The More You Do The Better You Feel

by David Parker

  So, by creating his grocery list while he was engaged in other chores, Barry maximized his time while anticipating his future needs. Even better, by occasionally thinking of what he needed from the supermarket, Barry not only kept busy with his chores, he also made things a tad more lively for himself.

  While Barry knows that the letters “J.O.T.” stand for “Just One Task,” he also knows that he’s grown a great deal over the last six months. Even now, Barry feels capable of handling a bit more than he could only a few weeks ago. This explains why Barry is able to work on his grocery list, while tending to the tasks that he already wrote on his J.O.T. list. Although this is not something that he does each and every day, the more that Barry accomplishes, the stronger he feels—which just happens to be the complete opposite of the very last characteristic of procrastination listed in Chapter Four: “As Procrastination Grows Stronger—The Procrastinator Feels Weaker!” It’s safe to say that Barry has come a long way.

  While we’ve seen that Barry has gotten a great deal done, there is an alternate way he could have created his J.O.T. list, one that could speed him along his way as far as writing is concerned: by combining similar items. With this alternate process, The J.O.T. Method™ is performed in the same way as before—the only change is in how it’s written.

  In order for you to make use of this alternate J.O.T. writing method, you will need the following conditions present:

  1. You need to have a good number of tasks that need attention.

  2. Many of those tasks need to be exactly alike—for example, you have many books to place on a shelf, or you have a lot of CDs to arrange.

  3. You have a good amount of free time available that you’re willing to devote to these tasks.

  Let’s look again at the J.O.T. list that Barry wrote for Saturday, September 8th:

  As we can gather from analyzing his J.O.T. list, Barry had accumulated many newspapers and magazines, and he had plenty of business cards to file away. While he accomplished a great deal, which is something that Barry should be very happy about, much of it involved the same items being written many times over on his J.O.T. list.

  If Barry wrote each item only once and substituted vertical “ditto” marks for each similar task, he would have more room for other tasks, and he wouldn’t need to spend time thinking about each item as he wrote them down. In addition, Barry could increase his productivity as a result of his spending a bit less time writing out each and every one of his tasks.

  Here’s what Barry’s J.O.T. list would have looked like if he had combined similar items:

  As you can see, this alternate process has the effect of streamlining Barry’s J.O.T. list by economizing space within the list, allowing more room for future tasks and leaving his J.O.T. list looking less cluttered. Of course, some people might prefer the traditional J.O.T. list, and if the traditional J.O.T. list works for you, then feel free to stick with it.

  The Counting Technique

  Our second improvement on The J.O.T. Method™ may help you increase your level of motivation with regard to your tasks.

  There may come a time when you’ve spent the greater part of a Saturday or Sunday taking care of little chores around the house. After having climbed Mount Paperwork, you might feel slightly lightheaded—not from altitude sickness, but from the mixed feeling you get that’s part elation at how much you’ve gotten done, and part tiredness from of the hard work you engaged in. It’s at this particular point that you’ll need to make a decision on whether to:

  Carry on and “do” more.

  Take a break.

  Or to call it a day.

  As a recovering procrastinator, you may have faced a particular problem many of us have also experienced. It concerns our practice of taking a break, but not resuming work after that break should have ended. The best way to avoid encountering this problem is to avoid taking unnecessary breaks. Notice that I specifically referred to “unnecessary breaks.” While we want to avoid taking unnecessary breaks because they can affect our productivity, we always need to preserve our right to take breaks when we truly need them. We never want to overwork ourselves, because that could backfire on fire on us by depleting our reserves of mental and/or physical energy, which might then make us feel panicked and overwhelmed. For people like us, that’s a recipe for disaster. As long as you keep that in mind, you should be all right.

  That said, there may be times when you’ll find yourself wanting to continue working, while also wanting to take a break, and it’s at those times that a little motivation might help maintain your forward momentum. Fortunately, one of the most effective ways to keep going also happens to be one of the simplest techniques. All you need to do is count the number of tasks that you’ve completed, and then write that number down to the right of the last task you’ve completed on your J.O.T. list. The only rule that must be followed in order for this to work is that you must write that number down before taking your break. What often happens as a result of practicing this simple technique is that whatever number of completed tasks that you have calculated, there’s a part of human nature within you that will likely ask, “Could that number be just a little higher? Could I squeeze in one more task before my break?”

  Using the same J.O.T. list as we did at the start of this chapter, let’s compare The Counting Technique to the traditional version of The J.O.T. Method™. In this example, all Barry needs to do is count his completed tasks, look over the last number written, and see if he feels up to raising the count. Let’s see how Barry used this simple technique. Reverting to Barry’s last J.O.T. list without the streamlining that came from The Combining Technique, Barry’s J.O.T. list now looks like this:

  As you may have noticed, Barry’s J.O.T. list tells us that he’s come back from shopping and he’s put his groceries away, because he’s struck a line through those tasks. Barry now finds himself wondering whether he’s up for more tasks. While he wants to get more done, after looking over his J.O.T. list, he’s found that although it confirms his productivity, it didn’t tell him exactly how productive he had been. In order to motivate himself, Barry practiced “The Counting Technique.”

