Discardian

Efficiency isn't the first priority

Do not believe that it is very much of an advance to do the unnecessary three times as fast.

         --Peter Drucker

Upgrade, wherever possible.

"To progress in life you must give up the things you do not like. Give up doing the things that you do not like to do. You must find the things that you do like. The things that are acceptable to your mind."

-- Agnes Martin

Find your baseline

Ze Frank's got a good idea for you - acknowledge that you're made up of many selves with different moods.

Accept that you are who you are, in the mood you're in today. Recalibrate to the current baseline and try to do the things that today's me is best at.

Tie Off Loose Ends

Two things today:

- Do the mundane things that must be done before December 31st.

For me that's figuring out submitting receipts from health expenses for the past year for my Flexible Spending Plan fund. Always odd how this, with it's great potential for a reimbursement check, gets pushed to the end of my list. Tackle your bureaucracies and take whatever rewards that brings you - even if it's just the relief of being done with the chore.

- Think about an emotional loose end that you could complete.

Perhaps it's having watched the brilliant film Hiroshima Mon Amour this past week that has me musing on the past and that amazing balancing act between the fear of forgetting (and repeating) our horrors & mistakes and the necessity of forgetting in order to live life unparalyzed.

Look ahead & avoid headaches

I suppose there are folks for whom December and January are not busy months, but I'm not sure I know any.

Since the chaos is descending and won't lift for a bit, take a little time today to smooth your path.

- Renew prescriptions - and check out online or renewals by mail if your pharmacy offers the service.

- Pay bills early or set up automatic payment.

- Look over your calendar for anything else requires special action (e.g. reserving rental cars, buying tickets, finding those tickets you bought a while back, etc.)

3 Hours Of What You Most Need

Maybe you need to knock an important errand off your list so you quit fretting about it.

Maybe you need to catch up on sleep.

Maybe there's a movie you really really really want to see in the theater.

Maybe you need some time alone to just take care of yourself & relax.

Maybe you want nothing more than to go out to play with your friends.

Whatever it is, give it to yourself. Make your well-being a priority today.

Back on Track

Have you been slacking on something? Maybe even failing to do once a week what you'd planned to do every day?

Pick one good habit you'd been meaning to have and start doing it again. Today. And tomorrow. And the next day.

Two Priorities: Day 2

1. Work

Today go back to the project(s) you identified as "that which your boss cares most about you having completed".

First, figure out the status and next step for it/them.

Second, if the next step can be completed in less than 30 minutes, do it or identify what needs to happen before you can move it forward.

Third, email a status report to your boss. "Hi, I thought you'd be interested in an update on what's happening with these projects..." Make sure it covers current status, next step, any actions required by others to move it forward, and when you're expecting to be able to do that step or meet with the others to get it rolling. Be concise; bosses really like having a clear picture from a brief message.

2. Home

Find all the open projects that are taking up more than a shoebox or a binder's space. Jot them down on paper. Mull them over a little.

Circle the ones that still matter to you.

Put a star by the ones that you'd also enjoy working on if you suddenly magically had a completely free day tomorrow.

Draw a dotted line through the ones that don't matter to you anymore.

Two Priorities: Day 1

1. Work (or, for the retired & students, Projects You Do For Others)

Carve 20 minutes out of your day somewhere (or stay late or come in early tomorrow if you have to) to think hard about a few things & take a few notes:
- that which your boss cares most about you having completed;
- that which nags at you most and which it will relieve you greatly to have completed;
- that which your boss cares about and which has been waiting for a while and which can be completed in less than an hour;
- that which will most help you be more efficient in the future;
- that which is a demonstration of the skills which are required for the position you'd like to be promoted to.

We're going to come back to these each day for the rest of the week, so keep these high-level categories in mind as you work through the days.

2. Home

Find that uncompleted project which is taking up the most space. Put in 45 minutes on it OR pack it up with a note to remind yourself of the next steps to do OR officially abandon it & get it out of the way.

