The Trance of Productivity - Part 2
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.
You’re reading Part Two. Part One is here.
I said in part one that I had this great little trick I use whenever I want to do the brainless and tedious task of cleaning up a mess. THE CLEAN UP TRANCE. Stupid name, simple concept. But for me, it works like a charm
A quick recap of the CLEANUP TRANCE:
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.
I am almost embarrassed to write this down because it seems on the face of it to be such a basic thing to be able to focus on, and yet I used to struggle to actually clean shit up. Really. So this deliberate approach is brilliant for me. The best part (and the reason I call it a trance) is that when you click into the loop of doing something, and deciding on what is next the process takes on an almost self perpetuating quality and you’re not even trying to focus - your just hooked into it and it cycles along until before you know it you’re done.
So I thought I’d try to expand this - and use it to focus myself on a day to day basis.
Would it work?
Well, yesterday I woke up, cleaned my house, restrung my guitar, made a list of stuff I’d like to complete, practiced guitar for an hour, bought a guitar e-book by the wonderful Desi Serna which I have been meaning to buy for ages, started planning for my flight and accommodation for when I travel back to Australia, completed the restructuring of my hard drives after having a drive die on me, completed my Final Cut Pro instructional website which I’ve been meaning to do for the last 3 weeks since the hard drive disaster, began the ugly process of arranging my tax, cooked some pasta, recorded a podcast, created a new forum for the release of the new Final Cut Studio, gave away 2 prizes in the podcast which sponsors had offered weeks ago and Matched an editor to a job through the Final Cut Pro Talent Registry.
So the short answer is, hell yes it does.
And what I discovered was that you really don’t need that convoluted series of 9 steps to get the essence of it.
It all comes down to a simple concept:
Always know what you’re doing NOW,
and always know what you’re doing NEXT.
This concept is my new best friend.
For example, right now I am writing this article. That’s what I am doing now.
Next I am going to spend an hour practicing the Pentatonic scale on my acoustic guitar. Its something that excites my lately and that I enjoy, so I want to do it.
But while I am doing that I will also decide - BEFORE I BEGIN PLAYING THE GUITAR - what it is that I am doing next. But until then I am not even going to consider what it is that I am going to do after that. It is to much to think about. It doesn’t matter.
Always know what you’re doing NOW,
and always know what you’re doing NEXT.
I am not saying don’t plan.
In fact it would probably be good that you spend 15 minutes of each day - before much of the day goes by - jotting down the things you want or need to get done that day. (And if you’re going to do that - try to include one thing that you know you ought to do but have been dreading).
Even the writing of that list should not commence until you know what you are going to do once that list is written. Otherwise you could waste your day writing a freaking list.
A huge benefit of consciously deciding what you are going to do next is that you would never consciously decide to do something like, say... troll through your friends facebook photos for the next 2 hours. You might, however decide to check your Facebook page. Nothing wrong with that.
The problem comes when you just happen across Facebook. You can literally spend hours there without direction, without purpose, and with the vague idea that you probably ought to be doing something else.
My girlfriend was going to quit Facebook because it was sucking up all her outside of work time. That’d be a shame though because Facebook in and of itself is not a bad thing. In a lot of ways its brilliant - for finding old friends, old photos of yourself or your friends that you thought you lost.
Here’s the trick (its the same as always): If you do decide to check your facebook page, have something in mind that you are going to do after that, and have it mind before you login to your account.
...or to put it another way:
Always know what you’re doing NOW,
and always know what you’re doing NEXT.
Am I an idiot? Maybe. Is this so basic a concept that I am the only one in the world who has to think it through? Maybe, but I’m thinking not.
Here’s the thing. A lot of the time I find myself doing something...which leads to something else...which leads to a slightly unrelated thing...which leads to and unrelated thing...which pretty much describes the pattern of a distracted mind.
Now I am sleeping, but there is still a ‘NEXT’.
Another benefit I found in this process is that just because what you might happen to be doing ‘NOW’ is sleeping, doesn’t mean that there is not a ‘NEXT’. In fact, before you sleep is the best time of all to have something in mind that you re going to do next.
I don’t know about you but the moment I wake up is the least reasonable I am all day.
I don’t want to get out of bed. I play games in my mind, making up reasons why I can and should stay in bed at least a little longer. And when I finally get up, it always takes a little while for my brain to follow.
This morning when I got up, however, the first thing I remembered was the next thing I was going to do when I got up. It was the last thing I thought about yesterday and it was right there when I woke up in the morning. That’s right - I was going to clean the kitchen. It still had all the dishes from the pasta from the day before. Before I started of course, I decided what I was going to do next. Next I was going to put on the coffee percolator.
Dead simple.
However, during that time, I thought about checking my email - and I would have, except I knew that wasn’t what i was doing now. I did it third or fourth or something. Had I stopped half way through cleaning, it would have been just a few easy and brainless steps to complete distraction.
There’s always a bigger ‘NOW’
I don’t want to overcomplicate this, but once you’ve got the hang of knowing what you’re doing now and knowing what you’re doing next, you might realize that life is more than little tasks. So this idea of “what’s now and what’s next” might seem a little short sited.
What about “what’s coming up down the road?”
Well the way I think of it, its the same basic concept.
Sure, now I am writing this and next I am practicing my guitar. But at the same time I am aware that now I am traveling and next I will be setting up my life in Sydney Australia. So I am traveling knowing that’s what I am doing in the larger NOW and I am setting up a life in Australia in the larger NEXT. As I arrive in Australia it will be my new large now and I will define a new large NEXT.
Most people just trundle along but thinking about where you are and where you’re going next doesn’t require that much effort.
As George Bernard Shaw put it, “Few people think more than two or three times a year. I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.”
So there’s layers of scale to this. And they go both ways.
Here’s an example in the opposite direction. Let’s say NOW i am cleaning the kitchen and NEXT I am going to work on a pitch for a television commercial. OK. That’s decided. But in order to stay focused on cleaning up, what am I going to do? I’m going to think in terms of a smaller NOW-NEXT. Or to take us all the way back to the start, I’ll do the old “CLEAN-UP TRANCE”.
This idea of a ‘Productivity Trance’ is really just a mental approach for getting things done on a day to day level.
So lets keep it simple.
I can pretty much forget everything I’ve written here as long as at any given moment I can answer this question:
What am I doing NOW, and what am I doing NEXT?
Give it a try!
Doug Suiter,
Berlin, Germany.
Friday, 24 July 2009.
UPDATE: PART 3 OF THIS POST CAN BE FOUND HERE.