
The Only Way to Get Important Things Done  - yarapavan
http://blogs.hbr.org/schwartz/2011/05/the-only-way-to-get-important.html
======
JacobAldridge
I'm a massive fan of life-task automation, for the benefits of not worrying
about certain things (and therefore being generally happier in life).

Classic example for myself - when I used to commute to work, I would change
lanes at exactly the same point every day. There was a month of trial and
error to begin with, but this route and those lanes gave me the 'most likely
fastest journey'. No more thinking about traffic, worrying that the lane next
to me was moving faster, should I change etc etc.

I even have an automated rule for when I need to automate a rule - only when
something annoys me three times. Can't find my keys when heading out the door?
Very quickly automated where they live (ie, it happened 3 times very fast).
Trip over a stair once? Not even going to register as an issue until it
happens two more times.

~~~
Markku
Can you give more examples of things you have automated and how they worked
out? And what didn't?

~~~
JacobAldridge
Sure. In no particular order:

I colour code my diary and contextualise it a month in advance. Today was a
Blue- Sales day, so every sales opportunity this month has been offered today
as an option- none of my clients (Blue- Delivery day) had it as an option

My pockets are consistent- phone lhs side, money clip rhs, keys to the rear-
To check I haven't forgotten/lost anything I just touch 3 pockets

At shopping centres I always park in the same section- replaced standing still
remembering my park with automatic 'walking to section' while remembering

When I get a plate of food I generally plan which order to eat it in then
exexute, rather than thinking with each mouthful. That may be bordering on ocd
but at least I don't do it in alphabetical order!

Laundry is always washed and hung in the same order, linked to where clothes
go when clean- ironing pile, top drawer etc. Ditto washing dishes.

I always round up time for calculating travel legs. I don't like being late,
and don't mind being 30mins early

I clear my inbox by person not date- allows me to address many emails dealing
with the same or related (Tracey- training; Darryl- IP development)
discussions at once

For 6 years we have been once a month cookers- 6 meals x 4 portions (roughly
chicken, beef, pork, lamb, fish, vegetarian) which are frozen and reheated
based on the calendar I draw up

We have holidays drafted from now until November and try to book up our
weekends 3-4 weeks ahead, to balance our social life and prevent waking up and
wasting a day wondering what to do

And lest all of this seem boring, I applied this mindset most recently to
completing the Monopoly Pub Crawl in order- 26 pubs over 13 hours. One
definitely needs a system for that.

If I blogged more about any topic specifically, which ones would interest you?

[As for what doesn't work for me- anything linking tasks like 'I will do x
then y then z'. One interruption to x means nothing gets achieved.]

~~~
Markku
Thanks for the details! Here's what happens to me.

Planning for a month. How detailed really? I would imagine that such a plan
doesn't survive life. How do you cope with changes? I don't plan so much ahead
now because other people influence my doings too much.

Always the keys, phone and wallet are in the same location. Take the same
buses always so I remember the schedule. I store my stuff in the same location
always. Shelves are organized, everything boxed and labeled. Plastic bags
stacked by size and tied with rubber bands :) That's just being an organized
person. Bookshelf has no particular order because it's acoustically better.
Only the to-read -books are in one place in order of interest.

No need to decide in what order I eat stuff, I just put stuff in mouth :)
Actually, rotating between the parts, trying to put meat and other stuff in
each mouthful.

So far I haven't decided to wear the same clothes every day, or wear my stuff
in any order. But this takes only a minute each day.

I'm also always in time. That means I usually wait for other people, I use
that time to observe other people or read something on the phone. To work I
almost never need to be on time but just come at my usual time +- delays in
traffic.

Inbox, I answer stuff when I read it. Should mark some items as followup I
guess.

Holidays are difficult to plan for me, never know when can take, should take,
need to synchronize with other people, work etc. Besides it feels good to
waste time on days off. That's when the brains come up with new ideas. Wasting
a day typically means spending it on something that I then thought was most
interesting, which is the right thing, yes? If I'm bursting to do something, I
do it.

I guess for me the same that plan x -> y -> z doesn't work. Such processes are
inflexible. It should be possible to do x, y and z in whatever order I feel
like and all of them should be possible to finish in one go. Or not do at all.
Now how to string a bigger project together ...?

Cooking part is interesting. What do you do with fresh foods or they are just
no on the menu? We cook for 2-3 days at a time and it does take more time than
to heat stuff up.

Many of your choices require commitment not only from you but from your family
and friends. How does that go?

------
jacobr
This advice seems to contradict the advice given about increasing your
intelligence in a recent post: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2562632>

Compare this:

    
    
      Efficiency is not your friend when it comes to cognitive growth. In order to keep your brain making new connections and keeping them active, you need to keep moving on to another challenging activity as soon as you reach the point of mastery in the one you are engaging in. You want to be in a constant state of slight discomfort, struggling to barely achieve whatever it is you are trying to do, as Einstein alluded to in his quote. This keeps your brain on its toes, so to speak.
    

With:

    
    
      The proper role for your pre-frontal cortex is to decide what behavior you want to change, design the ritual you'll undertake, and then get out of the way. "It is a profoundly erroneous truism that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing," the philosopher A.N. Whitehead explained back in 1911. "The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of operations we can perform without thinking about them."
    

Is there a real contradiction? If yes, is there any point to intelligence if
you get less important things done?

