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In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”   Dwight Eisenhower

This series of posts is designed to take the traditional time management system, best exemplified by Brian Tracy’s system in his books “Goals” and “Eat That Frog”, and to go to the next level by developing a more “agile” time management system that can cope with the fact that your workplace, your home life, and everything in between is in a constant state of flux.   You need a system that is robust enough to withstand the changes that modern life can throw at you.   David Allen’s organizational and time management system as described in his book “Getting Things Done” is a great example of such an agile system.

His core concept of the book is that you need to develop a system to manage your workflow with the following five stages.

1. Collect pieces of information that commands your attention
2. Process what these mean and decide what action to take about them.
3. Organize the results efficiently.
4. Review your options
5. Decide what to do

The last post described how to improve your information review system, the fourth stage of his system as outlined above.  This post covers the last step of his organization system, that of improving your information decision-making system.

1.   The Information Processing Workflow Diagram

The workflow diagram below is a a presentation of the five stages of managing your workflow.   Please refer to it in the following discussion.

2.  Summary of Previous Four Stages

First of all, the information collection system collects all the information in a series of collection buckets or inboxes, as seen in the top of the flowchart.    Then in the information processing system you place them in one of eight collection bins, depending on the answer to the questions “Is it Actionable?” and “What’s the Next Action?”.     These eight bins comprise the information organization system  which you review at least once a week, and then once a month, in the information review system.

3.  Information Decision-Making System

So what does one’s typical day look like for an organization system based on the model in Getting Things Done?   I have three in-boxes, my personal e-mail, my work e-mail, and my regular personal mail (that comes in the post).   Since I work from home, I don’t have a physical regular mail for work, but you probably do if you work in an office.

My first half hour is spent on taking what is in the electronic in-boxes and sorting them into the appropriate collection bins.   Then comes the decision-making process. This has three components.

a.  Doing Work as It Shows Up

If there were action items that can be done in 2 minutes or less, then I do them right there and then.

b.  Pre-Defined Work

If there were action items that can be done that day, they were put in the “Next Action” or “Action Items” list.   Of course, items that were put previously on the list and were not yet completed before that particular day are still on the list, so David Allen refers to this as the “Pre-Defined Work” category.    These are items that are defined in the sense of being single-action items.

c.  Defining Your Work

If there is an action item which requires multiple steps, then this is by definition a project and will require you to create at least a project plan (a decomposition of the goal of the project into tasks and activities) and possibly a project schedule.  So the process of defining your project work is also important.

These three categories will essentially define your work day.   The reason why I call this system an agile organization system because it is robust.   If you get a phone call asking you to do something immediately, well then you switch to category a above.   When you are done then you go to your b list of action items or you work on your c list of project items.  You can go with the flow and, if you are interrupted, you always know where to pick up where you left off.

The rest of the David Allen book is that of refining the techniques in each five of the stages.   You can buy the book and start improving your system but you must implement the system in order to be able to figure out how to shape it to the rhythm of your own life.

Organization is not a spectator sport–like a garden, you have to dig in and get your hands dirty to plant seeds, water them and nurture them.   Don’t worry, it’s worth the sweat and toil when you see what beautiful things start coming up out of the ground!

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“In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”   Dwight Eisenhower

This series of posts is designed to take the traditional time management system, best exemplified by Brian Tracy’s system in his books “Goals” and “Eat That Frog”, and to go to the next level by developing a more “agile” time management system that can cope with the fact that your workplace, your home life, and everything in between is in a constant state of flux.   You need a system that is robust enough to withstand the changes that modern life can throw at you.   David Allen’s organizational and time management system as described in his book “Getting Things Done” is a great example of such an agile system.

His core concept of the book is that you need to develop a system to manage your workflow with the following five stages.

1. Collect pieces of information that commands your attention
2. Process what these mean and decide what action to take about them.
3. Organize the results efficiently.
4. Review your options
5. Decide what to do

The last post described how to improve your information processing system, the second stage of his system as outlined above.  This post covers the next step of his organization system, that of improving your information review system.

1.   The Information Processing Workflow Diagram

The workflow diagram below is a a presentation of the five stages of managing your workflow.   Please refer to it in the following discussion.