Project Progress

There's a project you have that's in a partially-completed state. You know, that one you keep looking at all the time and thinking "oh jeez, I really need to get rolling on that".

Today is the day to work on it for 90 minutes straight. A good solid chunk of effort, that's what it needs.

You can go longer if you get inspired. ;)

It's here! Saturday!

Yes, that day that you've spent all week thinking "On Saturday I'll..." about.

So, what's on your list? Do it!

If you've packed too much in, pare it down to what you'll most enjoy and be most relieved by being done with.

Me, I'm visiting Grandma Susie, dumping a bunch of old crap at the Goodwill, doing a bit of shopping for obscure cocktail ingredients (who would have thought that orange bitters would be so elusive?) & fresh fruit & veg, and watching DVDs & reading.

Be yourself, no matter where you are

It doesn't matter how small a space you live in, be true to yourself.

Take a look through these wonderful portraits by Micheal Wolf of the residents of Hong Kong's oldest public housing estate. Just click on the first picture's thumbnail and then click on the image that pops up to see the next picture.

I love these faces. Humans are so great!

Now, if they can be so diverse, so clearly collecting that which is important to them in a little home, what would what the essentials be for you?

Don't Let Imaginary Obligations Stress You Out

Sometimes we act as though we have a lot more loaded on ourselves than we really do. We set up these expectations not with others, necessarily, but with ourselves which can then prevent us from meeting real deadlines without feeling overwhelmed.

Suppose, for example, you started a weblog that you try to have new content in every day. (I know, I know; where do I get these crazy examples?) If you aren't charging for the "service" and you're not being paid for it, it needs to be in your mental category of Optional not Required activities.

Yes, it's good to set goals and keep up with them. Yes, it leads to improved skills or other benefits. But, ya don't gotta!

The things you do have to do by a certain time or on a certain day will sometimes add up to a large list. This is when you can make an agreement with yourself to put other things on hold.

If a window of low stress comes during your break and you feel like it, sure, but do not feel a speck of guilt over making a plan to opt out of optional activities for a set period of time.

Keep yourself happy and relaxed and rewarded.

***

As you may guess, this tip comes with the announcement that Discardian will be on holiday until mid-September. Please enjoy the archives in the meantime and happy discarding!

Safety Nets

If something suddenly takes up all your time & energy, it's very helpful to be able to give it the necessary attention without it throwing things even more out of balance.

Direct deposit and automatic bill pay can really save you when what you most need to do to get yourself through a demanding time is to come home and think about nothing at all.

Drinking enough water and getting decent meals - especially breakfasts - and as much sleep as you can will help keep your body supporting the stress on your mental focus and your emotions.

Clear communication with friends, family and significant others can reduce the potential for drama, which is usually the last thing you need. Say something like "I'm winding up putting all my energy into [whatever is going on] and I'm afraid it's going to make me [spend less time with you, be unfocused, be unusually emotional, ...]; I'm sorry in advance if that turns out to be the case and I truly do appreciate any slack you can give me while I'm getting through this." It won't solve everything, but it should weed down the number of "Why didn't you come to my party?" whines.

Most of all, be honest with yourself. Prioritize and let stuff go as you need to. Do some things well that are most important and skip or skimp on other things that aren't. You can't always do it all and that's OK.

Do Your Worst Wednesday II

Here it is Wednesday again. How was it having those unfavored tasks chipped away at last week? Did the little bit of progress help unstick a stuck project? Was it pleasing to have that loathed chore done and not nagging you?

This week's worst is again in two parts:

1. Bureaucracy
Take care of one tedious bureaucratic chore that has been malingering on your list. Make that appointment to renew your driver's license, set up direct deposit for your paychecks with your HR department at work, refill those prescriptions, whatever will give you that lovely "*phew*, that's finally done" feeling.

