[http://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2007/05/21/20-procrastination-hacks/, 22 May 2007]

This post was written by Leo Babauta of ZenHabits.net

I’m going to take a wild leap and suggest that procrastination is a problem that plagues even the best of us. Yes, even Scott Young must procrastinate once in awhile. I surely do.

But even though I procrastinate, I find ways to get a lot done. I am the epitome of what Scott calls “productively lazy”.

This post, for example, was written as a means of putting off a more urgent article that I need to write by the end of today. But by procrastinating on that, I’ve written this, which I hope will be helpful for all procrastinators everywhere — and that means you.

Please note that I do not suggest that you do all of these — that’s an overwhelming task that would certainly be pushed back endlessly. Instead, choose one and try it. It will probably work for a little while. Then, when it stops working, choose another, and give that a go. With a palate of great procrastination hacks, you can never go wrong. And often, a combination of these will work fantastically.

1. Form a Do It Now habit. Procrastination, like many things, is simply a bad habit. By replacing it with a positive habit — the Do It Now (DIFN) habit — you will kick procrastination’s butt. This will require concentrated effort for 30 days, but after that, it should be on autopilot. I put up a sign on my computer that says “DO IT NOW” and every time I feel like procrastinating, I look at the sign and get to work.
2. Do Your MIT first. I have a rule that before I check my email or read my feeds, I have to do my Most Important Task first. I do it first thing in the morning, and then no matter what happens after that, I’ve done something very productive today. If you’ve been procrastinating on a very important task for some time, I suggest you do that first. Don’t allow yourself to do anything else until it’s done!
3. 10-minute rule. If a task seems overwhelming, tell yourself that you’re only going to do it for 10 minutes. There’s nothing intimidating about 10 minutes. And more often than not, you end up doing more than 10 minutes after that initial hurdle of getting started is overcome.
4. Break it down. Got an overwhelming task to handle? Break it up into much tinier tasks. I mean really tiny. Have a paper to write? Just write the headline. Or just do 10 minutes of the outline. Or just write the first sentence. That’s a task you can accomplish, and when you’re done, you feel great. Use that feeling of success to carry you to the next tiny task (”Write 2nd sentence”) and keep going from there.
5. Love your work. Why do we procrastinate. Sometimes it’s because we don’t like what we’re doing. If that’s the case for you, you might want to consider a different job or a different line of work. But in any case, as much as possible, seek to do things you love, even within your current job. Not feeling like doing that task right now? Find another that’s more fun (not video games).
6. 30-10. This is one of my favorites. I set a timer for 30 minutes, and then work like mad until the timer goes off. Then I set the timer for 10 minutes, and do something that I really want to do (email and feeds for me, maybe Twitter or Digg for you). Repeat as often as necessary. The key is sticking to your timer — don’t stop while the 30 minutes is still going, and don’t go beyond your 10-minute break.
7. Set a deadline. Deadlines, for me and for many people, are one of the best tools for getting things done. If you set a deadline for a task, you are more likely to actually do it. For some, the pressure of a deadline isn’t felt until after the deadline has passed, but still. It has its uses.
8. Put public pressure on yourself. The power of the deadline is best when combined with public pressure. If your boss, or a group of people, want something in by a certain date or time, you are more likely to bust your butt getting it done. If there isn’t any public pressure on a task, create it — email someone and promise to have it done by a certain time, and ask him or her to check on it at that time just to make sure you do it.
9. Reward yourself. This has two benefits: 1) it makes you look forward to completing the task, so you can get your reward, and 2) it makes the process more enjoyable. It’s important to make the process pleasurable and fun, so you’re more likely to do it.
10. Consider not doing it. If it’s something you’re really dreading, perhaps it’s something you shouldn’t do. This is not always an option, but sometimes I get requests to do stuff that eventually it turns out the requester didn’t really want too badly in the first place. Sometimes when I put something off, it’s no longer necessary by the time I am really ready to do it.
11. Change to an “abundance mentality”. Instead of thinking about the problems and difficulty and obstacles, think about the possibilities and opportunities presented by this task or project. By thinking of it in this way, you are more likely to want to do something, knowing the reward and benefits that come from actually getting it done.
12. Clear away distractions. Procrastination is much easier with games and IM and email being right there, ready to access. Turn off email notifications, clear away all other web pages, turn off games and other distractions on your computer, and clear off your desk. In fact, if you can disconnect the Internet, that’s best.
13. (10+2)*5. Merlin Mann’s famous hack. Basically similar to the 30-10 hack, but shorter. 10 minutes of work, followed by a 2-minute break, and repeat. It works great.
14. Procrastination dash. This is just a short burst of focused work — as short as a minute. It’s designed to get you out of procrastination mode.
15. Track your time. Want to see just how much time you’re wasting? Track it. Just do a time log, even for one day. It will be enlightening, and it will make you much more aware of what you’re actually doing and what your time-wasters are. This is a sure way to get your procrastination under control.
16. Prepare yourself. Often tasks are much easier, and we’re much more likely to get started, if we prepare for them first. Get the research done, get the tools ready, clear away distractions, get your coffee ready, and get going.
17. Overcome your fears. What fears are blocking you from doing this task? Fear of failure? Fear of not being good enough? First imagine the worst thing that can happen. How bad is that? Often, if you give some thought to what can actually happen, you can get a handle on your fears, and you can find ways to overcome them.
18. Get a task-master. Having trouble getting yourself going? Get someone else to push you and make sure you stop procrastinating. Enlist the help of a co-worker or family member. Make sure your task-master isn’t as forgiving as my wife is.
19. Schedule it last-minute. Have an absolute deadline for a task that will take one hour? Schedule it so you don’t actually start on it until about an hour before deadline (well, give yourself a 30-minute cushion). Will a project take 2 days to complete? Schedule it 2 days before deadline. If you have absolutely no padded time in your schedule, you will have no choice but to get a move on.
20. Structured procrastination. This is a beautiful idea — put your most important task at the top of your list (but make it something where the deadline can actually be pushed back), and put other important tasks right under that task. Well, in order to procrastinate on the top item, you’ll do the ones underneath it. That way you’ll get a lot done while procrastinating. The good thing is, if other more important tasks come along, they get added to the top, so the task that was formerly at the top will eventually get done.

Bonus hack: Procrascipline. A good list is even better if you throw in a bonus. This is an excellent one as well. From the Slacker Manager, the first rule of procrascipline is that you cannot ignore the task. The second rule is that you must put it on a list that you actually look at throughout the day. The third rule is that you must communicate your progress to others — whether you’ve actually made any progress or not (and if not, why not). These three rules actually work. Don’t procrastinate in doing the third step, though.

David Conn
Wednesday May 9, 2007

FC United of Manchester, formed by fans opposed to Malcolm Glazer’s takeover at Old Trafford, have travelled a joyfully long way from mere rebellion. At Gigg Lane, a week before “Big” United were confirmed as Premiership

There is a depth to this commitment which quite unexpectedly caught me by the throat, got me in the eyes. FC United may have started in protest at the heart-sinking economics which devoured Manchester United but it is powered by the fans’ heartfelt attachment to football and the collective belonging they feel it represents. The relationship with “Big” United is complex; most FC fans still support the club – packing the pubs and Gigg Lane social club to roar United on to the 4-2 win at Everton before FC’s game last week – but they grew alienated, over time, from the business which is Manchester United.Mike Turton, 44, an electricians’ supervisor, who was at the Formby match with his daughter Danielle and sons, Ryan and Thomas, is a typical FC founding father. An Old Trafford regular for 31 years, he packed in on May 12 2005 – they can all recite the date – when the Glazers, from their Florida base, finally acquired United with their £810m hedge fund-leveraged deal.

