This theme kept coming up for me this week, which is a sure sign I should share it with you. 🙂
I’ll kick off with 30 seconds from Snoop Dogg. (It has a swear word at the end, if that bugs you.)
“I want to thank me for just being me at all times” is a fabulous point of view that more of us should adopt.
How often do you get to the end of the week with a bunch of self recrimination for everything you didn’t get to? The irritating little projects that have taken up permanent residence on your to-do list, and the Walls of Awful that feel too horrible to start climbing.
If you don’t read or do anything else in response to this email today, I’d love it if you did this:
Do this: Take a minute and write down three things you did this week that were great.
I don’t care if you “had to do them” or you “shouldn’t get credit for doing your job,” or any of the other nonsense.
You did a lot more than three excellent things this week, but pick at least three and write them down.
I’m calling this the “self-gratitude journal.” Gratitude practices are nice, but they always feel corny and awkward to me after a day or two.
But channel a little Snoop and thank yourself for being you. Because you’re pretty great, actually.
The thing that makes to-do lists so annoying
Now, let’s talk about all the crap on that list.
The number one reason things don’t get done is Isaac Newton’s first law of motion.
That’s the law of inertia: An object at rest tends to stay at rest, and an object in motion tends to stay in motion.
To-do lists are full of “objects at rest.” And applying enough of a push to get them into motion is the name of the game.
Once you start, you can usually keep going until you’ve made some meaningful progress. But starting can be a MoFo.
Because I have an Inconvenient Brain, I’ve collected lots of techniques for dealing with irritating little tasks that are hard to cross off. Try one of these inertia busters and see if it helps:
#1: Quit in the middle
There’s a very natural impulse to quit work for the day at a natural break in the work. So maybe you keep writing until you finish a chapter, or you complete a first draft of a podcast script.
But consider stopping in the middle, instead.
Apparently Hemingway championed this idea, but don’t let that deter you.
If you stop in the middle of a chapter, a paragraph, or even a sentence, you’ll have a strong drive to just finish it when you sit down again. It reduces the friction of getting back into the work. It’s Isaac’s law again: It’s easier to keep moving than it is to start moving.
Software engineer Kent Beck has a version for programmers called the “Red Test Pattern.” Stop coding at a point of failure, so that your natural drive gets you to resolve that failure when you start work again.
#2: Get chased by KGB assassins
Need to power through something tedious? Put on a soundtrack from your favorite thriller (the Jason Bourne series has good ones) and work as fast as you can for a fixed period of time.
Imagining you’re being chased through Berlin by skilled assassins will give the project a little extra juice.
This sounds silly (let’s face it, it is silly), but that kind of fast-paced, energetic music will give you a little brain stimulation, and encourage you to work with a little more focus and haste.
If “Beyoncé dance party” sounds like more fun than “get chased by assassins,” you do you. But find a way to let an energetic piece of music propel your objects at rest into objects in motion.
#3: Break it down some more
I know, I know.
“Eat an elephant one bite at a time.” We’ve all heard this until we want to throw things.
Still true, though.
If you’re still looking at that stupid task and wishing a comet would land on the building so you could get out of it, take all of the steps you have now and break them into absurdly smaller pieces.
“Write the introduction” becomes “Write one crappy sentence that could potentially work in the introduction.”
If you need a basic framework for a piece of writing (not just a blog post), you can use this one: How to Grow a Blog Post in 7 Easy Steps.
Then, break the “easy steps” into “one-minute steps.”
You can totally combine this with the KGB assassin one.
Try one next week?
You’ve probably got a list of some kind from this week. It probably has stuff on it that didn’t get done.
Think one of these might be useful to take some bites out of it next week? Write it down now, and stick it on a post-it that you’ll see on Monday.
And be sure to let me know how it went. 🙂
That’s the Fierce for this week! May the Fierce be with you.
Sonia