2. The Worst Room
At home, what room is the biggest mess? As I write this, my "guest" room is so cluttered with the things I'm going to donate to charity that it would be really difficult to have anyone visit. Where's the core of your physical chaos? Give it 30 minutes of focused attention today. It may be that it's such a disaster all you can do is write down the plan of all the steps that need to happen to recover that space. That's okay, just be sure you use all 30 minutes and get started on step one as soon as you can.

My friend Mena got inspired when her husband was off on a trip and surprised him on his return with a beautiful new sitting room she'd unearthed from under the piled boxes, junk mail, and random crud that had piled up in their spare room. A whole extra room in your home for just the price of some cleaning up and maybe a little new furniture to round out the new look? That's a deal!

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Today

- Do one horrid ugly chore that you always put off. (For me it seems to be scrubbing the bathroom porcelain that's the most loathed task).

- Do at least one thing you've been feeling bad about not having done. Write that letter, call that elderly relative, mail that gift, write those donation checks to your favorite charity.

- Do one thing you really love doing that you somehow haven't been good at getting around to lately. Walk on the beach, go see a movie, get together with the gang, hang out with the kids doing fun things together.

You'll feel so accomplished at bedtime!

What's your time worth?

Here's a tip from Discardian Joe:

In high school, I was good friends with the tech director in the school's theatre. He had a lot of commitments, in his job at the school, in local theater, and in the community. But he had a remarkably good method of deciding whether to take on a design job or more volunteer work. He decided how much his free time was worth to him, in dollars per hour. If the new commitment wasn't either remunerative enough or fulfilling enough to be worth that amount per hour, he said no. "They were going to pay me $500 to do the set design," he'd say, "but it was going to take 25 or 30 hours of work, and I bill my free time at $25 an hour."

Decide what your free time is worth to you. If you're an undergraduate, the number might be around $5; if you're a CEO, it might be in the hundreds. Before you take on an optional commitment, ask yourself whether the compensation or pleasure of the task is worth the amount of money it'll cost you in free time.

*sigh* And some days ya just gotta do that thing

More about balance has been postponed in favor or restoring the critical inbalance in my home between clean and dirty underwear/towels/sheets/everything.

What's just gotta get handled around your world?

Maybe it's a chore, maybe it's a movie you have to see before it goes away, maybe it's a phone call you've been putting off, maybe it's getting the hell out of the house and taking some time for yourself so you don't go stark raving mad I tell you mad.

To reclaim a phrase from the corporations: just do it. You'll be so relieved afterwards!

Knocking down the roadblock

Got a To-Do that's been on your list for way too long?

Today you're going to do one of two things:
1) Decide you're never going to do it
or
2) Spend 30 minutes on it

One or the other. No in between.

Putting your time in the right place

As a general principle, spend 80% of your time on the 20% most important activities.

Don't spend more time maintaining your to-do list than doing what's on it.

The corollary to this is that 80% of what will fall onto your plate is just not a priority. That doesn't necessarily mean it can all be discarded, but some of it can and rest can be postponed until the important stuff is done.

Put an index card up on the wall in your office that says

80 / 20

to remind you.

Prioritize your energy

A lot of the time my advice is basically "just do it", but sometimes that isn't the right answer.

I have a guest room that is currently a halfway house for yard sale items, unfinished projects, and other miscellanea in a semi-confused state of existence in my daily life. I want to get it cleared out of the unimportant or no-longer-me stuff and turned into a space I really use. It weighs on me that I'm paying rent for that room and I don't make proper use of it.

However, today I have to concede that now is not the time. I have a massively busy schedule at work for the next month. I will be in a state of intense activity every day and have at least three conferences to prepare materials for.

This month, I'm closing the door. What am I paying that rent for? For the ability to put my personal chaos in another room and not have it detract from the peaceful, soothing nature of the rest of my home.

When you need some clarity and extra calm, find those resources you already have to help accommodate and relieve the stress-causing things in your life. Split the to-do list into "Must happen now" and "Can wait until things settle down" and absolutely do not worry about that second list.

