Archive for ‘Project Management’ Category

How to Organize Support for Patients and Families in Need

Posted on: July 17th, 2023 by Julie Bestry | 16 Comments

The following anecdote from inspirational teacher, speaker, and author John Perricone has been making the rounds on the web:

Several years ago, I invited a Buddhist monk to speak to my senior elective class, and quite interestingly, as he entered the room, he didn’t say a word. (That caught everyone’s attention). He just walked to the board and wrote this:

“EVERYONE WANTS TO SAVE THE WORLD, BUT NO ONE WANTS TO HELP MOM DO THE DISHES.”

We all laughed. But then he went on to say this to my students: “Statistically, it’s highly unlikely that any of you will ever have the opportunity to run into a burning orphanage and rescue an infant. But, in the smallest gesture of kindness — a warm smile, holding the door for the person behind you, shoveling the driveway of the elderly person next door — you have committed an act of immeasurable profundity, because to each of us, our life is our universe.”

This is my hope for you for the New Year, that by your smallest acts of kindness, you will save another’s world.

Recently, I’ve had small acts of kindness on my mind. Some friends, both near and far, have been going through difficult times, and it has had me thinking about what I can do for them, especially when I’m not close enough to help do the dishes.

Dishwashing Photo by Pavel Danilyuk

Most of the time, our goal in getting organized it to make our lives easier and prevent unfortunate things from happening. However, sometimes, through nobody’s fault, bad things happen. People get sick or injured, or family member die, or people just go through dark times, and no matter how organized they were (or we were on their behalf), life gets upended.

When that happens, when a family member or friend is in bad shape and everyone has to pull together to help take care of that individual or their family, organization is the key to making everything a little less chaotic. 

In today’s post, we’re going to look at some strategies and resources for helping when someone you know is sick or injured or recovering, and they or their household could use a little support.

ASSESS THE SITUATION

We can’t presume to know what someone else needs, even if we’ve been in the same situation, or even if we’ve helped that same person before.

An organizing client recently told me that she and her husband had needed little assistance after the birth of their first child, but experienced profound difficulties after their second was born prematurely. She was in the hospital for an extended ime, and the baby was in the NICU for months after that.

After the first birth, she needed only a little errand-running and someone to sit with the baby so she could shower or nap. After the second, she and her husband felt exhausted and overwhelmed, and needed support for everything from meals and childcare to housekeeping and someone to check if they’d paid the bills.

Most people will welcome some assistance, while others struggle with the idea of letting well-intentioned others make arrangements. So, talk to them or their caregiver to get a sense of what kind of support they will need, want, and accept. Common categories of assistance might include:

  • Grocery shopping — Depending on the individual’s or family’s preference, you may perform a weekly inventory and create a shopping list to share with others helping to cook, or you might help the family set-up and learn how to use online grocery shopping apps and arrange for delivery by someone in the support network.
  • Cooking — Whether you’re helping with meal preparation in the home, or cooking at your house and delivering, ensure that everyone’s dietary preferences and restrictions are considered. It does nobody any good to have a freezer full of pasta-based casseroles if someone has a gluten sensitivity. (As much as everyone is environmentally conscious, this is one time when using disposable containers to lessen inconvenience should be considered.)  
  • Cleaning — When you don’t feel well, messy or dirty surroundings will make everything worse. Imagine the relief of a clean bathroom and a tidy kitchen for someone spending most of their time at home or in medical settings.
  • Childcare and transportation to/from school and extracurriculars — This might be a good fit for friends who are parents of the children’s classmates, but don’t forget to invite  “aunties” and “uncles,” relatives or not. When things are stressful at home, whether there’s an illness or a new baby, getting a special day out with grownup who isn’t a parent or grandparent can make a child feel valued and like a VIP. 
  • Errand-running — Having someone who can dependably pick up prescriptions or make store returns ensures that the household can still run (somewhat) smoothly without daily stressors.
  • Pet care — Fido and Fluffy may not be able to talk about their feelings, but you know they sense that something is going on. Some people in the support network might limit their efforts to feeding and cleaning up after pets, while others might be up for taking pets on an adventure to the dog park or the groomer.

Toddler Walking Dog by Robert Eklund on Unsplash

  • Transportation to medical appointments — Imagine how uplifting it would be have a trusted friend take you to your appointments and feel, even for a little while, like the company you’re keeping with them is just a normal excursion!
  • Serving as a scribe during medical appointments — Being ill is stressful, and it’s hard to focus when you’re not feeling physically and/or mentally at your best. Having a trusted, confidential friend available to take notes, and maybe even to ask questions if you see they’re looking confused, could be a huge comfort. (It’s a plus if the person has any medical background, like a retired nurse or PA, but in a pinch, you’d be surprised how much someone picks up watching two decades of Grey’s Anatomy.)
  • Acting as entertaining/distracting company during chemo or other treatments, and during convalescence. Again, whatever someone can do to make a moment or an hour feel “normal” might be a blessing.
  • Emotional support, both for the person and their caregiver(s) — This is an especially good category for loved ones who live at a distance. Having someone in the Pacific Time Zone who’s awake and able to offer a shoulder when everyone in your time zone is asleep gives patients (and their families) the chance get what they need without feeling burdensome. Encourage people who can’t participate in more formal support schedules or visit in person to be there however they can, even if that’s a card or a texted meme. 

Read about others way to help.

How to Help Someone Who is Sick (An impressive list from the Kansas Health System)

How Not to Help a Friend in Need (New York Times)

50 Thoughtful Gift Ideas & Gestures for a Friend in Need (PrettyWellness.com)

Do not just ask, “What can I do?”

This puts the onus on someone whose mental reserves are already taxed to try to conceptualize what they need and try to feel comfortable asking for a favor. Instead, your goal is to to say, “Here are the things we’ve thought of. What are you comfortable letting us do? Is there anything we’ve forgotten that we could add to the list?”

CREATE A SUPPORT NETWORK

Even if you’re the sibling, the in-law, or the best friend, you can’t do it alone. If someone you love is going through any kind of illness, treatment, or recovery, or is otherwise in a difficult position (for example, is in grief or suffering depression), you can’t be the magic wand that solves all the problems. What you can be is a project manager so that, together, you can all maneuver that wand to make a little comforting magic.

Gather your community.

With the permission of your loved one and/or their partner or caregiver, reach out to friends, family members, neighbors, and colleagues to see who is willing and able to help. Use social media, email, texts, or phone calls to inform people what you’re trying to do and why, and ask for their support.

Make clear that you’d much rather someone take on a smaller role and be able to contribute than to take on too much and not be able to provide what’s promised when the time comes. 

Don’t presume that everyone is equally skilled and comfortable with all tasks. Provide a list of the tasksto be completed, and ask individuals to state where and when they’re able to help. People who love to cook will find it easy to “make double” when preparing meals, while those with flexible schedules and a love of kids will probably be eager to play taxi from school to ballet or soccer and then home.

Coordinate a schedule.

Once you have a group of people who are ready to help, you’ll want to establish a schedule that ensures the person you’re supporting receives consistent help without overwhelming any one individual.

This may involve setting up rotating shifts for different categories of tasks or assigning specific days to different people. Some in the network will have a great deal of flexibility while others can only help on weekends or evenings. Meet people where they are.

Communicate clearly.

Once everyone is on-board with providing support, select a method to ensure clear and open communication.

Rotary Phone by Sam Loyd on Unsplash

Different people (and definitely different generations) have decidedly varying communications preferences. Boomers and retirees might not mind phone calls, while GenZ and Millennials (and folks with jobs that require a lot of intense focus) are more likely to prefer texting or emails, so they can reply at their convenience. Create a master list with everyone’s name, phone number, email number, and preferred contact method, and if everyone is amenable, share it as a spreadsheet in Google Drive or a note in Evernote. 

Sometimes, you’ll want to communicate with the entire group rather than individuals, and email might work best. There are also online platforms (as we’ll discuss below) to help develop support calendars, allowing individuals to sign up for the tasks and times that work best for them.

Communicate with the person/family, too. If people are going to be showing up to drop off food, make sure they know the schedule, and get the OK for how things get delivered or accomplished. They may prefer that nobody come to the house before 10 a.m., or that meal deliveries come to the side/back door (which may be easier for a recovering person to access), or that they get a text ten minutes in advance of anyone showing up.

Remember the importance of privacy and confidentiality.

I can tell you from first-hand experience that being a patient, whether for an acute condition or a chronic one, means having to give up far too much privacy and dignity. Remind and encourage everyone involved to respect the individual’s confidentiality. Someone may feel great about having delivered three days of meals to the family and want to share that warm fuzzy on social media, but nobody’s humblebrag should come at the expense of another person’s privacy.

Of course, it should go without saying that only the individual you’re supporting (or, if applicable, the family) should be sharing medical updates (unless a proxy is asked to do so).

Consider crowdsourcing professional support.

Depending on the individual’s needs, the support community may want to provide funds to help accomplish professional work when the individual in crisis is unable to perform their usual tasks. Help might include a professional organizer for household functionality, a daily money manager to keep up with finances, or an academic tutor for the children.

Your network might want to gift the individual in-home massages or salon services (manicures, hair/scalp care, skin care, etc.) to boost their spirits and support their physical well-being.

Embrace flexibility.

As you likely know, health conditions can be unpredictable and do not abide by the calendar. Be prepared to adapt and reconfigure the support schedules as needs change. 

USE SUPPORT RESOURCES THAT ALREADY EXIST

There’s no need to reinvent the wheel. Take advantage of resources that can complement the efforts you’re already making.

