Time Management Tuesday: And More On Focusing

I'm still working on focusing. Have you noticed?

How Self-Control Works, and How to Boost Your Willpower by Better Understanding It at Lifehacker includes some thoughts on the subject, since being able to stay focused requires willpower. My favorite thought was the first one, practice.

Practice

The article suggests picking something you do in excess and practice not doing it for a week. And once you can not do it for a week, practice not doing it for another. Work up to a month. A month is supposed to be a significant time in terms of changing behavior. I think I've read six weeks elsewhere, but you get where they're going with this.

Now, I see two things going on with practicing not doing something: 

1. You're toughening up willpower and improving focus in general. I can't find my support for this, but I've read that improving willpower/discipline in one area of your life should improve it in others.  Thus, if I could develop the discipline to not eat all the time I'm cooking, I could, presumably, not have to read articles about Chip and Joanna Gaines or hunt up actors on-line while I'm watching them on TV in the evening. We believe that monks and athletes have iron focus. Maybe because discipline in one area of their lives transfers to another?
2. If you practice not doing something time consuming, you could end up with some more time. For instance, practicing not reading those articles about Chip and Joanna Gaines and not hunting on-line for info on actors will leave me more time for blogging and relaxing in the evening, since, I swear, that's the only time I do those things. You can always practice not doing time consuming during the work day.

So the idea is that by practicing doing less you can save time because you've become a disciplined badass.

Time Management Tuesday: Office Versus Home

So, I've written here several times about writers who work at home, and the time problems we face because we're...at home. At home, no one is imposing structure on us with work hours and lunch and coffee breaks. At an office, there is no laundry to do, no telephone calls coming in from relatives. There's no diverting work time into tasks like vacuuming and mopping because there's a cleaning crew to do that, right? You're not working surrounded with piles of clothes, boxes, books, toys, old magazines. The guilt you feel stopping work at the office to read on-line about what's going on with Prince Harry and Meghan What's-Her-Name is different than the guilt you feel stopping to read about them at home.

If there was some way that writers could work in an office with a supervisor who made sure they had nothing to do but lean into it, wouldn't we all crank out masses of work?

Office

Well, today I had a chance to put in a couple of hours in a real office. As you can see from the accompanying pictures, as far as order is concerned, it wasn't much of an improvement over working at home. It's just that the stuff heaped around me wasn't my responsibility, which was nice for a change.

I did feel that I was staying on task better than I do at home. I finished preparing a submission, and if we'd stayed longer, I would have had a good shot at getting a synopsis done. Why?

Home

   I think the difference is that there were other people working in the building. I don't mean they were working with me. One person was in the office across from me, and three were upstairs. I don't mean I was being encouraged and supported by my fellow writers, either. We're talking an office manager, an engineer, and two surveyors. I'm not even talking some kind of social interaction thing. I ate lunch at my desk. And I wasn't surfing the 'net the way I often do when I eat lunch at my desk at home.

Lunch!

No, I think it was just the fact that there were other people nearby working, by themselves, that did the trick for me.

This actually makes sense when you remember that Kelly McGonigal says in The Willpower Instinct that willpower successes (and failures) are contagious. We like to conform to what we feel is the norm. In an office where others are working, it's normal to work. When we're alone in our houses, we don't have a social group of worker bees to create a norm for us to conform to.

So working in a traditional office may be beneficial in terms of getting us to manage our time efficiently not because of the structure we can hope to find there, or the boss breathing down our necks but because of the other people working there. How can writers who work alone duplicate that experience?

Time Management Tuesday: National Novel Writing Month

Today is the first day of National Novel Writing Month, which I had hoped to take part in this year for the first time since 2004. ( I had remarkably little to say about the experience here. So unlike me.) However, because I did a second revision of the mummy book, I didn't have time to prepare. National Novel Writing Month involves writing a 50,000 word draft in one month. It's extremely difficult to do without preparation.

Set Aside Time

I'm a supporter of what I call Set Aside Time, a time scheduled for a specific task. For writers, this might be intensive writing, a binge, you might say. That's what National Novel Writing Month is about. I've heard of even established writers, people who write regularly all year round, taking part in NaNoWriMo in order to jump start new projects.