  First, he began counting the number of tasks he had completed, writing every tenth number to the side of that task. “Ten …, twenty …, thirty.” Then he counted up the last tasks he had accomplished, “Thirty-four …, thirty-five …, thirty-six!” and he wrote that number to the side of his last completed task. Here’s what Barry’s J.O.T. list looked like after he copied those numbers to his J.O.T. list:

  Almost instantly, Barry’s mind began to ponder: “Hmm … I wonder if I could get 40 tasks done? That’s a nice round number. There are a few other small chores that I could get done. They wouldn’t take very long, and they wouldn’t require a lot of physical or mental energy. Maybe I could just try doing one of them. Then I’d know that I had 36 tasks done. I’m sure if I went from 35 to 36, I’d almost definitely want to hit 40!”

  The Counting Technique has other advantages too, because having numbers written down in your J.O.T. list from previous days can actually help motivate you in the future. It’s only natural that one day you might flip through the pages of your notebook, and review how productive you were one week ago, one month ago, or on a particular day, and wonder if you could out-“do” yourself. So, your written J.O.T. record can become even more useful to you over the long run, because it not only shows you how productive you’ve been in the past, but at the same time, it can also help motivate you to keep going in the present.

  You can also simultaneously use both of the improvements to The J.O.T. Method™ that you were introduced to in this section. The most important thing is to find the process that works for you. If you’ve found that the traditional way of using The J.O.T. Method™ makes you happy and productive, there’s no reason to change gears.

  After a while, you might even find your own way of customizing The J.O.T. Method™ that fits you to a tee. If that happens, then I warmly invite
you to contact me via my website, to let me know about your discovery.

  Dealing With Larger Projects

  There are some tasks that almost seem to take on a life of their own. They can exasperate and frustrate us, defy completion, and put up such a fight that we can feel as if we’ve caught a fish that’s not only fighting back, but trying to snap the fishing line as well. While smaller tasks usually can be accomplished with the assistance of The J.O.T. Method™, there are some larger tasks that can swamp our physical and/or our emotional resources. Here are a few examples of these kinds of tasks:

  Starting a new business.

  Building an extension onto your home.

  Preparing for a major life event, like planning a large family wedding, or relocating.

  I can tell you from first-hand experience that another unwieldy task that can exert a toll on someone is the writing and production of a book. After all, a book is not a “just one task” kind of chore; it’s a project that’s made up of thousands of concepts and ideas that must be coalesced into words, pages, and chapters. Plus, there are also the challenges getting the manuscript edited, having the book printed, sending word of the book out to the world, and then placing it into the hands of readers like yourself. As recovering procrastinators, we have enough difficulty just getting our smaller tasks done. So, what do we do when a larger task or project threatens to exceed our ability to complete it?

  The best way that I have found to deal with what seems like an unmanageable task is to compartmentalize my time, and deal with only one task for a specific time period. I refer to that as a “timed event.” This is different from The J.O.T. Method™, whereby we either take care of simple tasks, or we break down medium-sized tasks into their smaller, “do”-able components, which we then accomplish. Instead, when you create a timed event, you dedicate yourself to dealing with only one task for whatever period of time that you’ve allocated. The important thing is not to overwhelm yourself by devoting too much time to a task because that could make you feel trapped or like you need to escape, which is an old trait from your days as a habitual procrastinator.

  Someone once said, “What gets measured, gets done.” Any project that takes a good amount of time can always be measured in time, even future time. When you’re confronted with a large project, it may be helpful to first try analyzing it in terms of how long it may take to complete. Even if the figure that you come up with is purely a guess, it’s always good to think about how much time your project may take because by doing so, you’re preparing yourself for the job ahead.

  In order to size-up a large project, the following outline may be helpful:

  1. Have your calendar handy and determine the timeframe by which you would like to have the project completed. Sometimes that timeframe will be dictated by the project. For example, there may be an external deadline that you need to have the project finished by, such as a date when forms must be completed, or a mailing envelope must be postmarked. If that’s the case, then you’ll need to know what that date is. It’s also a good idea to mark that date on your calendar. If there isn’t an external deadline, then your timeframe is simply the date that you’d like to have your project completed by.

  2. To the best of your ability, estimate how much time you believe you project will take to complete, and then write that figure in your notebook expressed in minutes and/or hours. This may not be easy to do the first time you try it, but that’s okay, just do the best you can. You don’t need to be perfect, and your figure doesn’t need to be perfect either—you just want to establish an estimate so you can get an understanding of what you’re about to deal with.