Meal and Support Scheduling Platforms

Caring Bridge — One of the best-known platforms of its kind, Caring Bridge exists to help provide updates during a health crisis. It’s like a cross between a personalized web site and social media in that family or assigned parties can create posts updating someone’s health status and needs, and others can provide supportive comments. However, Caring Bridge also has a planner that allows volunteers to offer help with all the categories described above. 

Caring Bridge is free to use, has no advertising, and is a non-profit.

Meal Train — This calendar platform lets family, friends, neighbors, and colleagues sign up to provide meals for the person/family in need. It takes a lot of the administrative weight off of whomever is project-managing the family’s support, and Meal Train provides a straightforward way to organize and coordinate meal deliveries to ensure that the patient is getting nourishment and that the household isn’t eating takeout pizza for weeks on end. 

  • Create a free Meal Train page for the person/family whom you’re supporting. 
  • Enter the dates when meals will be needed.
  • Fill in all of the preferences including favorite foods, food allergies/sensitivities, and the ideal drop-off times to avoid disturbing the patient or family.
  • Share the Meal Train link with everyone in the support network so they can sign up to provide meals.

Members of the support network might benefit from reading some of Meal Train’s helpful articles, like:

11 Trips: Meal Train Etiquette for the Savvy Participant

6 Tips for Delivering your Meal

When Dropping Off a Meal, Should I Stay or Should I Go?

Although Meal Train is free, there’s a Pro level for $15/month for groups that might need to oversee multiple support pages. For example, if your house of worship or community group makes a point of supporting families in need, Meal Train Pro is an option.

Lotsa Helping Hands — is similar to Caring Bridge and Meal Train in that it supports the creation of a caregiving community. You can organize and coordinate all of the cooking, cleaning, errand-running and other tasks described earlier in this post, and individuals can sign up to provide support based on the person’s/family’s specific needs and each individual’s capacity.

The platform includes a care calendar for volunteers to sign up for tasks, an announcement page for updating everyone on progress or setbacks, a “well wishes” pages for sending messages to the patient and family, and a photo gallery for sharing supportive pictures. 

Specialized Platforms

Not everyone makes an ideal volunteer for providing meals. But just because you (by which I mean I) can’t cook doesn’t mean you can’t provide a meal. Sure, you can use a service like Door Dash or GrubHub to dial up a person’s favorite restaurant meal and have it delivered, but sometimes you want a person to have a real home-cooked meal, even if you know they’re better off not having it cooked in your home.

To that end, I was delighted to discover Lasagna Love.

Lasagna Love provides delicious lasagnas for those in need. It might be for a patient, a family who has had a new baby, or even for someone you know who is just going through a really rough patch. Lasagna Love is a bit of a community, itself. You can:

The site describes its efforts this way (emphasis mine):

Lasagna Love is a global nonprofit and grassroots movement that aims to positively impact communities by connecting neighbors with neighbors through homemade meal delivery. We also seek to eliminate stigmas associated with asking for help when it is needed most. Our mission is simple: feed families, spread kindness, and strengthen communities.

Something tells me that the Buddhist monk in John Perricone’s classroom would approve. After all, if you’re making the lasagna for someone who needs it, it’s goes one step beyond helping Mom do the dishes. It’s may be a small act of kindness, but one with huge potential results. 

If you think you’d like to become a lasagna chef, learn how to get involved at the website and take a peek at the simple graphic, below.

Make lasagna once or become an ongoing lasagna chef or find a balance somewhere in between. Hear more directly from Rhiannon Menn, the founder:

While Lasagna Love was a brand new concept to me, the next resource is the one I’ve known about the longest, and have been gratified to recommend it to clients and others who have sought referrals.

Cleaning for a Reason — This 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization provides free home cleaning to patients battling cancer.

Cleaning for a Reason connects its trusted network of 1200 residential cleaning companies, cleaning industry volunteers, and community volunteers with cancer patients and their families to provide a clean, healthy environment.

Patients or their loved ones can apply for two free home-cleaning sessions and use this page to find a service provider. Cleaning for a Reason serves all individuals and families with any type of cancer, and patients are eligible if they’re recovering from cancer surgery, in cancer treatment, or in hospice care.

Cleaning for a Reason allows applications to be submitted by family, friends, and colleagues, as well as caregivers, doctors, and nurse navigators, but asks that you first verify that the patient is willing to accept the services.

Hear more from the founder, Debbie Sardone:

You can read about the program at the Cleaning for a Reason site and on the Facebook page.  

If someone you care about is ill or going through a difficult time, anything you do to let them know they are loved and valued will help. However, if you’re able to project-manage or volunteer by providing organized and consistent support, it will make a significant difference in their well-being during challenging times.

Whether you do the dishes, make a lasagna, organize the troops, or come armed with two boxes of tissues, it’s worth repeating: “By your smallest acts of kindness, you will save another’s world.”

Paper Doll On Understanding and Conquering Procrastination

Posted on: April 24th, 2023 by Julie Bestry | 12 Comments

 

Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task. ~ William James

We all procrastinate. Everyone knows that it’s irrational to put off doing something until the quality of the work might suffer. It’s obvious that it doesn’t make sense to keep not doing something when the deadline is fast approaching. And yet, at least sometimes, everyone procrastinates.

WHAT IS PROCRASTINATION?

Contrary to what you might have been told in your childhood (or even more recently), procrastination is not about laziness. Rather, it’s a self-protective mechanism.

Research shows that we use procrastination as a technique to regulate our moods. More specifically, to regulate, manage, and prioritize a negative emotion in the present over the negative outcome of our procrastination in the future.

Instead of delving into the science and scaring you off with words like amygdala and prefrontal cortex, here’s a cartoon to ease you into what’s actually happening in your brain when you procrastinate.

WHAT TRIGGERS PROCRASTINATION?

The tippy-top expert on procrastination, Canadian professor of psychology Timothy Pychyl of Carleton University in Ottawa, is the author of Solving the Procrastination Puzzle.

According to Pychyl, there are seven triggers that cause people to procrastinate:

  • Boredom — Whether a child is delaying doing homework because the assignment isn’t challenging or an adult is facing a stultifying task (vacuuming, I’m looking at you!), doing anything stimulating (even if it’s counterproductive) may feel better than doing the boring thing.
  • Frustration — The task itself may be frustrating because it’s full of difficult, fiddly little steps, like putting together a spreadsheet from multiple sources of data or figuring out how to build an Ikea desk without any written instructions; or, you might be frustrated because the work involves dealing with annoying members of your team.
  • Difficulty — When something seems like it’s going to be too mentally or physically taxing, it’s comforting to procrastinate. Sometimes we tell ourselves that we’re preparing, or doing pre-work, to set the stage for the difficult task, but there are only so many pencils your teen can sharpen before settling in on that calculus homework.
  • Lack of Motivation — This may seem the same as boredom, but it’s actually more complex. Boredom is mostly about the task; some activities are just inherently lacking in stimulation. But motivation relates to internal drive. Even if you aren’t happy in your current role at work, you may not be that excited about applying for a new job (perhaps because of depression, anxiety, or fear of change). You have to see the benefit of working on your resume and prepping for an interview as steps toward a personal goal of being more professionally confident, rather than just items to be completed to “get a job,” which may not be inherently motivating.
  • Lack of Focus — Mental focus depends on physical and emotional stimuli as well as external stimuli. A variety of emotional concerns related to the task at hand — fear of failure, being embarrassed in public, losing a scholarship or a job — as well as unrelated issues like family or relationship troubles, or health concerns, can detract from your focus. Similarly, working in a crowded or noisy space, or even in an environment with visually distracting elements, can dilute your focus. Some people need to turn down the radio while driving to find the address they’re seeking; others need a tidy desk in order to read, even if the desk is outside their line of sight. You can’t focus if you’re hungry or tired, either.
  • Feeling Overwhelmed — Too much of too much will always keep you from taking clear action. In the professional organizing field, we talk about suffering from decision fatigue and often say, “The overwhelmed mind says ‘No’.” Have you ever stood in the toothpaste or shampoo aisle and been shocked by the ridiculous number of competing alternatives? Similarly, if there are many different ways to approach a talk (writing a blog, replying to an email, making a plan for a move), overwhelm may lead us to just physically or mentally wander away.

 

  • Being Overworked — Burnout is definitely a trigger for procrastination. If you’ve ever worked day-in and day-out on a project such that by the time you got home, you had literally no mental space or physical energy to do anything, even to prepare food, that’s a sure sign of overwork. Alternative options might be more or less pleasant (think: socializing or housework), but you might choose to lay on your couch and mindlessly scroll through social media instead of either thing you were supposed to do. Overwork eliminates the energy necessary for doing anything in the now, so everything gets pushed to a theoretical later.

Of course, Pychyl is not the only one to define triggers for procrastination. Others have identified fear of failure, impulsiveness (sometimes associated with ADHD), and generalized anxiety. Various executive function disorders can make it difficult to sequence or prioritize tasks.

The point is, procrastination is not laziness, but a conscious or even subconscious need to not feel icky now, even if you’re going to feel doubly icky later.

Procrastination is not laziness, but a conscious or even subconscious need to not feel icky now, even if you're going to feel doubly icky later. Click To Tweet

PRACTICAL STRATEGIES TO COMBAT PROCRASTINATION

Obviously, once you identify your trigger to procrastinate, you can employ techniques to reverse the behavior. For example, if a task is boring, like housework or working out, you might pair it with music or a streaming TV show.