Word Count And The What-The-Hell Effect

One suggestion I'd make for anyone taking part in National Novel Writing Month is to not let that 50,000 word count requirement work against you. If you're going to make it to 50,000 words in one month, you need to write in the area of 1,666 words a day, every day. Weekends. Thanksgiving. The whole thing. That daily average doesn't sound like much? If you don't make it a few days, the average you have to make for the rest of the month grows larger. And larger and larger. That can become grim.

Remember, willpower failures are most likely to occur when we experience setbacks and feel bad about them. If you start missing your daily goals by week three, or week two, or the end of week one and feel you now have no hope of making your 50,000 word month goal, don't let yourself feel bad about it. You run the risk of giving in to the What-the-Hell-Effect. What the Hell? I'm not going to make it, anyway. There's no hope. I'll just quit.

If you just quit, yeah, there's no hope that you'll make the 50,000 words. Keep going, and who knows? You might experience a couple of really good days and get back on track.

More importantly, though, is that if you don't quit, you may finish the month with 30,000 words on a new project. Or 20,000 words. Or 10,000.  You could finish the month with any kind of start on a manuscript, material you wouldn't have if you hadn't kept working.

Sure, if you don't make the 50,000 word goal, you won't get whatever badge or reward the NaNoWriMo folks give out. (I really don't know what they do.) But is the point of your involvement with National Novel Writing Month to get the NaNoWriMo treat? Or is it to write? Because if it's to write, any writing you do is valuable.

Fine Talk From Someone Who's Not Doing NaNoWriMo This Year, Gail

NaNo Materials I Need To Go Through

I'm not doing National Novel Writing Month in the traditional sense.  What I am going to do, though, is the prep work I should have done before this month. What I'm hoping to have by the end of November is not a completed draft, but the prep work so that I can write a draft in the future. That will be a whole lot more than what I've got on this project now.

We'll talk more about this later.

Time Management Tuesday: Well, This Could Change Everything

Many plans for dealing with time management as well as procrastination (a different issue) lean on the belief that willpower is finite. It's strongest first-thing in the morning and becomes weaker over the course of the day. Thus we're advised to break our work time into increments or units, with breaks in between them. When we go back to work, we feel closer to our more powerful morning selves. It's a mind game

Willpower Is Finite. That's Science!

In Everything Is Crumbling in Slate last month, author Daniel Engber describes how willpower gets used up by describing the results of a twenty-year-old study. Two groups of test subjects were asked to spend time solving an impossible puzzle after they were left alone with a plate of quite luscious chocolate chip cookies and not so inviting radishes. One group was told it could only eat cookies. One group was told it could only eat radishes. The subjects who were allowed to eat cookies spent more time on the impossible puzzle then the subjects who had to use their valuable willpower avoiding the cookies because they were instructed to eat radishes.

"The authors," Engber says, "called this effect “ego depletion” and said it revealed a fundamental fact about the human mind: We all have a limited supply of willpower, and it decreases with overuse. Eating a radish when you’re surrounded by fresh-baked cookies represents an epic feat of self-denial, and one that really wears you out. Willpower, argued Baumeister and Tice, draws down mental energy—it’s a muscle that can be exercised to exhaustion."

According to Engber, scores of studies using similar procedures supported these findings.

And that supports everything I've read about willpower, time management, and procrastination.

Or Is Willpower Finite After All?

Engber goes on to report that a paper is going to be published in  Perspectives on Psychological Science that "describes a massive effort to reproduce the main effect that underlies this work. Comprising more than 2,000 subjects tested at two-dozen different labs on several continents, the study found exactly nothing...No sign that the human will works as it’s been described, or that these hundreds of studies amount to very much at all."

Engber's article focuses on how the new study brings into question the old willpower study, and the significance of an established study and the established knowledge it provides being called into question. My interest?

Were these studies the basis for the time management programs developed around working in short increments of time in order to replenish willpower? If so, what does this mean for time management?

Of course, the problems with these studies may not mean that willpower isn't finite and isn't depleted over the course of the day. It may just mean that these particular studies don't prove it. But if these studies were used by time management people, are we just left in limbo?

Time Management Tuesday: The October Purge Results Post

Oct. 31st

We did, indeed, each find an item a day in October to get out of this house. That's sixty material possessions we don't need to spend time dealing with. That's more than 22 cubic feet of belongings that won't cause disorder in our lives, leading to self-regulatory failure. Seriously, someone (not mentioning any names, Civil Guy) measured the heap, did some calculations, and came up with 22+ cubic feet. Evidently that's not much when you're talking loads of gravel or concrete. But we're talking stuff.

