The thing is... we don't see some of those small steps. We see a singer blaze into stardom and forget that this singer spent hours, days, months, years, practicing their craft, one small step at a time. We see new buildings pop up in our neighbourhood. We don't see the myriad small steps that go into constructing the building. We hear of a friend of a friend retiring at age 40 with millions in the bank. We are jealous and wonder what they did to hit the jackpot? Win the lottery? Sell a start-up? We don't believe it can be done one frugal penny-pinching step at a time.
And we know this... deep down, we know this... but still... we think that we there might be a shortcut to fame or fortune.
How Much Time is "Enough" Time?
A friend of my is producing two books a year (more or less). These are not fiction books, but heavily researched non-fiction espionage books. I don't know how he does it! He must have oodles and oodles of time! Like, open vistas of whole days that are just devoted to writing. Right? Maybe. Maybe not. Perhaps he just has a different view of time.
I still think that I need several blissfully empty hours in front of me before I can work on the next book, or start a new project. I don't believe that I can write a book one small step at a time. I think 30 minutes is too short. I think the smallest step I need is 2 hours. Maybe more. Like 4 hours!
Perhaps that is the key. I have an image in my mind of the size/length/duration of the "smallest step". For writing... realistically... I think I need 2 hours... and ideally 4 hours. I mean, I "need" that time to get back into it... to pick up where I left off... to gather my research notes and recall where I was in the project. And maybe I do need an hour to do that... but if I were to work on the project every day... I wouldn't need so much time to "get back in the groove".
When it comes to yard maintenance... it's the same... I think I need a good hour to get anything useful done. I mean, there is soooo much to do out there... I believe that I need at least an hour to make a meaningful dent in things. Or do I? My partner and I went out there this past spring, on a sunny afternoon, and decided to spend 15 minutes decluttering the shed. We made a sizable dent in the chaos in the shed. Just 15 minutes.
Same with house cleaning... my default seems to be an hour. Even though I know, from experience, that I can get a tonne of cleaning done in 15 minutes. My brain seems to have a default setting of one hour.
So if there is less than an hour of time in my day... I fill it with smaller, less important tasks that I know I can complete, rather than working on a larger project which I know will not be complete... even though it is moved further along to completion.
I know that completing a task gives a dopamine hit... so maybe I'm just a dopamine addict... wanting the hit after completing a task. If I know that a task can't be completed in 15 minutes or an hour... there is no dopamine carrot dangling ahead of me. And so I default to easier, simpler, shorter tasks.
The question then becomes... can I alter that 1 hour default? I did use the Pomodoro technique successfully a few times for projects that were seriously stuck. Work for just 25 minutes and then take a 5 minute break. It seems awfully rigid though. Or could I create an artificial dopamine carrot for working on something for 15-30 minutes? And what would that look like?
Peak Alertness
Or... perhaps my sense that an hour is required in order for me to do productive project work isn't actually that far off. Studies have shown that our ultradian rhythm (cycles repeated multiple times in a 24 hour period) might have a role to play. Based on studies of our natural energy and alertness cycle... we can maintain peak alertness for 90 to 120 minutes before we need a break. On top of that... studies have also shown that it takes about 23 minutes to get into a deep work zone.
Sooo... if I really want to do some deep work... then the Pomodoro technique isn't going to work. I legitimately need about 30 minutes to get into a work zone. And I can maintain that for up to 2 hours. So the sweet spot for working on a complex project (like writing a blog or working on another book) is going to be somewhere in the 60-120 minute zone.
This actually makes me feel a bit better. I'm not mucked up! My sense that I can't get anything useful done on a blog or a book in less than an hour is probably not that far off. I need to be able to work on it for at least 30 minutes to get into a flow zone... but can only maintain that for another hour or so.
30 Minutes is Enough?
But here's where I can marry these two bits of information. All I really need is a 30 minute chunk of time. That's a small enough segment that it doesn't feel impossible or overwhelming. I also know that once I've been working on something for 30 minutes... odds are I will continue for a bit longer. And yes, ideally I would have a one hour chunk to devote to my writing.
On the other hand... for other things... like decluttering the garden shed, or updating our finances... I can drop that down to 15 minutes. I can get a lot of decluttering done in 15 minutes.
Now... the trick is... to actually follow through on this. An hour seems like a fairly large step to me... although 30 minutes is a bit more doable... cuts that hour in half. But even those 30 minutes are broken up into countless small steps... the first one being... to just start! Getting started seems to be 80% of the battle. If I can just get started, I know that everything else falls into place.
Next Small Step
So much of my to-do list is made up of things like "write blog about ____". That isn't, actually, a small step. That's like saying "land a man on the moon". Well... let's just give up right now because that is a huge mountain of a task! It's no wonder I get stuck and just skip over that item in my to-do list... it's much more doable to "screw fire extinguisher to the wall"... a very concrete, small step task. And it gives me a quick dopamine hit. Whereas "write blog" is so amorphous and nebulous that my dopamine addict looks at it and goes... "nope... too hard... I need a quick fix". And so I spend my time completing small tasks rather than focusing my precious time on larger, complex tasks.
Sigh... I'm back to looking at my productivity system! Surely there is something out there... something better than what I am doing. Something that will actually help me focus and get things done?
Productivity Systems
What about the Getting Things Done (GTD) system... where you identify the next actionable step? "Write blog" is not an actionable step. Even "research blog" is not an actionable step. Maybe "open blogger web app"... "open current blog post"... "review material written to-date"... "identify next steps"... Those are small steps. But do I really want to spend time adding them to my to-do list? Not really. I think I should be able to identify these when I see "write blog post"... but clearly that is NOT working!
There's also time-blocking... where you look at the week ahead and map things out ahead of time. What appointments do I have? What are the self-care things that need to go in there - walk, eating, etc. What work time do I need to factor into the schedule. Then... look at the remaining time and figure out... what can I do in that block of time... write a blog? answer emails and make phone calls? research Airbnb tips and tricks? The idea with time-blocking is that you group things together. So I am not answering emails and making phone calls throughout the day, when I should really be working on a blog or something else. I have tried it in the past and found it far too rigid... but perhaps I wasn't using it correctly because it is supposed to flex and flow with the unexpected.
I've also come across another idea... about working on one thing... without distraction. So the question to ask is... "Did I do what I said I'm going to do for as long as I said I would, without distraction?". Even if I didn't finish it... I can still get a dopamine hit because I did what I said I would do... without getting distracted. That's a win!
I'm going to have to let all of these percolate for a while... and see what I can come up with that might actually work for me
Image by Steve Buissinne from Pixabay
