Two Minute Offense

Now that you can get your shirts on and off more quickly… Let’s inject some style into the wardrobe situation. Don’t worry, it doesn’t require spending any more money.

Just make sure that when you go to put that shirt back in your closet, take an extra second (the one you saved by putting on quicker earlier) and make sure it goes to the back of the rack. Then you can just take the first shirt that’s there and put it on really fast! It’s like the “top of the drawer” approach for the stylish. You can even sort your shirts, so if you’ve got long sleeve for cooler climes, and short sleeve button downs for when the weather is a little warmer, you can move the “categories” around so the best available choice is always the First Choice.

This will, obviously, decrease the so-called “repeat” outfits, instantly making you more stylish than probably half of the people you work with.

The categorization also works well if your apartment/house has fairly small closets (or relatively few of them) and you have to share with someone else. I know that the first shirt after my wife’s clothes will be the one I’m going to wear.* I know it’s going to be clean, and since I limit the number of pants I have to only go with the shirts I have, I know the rest of my wardrobe will fall into place around it. (That’s a whole different post, though, isn’t it?)

*I let her have the front of the closet since I’ve got about 7 inches on her and it’s easier for me to reach back there.

I first came across the knowledge in this area while listening to Brian Tracy. Leading Forward has a few good bullet points that I think you can probably read in less than 2 minutes.

Leading Forward: How to Multi-Task Productively
Effective multi-task requires careful thought, in addition to my previous post, some tactics to bear in mind to ensure appropriate multi-tasking are:

• Limit multi-tasking to simple tasks. Keep multi-tasking to simple tasks, that which does not require deep thinking, creative thinking or problem solving.
• Set apart time and energy for important work. Give important work, work requiring deep thinking, problem solving or creativity and imagination, the quality, energy and time it deserves. This will mean you will need to persevere on an important task until it’s completed
• Remove distractions and limit interruptions. When working on complex and important tasks, remove distractions, shut down your e-mail client, switch off your phone and TV, etc. Focused time and energy on important, complex tasks IS the most productive way to work!
• Daily and medium-term planning is crucial. Without effective daily and medium-term (a 40 day window) planning, ensuring appropriate multi-tasking is impossible, you ultimately remain in crisis (multi-tasking) mode. Planning helps to schedule time for important and complex work which is best suited for focused attention.

I have found that I often lose data (ie: thoughts and ideas) when I am forced to switch between tasks. Even when these tasks are related (parts of the same project), I either have to completely finish what I’m working on, or write down all the important things I need to remember with the regard to the task (which saves me some loss in productivity, but less than if I just switched without capturing that data).

How many times have you gone “Oh, right, now I remember you saying that”?

Self-Discipline » Steve Pavlina’s Personal Development Blog

It’s a mistake to try to push yourself too hard when trying to build self-discipline. If you try to transform your entire life overnight by setting dozens of new goals for yourself and expecting yourself to follow through consistency starting the very next day, you’re almost certain to fail. This is like a person going to the gym for the first time ever and packing 300 pounds on the bench press. You will only look silly.

Once again, how much do I love Steve Pavlina’s blog? A lot.

I recently came across some other articles on concentration, which I consider an important part (no really a part, per se, but close relative, perhaps) of self-discipline. I won’t link to it, because I don’t have the link any more… But the point is that I think using concentration techniques is a great way to start out building your self-discipline. Things like:

• Counting every four steps (1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4) [or five or six steps] when walking
• Counting the number of bites when chewing food
• Counting inhales/exhales [up to ten] on public transit (while commuting, essentially - I wouldn’t recommend doing this in the car without praticing elsewhere first, because it requires a suprising amount of concentration, at least for me, the Scrawny Concentrator)

It seemed kind of ridiculous to me at first, but I believe that doing these things (I started about 2 weeks ago) has actually improved my ability to concentrate, and helped me in my quest to stop biting my fingernails (of course, the psychology behind that, I think, is a whole different thing that I am still trying to figure out).

I saw Steve’s post, and thought it was a great, so I wanted to provide a few ideas of how you can start your self-discipline training regimen. I started with the walking one, and found it the easiest. Just make sure you’re actually counting steps, and not just counting to four while walking. I like these particular ideas because you can (or rather have to) do them while you’re doing something during which you can’t really be doing anything else (I can’t send email while I’m walking to work; I could do something on the train, but it’s nice to relax and count breaths in the mornings - after all, I got the idea from a Zen meditation book).

How to Become an Early Riser - Part II » Steve Pavlina’s Personal Development Blog

I recommend getting up at the same time for 30 days straight to lock in the habit, but after that you’ll be so conditioned to waking up at the same time that it will be hard to sleep in. I decided to sleep in late one Saturday morning and didn’t set my alarm, but I woke up automatically at 4:58 am. Then I tried to sleep in, but I was wide awake and couldn’t fall back asleep again. Oh well. Once the habit is established, it isn’t hard at all to get up, assuming you’re going to bed at the onset of sleepiness.

Just a little something to add… If you’re having trouble waking up a lot earlier, try doing it in increments. This is the approach I took and I’ve gone from 6:45am to 6:00am in 15 minute increments over the past few months. It’s much easier to wake up 15 minutes earlier (and you won’t feel as tired later on) than it is to wake up 45 minutes earlier. It like a patch vs. cold turkey. If 15 minutes is still too much, try 10 or even 5 minutes… Then you can tell yourself, “It’s only 5 minutes earlier, that’s nothing.”