What's the first thing on my important list? "Stay well and happy and unstressed".
What's second? "Support my family and friends as best I can".
What's third? "Perform well at work".
What's not on the list? "Clean out the armoire in the guest room".

Be sure that getting organized and uncluttered doesn't leave you overwhelmed all the time. Sometimes the best tactic truly is to just shove that crap in the closet and deal with it later. (Just don't put the bills in there or postpone later too long).

Slay the beast

Thanks to Heartsong for her great tip in the comments yesterday. Yes, absolutely, when something has been on the top of your to-do list for long time and you keep putting it off, you need to either find a way that it can be permanently off your list or get started on it. Sometimes those first 15 minutes are all you need to overcome the entropy.

Today, look for the physical manifestations of the not-yet-done items on your list. What is clogging up your space that doesn't need to be? Do one thing today that cleans some of that stuff out of your life.

The other day Joe & I went and sold books & CDs to Green Apple and that cleared a bit of room, but I still have quite a few things piled up in there waiting to be dealt with. First on my list, though, is not the stuff in the guest room or the basement, but that stack of bills, receipts and mail. It'll be gone by tonight.

Take Your Chances/Cut Your Losses

If a great opportunity falls in your lap, but it'll be tricky to bring off successfully, see if there's a way you can give it a try while maintaining an escape plan. If so, set up the timeline for when you will definitely proceed with it or will use that exit. Then go for it.

When you're trying to make a project come together be sure to regularly weigh the work required, time remaining and chances for success. If the picture gets bleak, instead of exhausting yourself for a poor result, choose one of these options

- scale the project back to make it achievable with the originally planned amount of work in the time remaining,

- extend the deadline to allow you to fit in more work at a non-stressful pace,

- decide it will not come out well enough to be worth it, cut your losses and call it off.

As time goes on you'll get better at estimating the work required, calculating the time things take, and judging before commitment whether something will be rewarding. If you let yourself intelligently make some mistakes by taking some risks, you can learn from them.

Set aside your short attention span

Sometimes something takes longer. Sometimes you need to mull it over for a while. (Sometimes you get the same Discardian post for a little longer than a day because it's that important).

What have you been giving less attention than it deserves?

Take some time off rushing around, slow down and focus.

If the goal in your life is not to have read as many blog posts & flipped through as many magazines & watched as many shows as time and caffeine allow - and I certainly hope it is not - then what do you want to have done with yourself? What would you like to be looking back on at the end of this year?

Go do some of that.

Email Mastery: Wham, Bam, Thank You Ma'am

Sorting incoming email faster is one of the critical ingredients of email mastery. You need to be able to process without acting on things. First, know what you have. Second, do the right next thing.

Taking as few seconds per message as possible whip through your inbox and delete, file or label everything as appropriate.

If you don't already have labels set up for your mail, do that quickly now. These labels should reflect the order in which you need to deal with things and I find it helpful to group by how long I think it will take to move this issue forward or perhaps even resolve it. My labels, once again, are Urgent, 2 minutes, 10 minutes, 30 minutes and Waiting For Someone. Also I recommend creating a Tickler folder for things you don't need to deal with until a certain day.

Before you begin, decide generally what you file and what just gets deleted. The only things that remain in the inbox are those that require some action.

If you have a very full inbox, work your way through this in 10 minute bursts. Set a timer (I recommend Minuteur for Mac users) and do not let yourself get distracted in that time. It's just ten minutes; you can do this! If you aren't done after 10 minutes, then go deal with some other discrete task that needs to be handled today - preferably something on paper or involving talking to someone so you get a break from the intense mousework - and then when you've had the pleasure of checking that off, come back and do another 10 minute burst. Repeat as necessary.

For some messages, the obvious action will be to give it the 2 Minute label because it's a long message you know you have to read and may need to act on, but your few second scan of it makes clear that that could wait until tomorrow if it had to. Read it later, even if later is just after this burst. Do not act while you're processing the inbox - you are only spending a max of 10 seconds per item to sort it into stacks.

