How to Get Going, Stay There, and Visit Often

The lesson which life repeats and constantly enforces is ‘look under foot.’ You are always nearer the divine and the true sources of your power than you think.

–John Burroughs

My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground upon which I stand. And we have more possibilities available in each moment than we realize.

—Thich Nhat Hanh

Laziness is not a one-and-done decision. We choose whether to be lazy or not every second of every day. 

If we change our short term, we change our long term.

How to Get Going (i.e., go from Lazy to Not Lazy)

The hurdle between the realms of Lazy and Not Lazy is most often procrastination. Procrastination is when we know we should be doing one thing but instead do something else.

What can we do about it?

The ideal scenario, of course, is to get over it and get on with the task at hand. Willpower is the first and best weapon. Being truly productive and reaching our goals means exerting our willpower. And we have to exert it strongly.

Grit.

But this is much easier said than done.

If willpower is insufficient, one helpful tool is to try to figure out why it is you are procrastinating. Often it is because of anxiety or fear. If you can identify the reason, it is much easier to deal with.

Sometimes, despite your best intentions and efforts, you have fewer resources at hand than you planned on. You’re tired, or you’re distracted by something, feeling down, whatever the reason, you just can’t get the ball rolling.

Here are some strategies for when this occurs:

Do something ridiculously small. Writing 1,000 words of your novel is intimidating. Writing 500 words? Less intimidating. Writing 250 words? Less intimidating still. Writing 100 words? You can do that. Writing 10 words? Anyone can do that. Write one sentence. Wash one dish. Make one phone call or write one e-mail. One. You can also work for a ridiculously short amount of time (I keep a one minute hourglass sand timer on my desk for such times.)

Even if you make only a little progress, you’ve maintained the habit. If the habit did die—and new habits often die young—then you would’ve lost substantially more progress. So in the absolute sense, you made tremendous progress.

But the best part is this: We tend to keep going.

According to psychologists, the Zeigarnik Effect kicks in once we have begun a task, providing a voice that motivates us to keep going. It’s the cause of any time you’ve ever said “Be right there!” three or four times before actually being right there.

This will seem wrong because of cognitive bias, but it’s true: The decision to act occurs before we “feel” motivated or unmotivated.

So, if we connect these ideas, the process is:

(1) Make the decision to do a small task or work for a small amount of time.

(2) Feel motivation.

(3) Make a little progress.

(4) Make a lot of progress.

The Zeigarnik Effect kicks in again, forcing us past the initial few minutes.

Routines are great, but you don’t need a pencil sharpener that much. A little routine before you begin work is helpful, especially if it involves something you like. Coffee. Music. Putting a particular hat (or in my case, a hoodie) on. Aligning your keyboard just right and refilling your glass of water. But don’t get obsessed with the routine such that the task supports the routine, rather than the other way around.

This has happened to me (and will again.) I like pencils and prefer to have one nearby, even if I am primarily, or exclusively, typing. Rare is the time I do not have a pencil and a pencil sharpener within reach. But once in awhile, I have a horrible lapse of judgment. It always hits me like a punch in the gut… Where is my pencil sharpener? I start looking around frantically, begin wondering if I should drive back home to get one, or just go buy a new one at CVS.

I do this for about a minute before I realize how pathetic I am. The point is: Establish a good routine but remember its purpose.

Compete with yourself. Gamify. There are all sorts of ways to turn tasks into games. There are articles all over the web and apps too. An easy thing I’ve experimented with is assigning point values to my actions, more for the most impactful actions, less for the more trivial, negative for bad habits. The goal, every day, is to beat the day before, and beat the total average. I pull this one out from time to time.

Compete with yourselves. If some physicists are right, then there are, right now, near-infinite versions of yourself in parallel universes. In some of them, you are crushing life up and down, left and right. In others, you are a total bum. And there you are, right now, in our universe, somewhere between those two poles. Everyone between where you are and the Life Crusher version of yourself is beatable. You can be more productive than them… because you are them. What changes can you make to out—do yourself? What are most versions of yourself not considering? What’s your advantage? This might seem silly, but I swear it works.