2.  Periodic Review

Let’s say that from Monday through Friday you go through your Inbox (stage 1), and then you process the information (stage 2) into the eight information bins (stage 3) that are on the outside edge of the flowchart listed above.

Every once a while, and David Allen recommends once a week, you need to review four information bins, in particular, your “Next Action” (or “Action Items” list, depending on what you call it), the “Pending Actions” lists, the Project List, and the Calendar.   Let’s talk about each of these reviews.

a.   “Next Action” (or “Action Items”)

Are the action items from the following week all completed?    Are there any from previous weeks that are still hanging around?   Maybe you should consider delegating some of these to others, or at least enlisting some help from others, if there are.

b.  “Pending Actions”

Are there any items for which you requested information from someone else and you haven’t received it yet?   Now is a good time to fire off a reminder to those people.

c.  “Project List”

Are there any projects for which you have not created a project plan or schedule?   Even just decomposing the project into its component tasks or activities and the deliverables or results of those tasks is enough to proceed.   Of course, if you have done a project plan or schedule, and you see that you are falling behind, just like with the “Next Action” list, you should consider delegating some of those action steps to others, or at least enlisting some help from others to get them done.

d.  Calendar

Are there any pending deadlines, appointments, or meetings that are coming up in the following week for which you are not prepared?   Now is the time to add to your “Next Action” list to make sure those preparations are done before the event!

If you do a periodic review, then David Allen says you can eliminate what many people do, which is the creation of a “Daily To-Do List.”   He says this for the following reasons:

a.   Between the processing and organizing of information you do on a daily basis, and the review which you do on a weekly basis, you can capture everything you need to do.

b.  Creating a daily list would be okay in a static world, but in a fast-moving workplace, if you create a to-do list for the next day, the first half-hour of your workday may contain information in your inbox which obviates that well thought-out plan you spent doing the night before.

c.  Another problem about daily lists is the compunction that you must finish EVERYTHING on that list or you will be guilty.  Again, if other things come up with higher priority and you take care of those instead of all of the items on your to-do list, you will still be able to say that you have done everything you could in the time you had available.

What I do is review my “next action” lists that are divided into categories on a weekly basis, and then I keep my diary for “day-specific” tasks.   If there are no day specific tasks, I just look on my “next action” list, see what needs to be done with greater priority, and start at it.   In reality, I never get my “next action” list completed emptied, because it is always filling up.  However, I do review the date when I enter the items on my “next action” list, and I pay attention to those that have stuck around the longest.   Then I go ahead and delegate them, delete them, or start doing them!

In this way, I can say that the David Allen “Getting Things Done” system is really “agile” meaning that it is robust and can handle any changes that occur on a day-to-day basis.

The next post talks about your information decision system.

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This series of posts is designed to take the traditional time management system, best exemplified by Brian Tracy’s system in his books “Goals” and “Eat That Frog”, and to go to the next level by developing a more “agile” time management system that can cope with the fact that your workplace, your home life, and everything in between is in a constant state of flux.   You need a system that is robust enough to withstand the changes that modern life can throw at you.   David Allen’s organizational and time management system as described in his book “Getting Things Done” is a great example of such an agile system.

His core concept of the book is that you need to develop a system to manage your workflow with the following five stages.

1. Collect pieces of information that commands your attention
2. Process what these mean and decide what action to take about them.
3. Organize the results efficiently.
4. Review your options
5. Decide what to do

The last post described how to improve your information processing system, the second stage of his system as outlined above.  This post covers the next step of his organization system, that of improving your information organization system.

1.   The Information Processing Workflow Diagram

The workflow diagram below is a a presentation of the five stages of managing your workflow.   Please refer to it in the following discussion.

