The Incremental Life

build an extraordinary life one step at a time

Stop Multitasking and Start Multi-Tracking

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multi-tracking

One day last week I had the opportunity to make some interesting observations while on my daily walk. Because it was so cold that day, I decided to shift my walk to late afternoon. By the time I made it to the local track, there was a group of boys playing a game of pick-up football.

What I saw left me shaking my head in a bit of disbelief. Every couple of plays, about half the boys would leave the game and head to a nearby picnic table to check their smartphones. I have no idea what was so important that they felt they had to check their phone every few minutes rather than just enjoy the game, but I have a feeling it was nothing more than periodic Facebook and text message checks.

How sad that this group of boys were so distracted that they couldn’t be present in the moment. Not only were they pulling themselves out of the game to check their phones, but they left their friends standing around to wait over and over throughout the afternoon.

That’s what multitasking is like.

Too often we go through our day completely distracted, telling ourselves that we’re making more efficient use of our time through multitasking. The truth is that we’re just like those boys checking their phones every two minutes. Instead of concentrating on the task at hand, or being fully present in the moment and engaging the people around us, we’re getting less done and fostering shallow relationships in the name of multitasking.

Instead of multitasking, we should be multi-tracking.

You’re busy. I’m busy. We’re all busy! If you told me everything that was on your task list for this week, I bet you’d say there’s more to do than you have time to get it all done. So, you’ll probably convince yourself the best way to go is attempt some multitasking and cover two or three projects at once in the hopes of clearing your list enough to not be overwhelmed and overstressed next week.

Stop the madness.

What is multi-tracking? Multi-tracking is nothing more than looking at your life and choosing to do one thing at a time. It really doesn’t matter what you choose or how you decide to give priority of one thing over another, what’s important is focus and intentionality.

I challenge you to stop multitasking for one week and see if it doesn’t improve both your work and your relationships. How?

  • Multi-tracking allows you to be fully present in the moment. You can work or spend time with someone with complete focus, giving yourself permission to cut out any and all distractions. You’re choosing to be intentional with your time rather than spitting yourself ten different ways in the hopes of getting more done.
  • Multi-tracking can be either time or task-based—whatever works best for you for the particular project to which you’re giving your attention. Instead of trying to multitask through your morning, why not choose the top three things you need to accomplish for the day and give each of them a full hour of attention before lunch? Anything left undone can be given more time in the afternoon, or you can use that time to tackle remaining tasks.
  • Multi-tracking creates margin. You can place specific limits on what you need to accomplish, as well as purposefully make time for other aspects of your life such as family, recreation, volunteerism, and more.
  • Multi-tracking also forces you to be more aware of how and where you waste time. I’m an advocate for taking regular breaks throughout your workday to do non-work things such as checking up with friends on Facebook, checking the news or latest scores—anything non-work-related that interests you and helps clear your mind and relieve stress. The problem with multitasking is that we lie to ourselves and think we can handle doing work while keeping Facebook open while also listening to our favorite sports talk show while talking on the phone with a client… It’s just not possible that any quality work is getting done in that situation.

If you’re not persuaded yet, consider this. You know how studies show that distracted driving (texting, etc.) is just as bad or worse than drunk driving? Recent research has shown that multitasking not only negatively effects attention span and memory recall— not to mention decreasing the quality of your work—but it also lowers IQ and possibly causes permanent brain damage! (Forbes 10/8/14)

Will you take the challenge to give up multitasking for a week and see how well it helps you perform? If so, please come back next week and let us know how it went, and what you learned from the experience.

In the meantime, share what you think about multitasking vs. multi-tracking in the comments.

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Jeff M. Miller (@jmarkmiller)
I’m Jeff M. Miller, and I help ordinary people who are stuck in a rut change their behaviors so they can be extraordinary. I’m an entrepreneur who retired from my full-time job in my early 40s to work from home. I’m a financial counselor, life coach, graphic designer, and passionate believer in helping others improve their lives a little more each day.
http://theincrementallife.com

5 Steps to Align Your Daily To-Do List with Your Goals

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Align Daily To-Do List

How do you know if you’re truly making progress each day toward your goals? Last week, you learned how to turn your goals into an actionable plan, which means you made a plan that is simple, specific, incremental, and effective. Crafted successfully, such a plan has built-in metrics—ways you can measure your forward progress on a regular basis.

But maybe that’s not enough for you. You want more than being able to look backward at the end of the day and see if you’ve done well. You want to be even more intentional about how your day is set up and how you can ensure that what you’re doing fuels your forward momentum.

You need to measure your daily to-do list against your goals and make sure they’re in alignment.

Now before you go scorched earth on your task list, realize that there will always be things to do that don’t directly influence your goals. I’m sure there are responsibilities that come with your job and household that won’t offer forward motion on your personal goals—especially if you work for someone else. What you can be sure of, however, is that you can control the individual parts of your to-do list in such a way that everything you do has at least an indirect effect on reaching your goal.