It also may be helpful to take away the temptations of more entertaining options. Lock your phone in a drawer — having to unlock it to play Candy Crush may give you the necessary pause to stick with your task. If you’re tempted by websites that are more entertaining than the work you’re supposed to be doing, lock yourself out of those websites (for whatever time period you set) by using a website-blocking program like:

Cold Turkey — works with Windows and MacOS

Focus — works with MacOS-only

Forest — designed for your phone, it works with Android, iOS, and in your Chrome browser

Freedom — works with Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, in as a plugin for Chrome

LeechBlock — works in various browsers, including Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Opera (but not Safari)

Rescue Time — works with Windows, macOS, Android, iPhone, and iPad

Self-Control — works with acOS-only

There’s also Paw Block, which, while it only works as a Chrome or Firefox extension, has the benefit of showing you pictures of kittens from the around the internet when it prevents you from accessing distracting websites. 

If you’re frustrated by the elements or situation of the task, you might bring in a friend or colleague to help you do it, someone who doesn’t have the emotional connection to the stressors that are throwing you off. They don’t necessarily need to perform the tasks, but just body double with you so you feel soothed and less frustrated.

You can break down difficult tasks into the tiniest possible elements, or seek a supervisor’s guidance, so the annoyances seem less annoying. (It’s tricky in the moment, but you might also try to reframe “difficult” tasks as challenges and contests with yourself.)

If you’re feeling unmotivated, see if you can find a short-term reward. (Cake? Cake is always good! But a refreshing walk outside after finishing the first of three elements of a task may help you get your head back in the game.) For a deeper lack of motivation, work with a therapist or coach to help you identify the meaningful benefits you can get from doing the things at which you tend to procrastinate, or possibly find a life path that eliminates those tasks. (If creating PowerPoint slide decks gives you a stomachache, maybe you need to consider becoming a lumberjack or a lighthouse keeper. Not everyone wants to be an knowledge worker, and that’s OK!)

If your procrastination is due to floundering focus, determine what’s contributing to the lack of focus. If it’s internal (troublesome thoughts and emotions), consider meditation, walking in nature, and talking through the excess thoughts with a friend and/or in therapy.

But if it’s external, if you’re feeling attacked from all sides by an overload of sensory stimuli, you may need to declutter and organize your space or move your workspace elsewhere (or invest in noise-canceling headphones). But it’s possible you’ll want to see if an ADHD or other diagnosis might help support your efforts to get assistance dealing with distractions.

Overwhelm may seem a lot like frustration. While you may be frustrated by just one (big) annoying thing, overwhelm feels like you’re getting pelted with dodge balls from all directions. It’s a good time to sit down with someone who can help you see the Big Picture and identify the priorities and sequences. Professional organizers and productivity specialists excel at helping you battle overwhelm and get clarity.

And if you’re overworked and experiencing burnout, it’s time to have a realistic discussion with your partner, therapist, boss, and anyone else who can help you achieve balance before you suffer health consequences more serious than just the emotional distress related to procrastination.

In the short term, some meditation and schedule modifications might work, but if you’re experiencing chronic overwork, more intense career and life changes might be necessary. Start by revisiting my series on toxic productivity, below, and pay special attention to post #3.

Toxic Productivity In the Workplace and What Comes Next

Toxic Productivity Part 2: How to Change Your Mindset

Toxic Productivity Part 3: Get Off the To-Do List Hamster Wheel 

Toxic Productivity, Part 4: Find the Flip Side of Productivity Hacks

Toxic Productivity Part 5: Technology and a Hungry Ghost

EMOTIONAL AND INTELLECTUAL STRATEGIES TO COMBAT PROCRASTINATION 

Making changes in your space and schedule, breaking your projects into smaller tasks, and giving yourself rewards are all smart practical solutions, but they’re external. Changing your external world can only eliminate some of the obstacles to your productivity. To truly conquer procrastination, experts advise making internal changes as well.

Admit it! 

Denial is not just a river in Egypt. When you catch yourself procrastinating, acknowledge it. Once you call your own attention to the fact that you’re delaying doing the thing you’re supposed to be doing, you can look at that list of triggers and say, “Yikes! I’m avoiding writing this report. Why is that?” You can’t solve a problem if you don’t realize it exists. Admitting it gets you halfway to a solution.

Forgive yourself

This isn’t the same as letting yourself continue to procrastinate. And just like forgiving someone else isn’t the same as saying that the undesirable behavior never occurred, forgiving yourself gives you the opportunity to recognize that past behavior doesn’t have to dictate future performance.

A 2010 study by Michael J.A. Wohl, Timothy A. Pychyl, and Shannon H. Bennett entitled I Forgive Myself, Now I Can Study: How Self-Forgiveness for Procrastinating Can Reduce Future Procrastination found, as the title indicates, that students who forgave themselves for procrastinating on preparing for exams earlier in the semester were far less likely to procrastinate on studying for the next exams.

You’re human; if you were a perfect person … well, you’d be the first one ever. Forgive yourself for having procrastinated in the past.

Practice self-compassion 

Related to self-foriveness is self-compassion. Researchers found that people who procrastinate tend to have higher stress levels and lower levels of self-compassion, and theorized that compassion cushions some of the more negative, maladaptive responses that cause repeated procrastination.

Think of it as similar to overeating. If you cheat on your diet, low self-compassion might get you so down on yourself that you figure, “I’ll never lose this weight. I might as well just eat the whole ice cream carton!” But if you’re able to have self-compassion, you may tell yourself, “Yup, I did eat more than a half-cup serving of ice cream. But I understand why I did it. Next time, I’ll try drinking a glass of water and walking around the block first. Or maybe I’ll go out and eat the ice cream on the front porch, where the rest of the carton won’t be so accessible!”

(Seriously, whoever thought half a cup of ice cream was an adequate serving, anyway?)

Be intentional

All of the alternatives I described up above for seeking assistance and changing your environment (and the ones we’ll discuss next week) will only happen if you place your intention and attention on making changes.

Yes, this means a little extra labor on your part. If you know you procrastinate because you anticipate interruptions (from co-workers in the office or tiny humans when remote-working), you’re creating a problem before the problem exists, so you’re missing out on productivity before you need to and then again when the problem actually occurs. (And then you’ll spend the time after the interruptions being resentful about them, and that will lead to less productivity, too!)

Once you know what you’re up against and which triggers present a problem for you, build time into your schedule to plan your way around the obstacles and triggers. That might mean seeking out time with professionals who can help you, whether those are therapists, professional organizers, productivity specialists, or life or career coaches.

Embrace consistency

The various popular books on forming habits, like James Clear’s Atomic Habits, all agree that it starts with changing your identity, and seeing yourself as “the kind of person who” does things in a more agreeable, positive way.

 

One of the ways you can prod the formation of that kind of identity is to develop consistent actions and behaviors. In order to be the kind of person who goes to bed on time (and thus, can get up on time), you need to jettison the behavior of doom-scrolling for hours before bed. To consistently do that, you might set an alert on your phone for 8 p.m. to put the phone away, somewhere far from the couch or your bed. (Afraid you won’t get up on time if the phone isn’t near your sleeping area? Revisit my post from last summer, Do (Not) Be Alarmed: Paper Doll’s Wake-Up Advice for Productivity.)

Be a Self-Starter

You’ve heard me talk about activation energy before. In my post, Rhymes With Brain: Languishing, Flow, and Building a Better Routine, I wrote:

We also depend on activation energy. Because the hardest part of what we do is the getting started, we have to incentivize ourselves to get going. There are all sorts of ways we can trick ourselves (a little bit) with rewards, like pretty desk accessories or a coffee break, but the problem is that action precedes motivation. We’re not usually psyched to get going until we have already started!

Action precedes motivation. We're not usually psyched to get going until we have already started, whether it's a runner's high or Csikszentmihalyi's flow. Click To Tweet

A huge key to breaking the procrastination habit is getting started. After all, Sir Isaac Newton’s First Law of Motion states that a body at rest tends to stay at rest and a body at motion tends to stay in motion. (OK, it actually says, “a body at rest will remain at rest unless an outside force acts on it, and a body in motion at a constant velocity will remain in motion in a straight line unless acted upon by an outside force.” But this isn’t Physics 101.) 

Did you watch the cartoon at the start of this post? (It’s OK if you skipped it; just scroll up and watch now and we’ll wait.) If you did watch, you know that you’re more likely to feel negative emotions about a task when you’re avoiding it, but when you’re actually doing the task, it doesn’t feel so bad.

So, get yourself in motion so that you can stay in motion! Get yourself past the hurdle of starting and that small victory of starting, and the realization that it wasn’t as bad as you feared, might make you less likely to procrastinate the next time you’re facing that same challenge.

GET STARTED AT GETTING STARTED

Once you’ve read all of the preceding advice, you still have to get your butt in the chair. (OK, yes, you could use a standing desk. Let’s not be pedantic!) There are two key ways to do that.

First, embrace accountability. As I’ve previously described in these various posts, borrowing willpower from others by getting support from “partners in crime” can be just the motivation you need to get started and stick with it, whatever the “it” is:

Paper Doll Sees Double: Body Doubling for Productivity

Paper Doll Shares 8 Virtual Co-Working Sites to Amp Up Your Productivity

Count on Accountability: 5 Productivity Support Solutions

Flow and Faux (Accountability): Productivity, Focus, and Alex Trebek

Second, even when you’ve got accountability support (and especially when you don’t), there are techniques for helping you get started on tasks in ways that feel hopeful, and that make finishing seem possible.

