It happens every November, and I know it has something to do with the weather. The skies turn gray, the chilly rains fall on D.C., and I wish I were somewhere with snow instead of puddles. I dream of heading to Canada or the Alps and strapping on a pair of skis and taking to the slopes. I’ve never been a big fan of the wet, Mid-Atlantic falls and winters. I’m of the opinion that if it’s going to be cold and blistery, I should at least have snow and skiing to enjoy.

Of course, a week of vacation to someplace truly cold reminds me that my desire to live on a snow-covered mountain is simply wanderlust. It’s nice to visit, but I don’t think I’m ready to experience it six months out of every year.

When wanderlust sets in, though, it’s difficult to ignore. I have to act on it, even if I don’t actually take a vacation. If I don’t, the wanderlust consumes my thoughts and I’m not able to think of much else. Here is how I handle wanderlust in an organized way so that if I do decide to take the vacation, all of my daydreaming was actually profitable:

• Schedule time to plan the vacation. Instead of letting thoughts of wanderlust occupy a constant stream in my mind, I schedule time to plan the vacation on my schedule. If I find myself thinking about the trip when I should be doing something else, I remind myself I have set aside time to deal with it later and get back to focusing on the issue. Then, I only work on the trip during the scheduled time.
• Create a wanderlust scrapbook. When I was younger, this was an actual scrapbook I could glue things into and carry with me. Now, I simply use Evernote and drop in digital files I can access from my phone or laptop.
• Research travel details. When is the best time to travel to the location? What are the ideal places to stay? Where and when can deals be found? How much will the trip cost? What will the place look and feel liek? All of this information goes into the scrapbook or Evernote.
• Save up money for the trip. Even if I don’t end up taking the trip, I still put aside money for it. If I don’t budget the money, taking the trip won’t ever be possible. If I eventually decide to use the money for something else, I at least know exactly what I’m giving up or delaying.

How do you organize things that fill your mind and distract you from other things you should be doing? Do you plan all of your vacations, regardless of if you take them? Do you plan for other things you dream about and want to do? Do you do the same things with worries? How do you keep your mind from wandering when it should be focused?

Conveniently, the tree fell minutes after I had finished my “must complete these tasks or lose my job” items on my to-do list. I had a lot of work left to do in the day, but all of it could wait until the connection was re-established or until I made it to the local coffee shop that has free WiFi.

While I was driving to the coffee shop, I thought about how getting the most important work out of the way first saved me a great deal of frustration. Had I put off the most important work, I would have been angry and stressed and worked into a frenzy about nature simply being nature. Instead, I was more entertained than anything else. A dead tree took out my connection — possibly the best reason ever for losing service.

I structure my day by doing the most important tasks first. This means I sit down at my computer and start writing before checking e-mail, Twitter, voice mail, or even comments on Unclutterer. If I’m at my desk at 6:00 a.m., I won’t get to the other tasks until usually 8:00 or 9:00 a.m. These other activities are a reward for getting through the high priority assignments.

When I leave work at the end of the day, I’ll often open up the most important task for the following day and place it at the center of my screen. (I learned this tip from Glen Stansberry, I would like to note.) Then, when I sit down to work in the morning, I can immediately start on what I need to do.

How do you structure your work day? Do you get your most important tasks completed first thing in the morning? Or, do you procrastinate and put off the hard work hoping that maybe it will just go away? Tell us how you structure your work and what works best for you in the comments.

This is from the Wednesday chapter, “Communication Processes” section:

“You might not realize it, but meeting attendees have some control over how quickly a meeting runs and they certainly impact the quality of the discussion.

