Beyond the Clock: My Evolution from 4-Hour Dependency

When I first started this blog, I knew that I wanted it to focus on small steps - for healthy living, for the environment, for anything really. And several years into this, I am reminded daily that no great thing gets done without these small steps. Everything is made up of small steps.

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

Shrinking To-Do List

My To-Do list is losing weight, serious weight. I'm not sure if it's the Covid19 virus thing - stay at home as much as possible... or my new productivity method of scheduling things into my calendar but... there is some serious stuff getting done in and around our house.


Some of these things have been living on my to-do list for years. Yes, years. Some have only been there for months... but they all carry weight. Every time I looked at these incomplete projects, I'd feel a blip of guilt and a fleeting thought of "Gotta get to that"... And then I'd move on and ignore that little blip and that fleeting thought. Except... they'd still be there in the background, niggling at me. It gets exhausting after a while, carrying all that extra weight around.

But now... time seems to have expanded and with nothing better to do... I am tackling these projects and loose-ends with gusto.

Case in point... we had a wood-burning fireplace, complete with faux stone surround and hearth. FYI, this is one of those zero-clearance fireplaces (basically a metal insert), not a brick fireplace.

We decided to get an electric fireplace instead (our street does not have natural gas and it would have cost $$$$ to get the line extended).

Void left by hearth...

Sooo... we stripped off the wooden mantel, pulled down the faux stone, tore out the hearth and had a guy come in and install the electric fireplace and build us a nice stacked-stone looking fireplace surround.

Soooo much nicer! Less mess from wood and ash and so much easier to maintain and get started. Just the press of a button.

See the seam where flooring meets...

Except... removing the hearth, left a big void in the laminate flooring where the hearth had sat. We had extra laminate flooring, so I laid some perpendicular to the prevailing flooring and there it sat. It needed some floor trim to cover the three seams where old flooring met patched-in flooring. It even got the oak floor trim and stained it the right colour. But then just laid it down loosely and... we covered most of it with an area rug. But I still knew that the incomplete flooring trim was there... and it ate away at me.

Voila - finished floor trim...

Enter Covid19 and... I dug out the my little MasterCraft mitre saw and cut up some trim to finish another project (3 years old) and decided to do the floor trim as well. If I'm going to haul out the mitre saw... I might as well put it to good use!

It was a bit of a tricky business requiring 45° cuts and figuring out lengths because my trim pieces weren't long enough for the entire length of the hearth area and... well... it got done in less than half an hour.

WTF. Thirty minutes of work to complete this project versus the 15 months of niggling reminders and guilt as it sat undone. Sigh.

But... this is how my life has been the last week or so... getting a bunch of heavy-weight to-dos off of my list that have been sitting there for far tooooo long.

Breaking up with my To-Do List

"I'm breaking up with you!"

That's my biannual scream at my To-Do List. It happens like clockwork. I start sinking under the weight of incomplete tasks and upcoming To-Do's and inevitably think that there's something wrong with my current To-Do List.

If only I had the "right" To-Do List app or method or system or something.

I stomp off in a huff, troll through different to-do list apps and methodologies before I discover a sparkly new one that looks like the answer to my prayers. Harps play, angels hum, lights dazzle and I fall head over heels for my new To-Do List love. I then storm into my current To-Do List and move everything over to the new app/tool/method and slam an invisible door. "I am so DONE with you!" Hmph.

All goes well for a week or two. My new To-Do List and I are in the honeymoon phase after all. I am the energizer bunny of productivity! Things are going swimmingly and then... inevitably... the shiny newness wears off and... I realize that the new app is not cutting it. In fact, it's worse than my old method!

And so I go crawling back to Remember the Milk (my long-term app) and repopulate my To-Do List and swear that I'll always be true. We're good for a few weeks/months and then... it begins again.

This cycle of disillusionment/cheating/switching/reconciliation takes a lot of time and energy and it would be soooo much easier to not have to go through this every few months.

It's not You, It's Me

The thing is... the problem is not with my To-Do List... it's with me. Much as I would love to get rid of my To-Do List... there are way too many moving parts in my life for me to abandon it completely. I need to be able to keep track of upcoming tasks otherwise bills don't get paid, calls don't get made and things don't get done. My To-Do List is my catch-all for everything that I need to remember... in the short-term and long-term.

While I keep coming back to RTM, I've also tried innumerable productivity systems and apps: Kanban, Trello, Todoist, Toodledo, RTM, OneNote, Asana, Bullet Journal (paper-based), Pomodoro, Getting Things Done, Eat the Frog, 1-3-5, the One Thing, Google Keep, Google Tasks, Evernote, Notion, Wunderlist and many, many more. I am a To-Do List junkie.

On top of that, I seem to need to keep a foot in both the analog and digital worlds. A purely digital system doesn't work so well for me. I need something on paper to jot things down, to take notes, whatever. On top of that, my email inbox sometimes functions as a To-Do List. While I aspire to Inbox Zero, sometimes it's easier to leave an email in my Inbox to remind me... "right... need to handle that"... or... "right, waiting for a response on that".