Use carrots or Game of Thrones, or even better, Italian subs. Can you build any rewards into your schedule? Allow yourself to watch Game of Thrones after x, or maybe only go out to brunch after you do y. Or treat yourself to a large Italian sub with hots, extra pickles, light oil and lighter vinegar, oregano, and a dash of pepper. Or watch Game of Thrones while eating said Italian sub.

Bring allies, but tell them to leave their lyrics at home. Music. It helps motivate me, especially when I am writing. Good music makes time better, great music makes time disappear. A Spotify playlist, customized to your individual ebbs and flows during a session, is the best timer I know of. (Music can also serve as a carrot, but that’s really mean.)

Deprive yourself of something to force yourself into action. Go to a coffee shop without your laptop cord. Or go with nothing but a pen and notebook. (And a wallet, don’t just go sit down without ordering something. I’m looking at you, Berklee College of Music students.) Most, if not all, of us, have several “blades” and “bows” distracting us in some way, leaching our resources.

Productive procrastination. If you just can’t summon the willpower to work on the most impactful action, is there something else important you could do? It might not be the goal you intended to work on, or it might be an aspect of another goal, but the important thing is that you are doing something.

Have a backup to your backups. If you are totally brain-dead, you can do what I call “Zombie Mode.” Basically, you allow yourself to do any mindless or near-mindless activity that, in some way, pushes you towards your long term goals. Obviously, this is more of a last resort. But, again, something > nothing.

How to Keep Going (i.e., stay Not Lazy)

It’s not just about getting the ball rolling. You must keep it rolling. Here are some strategies:

Don’t become a victim of perfectionism. The greatest masterpieces the world has ever seen are not perfect. Nothing you ever do will be perfect. Perfectionism is an amazing way to hide your fear. But that’s what it is: lipstick on a pig. If you find yourself spending valuable resources, heed the words of Seth Godin and “Ship it.” Schedule a specific window during which you do everything necessary to get your project or product or whatever in shippable form. Then ship it without regret. (I also advise you to keep everything you cut. I’ve often found great material in the carnage left behind from the mad rush to ship.)

At all costs, beware the rabbit hole. Rabbit holes, covered by fallen leaves, are hard to see. Sometimes the rabbit hole takes the form of a detail that, at first, seems shiny and important, but quickly proves to be insignificant. In spite of this, we trudge forward, now not only convinced to make progress, but also to justify our initial decision. Other times the rabbit hole is an idea in our heads, a way that will make us more productive. Or an idea that might solve a critical problem, but which requires significant resources.

Rabbit holes waste time, can lead us astray, and they’re everywhere. Expect them. If you don’t stumble across one once in awhile, then you’re stumbling a lot more than you think.

Climb out of the rabbit hole.

If you beat yourself up about it, you are not stumbling into a rabbit hole; you are digging a new one.

Sometimes you just need to take a break. If you suddenly become the world’s best rabbit hunter, maybe you just need to open a book or flip on the TV. It’s not a great habit to get into, but sometimes it’s the best option available.

Time-boxing:

Time travel is not (yet?) possible, but you can still manipulate time. I am a huge proponent of time-boxing. It is a constituent aspects of my productivity system and workflow. It changed the game for me. In fact, most of this book was edited and revised during a time-boxing session.

If the term is new to you, let me introduce it: Time-boxing is a strategy in which you take control of time and use it strategically to get things done. The idea is simple:

Set a clock for a set period of time.

Focus on the task at hand for that duration of time.

When the timer goes off, take a break.

Repeat.

After a pre-determined number of focus sessions, take a longer break.

Repeat.

The psychology behind it is this: When you know a break is coming, when you know your misery has an endpoint, you feel more motivated to move forward. After your break, you're refreshed, and you start the clock again.