So, come back for next week’s post, Frogs, Tomatoes, and Bees: Time Techniques to Get Things Done, where we’re going to be doing a deep dive into a variety of well-known and sleeper strategies for eliminating procrastination. We’ll be talking about tomatoes and frogs, blocks and tocks, and so many numbers that you’ll think we’re in math class. (But I promise, just in case you tended to procrastinate on math homework, there will be no trains leaving Chicago at 120 miles per hour.)

Until next time, read more about the nature and causes of procrastination:

Why You Procrastinate  (It Has Nothing To Do With Self-Control) ~ The New York Times

Why People Procrastinate: The Psychology and Causes of Procrastination ~ Why People Procrastinate

6 Common Causes of Procrastination ~ Psychology Today

7 Triggers of Procrastination ~ ChrisBaily.com

Procrastination triggers: eight reasons why you procrastinate ~ Ness Labs

When you tend to procrastinate, what triggers tend to haunt you? What methods do you use to keep procrastination at bay?

Highlights from the 2023 Task Management & Time Blocking Summit

Posted on: March 13th, 2023 by Julie Bestry | 12 Comments

As you know from my post Surprising Productivity Advice & the 2023 Task Management & Time Blocking Summit a few weeks ago, I was set to spend three days at the beginning of this month attending, and being a panelist and presenting at the summit. This is the fourth year I’ve been involved, and it was definitely the best yet.

The theme of this year’s summit, One-Size-Doesn’t-Fit-All. Now what?, is dear to my heart. In February, the summit’s creator, Francis Wade, and Productivityist Mike Vardy delivered a pre-summit session to set the stage. Generally, Francis posited, when people are struggling with productivity (and this is true of tangible organizing struggles, too), they seek out experts, “gurus” who identify their so-called secret formulas. “Do this and all will be well!” And that may be true, but only for a while.

No one system for anything — career paths, life balance, making cookies, or having an organized and productive life — works for every person in every situation. At some point, it’s essential to take the guru’s advice and customize it for yourself so you can live an authentic life.

Even Marie Kondo, whom I chided for insisting her way was the one-true way (in my post The Truth About Celebrity Organizers, Magic Wands, and the Reality of Professional Organizing) has had to face the fact that her way doesn’t exactly work for the kid-filled life she now embodies. (See all the various recent articles with titles like “Professional tidier Marie Kondo says she’s ‘kind of given up’ after having three kids.”)

Early on, especially pre-internet, there were no centralized places to access productivity advice. Then, so many people got into David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD to those in the know) that it was evangelized everywhere. But with the expansion of the web, “productivity porn” proliferated, and people had (and have) access to so many options.

The problem? Whatever popular productivity methods are out there, people aren’t all the same. They are unique. As I presented in “Paper Shame” — Embracing Analog Productivity Solutions in an Increasingly Digital World:

Because I know my own style, I know what works best for me. Because I stay abreast of all of the options out there, I know how to suggest what might be best for my clients. And my job is to know that what works for me won’t work for each of my clients, and what works for my overwhelmed, 30-something client with ADHD and a toddler won’t be the same as for my single-dude on-the-road salesperson client or my new-retiree client whose spouse was just diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. We’re each unique.

So, it’s important to know that it’s normal if the productivity strategies that work for your bestie don’t work for you. As you read blogs and books and incorporate advice, instead of accepting every bit of it “hook, line, and sinker,” Francis encouraged what he calls an ETaPS framework.

Simply put:

Evaluate your current situation and needs
Target where you want to move the needle (and by when)
Plan how you’re going to incorporate change into your approach, and get
Support through coaches, friendly accountability, and exposure to a wide variety of opinions and methods.

The summit was one stellar way to get that exposure. 

These three jam-packed days included 27 recorded video presentations as well as live interviews, panel discussions, and networking at digital Zoom-like tables. It would be impossible to share all of the highlights, which ranged from Olga Morett‘s compassionate, vulnerable approach to “unmasking” and self-exploration for neuro-diverse individuals to Hanifa Barnes‘ framework for building without burnout (which included a deep dive into understanding circadian rhythms and body clocks for chronotypes — apparently I’m a cross between a wolf (night person) and a dolphin (insomniac).

Dolphin photo by Ádám Berkecz on Unsplash

Thus, rather than providing a full recap of the summit, I’m going to share highlights and snippets that caught my attention, and which I look forward to sharing with my own clients.

QUICK BITES

“The menu is not the meal.”

Henrik Spandet, while talking about the differences among task management, calendar management, and meeting management, cautioned participants to remember that a task list is merely a list of opportunities, just as a menu is a list of dining alternatives. One must prioritize to maximize the experience. You can’t expect to do it all, or do it all at once. (He did not, however, discuss the advantages of eating dessert first.)

“If you’re not doing what you’re supposed to be doing, just sit.”

Carl Pullein‘s take on self-discipline dovetails with my own advice for dealing with writer’s block, and it’s kind of like the reverse of the bartender yelling, “You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here.” You don’t have to perform the task you’ve set for yourself, but if you don’t, then you can’t do anything else. No perfectionist procrastination by tidying your desk; no mindless scrolling.

Sit. Just sit.

And in sitting and not doing, you may find yourself motivated to start writing, creating, or tackling whatever you’ve been avoiding. If not, you will find yourself having to face the reason for your avoidance, which may prove equally productive.

During a third-day “Boundaries, Burnout and Balance: Finding Peace When Working from Home” panel with Renee Clair, Clare Evans, and Olga Morett, the concept of “the booty hour” came up — and how getting the butt-in-the-chair is that make-or-break moment.

Do, or do nothing, is a powerful choice. We are so fixated on never being bored that the idea of having to do nothing may make the thing we are avoiding suddenly a much more compelling alternative!

“What gets measured gets managed — even when it’s pointless to measure and manage it, and even if it harms the purpose of the organization to do so.”

Too often, Peter Drucker‘s quote is truncated as “What gets measured gets managed” but the full quote is so much more powerful. In other words, be aware of how your methods and strategies impact your work, but do not get so caught up in the minutia of how many emails you’ve cleared (or not), and focus on the bigger picture of accomplishing what you want and need to do.

Don’t spend so much time tweaking your systems to get a micro-percentage point of difference. Know what metrics will help you achieve the return on investment of your time, energy, and attention, and focus there. Prioritization can feel abstract, but pay attention to what has the greatest impact on your life, and what brings you closest to your goals.

“Busy leads to burnout; productivity leads to prosperity.”

Ayana Bard‘s message at the start of her five-part approach to mindfully productivity has been in my head for the past week. Her approach involves gaining clarity (and understanding yourself and your tasks so that you can prioritize), knowing where your time is actually going (by doing a time audit), and managing your attention and (mental, emotional, and physical) energy. 

Ayana accented the importance of mindfulness (i.e., paying attention with purpose), and noted that practicing mindfulness is easy to skip but not easy to do. (Hence the practicing part, eh?) She recommends incorporating mindfulness of your energies with regard to ultradian rhythms by working 90 minutes at top performance, taking 20 or so minutes for healing and recovery, and then starting another 90 minute cycle of top performance.

BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS

Professor Bret Atkins‘ presentation The Zen of Ten offered lists of ~ten (though he cautioned, not “top” ten) books (both well-known and a second list of sleepers), podcasts, videos, terms, and tools. The big-name list included works by David Allen, Steven Covey, Cal Newport, and Brian Tracey, as well as the “habits” triumvirate of The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, Atomic Habits by James Clear, and Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg.

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Slightly lesser-known gems ranged from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (worthy of a future Paper Doll post), Ryan Holiday’s The Daily Stoic, Tony Buzan’s The Mind Map Book, 1908’s How to LIve on 24 Hours a Day by Arnold Bennett, and 4000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman, about which I wrote extensively in Toxic Productivity Part 3: Get Off the To-Do List Hamster Wheel.

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There is no way to do his superb lists justice (and will be revisiting his other recommendations in future posts), but I will note that out of 22 highlighted books (yes, there were a few bonuses), there was only one book authored by a woman: Molly McCarthy’s The Accidental Diarist: A History of the Daily Planner in America.

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I note this because it’s a more damning comment on the publishing industry than of Atkins and his discernment. But that’s also a topic for a future day! 

Other books recommended by presenters were:

Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker

Time Surfing: The Zen Approach to Keeping Time On Your Side by Paul Loomer

SCOPE — IT’S NOT JUST A MOUTHWASH

Trevor Lohrber felt that the true key to time management is often reducing the scope of a task rather than trying to increase your productivity and ability to do more. After all, our time is limited by strictures — where we have to be and when and how soon the work must be completed. Trevor presented three concepts, but it was the idea of pacers that caught my attention.

Did you ever take an exam in school and spend so much time writing the first part of your essay that when they called “15 more minutes!” you had to rush through your remaining points?

Although the point of deep work is to get into flow, Trevor points out that we often hit a wall when we look up and realize, “Oops, I’ve run out of time!” He suggests that by becoming more aware of time passing while we’re within a block of time, we can adjust our scope.

Trevor encourages using gentle timers at fixed intervals during a time block; for example, every 15 minutes during an hour-long work session. They key points are that these aren’t alarms (in that they’re not alarming), but gentle sounds, like an ocean or wind chimes; set your “snooze” to 15-minute increments and you can brush it away with the flick of your finger across your phone.

The idea isn’t to startle you out of flow, but just lightly alert you to the passing of time so you can stop to consider whether you need to limit the scope of what you’re doing now so you can finish the whole task on time.