~~~
nickpp
There is a time for growth and a time for getting things done. A time for
learning and a time for executing. A time for training and a time for
competing. A time for sharpening tools and a time for using them.

Different strategies for different goals.

~~~
SatvikBeri
Exactly. Using a GPS to go everywhere will make your sense of direction worse.
But that may be worth the easing of the cognitive load for you.

Also, many of the things to automate-such as sorting email or paying bills-
don't really improve your brain anyway. The getting smarter article points out
that once you get good at something, doing more of it doesn't make you any
smarter.

------
latch
I feel pretty confident that the single biggest thing people can do to be more
productive, or to have more time, is to dump their TV.

Following this is the trifecta of: exercise, eating well, and sleeping enough.

~~~
Markku
After dumping my TV some years ago, there are still some problems with time.
Working, commuting, exercising and eating seem to take about 15 hours in
total. Now with 7-8 hours of sleep it leaves approximately 1 hour for hacking
or time with other people. A bit too little, no?

Sometimes it might be possible to combine commuting and exercising, but at the
moment it's not worth it, since commuting and meditation, as well as commuting
and reading, are possible with public transport.

One thing I can recommend is to get a cross-trainer or exercise bike and watch
some interesting stuff while exercising. Recently I've been reviewing open
courseware, Clojure webcasts etc. Saves time.

I would say working less for money is the single biggest thing people can do
to be more productive, or to have more time.

~~~
lsc
>I would say working less for money is the single biggest thing people can do
to be more productive, or to have more time.

moving closer to work has similar effects on your free time without cutting in
to your free money.

but yeah, I agree. It's hard to have time to work on your stuff if you work 40
hours a week, especially if you need some family or social time. working part
time helps a lot, if you can pull it off. Again, though, be mindful of the
commute and reduce the number of days a week you work rather than reducing the
number of hours a day you work.

~~~
Markku
I've been considering a 4 x 10 hours week.

But really, commuting is impossible to avoid if you work in consulting, where
your customer changes from time to time. You can't expect to move as often. My
work used to be only 10 minute walk away ...

------
rkalla
I don't know if this comment will get read, it'll be buried down at the
bottom... let's pretend it's a pot of gold hidden at the end of the rainbow :)

In short: I agree with this article (originally proposed in THIS article/video
[http://www.fastcompany.com/video/why-change-is-so-hard-
self-...](http://www.fastcompany.com/video/why-change-is-so-hard-self-control-
is-exhaustible))

I moved on from my job as a project manager a few years ago and spent a year
dabbling here and dabbling there on different projects. Some open source and
some not.

The majority of the time I was "working" I was mostly showering myself in
self-imposed guilt: "Why aren't you a huge success by now? Why don't you have
an awesome startup on HN yet? Why don't you go back to work for some company
and stop wasting money? Why don't you grow all your hair back?"

I enjoyed the freedom of the year, but the guilt and self-doubt was getting to
be exhausting. It shook my confidence a bit, but I think my optimism towards
life in general helped shore-up that weakness a bit and kept me facing mostly
forward instead of giving up and falling down on the ground for a good cry or
turning sideways and taking up another position somewhere just to stop the
self-loathing.