If you have trouble waking up in the morning even before you start trying to wake up earlier, you will need to look at some other blog posts on Motivation (there aren’t any here just yet, but there should be eventually… a good reason to subscribe to the RSS feed)

Jason Womack - Stay Motivated

So, here’s an example of the process under the “Category” Product Management:
Goal: Enhance awareness and customer base of a new product.
Milestone: Roll out the new advertisement campaign.
Target: Contact 100,000 people by 3rd quarter.
Task: Draft e-mail to set up a meeting with marketing team.

I’m working on doing this kind of thing with my goals. I’ve only recently (as in, last week) started writing down my goals (in the past/present/already-happened tense, no less) and found that it really does help to motivate. Knowing that certain things have to be accomplished in order to make those goals a reality is a good way to kick yourself in the ass (since I’m not actually that flexible).

To add to the above example, here’s one of mine:

Category: Continuos Learning
Goal: I can hold first-year level conversations in French with Val.

I haven’t broken it down into Milestones with Targets and Tasks yet, but as soon as AirSet supports hierarchical lists, I’m all over it (they’ve promised that it’s coming soon… hopefully in enough time to help me achieve my goals). That particular goal is a good nominee for the breakdown, because it is very abstract when you’re looking at where to start. My girlfriend (Val) is a French teacher, and I figure I can learn in a year what her students do (especially since I’m more motivated than a lot of them). I’ll probably need her help to create Milestones like “Finished Chapter 1″ or something.

Another, perhaps superior, example is:

Category: Fanatical Pupil
Goal: I have self-published Between Blue Lines and one other new book of poetry

The beginnings of Between Blue Lines can be found over at Fanatical Pupil… it’s a good example of the needed kick in the proverbial ass. You can see (at least at the time of this post) that my last posted poem was on April 25th. That’s over a month ago… So, in order to get that book and another completed by next year, I’m going to have to start writing some damn poetry. (Don’t worry, I have goals for this blog and my other one, so writing here is not wasting time that could be spent achieving my goals… or rather, the time spent here is, in fact, time spent achieving my goals)

Anyway, to break that down into Milestones, Targets and Tasks, it would look something like this (probably):

• Milestone: Writing (first drafts) are finished
• Target: I have 100 poems ready to go
• Task: Write a poem (until I’ve got 100)

That seems like how it would work for me. Comments and suggestions are welcome, of course. And any other goal-setting advice…

How to Become an Early Riser » Steve Pavlina’s Personal Growth Blog

If you sleep based on what your body tells you, you’ll probably be sleeping more than you need — in many cases a lot more, like 10-15 hours more per week (the equivalent of a full waking day). A lot of people who sleep this way get 8 hours of sleep per night, which is usually too much. Also, your mornings may be less predictable if you’re getting up at different times. And because our natural rhythms are sometimes out of tune with the 24-hour clock, you may find that your sleep times begin to drift.

…It’s very simple, and many early risers do this without even thinking about it, but it was a mental breakthrough for me nonetheless. The solution was to go to bed when I’m sleepy (and only when I’m sleepy) and get up with an alarm clock at a fixed time (7 days per week). So I always get up at the same time (in my case 5am), but I go to bed at different times every night.

I go to bed when I’m too sleepy to stay up. My sleepiness test is that if I couldn’t read a book for more than a page or two without drifting off, I’m ready for bed. Most of the time when I go to bed, I’m asleep within three minutes. I lie down, get comfortable, and immediately I’m drifting off. Sometimes I go to bed at 9:30pm; other times I stay up until midnight. Most of the time I go to bed between 10-11pm. If I’m not sleepy, I stay up until I can’t keep my eyes open any longer…

When my alarm goes off every morning, I turn it off, stretch for a couple seconds, and sit up. I don’t think about it. I’ve learned that the longer it takes me to get up, the more likely I am to try to sleep in. So I don’t allow myself to have conversations in my head about the benefits of sleeping in once the alarm goes off. Even if I want to sleep in, I always get up right away.

After a few days of using using this approach, I found that my sleep patterns settled into a natural rhythm. If I got too little sleep one night, I’d automatically be sleepier earlier and get more sleep the next night. And if I had lots of energy and wasn’t tired, I’d sleep less. My body learned when to knock me out because it knew I would always get up at the same time and that my wake-up time wasn’t negotiable.

I also discovered this pattern myself by setting my alarm clock and waking up at the same time every morning. It just seemed like a good thing to do to get into a habit. Once you get used to it (and often during the Spring and Summer when it’s lighter in the mornings) your body (well, mine at least) will wake up automatically at the time it’s used to getting up. I usually have a lot of stuff I like to/need to get done in the morning, so staying in bed is not an option. It’s been longer than I can remember since I hit the snooze button.

A slight variation on this system is that I will often sleep in until 8 or 9 on the weekends (during the week, I get up at 6). I usually sleep in a little later on Saturday and/or Sunday if I’ve stayed up late for a few days during the week. I kind of just let my body wake me up on those days. However, I don’t stay in bed for an artificially long time; after I wake up the first time, I get up. Yes, this is true even after I’ve been out drinking. I’ve got my alcohol tolerance pretty well figured out, so I know how much I can handle without getting a hangover. In addition, I make sure to have water ready in the fridge to drink when I come in from a night out. I try to drink at least 16 ounces of water, and find that it’s enough to help my body flush the alcohol. But I guess that’s getting a little off topic…

So, yeah, wake up at the same time every day. Go to bed when you get sleepy. If you need to stay up later, you’ll probably get tired sooner the next day, so you should still wake up at your usual time.

Bad Music + Future Tickle + Praise for TaskToy