When I use this method, I get far more done, I get it done in a shorter amount of time, and I feel much less spent because I didn’t need to fight with myself. Instead of checking Twitter in the middle of a paragraph, I know that I can check Twitter on my break. Instead of checking my phone, I wait until my break. It gives me something to look forward to and helps me get in the zone.

Think of your available time as opportunities to do this. If done well, you can get more done in those blocks of time than you would have otherwise.

Time-boxing is also effective for actions we dread. Want to clean out your desk? Do a time-boxing session focused on one drawer of it. Want to clear a sink full of dishes? Start with a fork!

Even if it is just one short session, starting is often the hardest part, and you may end up working well past the buzzer.

The Pomodoro Method is the most popular time-boxing format. Put simply, a "Pomodoro" is 25 minutes of focus upon one discrete task. Complete the Pomodoro, take a 5 minute break, do another Pomodoro. After 4 Pomodoros, you take a longer break of 15—30 minutes. (15 is almost never enough for me. I think 30 is well-earned.)

Another feature of the Pomodoro Method (which applies equally well to any time-boxing method) is its ability to provide data on how long certain actions take. For example, when I was writing my dissertation, I figured out that writing a page took three times more Pomodoros than I initially thought it did.

You may also find that other actions take less time than you think. (For me, this often happens with tasks I am procrastinating. In my mind, they grow into venomous beasts of burden, but they're usually just annoying little pests.)

How to Get Going Next Time (i.e., be Not Lazy again soon)

End strategically. Ernest Hemingway would always end his writing session when he was feeling good, when the words were still flowing. Then he would retire for the day (from writing, that is, not other activities.) In so doing, he was more motivated to continue the task later. He remembered the feeling of “going good,” not the dread that results from quitting when you are stuck.

Don’t leave juicy information on the table. After you focus on a particular task, you will learn things about yourself, your habits, and your overall productivity. Learning is great, but if it is not applied to your future decision-making, what’s the point? Carry it forward.

Keep learning about everything, but mostly about yourself. Learn from your actions, tendencies, and thoughts. Challenge yourself. Expand your self-awareness, increase your emotional intelligence, and strive to understand your mental models.

(This was primarily sourced from How to be a Long Term Person in a Short Term World, available on Amazon.)

Opening your eyes is much harder than keeping them closed.

Defining your goals, visualizing your future, all that stuff: it’s not easy, but it’s roasted peanuts compared to looking down to see where your feet are planted right then and there.

Comfort is no test of truth. Truth is often far from being comfortable.

— Swami Vivekananda

Your day-to-day actions, whether intentional or not, are leading you somewhere. Changing directions first requires that you know where you’re currently going.

Assessing Your Trajectory

The purpose is not to beat yourself up. It’s not easy to honestly assess your life. Even if it’s an entirely private process, it feels like we’re pants-less in front of the world. That is why so few are willing to do it.

Causal Process of Personal Trajectories:

Intentions create objectives.

Objectives decide actions.

Actions cause short term outcomes.

Outcomes, over time, create a long term trajectory.

Filling in the Blanks

Most of the time, we’re unaware of our intentions; we often operate on instinct or emulate what others do. For similar reasons, we do not know our objectives; our true motivations are often hidden or amorphous.

The best we can do is identify our actions and outcomes, and from them surmise our trajectory.

Crude Method

1. Divide a piece of paper into three columns (or use a whiteboard or computer program — it doesn’t matter.) In the left column, write the most time- and energy-consuming actions you regularly take in the context of your work and career, or in pursuit of those (e.g., going to school.) Also include exercise or any side projects which you attend to once a week or more. Do not include hobbies unless they are part of some larger pursuit. Rather than make this exercise open-ended and analyze every component of every action you take, err on the side of ‘quick and dirty.’ If you can’t remember an action right away, then it’s probably not done with enough regularity to be included here.
2. In the middle column, write out the expected outcomes of these action. Maybe it’s “keep job” or “get promoted” or “get good grade.”
3. Extrapolate the actions five or so years into the future. Where does it lead you? Write this in the right column.