• Be prepared. Read the agenda at least a day in advance of the meeting. Come to the meeting with relevant materials. Have a pen and pad of paper with you. Turn your BlackBerry to vibrate. Know who else will be at the meeting. Know the goal of the meeting, its location, and its start time. Arrive at the meeting on time.
• Respect others. How many times have you been in a meeting where a presenter has had to repeat information because Gary and Stephanie were focusing on their laptops instead of paying attention the first time something was said? Not only does this type of distraction waste Gary’s and Stephanie’s time, but it also wastes the time of everyone attending the meeting. Focus your attention on who is speaking. Make eye contact. Show that you’re listening. Avoid making snide comments to your neighbor. If you’re having trouble concentrating, write down in excruciating detail everything the speaker is saying. It will give you something to do, and you can review your detailed notes later if you spaced out on what was being said.
• Think before you speak. Before you contribute to a conversation in a meeting, ask yourself: 1) Is this comment helpful and relevant to the topic being discussed right now? (If it’s not, save it for after the meeting.) 2) Will this comment be helpful to everyone in the room or just one individual? (If the comment is only helpful to one person, save everyone else’s time and talk to that specific person after the meeting.) 3) Can I craft my comment so that it takes less than thirty seconds to express? (If you can’t, keep crafting. If you’re not presenting, your comments should be brief.)”

What do you do during meetings to help speed them along? Add your ideas to the comments.

Now, on with the excerpt from the Thursday chapter, “Working While at Work” section of the book:

“… try these strategies for improving your productivity when you don’t really want to work:

• Similar to what you might do when exercising, play music with a fast rhythm.
• If you drink caffeine, consume it in small, frequent amounts instead of just one large cup at the beginning of the day.
• Set time-specific goals in two-, five-, or ten-minute increments. Identify what you want to accomplish in a very short amount of time, and then set a timer and go for it.
• Isolate yourself. Remove the desire to procrastinate by not having any other options but to work.
• Acknowledge that you’re procrastinating. Often, just realizing that you’re putting something off is enough to get you working.
• Challenge a colleague to see who can get the most work done in a set time period.
• Ask someone to help you stay accountable. There are professional motivators who will call you once a day to see how you’re doing, but a trusted and willing friend or coworker can do the same thing for free.
• If the task doesn’t require much though, listen to an audiobook while you work. Agree to only listen to the book when you’re working on the project you don’t want to do. This way, you’ll be interested in hearing more of the story each time you take on the undesirable task.”

Productivity = outputs / inputs (within a time period, quality considered)

He then goes on to claim that stress — both rational and misplaced — impacts the inputs variable in the equation. Stress can help you to be motivated and creative (Only two more hours to get this done, let’s get working!), but it also can make you freak out about small, irrelevant factors in your work (Who keeps putting the hole punch away? Can’t you see I’m using it!).

Buttell goes on to quote a 1999 study by Robert Ostermann, professor of psychology at FDUU’s Teaneck-Hackensack Campus, on the link between stress and productivity:

No one reaches peak performance without being stressed, whether an athlete, an office worker or a manager.

Looking at your average day, how do you manage stress to let it work to your advantage? How do you use stress to influence your inputs variable?

Last year, I picked up a Pocket Briefcase, which has now become one of my favorite organizational tools. Instead of carrying around a wallet and a stack of note cards, I’m able to carry just a wallet, because the cards fit inside. This particular briefcase has a pocket for cash, slots for a few debit and ID cards, and two pockets to organize used cards. I recently went on a trip out of the US and discovered that my Pocket Briefcase will even fit my passport.

This works for me because even when I don’t want to carry a notebook, I’m always carrying my wallet, so I’m never without a pen and paper. If you use note cards with your personal information on them, then you’re carrying business cards too!

Levenger’s pocket briefcase isn’t cheap, so if you want to see if this kind of tool will work for you without spending a lot of money, you can find similar items in many stores that carry office supplies.

Actually, I’m envious of anyone who gets sleep, irrespective of if they have children. I may even be thinking mean thoughts about all of you and your well-rested state of being right now …

Where was I?

Oh yes, sleep deprivation.

