Tools for Thought

Realizing the life we want to live requires action. Discerning that life requires perspective. Action usually requires at least some loss of perspective. It’s hard to drive while reading the map. In a society rich with information, entertainment and commodities, perspective demands that from time to time we enter the devil’s workshop of idleness. An ethic of constant activity is like a car without breaks.

The most insidious problem with time management is that it views every moment in terms of its opportunity cost. Coulds become shoulds. Two hours spent reading a book could be better spent prospecting for clients. The time I spend writing this post could be better spent toward my freelance writing. Since there are infinitely more things that we could do than what we can do, looking for lost opportunities behind every choice we make is gratuitous. Making a decision work is more important than making the right decision.

Technology has transformed work from a place that we go to into an activity that’s constantly available. But the ability to work anytime does not confer the ability to work all the time. There’s a limit to how long we can work with sustained, meaningful focus. Beyond that critical threshold, productivity diffuses into busyness.

It’s only recently that we’ve come to understand that ending work takes as much discipline as beginning it. There’s no elixir for attaining that discipline, only an act of will.

Decide before starting a high-focus task how long you’re going to spend on it. Until recently, writing was consuming all of my discretionary time. Since writing generally comes easy to me, I realized that beyond a certain point, it was a crutch activity that was keeping me from new experiences, not to mention other projects that didn’t involve typing.

So I set a rule for myself: spend no more than eight hours a day writing — four hours freelance writing, and four hours blogging. It’s still tempting to spend more time on a writing project, especially when I’m very close to finishing. But simply having momentum on a task is not enough reason to continue it if it means letting other needs and interests atrophy.

Clearly envision and define the successful outcome. Without an explicit image of what a completed project looks like, or at least a quantitative benchmark, the quality of the outcome we pursue will always be relative to our existing results. Since our aspirations exceed our efforts, chasing a shifting goalpost is a fool’s errand. What constitutes “done”? What is the practical standard that allows you to let the project go and move on to new challenges?

Take more breaks. Taking breaks means disengaging, not task switching. Breaks mean not checking email, watching TV, catching up on RSS feeds. The object is to liberate attention, not reroute it. A break can entail sitting back in a chair for two minutes, meditating for 10 minutes or taking a nap for 20 minutes.

Just as we fool bosses into looking busy by being in visible motion, we fool ourselves into feeling idle by not being in visible motion; so TV and the internet allow us to simulate idleness while idling. We need to rest mentally and emotionally, not just physically, and it bears repeating that this is a discipline — something we have to train ourselves to do after years spent working under supervision.

Get feedback from end users. Managers have a vested interest in keeping employees working for work’s sake, if only to appear appropriately managerial. But clients, audiences and consumers tend to know when enough is enough. They signal their satisfaction by either silence (good work taken for granted) or praise (great work). As a group they’re more objective than our (real or internalized) bosses.

If you expect a certain volume of output from yourself, but no one else is asking for it, try producing less quantity and channel your efforts into higher quality. Decreased activity often translates to the increased perspective you need to judge your efforts more objectively.