“I didn’t leave because of the takeover,” he said. “That was just the final push I needed to get out. It started in the Nineties; winning trophies was very nice but I didn’t support United to win trophies. I’d stopped enjoying it. The prices were rising and I started wondering why I was forking out to fund the players’ ridiculous wages.

“I love what we’ve built here, I’m really proud of it. I like to think it’s in the best Manchester tradition of protest, along the lines of the suffragettes and the Trades Union movement, which have their roots here.”

You hear this Manc pride a lot as well as bemusement that fans of other clubs have not protested against their takeovers – “Not even Liverpool,” the FC fans all murmur. Here they have moved on, to building their own club according to the principles they argued for when campaigning: supporter-ownership, with members (2,500 of them) voting for the board and policies; ticket prices affordable at £7 for adults, £2 for under…#8209;16s, and an agreement with stewards that supporters can stand. The club has established a youth policy which seeks to work with junior clubs who often feel exploited by the way professional clubs’ academies trawl for the best players. FCUM have also made partnerships with social welfare and community organisations, seeking to welcome marginalised groups and introduce football as a good presence in their lives.

Andy Walsh, the former Militant firebrand and leader of the United fans’ anti…#8209;Murdoch and anti-Glazer campaigns, has been reinvented here into FC United’s general manager, all trim in a blue check suit and club tie, directing details on his walkie-talkie – stewards, tickets, match day volunteers.

“Most people here still love United,” Walsh said, “but they love their feeling for United, which grew from following the club for years, not the big business which came to exploit that loyalty. We’re aiming to show a football club can be run by and for supporters, open to all sections of society.”

The Formby match was designated a youth day, with under-16s allowed in free and young people before the game taking part in drama, banner-making and working with the Touch of Class rap collective, which promotes an anti-gun message. Thomas Cullen, a coach at Trafford Athletic Club, brought a group; he said he believed one lad had just been saved from being excluded by his school. “His teacher is here and she saw a different side of him,” he said. “This is great for them. They’re mostly black lads from Hulme and Moss Side but not one has ever been to a match at Old Trafford because they can’t afford it.”

Bill Evans, manager of Rochdale Children’s Rights and Advocacy Services, brought 30 children, all in local authority care, saying it was a “positive way for them to feel included”. Maxine Seager of the Tameside Youth Service, a disaffected “Big” United fan herself, came with 70 kids – “Two coach loads,” she said, grinning and rolling her eyes.

“They’re loving it, buzzing. They get so much out of this and we work our programmes, on anti-racism and social cohesion, around coming to the game.”

The youth day events were organised by Vinny Thompson, who seemed staggered by his own football conversion: “To go from parading on terraces all over Europe to being a lentil…#8209;eating social worker in two years is pretty bloody amazing.”

The thirty- and fortysomething Stretford End veterans who formed FC United are painfully aware that Premiership ticket hikes have largely priced out the next generation of fans, so are replenishing their own ranks with the regular £2 entry price and this youth day. The place was teeming with kids, a sight long disappeared from top-flight football. One group of eight, aged 11 to 14, marching along with classic red, white and black scarves around their necks and not an adult in sight, seemed like a Life On Mars throwback to the 1970s. One eloquently explained why they come: “The atmosphere’s mint.”

The 3,847 who made it to the Formby game may not represent the dent in the Glazers’ business plan some hoped for but it is many more than Bury had at their last home game, a phenomenon at the base of football’s pyramid. The five goals strolled in took FC’s total this season to 157 and a finish on 112 points; both are records. After the game the North West Counties League title was presented to Dave Chadwick, FC’s mountainous captain, Walsh discreetly handing out the champagne. Beaming, bowing to shake hands with crowds of kids at the Manchester Road End, the players looked disbelieving, that tough semi-pro careers have turned out this glorious.

Karl Marginson, the former Rother-ham United and non-league striker who has proved the perfect manager, said he has understood FC’s philosophy more with time. “It’s a very special thing to be part of. I try to instil its importance in the players, that this is the fans’ club.”

In the celebrating stands they were mixing fond player ditties, anti-Glazer chants and pro-FC compositions. To the tune of Anarchy in the UK they roared: “I am an FC fan/I am Mancunian.”

This is a football club they have fashioned for themselves out of belief and conviction. While Big United chase the Double at Wembley, they are off to the UniBond Northern Premier League next season. It seems like the best trip they have ever been on.

Manchester’s proud tradition of protest

Peterloo

The army’s slaughter of 11 people attending a mass rally for parliamentary reform in 1819 accelerated popular pressure for democracy

Marx and Engels

Karl Marx’s political ally, Friedrich Engels, lived in Manchester and based his 1844 classic, The Condition of the Working Class in England, on the city’s inequalities

Trades Union Congress

Formed in 1868 at the Mechanics Institute in Manchester

Suffragettes

The Women’s Social and Political Union, that lobbied for the vote, was formed by Emmeline Pankhurst at her home in Manchester in 1903

Right to roam

The campaign for access to the countryside was boosted by the 1932 Kinder Trespass, led by the Manchester activist Benny Rothman

Punk rock

A Sex Pistols gig at the Lesser Free Trade Hall in 1976 is often heralded as the birth of punk and inspired a generation of Manchester music

FC United of Manchester

Formed in 2005 by Manchester United fans protesting at the Glazer takeover

david.conn@guardian.co.uk

[http://football.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2075252,00.html, accessed 11/May/2007]

While you can and probably should track more than one next action at a time for each project (these are all the things that can be done now), it’s vital to differentiate a true next action from any of the garden-variety items that just need to be done at some point later. In other words, be careful not to to turn your to-do list into an ad hoc project plan.

Now, now, now

Avoid the trap of littering your horizon with piles of crufty pseudo-tasks that can’t actually be addressed (or, almost as often, can’t be addressed yet). While you want to always stay aware of future obligations and the work that they are likely to generate, the to-do list is absolutely not the place to do it. Keep your to-do list a sacred tabernacle for current activity, and maintain longer-term task and support materials as well as appointments where they belong–in a project support folder and your calendar, respectively.

Remember: you should theoretically be able to choose any item from your list and, given the proper tools and context, start on the task immediately. Reveal hidden dependencies and move the later items someplace else; there’s no shame in tracking the small task that will keep things moving (and doing it is even better).

Trim, toss, and refactor

Make a habit of pruning your list of completed, dead, and obviated tasks. To be effective, your list should be alive– a functional dashboard for understanding the immediate work at hand. And remember: your to-do list is not the place to park your ambitions or test the limits of your grasp. Constantly break tasks down and down to the most atomic work possible, and be ruthless about moving (or deleting) stuff that belongs someplace else.

Why Am I Doing This Task?