Somewhere around the middle and end of the first year I made some unintended-
but-welcome changes in my thinking.

The first realization I had, due to an article I read somewhere, was: "Guilt
is a USELESS emotion".

The article went on and on about it, backing up the claim. Long story short,
it was right. It IS useless.

In a way, Guilt is the result of you not being willing to take a stand, make a
decision and move on with your life. Guilt is a lot like sitting on a fence
and complaining about how your bum hurts all day long, but refusing to get off
the fence. And not life decisions... just ALL decisions.

I feel guilty because I haven't called my parents. I feel guilty because I
haven't done yard work. I feel guilty because I need to change the oil in my
car. I feel guilty because I haven't put any pants on today... etc. etc.

I began to realize that this unwillingness to get off the fence was the source
of pain-via-guilt, not the actual decisions themselves.

For the next 6 months I learned to think things through until I hit a logical
conclusion, then commit to a decision. Over-thinking was never a problem for
me, but committing (I realized) was, so I worked on that.

Only after a few months of almost passive-attention to sticking to my
commitments did I realize my life being _noticeably_ easier. I had no idea
why, but it just felt great...

That was when I first came across this concept presented by this article: will
power is a limited resource.

As a software developer there are a litany of cliched things I berate myself
about... gotta work more, gotta exercise more, gotta eat better.

But given my new outlook on life I decided "Enough!", I am going to make
decisions and move on with my life. So far this year I have made decisions to
work... and work and work and work. Yes lots of things have taken a back seat,
but instead of being wishy-washy about it, I am leveraging the mass of my will
power against my desire to work and not spending it on anything else.

That means I'm eating fast food and not exercising as much as I "should", but
I'm done making half-decisions.

If I decide to eat better or exercise, I'm not going to spend all day thinking
about it, I'll just go do it and get on with my life.

Since I learned those two things: 1\. Commit to decisions / Ignore feeling of
"guilt" 2\. Will power is an exhaustible resource

Life has jus become fantastic.

I've gotten a hell of a lot more clarity on the things I want and I don't sit
all day rolling my hands together because I want to work on X, but my business
sense tells me "NO" so instead I have to pretend that I don't want to work on
X and instead I'll go work on something else.

Forget that, it's my life, if I want to work on X, I'll work on X.

I like to get up in the morning now. I like what I do. I like what I work on
and I like the people I meet doing it.

I have no idea what is in store for me, but sitting under a wet blanket,
grinding your teeth from stress and sweating, trying to figure out a HN-worthy
business and become the next-big-thing is bullshit.

Living your life; doing things you love and having success find you on your
terms... it is intoxicating and so much more accessible than a lot of people
realize.

DISCLAIMER: I wouldn't recommend trying this mental shift until you are ready
for it. If you are a stress ball and a pure-rage-fountain, maybe wait until
you've calmed down a bit before embarking on this journey.

If you are sick of feeling trapped by guilt and inaction and are ready for a
change in scenery, give this a try.

Also, but "this" I mean simply accepting that will power is limited and
learning to focus it on the things you truly want out of life instead of the
things you tell yourself that you want.

TIP: Having a six-pack or a social-cloud-network-web-scale-synergy-Twitter-
killer company may not ACTUALLY be what you want when you finally take the
time to look inside yourself. Just be ready/willing to accept that. This can
be really horrifying for people to face when they start looking inwards
because they define themselves so heavily in (sometimes) false terms that the
idea they had it wrong this whole time is... just too
unsecure/scary/unsettling/open-ended.

~~~
etruong42
I think I'm on a similar realization as you. I "used to" want to be
featherweight MMA champion of the world. Once I was into fighting, I kind of
assumed I wanted to win (I think everyone does), but I slowly realized that I
received no joy from winning. I just loved fighting, but I didn't have a drive
to actually defeat my opponent. And you're right. It's fucking scary. "Wanting
to be MMA champion" was so deeply ingrained into my identity at that point
that questioning that made me question who I am. Am I a quitter? Some loser
who can't keep his motivation up? How can I get anywhere in life if I give up?

Now I realize that if I don't receive satisfaction from doing something,
there's not much reason in doing it. I chose the term satisfaction very
carefully here because, for example, people sometimes say eating cookies makes
them happy, but they will rarely say eating cookies gives them satisfaction,
especially if it's part of an unhealthy lifestyle.

There is still an uncomfortable thought that lingers in mind that I just "gave
up" and am trying to rationalize it and make excuses, but I also know that I
am still fighting, and if defeating my opponent ever gives me the same elation
as just being in the ring, I will be shooting for that goal again. Except at
that time, it would be for real.

