A Fine Balance

For the past week, I’ve been sticking to a rigid work schedule. I decided to try it out because, for the previous six months, I had been working “until I was finished”.

Of course, “finished” never came, the quality of my work decreased as the hours increased, and I was starting to get burnt out. I even started to fantasize about going to a beach.

The main problem was not the number of hours, but with so much time allocated to work, I didn’t have to be selective about which tasks I concentrated on. Without constraints, I wasn’t forced to pick and choose the most important things out from amidst the fluff. The result was that I got a lot of things done, but not the right things.

To combat the situation, I did two things: I stuck to a rigid work schedule and, even more importantly, I kept a work journal. From those two practices came three immediate benefits: increased urgency, much-improved focus and a refined selection of tasks.

Urgency

Reducing the time available immediately increased the pressure to perform. I worked faster because I knew that the clock was ticking and I had to ACT NOW in order to complete what needed to get done before my time ran out.

Focus

I think that 99% of people can’t multi-task and the other 1% lie about it. As a committed mono-tasker, reducing the amount of time I had available each day also forced me to reduce the number of Next Actions that I had on my daily list. Rather than sifting through 200+ actions to decide what’s next, I had to reduce my options to a few of the most important. As a result, my motivation increased and I could stay on task until they were complete.

Refined Selection

The work journal acted as a chaperone for my brain. Knowing that I was keeping track of everything I completed, I easily avoided useless distractions. I didn’t want to log “surfed TED site for 40 minutes” or “hung out watching YouTube”, so I didn’t do it.

Working “X# of hours” has been abused by tens of thousands of time-focused people who think that putting in time is the equivalent of working. This is obviously a repulsive practice, but putting boundaries around your time can be incredibly productive if it’s results-focused.

Just as embracing constraints is the key to great art, I’m starting to think that it is also the key to doing great work.