This is important. When compiling a list of all the stuff that’s on your mind (and on your plate), it’s crucial to unpack how each task you accept or assign to yourself will support your projects, your roles, and the goals you’ve set for yourself. Before adding a new item, reflect on the value that each chunk of work brings to your world.

• Is this the best use of my time right now?
• Am I the best person to do this task?
• Is this something that must be done now? Why now?
• What happens if I don’t do this at all?

To illustrate the significance of these questions in the grand scheme of things , I’ll borrow (and freely butcher) an image from developer Joel Spolsky. Try imagining your available time and resources as a wooden box–a fixed amount of space that can only contain so many cubic inches of “stuff.” You’ll be filling that box with wooden blocks of varying sizes, each of which represents a separate task on your list. The bigger the block, the more time that task will take (and the more metaphorical space it will require in your box). Got it?

Let’s say your notional box has 8 average-sized blocks in it right now, with a maximum occupancy of about 10 blocks. Now, let’s imagine you’re thinking of adding 5 big new blocks to the box. Well, you have some decisions to make now, don’t you? Some of those blocks might fit easily into a team member’s box (hello, delegation), while others might be reduced in size to fit the available space. But more often then not, you’re going to have to do the painfully obvious and just free up some space–either by removing some old blocks or by forgoing the addition of new ones. Of course, it doesn’t go without reiterating that the smaller the blocks (tasks) you choose to add, the more flexibility you have in adding and moving blocks; think about how (what becomes) that big IKEA bookcase arrives in that flat little carton.

Remember: for the sake of this visualization, making your task box any bigger is not an option, no more than you can add a few hours to your day or a couple weeks to your month. So the only variable in your control is what you decide to put in or take out–what tasks will you choose. The bottom line is that both those blocks and the box are ultimately your responsibility, so brace yourself for some hard decisions on where your priorities lie.

If it’s on your list, it’s a commitment

Try to keep this box image forefront in your mind whenever you’re tempted (or compelled) to shovel more work into an already-teeming inbox. Look at each addition to your to-do list as a personal commitment to completing that action. Bear in mind that every minute you spend working on one task is necessarily a minute you cannot spend working on another. So ensure that your to-do list honors these reasonable limits and keeps you focused on the work that’s most valuable to you.

This actually takes a surprising amount of discipline and requires making a kind of deal with yourself; no more treating your to-do list like the hope chest where you toss all the stuff you should be doing or might maybe be doing. The to-do list is a plan, and it’s a contract. If you’re not sure you want to do an item, take it off the list. If you can’t envision what doing the task will look like, off it goes. Jot and doodle someplace else.

Like so many of the things we talk about here, the to-do list is really a cipher, albeit an important one. As the artifact of your short-term planning, it becomes the developing Polaroid of your next few hours, days, or weeks. So, reframing your list as “the things I want to have done” helps set the proper state of mind; this is your life for the next little while, so don’t be skittish about taking it seriously enough that you can depend on it as the tactical plan for getting you where you want to be.

Solving common hang-ups

Getting good at this stuff is a process. Don’t expect to be an instant master of the to-do on your first try. To help you navigate some of the challenges that frequently await your to-do list, here’s some strategies for getting out in front.

Get a running start

Start off your day or your week by giving yourself several tiny tasks that can be accomplished in just a minute or two each. Aim low, and don’t be embarrassed to make these really, really easy jobs. “Clean the keyboard,” “Empty the trash,” and “Add paper to the printer” might seem like pointless busy work, but ticking off several fast items in a row can often be the jolt you need to start tackling the bigger, scarier stuff.

Delegate actively

If you’re tracking tasks that you’ve assigned to others or are waiting on work from someone else on your team, resist the urge to shift responsibility for ensuring their timely arrival. Give yourself tasks like “Call Alex for ETA on redesign sketch” or “Email Bob for latest revision of Chapter 3.” This active follow-up especially deserves a spot on your list when others are depending on your piece of that work to keep the project moving and on schedule. Even when the ball is in someone else’s court for the moment, always give yourself timely reminders to ensure that it returns to your side of the net when it’s expected and needed.

Cringe-bust your to-Do List

Ever notice how some items seem permanently stuck on your to-do list? Days, weeks, seasons may fly by and the same three or four hoary old tasks stare back at you, stroking their beards and cackling. Chances are you’ve stopped mentally processing these to-dos as tasks in the world and now just let your eyes fly past them so as to minimize the guilt, pain, and cringing that they cause you.

You can “cringe-bust” your to-do list by printing out a complete set of current tasks–preferably in alphabetical rather than priority or project order. Run through the list quickly, placing a check mark next to any item that causes you the slightest anxiety or concern. The idea is to root out the items that you dread doing.

On your second pass-through of the list, make a note on a separate piece of paper highlighting why you’ve been avoiding each task. Is it fear of failure? Boredom? Garden-variety anxiety about the outcome? Whatever your reason–and do be honest with yourself–generate a new to-do for each item that addresses the “cringe” rather than the actual to-do that’s causing it.

For example, if you’re dreading calling an introverted customer because there’s always weird silences in the conversation, give yourself a to-do to generate a few topics that you can bring up when things start to slow down. It won’t make the call fun, but it will get you past the anxiety that’s holding you up. The trick, in any case, is to deflate the cringe-y task by replacing it with a more active, manageable, and unintimidating one that drains the situation of the power to control you.

When you’ve succeeded, cross out both tasks with a thick red marker, and give yourself a high five. You rule.

[From: http://www.43folders.com/2005/09/13/building-a-smarter-to-do-list-part-ii/, accessed 20 April 2007]

In my own experience wrangling life’s entropic challenges, some of my best gains have come from maintaining a smart, actionable, and updated accounting of all the things I’ve committed myself to doing. While the quality of that list may vary from day to day, it’s the best place to train my focus whenever things are starting to feel out of control. In fact, the health of my to-do list usually mirrors the health of my productivity (as well as the barometric pressure of my stress). On the good days, my to-do list has a living quality that helps guide my decisions and steers me through unexpected changes in priority or velocity. And on the crummy days, it becomes the likely suspect when I need to quickly reassess the state of the union and make changes.

While you can argue for the flavor and approach to task management that best suits your style (and your personal suck), it’s hard to disparage the benefits that come from getting task commitments out of your brain and into a consistent location. One list scribbled on one busy day is not necessarily the answer (although it can be a lifesaver). Try thinking of your to-do list as an evolving plan for responsibly focusing your effort and attention in the near future.

Anatomy of a To-do

The primary idea of a to-do is that it’s a task that can and should be done–a point that might seem obvious until you start uncovering how many of the items on your to-do list may not belong there (or, conversely, how many uncaptured items do). The best and most useful to-dos share common qualities:

• it’s a physical action
• it can be accomplished at a sitting
• it supports valuable progress toward a recognized goal
• it’s something for which you are the most appropriate person for the job

Glancing at your own to-do list, do you see any potential troublemakers? Notice any items that make you squeamish? Any mystery meat tasks that seem “un-doable” as is? Don’t sweat it. We’re going to have you shaped up in no time.

Break it Down to the “Next Action”

In Getting Things Done , David Allen introduced his notion of the “next action,” which he defines as “the next physical, visible activity that needs to be engaged in, in order to move the current reality toward completion.”