Is this where you want to go?

When I did this, I realized my actions were not leading me where I wanted to be. I knew I had to make a change.

Setting Your Own Trajectory

Once you know where you’re currently heading, you can set a new direction.

Creating actionable goals (discussed in a previous post) allows us to set meaningful intentions; clarify our objectives; perform actions based on reason and planning rather than instinct; and most important of all, learn from our outcomes so we can set our own long term trajectory.

This was primarily sourced from my book, How to be a Long Term Person in a Short Term World, available on Amazon.

How to Parse the "Vital Few" From the "Trivial Many"

Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.

–Vincent Van Gogh

The Best Sorts of Small Things

Much of the productivity literature speaks to external interruptions and internal struggles such as procrastination. Some of the literature speaks to the Pareto Principle and how its application to your task management can improve our efficacy.

Yet few discuss exactly how to figure out which tasks are more “pareto” than another.

OK, back up. Let’s talk terminology.

Pareto Principle

The Pareto Principle holds that 20% of inputs cause 80% of outputs, and applies to many contexts. (Even if the numbers are rarely so precise, the important takeaway is that there is a small group of inputs that are most consequential, and a larger group that is least consequential.)

The practical extension is that we should devote most of our resources to the most critical inputs. For example, if 20% of salespeople generate 80% of sales, we should give them every opportunity to succeed, even at the expense of the less successful 80% of salespeople.

Similarly, a few key network connections provide the majority of job leads, and so we should focus our time and energy proportionately.

Applied to productivity, we should spend most resources on the “vital few” actions, and fewer on the less critical actions.

That’s my objective here: to describe a method I use to figure out which tasks, exactly, are of the “vital few” and which are not.

Parsing the Pareto

Parsing the pareto 20% from the 80% is sometimes easy. If you’re learning to play the trumpet, spend more time practicing, less time shopping for fedoras and sunglasses, and you will improve.

If, while making a cup of coffee, you count sugar granules but don’t grind the beans, the Pareto Principle can help.

The best time to identify the pareto tasks is before you begin. When you’re in the thick of it, it is very hard to see the forest for the trees.

Benefits

Planning out only the most critical tasks also has the effect of preventing you from overplanning. It is tempting to plan out every single task because it “feels” productive, but it’s not.

Defining the pareto often clarifies what the goal itself is. It also provides a central node, helpful for determining what the other important tasks are. For example, if my goal is to “publish a book,” I would define “writing” as a pareto task, and would probably change my goal to “write a book.” This is a much better goal, for all of the reasons given in Chapter 3.

Pareto tasks compound future productivity by encouraging formation of habits and routines. When actions become habits or routines, we’re on auto-pilot. Procrastination, anxiety, and other forms of Resistance, are thoughts that enter the mind before action. With habits and routines, we’re already taking action, so there’s no opportunity for the Resistance to inhibit us.

Arguably most beneficial is the skill-building potential. By skill, I mean an ability that is relatively rare and applicable to many situations. Pareto tasks often fit this description.

Pareto tasks are often easier to measure and receive feedback from. For example, if writing, one can track how many words are written, and figure out the contexts in which we write best.

By identifying the “trivial many” tasks, we know what we can delegate to others. We can hire a freelancer to proofread or someone to design our book covers, for example. (Which I did not… but maybe next time.) Such an exercise reveals trivial actions as well as worthless and even harmful ones.

When we can eliminate a task entirely, we free up resources. It’s not as good as completing a task. It’s better.

Complications

Attaining goals requires both the vital and the “trivial.”

For example, if you write an entire book but never try the “trivial” task of showing it to somebody, no one will ever read it.

(And presumably, if your goal is to write a book, this includes actually sending it out into the world.) Thus, certain seemingly trivial tasks are, to some extent, vital.