2.  The Eight Information Bins

If you have processed the information from your inbox, as described in the last post, by asking “Is It Actionable?”, then there are three bins for if you have answered “NO”, and five bins for if you have answered “YES”.  Let’s take the first three information bins which correspond to information which is NOT actionable on the day you receive it.

a.  Trash

If is it not something that requires action, and it contains no information of lasting value, you throw it in the trash.

b.  Incubate Tools

If it is not something that requires immediate action (in 2 minutes or less), and does not need to be done on that day, then you may put it in the “Next Action” or “Action Item” list.

c.  Reference Files

If it is not something that requires any action at all, but represents information which may be useful at some later time, then you may put in a reference file.   These file folders should be split into categories; however, you may split some of these folders into subfolders for ease of finding the information you need quickly

Now for the five information bins which correspond to information which is IS actionable on the day you receive it.

d.  Project Lists

For those items which require more than one action step, they are considered projects and need to go in your project list.

e.  Project Plan/Schedule

Each project will need to have a project plan, which lists the activities or tasks to be done, the deliverables or tangible results of those individual tasks (if any), and the date on which those tasks need to be done.   A project plan and/or schedule needs to be completed for every project on the project list.

f.   Next Action List

For those items which require only one action step, if they are not immediately, then they need to go on the “Action Items” or “Next Action” list.

g.  Pending Action List

For those items where you need information from someone else to complete the action, they need to go on the “Pending Action” list.

h.  Calendar

For those items which require an action by a certain day such as a deadline, or request your presence on a specific date and time, they should be recorded in your calendar or other diary system so that you don’t forget them.

If you take the information and process it into this organization system consisting of the eight bins mentioned above, you will be in a good position to take effective and efficient action on everything in your system.    Remember, if the goal of stage 2 is to empty your Inbox, the goal of stage 3 is to work on reducing the “Next Action”, “Pending Action” and “Project Lists” bins.

The next post will cover the periodic review you will need to do to make sure that there are no “holes” in your information bins.

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This series of posts is designed to take the traditional time management system, best exemplified by Brian Tracy’s system in his books “Goals” and “Eat That Frog”, and to go to the next level by developing a more “agile” time management system that can cope with the fact that your workplace, your home life, and everything in between is in a constant state of flux.   You need a system that is robust enough to withstand the changes that modern life can throw at you.   David Allen’s organizational and time management system as described in his book “Getting Things Done” is a great example of such an agile system.

His core concept of the book is that you need to develop a system to manage your workflow with the following five stages.

1. Collect pieces of information that commands your attention
2. Process what these mean and decide what action to take about them.
3. Organize the results efficiently.
4. Review your options
5. Decide what to do

The last post described how to improve your information collection system, the first stage of his system as outlined above.  This post covers the next step of his organization system, that of improving your information processing system.

1.   The Information Processing Workflow Diagram

The workflow diagram below is a a presentation of the five stages of managing your workflow.   Please refer to it in the following discussion.

The first stage, that of your information collection system, is represented by the irregular shape with the label “STUFF” and the arrow which takes it to the rectangular box marked “IN BOX”.   That should be the end state of the first stage.

Now, the first question you need to ask to process the information, is

2.  Is it Actionable?

Not in the sense of “legally actionable” of course, but is the e-mail, or letter, or whatever is in the in-box something you can act upon today?   The diamond shape means that you have to make a decision, and in this case there are only two possibilities, “YES” or “NO.”

3.  If Not Actionable, Then “Eliminate”, “Incubate”, or “File”

Let’s say the answer is “NO.”   Then you have one of three choices (leading from the right of the diamond) which are …

a.   Eliminate, as in throw in the trash.

b.   Incubate, which means put in an separate folder marked “Action Items” or some other file which David Allen calls a “tickler” file if the date you will get around to it uncertain, or put in your “Calendar” if it is something that has a definite date some time in the future.

c.  File, meaning that it is useful information that needs to go into a folder that has a specific category attached to it so you can easily find it later.

4.  If Actionable, Then “Next Action” or “Projects”

If on the other hand, the piece of information in your in-box IS something you can act upon today, then there are two choices (leading from the bottom and the left of the diamond, respectively) which are …

a.  What’s the Next Action

Decide what the next action should be, which means either you i) do it now, ii) have someone ELSE do it, or iii) you do it later on that day.   These are represented by the choices leading from the bottom of the “What’s the Next Action” diamond, the left, or the bottom right, respectively.

i.  Do it now

Once you have gone through all of the items in your inbox, you will see that it is smaller than the original list because you have already ELIMINATED many of them, or put them in an “Action Items” file if they cannot be done today.