We’ve talked in the past about how it is important to keep a sleep journal to determine the number of sleep hours you need to function at your best. Too little sleep and too much sleep can influence your behavior, so it’s best to know how much sleep you need. If you don’t know how to interpret the data you collect in your sleep journal, I recommend checking out the article “How Much Sleep Do We Really Need?” by the National Sleep Foundation.

Missing out on sleep affects motor skills, cognitive abilities, and other brain functions. Also, and this is the part that is most disturbing to me, being suddenly woken up (say, like by a crying baby) can have the same effects as sleep deprivation. A study by researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder found that sleep inertia (being jarred awake) is the same as being deprived of sleep for 24 hours.

From an article about the study on Medical News Today:

The study showed test subjects had diminished short-term memory, counting skills and cognitive abilities during the groggy period upon awakening known as sleep inertia, said CU-Boulder Assistant Professor Kenneth Wright, lead study author. The new study has implications for medical, safety and transportation workers who are often called upon to perform critical tasks immediately after waking, since cognitive deficiencies following 24 hours of sleep deprivation have previously been shown to be comparable to the effects of alcohol intoxication, he said.

In addition to tracking your sleep patterns, you might also want to try different methods of waking up. A blaring alarm clock might not be the safest way to wake you up from your beautiful, relaxing, glorious night of sleep.

Let’s say you’re composing a song about Jessica Fletcher from Murder, She Wrote. You get your band together, you lay down the tracks, and there they are on one computer. You can go back and punch in a solo, cut vocals, or whatever else you need to do. No sweat. But what if one of your bandmates lives 800 miles away?

One option would be to keep sending a file back and forth for each change. The problem is that it’s difficult to keep track of changes, and eventually you each end up with a folder full of files and no way to tell who has the latest version.

A better solution is Subversion, a version control system designed to be a single repository for current and previous versions of files.

In my example, the file happens to be a GarageBand file, but Subversion can just as easily handle any other type of file. Developers have been using it for years to keep track of source code and documentation.

Here’s how it works:

• Create a Subversion repository. You can create a free repository at Beanstalk
• Get a Subversion client like Versions. There’s a 21 day free trial period.
• Create a bookmark to your repository in your client. You can find Versions-specific instructions here
• Check out a “working copy”
• Add folders and files to your “working copy,” or make changes to existing ones
• Commit

When you commit a change, Subversion updates the current version of the file with the changes that you made, but also saves the previous version so that you can revert back to it if you need to. If you try to commit a change to a file that someone else has recently changed, Subversion will let you know. If it’s a text file, you can see what the differences are, and choose to merge the changes together.

By keeping all your files updated and in one place, Subversion is a great tool for eliminating collaboration clutter.

These are the basics, but If you want to indulge your inner egghead and understand more about how Subversion works, I recommend O’Reilly’s book.

Built with Adobe AIR, Klok is a lightweight and cross-platform tracking solution. You can create a hierarchy of projects and sub-projects in the task-management sidebar and then track the time spent on each by dragging and dropping them into the workflow for the day. While you can delve into the details of each block of time, simple adjustments like expanding the amount of time you’ve worked on a project is as easy as grabbing the edge of the block with your mouse and tugging it down.

Also on their list are Manic Time (Windows), SlimTimer (web-based), RescueTime (Windows and Mac), and Project Hamster (Linux). All five of the applications mentioned in the article are free to access or download.

If you haven’t tracked your time before, I recommend keeping records for at least two weeks to see how you spend your time. The data you will acquire will give you insight into your most productive hours of the day, your low-performance times, when people tend to interrupt you, and how much time you waste during an average day. Then, you can start to tweak your work habits to get the most out of your time in the office.

If this statistic is true, and I know from experience that there is a refractory time after any distraction, it is strong evidence against leaving the notification alert active on your e-mail program. Instead, you should schedule time in your day to check your e-mail. Based on the type of office environment you work in, you might need to check your e-mail at the top of every hour. However, most people can get by only checking their e-mail two to four times during the work day.

