A friend posed this question:

“What do you do when you have two conflicting things to get done? For example, for me it’s writing vs. studying.  Both take the same amount of focus, time and activity level.  One is more pleasurable, and one is more necessary.

“So when I have a block of time in which I could EITHER write or study……….I end up surfing the web for hours.  In that web-surfing loop where you don’t really look at anything, just go to the same sites over and over to see if they’ve been updated since three minutes ago.  To be honest, it makes me feel like that story in I, Robot: Runaround.  I experience this practically every time I schedule writing-and-studying time for myself.”

It’s a good question, and one I definitely identify with in my own experience. When I have more than one important thing to do, all of the important tasks are weighing on me at once. If I undertake one of them without making special effort to handle this problem, the fact that I’m not doing the others will distract and upset me. For me, this gets worse when there are more things to do, because then it’s hard to even identify all of the things that need doing, and the other priorities will plague me without my even being fully aware of what they are.

One of the reasons we often turn to something completely self-indulgent in these cases is that we hope it will take our mind off all of our other concerns. For example, what if I have the option of writing or studying or watching a good movie? If I do the writing, the fact that I have studying to do might continue to bother me. If I do the studying, the ignored writing might be the pain in my neck. But if I watch the movie and like it, I might be so swept up in the story that I don’t think about either writing or studying–so that the only solution that gives me any relief is the only one that in the long term doesn’t help me at all.

Fortunately, there is a solution to this. Actually, there might be a bunch of solutions to this, but there’s one solution that I know (and that I’ve recently been using more and more). It has three parts: listing, prioritizing, and resigning.

Listing: If you have a lot of things to do, it helps to list them out. If a lot of things are bothering or distracting you, list them all–but if there are only a couple or a few major issues to tackle, don’t bother with all of the lower-priority ones, and instead just list that couple or those few.

In this way the part of your brain that has been devoted to keeping track of them all can rest, because you now have them all on paper and aren’t in danger of forgetting. Listing also allows you to start

Prioritizing: Looking at your list, you decide what one or two or ten things are really the most important for you to tackle right away. Some might call for a quick action but not be of desperate importance (for instance, calling your friend back and confirming that you’ll be at a party tomorrow), but most of your top items should be chosen for importance, whether or not they would need to be done immediately. Try to avoid prioritizing things that are in your face but that don’t matter much in the scheme of things. For instance, you might have noticed for the hundredth time today that you have a little trouble finding any CD in your CD collection, and it may occur to you to organize your CDs. This idea could be very much on your mind, yet not really at all important in the scheme of things. This shouldn’t “float to the top” unless you really have nothing more important to do (in which case your life must be far, far more peaceful than mine!)

Keep in mind that it’s not remotely necessary to prioritize all your tasks: just figure out which are the top ones, and then of those, make sure at least the top few are in priority order. If two things are exactly as important, choose whichever one you’re more enthusiastic about. If a task is very large, try to break it up into sub-tasks and then prioritize those. For instance, if you have three years worth of personal papers to file, break the list item “File all those papers” down and start with a task “Spend 15 minutes starting in on filing.” You can take the rest and make it a task, “Continue with filing,” which can spawn other tasks in future.

I know I’m getting into organizational techniques instead of obvious motivation techniques here, but among the elements of motivation are knowledge of what you need to motivate yourself to do and goal-setting. The listing step covers the knowledge, and this step covers goal-setting. When you’re done with prioritization, you should have a sub-list of Important Things and single thing at the top of that list. This now allows you to begin

Resigning yourself to the idea that you can only under normal circumstances do one thing at a time. (Note: a later post of mine goes into more detail about resigning ourselves to making good choices.) If you decide to study, for instance, your brain may pipe up “But … I have to do some writing!” This is a broken idea, a lie that you’re telling yourself. In fact, you don’t have to do some writing right then. Writing will come later, and as good as it might be to get some done now, you can’t write at the same time as you’re studying, and for the moment you’ve chosen to study. If you’ve broken up your large studying task into chunks, then perhaps what you have decided to do is study one particular chapter, or study for one hour. And you know that when that hour or chapter is over, if you are still on discretionary time, you’ll be able to switch over to writing then. Get at peace with the idea that nothing is going to get done right away except your top priority. When you catch yourself manufacturing broken ideas, repair them one by one until you feel calm and ready to begin. It’s not an easy thing, but once done, the need to do anything other than what you’ve chosen to do goes away, and you can get to work without distraction.

TV picture by Qfamily; writing picture by Ed Yourdon .