For example, a classic old-school to-do might be something like “Plan Tom’s Surprise Going-Away Party,” “Clean out the Garage,” or “Get the Car Fixed.” But, as Allen cannily notes, these are each really small projects since they require more than one activity in order to be considered complete. Learning to honor that distinction between a task and its parent project may, in fact, be the most important step you can take toward improving the quality and “do-ability” of the work on your list.

So, in our example of beginning to organize for Tom’s big party, we first want to learn when exactly he’ll be leaving town. But to obtain that information, we’ll first need to call his housemate, Sue, for details. But before we can call Sue, we’ll have to remember where we jotted down her new work number last week. (Project managers call these kind of linked tasks “dependencies,” but you knew that.)

Suddenly our focus has narrowed from the ginormous and ultimately un-doable “Plan Party” to the entirely manageable “Find Sue’s work number.” While this is far from the only task we’ll have to complete for our party planning, it’s clearly the next thing we’ll need to do before proceeding. This is the bona fide “next action,” so it’s earned a place on our to-do list.

By always breaking projects of any size into their true constituent next actions–and it’s definitely okay to have several at once per project–we’re making it fast and easy to always know what should be happening next.

Let’s Get Physical

Articulating your to-dos in terms of physical activity–even when they require only modest amounts of actual exertion–has a variety of benefits.

Most importantly, it ensures that you’ve thought through your task to a point where you can envision how it will need to be undertaken and what it will actually feel like once you’re doing it. This means you can easily visualize the activity, the kinds of tools you’ll need, and perhaps even the setting where the work should take place; It’s not just a bunch of words you’ve written on a page.

All in how you phrase it

Framing your work in the physical world is easiest when you imagine what’s being done, and the best trick here is to simply phrase your task in a form like: “verb the noun with the object.” That means instead of reminding yourself with the mystery meat of “Year-end report,” you’d more accurately first “Download Q3 spreadsheet from work server.” And, instead of “Get with Anil,” you’d probably want to “Email Anil on Monday to schedule monthly disco funk party.” Get specific in whittling the task down to one activity that you can accomplish completely at a sitting. “A sitting” will vary for you, but I try to never plan a task that would take more than ten minutes (your level of busy-ness might command even smaller-sized tasks).

Consider, for example, how an oversized to-do like “Prepare the big presentation” might be improved upon by zeroing in on the physicality of a first step like “Draft four ideas for our presentation’s theme.” Where the former task provides no purchase for a sensible ascent, the latter gives us a fat handle for getting started with something that already feels familiar: we know how to type, and we definitely know when we see four of something. So, this is a sensible chunk of work that can be done.

Get the verbs right

Notice how we’re breaking these Big Nouns into little verbs? That’s deliberate. With that original to-do for your presentation, you might theoretically just keep “preparing” your presentation until some arbitrary alarm bell goes off in your head, saying “Yeah, okay, that looks like a fully-prepared presentation, so you can stop.” But a better-defined chunk of activity suggests a task with clear edges; it has a beginning and an end. This enables you to keep putting one foot in front of the other, ensuring that you always know what to do next, instead of half-assing your way through a badly-defined pile of fuzzy nouns.

This physicality and functional piece-work act in concert to make the planning and execution of your tasks as stress-free and unintimidating as possible. Knowing that every item on your to-do list is a familiar task that can be accomplished before lunch can be wildly empowering. It’s just up to you to ensure that all your work is segmented, shaped, and stacked into units that can fit through the windows that are available to you.

Your work is what you make it

The trick is that these jobs can be made easier long before they’re undertaken by framing and naming them properly and in the right-sized units. As early as the capture and planning phases of this cycle, you hold the power and responsibility for defining your work. Failing to do that well and thoughtfully is a primary cause of hang-ups further down the line. In other words, your work often isn’t difficult because you’re necessarily all that busy, but because you hadn’t taken the time to list it all out in a way that makes it clear and “do-able”. This is so important as you begin actually working on your tasks, when the last thing you want is to wonder whether you’re doing the right thing at the right time.

As we’ll see tomorrow, to have any use beyond a handy brain dump, your to-do list has to stay current and reflect your realistic commitments in the world. Otherwise you’re studying documentation for a product that may not exist any more.

[http://www.43folders.com/2005/09/12/building-a-smarter-to-do-list-part-i, accessed 20 April 2007] 

[From:http://www.mallosworld.co.uk/organize-it/2007/03/26/clutter-101-how-to-de-clutter/, accessed 16 April 2007] 

Welcome to the second part of my Clutter 101 series. For the purposes of this article I am going to assume you are doing a big de-clutter of your entire environment (I will mention at the end of the post about how to do mini de-clutter sessions after you are on top of everything). As such you will be dealing with a rather large project so it’s wise to break it down. Take one room at a time and within each room decide the key points that need a de-clutter. For instance the bedroom could have the wardrobe, drawers and under the bed itself to deal with. Take each of these sections and do them fully and do all the sections in that one room before moving onto the next. De-cluttering sometimes means making more mess initially as you dig everything out so its wise to only have one room in this state at a time.

Make sure you don’t choose too long a timescale to complete your de-clutter as stuff will continue to come into your life; by the time you complete one area, you may have to work on previous areas again. If your environment isn’t ready and organized enough to receive it then your de-clutter problem will not get resolved.

Make sure you have the special de-clutter tools in place. Have large rubbish bags next to you, have a sweeping brush and dustcloths and any other washing tools you might think you will need; things will be dirty and dusty. If you are sat on the floor surrounded by boxes, papers and various other junk, the last thing you need to do is go get yourself a plastic bag.

Now you have to just jump in. Don’t be cautious, pessimistic or afraid to make a mess of your rooms with this. Relish being in at the deep end. Seeing those rubbish/recycle bags fill up is very satisfying. Remember, you are working on individual sections of each room so things won’t get overwhelming.

Take everything out of the area you are working on and start again, with a clean slate. Take each item at a time and decide quickly what you intend to do with it. Its almost a natural approach to keep stuff so make the decision before that thought process takes over. Recap the reasons we keep clutter as mentioned in the previous post in this series:

• It was a gift/present
• It’s expensive/it cost me a lot of money
• I might be able to sell it on someday
• It might come in useful one day
• I would feel guilty throwing away so much stuff
• I don’t have time
• I can’t be bothered

If you don’t need it, bin it in those plastic bags you have handy, or put it in a separate pile for recycling/giving away. Otherwise return it back to where it came from neatly or put it in new places (having cleaned these areas first) if you have found new/more efficient areas to store things. De-cluttering isn’t just about the clutter, it’s about managing what’s left over more effectively and very often with a big de-cluttering exercise like this you will find that you have created so much extra space you can afford to rethink where you were originally storing everything. A prime example was how I was able to break down all the clutter in a chest of drawers to 2 drawers (from 5). I binned the chest and placed the two drawers at the bottom of the wardrobe. I created more space and used existing space more efficiently.

Remember to designate a place for everything and have everything in its place (and note, items can share the same space). Without this you will buy/receive something and then wonder where to put it. More often than not, you will end up dumping it somewhere. Then you will do the same with the next item to come in and before you know it you have this big dumping ground.

