When we set ourselves to do something and start working on it, we think we are taking action to achieve the results but guess what? Sometimes, what we’re doing is not yet the real action that would help us achieve the outcome but we’re just simply preparing for the goal or just being in motion towards the goal.
What does that mean? “Being in motion” vs “taking action” sound similar but they are not the same according to Atomic Habits by James Clear.
When you’re in motion, it pertains to planning, strategizing and learning. These are all good but they don’t produce the results. It’s the action that delivers the outcome.
For example, if you brainstorm for possible topics for an article, that’s motion. If you write an article, that’s action.
If you research about healthy meals and recipes, that’s motion. If you eat a healthy meal, that’s action.
If you analyze data from a campaign, that’s motion. If you optimize a campaign, that’s action.
If you talk and listen to a mentor and reflect about the advice, that’s motion. If you apply the learnings from your mentor in real life situations, that’s action.
Being in motion is generally good but as Clear points out, it will never produce an outcome by itself. Why? Because it doesn’t matter how many times you consult a mentor, this motion will never improve your performance if you never apply any of the learnings from your mentor. It doesn’t matter how many times you talk to a gym trainor, that motion will never get you into shape until you actually do the exercises or eat the diet the trainor recommended.
Thus, there is some danger on being in motion as it can lead us to procrastination because being in motion can make us believe that we’re making progress and that we’re getting things done but in reality, we’re just “preparing” to get something done.
I’ve never thought about it this way but it does makes sense. For most of the things we said we’re going to do and we never get around doing, maybe we’re stuck in the motion phase and fool ourselves into believing that we’re actually doing something but in reality, everything we’ve been doing is just being in motion and preparation. Tsk...tsk... It's time to review and reflect. 😬
Do you think the reason why you can’t build and maintain good habits is because you lack the self-discipline? That maybe a myth because according to the book Atomic Habits by James Clear, there is no difference between people who appear to have self-control and those who don’t. He says that people who are most self-disciplined are just better in structuring themselves in this way, they spend less time in tempting situations which doesn’t require self-control. It’s easier to use self-restraint when you don’t have to use it often. Makes sense, right?
So the way to improve ourselves is not by wishing we had more self-control but by creating a more disciplined environment.
To build good habits, we need to make the cues for the habits highly visible and obvious and reset our place so that the environment is friction-less to perform the good habits. For example, if you want to develop an exercise habit, bring out your rubber shoes and whatever you need for your workout the night before.
If you want to eat healthy, have ready-to-eat pre-cut fruits in your fridge so there’s healthy food available any time you want to eat.
If you want to develop a writing habit, have your writing materials ready on your desk everyday.
If you want to regularly go to the gym, find a gym that is close to your home or office. Distance would create friction since traveling requires extra effort.
Or whatever good habit you want to build, join a group where your desired behavior is the normal behavior. After all, according to the Atomic Habits, we tend to imitate the habits of 3 social groups namely the close (friends), the many (the tribes) and the powerful (those with status and prestige).
In the same way, if we want to stop bad habits, we need to increase friction so we don’t end up doing them or simply avoid tempting situations. For example, if you want to lessen time watching tv, unplug it after every use and remove the batteries of the remote control, so it takes a lot of effort before you can use the tv.
If you want to lessen time spent on social media, log out every time you use it or change passwords frequently that chances are, you won’t remember the last password and have to reset the password every time you use social media. Or to add another level of friction, uninstall the app after every use and reinstall it every time you need to use it.
If you are trying to lose weight, stop hanging out with friends who love to eat out. Just do other activities with them that doesn’t involve eating or you can meet them for coffee or tea instead.
The key to self-discipline is we have to redesign our life so that the habits that benefit us are the easiest to do and the habits that don’t add value to our life are the most difficult to do.
It's great to know that self-discipline doesn’t require superpowers after all (yay!😅) - but that is only if we don’t subject ourselves to the wrong cues and tempting situations.
After each project, we usually have a postmortem. We review the project in hindsight - after it happened. But do you know what there's such a concept as premortem? It's an exercise in hindsight in advance. You envision what could go wrong, what will go wrong - in advance, before you even start with the project.