Do you have to have an organizational system in order to motivate yourself? No. Does it help? Hell, yes.

In order to motivate ourselves toward specific goals, we can identify a set of factors that we either need or at least benefit a lot by. Among these are a few important ones that organization helps with in spades, specifically:

1. Setting and prioritizing goals
2. Understanding what needs to be done, and
3. Getting regular, meaningful feedback (in the form of checking things off)

If I’m pursuing a big goal (whether it’s completing a book proposal, renovating a house, or learning to speak Bantu), in many cases the most productive thing for me to do is to break that big task into steps, and the steps into smaller tasks, until I get down to the level of tasks that can be done in one pass. This is less important with goals that are more repetitive (for instance, speaking Bantu: if I set up regular lessons and study times, I should be fine) than with goals that are made up of a wide variety of little things (like cutting window glass, taking down cabinets, and painting for that house renovation) that may be hard to keep track of. If I’m doing one big task of the second kind, organization becomes important. If I’m doing several big tasks like that, or lots and lots of little tasks, organization becomes the difference between being productive and being driven profoundly, dramatically nutty. Anyone who forgets to do important things, does low-priority things when they would rather have been doing high-priority things, feels scattered or overwhelmed, or doesn’t know where to start on the mound of things ahead can probably benefit from better organization.

It’s important to realize that organization itself requires self-motivation to be trained into a habit. Since we’re motivated to do things that we feel happy about and tend to avoid things that we feel anxious about, it’s very helpful to consciously associate the organization you do with the relief it brings, whether that’s at the “Well, at least now I know everything I have in front of me” level or at the “Hooray, I’m finished!” level of achievement. If you find yourself avoiding your organizational system, try taking a step back and thinking of the benefits of your system, of anything it has helped you do in the past, or of people whose organizational skills you admire. Thinking positively about organization makes doing organization much more appealing.

Which organizational system you choose will also make a lot of difference. A paper system can work if you don’t have a lot of tasks or if you don’t mind writing and rewriting things a lot, but electronic systems make things much easier by helping group and prioritize tasks, dropping completed tasks from your list, and so on. Many electronic organization systems also allow you to keep different categories of tasks, which is important: ideally, you want to categorize your tasks so that at any given time, you’re only looking at the things you could conceivably get done right then. It can be anxiety-producing to look at a monumental list of tasks, 90% of which you can’t do now because you’re in the wrong place, have only a limited amount of time, etc.

Because of this, I tend to break out my own task lists in four ways: first, by where I do them, in that I use a completely different organizational tool for work compared to home, since it’s rare that I’ll have the choice of doing either of those things at the same time. Second, by theme: I have one task list of things to do with my son, another of strictly writing-related tasks, another of financial tasks, etc. Third, by task length: I tend to keep a separate list of very quick tasks that I can get done when I just have a few spare minutes. And fourth, by importance: I find it helpful to keep a list of top tasks so that they don’t get ignored in favor of easier but much less important ones.

Of course, this results in a lot of lists, but then, I don’t categorize every single task in all four ways. For instance, my most important tasks just go in the “top” list regardless of other concerns, and my “quick win” short task list contains both important and unimportant tasks (although it’s prioritized within that).

The goal of all this separation of tasks (which is probably overkill in that form for most people, as I tend to have a lot of complex things going on at any given time) is to have a set of task lists that I can choose from whenever I’m ready to do something productive. If I’ve blocked out time for writing, I look at the writing list. If I have a few spare minutes, I look at the “quick win” list. If I’m going out to run errands, I look at my errands list. And so on.

With any luck, your list of things to do is much shorter than mine, and you would need at most only a few categories.

Any task management system needs to be one you can access conveniently and often. A computer-based one is no good if you’re rarely at the computer, for instance. And any system that makes it hard to figure out what you should be doing (like a paper system where you have to sift through a pile of notes) or that takes too long for you to access (like a computerized system that takes a long time to start up) or that makes it hard to read or enter tasks (like a task list on your cell phone when you don’t have an alphanumeric keypad on your phone) is probably the wrong one.

In terms of my favorite tools, here’s what I’m using at the moment.

First and foremost, I use Todoist, a completely free, online system that offers one of the easiest, most natural, and most convenient user interfaces I’ve ever seen anywhere. While it does offer ways to prioritize and schedule due dates, generally speaking the main thing I care about is typing the task in as part of the right category. To do this takes me one double-click (to open the shortcut to the Todoist site on my desktop), one single click (to select the project I want), and one keystroke (“a” to staring adding a new task). Once I have the task in, it’s easy to edit, schedule, prioritize, move between projects, or move to a different place on the list with drag-and-drop.

