Try this "day of pain and suffering!"

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

If you are like me, your to-do list can get really long.

With so many urgent and important tasks on our plates, how can we ever get to our backlog of undone work?

One recommendation is to delete tasks that are not done after a preset amount of time has passed. One author suggested giving yourself only 7 days.

Yikes!

I don't know about you, but for me, that would be a recipe for disaster. I have tasks I still need to do even after seven months have passed.

I learned a method from Thanh Pham that has been effective for me. Thanh is the founder of the excellent productivity training company Asian Efficiency. (Do check out their offerings!)

Thanh and his colleagues schedule a full day to reduce their task backlogs. They call this day "Doomsday," because it feels like it will be a "day of pain and suffering."

Are you hooked yet? 😉

I have used this method for several years, and find it transformative!

How can this be? Like Thanh, I begin my day with the expectation of pain and suffering.

But when it is over, this is what I actually get:

• An updated, current task list.
• An immediate boost of energy.
• Readiness to tackle the important projects on my plate.

Tynan, another blogger I follow, describes it like this:

"These things have to get done, and it's nice to bring them to a close for their own rewards, but the real benefit is how smoothly everything else goes afterwards. What a feeling it is to work on a big project with no collection of minor tasks nagging in the back of your mind."

An added benefit: finding tasks that are on the brink of turning into emergencies.

Years ago, I received a routine reminder to renew my medical license within the next 3 months. Because this was usually a 5-minute online task, I waited until the day before the deadline.

Alas!

The very last question asked for the date of my recertification in dependent and child abuse.

Hmmm... I had not recertified.  

I had until the next day to get this done. I located the 2-hour video training, watched it, completed the post-test, and waited for the CME office to send my official certificate. Miraculously I had a free schedule that day and was able to pull it off.

But, lesson learned.

The mechanics

I recommend an "assembly line" approach. This eliminates the need to think about what to do next.

• Get out your list.
• If you can order the items from oldest to newest, do that.
• Read the first (oldest)  item, and complete it.
• Go to the next item, and do the same.
• And so on until the time is up.

FAQs

How often should I do this?

The simple answer is "often enough to avoid big backlogs."

You can schedule a regularly recurring time - I'd recommend at least every 3 months. Or do an ad hoc session when your list feels overwhelming.


Do I have to do a full day?

No.

If you can do a full day, you will of course get more done.

But, even a 2 or 3-hour session is beneficial.


What counts as "done?"

Does this seem obvious? If you have done the required work and crossed off or deleted the list item, it's "done!"

But two other outcomes also count.

• Great when it happens: You decide you don't need to do this task. Delete it!

• More often: The "task" is actually a series of tasks.

If you have time for the whole thing, go ahead. But more likely, you won't.

 Instead, pick the next thing you can do to move this item forward. Once you have done that, you are "done" for today. Replace the original item with the next thing you must do to finish this work, and take that up later.

Can I minimize the development of backlogs?

Yes, you can!

One option is to spend a little time every day taking care of small tasks.

Dianna Wiest, for example, recommends allocating up to one hour a day for this purpose. The hour can be all at once, or, a minute here, 5 minutes there as you have free moments between other work sessions.

A similar method, recommended by many productivity consultants, is to Do It Now!

David Allen (Getting Things Done) formulates this approach as "the two-minute rule." Any new task that you estimate will take no more than 2 minutes should be done immediately. (If you are wrong, just stop and add to your list. If you were right, you've avoided one more item on your list.)

What you can do next

If your lists feel too long, schedule a two-hour session and see how far you get.

If you find that helpful, plan another session soon to do more.

Then, if you find this method helpful, make a future plan using one or both of these triggers:

Schedule a recurring day or half-day
When your list feels too long, do an ad hoc session

Remember, this "doomsday" experience is not at all about pain and suffering!

Use front-loading to get high priority work done on time

Amy (not her real name), is an early career tenure-track faculty member in a science discipline, and is one of my coaching clients.

In a recent Monday session, she wanted help figuring out how to complete the institutional review board application for her newest research project. (This committee has to approve scientific studies that involve human subjects before the study can start.)

The application was due the following Monday, but she had been putting it off and had the entire proposal to write.  