"Far too many ambitious undertakings fail for preventable reasons. Far too many people don’t have a backup plan because they refuse to consider that something might not go exactly as they wish".
This concept of premortem though is nothing new. The origin is credited to the Stoics which they call premeditatio malorum (premeditation of evils).
In onemy past blogposts about Stoicism, this was referred to as retrospective negative visualization. But the examples in that blogpost were mostly serious life situations like visualizing the loss of a loved one.
But for the purpose of this blog, we could use the premortem technique for simple projects, plans or goals. Here's a simple framework you can use to start thinking about the possible negative scenarios of your projects and goals, and the corresponding possible solutions and back-up plans:
What if ______? Then I will ______.
What if ______? Instead I’ll just _______.
What if _______? No problem, I can always ________.
And in case there is is nothing that can be done, Holiday says that the Stoic way is to manage expectations. Because sometimes, he says, the only answer to "What if . . . " is, "It will suck but we’ll be okay".
When we write down personal goals, we usually write as many as we can but oftentimes, most of them remain semi-achieved, others are temporarily parked and some are never even started.
When I started realizing this, I started limiting my personal goals to 3 to 4 per year max. It sounds very few but when you have a full-time job, trying to achieve 3 to 4 personal goals on your free time is a lot. In fact, I can't even work on all 4 goals at a time. I can only work on 1 or 2 at a time before I move on the next. This is also because I'd rather do a great job in completing one than have 4 semi-achieved/half-baked goals.
So it seems that having a long goal list is counter-productive, right? That's what Warren Buffett thinks too. He is for eliminating, sometimes important goals, in order to focus on the few that will bring the success we desire.
I was actually surprised to read about Buffet's stance coz most books encourage writing as many goals as we can.
To illustrate Buffett’s way, there’s this story about his personal pilot and how he helped him to focus and prioritize his goals using a 2-list strategy.
First, Buffett asked his pilot to carefully think about, and write down his 25 top goals. When he came back and presented this list of 25, Buffet asked him to pick out the top 5 most important goals. Thus, at this point, there are 2 lists: the list of 5 goals and the list of 20 remaining goals.
The pilot thought he would then focus on his top 5 and work towards the other 20 if he could find time. But Buffett told him that that is actually the path to becoming unsuccessful. Rather, Buffett said, the pilot should throw away the list of 20 – no matter how seemingly important they are – and focus solely on the top 5. His reason is because the list of 20 would be a source of distraction that would prevent you from focusing on the top 5. The article which I read suggests another alternative - instead of throwing the list of 20, you can make it as your "Avoid-at-all-cost list" - in short, it's a reminder of what you shouldn't focus on.
25 and 5 goals are a lot for me. I think my 2-strategy list is just composed of 10 and 4 max. I sound like such an under-achiever. 😂
Anyway, no matter how many are our goals, the biggest takeaway is we need to learn how to prioritize, focus and stick to completing the important few rather than be busy trying to accomplish a lot but end up not completing anything. :)
In 2006, I had a trip to Israel, Jordan and Egypt. Because my work life then was toxic, I ended packing the same morning as our departure. I was about to leave for the airport when I thought of checking my stash of leftover bills from past trips just in
case I had any US dollars I could bring.When I
checked the pouch where I store them, my passport was still there!In short, if I didn't look for leftover bills, I would have totally forgotten my passport!Yikes!
My 2 biggest learnings from that incident were (1) always
have a travel checklist, and (2) never pack hours before a trip!
It's been 11 years since I started using checklists because of that incident. I have checklists for check-in luggage, for hand-carry, for a beach destination, etc. Fortunately, I've never had any close encounter
of missing a flight due to a forgotten passport. Whew!
Through the years, my use of checklists has expanded. I even have checklists if I'm going to a pilates class, or going swimming, a checklist for weekly and monthly household chores, name it! Wahaha…. And it works because it saves you a lot of time (no need to rack your brain on what to bring every time!) and it gives you peace of mind knowing that the essential things you need to do or bring have been already pre-identified.