The benefits of Trevor’s approach is that these “moments of mindfulness” keep you from going down any rabbit holes and ensure you’re repeatedly reassessing the work to be done in the time allotted. It allows you to work smarter because you are reassessing your scope regularly through the process, and improve your focus because you’re more aware of the scarcity of your time. (Trevor also cautions that this is not ideal for creative tasks, like writing a key chapter in a novel, because that focus can lead to tunnel vision, something you want when you’re trying to finish your accounting but not so much when you’re trying to develop dazzling prose.)

THE HOCUS POCUS OF FOCUS AND WHAT’S GOING ON IN OUR BRAINS

Achieving focus is the Holy Grail of productivity. We can do a brain dump to make sure we’ve examined all of our obligations, prioritize so we can work first (and longest) on what matters most, and create blocks of time dedicated to that deep work. 

But how do we gather the motivation to get our tushies in the chair and then maintain our focus to actually get it all done?

This is where mindset is essential. Misha Maksin talked about the flow state, something we’ve covered here extensively, starting with Flow and Faux (Accountability): Productivity, Focus, and Alex Trebek (in the section called Sidebar on Flow and the Unpronounceable Mihali Csikszentmihalyi), and how four “mega” time wasters (anxiety, overwhelm, indecision, and procrastination) block our ability to achieve flow.

He casts it as a question of whether we are in a “primal state” where we feel we are under threat, ruled by our sympathetic nervous system, and using closed, contractive survival thinking, vs. in a “powerful state” ruled by the parasympathetic nervous system, thinking in an open and expansive, creative way. I mean, wouldn’t you prefer to be curious, compassionate, and joyous vs. fearful, anxious, and overwhelmed? I know Ted Lasso would!

Misha explained how the mechanism of unproductive behaviors starts with beliefs driving our thoughts, which then drive our emotions, which lead to our actions, and then results, and those results then determine our core beliefs. This means that results are both initially determined by past beliefs and reinforce future beliefs, in a perpetual cycle that, if our beliefs about ourselves or our abilities are negative, our results very likely will be, also.

However, we can rewire our mindset so that the driving force is not our beliefs but our decisions. Per Misha, if decisions determine thoughts, which activate emotions, which motivate actions, which produce results, which reinforce decisions, keeping us in that productive “powerful state,” — we have a much better shot at attaining flow in our work and joy in our lives. 

The key, Misha posited, was to notice when our brains are moving us to that ineffective “primal state” and use our tools to focus on making wise, proactive decisions rather than being ruled by the negative self-talk often inherent in our beliefs. Perhaps easier said than done, but it’s a powerful switch. We can decide to get our butts in the chair now rather than repeat a belief ingrained since childhood that we “always” procrastinate.

DRIVEN TO DISTRACTION

Dr. Melanie Wilson identified a three-part approach to changing reaction distractions, and while there are practical elements, this is basically a psychological approach.

  • Adopt a new identity, eschewing the one that says “I am an easily distracted bunny” and trading it for one that says, “I’m a focused, productive person.” This echoes what James Clear says in chapter 2 of Atomic Habits.
  • Identify your unmet (emotional) needs so you can stop using ineffective, distracting coping mechanisms. Wilson notes that certain feelings lead us to distract ourselves with unproductive alternatives — overshopping, overeating, drinking, gambling, compulsive social media scrolling — and that the common advice to replace those habits with more productive ones (go for a walk, read a book) fails because they don’t get at the underlying emotion that drives the self-distraction. If we can identify the negative emotion, we can satisfy it with planned activities that do satisfy it. For example, Wilson’s personal example was having ADHD and craving novelty. By planning her days with lots of intentional novelty built in, she was less likely to seek distractions (like compulsive shopping) when she was supposed to be doing deep work.
  • Acknowledge troubling issues (what she calls “gnawing rats”) instead of avoiding them. Wilson notes that scheduling quiet time to think (and not merely to meditate), journaling, praying, or planning time to deal with a distracting issue, you’ll be less likely to experience the  harsh (and distracting) negative side effects of those problems, like sleep issues, IBS, heart trouble, etc. 

BEGIN WITH PERFECT

We know there’s no such thing as perfection in achieving a schedule that doesn’t overwhelm. That said, there was a repeated theme across the summit, the idea of starting with a “perfect” or “ideal” week, beginning with a completely blank schedule.

Carl Pullein advice was to:

  • Block out your sleep for the amount you really need, not the amount you usually get
  • Create a morning routine and block time for that (and if that’s not when you want to be doing physical self care, block out the optimum time for that for your needs elsewhere in your schedule)
  • Section off one or more blocks for communication (like replying to emails) rather than having it be the task you return to each time you transition between meetings or projects
  • Create space for “dynamic” aspects of your calendar that change, like appointments. Carl noted that we all need to have blocks on our schedules for our “Core Work” — basically, the thing for which we are paid. For me, that’s time working with clients, and those blocks are fixed; I work on weekday afternoons. For a salesperson, that time is spent on sales calls, not in staff meetings.
  • Set boundaries for the available times for these elements (obviously, depending on the level of control you have over your own schedule). For example, Mondays are my Admin Days when I don’t see clients, and I only schedule personal appointments (doctor, dentist, haircut) on Mondays; if your energy levels make it hard for you to be creative in the late afternoons, make sure your core work isn’t scheduled at those times.

Anna Dearmon Kornick and Trasetta Washington both took a similar approach, hewing closely to the formulation laid out in the well-loved “Rocks, Pebbles, and Sand” story of filling a jar.

Using slightly different language, Anna described the elements as:

  • boulders — the immovable, important, but non-urgent essentials of life, like health and wellness, and maintaining our major interpersonal relationships,
  • big rocks — our high-priority, important-and-urgent-but moveable aspects of work, particularly our deep work focus,
  • and pebbles — everything else, the non-important/non-urgent to-dos from laundry to errands to all the random reports and meetings that endlessly tend to crowd us out of our own lives if we do not preserve our boundaries.

Anna encouraged designing one’s week with four concepts in mind:

  • Parkinson’s Law — Basically, work expands to fit the time available.
  • Planning Fallacy — Due to an optimism bias, we consistently underestimate the time it takes to complete tasks.
  • Time Blocking — The act of carving out specific sections of our schedule for specific categories of tasks
  • Task Batching — Grouping thematically or platform-related tasks together, like replying to emails or sourcing graphics for blow posts.

Meanwhile, Trasetta added an element to the story, with the professor being prepared with containers of big rocks, pebbles, sand, and two beers (indicating always having time in your schedule for a friend). Her approach to designing the perfect week included color-coding (and name-theming) calendared categories with:

Green Machine — tasks that drive revenue
Blue Skies — educational and personal development
Mellow Yellow — self-care and rest activities
Red Tape — meetings, commutes, and essential but ultimately unimportant activities

She also added “advanced” operations, color-coding them as: 

Orange Operations — general business operations
Violet Vision — planning and strategic activities
Purple Passion — tasks related to community and spirituality

TECH OR NOT TO TECH, THAT IS NOT THE QUESTION

My own presentation,“Paper Shame” — Embracing Analog Productivity Solutions in an Increasingly Digital World, delved into the idea that focusing on what we need to do and then getting it done varies; it can be helped or hampered by a system or platform depending on our own personal needs and characteristics.

In our live panel, Ray Sidney-Smith led me and Misha Maksin through a discussion of “Paper vs. Digital in Time Management,” but it was less of a debate than the title might imply. We acknowledged that we each embrace a hybrid approach, whether by choosing disparate methods for different areas of our lives, or by combining them.

This year’s summit had the fewest presentations on using particular types of technology, and instead looked at platform-agnostic approaches to understanding your task management needs at a personal level. For example, Dr. Frank Buck‘s presentation on handling multiple projects looked at removing the friction often inherent in task management from three perspectives: using an analog (paper) approach or either of two different digital models.  

Again, not only does one size not fit all people, it doesn’t even fit all different versions of ourselves.

That said, Gynanendra Tripathi introduced us to his new player in the productivity realm, AlphaNotes, which seeks to help users “carve out their own trusted system for employing GTD elements.” They concentrate on leveraging digital storage and “lightning-fast query” ability to store and access information to support getting things done. The presentation went down a bit of a technical rabbit hole, but luckily, AlphaNotes has made an introductory explainer video.

ONE SIZE FITS YOU — TODAY

During a live recording of the Productivitycast podcast at the summit, Ray led Francis, Augusto Pinaud and Art Gelwicks in a lively debate and discussion about the concept of “one size fits all” within the framework of productivity.

Francis posited that we are inherently greedy — we want to do more and achieve more, and the concept of “more” means that we will eventually outgrow many of the systems, tools and methods we have in place. Augusto reflected on what happens when we reach capacity — this is where our geeking out on productivity (and not just productivity tools) comes into play.

 

 

 

 

    

 

 
Our skill sets may stay the same, but our tools may need to change. To the idea that “one size fits all” with regard to tools and platforms may fit just for that particular function, Art made a great metaphor about “pants” in the closet. Tuxedo pants, sweatpants, work pants, etc. all serve one narrow function, but each is not appropriate for other functions.

They’re all pants, they served the needs you have at a particular time, but we have to accept that we probably won’t find one pair of pants to rule them all. We have to stop to think, “What fits you now” and:

“What productive pants do you have on today?”