Her bigger concern was that she was not spending enough time on writing and research because of other demands on her time, such as teaching. 

She was discouraged.

I suggested that we begin by making a plan for this application:

1. We made a list of the specific tasks required.
2. I asked her to schedule time on her calendar to do the work (a.k.a. "time blocks").

Her plan looked like this:   (I have removed all of her other appointment for clarity).

At that point, I said, "Stop!"  (In the nicest possible way...)

I asked her to instead add a block for today in the first time slot available.

We then looked at each of the remaining days to see what time was available for this project.  When we got to the weekend, I learned that she had plans to be out of town and could not use it to work. This reinforced the need to try to finish by Friday.

Once we had the big picture, we added more blocks. 

The revised plan looked like this:

This plan had several key differences from the first one:

• We added a deadline notice, in red, on the following Monday

• We blocked out the weekend by setting an all-day event shown as "out-of-office." (Outlook). This created a visual reminder that the time was not available.

• You may have noticed that the total amount of time blocked was nearly the same in the two plans. Six hours in the first and 7 hours in the revision. 

• The distribution of the time, however, was quite different.  Half of the time was in the next two days in the new version.

At our meeting the following week,  Amy reported that she had submitted the application on time, and, experienced no stress when doing the work.

She told me that both things I had recommended, the detailed task list and scheduled time blocks, helped.

But the most important thing was getting a big chunk of the work done at the beginning of the week:

• She had time to deal with the questions that came up as she drafted the methods

• When the IRB website had a glitch there was time to get it fixed.

• She was prepared when she met with her collaborator to finalize the application. 

• She was asked to take on an extra teaching assignment late in the week because of the illness of a colleague. She was able to do this without panicking because the application was nearly done at that point.

Front-loading

"Getting a big chunk" of a project done at the beginning of a time period is sometimes called front-loading. 

The Free Dictionary defines front-loading as to "distribute or allocate (costs, effort, etc.) unevenly, with the greater proportion at the beginning of the enterprise or process."  

A very rough schematic sketch....

And that was what we did for Amy's IRB application work.  In fact, we used a  double dose of front loading in Amy's IRB work plan. We front-loaded the week, with half of the planned time in the first two days, and each day by scheduling the blocks as early as possible.

Like Amy, you can benefit from front-loading too.

You will get more time to come up with ideas and transform them into a final product. When glitches arise, as they will, you will have more time to fix them. If that weren't enough, you have much less pre-deadline stress.

But, you may be thinking, doesn't this just induce procrastination?  (You know how that goes, "I have plenty of time so I can put it off to another day."  Not that I have ever had that kind of thought...)

Actually, used properly, front-loading can actually prevent procrastination! 

For me, "properly" means starting work on a project "early," defined as "before I think I need to start." 

Starting early, for me, removes the pressure to get it right the first time.  Ideas and words flow more freely when I know I have plenty of time.

Questions?

What kind of work should I front-load?

• Of course, you can front-load any kind of work.  But, I recommend reserving it for important projects that will take a lot of time, and that you are likely to put off.

What time intervals should I front load?

• Over the entire time project period. Schedule time to get started as soon you add a front-loadable candidate project to your list.

• At the beginning of regular calendar interval planning.
• For long projects, consider the year, quarter, and/or month.

• Always front-load the week and each day. You should do it when making your regular weekly and daily plans. (😉😊)

How many projects should I front-load at a time?

• You need to be choosy.  Pick the work that is highest in impact, especially if it has a hard deadline. Maybe one or two projects at most.

• This is not incompatible with working on multiple projects simultaneously. Putting in a big chunk of time early often means you can keep the project moving forward later in smaller amounts of time. Writing a paper is a good example. If you can get a first draft done quickly, you can do the revising in smaller time blocks.

• In practice, this means you will often have one project in the front-loading stage and the rest in "regular time" mode.

What if I am always fully scheduled at the beginning of the week or every morning? (For example, teaching, client meetings, patient care, or group meetings that you can't change.)

• Try choosing a different day or hour the beginning of your planning interval.  Instead of Monday, use Wednesday (or the first day with open time). Instead of 8:00 am, block the first time that is available that day.

FAQ: Do I have to write EVERY day? Would once a week work?

