Productivity and Organization

[spoonitnow]

Someone from FTR asked me about how I manage my scheduling, organization, productivity, etc. It's not the first, second or third time someone from FTR has asked me about it, so I'm going to make a post about it here that I can just link people to in case I'm asked again in the future. This is probably going to come across as odd and possibly pretentious because of the contrast from how I normally just carry on and frequently act like a caricature of myself in the commune. I'm going to try to make this as in-depth as I can including the tools and reasoning behind what I do.

Why I Need These Systems

There are three reasons I need the systems that I'm going to describe to you here. The first is that I've historically had a major problem with procrastination, and the diagnosed PTSD that came along with an ex-fiancee having mental problems and trying to kill me on multiple occasions 4-7 years ago complicated that further (something I don't want to talk about here). In short, I'm having to work with the cards I've been dealt. I'll elaborate on procrastination in general below because there are a lot of misconceptions about it, and it's a particularly interesting topic in and of itself.

The second reason is that I basically run two businesses, and this means I have a ton of stuff that needs to get done. I'm a full-time writer in the gambling industry (brag: I beat out Nicholas Pileggi's Wikipedia entry when you search Google for casino writer). I also build web assets for my emerging empire. When you combine this with the fact that I don't like working more than a few hours each day, I really have to use the time I am working as efficiently as possible.

The third reason is that I support myself and two females (something else I don't want to talk about here), so sitting around half-assing it isn't really acceptable for me. Instead, I want to be successful and give them a good home and the freedom to pursue whatever they want in school and otherwise. If I want to keep doing that, I have to keep my shit together, and that's where these systems come into play.

It's worth noting that there's a lot of overlap between managing a household and keeping your productivity going strong, and this is something that a lot of people ignore and suffer for it.

A Handful of Goals

There are a few goals that I need to achieve with my systems. I'll show you how I go about achieving these goals after I've listed them.

1. I need to be able to leave myself a reminder for something, timed or open-ended, at any time. The GTD system called this "Ubiquitous Capture," but I was doing this before I ever heard of GTD. Either way, it's something I recommend to everyone.
2. I need to receive reminders for certain tasks I need to do on a regular or not-so-regular basis. This could be making sure certain bills are paid each month or making sure I send out certain invoices to clients each week. This also includes things like some of my in-laws having a cook out on a certain date and making sure I schedule my work around that.
3. Sometimes I send myself just general things I want to remember like a movie I want to watch, a song I want to download or a book I want to read. I need somewhere to keep lists of these things.
4. I need to know what the other people in the household are doing throughout the week. Work schedules, when they're going to the gym, if they're planning to go hang out with a friend, etc. I also need to know where they are in their cycle, and while that might be slightly outside of what most people think of with productivity, I'll show why it's important.
5. I need to get most of my work done when I'm personally "feeling it" the most. For me, this is early in the morning, but it could be different for other people, and you'll want to work with that instead of going against the grain.
6. I also need to be able to get smaller chunks of work done when I'm not "feeling it" and have a process for making that happen.
7. I need to take care of myself mentally and physically otherwise.

That's a lot of ground to cover, but one of the reasons I'm putting this in a post is so that I don't feel like I need to skip over anything like I would if I was describing it to a single person.

Tools

People get too caught up on tools. For organization, I use three, and I use them for specific purposes.

First, I use a free service called IFTTT for capturing information with text/SMS messages. It gives you a number to send messages to on your phone normally, and those messages are automatically sent to some other channel that you choose. It can be email, a Google Document, a Google Spreadsheet, a Tumblr post, just whatever you want. I use this because it's much easier to send a text message than to try to open up some other app on my phone just to take down a note or reminder.

Second, I use a free app called Todoist for receiving those messages. Todoist has an inbox that's basically just a list of those messages or reminders. However, it also has a solid reminder system built in where you can schedule recurring tasks, and that's what I use for reminding myself to pay bills, send weekly invoices, not miss family functions, etc. It's web-based but has a downloadable program version as well.

Third, I use the free version of Microsoft OneNote for two things. First, along with IFTTT and Todoist as mentioned above, I use it to keep up with reference material from the reminders I send myself. For example, there's a list of songs I want to download there, so when I send myself a reminder with IFTTT to Todoist to download something, that's sent to the list on OneNote when I process my inbox. Later on every week or two, I'll come through and download all of the songs I wanted at the same time because it's more efficient that way.

So here's a quick summary:

• IFTTT: Send a text message to my Todoist inbox because it's easier than opening Todoist on my phone.
• Todoist: Has an inbox for my text messages, and allows me to schedule out things I need to be reminded of.
• OneNote: Keep reference lists of things from my inbox that go together, and keep notes on my writing.

So that's how I handle my tools, and that actually covers a few of my goals by themselves (1, 2 and 3).