However, to avoid the temptation of taking things too literally and end up buying hundreds of storage devices and name each one for every possible item you could ever own, it’s quite likely that you will get stuff that doesn’t have places for it. This is where I have specially defined miscellaneous drawers. If an item doesn’t seem to fit anywhere and you are sure you will need it then place it in these. Do not think of it as a dumping area however. In a de-clutter environment there is no such thing! Treat them like you would other areas and regularly work through them.

Magazines, papers, bills etc; I tend to find that this is what mostly gets binned. All those receipts dumped at the bottom of pockets, the spam mail that comes through the letter boxes etc. If you think it could be interesting for a later date create a reference folder/file and store the bare minimum part you need (tear the page out or rip the relevant chunk from the rest of the content). As much as its useful to have such reference materials stored efficiently, generally we will rarely refer to them so it makes sense to store the bare minimum. There is a small thing called the internet which you can refer to instead

Bills and other financial papers are tricky. There is no real consensus on how long you should hold onto them. Either way, you should have a well organized system for storing these too, rather like with reference material. That way they take up less space and they are more manageable. Nowadays a lot of companies offer online bills. If you want to cut down the amount of stuff that comes through your letter box or you want to limit how much you have to file away this can be a useful option.

Anything financially tied to you or papers that contain your name, address, etc should be shredded or destroyed if you don’t need them. Shredders are very cheap and almost essential with all the fraud there is nowadays.

After all that effort stick with it! Remember the benefits of having a more relaxing environment where you can find everything, having more space and knowing what you actually own. After you have de-cluttered and organized everything neatly, the first thing to go will be that neatness if you don’t stick with it. All it takes is one lazy afternoon where you just throw your clothes into the cupboard, leave some papers on the table rather than shredding them or knock over some toiletries in the bathroom and not pick them up. A drawer here, a box there, it all makes a big difference.

Remember, you’ve done the hard part. Any mini de-cluttering you do from now on will be easy. As you do your usual cleaning each day/week choose one of those individual areas and have a quick check for anything you can get rid of. And, as stuff comes in put it away neatly! View it as though you are optimizing your environment. How can you best manage the stuff you own so that there is less of it, it uses space better and it’s out of the way?

I’ve found myself with a fair bit of spare time at the moment so I’ve decided to give the home a really good and long overdue tidy and de-clutter (4 big bags of rubbish and counting). So as a natural progression, I thought I would write a little series on dealing with clutter. In this first part I will look at what sort of attitudes make us keep so much stuff. Next week I will talk about some approaches and tactics to clearing it all out. As always let us know your thoughts

It was a gift/present.
If a gift had any practical use to you it’s likely it would already be serving its purpose and/or have a suitable place in your home, rather than be taking up space. If it could be used, use it now, otherwise give some careful thought to getting rid of it (keeping one or two big gifts for the sake of not offending someone is understandable, but bear in mind the majority of time they won’t even remember).

It’s expensive/It cost me a lot of money
Well if it’s lumped in with your clutter, it’s either served its purpose or been a big waste of money unfortunately. Either way, deal with it! Its costing you even more money to have it stuck around taking up room. Try selling it if it’s worth that much, but if it’s not shifting, see below…

I might be able to sell it on someday
Why do you think you can or will sell it in the future? What’s stopping you from selling it now and clearing some space? If its some sort of investment like an antique or collectors item store it in an appropriate place (remember, I’ve said it before and its corny but a place for everything and everything in its place), otherwise put it on eBay or have a car-boot sale. Get rid of it now.

It might come in useful one day
If you have already had the item for a while and you havn’t used it, it’s safe to assume you are not going to be needing it any time soon. Simple really.

I would feel guilty throwing away so much stuff
Recycle it then, give it away to your friends or charity shops. There are so many options nowadays which are out of the scope of this particular article so I suggest you do a google search for recycling and clutter in your particular region/country (if there is any interest I will add to this series with a few links/suggestions for recycling, let me know in the comments).

I don’t have time
Make time now and save loads later! You won’t have to dig around in the back of boxes, struggle with space whenever you buy a new item, stress about losing a bill in the masses of paperwork stuffed in drawers. Once you are on top of the clutter in your home it’s almost a natural (and quick!) process to stick with it.

I can’t be bothered
If you are reading this blog then I would assume you are interested in becoming more productive and/or you want to make some positive steps in your life. Getting rid of all the clutter in your life is one aspect of that. De-cluttering your home is a key step in de-cluttering your mind. It makes your whole living streamlined.

April 14, 2005, The Age

[from: http://www.theage.com.au/news/Ross-Gittins/The-real-secret-to-happiness-higher-taxes/2005/04/13/1113251680538.html, accessed 10 April 2007] 

According to monkeys, high taxes can make us work less and live more, writes Ross Gittins.

With so many businesspeople, economists and politicians banging away, you would have to be pretty slow not to have got the message: what our economy desperately needs is a lowering of income tax rates, particularly the punishing top rate of 48.5 per cent.

The high tax rates we face are discouraging people from working as hard as they could. We need more incentive to try harder – to earn more, produce more and consume more.

But I’ve just been reading a new book – by an economics professor, no less – that argues the exact reverse: we need to keep tax rates high to discourage us from working so hard and, in the process, neglecting more important aspects of life, including leisure.

The prof is Richard Layard – Lord Layard, to you – of the London School of Economics. His book is Happiness: Lessons from a New Science, published in Britain by Allen Lane.

Why on earth could so many of us – particularly those on the top tax rate – be working too hard and neglecting our leisure? At base, because our evolutionary make-up makes us highly rivalrous towards other people, to be always comparing ourselves with others and seeking higher status.

Layard quotes other researchers’ studies of vervet monkeys. The researchers manipulated the status of a male monkey by moving him from one group of monkeys to another. In each situation they measured the monkey’s level of serotonin, a neuro-transmitter connected with feeling good. “The finding was striking,” Layard says, “the higher the monkey’s position in the hierarchy, the better the monkey feels.

“When a monkey beats off his rivals, he not only gets more mates and more bananas, he also gets a direct reward: being top makes him feel great. This is a powerful motivator.”

We need to keep taxes high to discourage us from working so hard and neglecting leisure.

Social standing has a big effect on physical health. When monkeys are put in different groups so that their rank changes, their coronary arteries clog up more slowly the higher their rank.

Not convinced this has any implications for humans? Well, in a famous study of British civil servants, those of higher rank secreted lower average levels of stress-related cortisol – one reason people in the higher grades lived on average 41/2 years longer than those in lower grades.

Still not convinced we’re obsessed by getting ahead of the Joneses? Consider this experiment where students at Harvard were asked to choose between living in two imaginary worlds. In World One, you get $50,000 a year while other people average $25,000. In World Two, you get $100,000 a year, while others average $250,000.

The majority of respondents preferred the first world. They were happy to be poorer in absolute terms, provided their RELATIVE position improved.

All this suggests that a major motivation for people in working so hard is to gain higher status directly from their position in their organisation or from the amount of money they earn and the homes, cars and other status symbols they are able to buy with that money.

Trouble is, what may make sense for the individual doesn’t make sense for society. Status-seeking is a zero-sum game. I can advance myself in the pecking order only at the expense of those I pass. My gain is cancelled out by their loss.