Now, with your smaller list, see which of them can be done in 2 minutes or less.   Then … DO THEM NOW!   These are the ones listed ASAP in the chart above.

ii.  Delegate it

For those pieces of information which need to be processed by someone else in your team, then do so by forwarding them to the right person in 2 minutes of less.    Another possibility is that, in order to take action on the item, you may need information from someone.   Then send that request for information from someone and put the item in a “Waiting For” or “Pending Action Items” file.

iii.  Next Action Lists

For those items which will take more time than 2 minutes, but which you want to start working on today, you need to put in the “Action Items” list (called “Next Action” in the diagram).   For action items that refer to a specific date, you may want to put those in the calendar.

If the piece of information requires more than one action step, then it is by definition a project, and needs to go in the “Project” folder rather than the “Action Items” list, which is for single-step items.

Now what have you accomplished by processing the information in this way?   Number one, your goal should be an EMPTY INBOX.    Most people have inboxes where the stuff towards the bottom is irrelevant, because it’s either trash or the item has been taken care of, or the information in it is no longer relevant.   In any case, it has no value to it and should not be there.

All of the urgent items (i.e., can be done in 2 minutes or less) will be taken care of.   All of the action items that weren’t handled this way will be either in the “Action Items” list or the “Projects” list, depending on whether they are simple (one-step) or complex (multiple steps).

Also, any references to future dates where you will be required to produce information or actually be physically present will be captured in your calendar.

Any action items which need you to get information from others will be in the “Pending Action Items” or “Waiting For” file.

This essentially puts every piece of information in the proper place for organizing, which is the subject of the next post.

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For those who have followed my posts on Brian Tracy’s method of organization as described in his book “Goals” and “Eat That Frog”, you will find your organizational skills greatly improved if you follow even some of the practices outlined in those books and described in the posts.

However, if you want to really take your organizational skills to the next level, you need to develop a system that is not a traditional time management system, but a more “agile” time management system that can cope with the fact that your workplace, your home life, and everything in between is in a constant state of flux.   You need a system that is robust enough to withstand the changes that modern life can throw at you.   For that reason, I recommend the book Getting Things Done by David Allen.

His core concept of the book is that you need to develop a system to manage your workflow with the following five stages.

1. Collect pieces of information that commands your attention
2. Process what these mean and decide what action to take about them.
3. Organize the results efficiently.
4. Review your options
5. Decide what to do

David Allen says you can analyze where your weakness is in the above “chain” of stages.   He recommends that you do the phases separately during the day, and NOT try to do all five phases at the same time.   In the first chapter of his book, he explains WHY you should organize yourself better, but I’m sure that if you are reading this post, you already know why you need to do it, and want some help in HOW to do it.   This first post out of five covers the first step of his organization system, that of improving your information collecting system.

1.   Your Information Collecting System

You collect information with various physical and electronic means, such as

• the mailbox outside your house or apartment
• the (physical) in-basket on your desk (mail, magazines, memos, notes, receipts)
• auditory capture (answering machines, voice-mail, dictating equipment, digital recorders)
• e-mails (on your computer, telephone, or pager)
• paper-based note-taking devices (loose-leaf notebooks, spiral binders, legal pads)
• electronic note-taking devices (PDAs, tablets)

David Allen refers to all of these collectively as “collection buckets”, whether physical or electronic.

2,   Three Requirements for Your Information Collecting System

1. Every open loop (i.e., any piece of information which requires an action) must be contained in your collection system and not in your head.
2. You must have as few collection buckets as you can get by wish.
3. You must empty them regularly.

Let’s discuss these three requirements in detail.

3.  Requirement #1–Get It All Out of Your Head

Working memory is widely thought by psychologists to be one of the most important mental faculties, critical for cognitive abilities such as planning, problem solving, and reasoning.   The more pieces of information you try to store in your head rather than in your Information Collecting System (hereafter referred to as your ICS), the less working memory you will have available to work on problem solving or other tasks at work or at home.

Many of us have in-baskets of the kind listed above on our desks at home or at work, but it is also important to be able to capture the serendipitous or “aha!” moments when you get a good idea.    These come at times when the conscious mind may be unfocused, like when you are in the shower, or they may occur upon waking from a sleep.   So keep a pad of paper by your bed, or take your iPhone into the bathroom (not the shower itself, of course) so that you can capture anything that comes to you while showering or shaving.

