The Trance of Productivity
This is all about my little practical experiment in time management.
You’re reading Part One.
Its basically a technique to help things get done, when you’re the only person who has anything to gain or lose from the outcome. Enjoy!
I have this little trick that I have been doing for a while now to distract myself away from distraction.
I invented it a few years ago accidentally and if your the sort of person that can just easily get down to work and do what needs to be done then chances are your going to laugh at this. If not, you might actually find it kind of useful.
I call it the CLEAN UP TRANCE.
It came about because I am a very, very, very easily distracted person. So a simple task - like cleaning up a room for example can stretch out into a day long project. I can’t seem to get myself from the point of picking something up to the point of putting it where it belongs without somehow being distracted by...pretty much anything.
So I figured my way out of it one day by inventing a little ‘mind hack’ that I still use to this very day...
You can try it. First you will need a mess.
Once you have a mess, follow these steps:
1. Close your eyes.
2. Turn to face the mess.
3. Open your eyes.
4. The first thing you see, no matter what it is, that’s where you start. Be ruthless. Go pick it up.
5. As you are walking toward it, think about where to put it. You have to decide before you reach it.
6. Now pick the thing up and start walking to where it has to go.
7. As you are walking to where it has to go glance around - do it without thinking. Whatever you see next is your next target.
8. As you are walking from where the first thing has been put to the next target, decide where the next target goes. You have to decide before you reach it.
9. Return to step 6. Repeat until the mess is no more.
You’re laughing at me, aren’t you?
Or maybe you’re not.
I’m telling you if there are people like me out there who need to think like this and need to hear it said. Sure, I made up the above steps but not before years and years of simply not being able to finish a goddam cleaning session without ending up going through a bunch of old photos that I stumbled across in the process or stopping to check my emails or to put on a coffee or whatever other million things defocussed me from what I was intending to to.
But as fundamental as being able to stick to the task of cleaning up sounds its one of those things that I struggled with for years without knowing why but all the while feeling the frustration of having realized that I had wasted an entire day on not quite cleaning up a mess.
The most astonishing thing to me is that not only do things get done in the way...but they get done very, very quickly. 15 minutes of clean up trance is a LOT of cleaning up.
The trance bit is where it’s at. It’s tricking your mind into a loop of doing the next thing as the first thing is being completed. You close the loop, it repeats and it’s self sustaining and there is simply no time to get distracted because your thinking about the next thing as your doing the current thing.
Now the reason I’m thinking about this now is because I am having a similar feeling about other things that i am doing in my life.
I am wasting time and getting distracted and I am wondering if this CLEAN UP TRANCE thing, which has worked so damned well (as stupid as it is) can be ported over into other areas of my life.
Can the CLEAN UP TRANCE be adapted to a larger scale endeavor? A TRANCE OF PRODUCTIVITY.
I’ll give it a shot tomorrow.
Basically what I need is a MESS - or in the broader sense, an unaccomplished goal. Now I have several of those so I’ll have to look at it as a series of messy rooms.
Then I need to look at each as a pile of things that need to be done.
I need to then look at that pile of what needs to be done and attack the first thing that I look at without regard to what it is.
Then I would have to take action to start it happening. As I start to take that action, I need to line the next thing up in my mind.
That’s it. Then I repeat.
OK, I’ll let you know how I go tomorrow 
This is an ongoing experiment...
Doug Suiter,
Berlin, Germany.
Wednesday, 22 July 2009.
UPDATE: PART 2 OF THIS POST CAN BE FOUND HERE.