Later, during networking, a bunch of us continued the “one size fits all” and “productivity pants” metaphors and I got to shock the Art, Trevor, and many of the men, who had no idea that women’s clothing sizes are not based on measurements (waist, inseam, neck circumference, etc.) as mens’ are but are often arbitrary and conflicting, and that even the same size across different clothing designers, or the same size across different styles in the same designer’s line, won’t fit the same.

Just trying to buy a pair of pants can adversely impact productivity! Maybe we can discuss that at the 2024 summit?

Organize Your Writing Time for NaNoWriMo 2022

Posted on: October 31st, 2022 by Julie Bestry | 8 Comments

Have you ever imagined writing the Great American Novel?

Does the idea of getting revenge after the end of a turbulent relationship by (barely) disguising your ex as the villain (or victim) in a mystery appeal to you?

Maybe you’ve figured out exactly what Billy Joel was talking about when he sang that “Paul is a real estate novelist” and you’d like to be one too?

(If not, don’t skip out. There are treats here for anyone who wants to organize their time to achieve a goal.)

NaNoWriMo gives you the opportunity to follow your dream.

WHAT THE HECK IS NANOWRIMO?

In the weeks leading up to Halloween, and then all throughout the month of November, you may see #NaNoWriMo pop up in your social media feeds. NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month. 

If you’ve ever done a month-long challenge (plank or do yoga every day of January, keep a journal for mindfulness, give up Facebook for a month, etc.), you’ll be familiar with this kind of effort. Except, at the end, instead of a fit core, increased self-awareness, or the calm of not knowing that people with whom you went to high school are bringing about the downfall of civilization, you’ll have written a book!

Each year, NaNoWriMo participants commit to writing a 50,000-word novel between November 1st and 30th of the month. That amounts to an average of 1667 words per day, but it’s only the final count that matters. (Because nobody actually writes on Thanksgiving Day. Too many carbs.)

Sign up on the website, maybe join some supportive forums, and then start writing. You can log your daily count and even get cute little badges for your progress.

Officially, there are opportunities to prep your novel during September and October, and get guidance for developing a story idea, creating complex characters, constructing a detailed plot outline (because outlines, like maps, get you where you want to go), and building your story’s world. 

All of these tasks are popular with plotters (people who create detailed outlines and prepare for the NaNoWriMo experience). Of course, there are also pantsers, authors who prefer to write by the seats of their pants and plan very little.

On a related note, there are also rebelsm with or without a cause. Although it’s designed as National Novel Writing Month, nobody is going to kick you out of the clubhouse for writing your dissertation, a graphic novel, your memoir, or whatever else you feel called to write. You may have noticed that I write really long blog posts — some topping 3000 words! One year, I used November to write most of a dozen blog posts and several articles.

It’s not cheating, it’s rebelling. (Doesn’t that sound a lot cooler? You can just imagine the leather jacket and the motorcycle.)

At any point, you can upload your novel to the NaNoWriMo website and it will verify your word count. When — let’s be confident! “if” is so iffy! — you hit that 50,000 word count, you can say that you’ve “won” NaNoWriMo for the year.

Winners get a certificate and a banner for display on social media accounts or any other web real estate, and you can purchase a T-shirt and other merchandise in the site’s store. Whether you actually publish or not — even if you never show your novel to anyone else — you’ll still know that you took on a challenge (one that didn’t involve surviving a global plague or not strangling any relatives at the Thanksgiving table) and triumphed.

GET BY WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM YOUR NANOWRIMO FRIENDS

Paper Doll readers know that I am all about mutual support, collaboration, and accountability, and so is NaNoWriMo. Throughout November (and actually, all year), you can avail yourself of a variety of writing assistance and support:

  • Discussion Forums — for covering everything from navigating genres to developing storylines to filling plot holes and punching up dialogue
  • Writing Groups — for writers seeking camaraderie with people of specific geographical regions, writing styles, or needs. There’s a group for writers with ADHD, authors who write fanfiction, and one called “Rom-Com Writers with Procrastination.”
  • Regional Support — from as wide a swath as the whole of Africa to as narrow as a neighborhood near you, you can find people to share your journey
  • Writing Buddies — NaNoWriMo makes it easy to find writing partners with whom you can trade ideas (or tales of woe)

As a Paper Doll reader, you already know the importance of accountability, but these two posts may also suit you well on your NaNoWriMo path.

NaNoWriMo are offers both new and archived Pep Talks from professional writers. I mean, if Outlander author Diana Gabaldon, Alex Cross mystery creator James Patterson, young adult novelist John Green, and MacArthur Genius-winning sci-fi writer N.K. Jemison can’t inspire you to write, who can?

If you need more motivation, NaNoWriMo sponsors offer some amazing prizes for both participants and “winners” who meet the 50,000 word goal. These include discounts for writing software (including Scrivener, Pro Writing Aid, NovelPad, and Plottr), digital devices, and writing/publishing support, and more.

So, you’ve decided you’re going to do this. You register, you post a banner and share your goal on social media, and now you’re watching the clock tick down to November. Now what?

ORGANIZE YOUR WRITING TIME

Last week, I was approached by someone who wanted advice on carving out time to write while still working a full-time job. I was honest; there’s no way to have more than 24 hours in the day, and contrary to what gets thrown around on social media, we do not all have the same 24 hours.

If you’ve got a full-time job (or multiple part-time ones), are raising kids, have a chronic illness, are caring for one more senior parents, or some combination of any of the above, you’re going to have less disposable time (like a temporal disposable income) than a single, healthy twenty-something. Time is not going to freeze and make time for you to write. So, consider stacking a few of these options to achieve your writing goals.

Accept that you have to dedicate specific chunks of time to writing.

You may be a pantser, but that’s about figuring out what you’re going to write. There’s no way to achieve any writing goal, whether writing a novel or finishing a term paper, without deciding when you’re going to write.

If you’re the kind of person who has to feel motivation to do something, I’ve got news for you:

Action precedes motivation.

You have to do something before you’re ready. Your 50K-word novel doesn’t have to be perfect; it doesn’t have to be polished. It doesn’t even have to be good. Your November writing project can be a hot mess!

But here’s my favorite truth about writing. You can’t edit a blank page.

Your 50K word novel doesn't have to be perfect; it doesn't have to be polished. It doesn't even have to be good. Your writing project can be a hot mess! But here's my favorite truth about writing. You can't edit a blank page. Click To Tweet

So feel free to write whenever you feel inspired. Nobody’s going to stop you from grabbing your notepad or keyboard or a quill pen (except, maybe the bird from which the feather was plucked). But schedule time to ensure that you have dependable time to write.

The same is true of organizing or anything else you do. Nobody will arrest you for jumping up during a commercial break in Grey’s Anatomy to load the dishwasher. But if you consider dinner tasks to include meal planning, cooking, clearing the table, and loading the dishwasher, and that “dinner isn’t finished until the dishes are done,” then you won’t ever have to dread walking into the kitchen. 

Know what you’re going to write.

Even if you’re pantser and don’t know (or want to know) what you’re going to be writing on November 17th, let the back of your brain ruminate while you’re doing mindless tasks like bushing your teeth to get a sense of what you’ll be working on in your next writing session.

If you don’t know what you’re going to write, you will avoid sitting down to write. If you procrastinate and avoiding writing…you will not have written! Sad but true.

And if you do manage to sit down to write with no idea what you’re going to write about, you’ll get distracted. You do not want to get distracted, or you’ll end up with something like this:

 

If you can’t stand the idea of knowing what you’re going to write ahead of time because you feel like that would mess with the mojo of your creative muse, there’s an alternative to an outline.

Grab a stack of index cards and write down key words or concepts: character’s names, key plot elements, essential conversational high points. Then stuff the carnds in a jar or a hat, and when you sit down to write, grab a card to use as a writing prompt. Yes, you’ll be writing out of order and will have a harder job later on, cutting and pasting, but you’ll be writing!

Block your time…and put some blocks on ice.

Start with my post Playing With Blocks: Success Strategies for Time Blocking Productivity to re-familiarize yourself again time blocking. 

Look at your schedule (and if you don’t have one, pull out a paper or digital calendar and hour-by-hour, day-by-day) and write down everything that’s already an obligation. That may be work, school, childcare, other-care, scheduled self-care and personal growth (like yoga or practicing a language or instrument).

 

Then write down all the things you do that aren’t ever scheduled, but which you have to do, from sleeping to grooming to housework and grocery shopping.

Identify blank spaces — if you have any. Those are your first options for writing time. If you’ve got blank space, you might be able to use it to write. (I say “might” because nobody can have all their waking time occupied. We need time to veg out, as I discussed in Toxic Productivity Part 2: How to Change Your Mindset. We can’t create without downtime.)

What if you don’t have any blank spaces? Consider whether you can remove some responsibilities for the duration of November. It’s about priorities. (This is true no matter what life goals you are trying to reach.)

  • Can you do one big grocery shop for the month and delegate the urgent milk-and-bread runs to another member of the household? (Or delegate all November grocery shopping and housework to someone whom you support in all of their goal achievement practices?)
  • Hire a babysitter for a handful of hours each week?
  • Are you willing to get up 45 minutes earlier, or stay up an hour later to get some writing time?
  • Can you cut out scrolling through TikTok of your November (or limit it to when you’re standing in line at the store or hanging out anyplace where that you couldn’t otherwise sit down and write)?
  • And, as a former broadcasting professional, I can’t believe I’m suggesting this, but could you cut an hour of TV viewing out of your life?

When it comes down to it, there some things you have to do in November: eat, sleep, hydrate, groom, work for pay, take care of dependent humans, and vote. (Please, please remember to vote!) But for 30 days, can you vacuum less? Binge fewer shows?)