I also recommend checking e-mail during the times when you are usually distracted during the day. Whether this is when others tend to interrupt you or when your mind typically wanders on its own, it’s best not to try to do high-functioning activities when you plan to work through your e-mail inbox. For me, this is right after lunch when I find it difficult to concentrate for more than a few minutes at a time. I check e-mail, return phone calls, and do a little bit of filing.

Try turning off the notification alert on your e-mail system and only checking e-mail on a schedule and see if it improves your productivity. If the interruption refractory period really is 17 minutes, you should immediately notice significant gains in your focus.

We’ve vanquished the Getting Started Monster, conquered the No Momentum Monster and now all that’s left is to finish up. You’ve uncluttered your space and managed to keep at it until everything is nicely streamlined. You’ve even put things back where they belong.

Well, almost everything. You have a few things that don’t fit in your current storage spaces, so you’ve left them on top of your desk while you figure out what type of storage you need for them exactly.

And then months pass with them still on your desk. A few bits and bobs not done don’t really matter you tell yourself every time you see the pile of things waiting to be given a home.

But it does matter because from that pile of things not put away the clutter starts to grow again, creeping out from that spot to take over the office again.

When we don’t finish projects we leave the door open to chaos. We let the Never Finishing Monster into our lives and everything around the place needs just a few adjustments to finish, but nothing’s totally completed. The baseboard is missing on the living room trim. The bedroom needs curtains. The email inbox still has a few dozen messages from two months ago waiting to be looked at.

Why don’t we totally finish? Because often we leave the fiddly bits to the end, the stuff that we’re not quite sure what to do with, or the stuff that we hate doing.

Dedicating Time

Fortunately, unlike getting started and moving forward, there is a trick to kill the Never Finishing Monster — it’s called the Get It Done Sprint.

I use this all the time with my writing. I’ll start a project and move it forward slowly and steadily but as I get closer to the end of something I slow down to a crawl that wouldn’t win a race against 80 year old snails.

When I notice that I’ve reached this point, I schedule a block of time (for my writing projects a week is usually a good amount of time) where I dedicate several hours a day getting the project done. The Never Finishing Monster doesn’t stand a chance against such dedicated effort.

It’s like the end of a 10km race — you pace yourself throughout the race until the finish line comes into sight and you sprint to the end.

Apply this same thinking to your organizing projects. When you almost reach the end, change your approach to the project and commit to getting it done within a very specific (and very short) timeframe. Schedule a day to go buy the supplies you need and enlist (or hire) help to put in that extra bit of effort to wrap up the project.

And don’t delay. Schedule the sprint as soon as possible. The longer you leave the project unfinished, the less likely you’ll get around to it and the more likely all your hard work will undo itself.

So tell me, what’s left to get finished in your house and when will you schedule the Get It Done Sprint that will squash the Never Finishing Monster flat?

In my first post in this series on Unclutterer, I talked about vanquishing the Getting Started Monster and hopefully you were able to defeat your own personal Getting Started Monster.

Great! If it’s an organizing project you’ve started, you’ve probably cleared a surface and streamlined your stuff. Maybe you’ve even managed to clear off the dining room table for the first time in years. Momentum has supposedly kicked in and you’re ready to keep going.

But you don’t.

The rest of the space stays disorganized and the papers start piling up again on the dining room table and you feel totally discouraged. Why bother when it’s just going to get cluttered again?

I’m the same way with my writing. Unless I’m vigilant about my writing, I can let it slide by the wayside and without really noticing I’ve come up with enough excuses not to write for over two weeks.

Not good.

You think I’d want to write every day. After all, it’s my passion and writing every day brings me closer to my goal of being a published author?

Yes, but it’s also work. Hard work. And there’s no immediate pay off. Yes, I have the reward of 200 or 2000 words written, but I get nothing, no gold star, for doing so and my long term goal is still a long way off.