Scheduling Around Each Other

To cover goal number four, I need to know when the other people in my household are doing things like going to work so that I can plan around them. We have a whiteboard calendar on the fridge, and everyone has their own color marker to write in their work schedule, when they're going to the gym and anything else they'll be out doing specifically that they have plans for. They fill in their work schedules first as soon as they know them, and then they fill in the times they're going to the gym around that.

The point of this is that it makes it easier for me to plan my time off, things we're doing together, etc. Everybody knows what everybody else is doing.

Here's probably a good place to bring up the cycle thing. I don't mark the cycles of the females I live with on the calendar on the refrigerator because that would be in poor taste, but I do have a private calendar that I use for this purpose. First, I'll say that the way I keep it accurate is that I have them both tell me when their period starts each time so that I can keep my calendar on track. If you're dealing with a teenage daughter, it might be better to just try to guess based on when there are tampon wrappers in the trash can. Second, there are a handful of reasons why I do this, and I'll try to keep from getting too far off topic by keeping them productivity/scheduling-based:

• I try to plan trips so that they'll be around their time of ovulation (about two weeks after their period starts). I do this because that's when women are in the best moods and have the least amount of hormonal conflict.
• I avoid trips when I know they'll be cramping and feeling miserable. They should be having fun too. That's a big part of the whole point of taking them to do a lot of the shit they like to do.
• I'm more likely to make arrangements for what we're eating myself when they're cramping and miserable. This is because it's easier for them to say fuck it and eat junk.
• A chick needs more of your comfort-building attention when she's PMSing and on her period and more of your pipe-laying attention the week before and few days after she's ovulating. For those of you with a teenage daughter, it means she's going to be more outgoing and wanting to go out with friends, etc., when she's near ovulation. It makes things a lot easier when you can anticipate how your interactions are likely to be going, and that keeps it from affecting your productivity.

All three of these items affect my scheduling for my work because they are more things to schedule around. They all make life much, much easier on myself and the females in my life.

Scheduling Actual Work, Productivity and Routine

This covers goal #5, and it's a big one. I'm going to talk both generally in terms of how to think about this stuff and specifically in terms of how I handle it myself based on these principles.

Productivity comes down to one thing: resistance. You want to create as much resistance as possible to going after distractions, and you want to minimize the amount of resistance you have to actually doing the things you need to be doing. When you can build a routine that manipulates resistance in these two ways, then you'll have huge gains in productivity over time.

So here's where I'm going to chime in about procrastination. Procrastination is the result of tactical and strategic errors in how you manage your mood, distractions and your habits. This post covers those aspects of the situation in a lot of detail, so I won't rehash that here since this is going to be long enough as it is.

Scheduling work by itself isn't going to mean that the shit gets done, and that's why you have to be smart about how you schedule it. Everyone has a time of day and set of conditions under which they are the most productive. The key is to set up a routine that becomes habit to get you into that environment at that time of day with a lot of resistance against distractions and a minimal amount of resistance towards the things you should be doing.

Here's the thing: Productivity is organic. It's like growing a plant: All you have to do is create the right conditions, and it will flourish. If you don't create the right conditions, then nothing is going to happen. I'm describing a format for finding the right conditions for yourself. Here are how I create the conditions that I use. You'll notice that I'm obsessed with how the different types of resistance are manipulated, and that's how I've been able to beat some pretty incredible levels of depression-fueled procrastination:

• I work the best early in the mornings probably 7-10 am or so. I have an alarm that goes off at 6:30 am, and it stays on the other side of the bedroom so I have to actually get up to turn it off. This adds resistance to sleeping in and lowers the resistance to getting up. My phone is setting on a towel because the first thing I do is take a shower since it helps me to wake up. My phone sitting on the towel increases the resistance to getting back into bed by decreasing the resistance for me to go get in the shower.
• My clothes are prepared the night before and sit beside of my deodorant and smell-good shit in the part of the house where I work. After I'm out of the shower and dry off, I have to put on clothes, so I walk to where my clothes are waiting. The clothes being prepared increases the resistance to getting back in bed and lowers the resistance to getting dressed and moving on with my routine. My deodorant and whatnot are right there, so I don't have to go anywhere else in the house (lowering resistance to the routine, increasing the resistance to distraction in other parts of the house).
• My laptop already has everything I need to get started pulled up. I have a Chrome extension called Block Site that allows me to schedule certain times that certain sites aren't available. I block FTR, some other forums, some news sites, Reddit and a few other things from like 6-10:30 am along these lines since those are my key productive hours. Sure, I could disable them if I really needed to see something, but the resistance factor is what matters here.
• I need Facebook for communicating with people sometimes, so I use another Chrome extension called News Feed Eradicator for Facebook that removes the news feed from the FB home page. It replaces it with a quote about productivity or focus or something like that. This allows me to use the messenger while increasing the resistance to distraction. Along similar lines, my phone isn't even in the same room with me (increasing resistance to distraction yet again). Note that I can easily add reminders and tasks directly to Todoist from my computer with a keyboard shortcut, so I don't have to worry about losing my method of capture (Goal #1) from having my phone in the other room.
• If I don't need Internet access for something specifically I'm working on, then I turn it off for an hour or so at a time using a program called Freedom. I prepare all of the work I'm going to do in that hour by taking notes on each item I'm writing or working on in OneNote before turning off Internet access. Again, the entire system here focuses on adding as much resistance as possible to distractions and lowering the resistance to getting the actual work done.
• I even break this down to the level of the icons on my Start Menu. I have Steam and some games on my computer, but there are no shortcuts to get there. This means I have to go into Windows Explorer and navigate to the game and then run it that way. The only shortcuts in my Start Menu and pinned programs on my taskbar are for things I need for work (Chrome, Email Client, Windows Explorer, Todoist, tracking spreadsheets, OneNote, word processor, etc.). This might seem dumb and minor, but it's just another example of putting as much resistance as I can up against the distractions while minimizing the resistance to the actual things I need to be doing.
• I time my work with breaks, usually an hour of work with a 15-20 minute break and repeat. Breaks like this are important because the longer you work and the more mentally fatigued you get, the more resistance you have to doing the work. If I can manage a minimum of three sessions of one hour each day, then my work stays caught up and I'm doing pretty well. Along these lines, my breaks are designed to get my mental fatigue down as low as possible without getting me sucked into big distractions. I usually go get my phone, set a timer on it for 20 minutes and sit out on the porch and read (ereader app on my phone + news feeds). Another good option I do sometimes, especially if I'm feeling restless, is just going on a walk for 15-20 minutes. I've said this before, and I'll say it again, but it's all about managing resistance to distractions and to getting the stuff done that I want to get done.
• Interruptions are something I haven't addressed yet. The people in my household know that they shouldn't be interrupting me unless there's some kind of emergency. They know I take breaks every hour, and they know that I check my phone during my breaks. If they need me to know something, they can just leave me a text message, and I'll get it relatively soon. If there's something important that one of them needs to talk about that can wait until that afternoon, they know that they should just leave me a text message that they need some time to talk to me later that day. On the rare occasion that there is something that needs to be addressed right away outside of the types of cases I've described here (this might happen once every 3-4 months), then I just deal with it the best I can right then before getting back to my work and adjusting the time until my next break as needed.

I've went into a whole lot of detail here, and virtually all of it has to do with managing resistance. If you increase the resistance to distractions enough and decrease the resistance to getting the things done that you need to get done enough, then it'll naturally happen that you're more productive. I'm not saying that you should do the exact things that I do here (though you're obviously welcome to). I'm saying that you should plan things out to actively manage resistance in the two ways I've discussed throughout the above if you want to beat procrastination and get a lot more done in a shorter amount of time with less stress.

While I'm at it, a quick note on willpower: You have a limited amount of it, and using it up is stressful. Manipulating resistance like I've talked about here drastically lowers the amount of willpower that you need to get shit done. This means less stress and being happier.

Getting It Done When I'm Not "Feeling It"

Everything in the above was centered around creating conditions where I'll be "feeling it" during my peak time of day. All of that is about how you should handle the majority of your work time by manipulating resistance so that it's just easier to get things done. However, sometimes you're going to run into a situation where you aren't "feeling it," but you still need to get something done. The world isn't perfect, and we need a strategy for dealing with that.

This is goal #6, and here's what you do to make it happen. I don't normally give specific advice on this, and you'll notice that everything above is about applying general principles to your own specific situation. However, this is one of the situations where specific advice is needed and particularly effective:

1. Identify that you aren't "feeling it," and identify the things that are putting you in the mode of "not feeling it." You need to do this because "not feeling it" is an organic situation, and you need to know the factors that are creating that situation.
2. Pick out 1-3 small things that you could do to manipulate the situation so that you were closer to "feeling it" and further away from "not feeling it." To give an example, I'm usually "not feeling it" after I've been sitting on the couch for a while wasting time on the computer. This could be as simple as closing the computer, standing up and walking around the house for a couple of minutes.
3. After you do those 1-3 things, take a moment to notice how your feeling has changed compared to step 1. You aren't necessarily going to feel great, but you should feel a little better than you did before those 1-3 things.
4. Set a timer for something small (5 to 15 minutes) with the intention of starting on the tasks that you need to complete. You are not going into this with the goal of finishing the task. Instead, you just want to work for that 5 to 15 minutes.
5. Once the timer is up, take a moment to notice how you feel and how that contrasts with how you felt in step 1. If you aren't feeling good enough to just start plowing into what you need to be doing. Repeat steps 2-5.