A Shift in Attitude
A few weeks ago, I could feel the frustration/overwhelm/disillusionment building within me. There was soooo much to get done! Every day, I would review my modified BuJo To-Do List at the end of the day and push forward a bunch of incomplete tasks. I'd review my Remember the Milk app and see so many snowplowed To-Dos... And yes, I have tried the Eisenhower Matrix of urgency/importance... doesn't work for me. At this point, everything is Urgent AND Important! Or at least... it feels that way.

I get to the point where I want someone else to just say: "OK, here's your next to-do... and when you're done with that... I'll give you the next one." I don't want to have to make the decisions... to scan a list with dozens of items and try and figure out what is next. Argh!!

A few weeks ago, I could feel a To-Do List break-up coming and thought... "this is ridiculous - there must be a better way". Right now, I'm staying with Remember the Milk for my overall catch-all of information that I can review on a weekly basis. For my day-to-day and week-ahead planning, however, I'm considering several tweaks.

1. Make each task an actual "task", not a project! I have this annoying tendency to write "redo garden beds" on my To-Do List. It is not an actionable task and so my goal is to break each project down into small, actionable items. One of my big issues is that I overestimate how long something will take. But breaking down a task/project into sub-tasks, the entropy hurdle is less. Or so thinks my rational brain.
   
   This would require a shift in attitude and execution on my part. To recognize that I am a bit of an over-achiever and approach my To-Do list with some compassion for myself. I don't have to climb the mountain... I just have to take the next step.
2. Write the reason for a to-do list item - not just what it is. For a slightly ridiculous example: Normally I would write "windshield wipers" on my to-do list, knowing that the current ones are leaving horrible streaks. But that might sit on my to-do list for weeks for any number or reasons. My new strategy, beyond breaking the task down into sub-tasks (buy windshield wipers, install windshield wipers) is to write it thusly: "install new windshield wipers so we can drive to Victoria safely tomorrow".
   
   I came across the idea of writing the To-Do List as if I were writing it for someone else. It made sense and it adds a certain clarity around priority and urgency. Again, this requires a shift in both attitude and execution. At first glance, I'm thinking this might help me prioritize things better... rather than seeing everything as Urgent AND Important.
3. Write a DONE list in my notebook. I used to have a running To-Do List in Remember the Milk and out of that would write a daily To-Do List into my notebook. The same To-Do List that was only half-done at the end of the day. Shifting away from that... and instead writing a Done List in my notebook, because there are a lot of things that I get done that never even make it on to the To-Do List.
   
   I've always been a person who looks ahead. I don't rest on my laurels, but am always jumping ahead, looking at what is still to come. The DONE list is a way for me to appreciate what I have done in a day and focus on the complete rather than the incomplete.
4. Schedule tasks into my day. Apparently, many millionaires (and probably billionaires) do NOT have a To-Do List... they just have a calendar. Huh. I have tried blocking time before but... actually scheduling things... in a realistic way? Not so much.
   
   I think part of my reluctance to look at a calendar-based system is a left-over twitch effect from when I was care-giving for my Dad. All of my careful time-block schedules went out the window during a very unpredictable time. My life is slightly more predictable now... perhaps it is time to try calendars again.

A Balancing Act
Part of my fixation with time and to-do lists right now is this... I have noticed that I will go for a walk with my partner when she is home. But when she is not home, I won't go for a walk. I know that a walk is good for me. I know this... and yet... when I am home alone, there is always something "more important" to do. This is perplexing to me...

I've tried adding "walk" to my to-do list. I can't tell you how often it gets postponed or ignored. Apparently I have no trouble prioritizing others... just myself.

Right now, I am trying to rejig by life by scheduling tasks into my calendar. And the first things to go on the calendar are self-care activities - like walks, reading and eating healthy meals (which always takes longer so my temptation is to take short-cuts and skip the healthy bits). Once my self-care items are blocked into my day, I have a better sense of how much time I actually have for other tasks. And it then becomes easier to prioritize what absolutely needs to get done today and in the coming days.

I've known about the rocks and the mason jar for a while now and have tried various ways of implementing it. Important things first... then smaller things. When I look at the picture here though... I can see how the left mason jar would result in my current sense of overwhelm... "OMG!!! I don't have enough time for these things!!" Tis very true... So this time, I'm putting my intentionality behind creating the right mason jar...

I'm planning a week ahead and I really have to watch myself or this little over-achiever will try and schedule too much into a day. I am trying to build in some white/flex/blank/down/transition time. If I find that I have some flex time in the day because things went quicker than anticipated, I can regroup, see where I'm at and maybe tackle a few of the smaller tasks that always need to be done - cleaning the toilet, doing dishes, flipping a load of laundry into the dryer, etc. It always amazes me what I can get done in 15 minutes, if I just put my head down and do it.

The idea is that my self-care activities are inviolable. If my schedule said "Walk with friend", I would make that appointment. I would never blow off my friend and not show up for the walk, barring a legitimate emergency. But if my schedule says "Walk [for me]", I somehow see that as optional and an appointment that I can keep... or not.

Sooo... my Small Step this week is to keep my appointments with myself. Treat myself with the same courtesty that I treat others. Wish me luck.