Because I love to use checklists, when I learned that Atul Gawande, the author of one of my
favorite books (Being Mortal) had a book entitled "Checklist
Manifesto:How to Get Things Right", I knew I had to read it. And I was blown away by what I learned from the book - how checklists are used in hospitals, construction sites, airlines, etc. to save lives. My checklists
looked nonsense and immaterial! Wahaha….
The book cites that one of the reasons why we make mistakes is because of ineptitude, the opposite of which is eptitude. But the challenge is - how do we apply our eptitude or the knowledge that we have consistently and correctly? The simple solution is to have a checklist.
For example, a doctor like Gawande on a given ordinary day, could have 6 patients with 6 completely different primary
medical problems and a total of 26 different additional diagnoses. He said no matter how specialized and trained doctors are, steps could still be missed and mistakes made. And that's where checklists come in.
In the field of medicine, it was a doctor named Pronovost who first introduced the use of checklists. He plotted out the steps to take in order to avoid infections when putting in a central line. Doctors are supposed to (1) wash their hands with soap, (2) clean the patient’s skin with antiseptic, (3) put sterile drapes over the entire patient, (4) wear a mask, hat, sterile gown, and gloves, and (5) put a sterile dressing over the insertion site once the line is in. Nurses are authorized to stop doctors if they saw them skipping a step on the checklist.
What were the results of using this checklist after 1 year in a test hospital? The ten-day line-infection rate went from 11 percent to zero! Yep, zero! Amazing, right?! Pronovost's team continued to use the checklist and monitor the results for 15 more months. The results? Only 2 line infections occurred during the entire period. They calculated that, in that one hospital, the checklist had prevented 43 infections and 8 deaths, and saved USD2Million in costs. Wow.
Another field that heavily uses checklists is the airlines industry. There was this Boeing plane (Model 299) which could carry lots of bombs, fly faster and fly twice the distance vs previous bombers. But when the first plane was first flown by the military, it lifted off smoothly but shortly after, it exploded. The cause of the explosion was due to pilot error. How could that have happened? The new plane required the pilot to attend to 4 engines, each with its own oil-fuel mix, retractable landing gear, wing flaps, among many other things. While doing all of these, the pilot (though a highly experienced air force pilot), forgot to release a new locking mechanism on the elevator and
rudder controls. That single simple omission caused the explosion. One newspaper concluded that the plane was “too much
airplane for one man to fly.”
But what did a group of test pilots think of doing? They created a pilot’s checklist.Flying this new plane was too complicated to
be left to the memory of any one person, however expert, they said.Their pilot checklist contained step-by-step checks
for takeoff, flight, landing, and taxiing. It had the kind of stuff that all
pilots know to do.Check that the brakes are released, that the
instruments are set, that the door and windows are closed, that the elevator
controls are unlocked— information which pilots may consider dumb stuff because it's the most basic stuff they do all the time.But guess what? With that checklist, the pilots went on to fly the same plane model - Model
299 - a total of 1.8 million miles without one accident! The army ultimately
ordered almost 13,000 units which they dubbed the B-17 and which were used during WW2.
Another great example in the airlines industry was this certain incident (forgot to take note of the airlines and flight no.) when the plane's engine stopped as it was nearing its destination. The pilot tried to rev up the engines but the plane exploded on its final approach. After careful study on what may have caused the explosion, the best explanation which the investigators could give was that on a long, smooth polar flight, the fuel flow becomes so slow that moisture (about 2 drops per gallon) could freeze and float in the fuel as tiny ice crystals and accumulate somewhere in the fuel tank. Then, during a brief burst of acceleration, such as on the final approach, the sudden increase in fuel flow might release the accumulation, causing blockage of the fuel lines.
Even if it wasn't proven that that was the cause of the plane's explosion, the Aviation Administration in the US in 2008 decided to issue a detailed advisory on how to prevent ice from accumulating on polar flights and how to recover flight control if engine failure happens. The advisory was very critical because the steps presented go against the basic instinct of pilots when an engine loses power. When an engine fails, a pilot's instinct is to rev the engine, but in the special case of polar flights, revving the engine would throw more ice crystals to the fuel lines. Thus, the pilots should do the opposite - turn the engine idle momentarily to allow time for heat exchangers in the piping to melt the ice - which takes only seconds - allowing the engines to recover. Again, this was just the investigators’ best guess but an advisory was issued anyway.