Thus all the effort we expend trying to get ahead of the Joneses, or at least keep up with them, is like a perpetual arms race, which is socially wasteful. We’d be better off if we could somehow call a truce.

Layard says our preoccupation with status is heightened by the fact that the modern capitalist economy has “conquered scarcity”. Our basic needs for food, clothing and shelter have long ago been more than satisfied.

And yet our incomes keep growing in real terms year after year. What are we to do with the extra money? I believe the richer we get, the more of our income we devote to our pursuit of status, to buying “positional goods” – goods that, as well as doing whatever they are supposed to do, also demonstrate our position in the pecking order: flash homes in good suburbs, late-model European cars, kids attending private schools and everyone dressed in the most fashionable way.

I strongly suspect that, whether we quite realise it or not, our underlying motive in urging governments to cut our taxes is to be left with more disposable income to spend on conspicuous consumption. We would like to strike another blow in the status race – even though, as a group, it would get us nowhere.

Those students at Harvard were offered another pair of alternative worlds: a world where you have two weeks’ holiday while others have one week, or a world where you have four weeks’ holiday and others have eight.

This time, only 20 per cent of students chose the first world. Most preferred longer holidays to shorter holidays that, even so, were twice what others were getting.

“So most people are not rivalrous about their leisure,” Layard says. “But they ARE rivalrous about income, and that rivalry is self-defeating. There is thus a tendency to sacrifice too much leisure in order to increase income.”

Taxes are clearly performing some useful function beyond that of raising money to pay for public spending, he concludes. “They are holding us back from an even more fevered way of life.”

Ross Gittins is an Age writer.

Have you ever met a self-help junkie? A self-help junkie is someone who reads self-help books voraciously, attends seminars as much as his/her budget will allow, and is fluent in self-help lingo; however, when you look at this person’s life objectively, s/he has very little to show for this investment beyond a well-stocked bookshelf and a collection of motivational posters.

Perhaps you know such a person all too well.

For a self-help junkie, the pursuit of personal development becomes a means of escape, at best a form of procrastination and at worst a serious addiction. The junkie avoids dealing with the real problems of his/her life in order to embrace the delusional fantasy that reading books and going to seminars is some form of progress or therapy, an end unto itself. But despite the emotional rollercoaster this approach can create, for the most part those positive changes never materialize. Year after year the self-help junkie devours volumes of material while the practical application of such knowledge remains just beyond the horizon. Their health, finances, relationship status, and level of awareness are largely unchanged, even after years of presumed life-altering breakthroughs. This enormous time investment in self-help is nothing but mental masturbation.

Much like drug addicts, self-help junkies feed their addiction by digesting more and more feel-good material. They get sucked into the emotional high that comes from reading enthusiastic drivel, but those unresolved feelings of emptiness and self-doubt always return in the end. For a brief time these devotees may maintain the illusion of action, such as by doing introspective exercises, taking quizzes, making journal entries, and reciting daily affirmations. But when they’re just about to begin the real action phase — the kind that produces measurable results — somehow they always get sidetracked, and the end result is nothing but a rah-rah fizzle. Reality begins to intervene, the desire to escape into the warm embrace of those positive feelings arises once again, and the cycle continues… often for years.

Unfortunately, there are many self-help books that readily feed this addiction, books that replace actionable, workable ideas with meaningless happy talk, vapid platitudes, and inflated stories of personal triumph. Such books invariably promise ”fast and easy” results. But the most substantial prose in such books is frequently devoted to upselling you on an expensive seminar, where the committed junkies can get an ever bigger fix, eagerly emptying their wallets in exchange for an ephemeral smile.

Real growth or delusional addiction?

Suggesting that the pursuit of personal growth is bad because of the existence of self-help junkies is like saying that food is bad because of the existence of junk food addicts. So-called “foodies” value the taste and satiety of food more than its nutritional value; whether the food is healthy and nutritious is of little concern as long as it tastes good and feels good in the tummy. Similarly, self-help junkies become fixated on the emotional high associated with personal growth; whether or not any real growth actually occurs is less important as long as the experience feels good for a while.

As human beings we have little choice but to experience growth during our lives. Our own bodies will force that upon us, as will our experiences and relationships. Growth is unavoidable, and the intelligent pursuit of new growth experiences can do a lot of good for us, producing measurable results. But we need to be sure those positive, measurable results are indeed materializing. If we are truly growing, we’d better have something to show for it.

What about intangible results? Surely there are intangible forms of growth like improved knowledge of self, a higher level of consciousness, inner peace, greater emotional awareness, and so on. Self-help junkies, however, frequently mislabel their lack of real progress as intangible, internal, or psychological growth. If that inner growth is really present, one’s external reality will surely reflect it. For example, if you’ve truly adopted an “abundance mindset,” you’re going to experience some very measurable financial abundance. Perhaps you’ll see your income and/or your net worth increasing year after year. Or the numbers in your bank account will include more digits than they used to. Maybe you opt for the simple life and live off the land without needing to worry about money at all. How this mindset actually manifests depends on your values and beliefs, but it must manifest in some external form if the inner changes have actually occurred. If your external reality is that you’re sinking deeper into debt, your “mindset of abundance” is nothing but a fantasy.

If you’re really growing internally, your life will reveal clear evidence of positive change. It may not be across-the-board change in every single area of your life, and it may not qualify as a massive breakthrough, but it will be present in some form, and it will be observable. I’d go so far as to suggest that if you can’t measure your growth in a tangible, objective manner, it’s a virtual certainty you’re wallowing in self-delusion. Even subjective growth will manifest objectively, and those manifestations can be measured. If there is no perceivable outer change, then no inner change has occurred.

Let me give you some examples of measurable personal growth across different areas of life. This list is far from comprehensive, and it’s unavoidably biased in its values, but it should serve to demonstrate some of the various ways that genuine personal growth can produce observable external output. So please consider it in that respect rather than nitpicking the finer details.

Physical growth

• running/biking/swimming at faster speeds
• running/biking/swimming for longer distances
• earning new belt ranks in martial arts (white belt, yellow belt, …, black belt)
• improving your stats in a sport (scoring, assists, batting average, completed passes, etc)
• losing weight or reducing your body fat %
• gaining muscle mass
• losing inches from your waist
• dropping clothing sizes
• being able to lift heavier weights and/or do more sets or reps
• before and after photographs that show clear physical improvement
• increased flexibility
• lower resting pulse
• lower blood pressure and better results from other medical metrics
• clearer skin and less frequent acne
• pain reduction or elimination
• improved structural alignment (shoulders over hips over knees over ankles)
• achieving new personal bests for physical challenges or fitness tests
• hearing more people say, “You look great”
• going illness-free for longer periods of time
• taking fewer annual sick days
• making significant dietary alterations (organic, sugar-free, vegetarian, vegan, raw, etc)
• sleeping fewer hours while still feeling rested
• increasing your typing speed
• upgrading your wardrobe
• acquiring new physical skills (juggling, skiing, dancing, gardening, massage, etc)
• quitting smoking and drinking

