Climbing a Mountain of Work PART 1/2
Many of the tips that I've described so far (action lists, perfect project planning, prioritizing) work great when you have a large variety of different tasks to do.
But what about when your primary project -your next most important task- is a single, monumental task. There really aren't many little tasks to climb over to motivate yourself, you're just getting them out of the way to carve out times of day for you to work on BIG HUGE PROJECT.
What's a BIG HUGE PROJECT?
- It's long: something that will take weeks and months of solid constant work to achieve
- The work is always the same, with little variation.
- examples:
- Writing a book, or drawing a graphic novel.
- Reading a textbook, or studying for a final.
- Knitting 20 scarves as Christmas Presents for relatives
- It's either really boring or really scary to you
- It's generally something you need to sit alone and CONCENTRATE on
Quite often, you can get quite good at carving time out for the BIG HUGE PROJECT, but when it comes time to just sit down DO IT it's so hard to motivate yourself.
You stare at the blank page and can't seem to make the pencil move.
All those amazing thoughts you had running through your head have conveniently run off to find something better to do. (Yeah, thanks guys, while you were totally keeping me distracted when I had that expense report to do! JERKS)
If you can just GET INTO THE DAMN GROOVE of it you know you can do a good job and you can make yourself happier for having made progress, but right now you just want to... make another cup of tea. Check facebook. Get zoned into just one more episode of Dr. Who. Clean the stove.
ANYTHING BUT THIS!
What do you do!? How do you keep yourself on track!?
Of course if I had the secret to this I'd be a brazillionaire by now. Below are a bunch of things that I've tried that sometimes help to get myself un-stuck. Try them in isolation or in combination, see what works for you!
Build a Nest
You sit down to write and.... oh, damn - you should have your phone in here. Just in case. Oh! you forgot to get some tea. Oh!and you need your reference book. Augh! Why is this chair so uncomfortable... Where are my notes?
When I'm working on BIG HUGE PROJECT, I try to always go to the same place, physically. Setting this place up for the task at hand is a bit of a ritual. A way to tell my brain "okay, we've arrived at the place. Now we are setting it up so everything is ready. Now we are working."
Your nest needs to be:
- comfortable: but not so comfortable that you drift off to sleep!! Comfort means not too hot or too cold, and ergonomically set up.
- set up with everything that you need within reach: with practice, you'll build the habit of collecting everything you need to work so you're not constantly getting up to fetch something.
- AWAY FROM THE INTERNET
- If this is a problem for you (and it is for most of us) find a way to unplug. For me, working in a different room from my beloved internets is enough. Of I course drift over to twitter when I need a stretch, but I am (usually) disciplined enough to wrench myself away. When I have to do computer work, on the other hand... that's a totally different story.
- If you know your personal time trap websites, add them to a blocker using this tip: http://lifehacker.com/146448/geek-to-live--ban-time+wasting-web-sites
- Or you can use this Chrome extension http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/stayfocusd-block-time-wasting-websites/
Of course, there are ways for your lizard brain to get around anything. You can turn off your computer, but you still have your phone. You can block facebook, but oh! Didn't block wikipedia... eventually you're just going to rely on motivation. Remember why you're doing BIG HUGE PROJECT. Remember that you really WANT to do this, and it's worth more to you than random wikipedia article #35.
The key is to STAY AWAY FROM TIME TRAPS. If it's too hard for you, you may need to build an ISOLATION ZONE. For me, the cafe made a great isolation zone. Being in public means I can't just flop over when I want to. Surfing the internet is *just* inconvenient enough. Libraries and friend's houses also make great isolation zones.
Warm Up
If you can't quite break the silence of the page and just GET MOVING, treat yourself to a warmup period.
SET A TIMER (you don't want the entire precious block of time you saved for yourself to get wasted on something random!) 20 minutes usually works well.
Use this time to be ridiculous.
If your BIG HUGE PROJECT involves drawing, use the time to draw crazy looking monsters. Sexy ladies. Weird cartoons. Whatever you want, who cares if it's good or not.
If your BIG HUGE PROJECT is writing, use it to write stream of consciousness, or try to write the opposite of what you NEED to write. If you are trying to write an amazing drama, write THE WORST melodrama. Write as BAD as you possibly can.
Be LOOSE and FAST.
I like to write outlines, point form thoughts, random threads at the top and bottom of the document to warm up and then stitch the piece together slowly.
This list of tips ended up getting too long, so check back next week for part two!