and understand how they change habits.

In others words, they need a custom set of supports that will ensure that the new habit gets created.

Without this knowledge, it’s an uphill battle.

I have tried to understand what I need to include in the mix to get my habits to change, and while I haven’t made tremendous progress, I have used a simple Habit Tracker to implement the same new habits each day.

This has worked wonders for me, as I start each day by going through the list and ticking off each of the habits I did in the last 24 hours.

I have also used RealAge.com to help me change my eating habits.  Two years ago, I did the test and discovered I had a real age of 33.  That was when I was 41.

Now, I have a real age of 30.3.

Talk about motivation — I am doing all the things I know I should do in terms of eating, flossing etc. just because it’s kinda cool to see my real ageactually go down based on the changes I am making in my life.

So, I now know 2 important things about what it takes for me to change a habit.  I need some kind of daily or regular tracking mechanism, and I also need a measurable goal that I believe I can change over time.

I believe that each person’s “habit changing blueprint” is different, and that there is no way to implement the new habits that a changed time management system requires  without being able to alter the underlying habits.

GTD and others systems would benefit if they also taught this all-important skill.

habit-list71.png

P.S.  The Habit Tracker I now use was adapted from the form developed by Productivity501.com.  The picture at left is just an example.

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Becoming More Disciplined

habit-tracker-piece.jpgOn a teleconference today, the attendees and I talked about the need to be more disciplined in order to change one’s time management practices.

I thought about it for a moment and then I had a different thought.

A year ago, I  created a worksheet for each to help me implement a number of new habits.

Essentially, I focused on creating a single new habit, which was to sit down and work through my list of new habits each work-day, before doing anything else.

If I performed the habit in the last 24 hours I would earn a check (or tick) on  the list, and if not, I would  place an “x.”  I had no idea how it would work, but I was shocked to realize that I have been doing the practice for over a year, coming up with a new sheet each month.  I have implemented all the new habits that I have committed myself to, and created a new raft of brand new habits during the year to put in place.

Recently, I switched over to a small spreadsheet on my PDA, and am no longer using paper, but underlying idea remains exactly the same.

As a result of doing this practice, I now have several new practices that have become habits.  When a practice on the sheet has become a habit, I simply remove it.

Question is — Am I more disciplined?

I’m not sure, as “more disciplined” sounds to me like one of those judgements that people make without really understanding what they mean, or how to accomplish them. For example, it’s not helpful to tell someone to “become more disciplined.”

It’s much more helpful to tell them to:

a.  create a tracking sheet for the new habits  they want to implement

b. each morning, before doing anything else, go down the list and track whether or not the habit was implemented in the last 24 hours

c. at the end of each month, create a new sheet

In other words, forget about being disciplined and instead, focus on your sheet each morning and on doing as many items each day.  By the end of the month aim to do almost all of the items each day.  People may believe that you are being more disciplined, but you know that it’s simply been a matter of focusing on one sheet of paper each day.

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Falling off the Wagon

wagon.jpgFrom time to time, a user of a time management system may find themselves “falling off the wagon,” neglecting to perform one or more of the critical habits that underlie the 2Time approach.

For example, they might forgo manual capturing, and instead try to remember everything  without writing anything down.

Or, they  might allow their capture points, such as their email inbox or voicemail box, to become full, or heavy with time demands.

They couldt even forget about scheduling altogether and just try to use their memory as their guide to tell them what to work on next.

In any case, their time managment system starts to fail under the weight of a practice that is not being undertaken.

In my experience the short-term solution is to set time aside to correct the error.  The more permanent fix is to take a good hard look at the underlying habit, and to use it as a learning moment.

There is some reason why the practice has not become a habit, and there are usually some supports to put in place in order to help solidify the practice.  For example, in order to remember to floss at least twice per week, I learned to tie my floss-er to the razor I use to shave my head.  Because I shave my head twice a week, it means that I cannot fail to remember to floss, as it is impossible for me to start shaving without separating the two instruments, and therefore remembering.

This worked for me, but the point is not that everyone should start tying different objects together in order to remember to use them.

Instead, I have discovered that for MY habit-pattern, this approach works, and now flossing has become irrevocably linked to shaving in my regular practices, much to the satisfaction of my dentist.

When we fall off the wagon, it’s a signal from the universe that our habits aren’t working, and that we don’t understand ourselves well enough to succeed at changing habits.  It’s simply a call to further self-development and self-knowledge, and an opportunity to learn how to “work on ourselves.”
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Speechus Interruptus

giuliani-speech.jpgDuring a speech to the National Rifle Association during the Presidential campaign of 2008, Rudy Guiliani stopped to answer a cell phone call.

Obviously, from the tone of the conversation he had with his wife, it was much less important than the speech he was giving. Like many professionals, however, he has developed the bad habit of stopping what he is doing to do something else that just might be more important.

This flies in the face of the principle of focusing on the task at hand so deeply that one enters the Flow state. You can see from the video that he mind takes a moment to return to the task at hand, and if his wife had just told him that there was “an emergency at home,”  for example, he would have shot himself in the foot by taking the call and possibly ruining the speech.

Click here to be taken to the video of Rudy Giuliani interrupting his speech to the NRA to take the call.

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The Three Ingredients of a Daily Plan

I read an interesting post on the topic of the kinds of things that one should look to do on a daily basis.

When I found it, I realized that it covered some of the things I wanted to write in a post, on  the topic of my own daily routine.

It’s  a simple post, but I guess that’s why it caught my attention.  I have found that skipping steps in my daily routine often leads to trouble, and results in commitments falling through the cracks.

At the start of the post, the author, Marcia Francois, makes the  point that each person needs to develop their own routine, and that even a well-established daily plan should be revisited from time to time.

This is some top-quality Time Management 2.0 advice.

Here is the link to the article – the 3 ingredients of a good daily plan.

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A Small, New Habit

istock_000001077068small.jpgI made a small change in one of my habits that I don’t recommend.

It’s not that it’s a bad change — far from it — it’s NOT the case that I, all of a sudden, decided to do without my favorite capture point.

The story is a simple one.  I started a project that has a tremendous number of time demands.

At the start of each day, I realized that I was starting in too much of a hurry, and needed to spend some more time Emptying, before doing things like checking voicemail and email.

I implemented the following practice:

Step 1 – check to see which items are incomplete from the prior day.  Put the in a reliable place.

Step 2 –  look at today’s schedule and configure it to my liking

Step 3 – empty my paper pad that serves as my primary capture  point

Step 4 – download email and  listen to voicemail, while moving as many items as possible away from these areas intended for temporary storage

Step 5 – schedule any new items into my calendar

As I said before, I don’t recommend these steps to anyone.  I also don’t say that they are useful.

I AM saying that  the process of adjusting one’s habits to the circumstances at hand is a critical one that no professional who is serious can ignore.  It lies at the heart of the Time Management 2.0 approach.

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The Link Between Managing Time and Peace of Mind

I recently wrote an article on the futility of trying to manage one’s time, instead of one’s habits.

I was asked by the folks over at Simpleology.com to address the mistake that many people make when it comes to time management.  The article entitled Quit Managing Time and Get Some Peace of Mind can be found by clicking on the link.

Incidentally, Simpleology is perhaps the best online personal development site that one can find at no initial cost.   It’s well worth a visit, or better yet, a subscription as the authors are quite generous in what they provide to someone who has committed to giving nothing more than their email address.