The converse is also true; the vital can become trivial. If a first draft begins to ramble in an incoherent direction, words are being written, but they are the wrong words.

Pareto Analysis

A Pareto Analysis is a way of systematically determining which tasks are most worthy of your time and other precious resources. In other words, determining what must be done and then, of those, which are paramount.

Step 1: Identify actions

Before you can determine which actions are pareto or not, you have to get the candidates together. Don’t list every action for a particular project. There are too many, and your resources are limited.

Instead, list only those tasks that strike you as necessary and important. If something is important, but not necessary, it does not go here. (Feel free to write it elsewhere, of course.)

Hint: If thinking of a particular action gives you anxiety, that is very likely a pareto action.

Step 2: Identify the pareto

With this list made, you are now going to apply the other two requirements: A pareto task must be necessary, and must also be vital and resource-intensive.

These are important distinctions because necessary things need not be vital (designing Kindle book covers, for example), nor are vital things always necessary (you can publish a book without proofreading it — it’s not smart, but you can do it.)

It is both necessary and vital that you actually upload the completed manuscript to Amazon for it to be published, but this is not resource-intensive.

It is also important to note that most tasks have aspects of which meet the criteria and others that do not. This depends entirely on how you define the task. For example, if you define the task as “read x book,” then you’ve “rounded up,” inevitably drudging up some redundant or unimportant (nonpareto) pages.

If, instead, you take a few minutes to acquaint yourself with the book’s structure, you will realize that you can read it strategically, prioritizing the reading of certain pages over others. In theory, you can keep lowering the scale, finding the critical 20% in granular details. Keep in mind that, at some point, returns diminish.

Circle those actions that meet the criteria. These actions now wear the prestigious badge of pareto.

Obviously, other pareto actions might emerge through experience, or because they slip your mind at this moment. That’s to be expected.

Also, if it’s something you’ve been procrastinating for whatever reason, it might be time to undeservedly “promote” it to the pareto level so that it gets done.

Step 3: Order actions

Next, we list the actions sequentially — both the pareto and the nonpareto-but-necessary. (Actions are not necessarily sequential, but usually, there is a fair amount of necessary sequence between steps.)

If actions are not necessarily sequential, then put them on the same line, giving priority to the pareto actions.

Then live the list. Spend as much time as you can on the pareto, getting the necessary but nonpareto out of the way to spend more time on the pareto.

This is the list that will, hopefully, keep you on track as you pursue your goals by keeping you committed to the Pareto Principle.

Step 4: Create guideposts

Now that we’ve defined the pareto and necessary actions, we can set up the guideposts that get us from here to there.

I discussed this in greater detail in a previous post and in my book . The essential idea is that, whenever possible, don’t assign arbitrary due dates to your goals. Instead, create guideposts: movable, flexible, soft targets.

A final thought, problem, and solution

As I mentioned above, sometimes the “trivial” becomes “vital.”

Stapling your research paper before you hand it in to your professor is certainly not the most important part of your project, but it no doubt helps.

True, taking out the trash costs you 10 minutes of time during which you could be completing a pareto task, but by that logic, you should never take out your trash because there will always be something more “vital” to do.

The same might be said for taking a shower. This, of course, is ludicrous.

You must staple your paper, take out the trash, and shower!

Think of it this way: If all you do are the Pareto actions, AT BEST you’ve scored an 80. In other words: a B — .

You passed the test. You wrote the book. You completed your project.

But it’s not an A. So you have to figure out how to spend 80% of your resources on the Pareto actions and 20% of the time on the perhaps-trivial-but-still-necessary tasks.

When you must do “unimportant” stuff, be strategic about when you do it. If it’s mindless, do it in between your major sessions. It will (almost) feel relaxing because your brain has been so taxed. A bit like swinging a bat after swinging a heavier bat — it feels lighter by comparison, even though it isn’t.

This was primarily sourced from How to be a Long Term Person in a Short Term World, available on Amazon.