Nothing To Do, And All Day To Do It In…

(Part 1 of Lessons Learned from Nano)

Did you know that it is actually *harder* to get things done when you have all day to do them?

When we only have an hour or so to write or blog or paint or clean (an hour scraped together by sacrificing precious time from elsewhere) we take that hour seriously, scrawling and scrubbing furiously. If we wind up finishing a little less than planned, we don’t fuss so much. After all, it was only an hour. We cant expect miracles.

But give us ALL DAY, and OMG!!!! The expectations are so high!!!!
(and yes, those excess punctuation marks were really required. I was going for an effect.)

When we have all day, we have time to do good work, right? And since we have time … we really should get those dishes taken care of first. Then we stare at a blank screen, page or canvas, waiting for inspiration. We have all day.. there’s no need for us to force a mad rush for inadequate accomplishments like others are doing. WE are lucky, we have free time to do this right, and… Oh, look.. there’s a squirrel. We’ll just watch him for a while, and wait for inspiration to strike… la la la. Let’s see what’s on TV. Next thing you know, we’re falling asleep, and beating ourselves up for not getting anything done.

Most productivity tips are about squeezing more work into small amounts of available time. But sometimes, we need help to get *anything* done in great masses of available time. We have to find ways to force structure on ourselves, to find and apply discipline, and it isn’t always easy.

_____One trick I’ve used is to impose a time limit, say… one hour, to write a minimum of 1000 words. If I didn’t get that 1000 words written, I was *not allowed* to write again until the next day. Somehow, the idea that I wasn’t going to be *allowed* to write clicked my brain into gear. Time became a limited commodity again, something I didn’t want to squander, and tada… the 1000 words appear surprisingly painlessly. A variation is to set a ‘cut off point’…. if I haven’t gotten that workout in by, say, five o’clock, I’m not allowed to do it. Suddenly, at 4pm, I’ll notice the time, and dive for that treadmill.

_____Another trick is the (10+2)4 Procrastination Hack, stolen shamelessly from 43 Folders. The idea is that we can stand to do anything for 10 minutes. So we write, paint, exercise, or scrub toilets for 10 minutes, then force a break of 2 minutes. Repeat 4 times. I tend to play with the times a bit, and do more of a (15+5)3 sort of thing — still, it’s an hour of almost painless productivity.

_____Remembering the catch phrase of “quantity over quality” helps too. There’s an oft-quoted story floating around the art world about a supposed college art class experiment. The students were divided into two groups for one week. One group was told their grade would depend on the quality of their work alone. The other group was told they would be graded on quantity alone.

The result was interesting. The group of students focused on quantity produced a higher number of quality works. I’ve seen this echoed in my own work, not just in the creative arts, but in daily mundane tasks, as well. It’s more important to just DO things, than to do them to perfection — and more perfection happens when we “just do it”.

So. There you have it. My tips and tricks for getting things done within a ridiculously unscheduled timeframe.

Have any tips of your own along these lines? Please share with the class. We need all the help we can get!

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MindTWEAK: It’s more important to do something imperfectly, than to do nothing to perfection.
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