The Procrastinator: I'll be back
Jun. 29th, 2007 12:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
todayiamadaisyAn item of note: The managing director of insurance company Allianz Australia is named Terry Towell.
I've been concerned lately about my titanic levels of procrastination. This has always been something of an issue; not so much at work, where reporting cycles and deadlines keep me on track, but away from work I frequently find myself crippled by inertia. I'm not sure if it's laziness or indecision or fear or... any number of things, really. Anyway, it occurred to me the other day that I was putting off writing an LJ entry - that is, finding an excuse not to do something I usually use as an excuse not to do other things - and realised that perhaps my procrastination was becoming a more serious problem.
So I've been trying to do something about it, and this has led me to the surreal world of productivity blogs. I was sort of prepared for it; I had psyched myself up to stomach plenty of "believe in yourself" and "dare to dream" slogans, but I had no idea what I was in for. What I had never considered was the possibility that there are people out there who make what they call "Moleskine hacks". That is, they get Moleskine notebooks - it's always Moleskines, I've noticed - and rule them up into personalised journals. Now, you and I might call that "using" a notebook, but we would be wrong, so very wrong; it's a Moleskine hack, and don't you forget it. Some sites even go so far as to review and recommend pens on the basis of how productive they are. Pens! I'll admit that I'm quite particular about pens - the pointier the better - but I wouldn't offer my expert opinion on them to anyone else.
Then there was the cult of Getting Things Done. This is a book that sets out a labyrinthine personal productivity system that has inspired a huge number of blogs that document the Things that various individuals are Getting Done. I read the book and I suppose it did have some useful ideas in it; it was mostly for work-related things like keeping the email inbox empty, which I do anyway. But the way the book says to go about this! It involves a flow chart to help you decide what action to take on a particular email, forty-three (yes, 43) folders to keep track of things to do in the future and a collection of lists of things to do, things to do for the things to do, things to do that are waiting for someone else to do something first, things you may want to do at some point and things to talk to people about doing. I tried to imagine myself doing all those things and realised that I would spend so much time fiddling about with folders and keeping lists up to date that I wouldn't Get anyThing Done at all.
After all that, I came across (I can't remember where, sadly) one simple idea. Every night before I go to bed I write on a small card three things I'm definitely going to do the next day, and the following day I do them; anything else I do, I write on the back of the card. At the end of the day, I look it over, think smugly how productive I've been, then rip it up and start again. I know it sounds twee and ridiculously simple, but I'm finding that it helps me enormously.
I've been concerned lately about my titanic levels of procrastination. This has always been something of an issue; not so much at work, where reporting cycles and deadlines keep me on track, but away from work I frequently find myself crippled by inertia. I'm not sure if it's laziness or indecision or fear or... any number of things, really. Anyway, it occurred to me the other day that I was putting off writing an LJ entry - that is, finding an excuse not to do something I usually use as an excuse not to do other things - and realised that perhaps my procrastination was becoming a more serious problem.
So I've been trying to do something about it, and this has led me to the surreal world of productivity blogs. I was sort of prepared for it; I had psyched myself up to stomach plenty of "believe in yourself" and "dare to dream" slogans, but I had no idea what I was in for. What I had never considered was the possibility that there are people out there who make what they call "Moleskine hacks". That is, they get Moleskine notebooks - it's always Moleskines, I've noticed - and rule them up into personalised journals. Now, you and I might call that "using" a notebook, but we would be wrong, so very wrong; it's a Moleskine hack, and don't you forget it. Some sites even go so far as to review and recommend pens on the basis of how productive they are. Pens! I'll admit that I'm quite particular about pens - the pointier the better - but I wouldn't offer my expert opinion on them to anyone else.
Then there was the cult of Getting Things Done. This is a book that sets out a labyrinthine personal productivity system that has inspired a huge number of blogs that document the Things that various individuals are Getting Done. I read the book and I suppose it did have some useful ideas in it; it was mostly for work-related things like keeping the email inbox empty, which I do anyway. But the way the book says to go about this! It involves a flow chart to help you decide what action to take on a particular email, forty-three (yes, 43) folders to keep track of things to do in the future and a collection of lists of things to do, things to do for the things to do, things to do that are waiting for someone else to do something first, things you may want to do at some point and things to talk to people about doing. I tried to imagine myself doing all those things and realised that I would spend so much time fiddling about with folders and keeping lists up to date that I wouldn't Get anyThing Done at all.
After all that, I came across (I can't remember where, sadly) one simple idea. Every night before I go to bed I write on a small card three things I'm definitely going to do the next day, and the following day I do them; anything else I do, I write on the back of the card. At the end of the day, I look it over, think smugly how productive I've been, then rip it up and start again. I know it sounds twee and ridiculously simple, but I'm finding that it helps me enormously.