~~~
rkalla
Perfect distinction between "satisfaction" and "happiness".

I think both are important. Satisfaction is typically the result of
accomplishment. Accomplishments give us confidence. Confidence (an amazing
subject) gives us the strength to mold and shape our lives into things we
want.

As an MMA'ist, you know better than probably anyone here the role that
confidence has in a fight. If you are fighting someone new to the ring, you've
probably had that sense where you can feel yourself dominating him before that
first bell ever rings... and he probably feels it too.

I think Happiness plays an important role in exciting us out of bed in the
morning; giving us a spring in our step and helping us chase things that
eventually bring us satisfaction.

Happiness recharges our willpower (re: this article) and that helps us move
forward towards things that bring us satisfaction and the circle feeds on
itself.

My limited understanding of this, right now, is something like:

Happiness > Accomplishment > Satisfaction > Confidence (loop)

Without the little things in life that make you happy, you can still
accomplish things, but you will eventually run out of gas or do it
begrudgingly and the satisfaction won't come.

From what you describe, I wonder if that was what was going on. You continued
to do things that you felt brought you satisfaction (fighting) and would time
again get to the precipice of "Accomplishment" and stop, so the opponent would
take the win and you would fall back a rung in the ladder and feel crappy and
feed this cycle of self doubt.

Was the fighting making you _happy_ or was that missing from the equation and
you liked it for other reasons? (stress relief, toughness, etc)

This isn't at all as hard as MMA, but I do something identical to this with
tennis. When I play regularly I'm pretty good; strong serve, good returns,
fast balls, big topspin, etc.

The thing that frustrated me to the point of _stopping_ playing tennis was
that no matter HOW GOOD OR BAD the opponent I played was, I would always lose
to them.

It was so obviously a mental handicap that it stunned me into a silent rage
when I played.

I could play a 4.5 and hang in with them one day, getting to 3 sets and
eventually losing. Then play a 3.0 the next day, go to 3 sets and lose to
them.

I don't know if it was a lack of accomplishment on the court such that I could
never push forward in the circle of confidence, but I realized it wasn't
making me happy. So I stopped.

Much like you said, I always wonder if I just "gave up" -- but I really do
subscribe to the "Guilt is bullshit" thought process, so I don't dwell on it.
I just figure "Hey, if some day I decide to get back on the court, I'll do it.
End of story."

If some day you decide Featherweight is all you want, you'll get back in that
ring and do it and the whole will-he/won't-he back and forth in your head will
be irrelevant because you will have made up your mind THIS is what you are
doing and THIS is what is going to happen.

Sorry if that was preachy... the similarity between what you said an my own
fumblings with sports was uncanny so I had a lot to say on the subject ;)

~~~
Psyonic
You should definitely read "Stuck in the middle with Bruce," if you haven't.
Fits perfectly with what you're describing.

[http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/misc/2005_Stuck_In_The_Mi...](http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/misc/2005_Stuck_In_The_Middle_With_Bruce.html)

~~~
rkalla
Psyonic, thank you for the link. Reading it in chunks, about 1/4 way through
it.

------
nickpp
This is Gold, Jerry, GOLD.

And the best advice on creating these rituals, or HABITS is Seifeld's "Don't
break the chain", coupled with Pavlina's 30-day trials.

[http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-
se...](http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-secret)

<http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/04/30-days-to-success/>

~~~
BruceForth
From the second article:

> I lost seven pounds in the first week, mostly from going to the bathroom as
> all the accumulated dairy mucus was cleansed from my bowels (now I know why
> cows need four stomachs to properly digest this stuff)

WTF? Does he think cows eat dairy? Or did I parse that wrong?