4.  Requirement #2–Minimize the Number of Collection Buckets

The reason for this is simple:   if you have to many collection buckets, you won’t be able to process the information in them easily or consistently.

This may seem to contradict the message in the last paragraph, where I suggest adding collection buckets (pad of paper by your bed, iPhone in the bathroom), but the idea is that the information in one collection bucket needs to be funneled into others so that you really have only a few information streams.   So, if you keep a notebook by your bed, you need to take those notes and put them in your planning document whether that is a physical notebook or a computer program.

Likewise, if you have voice-mail messages, you can write down those that need to be attended to on your daily calendar.   As long as you don’t leave a lot of pieces of information lying down that remain unattended, then you are doing your best to reduce the number of information streams, which in my opinion is even MORE important than the idea of minimizing the number of collection buckets that contain such information.

5.  Empty the Buckets Regularly

Have you watched any of those reality shows on hoarders where objects go in to a house, but they never come out?   Collecting information in your collection buckets is only important if you go on to the NEXT stage, which means that these pieces of information will be processed, and your collection bucket will become EMPTY.

Just because you pass a piece of information on to the next stage, of course, doesn’t mean that you have completely handled the information.   Think of the pieces of information as patients in a waiting room of a doctor’s office or, better yet, the emergency room of a hospital.    A patient in the waiting room needs to be seen by a doctor, who will then decide whether to take care of the patient right then and there, or whether the illness is serious enough that it will require a longer term of treatment that can only reasonably be done by a hospital stay.

Your job if you are managing the emergency room is NOT to cure everyone who comes in the door.   It is only to make sure that person is seen as soon as possible, and that the doctor makes a correct diagnosis as to the treatment of the patient.

Similarly, your job is to empty the collection buckets regularly and to send them on to the right place for further processing. In fact, you will find that having an empty in-box is a great feeling.   Yes, it won’t last for long, but it’s nice to know that the first stage of your information collecting and processing system is COMPLETE.

In the next post, I will discuss the next step, where you take those items in your collection buckets and PROCESS them so that they can then be ORGANIZED properly.

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In the 21st and final chapter of his book on preventing procrastination called Eat That Frog!, Brian Tracy gives his final piece of advice for increasing one’s productivity, which he calls “Single Hand Every Task”.   What this phrase means is that once you’ve set about STARTING a task, you need to then “concentrate on it single-mindedly until it is complete.”    This means whenever you are tempted to stop or do something else, make sure you urge yourself to continue working on it until it is complete.

The ready why I’ve renamed this principle as “Prepare, Pounce … then Persevere!” is because essentially the entire book has been getting you to

• choose goals that are consonant with your aspirations
• break those goals into tasks that are achievable in a single work period, whether it is an hour or an entire work day
• prepare your resources so you can get right to work

which covers the first two “P”s.    However, before I started with Brian Tracy’s books, I would often start projects that I would not end up finishing.    Let me give you an insight into how important the third “P” is.

When you start an endeavor in the United States, people will often wish you “good luck”, so that fortune will come to your aid.   One of the reasons why the Japanese have such a good work ethic, I believe (after having lived in the country for five years), is that when you start an endeavor in Japan, people will often say “gambatte kudasai”, which means “please persevere.”   There it is understood that your success is NOT going to depend on the whims of fortune, but rather your own hard work and determination to see the project through to the end.   When reading this chapter of Brian Tracy’s book, I suddenly hearkened back to the time I used to live in Japan and remembered that phrase, “gambatte kudasai.”    It took on new meaning to me.

And so I do all of the tools and techniques that Brian Tracy said about breaking up a task into bite-size chunks, doing the hardest task (the “Frog”, according to Brian Tracy’s quirky terminology) first thing in the morning, and making sure I start the task, but the perseverance I needed to finish the task was a matter of character, I thought, and at first I didn’t think I had it in me.

However, although many so-called character traits may have genetic components to them, many of them are essentially ingrained habits that have been practiced so much that they become, as one might say, second nature, and become part of one’s persona.