The point is to create a loop that doesn't require much willpower at any point and that strategically makes you feel better while getting some of the actual work done. This is just an organic process that will incrementally move you out of feeling like shit while moving you towards feeling like you can at least tolerate the work you need to be doing.

Taking Care of Myself Mentally and Physically

There's no point in being badass and getting a lot of shit done if you just feel awful all the time. I use some of that free time I get from being so ridiculously productive by manipulating resistance to do things that will help to maintain and improve my mental and physical health. Do whatever you want, but even if it's just meditation for the mental and a treadmill for the physical, that will put you miles ahead compared to not doing either. It can be combined like less than 30-35 minutes a day including a shower afterwards too, so don't act like you don't have time. Keep in mind that the more complicated and full of bullshit you hate that you make it, the more resistance you have to it, and the less likely you'll be to actually do it.

This gets us around to eating, which is one of the biggest regularly-occurring things that will affect your mood and "feeling it" compared to "not feeling it." This impacts your productivity a ton, and it also sucks ass to feel awful. Long story short, pay attention to how you feel after eating different things in different amounts at different times of day. I personally feel like complete and total ass after eating until I'm "full," and this provides a ton of resistance to getting the things done that I want to get done. As a result, I eat small amounts several times each day, and I keep food in the house that makes it easy to do that.

Wrapping Things Up

That pretty much covers everything I have to say on it. The key is to focus on the principles and then figure out how to make them work for your specific situation.

[boost]

This is a great post.

As and aside, something that has helped me a ton, yet sounds draining and tedious: try to figure out the most efficient "workflow" for everything you do in life, not just work. Spoon, you kind of got at this with you morning routine-- to take it further, I think that when most tasks, chores, errands, etc, are despised they're mostly despised because we suck at them. We're terribly inefficient, and so they feel like a drag.

The easiest example for me is cooking. Cooking for yourself has the potential to be healthier, cheaper, and less time consuming than eating out. If you set up a well stocked pantry and shop(another chore people are notoriously terrible at) for perishable staples on a regular basis, you should never need to run to the store to make yourself a decent meal. Now that you've got all the things you need, on to the actual cooking. I have a few go to breakfasts and I tend to repeat the same one for quite a while before switching. This allows me to really hone in on the most efficient way to get it done. Probably the biggest tip for this specific task is to do everything at the station you're at that is reasonable at the given time. For example, while setting the kettle on the stove for tea, pull down any other pots you will need and set them to preheat so they're ready to go when you are; if you're grabbing one thing from the fridge, try to grab everything you'll need and if you need something else, bring back everything you'll no longer need.

Maybe this all seems obvious, or maybe it seems like I'm overthinking a simple task, but believe me, the small time and financial gains add up when this type of strategy is applied across the board, and it has this strange effect of making the most mundane tasks fun-- everything becomes a sort of game; it's like how wearing a pedometer can have you chasing a previous high score of steps in a day.

[rong]

I do this with washing up. I arrange all the plates first, organise the cutlery so I can do all knives together, then all forks and so on. It's much more efficient and makes the whole thing less of a chore.

Admittedly this only matters if there's lots to do, but when the kids are away we have a tendency to not wash up for 2 days. So it can be quite a pile. Also of we've had a big dinner with people over or whatever.

[a500lbgorilla]

I want to bump this well, and all I've got is that there's a great convo to be had here.

[spoonitnow]

I find that most people who get started with GTD don't follow through. I'm too lazy to type out a big ass dissertation on why GTD should be taught and enforced in schools, but it's basically the best thing since blowjobs.

[aubreymcfate]

Procrastination is probably the number one surface problem in my life right now, and it's very much fueled by a similar PTSD (I've also faced death multiple times at the hands of an ex -- it gets under your skin, lol) so I want to air my thanks for this, maybe it'll actually help me.

There was a time in my life when I hardcore got things done. It's crazy when you very clearly feel how different you've become on the inside. But it's also a nice reminder that the situation doesn't have to be permanent.

[a500lbgorilla]

I feel along the same lines.

My productivity can be measured by cups of coffee or pressing deadlines or that that I need to do for those in my life. But given the slightest opportunity, I will collapse into a worthless pile.

My life maintains a decent schedule for me, but even I don't appreciate how it keeps itself up.

[boost]

A sort of mental hack that I've found helps a ton is to never say "you deserve a break" without the qualifier "after you get this done."

Even if it's just a quick task, like putting the laundry in the dryer, or putting in 45 minutes pushing a project towards the next stage-- it is remarkable how much more productive the trick can make me. I've used this system of rewards to power through days that typically would have been spent binge watching Netflix or aimlessly browsing the internet. But, honestly, most of the time the hurdle was simply getting started, and I find that it isn't a grind and I enjoy getting whatever done that needs to get done, I just needed a carrot at the end of the stick to get over that first hump.