~~~
Estragon
Pavlina's usually pretty out there. It suprises me that he still gets as much
attention as he does. There's one born every minute, I guess.

~~~
Psyonic
I liked him for awhile, but once he crossed the line into claiming we are all
actually figments of his imagination (and not just as a thought experiment) I
had to stop reading. I couldn't help but wonder who he was writing for at that
point.

------
projectileboy
The notion of 'ritual' is a central theme in Twyla Tharp's book 'The Creative
Habit', which I think most HN'ers would find a worthwhile read.

------
msie
I read somewhere that it was a myth that willpower is a limited resource and
that we imagine it is limited, but it's not. Does anyone else remember where
this was mentioned?

~~~
radu_floricica
It's definitely not a myth. Roy Baumeister mentioned in the article did most
of the work in describing how willpower behaves, and a few years back somebody
else pinned down the actual mechanism (something to do with glucose - drinking
a glass of something sweet restores most of the will power back).

~~~
LiveTheDream
The first thing I thought after reading this was how unfortunate it is for
people on diets that they have to drink a sugary beverage in order to regain
the willpower to avoid sugary beverages.

~~~
radu_floricica
Yeap, that's one of the lessons to draw from this. Another is that it's twice
as hard to change two habits at the same time: i.e. maybe people who quit
smoking and find themselves getting fatter to this because of a self-
regulation issue.

For what's worth, I remember the "magic number" for creating a habit is 60
days - and there's also good research on the stages one goes through when
creating a habit and what's most likely to sabotage him/her at each stage. We
really really need more "science in plain English" books about modern
psychology.

------
mva
What really helped for me is closing email and only check email at two times a
day (a bit before lunch and around 16.00) -> tips from the four hour work
week. Don't check email when you get into the office, because your further
work day will be influenced by it.

------
JesseAldridge
Along these lines, I made a little program which yells at me whenever I have
too many lines of code without a comment, or too many lines in a single file.
I've found it quite helpful not having to actively think about that sort of
maintenance stuff.

~~~
Revisor
Regarding comments, I really liked a technique Martin Fowler talked about in
Refactoring.

Whenever he feels the need to comment, he extracts the commented block into a
new method and gives it a name that explains the purpose - instead of the
comments.

The result is code cut into small self-explaining blocks that reads pretty
much like a sentence.

I tried to follow it these last weeks and IMO it works great.

Instead of a comment - use a function name.

~~~
JesseAldridge
Yeah, I followed that advice at one point. But I find in practice a plain
English comment can be much more helpful than a function name. For example,
from the code I linked:

# Check too many lines. Count number of lines without a comment.

If I were to turn that into a function name I would either have one long ass
function name or (more likely) I would cut out several words and lose a lot of
readability and clarity.

~~~
randallsquared
countLinesSinceComment() too long for you?

~~~
JesseAldridge
I think it's a bit too long, yes. I prefer around 10-15 characters for
function names. Also, you've lost a lot of readability with that camelCase.
Also, the "Check too many lines." part wasn't superfluous -- I had a separate
check for too many total lines before I count the number of lines without a
comment -- and that part of the comment has been lost.

------
Tichy
"Civilization advances by extending the number of operations we can perform
without thinking about them."

I don't think this implies our brains become more capable with more enhanced
civilization. For example I can eat an apple without knowing how to plant and
tend to apple trees because I live in a civilization where farmers and
software developers can exchange services. I don't have a ritual that allows
me to grow apples without thinking about it. The whole process of growing
apples has been completely outsourced from my life.