Unfortunately, just like with getting started there’s no trick to continuing. You can use positive enforcement of mini rewards, or picturing how happy you’ll be after you achieve your goal. You could also use negative motivation by imagining how much regret you’ll feel for not doing the thing that you’re procrastinating about.

In the end, however, there’s only the choice to continue.

The Power of Choice

There’s a saying about courage: A brave person feels fear and continues anyway. For getting around to it, a productive person feels like quitting but continues anyway.

Looking at it another way — every single day is a new start so getting back to a task you did the day before is exactly like starting it all over again facing the same Getting Started monster.

Almost every single goal I can think of requires a series of smaller steps to complete. Many times those small steps are repetitive and require a long-term commitment. The longer the commitment the easier it is to lose energy and enthusiasm until you’re moving less than a run-down grandfather clock.

If you’re the sort of person this happens to (I certainly am) all you need to do is make a choice to keep going. When I don’t feel like working, I remind myself that I’ve chosen my goals and if I don’t want to achieve them I don’t have to. Of course I wouldn’t be happy letting most goals fall by the wayside so I say “okay, fine” and get back to work.

With some goals, however, I truly do lose interest and I realize that the goal isn’t for me. By offering myself a choice to continue or not, I sometimes do choose to stop, often with a huge sense of relief.

So, how do you make sure you remember this choice? By repeating it to yourself every day.

I’m not big on affirmations where you stare in the mirror and tell yourself good things that you’re supposed to believe about yourself. The phrase in this exercise is meant as a daily wake up call, reminding you to keep the autopilot turned off and to stay engaged in everything you do.

And just what’s the super fantastic phrase that’s going to keep you motivated and moving forward?

I choose all my actions including what I’m not going to do.

That’s it. By taking responsibility for your actions, every day you’ll make a choice to continue or not, but remember – it’s your choice, no one is making you do or not do anything.

We’ve written in the past about how determining what matters to you most is an important aspect of uncluttering. Not only does focusing on what matters most to you keep up your motivation, but it also helps you to decide priorities for your time, energy, money, and space. “How to Set Goals When You Have No Idea What You Want” is a great resource for getting you thinking about the day-to-day things that are important to you.

A “goal” is simply something which you’d like to do or achieve. It could be buying a house or a car, yes, but it could also be something which might matter to no-one in the world except you — perhaps your goal is to learn to bake cakes as good as the ones your grandma used to make.

Goals aren’t things that you feel you “should” do, and any good life coach will steer you away from goals that have been imposed upon you by other people.

Spend 15, 20, or 60 minutes working on determining what matters most to you. Uncluttering will be easier and more productive when you know why you’re simplifying your life.

An example of this is processing mail when I come home: I instantly shred, recycle, or respond to the mail right when I walk in the door. This routine usually takes me two to three minutes, and then I don’t think about the mail or see it again. I used to just collect it and place it on the dining room table, then I would have to touch it again to move it so that we could sit down to dinner, then I would see it after dinner and think about it again, and then I would have to deal with it after worrying about it some more. In the past, I would spend 15 to 20 minutes thinking about the mail each night. Being “lazy” and organized with my mail saves me quite a bit of time over the course of the year. That, and I never have to worry about paying bills late.

Back in January, Leo Babauta wrote a post on this issue on his blog ZenHabits titled “The Lazy Manifesto: Do Less. Then, Do Even Less.” I like his perspective on doing less to increase productivity:

Do Less: The Ultimate Simple Productivity

It may seem paradoxical that Do Less can mean you’re more productive — and if you define “productive” as meaning “get more done” or “do more”, then no, Do Less won’t lead to that kind of productivity.

But if instead you define “productivity” as a means of making the most of your actions, of the time you spend working (or doing anything), of being as effective as possible, then Do Less is the best way to be productive.

Consider: I can work all day in a flurry of frenetic activity, only to get a little done, especially when it comes to lasting achievement. Or I can do just a couple things that take an hour, but those are key actions that will lead to real achievement. In the second example, you did less, but the time you spent counted for more.