One thing that helps in adopting Brian Tracy’s scheme of goal-setting is the gift of experience.   Meaning that all you have to do is try it and see if works.   You can even make a bet to yourself and say, “I’ll try it for 21 days, one chapter a day, and if it DOESN’T improve my life,” I’ll forget about it and move on.    That’s what I did with myself.   I read a chapter a day and started picking up a tip here and there and trying it out.   Well, by the end of the 21 days, I couldn’t say I was organized, but at least I was less disorganized, so I could honestly say it made a difference.

And then I took it to the next level.   I spent 21 weeks, and delved into each chapter for a single week, doing the practice exercises at the end of each chapter.    And the proof is in my planning journals that I bought at the beginning of the project.    Then it was a BIG DEAL that I was creating goals, tracking them down, and marking them off as I completed them in the journal.

Now, however, I realized that it has become almost second nature to me, so I figured at the beginning of this year, I would review the whole book is to tighten up my system of organization, and then I would give a gift to others of the ability to organize their lives in 2015.    And so I had the entire of creating this series of blog posts to write down my impressions about Brian Tracy’s book.    If you were interested in this series, then I suggest you get the book “Eat That Frog!” or his book “Goals” and first of all, read it through.    If you are like I was, you will be intrigued and you will want to try his ideas out.

Make sure to buy a journal not just to answer the questions that come up in the chapters, but to do the sample exercises and then trying creating your own plans for how to achieve your goals.   You will squeeze more out of life in 2015 if you do.  If it worked with me, it will definitely work for you!

So go out there and start “eating some frogs!”

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“If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.”   Martin Luther King, Jr.
In a way, this theme, the subject of the 20th chapter of Brian Tracy’s book on avoiding procrastination called Eat That Frog!, is creating a countercurrent to that procrastination.    With procrastination, you try to push away from the present moment a momentous task.   With a sense of urgency, you create a feeling that you need to push your momentous tasks into the present moment.

Brian Tracy talks about the pleasure you will get once you enter the flow state, which means that you get so involved in what you are doing that essentially time loses its meaning, and the moment becomes “eternal” in the sense of being “outside of time.”    For procrastinators, however, the future is “everlasting”, meaning that it stretches out in an infinite line from the present, and therefore there is no urgency in doing an important task now, because you have the rest of time to complete it.

However, death is the ultimate deadline for all of our activities, and many people who contemplate their own impending mortality create “bucket lists”, that is, things they would love to do before they kick the proverbial bucket.   But then to some people comes the thought, “why not do one of those wonderful things NOW?”

Taking a much more narrow approach on one’s own schedule, you can also apply the same principle of contemplating one’s mortality by asking yourself, “if this were my the last month on earth, what would I want to leave as my legacy?”   All of a sudden, those things that you keep putting off because you think you will live forever take on a different cast and you may find yourself wanting to start on those projects NOW.

What Brian Tracy recommends is a mental habit of saying that “the time is now”, or to put it in a different phrase, “the moment of power is in the present.”   You can’t change what is in the past, because it’s already done with.   You can’t change the future IN the present moment, although you may affect what happens by what you decide to do in the moment.  In reality, the one point where you have the most power is RIGHT NOW, and Brian Tracy urges that you try to do that.

One way that I find increases my productivity is that, with both the large tasks and the small ones, I play little “mini-games”, like giving myself deadlines and trying to meet them.   Even when I go through my morning routine, I say “okay, I’m going to be in and out of the shower in 5 minutes”.   And then “I’m going to brush my teeth in the next 5 minutes.”   And if you keep yourself constantly challenged, the most boring, everyday routine can be energized by the self-competition you invoke by creating deadlines for yourself.

If you have a longer block of time such an hour when you are working on a project, split it up into chunks of 2 or 4 so that you tel yourself, say if you are reading a book, “I will finish 10 pages in the next 15 minutes.”, or “I will clear away half of my e-mails in the next 30 minutes.”   By creating a deadline, you will find yourself engaging in a game of competition which is always healthy because you are competing against yourself.

So if you find yourself paralyzed when faced with an enormous task, learn how to at least crawl.

If you can crawl, then learn to walk.

If you can walk, then learn to run.

If you can run, then learn to fly!