But thanks to that advisory because on November 26, 2008, the disaster almost happened again. It was a Delta Air Lines flight from Shanghai to Atlanta with 247 people aboard. The Boeing 777 was at 39,000 feet over Great Falls, Montana when its right No. 2 engine failed. But the pilot and co-pilot knew what to do - they got out their checklist for polar flights... the engine recovered and 247 people were saved. It went so smoothly, the passengers didn’t even notice. Wow.
A more popular example for the airlines industry is that of the US Airways Flight 1549 incident in 2009 - the flight that took off from La Guardia Airport in New York City which struck a large flock of Canada geese over Manhattan, lost both engines, famously crash-landed in the icy Hudson River and where everyone survived.
Something new I learned from the book (or which I probably read before but just forgot) was that the pilot and co-pilot of that flight have never flown together before that trip. How could they have successfully pulled that off, right? Thanks again to checklists. The co-pilots ran through their checklists before the flight and introduced themselves to each other and the cabin crew. They did a short briefing, discussing the plan for the flight, potential concerns, and how they’d handle troubles if they ran into them... Take note that the crew had more than 150 total years of flight experience—150 years of running their checklists over and over and over, practicing them in simulators, studying the annual updates. They could have easily taken for granted the checklist routine but they did not. To refresh your memory on what happened with US Airways Flight 1549, I'm lifting off some excerpts from the book coz the story is just amazing. For some context on how could some geese possibly caused the engine failure, jet engines are apparently made to handle most birds, liquefying them. The kind of geese that hit the engine of the plane - Canada geese - are however larger than most birds and no engine can handle them. After ingesting one, jet engines are designed to shut down without exploding and that's precisely what happened. Except that the situation was unfortunately rare for Flight 1549 - 2 engines, not just 1 - were hit by the geese, thus, the plane immediately lost power. Once that happened, the pilot, Sullenberger, immediately made 2 key decisions: first to take over flying the airplane from his co-pilot, Skiles, and second, to land in the the Hudson. Once Sullenberger said "My aircraft," and put his hands on the controls, Skiles replied "Your aircraft". There was no argument nor discussion between the 2 co-pilots on what to do next. The briefing they had before the flight had made them a team. Sullenberger would look for the nearest, safest possible landing site. Skiles would go to the engine failure checklists and see if he could relight the engines. Except for the warning system, the cockpit was virtually silent as each pilot concentrated on his tasks and observed the other for cues that kept them coordinated.
The plane had only 3 1/2 minutes of glide in it. In that time, Skiles needed to make sure he’d done everything possible to relight the engines while also preparing the aircraft for ditching if it wasn’t feasible. But the steps required just to restart one engine typically take more time than that. He had some choices to make. Plunging out of the sky, he judged that their best chance at survival would come from getting an engine restarted. So he decided to focus almost entirely on the engine failure checklist and running through it as fast as he could. The extent of damage to the engines was unknown, but regaining even partial power would have been sufficient to get the plane to an airport. In the end, Skiles managed to complete a restart attempt on both engines, something investigators later testified to be “very remarkable” in the time frame he had—and something they found difficult to replicate in simulation. Yet he did not ignore the ditching procedure, either. He did not have time to do everything on the checklist. But he got the distress signals sent, and he made sure the plane was properly configured for an emergency water landing.
Meanwhile, the 3 flight attendants in the cabin—Sheila Dail, Donna Dent, and Doreen Welsh—followed through on their protocols for such situations. They had the passengers put their heads down and grab their legs to brace for impact. Upon landing and seeing water through the windows, the flight attendants gave instructions to don life vests. They made sure the doors got open swiftly when the plane came to a halt, that passengers didn’t waste time grabbing for their belongings, or trap themselves by inflating life vests inside the aircraft.