Let’s take the example of a blogger: I can write a dozen posts that really say nothing, mean nothing, but take up my entire day … or I can write one post that affects thousands of people, that really reaches to the heart of my readers’ lives, and takes me 1.5 hours to write. I did less, but made my words and time count for more.

If you’re lazy, as I often am, then the choice is simple. Do Less.

But do it smartly: Do Less, but make every action count. Send fewer emails, but make them important. Write fewer words, but make each word essential. Really consider the impact of every action you take, and see if you can eliminate some actions. See if you can achieve a great impact doing less.

This doesn’t mean “less is more”. It means “less is better”.

I don’t agree with everything in his post, but his viewpoint speaks to the heart of uncluttering. Read his post and then come back here to share in our conversation. I’m interested in reading about what your views are on lazy productivity.

Sure, you could easily create a digital list or a list on a sheet of paper, but both run the risk of being lost. This way, you can be sure your child makes it wherever he needs to go with everything on his list.

It’s novel, and I like when organizing can be fun.

2. Stand and come out from behind your desk — If you conduct your conversation standing, it will likely be much shorter. This is a good thing to do before you know if they have something valuable or if they are just coming in to shoot the breeze. If you want them to stay, pull out a chair and return to your seat.

I’m not super fond of his fourth tip (probably best not to destroy your company’s furniture), so I’d replace it with the following:

4. Close the door to your office or face a chair backward at the entrance to your cube. Then, hang up a sign on either the door or the back of the chair that states: “Please only disturb in case of emergency.” People will self-censor, even if you’re in a cube.

What tips would you add? Let us know what has worked for you in the comments.

I read about the injustices in the world — now that I have time to read — and I want to help out in all of the causes. I want to give my time, energy, and money to help others. But there are so many causes, so many people in need, and I can’t possibly give to all of them.

Her home is primarily uncluttered, yet her dining room table is piled high with magazine articles, donation solicitations, and printouts from websites detailing organizations, people, and causes in need. Her heart and good intentions are pulled in numerous directions. Most of us face similar situations in our lives — maybe not with looking for ways to help charitable causes but how to spend our personal time.

I gave her the following advice, and I suggest the following for anyone who feels pulled in too many directions.

1. Take the time to reflect on and determine what matters most to you. We’ve written about this process before, and I believe it is the most important step to determining how best to spend your time.
2. Choose ONE opportunity that aptly reflects what matters most to you to account for 80 percent of your available resources. Out of all of the possibilities that stand in front of you, pick the one thing that you feel comfortable making a true commitment to.
3. Budget the remaining 20 percent of your resources (time, money, whatever it is that you wish to commit) for all other projects that are in line with what matters most to you. For example, if you have $1,000 to donate to charity every year, $800 will go to the ONE organization and $200 might be distributed in $20 gifts to 10 other charities.
4. Stick to this arrangement for at least six months. Give yourself a decent chunk of time to commit to the new system. After six months you will be able to re-evaluate and decide how to proceed into the future.

In this list, I give the example of budgeting money, but you can budget your time just as easily. Commit to volunteering eight hours a week at the local animal shelter, one hour to your grandchild’s PTA, and one hour to sorting food at the food bank. Or, maybe you have a young family and you’ll commit eight hours a week to coaching your son’s soccer team, one hour to a professional organization, and one hour to a committee for your neighborhood association.

(With my job, I try to budget 80 percent of my time to writing and 20 percent of my time to administration. It doesn’t always happen, but I’ve found that focusing the majority of my work day on the most important aspect of my job makes it more enjoyable and more productive.)

If you look at the situation as “what do I get to do” instead of “what don’t I get to do,” it makes saying no to other opportunities simpler. You stop feeling overwhelmed and your attention is focused on what matters most to you.

Today we’re introducing a new service, called AtTheBigRiver.com.