Those folks who regularly need to send the same reply will benefit from creating a few mail templates to make this a matter of a few clicks rather than a bunch of redundant typing. If you can say the usual thing without having to create it afresh every time, you can often close out those kind of messages in your processing - just be sure you're only doing it on the ones you can truly handle in 10 seconds or less. The ones that need the standard message plus one or two more sentences belong with your "2 Minute" label.

Your goal: a prioritized inbox which contains only things requiring action and all the contents of which are generally familiar to you.

This will reduce your stress, help you focus your time on the most important actions, and give you the ability to respond much better to demands for status reports.

The Week of Email Mastery

Is your inbox a source of despair? Fear not! You can conquer it and develop good habits which will reduce its negative impact on you in the future.

First, a few basic principles:

1. Discard the idea that every email you get deserves your full attention.

2. Discard the idea that every email you get deserves to be answered with a correspondingly lengthy reply or, in many cases, any reply at all.

3. Discard the notion that you must file everything you save. Mail programs have search functions; unless its a category where you regularly need to know the last action on it or something that would be hard to capture in a search, just throw it in one big Archive folder.

4. Discard more email. Delete delete delete!

If your work is like mine, you have probably five main kinds of email:
- incoming, haven't looked at it
- action required
- action required, but not by any particular time (e.g. articles to read, someday/maybe projects)
- filed by topic (in my case, at minimum, folders for each customer and folders for each product release & sometimes the particularly discussed line items within that)
- archive (all other "dealt with" mail)

Additionally, those who subscribe to mailing lists or who are on group aliases will want to segregate any incoming mail to those which do not require reading on a daily basis. For example, my department has a group alias but that's often very timely information, so it goes into my regular inbox. Our customers have a mailing list where they trade tips and discuss issues but they are instructed to open calls with our help desk for anything urgent; since I could ignore the list for days at a time if more urgent matters arise, I have set up a filter to direct that mail into a separate folder. (And I have that folder inside a folder called lists so that I can't see the count of messages in it and get tempted to go "clean it up" when it is really not the first priority).

Some people like to have their inbox separate from their "action required" folder, but I adhere to a different approach: label quickly and then act on things in the right order.  My labels are: Urgent, 2 Minute, 10 Minute, 30 Minute, Waiting For Someone. This last label has a special meaning if it's in my inbox: check on this if you don't get a response quickly. Otherwise, things that I don't have to do anything on until someone else moves it forward can go in my Waiting For Someone folder.

More about specific techniques tomorrow!

Not interested.

You don't need sales calls or junk mail. You have better things to do with your time.

Here's a good page of tips on eliminating unwanted solicitation (linked from Lifehacker among other places).

Today do at least two things:
- call 1-888-5 OPT OUT and get credit agencies to stop selling your information.
-  send a postcard or letter to Mail Preference Service, Direct Marketing Association, PO Box 643, Carmel, NY 15012-0643 Include your complete name, address, zip code and a request to "activate the preference service".  For up to five years, this will stop mail from all member organizations that you have not specifically ordered products from.

(This tip might be United States only, but it's possible that Canadians can benefit from these as well).

Just Do It First

Okay, yes, lovely to relax and putter around, but there's something you've been meaning to do "on the weekend" for how many months now?

Before you get distracted into sedentary activities, just go work on it right now.

Walk away from the Web and make it happen.

(In my case this was "sort out the stuff for yard sale into '$5/each or 6 for $20' and '$2.50/each or 6 for $10' boxes. This morning I did not turn on the computer until AFTER I had done so. Sometimes the siren call of Flickr, blogs, news, and cartoons can be resisted! And since the first thing I did was read a chapter of that book I've been meaning to finish, I still felt like I had had a gentle start to the day.)

Manifesting Decisions

Yesterday I asked you to think about what you are and are not going to be spending time on henceforth.

Did you come up with some projects or commitments to bid farewell to? Today, take time to close those things out.