Mental growth

• increasing your reading speed and/or comprehension
• building your vocabulary
• acquiring new problem-solving techniques (mind-mapping, Fourier transforms, etc)
• mastering a new field of knowledge
• learning lucid dreaming
• creating a web site
• writing a book
• composing a song
• learning a musical instrument
• learning a foreign language
• increasing accuracy of intuition
• getting a college degree
• developing a faster and more accurate memory
• learning speed arithmetic
• learning new software
• learning chess
• learning computer programming
• devising a new software algorithm
• patenting an invention

Financial growth

• increasing your income
• increasing net worth
• reducing your debt
• acquiring new assets
• generating passive or portfolio income
• retiring financially independent
• donating to charity
• learning basic accounting
• creating an estate plan
• improving your portfolio’s performance
• closing lucrative deals
• buying a new house
• investing in real estate
• traveling the world
• setting up a college fund for your children
• becoming a millionaire
• setting a new sales record
• improving your negotiation skills

Social growth

• meeting new people
• making new friends
• starting a club
• getting a girlfriend or boyfriend
• getting married
• having children and/or grandchildren
• recovering from the loss of a loved one
• performing in a local play
• doing volunteer work
• losing your virginity
• moving in with someone
• building a Rolodex
• giving and getting more hugs
• enjoying new social experiences
• going on more dates
• being invited to lunch, dinner, or parties
• hearing your partner say “I’m happy” more often
• forming a mastermind group
• mentoring someone

Career and business growth

• landing your dream job
• starting your own business
• being promoted
• getting a raise
• getting a bigger bonus
• receiving an award
• getting a positive performance evaluation
• being assigned to work on the best projects
• becoming a manager
• securing a bigger budget for your dept
• hiring employees
• serving more customers
• selling your business
• training your successor
• publishing your work

Spiritual growth

• learning to meditate
• learning new forms of meditation
• experiencing other spiritual traditions and belief systems
• demonstrating new psychic talents
• practicing channeling
• forming a development circle
• becoming a monk
• discovering and committing to your life purpose
• receiving thanks for your contribution
• manifesting your desires more rapidly (less time between original intention and final manifestation)
• learning astral projection
• overcoming and facing your greatest fears

Personal effectiveness growth

• maintaining a clutter-free, well-organized home and office
• paying all bills on time with nary a late fee
• being punctual for appointments
• securing a reliable vehicle
• having a clear list of goals and written plans to achieve them
• having a functional time management system in place
• routinely achieving an empty email inbox
• overcoming procrastination

I’m not suggesting that any of the above should become the primary focus of your existence or that any of these specific items must be important to you as an individual. My point is that if you’re genuinely pursuing personal growth and not falling into the trap of self-help delusion, you should be able to produce a similar list for your own life. If your growth pursuits are effective, I guarantee they’re going to produce tangible, measurable results. I’d be wary of anyone who claims his/her self-help results are purely internal and have no outward manifestations. If those inner breakthroughs are genuine, they must eventually manifest changes in the physical world.

The purpose of self-help isn’t to endure crappy results and learn to feel good about them. It’s to enter the positive spiral where your thoughts, feelings, actions, and results are all aligned in the direction of your goals AND this alignment is getting better and better and better. The better this alignment, the more efficient you become at setting and achieving meaningful goals, the achievement of which can benefit a lot more people than just yourself.

As long as your ultimate focus is on results, the pursuit of personal growth is one of the best things you can do to help others because it can dramatically increase your capacity to contribute. A small dietary change can add many productive years to your life, a moment of inspiration can drive you to start a new business that may serve thousands of customers, and a confidence boost can help you find your soulmate. When one of us experiences true growth, we all benefit from it.

It’s great to feel good about your life, but if those feelings are only an escape, you’re merely deluding yourself instead of making real progress. Real progress in the realm of thought will eventually manifest in physical form, and that physical form involves getting your ass in motion.

As you pursue your own unique path of growth, be guided by grounded intelligence. Steer clear of the self-help junkies as well as the jaded cynics. Opt instead for the path of conscious optimization.

My favorite tool for turning ideas into action is still the 30-day trial. And if you need some ideas on where to get started on your own path of growth, be sure to read Where to Begin Your Path of Personal Growth.

A powerful personal growth tool is the 30-day trial. This is a concept I borrowed from the shareware industry, where you can download a trial version of a piece of software and try it out risk-free for 30 days before you’re required to buy the full version. It’s also a great way to develop new habits, and best of all, it’s brain-dead simple.

Let’s say you want to start a new habit like an exercise program or quit a bad habit like sucking on cancer sticks. We all know that getting started and sticking with the new habit for a few weeks is the hard part. Once you’ve overcome inertia, it’s much easier to keep going.

Yet we often psyche ourselves out of getting started by mentally thinking about the change as something permanent — before we’ve even begun. It seems too overwhelming to think about making a big change and sticking with it every day for the rest of your life when you’re still habituated to doing the opposite. The more you think about the change as something permanent, the more you stay put.

But what if you thought about making the change only temporarily — say for 30 days — and then you’re free to go back to your old habits? That doesn’t seem so hard anymore. Exercise daily for just 30 days, then quit. Maintain a neatly organized desk for 30 days, then slack off. Read for an hour a day for 30 days, then go back to watching TV.

Could you do it? It still requires a bit of discipline and commitment, but not nearly so much as making a permanent change. Any perceived deprivation is only temporary. You can count down the days to freedom. And for at least 30 days, you’ll gain some benefit. It’s not so bad. You can handle it. It’s only one month out of your life.

Now if you actually complete a 30-day trial, what’s going to happen? First, you’ll go far enough to establish it as a habit, and it will be easier to maintain than it was to begin it. Secondly, you’ll break the addiction of your old habit during this time. Thirdly, you’ll have 30 days of success behind you, which will give you greater confidence that you can continue. And fourthly, you’ll gain 30 days worth of results, which will give you practical feedback on what you can expect if you continue, putting you in a better place to make informed long-term decisions.

Therefore, once you hit the end of the 30-day trial, your ability to make the habit permanent is vastly increased. But even if you aren’t ready to make it permanent, you can opt to extend your trial period to 60 or 90 days. The longer you go with the trial period, the easier it will be to lock in the new habit for life.

Another benefit of this approach is that you can use it to test new habits where you really aren’t sure if you’d even want to continue for life. Maybe you’d like to try a new diet, but you don’t know if you’d find it too restrictive. In that case, do a 30-day trial and then re-evaluate. There’s no shame in stopping if you know the new habit doesn’t suit you. It’s like trying a piece of shareware for 30 days and then uninstalling it if it doesn’t suit your needs. No harm, no foul.

Here are some examples from my own life where I used 30-day trials to establish new habits:

1) In the Summer of 1993, I wanted to try being vegetarian. I had no interest in making this a lifelong change, but I’d read a lot about the health benefits of vegetarianism, so I committed to it for 30 days just for the experience. I was already exercising regularly, seemed in decent health, and was not overweight (6′0″, 155 lbs), but my typical college diet included a lot of In-N-Out burgers. Going lacto-ovo vegetarian for 30 days was a lot easier than I expected — I can’t say it was hard at all, and I never felt deprived. Within a week I noticed an increase in my energy and concentration, and I felt more clear-headed. At the end of the 30 days, it was a no-brainer to stick with it. This change looked a lot harder than it really was.

