Process: Managing varying energy levels

[Lisa Stroyan]

A long time ago, I read the book, "Time Management from the Inside Out" by Julia Morgenstern. She talks about matching your [mental] energy levels to your tasks. For example, if you have your highest energy first thing in the morning, and you automatically check email (which is not usually a very high energy requiring task), then in a sense you waste some of that time. For this discussion I almost think of energy as "willpower" or mental capacity.

So, the first question is, does anyone have an MLO structure that accounts for how much willpower the task requires? Do you use the effort field, and if so what do you do with it? What happens when you forget to set it?

The problem I've been encountering is that my mental energy levels have become unpredictable. It puts me in a loop, where I get overwhelmed by my task list, and because of that I don't even accomplish basic tasks that *are* achievable during that time. So, my second question is how do you keep yourself focused on using MLO when you get overwhelmed? As I've mentioned before, my most effective technique is to tweak my processes, which is why am writing this :-)

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Lisa

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Lisa Stroyan, mailto: lstr...@gmail.com

[Elizabeth Lindsay]

Hi Lisa,

I have debated about using the Effort field.  The reason I say debated, is that I've not fully incorporated it into my process.  Like you, I view it as willpower or mental / physical capacity.  I include physical, because some tasks on my list will mean burning a lot of energy and probably getting sweaty.  At one time, I had a view that showed items only of a certain effort level.  The reason I am not doing that now is that I found I accidentally overwhelmed myself with to many views into my tasks.  My current method is following GTD and using context first.  I do have estimated min and max times, which is my next way to cull out tasks.  My next step is to decide if I have the energy for any of the tasks that match my context and time.  Lastly, I have given myself permission to not work on something so long as I'm aware I'm not working on it.  I hope this helps.

Elizabeth

[Elizabeth Lindsay]

Forgot one thing I wanted to add.  I've recently changed my contexts such that items that I know I will not be able to devote any energy to it in the next couple of months to "@Someday".  This context is hidden in most views.  This has personally helped me stop feeling overwhelmed.

[Lisa Stroyan]

Thanks, it sounds like we have gone through some similar thought processes here. Can I ask, do you have any trick to design your contexts such that they work for you? I find when I've tried having GTD-style contexts, too many things are "available" - the tools I need (phone, computer, home) are with me so much of the time that it really doesn't limit my task list.

I'm thinking about considering flags again but they don't work on Android, so far anyway.

On Sun, Aug 11, 2013 at 11:31 AM, Elizabeth Lindsay <techno...@gmail.com> wrote:

Forgot one thing I wanted to add.  I've recently changed my contexts such that items that I know I will not be able to devote any energy to it in the next couple of months to "@Someday".  This context is hidden in most views.  This has personally helped me stop feeling overwhelmed.

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Lisa

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Lisa Stroyan, mailto: lstr...@gmail.com

[Stéph]

Personally, I try to use as few of the fields in MLO as possible, otherwise I get overwhelmed by maintaining and editing my MLO task list, rather than getting on and doing the tasks.  For that reason, I avoid the effort and time required fields.

Regards,

Stéphane

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Lisa

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Lisa Stroyan, mailto: ...@gmail.com

[TT]

As regards Lisa's original point, books by Mark Forster address exactly the problem of having too many items on the ToDo list and becoming overwhelmed to the point of doing nothing - see his first book “Get Everything Done and Still Have Time to Play” and a later book “Get Everything Done and Still Have Time to Play”, which has a system for tackling the problem of ToDo lists growing ever longer. (I should say though that I have still not yet fully adapted his systems, which many people find helpful, to MLO!)  In MLO I do star items to indicate current items to address and then sort their order in the 'Active Starred' view to give a current/today list of items. I leave the rest of the tasks unstarred but regularly review them.

I agree with Elizabeth and Steph that it is wise to try to limit how many MOL fields one complete and I too do not complete the effort fields. I have however found putting in a max time (estimated quite crudely as 15 mins / 1hour / 4 hours / 8 hours / 'days'  helps sort out long and short tasks and I have created a view which sorts active tasks in ascending order of time, which helps identify some 'quick hit' items which help me get going sometimes!

On having the energy to deal with tasks, this can be restated as the willpower to do the things one has set for oneself and in this context I am currently reading two interesting books:"Maximum Willpower" by Kelly McGonigal and "Willpower: Rediscovering Our Greatest Strength" by Roy F. Baumeister and John Tierney - you might be interested to see descriptions of them on Amazon.

I hope this is useful - it's my first post in the MLO Groups.

TT

[Lisa Stroyan]

TT - Welcome to the forum and thank you for your thoughts! I appreciate the book suggestions, I'm forwarding your message to my task list through the cloud :)

I'm not sure I agree that energy and willpower are the same, at least in how I handle them. I've found that pushing through some arduous tasks at certain times of day when my brain is not functioning well, is very inefficient even when I do work up the willpower. Maybe instead of energy I should use the term "brain fog" or something. And yes, too many fields gets arduous in itself. But I like the idea of filtering on max time, I'll have to think about that. 

Keep posting! It's great to have fresh voices here.

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