If there are physical materials that you won't want/need around anymore, decide their fate. Put things in the charity box or the trash. Take a picture of that unfinished painting or whatever to document how far you got (and maybe write a little story about why you chose that project and why you're now parting with it).

If it's something less tangible, say, participation in a club you don't have time for anymore, write a thank you & farewell letter or make a call to conclude your involvement. Acknowledge the good in the activity and then move on to what's a higher priority for you.

If it was something you'd added to your plate just for yourself - "I will learn Swahili in my spare time" or "I will read an entire new book every week" - don't forget to make some kind of parting gesture to confirm that this isn't just it fading down to the bottom of your current list, but coming off that list. It is not still floating out there as an obligation anymore.

Do watch out for those unconscious commitments you've made which show up when you examine where your time goes. By subscribing to magazines or the daily paper, you're committing to at least flipping through each issue. By getting Tivo or switching on the telly every night when you get home, you're choosing to spend your energy keeping up with tv shows. By buying video games, you're planning to spend time playing them. These are all perfectly okay choices, but make them consciously, weighing them against the other priorities you have in your life.

Make your choices and take some time today to rearrange your life to support that choice.

Me? I moved the tv out of the living room, took some of the games off my computer, and said  "kwaheri" to Swahili.

Make the path of least resistance be the path you most want to take.

Not everything started must be finished

We all have pet projects, social commitments, goals for personal or professional growth, and hobbies to which we devote our time. We stroll past the buffet of life and we start loading our plates. The problem is that we make a lot of trips back to the smorgasbord of options and pretty soon the dining table of life is groaning under the load.

Do you really like everything you picked up thinking it would be tasty?

Can you really finish all that? Or would doing so leave you feeling painfully over-stuffed?

Look at what you've obliged yourself to - including those things you aren't actually putting time in on, but which weigh on your mind - and at where the hours of your day go.

Think about how you would prioritize that list. What can you just get rid of because you don't want it anymore? What should you abandon because it just isn't as desirable as the other things on your plate?

Read more about this idea in D. Keith Robinson's To-Done essay, Knowing When To Quit.

Take Control of Your News

Here's a good tip from Bob Walsh of  To-Done!:

Nowadays, with text, audio and video feeds from every major and minor news organization a click away, Google News, news alerts, RSS, IM and all the rest, you have about as much chance of getting your head clear as surviving 10 fire hoses turned full on at your face. Too much news, way, way, way too much.

All the news doesn’t fit: on paper, on your screen, in your head.

Continue reading All The News Doesn't Fit

Let go of procrastination

United States citizens:
You know, you really probably do have time today to do your taxes. Or at the very least pull together all the papers you'll need and find the form. (a hint and have you considered filing online?) There are three possible outcomes: you get your refund early or you figure out you don't have to pay a significant amount or you have extra time to budget for a large amount owed. It's all better than waiting until April.

Rest of the world:
I bet you have some bureaucratic task you've been putting off. Really, it won't take THAT long. Just do it. Or at least get together everything you'll need to have in front of you in order to do it.

It doesn't have to happen all at once, just begin

Most of us are busy people, busy with work, busy with play, busy with our communities and friends and families. We look at our homes and think "Oh my gawd, there is no way I can get this clutter under control without spending weeks working on it full time!" It's so easy to be overwhelmed by the seemingly vast distance between the way things are now in your life and the calm, clear, open life we'd like to be enjoying.

But don't worry. You will get there and you don't have to take giant steps. Every little bit counts.

[read more of Where To Start]

Slay the Vampire

I highly doubt that anyone seeking a less cluttered life is someone who finds way too much time on their hands. So where is all your time going?

Put a piece of paper up where you'll keep seeing it (on the fridge is a good spot) and all week write down where your time goes. "90 minutes reading blogs", "30 minutes cooking dinner", "110 minutes commuting", "8 hours working", "20 minutes lunch",  etc.

At the end of the week, compare what you did to what you wish you were doing. What's the biggest chunk of time invested for the least payoff? What could be completely or mostly eliminated and replaced with something more important to you?