How do I stop my bad habit of "ploughing too deeply" (i.e. too perfectionist)?

[J Smith]

Hello

I am working at home a lot and I have a problem with the way I am using MLO which is that I keep "ploughing too deeply". i.e. I am spending too long on tasks and being too perfectionist about things. Part of the problem is that I am also not jumping into different Contexts often enough. (In fact I often do not bother to add a context for things that must be done at the computer screen and this may not help)

I rather feel that I should allocate block of time for each context. However I can see no obvious way to put this sort of thing into MLO. 

Do you have any hints / tricks that you use?

e.g. I am toying with using a kitchen timer for this sort of thing... i.e. only allow a certain amount of time in one sitting for each context.

J

[J Smith]

P.S.
To get clear you can add a Start Date and/or a Due Date easily enough for a task, but I don't think you can do anything similar for a Context...

[bird...@gmail.com]

J:

I have this quote on my monitor: 

Patton: “A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed at some indefinite time in the future.”

Eddie

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[J Smith]

Hmmm.... I'm not so sure.

"Now! Now! Now!" sounds more like a recipe for stress than a recipe for success.

[bird...@gmail.com]

Actually, I think the quotes from General George Patton really does touch directly on the issues that you're dealing with. Many times procrastination arises out of the desire to want to get everything perfect.

I myself I'm guilty of that. I refuse to move forward because I worry that I have not thoroughly covered every single base.. But what I have found is that it is often the case that I am just deluding myself. And what stands in the way is simply an uncomfortable feeling That you're missing something.

If you look back and reflect, as you have already done,  you see that your perfectionism is causing you to dwell too long on a particular project.

So the quote from Patton is simply telling us that you reach a certain point where things are in pretty good shape and that it's time to move on to something else. Don't worry, you can always come back to it later on.

Patent is not saying now now now, he is saying proceed if you have a good plan now.

I use an app called forest Which works along the same lines as Pomodoro, except that it has a more compelling approach to punishing you if you get off track.

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[Dwight]

Hi, John.
You should Google "the Pomodoro technique"
-Dwight
Mlo betazoid on Android sgn2

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[J Smith]

Thanks, yes good to remind myself about Pomodoro...

And yes I do use timers a LOT. I use the to set up what I call "do nothing but" time - i.e. focused time, measure by timer were no distractions of ANY sort is allowed. And then 'compulsory' breaks.

However having worked out how many Pomodoros each task is likely to take, according this this video the suggestion is
"set the timetable according to your to dos, to your time or even to the season"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CT70iCaG0Gs [see 1:09 ]

That's all very well but there is no easy way to add up how many Pomodoros will fit into a day. Plus it rather goes against GTD theory which assume priorities are likely to shift around quite a lot within a given day. 

While I'm here I like some of what Tim Ferris says here:
http://fourhourworkweek.com/2007/08/16/the-not-to-do-list-9-habits-to-stop-now/
especially his point 4. "Do not let people ramble"
"...A big part of GTD is GTP — Getting To the Point."

[Stéph]

There are quite a few items on the web about successful people scheduling with their calendars, rather than to-do lists.  That way, you have to complete in the time you've allowed yourself. It also forces people like me not to spread myself to thinly, expecting to get more done in a day than it's possible to do.

Timeful was a really good app for doing this but, sadly has now been sucked into the Google ecosystem, never to reappear as a calendar-independent app.

Stéphane

[John Smith]

> There are quite a few items on the web about successful people
> scheduling with their calendars, rather than to-do lists.

Interesting. However surely one can't put everything into a calendar! After all, a cornerstone of David Allen's GTD philosophy was to write the whole lot down, no?

Nonetheless I guess there may well be merit to putting some items into one's calendar.

Fwiw, I remember be rather envious of a friend - who is one of the most organized people I know - who showed me her paper-based Harvard Planner. There are lots of very powerful, compact reports. I loved the simplicity of the tick lists.

There was one template in particular that had consisted of a simple matrix with Task name along one axis and day of the week along the another axis, and you could just tick the day you were planning to do stuff.  Simples!

And then at a glance you could see your full list of tasks for the week AND the day of the week you were planning to do them. And if you messed up you could move the tick to another day trivially.

I wouldn't know where to start to get MLO to do such a thing.

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[Michael Emerald, CFA]

Hahaha I do almost the exact things you mention because I have the same problem.  So by definition I’m not the person to give advice!

 

But I will share my approach:

1.       I use the review feature to ensure I don’t monkey with task parameters too often.

2.       I do allocate blocks of time to everything: 5m, 10m, 15m, 30m, 1 hour.  (actually more)

3.       I agree that you can’t block time.  I’ve experimented with blocking off time, but

a.       It gets to unwieldy, and

b.      My fav book “Total Workday Control” (from memory), which someone in this group recommended, pointed out that when you block of chunks of time you don’t usually stick to it, and that blocks should be reserved for time that MUST be blocked off.

4.       To limit my big changes, any changes I want to make in the technology (like create a new profile) gets scheduled into my organizer, at a certain rate, so that I’m not constantly tinkering. 

5.       If I want to tinker with a task, I often use flags to label it for later, when I review it.  For example, if I want to do something daily instead of every two days, I’ll use a flag that I’ve called “do more often”.  That way I don’t have to take the time to edit the task, I can just keep moving through my list. (I realize there’s the wisdom that if something takes a minute or less you should do it right now; hence, there’s no perfect answer).

6.       For timers, check out the apps SequiTimer, Meditation Helper, or Talking Clock, and Stopwatch Pro, all for Android.  I use them all from time to time.

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[Michael Emerald, CFA]

Excellent quote!  Thank you.

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