What if you have blank spaces, but they’re short or weird? It’s possible you have lots of writing opportunities, but none are expansive chunks of ninety minutes or two hours. That’s OK. If you have a good outline (that’s where being a plotter has the advantage over being a pantser), you don’t need long blocks of time. 

If you have 15 minutes between when you get home from work and everyone else gets home, focus on just one small part of your outline. Are you stuck on the dialogue for a scene for a pivotal conversation between two characters? Play-act the conversation while you’re in the shower or while driving; it’ll help you get the language and tone right; when you’re getting close to how it should sound (and are out of the shower), use the voice memo on your phone or dictate it into a text to yourself to capture the wording. You can transcribe or copy it into your manuscript later.

Rejoice in exploring short writing blocks. It’s less time to dither or second-guess your writing. Focus on getting words on paper. Consider having 25 minutes (one whole glorious pomodoro) the perfect amount of time to work on two or three great paragraphs.

Can you get up 15 minutes earlier and skip 10 minutes of Twitter scrolling to get those 25 minutes? There’s one writing block.

Can you bring your lunch to work so that you use half your lunch hour for eating and relaxing and the other half for writing?

Can you convince your significant other to take over an evening task like laundry, just for November, to give you 25 minutes every evening?

Boom! There’s your writing time!

Let NaNoWriMo figure out your best writing schedule.

NaNoWriMo has a cute social media-style quiz for figuring out the best schedule for your personality and lifestyle. It’ll only take about thirty seconds, and may yield some insight.

Guard your writing time.

Several ago, I wrote R-E-S-P-E-C-T: The Organizing Secret for Working At Home, and many of the concepts apply to helping others in your space respect your time and boundaries. But there are also tips for respecting your own time, staying focused and on-task, and not letting other’s non-emegencies squeeze your time. 

Consider what motivates you.

Obviously, you shouldn’t do NaNoWriMo if it doesn’t appeal to you. But before the month even gets started, make a list of all the reasons why you want to do it.

Whether it’s to get back at your 11th-grade English teacher who was dismissive of your creative efforts or to give you confidence that you can step out of your comfort zone, come up with ten big and small reasons you are inspired to write a 50,000 word draft of a novel.

Then write ten more reasons. And ten more after that!

Read one of those reasons aloud at the start of every day in November. Give yourself a fighting chance to overcome inertia and achieve your goal!

 

Track Your Progress

Every time I write about NaNoWriMo, I like to share David Seah’s Word Counting Calendar. Print out the black-and-white or color versions. Every day that you write, just log your total word count and then color in the appropriate boxes.

Post the calendar near your writing space to keep you motivated as you progress toward your goal.

EMBRACE THESE RESOURCES

You could write a book (or several) about all the resources available for supporting a writing project. Here are just a few classics and new-for-2022 to help you organize your thoughts, your research, your writing, and your November.

10 Steps to Get Started with Scrivener for NaNoWriMo — Updated for 2022, this list from the ultimate writer’s tool walks you through how to make the software serve your NaNo needs.

Your Essential Guide to Completing NaNoWriMo in Evernote — As an Evernote Expert, I’m constantly finding (and sharing) new ways to use Evernote to support work and personal goals. Anthony Bartlett has gathered some great advice, including linking to essential Evernote templates for creating character profiles, plotting your novel, story premises, and 3-act structures.

12 Creative Writing Templates for Planning Your Novel — Speaking of templates, Forrest Dylan Bryant walks you through a dozen templates, from those listed above to writing trackers to plot and character templates. Don’t reinvent the wheel when you can use Evernote templates to support your writing and story development. 

A Novel Strategy: How to Organize Big Writing Projects — Speaking of Forrest, about five years ago, he wrote this nifty post about how to use Evernote to organize your notes for writing a novel.

(P.S. Combining all of the info above, if you’re thinking of using Scrivener, know that you can import your Evernote notes into Scrivener and see your notes and writing area side-by-side. Cool beans!)

What is NaNoWriMo? And How to Win in 2022 — Updated every year, this masterful post from Reedsy has dozens of tips for managing your time, developing your writing ear, and keeping up your motivation.

Write a 50,000-Word Pulp Novel Before Breakfast: My easy no-outline way of writing short novels in four weeks by Amethyst Qu

How to Survive NaNoWriMo in 2022: 17 Top Tips for Success — Self-Publishing School offers a list of winning habits to help make the most of your November.

Although I don’t write about NaNoWriMo every year, there are several posts in the vault, including those from 2017, where I created NaNoWriMoMo and wrote advice for organizing yourself for NaNoWriMo every single Monday of that November. Just type “NaNoWriMo” into the search sidebar on the left of this site to find them.

Whatever you choose to do with the coming month, I hope you take time to plan and organize to help your dreams come true.

Paper Doll Shares Secrets from the Task Management & Time Blocking Summit 2022

Posted on: March 7th, 2022 by Julie Bestry | 15 Comments

What did you get done last week? Was it everything you wanted to accomplish? Did you use a paper calendar or a digital one? A task app or sticky notes? Do you have SMART goals? Am I freaking you out?

Longtime readers know that I seek out all types of continuing education, including each annual NAPO conference. After 2020’s conference was canceled, I was delighted to get to participate in a virtual version, as I told you about in Paper Doll Recaps the NAPO2021 Virtual Conference.

I’d also attended a productivity summit and the last two years of the Task Management and Time Blocking summits, and have spent the last several months preparing to attend the third, as I referenced in Struggling To Get Things Done? Paper Doll’s Advice & The Task Management & Time Blocking Virtual Summit 2022.

Readers, let me just tell you, last week from Thursday through Sunday, I was entirely geeked-out over all things related to task management, time blocking, scheduling, goal achievement. 

And while we explored all manner of strategies, techniques, and tools for getting more done, there was definitely an undercurrent of something more valuable in this year’s conference. Over and over, there were presentations and videos that delved into examining the “why” of getting things done. 

It would destroy your time management and mine if I shared every amazing detail, but even just the  personal highlights are staggering. The summit was a combination of live presentations and panels as well as a series of about a dozen videos each day, and live (video) networking.

Out of the box, after the welcome, we began with a presentation from trainer and coach Jeff Whitmore about intentionality. Jeff talked about the reckoning we collectively saw, both with the onset of the pandemic and now, with the Great Resignation. We’re turning our backs on busy work, on “meetings that could have been emails,” and the experience of being buried in tasks for tasks’ sake, and turning to pondering what we really want — out of our careers, and more deeply, out of our lives.

In a theme that came up over and over during the conference, he talked about identifying the bigger picture of what you want in life and why, and focusing on tasks that drive those goals rather than letting all the competing sensory inputs of notifications and calls and emails determine what you do.

NOVELTY VS. THE FLATNESS OF TIME

The first morning continued with summit founder Francis Wade interviewing noted author, Laura Vanderkam, and her theme posited practical ways make life richer and more nuanced.

For me, Vanderkam’s interview was immediately reminiscent of what I talked about in Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is? 5 Strategies to Cope With Pandemic Time Dilation in terms of the way our lives seem to sometimes be an endless slog from day to day. It’s Monday again. It’s time to cook dinner again. As I noted in the chat discussion, sometimes it seems like I look up, over and over, and I’m blowing my hair dry again. 

Vanderkam’s research suggests that to get out of these ruts, we need more novelty, texture, and richness in our time and our tasks. To this, Francis quipped, “less skim milk, more milkshakes.” After a brief foray for praising Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey, Vanderkam suggested one main tip for preventing the automating and routines that make for good task management from diluting the texture of our lives.

Vanderkam encouraged everyone to plan life in weeks, and to identify one “big adventure” (lasting perhaps half a weekend day) and one “little adventure” (lasting an hour) each week to introduce novelty. The purpose? As Vanderkam noted, “We don’t ask where did the time go when we remember where the time went.” Aha. Mindfulness!

As @LauraVanderkam noted, *We don't ask 'where did the time go?' when we remember where the time went.* Click To Tweet

Vanderkam has been studying a wider array of methods for making a Chunky Monkey milkshake out of life. She conducted a nine-week research study with 150 people, having them track their time and studying their time satisfaction and time weariness before and after trying each of nine approaches, from the big and little adventures for making life more memorable to setting a fixed bedtime for yourself so you can “see how many hours the day really has in it.”

The results of Vanderkam’s research will be published in her forthcoming book, Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters. 

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GEEKING OUT WITH GTD

Another highlight of the summit was an Oxford-style debate on the proposition of whether the notion of organizing by contexts in David Allen’s seminal Getting Things Done is still valid. GTD methodology lets you conceptualize, and then act on, tasks depending on various features. And if this seems a little too “inside baseball” or geeky to you, I can only say that it was…and it was great. By ten minutes into the debate, I found myself shouting back at the screen (muted, of course) and adding lively comments to the chat.

Back in the early days of GTD, contexts were pretty much considered as where the next action could be done, or what equipment you’d need to perform it.

So, a context might have been “at the store,” or “on the phone” or “at my computer.” Thus, the question is, when all of your next actions  — like buying pens on Amazon or having a phone conversation with a client or emailing or searching the web to get clarity on an issue — can be done with just one small piece of metal, glass, and plastic that fits in your pocket, do contexts still matter?

(with apologies to the guys for not catching a single one of them smiling!)