Of course, fully using Todoist means I need to be at the computer, but when I’m not I print out my tasks if I need to consult the list, and write down a list of any that I need to add–which it’s then essential that I add as soon as possible, so that everything stays up to date. On top of that, though, since I have Web access on my phone, I can get to the mobile version of Todoist through that, which is very limited in terms of functionality, but where I can easily view my tasks and add new ones.

In terms of my calendar, to my own surprise this year I’ve adopted a simple, paper-based planner booklet. I find it much easier to see what I’ll be doing at a particular time by flipping to a page rather than by having to look something up on the computer, and writing things in a schedule doesn’t have the drawbacks of keeping tasks on paper, because old events are just ignored as you flip to the new page. One major limitation of this system, it should be noted, is that you don’t get reminders, but I address that by checking my planner often to keep myself aware of my schedule. If I really, really needed a reminder, I could enter alarms into my cell phone.

A good alternative for both of these systems is a PDA (personal digital assistant), like a Palm Pilot or a Blackberry. Older Palm Pilots that are still completely functional can often be gotten on eBay for $30 or less. The main reason I’ve stopped using my PDA in favor of these other systems is the niggling details of convenience. Since it’s much easier for me to enter tasks into Todoist or events into my planner than to enter either into my Palm Pilot, I find I’m more reliable about keeping information up to date when I use these methods. The benefits of “convenient” for things that we sometimes don’t feel like doing are hard to overstate.

Finally, a note about overcommitment, an issue I struggle with: if you have chosen to do more things in your life than you’re willing or able to find the time for, not only will you never feel caught up, but you’ll fail to do things you had wanted or promised to do. That is, if you choose to do more than you can realistically get done, you really won’t get it all done, and what you don’t get done will be chosen by circumstance instead of by you. The only completely sane solution to this is to take a hard look at your commitments and decide what you can do less of. The temptation is to promise yourself you’ll do less of the recreational stuff, and often this can be a good way to go for at least part of the problem–but it can also be hard, because every time we sit down to watch a television show or kill some time randomly surfing the Web, we’re acting not only on habit but in response to some internal desire, need, or gap. Tackling these kinds of issues takes mindfulness, self-examination, and willpower, and fortunately this blog is designed to help in all of those departments.

Of course, there are uncountable organizational systems, tools, programs, practices, and paraphernalia, and what works best depends a lot on the individual person. Do you have something that works very well for you? I’d love to hear more about it in comments.

“Drowning” photograph by Quinn.Anya.

For the past two and a half years, my son and I have been studying Taekwondo. At a class a few days ago, some of us were practicing a difficult kick, and a newer student was finding she had to go through the kick very slowly.

“It took me about two years to learn that kick,” said a third student we were working with, by way of encouragement.

That surprised me at first. It’s just one kick! Admittedly, it wasn’t nearly the only thing we had been practicing, and it was a kick that involved spinning in mid-air, but two years seemed like a very long time. Yet when I thought about it, I realized it had taken me a year and a half or two years too, and that was with taking extra time after class some days specifically to practice it.

Becoming excellent at something really does take a long time. What’s more interesting is that, in a manner of speaking, that’s all it takes. In other words, that old saw “You can do anything you set your mind to” appears to have a lot of truth to it, truth backed by fistfuls of scientific studies.

“What about talent?” you might ask. My response to that would have to be: “It doesn’t seem to exist.”

“But Mozart … Tiger Woods!” you say.

“Both were taught intensively in their fields by their fathers practically from infancy,” I’d tell you, “and both their fathers were teachers with exceptional credentials. By the time each was five years old, they were so far ahead of their peers, the world was their oyster.” Practice may not make perfect, but it does make darn good.

Skeptical? László Polgár knew a lot of people who were skeptical when he claimed that you could raise children who were prodigies at almost anything, if you cared to go about it the right way. To prove it, he married a woman willing to do the experiment with him, fathered three daughters, and brought them all up to be world-class chess masters. Two of the girls stuck with chess long enough to become grandmasters and (at different times) world champions. László himself is an unexceptional chess player, but he has studied chess thoroughly enough to have been a very effective teacher for his daughters.

All of this about talent that I’m casually summing up in a pretend conversation comes from the arguments found (among other places) in two recent, very well-written books. Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers does a lot to explain how the very best people in every field–music, chess, sports, business, and so on–all seem to have gotten their skills by working very hard for a long time. In fact, Gladwell will tell you how long that period of time is: 10,000 hours. It takes about 10,000 hours of practice in practically anything to become world-class at it.