Oct. 1st

Now, why does anyone need a specific unit of time in which to clear out? Why not just do it on a regular basis? I think we're pretty good at that, and we've become quite good at not bringing unnecessary material things into the house in the first place. But I noticed something happening last month that suggests providing yourself with a dedicated Toss Time makes sense.

It's All About Mindfulness

22 cubic feet from another angle

What I noticed was that I was noticing things. The misshapen work gloves I haven't worn in years, for instance. I'd just been dumping other gloves on top of them. I've known for a long time that I can't do a thing with the ravioli attachment for my pasta machine, but I've hardly been aware of its existence. That didn't mean it wasn't taking up space in the pantry. Every year when I pull out winter clothes in the fall and put them away again in the spring, I've seen but haven't seen, if you know what I mean, a pair of black pants that are two sizes too large for me. They looked very good on me when I was 25 pounds heavier than I am now, so I've been holding on to them in case I gain back that weight. I've had them for, maybe, fifteen years. Well, if I gain that weight now, I'll have to buy some new pants.

My point is that somewhere along the line we stop being affected by a lot of our possessions. We can't make a decision to keep or ditch them because we're barely aware of their existence. But exist they do. You could compare living with unnecessary junk to living with mild chronic pain. You've become accustomed to it. It's become a norm in your life. But it still impairs your function.

A dedicated time for cleaning house requires mindfulness of us.When we're done, some of the things that have been lying on the raised hearth and the dresser will be gone. We won't have to spend time moving them around looking for things. They won't have a negative impact on our willpower, wrecking our ability to stay on task with work.

Ha-Ha, Gail. Now What Are You Going To Do With That Pile Of Junk?

Fortunately, the last day of October was a Saturday. While I was busy baking cookies with my leftover Halloween candy Sunday afternoon, someone else cleared off the entire worktable. Some things were thrown away. Some were placed in the church tag sale area of our cellar. A couple  of books are going to family members, the others will be going to a library book sale later this month. There's a large pile of clothes waiting to be bagged for the Salvation Army. But that's an easy task. Getting to that point is what is difficult.

And, no, I have not yet read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up.  I ordered it on Interlibrary Loan, and it came in while I was on vacation. I'll try to read it before next year's purge.

Time Management Tuesday: The Write Jar As Motivator

I was able to sneak onto Blogger this morning and check my e-mail, but I'm having trouble getting other places on-line. (The new modem is here in the house. We're hoping to get it out of the package tomorrow.) I'm cobbling this post together with the help of my iPhone, which can zip me around the Internet.

I heard about write jars at the 10-Minute Novelist Facebook page. Vickie S. Miller's blog post What's Your Reward? #Writejar describes how it works. Write jars are similar to swear jars or any other kind of system you create to either fine yourself for a behavior you want to avoid (swearing) or pay yourself for a behavior you want to encourage (writing).

I believe that in the case of write jars, this would be considered an external support for willpower. You're using something outside yourself, a money reward, to help you stay on task. (Timers are also external supports.)  I'm not aware of any research on how well monetary support works, and given my crippling Internet problems this week, I'm not going to be able to hunt for any. That will be another blog post. Vickie had only been using a write jar for a couple of weeks at the time of her post, so we won't know for a while how it ends up working for her.

If I were going to try this, I think I would use a simpler system than Vickie is. Keeping track of the different cash amounts for the different types of writing would be unwieldy for me. But like anything else related to managing time, everyone should fine tune systems to suit their own needs.

This Week's Most Interesting Ditched Item 

 

I just tried to upload a picture relating to my October purge, but that's not going to be happening. But it was a Swiss cowbell. I kid you not. We had a Swiss cowbell here. Brought back from the Land of Heidi by in-laws a few decades back. I mention that because I want to make sure everyone knows that I wasn't responsible for bringing it into this country, just into my house. I was able to unload it on my sister-in-law. 

Edit: Yes! The new modem has returned us to our normal mediocre Internet access! So I am able to present you with the cowbell that is no longer in my house. I would  hate to run into the cow that was able to wear this thing around its neck.