Just keep yourself constantly moving forward … at an ever faster pace!

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In the 18th chapter of his book on confronting habits of procrastination called Eat That Frog, Brian Tracy suggests that you ‘slice and dice your complex tasks.”   I prefer to refer to this as “integrating your complex tasks.”

What I mean by “integrate” is the mathematical sense of the term.   When you take the area under a curve, you take the integral of the function that creates the curve.   What this means mathematically, is that you take the areas curve and you cut it into smaller areas by taking squares that are made up of fractions of the length of the two sides.     One square will yield four squares if you take one-half of your square’s length and height as your new base “grid”, nine squares if you take one-third of the side for your base grid, etc.

If you have a complex task, similarly, rather than being overwhelmed with its size or complexity, the best thing to do is to split it up into smaller pieces.    When I make my yearly goals, they sometimes seem like a bit of a stretch, such as this year when I said to myself I wanted to learn a new language, Hindi, at the beginning level at least (A2 on the European Common Reference Scale for foreign language learning).    However, when I split it into months using a Basic Hindi course as a guide, I realized if I did a chapter every two weeks, I would be finished with the course by the end of the year.    However, before starting the Basic Hindi course I needed to take a mini-course to be able to read the Devanagari script in which Hindi is written.   So that was my goal for January.    Using the Memrise app, I found that there are four levels of learning the script and so I assigned one of these to each week.    I’m now halfway through the Devanagari “alphabet”, but it app requires me doing a little bit each day.    I cannot spare an hour an day on this project, but I can spare 5-10 minutes a day, which is all I need to finish the day’s lessons.

My schedule is filled with these kind of daily practices, including the writing of this WordPress blog post, which contribute to my overall goals in a way that is incremental, satisfying, and yet still doable.

But besides the goals that are your own personal goals, it is ESPECIALLY important for those goals at work where you are given some enormous project.     The size and complexity of the project can seem daunting, but you don’t have to finish the project in a day.   You only have to move the ball forward–one unit.    That unit is defined as you want, but I find that for a complex project, one hour a day can be sufficient if there is no artificial deadline you are working under.   This is because it takes a while for your brain to hit the “flow zone” where you are really working in the flow of the task you are doing.   Switching tasks every thirty minutes takes too much “reorienting” time before you really start to get involved in the new task.

For that reason, the complex tasks should be given one hour time units, the medium tasks one-half hour, and the smaller tasks can be fifteen minutes or less.   But the trick is to do something!

My mother once told me that if there was something unpleasant or difficult to be done, promise yourself that you will at least START on the work and do five minutes worth.   If after five minutes worth of work, you elect to quit, then do so, and pick it up again at the same time the next day for five more months.   This gives your brain a psychological “safety valve” so that you don’t feel under too much pressure.   However, once you start a task, nine times out of ten, you realize that “hey, this isn’t so bad,” and most of the difficulty was a mental projection based on your own irrational fear rather than anything approaching reality.

If you get to five minutes, and you think, well, maybe I could do more, then stretch out your commitment to 15 minutes, and so on until you hit one hour.   AND THEN STOP NO MATTER WHAT!

At least take a break for air, and then look back and see what you’ve accomplished in that hour and give yourself some sort of reward for having so!     In this way, you will wear down the fear or anxiety that is at the root of a lot of procrastination.

If you “integrate” your work in that way, you will definitely “differentiate” yourself from the crowd!   🙂

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In the 17th chapter of his book Eat That Frog! about combating procrastination, Brian Tracy brings up one of his signature ideas on boosting productivity, and that is to have specific times of the day, and specific days of the week where you cut yourself off from input in the forms of electronics and concentrate on getting work done.    He also in the 19th chapter talks about “Create Large Chunks of Time”, but I find that goal to be pretty much the same as that of Creating Buffer Zones, in that a) you need to screen distractions out in order to pull creativity and productivity in.

I call these times “buffer zones” because they stop input from coming in and adding to your work load.   This will help you have certain dedicated hours usually the very first part of the morning and the very first part of the afternoon after lunch, where you will be able to concentrate on your top priority tasks, or “frogs” in Brian Tracy’s special parlance he explains in his book.