One team was Drs. Frank Buck and Joe Leondike; the other, Augusto Pinaud and Art Gelwicks. Always-unbiased Ray Sidney-Smith (host along with Augusto of my beloved Anything But Idle video podcast) served as the debate moderator. Sparks (politely) flew, but in the end, it came down to semantics and the notion of the evolution of David Allen’s philosophy. (And yes, we know the GTD debate panel was all guys, but I assure you, this was a matter of scheduling complexity. Women were invited to participate!)

My take? Yes, David Allen meant contexts to be more specific, but that was two decades ago. Now, tags (like you’d use in Evernote or Gmail) serve as your context. It’s not “computer” but “Amazon” or “LinkedIn,” the places you go (even if you’re only “going” with your fingertips) to perform a task that really matters.

Then again, I’m a proponent of the idea that whether you’re talking about Getting Things Done or KonMari, the Pomodoro Technique or even my own tickler files, hewing to the letter of any productivity or organizing law instead of empowering yourself to embrace the spirit of it is silly.

What matters is what works!

A NEW (TO ME) TIME BLOCKING METHODOLOGY

We tend to see the same systems and strategies repeated over and over: GTD, time blocking, the Eisenhower Matrix (urgent/important), the Pomodoro Technique, etc. But David Tedaldi of Morgen (one of the summit’s sponsors) introduced us to an approach that was brand new.

Tedaldi’s actual presentation was Tools for Time Management: Help or Hurdle? (which dovetailed nicely with my own presentation, on going “retro” to avoid the drawbacks of technology…of which, more later). As the founder of a company that developed a calendaring system for “professionals who manage multiple accounts, who want to schedule meetings faster, or need to keep track of tasks and appointments in a single, safe place,” he obviously believes in tech tools.

But he also acknowledged that using new tools fractures our time as we have to expend effort (and use our work time) to learn how to use these tools. But wasn’t what made the session memorable for me. Instead, that was Tedaldi talking about a new time management method that is simple, but with commitment, could be life-changing.

It’s called the 90-90-1 Method. (I initially misunderstood Tedaldi’s beautiful accent and thought it was the 1991 Method, and was imagining it had something to do with the Hubble telescope, C&C Music Factory’s “Gonna Make You Sweat” or Silence of the Lambs. Sadly, nope.)

Put forth by Robin Sharma in an 2014 post called You 2.0, the recommendation was to the point:

“For the next 90 days, devote the first 90 minutes of your work day to the one best opportunity in your life. Nothing else. Zero distractions. Just get that project done. Period.”

The 90-90-1 Method, per @RobinSharma: *For the next 90 days, devote the first 90 minutes of your work day to the one best opportunity in your life. Nothing else. Zero distractions. Just get that project done. Period.* Click To Tweet

What is your big, bold, audacious life goal? Want to write a book? Run a marathon? Show your child or spouse or friends that they are priorities in your life? Instead of making these things the sand that flows around the “big rocks” in your life, show up! For the next 90 days (which surely falls in line with the precepts of the popular book, The Twelve Week Year: Get More Done in 12 Weeks than Others Do in 12 Months), spend the first 90 minutes of your day focused on the ONE thing that you (claim) you care the most about.

Wow! (I know, right?)

PAPER DOLL TOOK A SPIN (OR THREE) ON THE DANCE FLOOR

Previously a panelist and moderator, I got to add presenter to my resume at this year’s event! 

My video introduced attendees to the benefits and logistics of using a tickler file, based on my now-classic ebook, Tickle Yourself Organized.

But my real passion was asking people to consider the notion that as useful as digital calendars, automated scheduling software, and task management apps can be, technology isn’t always the best way to get a mental handle on what we need to do and prompt us to do it.

Think about time. Kids, people with ADHD and other neuro-diversities, and many other people have trouble conceptualizing the passage of time — how long is 15 minutes? What does an hour look like or feel like? 

We used to be able to look at analog clocks and perceive, with the sweep of the minute and second hands, how we were getting closer to the top of the hour. With digital clocks, 10:01 or 11:47 just doesn’t feel tangible or real.

This is why Time Timer has proven so successful with students, non-traditional learners, and clients trying to be more productive. With them, you can see time. You can see the PASSAGE of time.

Research shows that something similar happens with handwriting notes vs. taking notes on a computer. When you’re trying to take notes in a class, if you’re typing, your instinct is to take a transcription of what the speaker is saying, word for word. The words come out of the speaker’s mouth, into your ears, and kind of bypass your brain & head to your fingers. 

BUT, when you handwrite, your brain engages and picks out key phrases, identifies essential elements, and helps you translate the presentation into something you understand so that you could explain it to someone else. Going retro by hand-writing your notes gives you an advantage.

One of the 21st-century problems with task management and time blocking is that all of the technology makes our tasks feel too vague and intangible. For many of us, to get things done, we need our resources to be “grippy” or “sticky” or they cease to have a sense of urgency or importance; when we only see due dates or blocks of time TO do something, we lack essential nuance and context.

There’s no novelty or uniqueness in a one-line task in an app to trigger related memories or brainstorm tangential thoughts. When you enter a task in an app, it’s kind of like transcribing those lecture notes; it sort of bypasses your brain. (I think it’s one of the reasons that the more colorful, artistic Bullet Journal approaches became so popular.) Writing things down on paper, and manipulating the words and the paper, gets the brain engaged at a level you don’t see with digital apps.

By blending time management and time blocking skills with paper resources, we can have a hybrid system (analog and digital) that lifts the weight of worry off our shoulders. We can eliminate the fear that tasks will fall through the cracks, assure that we focus on starting work rather than just noting when it’s due, and replace a sense of overwhelm with one of empowerment. Enter the tickler file!

HAVE A LITTLE COMPASSION

I was also on a Q&A Panel moderated by Casey Moore, along with Olga C. Morrett of Mujer Cronopio. As counterpoint to reviewing my more tactical approach to organizing and time management, delightful Olga, a Venezuelan currently freezing her tushy off in Montreal, spoke expanded on her presentation, Compassion as the Key to Your Productivity.

Our lively panel closed out the summit on Saturday, and I think half of the time was spent with us riffing on points the other had made, not counting the unexpected tangent about Titanic, including the idea that plunging into your tasks without planning not only can put you at risk of drowning, but can endanger the mental health of those you love. And, of course, we all agreed that there was definitely room on that floating door for Rose and Jack.

But I really want to share two key concepts from Olga. First, she talked about how self-compassion is an antidote for perfectionism and noted that “The human experience is imperfect. We are entitled to fail. It’s part of the process.”

And, to show yourself compassion, start with looking at your calendar. What you put in your schedule shows how you distribute your resources: your investment of time, money, energy, and attention shows what you you really value. If you’re not investing in yourself but everyone else’s priorities, then you aren’t showing self-compassion.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

I also took my turn as a moderator on a panel entitled, Is Sleep On Your To-Do List? A Look at Time Management and Wellness. Sleep is necessary for us to be creative, strategic, productive, and neurologically healthy. Poor sleep wrecks productivity, but time management failures can destroy our ability to sleep.

I got to interview Dr. Emily Hokett, an academic sleep researcher and expert on achieving better sleep, and Casey Moore (see above, who was pinch-hitting for our colleague Lisa Mark, whose daughter had a baby the week before the summit–mazel tov!). We talked about how poor sleep effects everything from our stamina to our relationships, and covered a pillowcase full of tips about good sleep hygiene, blackout curtains, and the winning tip for me — getting enough sunlight so that your body can tell the difference between day and night.

THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT!

Last year, we met four California high schoolers who came together to solve what they saw as serious problems in the time and task management app space. And they weren’t doing it for school credit or for money, but to help make people’s lives better!

Condution is an impressive open source app, and these young founders invite users and other coders to contribute. I tested the beta version last year, and it was as impressive as the guys themselves, and shockingly professional.

Only two of the four, Jack and Micah, made it to the summit. The other two were at SAT prep! Francis teasingly asked if they do normal teen things (oh, they do! Especially sports and music) and if they were on TikTok. (Nope). If you ever worry about the intentions and philosophy behind strides in the tech world, look no further than these young men. Here’s the video that started it all:

SO MUCH MORE

I’ve barely touched on the summit’s wise takeaways, which ensures there will be a lot to pepper in future posts. Eventually, we have to talk about task stacks from Trevor Lohrbeer, the founder of Day Optimizer. It simultaneously adds elements of gamification and diligence to the act of conquering your task list.

You can see a sneak preview of Danielle Hamlett‘s Willpower, Productivity, and Marshmallows, where she shared life-altering advice on how to amp up willpower. 

And I don’t know where to begin with the insights shared by Amie Devero, but I’ll be pondering the Arrival Fallacy for a while, which is the false belief that once we “make it”  — finish our tasks or attain our goal or reach our destination, we will reach some kind of everlasting happiness and be “done.” There is no inbox zero for all our life’s tasks.

At one point in the conference, Francis was hit with a bit of an epiphany about how all these sessions ostensibly about task and time management were about purpose and intention. When he extemporaneously said the following, I wrote is on a sticky note:

Task management is purpose conveyance.

ALL ACCESS PASS

If you’re bummed that you missed the summit, you can still get in on everything except the live networking. (I mean, I’m good, but I can’t help you time travel! Yet.)

Pick up a Premium, All-Access Pass (a $4700 value for $249) and you get a year of 24-7 access to all summit content, plus a digital copy of Francis’ book, Perfect Time-Based Productivity.

I leave you with four questions:

What big and little adventures will you add to your week to create novelty and make your life more milkshake and less skim milk?

What do you think of the 90-90-1 method?

Look at your calendar: are you showing yourself compassion?

Is your take management conveying your purpose?

 

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