2) In January 1997, I decided to try going from vegetarian to vegan. While lacto-ovo vegetarians can eat eggs and dairy, vegans don’t eat anything that comes from an animal. I was developing an interest in going vegan for life, but I didn’t think I could do it. How could I give up veggie-cheese omelettes? The diet seemed too restrictive to me — even fanatically so. But I was intensely curious to know what it was actually like. So once again I did a 30-day trial. At the time I figured I’d make it through the trial, but I honestly didn’t expect to continue beyond that. Well, I lost seven pounds in the first week, mostly from going to the bathroom as all the accumulated dairy mucus was cleansed from my bowels (now I know why cows need four stomachs to properly digest this stuff). I felt lousy the first couple days but then my energy surged. I also felt more clear-headed than ever, as if a “fog of brain” had been lifted; it felt like my brain had gotten a CPU and a RAM upgrade. However, the biggest change I noticed was in my endurance. I was living in Marina del Rey at the time and used to run along the beach near the Santa Monica Pier, and I noticed I wasn’t as tired after my usual 3-mile runs, so I started increasing them to 5 miles, 10 miles, and then eventually a marathon a few years later. In Tae Kwon Do, the extra endurance really gave a boost to my sparring skills as well. The accumulated benefits were so great that the foods I was giving up just didn’t seem so appealing anymore. So once again it was a no-brainer to continue after the first 30 days, and I’m still vegan today. What I didn’t expect was that after so long on this diet, the old animal product foods I used to eat just don’t seem like food anymore, so there’s no feeling of deprivation.

3) Also in 1997, I decided I wanted to exercise every single day for a year. That was my 1997 New Year’s resolution. My criteria was that I would exercise aerobically at least 25 minutes every day, and I wouldn’t count Tae Kwon Do classes which I was taking 2-3 days per week. Coupled with my dietary changes, I wanted to push my fitness to a new level. I didn’t want to miss a single day, not even for sick days. But thinking about exercising 365 days in a row was daunting, so I mentally began with a 30-day trial. That wasn’t so bad. After a while every day that passed set a new record: 8 days in a row… 10 days… 15 days…. It became harder to quit. After 30 days in a row, how could I not do 31 and set a new personal record? And can you imagine giving up after 250 days? No way. After the initial month to establish the habit, the rest of the year took care of itself. I remember going to a seminar that year and getting home well after midnight. I had a cold and was really tired, yet I still went out running at 2am in the rain. Some people might call that foolish, but I was so determined to reach my goal that I wasn’t going to let fatigue or illness stop me. I succeeded and kept it up for the whole year without ever missing a day. In fact, I kept going for a few more weeks into 1998 before I finally opted to stop, which was a tough decision. I wanted to do this for one year, knowing it would become a powerful reference experience, and it certainly became such.

4) More diet stuff…. After being vegan for a number of years, I opted to try other variations of the vegan diet. I did 30-day trials both with the macrobiotic diet and with the raw foods diet. Those were interesting and gave me new insights, but I decided not to continue with either of them. I felt no different eating macrobiotically than I did otherwise. And in the case of the raw diet, while I did notice a significant energy boost, I found the diet too labor intensive — I was spending a lot of time preparing meals and shopping frequently. Sure you can just eat raw fruits and veggies, but to make interesting raw meals, there can be a lot of labor involved. If I had my own chef, I’d probably follow the raw diet though because I think the benefits would be worth it. I did a second trial of the raw diet for 45 days, but again my conclusion was the same. If I was ever diagnosed with a serious disease like cancer, I’d immediately switch to an all raw, living foods diet, since I believe it to be the absolute best diet for optimal health. I’ve never felt more energetic in my life than when I ate a raw diet. But I had a hard time making it practical for me. Even so, I managed to integrate some new macrobiotic foods and raw foods into my diet after these trials. There are two all-raw restaurants here in Vegas, and I’ve enjoyed eating at them because then someone else does all the labor. So these 30-day trials were still successful in that they produced new insights, although in both cases I intentionally declined to continue with the new habit. One of the reasons a full 30-day trial is so important with new diets is that the first week or two will often be spent detoxing and overcoming cravings, so it isn’t until the third or fourth week that you begin to get a clear picture. I feel that if you haven’t tried a diet for at least 30 days, you simply don’t understand it. Every diet feels different on the inside than it appears from the outside.

This 30-day method seems to work best for daily habits. I’ve had no luck using it when trying to start a habit that only occurs 3-4 days per week. However, it can work well if you apply it daily for the first 30 days and then cut back thereafter. This is what I’d do when starting a new exercise program, for example. Daily habits are much easier to establish.

Here are some other ideas for applying 30-day trials:

• Give up TV. Tape all your favorite shows and save them until the end of the trial. My whole family did this once, and it was very enlightening.
• Give up online forums, especially if you feel you’re becoming forum addicted. This will help break the addiction and give you a clearer sense of how participation actually benefits you (if at all). You can always catch up at the end of 30 days.
• Shower/bathe/shave every day. I know YOU don’t need this one, so please pass it along to someone who does.
• Meet someone new every day. Start up a conversation with a stranger.
• Go out every evening. Go somewhere different each time, and do something fun — this will be a memorable month.
• Spend 30 minutes cleaning up and organizing your home or office every day. That’s 15 hours total.
• List something new to sell on ebay every day. Purge some of that clutter.
• Ask someone new out on a date every day. Unless your success rate is below 3%, you’ll get at least one new date, maybe even meet your future spouse.
• If you’re already in a relationship, give your partner a massage every day. Or offer to alternate who gives the massage each day, so that’s 15 massages each.
• Give up cigarettes, soda, junk food, coffee, or other unhealthy addictions.
• Become an early riser.
• Write in your journal every day.
• Call a different family member, friend, or business contact every day.
• Make 25 sales calls every day to solicit new business. Professional speaker Mike Ferry did this five days a week for two years, even on days when he was giving seminars. He credits this habit with helping build his business to over $10 million in annual sales. If you make 1300 sales calls a year, you’re going to get some decent business no matter how bad your sales skills are. You can generalize this habit to any kind of marketing work, like building new links to your web site.
• Write a new blog entry every day.
• Read for an hour a day on a subject that interests you.
• Meditate every day.
• Learn a new vocabulary word every day.
• Go for a long walk every day.

Again, don’t think that you need to continue any of these habits beyond 30 days. Think of the benefits you’ll gain from those 30 days alone. You can re-assess after the trial period. You’re certain to grow just from the experience, even if it’s temporary.

The power of this approach lies in its simplicity. Even though doing a certain activity every single day may be less efficient than following a more complicated schedule — weight training is a good example because adequate rest is a key component — you’ll often be more likely to stick with the daily habit. When you commit to doing something every single day without exception, you can’t rationalize or justify missing a day, nor can you promise to make it up later by reshuffling your schedule.

Give trials a try. If you’re ready to commit to one right now, please feel free to post a comment and share your goal for the next 30 days. If there’s enough interest, then perhaps we can do a group postmortem around May 20th to see how it went for everyone. I’ll even do it with you. Mine will be to go running or biking for at least 25 minutes or do a minimum 60-minute hike in the mountains every day for 30 days. The weather here in Vegas has been great lately, so it’s a nice time for me to get back to exercising outdoors.