John Cleese of Monty Python fame says that creativity or what he calls the “open mode” of thinking requires five elements:  a certain regular space where you seal yourself off so you are not disturbed, a beginning and ending time (think of “office hours” for a teacher at college), a certain level of confidence and lack of fear of making a mistake, and sense of humor that evokes your sense of play.

Although you may work in an office where inter-connectivity with your bosses, your colleagues, and your team members is important, you need to be able to create, as much as possible, at least two zones of “open mode” time in your day so that you can use your best self towards the truly important problems you need to solve.   Obviously, the “open mode” works for groups as well as individuals when you are brainstorming, but you need to be able to nurture some time in your schedule, or buffer zones, every day so that you are not constantly buffeted around like a snowflake in a blizzard of incoming e-mails, phone calls, and websites.

Once a day (most people do this on Sunday), he recommends going for the whole day where you unplug from the normal stimulants of news programs, newspapers, etc., and you allow yourself to look at the previous week and at the upcoming week in a sort of 10,000-foot view, where you can reflect back on what you have done, what has worked and what hasn’t, and where you can plan out the various areas of your life for the coming week and really try to brainstorm to make sure you capture everything as best you can.

The existence of these buffer zones should be communicated to those around you so that, at a certain point, when they see it is a certain time of day, they won’t even bother trying to get a hold of you until the buffer zone is past.   And if somebody does call you and leaves a message, usually an hour delay in response will not make a difference.   Of course, if you are working on a high-profile project, you need to have a signal, such as someone texting you, that you will accept if it means that a response is truly urgently needed at that second and cannot possibly wait for an hour.   In reality, few situations except real emergencies will warrant such intrusion.

In this way, you can put your best self to work during the week and every day during that week!

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This is the sixteen chapter of Brian Tracy’s book Eat That Frog!, which teaches you how to avoid procrastination in your life.   However, his title is “Motivate Yourself Into Action.”  Why did I change the title so radically?   For the following reason:

When you plan, you need to think of your own weaknesses and the threats from outside that may keep you from achieving your goal.    These are risks or risk factors that you need to consider.    You can have one of four strategies with regards to these risks:

1. Accept
2. Mitigate
3. Transfer
4. Avoid

If you have a risk which is high or which may have a high impact on your plan, you can try to mitigate or risk.  If the risk is high and it may have a high impact on your plan, and there is nothing you can do to mitigate or reduce that risk, you may want to see what you can do avoid the risk.    If the risk is low but it may have a high impact on your plan, you may want to see what you can do to transfer the risk but getting others involved in the plan.    If a risk is low and will only have a low impact on your plan, you may just decide to accept it and get on with the plan.

This is what I mean by the phrase “Plan Pessimistically”.   You need to account for, ahead of time, those risks or risk factors which may happen to derail your plan because there may just be someway you can try to reduce them ahead of them.

However, once you’ve got the risk response in response, then you need to switch to being optimistic when actually carrying out your plan.   Here’s Brian Tracy’s four pointers on how to do this:

1. Look for the good in every situation.   If something goes wrong, then look for something good or beneficial from it.
2. Seek the valuable lesson in every setback or difficulty.    The soil which helps plants grow is made up of the remnants of dead plants.   In a similar way, make your plans healthy by making them grow by learning from those setbacks or obstacles you’ve already encountered.
3. Look for the solution to every problem.   Always focus on the solution to the problem, rather than spending any emotional energy attaching blame to someone, or by complaining about things when they go wrong.    Your key phrase is, “okay, so what’s the next step?”
4. Think and talk continually about your goals.   Don’t just think and talk about them, write them down.    Visualize them.   By picturing the goals you watch to achieve in the future as already having occurred in the past and the results as existing in the present, you will train your subconscious mind to start trying to make that reality come about.

Let’s say you are now a pessimist and do not follow these tips for being an optimist.   How can you change?    You can do it in 21 days.   Write a gratitude journal for 21 days following the advice of Shawn Achor, a psychologist who studies positive psychology, by reading the following blog post:

21 Days to a More Positive Life through using a Gratitude Journal

I guarantee you will come out with a more positive outlook.   And with that more positive outlook, you will find more and more of your goals coming into fruition!

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