AtTheBigRiver.com is a convenient way to link to your favorite content at Amazon.com. It allows you to create intuitive, functional, and humane URLs on the fly, without interrupting the flow of your writing to stop and find the “correct” URL. AtTheBigRiver.com’s intelligent technology always sends your users to a sensible location. Just take the name of the artist, author, book or other product you want to link to at Amazon, change spaces to hyphens, and append “.atthebigriver.com” to it.

Examples

AtTheBigRiver.com works best with popular authors and artists. Suppose you want to link to The Beatles’ “official” page at Amazon.com. Finding the URL of the page is a hassle, and when you do find it, it looks like this:

• http://www.amazon.com/The-Beatles/e/B000APTK6K

Instead, you can simply use this URL:

• http://the-beatles.atthebigriver.com/

AtTheBigRiver.com knows where the “official” Beatles page is, and will automatically redirect users to it.

The same thing works with popular authors. Compare the “official” Neil Gaiman link on Amazon.com:

• http://www.amazon.com/Neil-Gaiman/e/B000AQ01G2/

To this:

• http://neil-gaiman.atthebigriver.com

If AtTheBigRiver.com doesn’t have a term in its database, it automatically redirects users to the Amazon search page for that search term. Try links like this:

• http://to-kill-a-mockingbird.atthebigriver.com
• http://ball-pein-hammer.atthebigriver.com
• http://charmin.atthebigriver.com

Constructing URLs

The rules for constructing AtTheBigRiver.com URLs are simple. Simply take the name of the artist, author, book or other item you want to link to, change spaces to hyphens, and append “.atthebigriver.com” to it. Our intelligent redirection technology is very forgiving. Underscores are automatically converted to hyphens, and non-alphanumeric characters are stripped out.

So these URLs are both equivalent and functional:

• http://j.k._rowling.atthebigriver.com
• http://jk-rowling.atthebigriver.com

AtTheBigRiver.com also works with Amazon.com referrer codes. Put your referrer code at the end of the URL and 90 percent of the time when that link is clicked on we’ll pass your affiliate code along to Amazon. The other 10 percent of the time we’ll substitute our code to help cover the costs of providing this service. If you don’t include a referrer code, we’ll use our affiliate code 100 percent of the time.

For example, if your affiliate code is affiliate123, then you add the referrer code like this:

• http://the-beatles.atthebigriver.com/affiliate123

“People have this innate view — it comes from friendship and marriage — that commitment is good. Which I agree with,” he says. That view shouldn’t, he says, carry over to inanimate objects.

It’s not that he’s not a voracious reader — he finishes more than a book a day, not including the “partials.” He just wants to make the most of his time.

“We should treat books a little more like we treat TV channels,” he argues. No one has trouble flipping away from a boring series.

Do you have a pile of books on your nightstand that have been lingering for months or years because you can’t seem to bring yourself to finish them? Are your bookshelves filled with books that you plan to get to one day but just can’t muster the energy to slog through them? If so, I vote to abandon the books. Say farewell to the bad to make room for the good.

It is so easy to think, “I’ll get to that later,” and let whatever the action is fall through the cracks. It doesn’t get written down on your list of next actions, it isn’t delegated to anyone else, and it slips right out of your mind. (At least that is how it works with me when I procrastinate.) You forget about it until someone comes seeking your response again, wasting your and the other person’s time.

I try to hold true to the two-minute “Do it now” policy at work, and an extended five-minute “Do it now” policy at home. Home-related tasks, in my opinion, seem to take a bit longer than office tasks. Unloading the dishwasher is a simple five-minute task that can be delayed if I don’t remind myself to “Do it now.” Clearing diner dishes, putting away items after getting ready in the morning, and dumping a load of laundry into the washer all seem to take about five minutes.

Do you use the two-minute “Do it now” policy at work? Have you tried a five-minute “Do it now” system at home? If you haven’t, I recommend giving it a try and watching your productivity improve.