Just two of the four exits were safely accessible. Nonetheless, working together they got everyone out of a potentially sinking plane in just three minutes—exactly as designed. While the evacuation got under way, Sullenberger headed back to check on the passengers and the condition of the plane. Meanwhile, Skiles remained up in the cockpit to run the evacuation checklist—making sure potential fire hazards were dealt with, for instance. Only when it was completed did he emerge. The arriving flotilla of ferries and boats proved more than sufficient to get everyone out of the water. Air in the fuel tanks, which were only partly full, kept the plane stable and afloat. Sullenberger had time for one last check of the plane. He walked the aisle to make sure no one had been forgotten, and then he exited himself.
So who was the hero here? No question, there was something miraculous about this flight. Luck played a huge role. The incident occurred in daylight, allowing the pilots to spot a safe landing site. Plenty of boats were nearby for quick rescue before hypothermia set in. The bird strike was sufficiently high to let the plane clear the George Washington Bridge. The plane was also headed downstream, with the current, instead of upstream or over the ocean, limiting damage on landing. Nonetheless, even with fortune on their side, there remained every possibility that 155 lives could have been lost that day. But what rescued them was something more exceptional, difficult, crucial, and, yes, heroic than flight ability. The crew of US Airways Flight 1549 showed an ability to adhere to vital procedures when it mattered most, to remain calm under pressure, to recognize where one needed to improvise and where one needed not to improvise.
Amazing story, right?! What's even more amazing was when Sullenberger, who was hailed the main hero of the flight, was interviewed said “I want to correct the record right now. This
was a crew effort.” The outcome, he explained, "was the result of teamwork and
adherence to procedure as much as of any individual skill he may have had". Wow. You know he's really one gifted individual. In case you want to start designing checklists, here are some tips from the book. There are 2 kinds of checklists:
DO-CONFIRM checklist - this is where team members perform their jobs from memory and experience; they pause to run the checklist and confirm that everything that was supposed to be done was done.
READ-DO checklist - this is where people carry out the tasks as they check them off—it’s more like a recipe.
And here are the characteristics of a good checklist (more applicable to procedural checklists though than my petty checklists. Wahaha...)
Good checklists are precise, efficient, to the point, and easy to use even in the most difficult
situations. They do not try to spell out everything—a checklist cannot fly a
plane. Instead, they provide reminders of only the most critical and important
steps—the ones that even the highly skilled professionals using them could
miss. These are also known as “the killer items”—the steps that are most dangerous to skip but are sometimes overlooked.
Good checklists are not lengthy. A rule of thumb is to keep it to between five and nine items, which is the limit of working memory.
Hope the stories above inspire you to start using checklists even if my kind of checklists are petty and simple. Wahaha.... At the start though, you may forget a thing or two, but that's ok. Checklists are meant to be continuously updated and improved on.
I've to admit that I have a hard time memorizing things. Like I couldn't remember my plate number even if it's one year old already. Worse, I couldn't also remember my older plate number. But the weird thing is, I could easily rattle off the plate numbers of our family cars when I was a kid.
I also couldn't memorize phone numbers. The only numbers that I know are my old and new mobile numbers and our analog landline when I was a kid (which doesn't exist anymore!). What's wrong with my memory? How did I even pass in school?! :)
Remembering names is another thing. And recalling faces too! Like sometimes I would see someone who looks familiar but I couldn't quite place where I've met the person. What's embarrassing is if this person was wearing a uniform the first time I met him, I wouldn't be able to place him if I see him in civilian clothes the next time! Seriously! Wahaha....
And so when I saw this book on kindle entitled Unlimited Memory: How to Use Advanced Learning Strategies to Learn Faster, Remember More and be More Productive by Kevin Horsley, I just had to read it. Maybe I still have hope! Haha....
The book teaches a lot of techniques on how to improve your memory, and how to easily memorize and remember facts and figures, but like in all things, they require regular practice to master them.
But the underlying principle of all the techniques is you have to use your imagination to increase retention. And it's not just about adding a mental picture but engaging as many as your senses - see it in your mind, touch it, smell it, hear it, taste it.
The SEE method requires the following - "See" it in your mind, "Exaggerate" and "Energize".
For example, you need to remember an elephant. Imagine an elephant in your mind.
To make it more memorable, exaggerate the image - it's a gigantic elephant and it's wearing a pink bikini.