So I doubt that creating lots of rituals will work out in the long run.
Eventually they might overrun my schedule. And it takes energy to remember the
rituals.

~~~
FrojoS
No, if its a ritual it takes energy to _not_ do it. Its almost impossible to
forget about it when you don't do it.

Example: Try to go to bed tonight without brushing your teeth.

Of course, if you can completely outsource a task, that is even better. But I
guess you won't be able to outsource your workout, sanitariness, writing down
of ideas, going to bed at the same time etc. any time soon.

------
terio
I think the take-home point of the article is to avoid depleting your limited
energies making new decisions about every little thing, which makes perfect
sense for me.

Now, Whitehead's cite is another thing:

"It is a profoundly erroneous truism that we should cultivate the habit of
thinking of what we are doing,[...] The precise opposite is the case.
Civilization advances by extending the number of operations we can perform
without thinking about them."

I find it much better for me to be mindful of the things I do. That does not
mean I have to make new decisions all the time. It is a non-judgmental
mindfulness, the practice of experiencing the present moment.

------
jongraehl
The willpower "battery" can be recharged or trained (it's also a willpower
"muscle"). I reviewed some of the research last year:
<http://jonathan.graehl.org/mitigating-ego-depletion> and
[http://jonathan.graehl.org/evidence-that-self-control-can-
be...](http://jonathan.graehl.org/evidence-that-self-control-can-be-trained-
lik)

------
pkananen
Maybe should be phrased as 'The Only Way to get Important Things Done, for me'

Good advice, though.

------
FrojoS
Good article. Funny, earlier this evening I stumbled over an interview with
Tony Schwartz (the author of the parent article) and David Allen, from
'Getting Things Done', in the print version of HBR.

I follow many of the advices, they make, already and they work great but many
others I keep struggling to make a ritual.

1) Morning Workout: Takes time, especially on days where I have to commute a
lot. Sure, I can make a good 5 minute workout but if I have to leave a lot
earlier than my usual sleep cycle I don't even want to take that time. I might
even decide to only shower the night before and hence can't afford a real work
out before jumping in my clothes. Also, I found that I'm often significantly
more tired over the whole day when I do a hard morning workout. I have plenty
of experience of this from my time in the military. Sure, I should probably do
a lighter workout. But I rather have a real workout later than wasting time on
some wishi-washi with Homeopathic weights. And real, strenght workout requires
full concentration and an awake mind.

2) Sleep Cycle: In winter, I usually succeed on this and I love the benefits.
But now that the days are long its hard to enjoy a social life and still get
up early. So I do get up early only when I have to and stay up late when its
worth it. Not very healthy but a lot more fun.

3) Planing the day ahead: I would love to make it a ritual to decide the night
before what is going to be the most important task tomorrow. Sometimes, I do,
but tonight for instance I fail. I worked in "the zone" for hours, stopped at
midnight. Now, instead of making that decision, write it down and then go to
sleep, I'm procrastinating here for more than an hour. I guess, I'm afraid to
take the step back to look at the whole task - which is huge for me - and get
mentally destroyed by the weight of that challenge. Whereas, if just keep
writing tomorrow where I stopped, I might not work on the most important
thing, but at least I get something done.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

------
peteretep
This guy also wrote an _awesome_ book:

[http://www.amazon.com/Power-Full-Engagement-Managing-
Perform...](http://www.amazon.com/Power-Full-Engagement-Managing-
Performance/dp/0743226755/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_1)

------
philipDS
But how can you do your work out immediately when you wake up and have to go
to work? Wake up earlier? But you still have to sleep around 8 hours per
night.. so you'd have to go to bed earlier, which gives you less time in the
evening to do some hacking and other things you like. How can you pull this
off? Go to work later?

~~~
BruceForth
There are still 24 hours in a day, doesn't really matter all that much in
which order you do stuff when they still take the same amount of time.

~~~
eru
Not all time is created equal.

------
gcb
it opens with "every time i'm home i'm with my kids" and then give an example:

\- "today my [morning priority] was this blog, then i gave me a reward to play
tennis" and

\- "always get 8hours of sleep"

\- "exercise in the morning"

...if i can always get 8h of sleep, always "be with my kids", write blog posts
all morning (after the work out) and still have some time to myself to play
tennis... i wouldn't be reading about getting things done.

The main problem everyone i know have is to conciliate work, loved one(s),
hobbies, 8hour sleep. all in a 24h day.

and the only way to solve it is give up on two each day.

~~~
hessenwolf
Would that nobody had told me about the 8 hours thing when I was so young. I
pathologically set alarms before free days to currentTime + 8 * 60 minutes and
go to bed alarmTime - 8 * 60 minutes, and I feel wrong all day if this is
interfered with.

In fact, I find that my body can handle significant variation to the 8 hour
rule. Knowing this doesn't help my obsession.