In his book Talent is Overrated, Geoff Colvin dives into the subject further, and points out that the quality of practice makes a huge difference as well. The very best violinists in the world now are much better than the very best violinists in the world 200 years ago, and it’s not just because there are more people playing the violin: it’s also that today’s violinists have better learning methods, recordings, and other resources contemporaries of Mozart or Beethoven never had.

But again, what about talent? There are just people who are really good at things from a young age, naturally, so what about them?

Actually, such people don’t seem to exist. Find anyone who’s exceptional at practically anything, dig into their past, and you’ll find a whole lot of practice–much more practice than people who aren’t as good as they are.

Not to say that genetics count for nothing. Genetics determine a lot about a person’s body, which can influence which athletic activities, for instance, they might be good at. Genetics also seems to determine a range of potential intelligence, and in turn intelligence has some influence over what a person can get good at–but only in that a person seems to need a certain minimal level of intelligence to be able to do well at certain activities, with more intelligence not corresponding to more success. For instance, a decades-long study that began by identifying a number of child geniuses found that these children didn’t fare any better than the average graduate student in life. Intelligence certainly counts for something, but it doesn’t make for automatic success.

I can understand if you don’t believe this, or if you have big reservations. If so, it might be worthwhile reading Colvin’s or Gladwell’s book and seeing if the evidence they present there doesn’t make a better case than I can in this short blog entry. The idea that people are born with special talents is a very strong one in our culture, and when we see someone who does well at something, we tend to assume automatically that it’s because of inborn talent, then take that success as proof that inborn talent exists.

And what does all this have to do with self-motivation? Well, it is a bit of a tangent, but it does relate to two key elements of self-motivation: goals and belief that you can accomplish them.

In terms of goals, it may help to realize that if you have a goal of being very, very good at something, it’s almost certainly possible to reach that goal–but it will take a lot of time and effort, so you had better enjoy whatever it is you plan to be doing. In some cases, others may have an enormous head start on you. For instance, if you start playing violin at age 30, it’s not likely that you’ll ever catch up with 30-year-olds who have been playing violin day in and day out since age 5–so you can become an excellent violinist even starting at age 30, but there’s little possibility you’ll become one of the best in the world.

In terms of belief, it can be discouraging sometimes to slowly move through a kick that feels awkward and clumsy to you when other people are spinning through the air and delivering it seemingly without effort. What Gladwell and Colvin and the researchers on whose work they’ve based their books have to tell us is that in time, that kick will come. Practically anyone can fly through the air, spinning, if they’re willing to put in the time.

Takeaways:

• Only a few inborn traits, like intelligence and body size, affect what we can or can’t become great at
• Almost all exceptional skill comes from many, many hours of practice
• No, seriously: it’s true

Pictures above: Wolfgang Mozart, Judit Polgár

In recent posts I’ve talked about willpower, but there’s another kind of self-motivation a person might want to develop: the motivation to complete a particular project.

Willpower is the kind of thing you need if you want to quit smoking or resist making snarky remarks at staff meetings or to make the effort to memorize names when you meet new people. Project motivation is the kind of drive you need to finish a novel, learn a foreign language, or make major home renovations.

Many insights and techniques apply to both these kinds of self-motivation, but it’s worth knowing whether which habit or a project is more important to you at the moment so that you can focus on the approaches that will be most useful to for that particular goal. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, we have a limited amount of time, energy, and attention to change our behavior. If we try to do too much at once, it’s like trying to carry a bunch of bowling balls in our arms: one bowling ball is manageable, but trying to carry four or five is a disaster. Fortunately, once we master one kind of self-motivation, it’s often possible to move ahead and add others, one at a time, mastering each before we proceed (like carrying the bowling balls separately).

So what’s your biggest priority, right now, the one thing that self-motivation would help you the most with? If it’s a willpower issue, like losing weight or being a better listener, focus your efforts on being aware of your own mindset and recognizing opportunities for making good choices. If it’s a project, begin by choosing a very specific goal–for very big projects, perhaps a waypoint rather than the big end goal–and lay out the specific steps you’ll need to take. Then, figure out what changes you need to make to be able to take those steps–for instance, where the time to do them will come from.

Takeaway:

• Which strategies will help you most depends on whether you’re working on willpower or creating a push to complete a project.

Photo by Rick Kennedy