Just Start: Maybe you should give yourself *less* time
Hey team,
Time, as you’ve probably heard before, is the one thing we can’t buy more of. We’re all looking for it, protecting it, trying to optimise our days to get more of it, and promising ourselves that once we somehow find enough of it we’ll be able to do all the things we want to do.
If this doesn’t quite work for you (in the past, it hasn’t for me), I’m here to suggest another option: give yourself less of it.
Probably almost everyone’s familiar with the feeling of procrastination: especially the part where it seems nearly impossible to start a job until an onrushing deadline means you absolutely have to. This is rarely good: it means you have an unpleasant time procrastinating and working, you don’t produce work that’s as good as it could be, and you end up getting your must-dos done but not your want-to-dos (for more on this, check out Tim Urban).
But having no time can help you start. And starting is sometimes the hardest thing to do.
For a while now, I’ve been doing trying something with a big project I’m working on: instead of trying to carve out an hour, or even a 25-minute pomodoro to work on it every day, I give myself 10 minutes. Sometimes, I spend that time just staring at the screen and thinking (for more on this, see the work-or-nothing rule), sometimes I write a couple of sentences, and sometimes I write a solid couple of paragraphs.
I think this does a few things:
It cuts down on the excuse that I don’t have time to do the thing on any given day. I pretty much always have ten minutes: it’s something I can do after the school run but before work, or over lunchtime or just before bed.
It keeps the habit of doing the work alive.
It keeps the work percolating in my mind: because it’s quite rare that I finish a full chunk of work, or even have time to get bored of it, I go about the rest of my life half-consciously thinking about the work, or looking for connections and examples that might make it better.
But doing less doesn’t just work with work: it can also work with your other interests, by keeping your momentum going and helping you to streamline things down to the absolute essentials. For instance:
If I only have five minutes to work on piano, I’ll usually open up a random book of sheet music (I get them from charity shops) and try to sight-read something I’ve never played before.
If I only have five minutes to think about jiu-jitsu, I’ll go back to an instructional on a movement I haven’t been quite hitting in the gym, and see if there’s something I’m missing.
There’s a bit in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance where the (unreliable) narrator helps a student struggling with writers’ block by telling her to focus to the main street of her town, then just one building, then one specific brick: she comes back with a 5,000 word essay. It’s not quite the same thing, but for me, some restrictions actually make work easier.
Have a great weekend!
Joel x
Stuff I like
📖 Book - How to Take Smart Notes by Sonke Ahrens
I read this earlier in the year after someone recommended it, and I’ve just been reading it again: its key idea about a better way to take centralised notes is a game-changer, but it’s also full of other observations about the value of writing in thinking. Highly recommended.
🎙️Podcast - The Moonwalkers, with Tom Hanks
I’ve never actually been that interested in the history of moon exploration — I don’t know why, maybe that the best bits seemed to be over before I was born? — but The Rest Is History podcast is pretty much always great, and here Tom Hanks out-explains the (excellent) hosts to tie it all back to our human drive to achieve things in pretty much every sphere. He’s also a charming man with a lovely voice: I’m expecting big things from this Hanks fellow.
🎥 Video - Getting a personality is easy, actually
I find this YouTube channel fascinating: it's been going 2 months, has 367k subs and its biggest video has 3.4M views. It’s also working under incredible limitations: very basic animation, no video at all, and voiceovers from one man. But it works! It's got a really clear promise (this seemingly hard thing is Easy, Actually) and the content genuinely delivers on it. It also actually overdelivers a lot with elaborate jokes and easter eggs that you have to rewind or pause to get. It’s a really good example of someone using limitations to make something incredibly recognisable and unique: also, the videos are a fun watch.
🪶 Quote of the week
“I’m reminded of the hate mail and negative social media attention anyone in the public eye receives from anonymous sources. If you read between the lines, what it seems to be saying more than anything is, It’s not fair that you’re famous and I’m not.”
From The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read by Philippa Perry
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Please forward it to someone else! Also, if you’ve got a book or an article you think I should read, or something you think I should watch or try, please send it my way.
And if you haven’t already, please check out my YouTube channel, where I deep-dive into stuff like productivity, lifelong learning, piano and Brazilian jiu-jitsu.