To make it even more memorable, energize it by making it move in illogical ways - it's a dancing gigantic elephant with a pink bikini.
Which would have been memorable? A regular elephant or a dancing gigantic elephant with a pink bikini?
Now try how effective this technique is by using your imagination in the exercise below. At first, I thought nothing would stick but I was so happy, I did recall a few words. Try it -
Italian words
Chicken is Polo. You can imagine playing polo with a chicken instead of a ball.
Cat is Gatto. Imagine saying to your friend, “You’ve got to hold my cat.”
French words
Book is Livre. Sounds like liver, so you can imagine opening a book and finding squashed liver inside.
Hand is Main. My main hand is my right hand.
Zulu words
Dog is inja (eenjaa). Think of an injured dog.
Snake is Inyoka (eenyo’kaa). Imagine a snake slithering in your car.
Japanese words
Chest is Mune (Mooneh). Imagine money growing out of your chest.
Door is To (Toe). Imagine you are kicking the door with your big toe.
Quick quiz:
What is the Italian word for cat?
What is the Japanese word for chest?
What is the French word for book?
What is the Italian word for chicken?
What is the Zulu word for snake?
What is the French word for hand?
Amazing, right?!
Here's another exercise:
See your car in your mind and imagine you squeeze a big apple into the front grid of your car.
Take a carrot and stab it into the bonnet.
On the windscreen see grainy bread, and think to yourself, “The grainy bread is going to damage my windscreen wipers.”
Get inside your car and squash dried fruit on the dash board, really see it go into your speedometer. On the driver’s seat imagine you are sitting on blue berries and strawberries – really feel it.
Throw eggs at the person sitting in the passenger seat next to you, they now have egg on their face. Imagine you are pouring thousands of nuts and seeds onto your back seat.
Go outside your car and imagine a massive orange on your roof. You open the boot and it is full of fish – really smell the fish.
In the exhaust pipe there is broccoli and Brussels sprouts growing out of the exhaust, and finally the tires of your car are made out of sweet potatoes.
Go through your car, from the beginning to the end, and see if you can remember all the information. If a word didn’t stick, go back, make the connection stronger and SEE it more clearly in your mind.
Quick Quiz:
What is on the roof?
What are the car tires made of?
What was on the driver’s seat?
What was on the bonnet of the car?
What you have just learned are 14 super foods.
How cool is that?! I'm able to remember some things! There's hope for people like me! Haha...
When I was a student, I was limited to using acronyms and mnemonics. Then after exams, everything just gets automatically purged. Haha... The only acronym that I could remember now is ROYGBIV. Wahaha....
The author also shared techniques on how to easily remember names and numbers but they are too complicated and long to blog. But the gist is for numbers, there are specific letters/sounds to each number from 0 to 9. Then if you want to memorize a string of digits, you create a word/phrase by translating the digits to letters/sounds. (All vowels are fillers so you know they don't have a numeric value.)
For example, you need to memorize the number 321.
According to the number method, here are the corresponding sounds:
3 = sound of M
2 = sound of N
1 = sound of either T or D
So if you want to remember 321, you could form the word MINT or MIND or MEND (vowels are fillers so they don't have numeric values).
Apparently, this number method isn't a new technique. According to Horsley, it was developed in the 1700s by a man named Stanislaus Mink von Wennshein. Wow.
And by using this method, do you know what the author could memorize? A 50-digit random number in less than 20 seconds and 100 digits in 45 seconds. Whoa!
And me? All I could memorize is a 4-digit number! Wahaha... But at least, I now can easily remember my plate number. Baby steps. Harhar...
As I grow older, I never seem to run out of things to do, not just at work but at home too. The difference is at home, there are more distractions - tv, fridge, bed, gadgets. Hahaha...
I do keep a list of things to do on my phone but it only serves its purpose if I remember to access it when I get home. But more often than not, I don't because as soon as I get home, I end up doing other things. Haha...
Anyway, I read a book summary of Personal Kanban: Mapping Work/Navigating Life by Jim Benson & Tonianne De Maria Barry. I started using the Personal Kanban technique this week and guess what? I was able to cross out 8 out of the 15 backlogs I have. Yay! It works for me!