Here are 5 Steps to Align Your Daily To-Do List with Your Goals

  1. Cut Items First
    Start by looking at your to-do list for the day and determine if there are items that are detrimental to reaching your goals. Unless they’re things you can’t get out of doing—such as work assignments—cross them off the list right away. Keep in mind you’re looking for items that are truly a hindrance to reaching your goals, not simply things you don’t want to do.
  2. Prioritize Your List
    Prioritize the remaining items on your to-do list. I suggest breaking up your to-do list into the following categories:

    • Needs Action Immediately
    • Needs Action Today
    • Needs Action Tomorrow/Later
    • Delegate
  3. Tackle Responsibilities and Necessary Items
    These are things that you have to get done whether or not they move you toward your goal, so you have to make them priority. Be encouraged that all of these items are probably at least indirectly associated with your goals in some way. Consider even onerous tasks assigned by a supervisor as beneficial because they at least provide a paycheck.
  4. Make a Top Three List
    Once you’ve cleaned up necessary tasks and responsibilities, find the top three items that will move you toward your goal today. Circle them and number them #1, #2, and #3. Use the time you’ve got left in the day to work on them in that order.
  5. Do Some Clean-up Work
    By this point in your day there are probably items you’ve avoided or put off because they were low priority—like cleaning the bathroom at home. Spend some time working on some of these tasks. Hopefully they’re quick ones. After you’ve done all you can for the day, see what needs to be moved to tomorrow’s list and begin anew.

Note: If you’re employed and on company time, don’t work through your personal to-dos at work unless you’re on break or lunch time. Don’t steal from your employer, they’re paying you for your time.

In truth, what we’re setting out to do here is to begin the process of evaluating your life in general to see if the actions and choices you take each day align with who you want to become. In everything you do, keep your core values at the forefront of your mind and begin cutting out those things that don’t measure up.

How do you prioritize your to-do list? How do you make daily decision to make sure you’re always gaining forward momentum toward your goals? Please share in the comments.

Align-To-Do-List

Jeff M. Miller (@jmarkmiller)
I’m Jeff M. Miller, and I help ordinary people who are stuck in a rut change their behaviors so they can be extraordinary. I’m an entrepreneur who retired from my full-time job in my early 40s to work from home. I’m a financial counselor, life coach, graphic designer, and passionate believer in helping others improve their lives a little more each day.
http://theincrementallife.com

Using Wunderkit and the Pomodoro Technique to Get Writing Projects Done

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I’ve recently felt a need to get both my work day and writing day more organized. You know how it is, you let yourself get distracted momentarily, telling yourself you’ll only take a few minutes to check that email, respond to posts on your Facebook wall, Tweet what you just heard on the radio…you get the picture.

I’m a fairly organized person, and already used a task list to track my daily and weekly tasks. Even so, I found my systems wanting and decided to look for something to give my the extra discipline I felt I needed. To be honest, I’m still experimenting with this method, and the last week has more external interruptions than usual, but so far I love the increased amount of work I’ve been able to accomplish.

My first step was to transfer my existing task list into Wunderkit, and then expand it from there. Before my task list was fairly general in nature. I used a combination of labels in my email inbox and sticky notes stuck to my iMac to keep track of the daily minutia.

I still use the email labels, but each of them become an item in the task list on Wunderkit. Let me back up a little and give a general explanation about Wunderkit itself.

It’s not my purpose to review the software for you, but I highly encourage you to give it a try. Wunderkit is really meant to be a group workspace, and I may use it that way in the future with my beta readers or with coworkers, but for now I’m still feeling my way through.

Wunderkit allows you to create multiple workspaces. You can do this via their website, via a computer-based application, or their smartphone app. You can make these workspaces private—as all mine are for now—or you can invite others to join your workspace, giving them access to your task list and notes. You can also create public workspaces which anyone can join.

Below, you see the task list from my work workspace. My personal method is to label each task in all caps at the beginning, prioritizing when the task needs to be done. Like any task list, when you’ve complete the task, you check it off and it gets moved to the Recently Done section of your workspace.

In this next image you see my task list from my writing workspace. Rather than use the list to detail when tasks need to be done, I label them by type (i.e. blog post), or show what stage of completion a writing project is currently in. I typically jump from project to project as I write, so I don’t prioritize what I’m going to write or when I’m going to write it. I have found that being able to see the project listed in front of me, and what stage they’re in, helps me keep from neglecting any of them.

Now, the next step in my new organization plan involves the Pomodoro Technique. The easiest way to explain the technique is to quote the website.

  1. Choose a task to be accomplished
  2. Set the Pomodoro to 25 minutes (the Pomodoro is the timer)
  3. Work on the task until the Pomodoro rings, then put a check on your sheet of paper
  4. Take a short break (5 minutes is OK)
  5. Every 4 Pomodoros take a longer break

So, whether at work or at home plying my writing, I choose a task and spend the requisite time on it. Admittedly some of my tasks don’t take 25 minutes to accomplish, so I might group some of them together.

For my timer, I’m using the free version of the PomodoroApp, and may think about purchasing it in the future.

Up to this point the system is working beautifully, keeping me on task for short bursts and allowing breaks when I need them. I’ll post an update in the future to report on how it’s going.

Jeff M. Miller (@jmarkmiller)
I’m Jeff M. Miller, and I help ordinary people who are stuck in a rut change their behaviors so they can be extraordinary. I’m an entrepreneur who retired from my full-time job in my early 40s to work from home. I’m a financial counselor, life coach, graphic designer, and passionate believer in helping others improve their lives a little more each day.
http://theincrementallife.com