From time to time, I will share a question that has been posed to me by a workshop participant or coaching client.  The one for today should be relevant to many of you.

The background for the question is my recommendation, based on expert opinion from the writing world, that you aim to do at least a brief session (45 minutes or so) of writing on your scholarly project every day, or at least on most days.  

This is the way many professional writers work, and there is some empirical evidence that this approach produces more writing, and better writing than what Robert Boice calls "binge writing," a term he uses to describe the practice of waiting to write until large uninterrupted blocks of time show up, or a deadline looms.  

I've summarized all of this in one of the articles posted elsewhere on my website titled Becoming a Productive Academic Writer.

Here is the question:

I have heard about the data on writing before (most successful academics write for 30 -60 minutes a day) . I talked to my mentors about that data (your presentation, Dr. Boice, Dr. Kerry Rockquemore). All three said they write in blocks not every day. Some only write once a week but the entire day. I have heard that from very productive physician faculty. Is there data on physician scientist or physician educators who are involved in research careers on when they write and how long?

Here is my answer:

Dear workshop participant,

Your question is a great one.  

I am not aware of any data from a medical school faculty cohort.  Boice's work was mostly in a Liberal Arts setting.

However, I'll throw out an "educated guess" response. 

• The major purpose of writing daily is to be more productive.  Classic "binge" writing (as described by Boice) is writing that occurs infrequently, every few weeks or even months, and it seems obvious that such a schedule cannot lead to maximal productivity.The only alternative that has been studied, albeit with small numbers of subjects, is the daily method.  The rest of the evidence is based on interviews with professional writers - who don't have anything else to do with their time, unlike clinicians!  
• The second purpose of writing daily is that your brain stays engaged in the work, so that "warming up" is not needed, and, new ideas show up spontaneously more readily.

I would think about the idea of weekly writing like this:  

The daily method (using the minimal time approach) yields a minimum of 30-60 minutes a day of writing, with the advantages of the close connection between writing sessions i just described.

The weekly method could yield the same minimum of writing time (2.5-5 hours), and the sessions are probably still close enough to  get the other benefit as well.

You can see if you start to move the long session out to every 2 weeks or longer, it will be difficult to get the same amount written as the daily method, and the "session proximity benefits" will be  increasingly fewer the longer you wait between sessions. 

So, my "logical" conclusion is that once a week should work fine, as long as you make the session at least 2.5 hours!!

Let me know how it goes,

Susan

I'll add that this approach of taking daily action is recommended for any major project you are working on, so you can use this advice even if you don't have writing on your agenda. 

What do YOU think?  What is your experience with the time frame YOU use to write, or that of your peers or mentors?  You can write to me directly (srj.susanjohnson@gmail.com), or post a comment here.

4th of July special: How the miracle of "snakes" can make you more productive

Recently, a good friend of mine told me I should stop saying I was a blogger because I don't post regularly (an understatement, for sure).  

Oops!  She was right...

I've been stewing about this problem in the weeks since, and today, thanks to the recent 4th of July holiday, my children, and some "snakes" I was reminded of the answer and  discovered the perfect topic for my return to the blogosphere.

Here is how it happened.  This morning, the two teens decided to extend the holiday another day by setting off some snakes (made by Phantom Fireworks) in the driveway.  

How snakes work.

(Photo credits to my daughter Lydia.)

The unlit snake looks a bit like a Tootsie Roll, but not so appetizing:

To set off, light one end.  Then, watch the miracle: under the influence of the continuous flame,  a very long ashen "snake" is produced, appearing to arise out of nothing.

The final snake can be not only long, but  complex.  (I've included a flip flop-clad foot to add authenticity.)

So what do these snakes have to do with productivity?

Think of the unlit snake as an unacted on task - formless, small, unrealized.

By adding the flame of regular, consistent  action, you will watch your results emerge almost effortlessly.

You'll not only complete the task, but by applying regular consistent action your result will often be more complex and satisfying than you had imagined.

If this seems too simple to be true, give it a try: 

1. Pick a task, any task, that you've been putting off.
2. Figure out one action you could take that would get you closer to "done," and do it today.
3. Tomorrow, do the same thing.
4. And so on, every day, until the task is complete.