So what is Kanban? It's a technique developed by Toyota to streamline their production - reducing costs while maintaining a high level of quality. A Toyota engineer named Taiichi Ohno designed a billboard-like display system which shows the workflow of the entire factory. Instead of waiting for tasks to be assigned, employees just had to look at the billboard and know what was next.
Personal Kanban was inspired by this. It was designed to help one organize and increase productivity.
What do you need to do? Write 3 columns - Ready, Doing, Done. At the bottom section, write Backlogs.
Here's how your Personal Kanban (Kanban=Billboard) should look like (sorry, I am too shy to show the tasks I have so I've put blank sheets instead! Haha...)
How to use the Personal Kanban:
1. Write down everything first in the "Backlogs" section.
2. Choose which among your backlogs need to be tackled and put them under "Ready".
3. When you start doing a specific task, move it under "Doing"or your work-in progress stage. You may have 2 to 4 things at a time here - whatever you can handle.
4. Once you've completed a task, move it to "Done". It's a happy feeling as you see tasks pile up under this column. :) Just clear this column as you wish (maybe weekly to see what you've accomplished in a week).
It's that simple. :)
You can make one using a whiteboard or corkboard but since I try to be a minimalist, I just used post-it notes (and magic tape if they start peeling off) on my wall. Haha...
And since it's on the wall, it's highly visible. Not a day passes by that I forget to take a look at it. No more excuses. Haha....
If merely keeping a list of personal tasks hasn't worked for you, you may want to try out Personal Kanban.
If you keep a list of all the things you need to do, sometimes it could get overwhelming. I keep track of my work and personal tasks in Wunderlist and as soon as I tick off a few tasks, there are new ones to do.
In the book "Eat That Frog" by Brian Tracy, he refers to your "frog" as your biggest and most important task, the one you are most likely to procrastinate on if you don't do something about it. It is also the one task that can have the greatest impact on your life and results at the moment.
Thus, he says, if you have to eat two frogs, you have to eat the uglier one first.
This means you always have to tackle the biggest, hardest and most important task first before moving on to something else. Because sometimes, our natural inclination is to tackle the easier ones to immediately get them off our list.
As a rule of thumb, we could also apply the Pareto principle or 80/20 rule by asking ourselves -
Which 20% of our activities will account for 80% of our results?
Which 20% of our customers will account for 80% of our sales? Which 20% of our products and services will account for 80% of our profits? Which 20% of our tasks will account for 80% of the value of what we do?
So the next time you feel swamped with things to do, just ask yourself if what you're about to do is part of the top 20% or the bottom 80%. If you have 10 tasks, focus on the top 2 because they could possibly be worth 5 to 10x more than all the other 8 remaining tasks combined.
Do you ever sometimes wonder why there are things that you've been wanting to do but never find the time to do them? Things that are important like exercising, reading a book, traveling and enrolling in a class and yet you end up always postponing them.
While reading O Mag's October issue, I came across the popular urgent/important matrix developed by Stephen Covey Sr. (the dad of Stephen Covey, Jr. - ok, I actually thought there was only 1 Stephen Covey, the author!).
The matrix allows you to categorize activities based on urgency and importance.
There's no doubt that we need to prioritize tasks on Quadrant 1 (urgent/important) the most while Quadrant 4 the least (not urgent/not important). But oftentimes, the mistake is prioritizing things in Quadrant 3 (urgent/not important) over Quadrant 2 (important, not urgent). As Randy Pausch shared in one of his speeches (before his famous "Last Lecture" speech), we should spend time on activities that are more important even if they don't seem critical.
Come to think of it, the things that are in Quadrant 2 are usually the things that we really want to do in life but since there aren't any pressing deadlines, we end up prioritizing Quadrant 3 tasks where we are fooled by the urgency of unimportant tasks (e.g. listening to a demanding colleague who endlessly whines). So while there are things that we really HAVE to do (Quadrant 1), let's make sure to also do the things that we WANT to do (Quadrant 2), otherwise, we're taking out the fun out of life:)
