Actually, really getting things done



I'm one of those people who has no trouble at all getting started on a job. Sleeves rolled up and I'm ready to go. I'm not one of those people who tend to get things done. Constantly, I have a huge list of things I'm working on.

I've been been like this all my life and frankly it's getting worse not better. So what can I do about it?

I think I need to treat getting things done as a thing in itself and worked on that thing. So what does getting something done actually mean? I think a good way to look at it is that you've created something that didn't exist and made it exist in such such way that you no longer need to look at it any more. It is definitely now off your list, and possibly out of your life. So to take a trivial example, this blog post will be done when it's appeared online. To make sure it actually appears online I've given myself 10 minutes to complete it. I have a timer running which I am continually looking at. And while I'm looking at it, I'm trying to judge how I can use the time I have left to achieve my goal of a completed blog post.

And I'm not leaving anything to go back back for. So every paragraph has to be completely edited before I move onto the next one. (You will notice that you don't get power off for 10 minutes).

I fitted this into a bigger scheme of course. I want to have a steady stream of posts coming out on this blog. My goal is to have one come out every week. So I want to write two every week. That means I will have a stash of blog posts to come. And I will spend literally only 20 minutes a week doing so.

You could look at the date of this post and how many blog posts I've actuall written to see how well I've done.





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What Would Marcus Do Week 1: Marcus Aurelius on Gaining Control of your Mind

Image
  “You have power over your mind—not outside events. Realise this, and you will find strength.”  — Marcus Aurelius Marcus Aurelius wrote these words nearly two millennia ago, yet they still resonate. Every ping, buzz, and notification represents an “outside event” attempting to commandeer our attention. Modern research confirms that external distractions significantly compromise our memory and cognitive performance more than internal mind-wandering, precisely the distinction the Stoics understood intuitively.
Read more

What Would Marcus Do Week 2: Seneca on Busyness and the Poverty of Distracted Time

Image
“Nothing will ever please you if you start looking for what you have lost.”  — Seneca Seneca wrote extensively about time’s true value, arguing that we aren’t given a short life—we waste the life we’re given. His insights in “On the Shortness of Life” read like a diagnosis of our contemporary condition, where the average person spends several hours daily fragmenting their attention across multiple platforms. Research reveals that media multitasking interferes with attention and working memory, negatively affecting academic performance, recall, and reading comprehension. Seneca would recognise this as the natural consequence of what he called vita occupata—the occupied life that mistakes motion for progress.
Read more

Speeding Up My Blogging Using A Really Scary App

Image
I like to linger on my writing. I enjoy leaving it, coming back to it, and editing it. Then re-editing it. The less pressing the writing is, the more leisurely my approach. The writing that is least important to me, and judging by my stats to everyone else as well, is my blogging. As a consequence, I produce very few blog posts, and what I do produce often stays in draft form for quite a long time. Often indefinitely.
Read more