  3. Most importantly, avoid the trap of making vague or defeating self-statements like, “It’s going to take forever!” or “I can’t see how it’s going to take anything less than several months.” Statements like those are the complete opposite of what you want to come up with.

  4. One good way to estimate time is by generalizing at first, and then working at developing a round figure that expresses how many hours the project might take to complete. For example, let’s say that you look over your project and fairly estimate that it may take five weeks to complete. Furthermore, let’s also say that your five-week estimate safely falls within any external deadline.

  5. The next thing you’ll want to do is to think about how much time you’d be willing to devote to your project over that five-week time span. Depending on how much free time you have, you could come up with a schedule like one hour during any three evenings of the workweek, and three hours every Saturday. This would come out to three evening hours each workweek, plus three hours each Saturday, which comes to an estimated six hours spent on the project each week. Since you previously estimated that you’d like to have the project completed within five weeks, all you need to do now is to multiply six hours per week times five weeks, which comes out to an estimate of thirty hours for the completion of the project.

  6. As long as you have your calendar nearby, you might want to go over the weeks ahead. See whatever you already have planned and work your project into the calendar. Bear in mind that you only produced an estimate with round numbers, and you can always tailor your work to fit your personal schedule.

  7. Remember as well, that by filling in your calendar with project reminders you’re helping yourself to remain focused on your project, and to stay on track in regard to its deadline.

  When your calendar and watch indicate that the time for working on your project has arrived, remember that you only need to work for the period of time that you’ve set aside. Once you’ve begun working on your timed event, use a stopwatch, or if you don’t have a stopwatch, then write down the actual time in your notebook. Whichever way you time yourself, be sure to stop the clock for breaks, or deduct break time from your written total; and bear in mind that these are called timed events for a reason, so keep track of your time. Try not to do less than you promised yourself, and remember as always, The First Golden Rule of Overcoming Procrastination: “Always keep the promises that you make with yourself.”

  You may occasionally feel the temptation to do more by going beyond the amount of time that you’ve set aside. While you can always do this, it’s important to point out that the only way that you’re going to discover that you’ve gone too far beyond your limits is when you find that you’ve exhausted yourself. This is something that you do not want to do, because when your next calendar date for working on the project comes around you do not want to be put off by the bad memory of your most recent experience. Remember that too much of anything is not a good thing, and this is especially true when it applies to overworking ourselves; so, at least for now, try sticking to the plan at hand. While our goal has always been to overcome habitual procrastination, our goal has never been to set world records in productivity, especially with regard to lengthy projects. This is the reason why we map out our timeframes, and use the calendar and clock as well.

  If you run into any difficulties while working on your project, remember that you always have The J.O.T. Method™ at your disposal. Use it to break any larger-sized tasks into more manageable units. You’ll also want to keep track of your project in your notebook, whether by using The J.O.T. Method™, or simply by writing down what you’ve been doing and calculating how much time you’ve accumulated while working on that project.

  Here are some additional suggestions regarding timed events:

  If you have any problems getting a timed event underway, start off the easy way by working in ten-minute time units. After you’ve gotten your first ten minutes of work done, take a deep breath, make a note of the time, and start working on another ten-minute unit.

  Be realistic. A big job is going to take time and effort, so give yourself time to grow comfortable with the idea of methodically working on a big project.

  When you work on a project, work slowly and in an orderly manner, and resist any temptation to rush things.

  Find the little joys that a big project
has to offer and don’t be afraid of actually enjoying yourself. You may find a special sense of security in the knowledge that you always have the option of having something more constructive to do than watching television.

  Consider making a game out of your work whenever you can.

  Be amazed by how much work you can get done in just ten or fifteen minutes, when compared to how much time you used to waste watching television for thirty or sixty-minute intervals.

  Discover the power you now have to start working on long-term projects, along with your ability to temporarily stop working, and to resume work again. Compare that to how you used to behave as a habitual procrastinator and learn to appreciate your new abilities.

  Look at the passing of time on your stopwatch as you work as a boost to your self-esteem and be proud that you’re now taking better care of yourself than you did as a procrastinator.

  The following advanced techniques for overcoming procrastination have more to do with what we can do in a physical sense to increase our personal productivity:

  Use Light Housecleaning as a Starter for Your More Difficult Tasks

  Sometimes we see our projects as larger than life, and as a result, we feel immobilized in our tasks’ shadows. One good solution that I’ve found to this feeling of immobilization is to engage in light housekeeping. I’ve found that it’s a great starter-task that helps me prepare for my more challenging tasks.

  The moment I get off my couch and begin cleaning or organizing, I being to feel different. Even if I’m only dampening a rag and running it around my bookshelves, I’m actually “do”-ing a lot more than just that because my mind becomes busy finding targets that require dusting, and then completing each action.