Sunday Success: Week 5

So Shcmoove

The streamlined minimal apartment is working. I’ve been able to keep a home workout routine, get a decent amount of drawing in, and as always, continue to make progress in my readings. This week was difficult to get in around, but at the least there are some note worthy items for this week.

Pictures imminent.

Books and Game Design

I managed to complete an online class (coursera.org) on gamification as well as get deep into some advance game design books. I’m glad I read the other books in the order I have because this would have been way over my head. A much denser read, but certainly a wonderfully detailed account of the structures necessary to game design and the underlying game mechanics for any other interested reader.

As I mentioned last time I’m making big headway in Martin Seligmen’s massive tome “Character Strengths and Virtues”. I only feel a massive regret that all of my college text could be this smooth to read. For a book primarily focused toward those already familiar with psychology’s history and theories in this area, I honestly feel like I’m rubbing my eyes with butter. This book is appropriately a joy to work through and does a fabulous job of displaying content matter.

For a specific example of game design practice, I tried introducing a new spur of the moment game with my classes. I teach kids ages 6 to 14 for referencing. I’m extremely lucky in that my school specifically focuses on playing games as an integral part of the lesson plan, and so I have a number of advantages others don’t. This last week I introduced “Sam Game”. The idea was to create a game that was quick to play, could scale in difficulty for my kids but was just as fun at all levels. A big thing I’ve been trying to work on is the idea of cooperation amongst my kids. I have honestly never seen such competitive kids for their age. Maybe it’s just their broken English that makes it all the worse, but wow. These kids will kill each other over a missed call if you let them. The set up for the game is simple. 2 kids from one “team” are on opposite sides of a circular target. The target usually has 2 zones. One of low points, and the small center zone which gives the most points. If I’m feeling mean, I will add another zone and the largest/easiest of which to hit results in the team dancing for our mutual enjoyment. Player A tosses a small ball to Player B. Player B is holding a large, stuffed dice and uses it to deflect the ball back at the target and get points. There is a small amount of danger to this game and any game that allows one kid the ability to pelt the other out of nowhere, however these chances are quite low for the personalities in my classes.

Drawing

Manged to sneak away and draw this week. I admit that I didn’t quite meet the hourly quota, but I was at least able to do something everyday. This is the more important stat for the week. This week I tried to draw as quickly as I could without many corrections. I wanted to see how much I had internalized the circles and lines I’ve been practicing this much. It is worth realizing that even though I spent a decent amount of time on these, that there are less than 100 face attempts here. This is something that needs reckoning with if I want to improve. Of course my drawings aren’t going to look better if there is only a difference of 8 attempts between weeks. This is one of the reasons that drawing quickly is so important. Even if I mess it up, it was another attempt. Progress comes from intensive practice over time and many, MANY screw ups. I am not working through my screw up phase nearly fast enough. Here are my speed attempts.

Chinese

No Chinese was accomplished this week. I was dumb : C

Upcoming: April Plans

Now that March is effectively over, it’s time to pick a new theme for April. I’ve decided that my efforts will be focused primarily on drawing and Chinese. These are two areas that I suspect will lend themselves well to actual study. The progress through either discipline is tangible, and once I get through the first two weeks I should start to get some decent reinforcement for being awesome.

There are a number of goals I have for April that are going to make it my busiest month ever. I need to get myself ready to leave for Shanghai and all that entails with paper work, being places, and making sure everything is on lock. That means traveling around Harbin and getting the pictures I’ve been meaning to to prove I’ve actually been here. So, let’s get the goals for April hammered out below:

Blog goals: At least 1 post a week with Sunday Success updates

Drawing Goals: Be able to quickly draw full human sketch ups. Produce at least 1000 face attempts. As a secondary goal, I have a number of half filled sketchbooks. It would be great if I could fill them up so I feel better about sending them home, or letting go of them so that I can subtract another book from my luggage.

Chinese: Be able to hold a 10 minute conversation with someone on italki, skype, or on the street without using English.

Travel goals: Substitute as many books as possible into ebook form and send physical books back home. Become a mobile wizard through creative use of cloud tools and mobile tech.

Reading: Continue to at least read 30 minutes everyday. I spend 2 hrs. on a bus every day so this is totally possible. Make progress through game design and positive psychology papers.

New Year. New Drive

A Walk About

It has been over a month since my last post, due to a number of reasons. Among them, getting sick, a flood of work, and traveling have been among the main draws. And Batman. Lots of Batman. This saddens me in a few ways. I did the very thing I had hoped to solve months ago. I lost momentum and couldn’t find it in myself to keep rolling. I broke my routine and because of that, have been drawing less and less since even December. That was a long time ago.

Chinese New Year has finally wound down and with that, so has a number of hectic whirlwinds. Before I was just kind of putzing, and not really getting into the roll of things. I’ll discuss it later, but I’m dreadfully behind and need to start making some real results fast. Perfect.

New Drive

One of the frustrations I had earlier last fall was getting my new gaming laptop shipped to me from the States. This was a nerve racking ordeal that took nearly a month to get figured through customs. Now that its in my hands, for the first time ever I can get a taste of PC gaming. That was the whole point. In December, I also was hitting a slump and needed a hero. You may recall my gushing about Batman for a while. Thanks to an earlier Humble Bundle purchase and steam sale, I now had all 3 Arkham games, and the means to play them. Fast forward to now, I’m finished with all 3 games, loved them and have logged at least 20 hours on each one. As you might be able to guess, I have conflicted feelings over this. The WHOLE POINT of getting my computer was to do exactly this. The problem was in execution. I binged. Hard. The hardest thing to do with routines is keep them going from day to day. I binged on games, and while I felt inspired watching my caped crusader beating justice into thugs, I wasn’t continuing my practices. Now, a month later, it’s going to be even HARDER to get going again. But. That’s what’s going to happen. That’s what has to happen.

Strong Adventure

Over Chinese New Years, my sister and I traveled to 6 provinces, and many more cities dotting north, and southwest China. There were more than a few times where we would drop in to one city from a night train, trek to the sights, consume as much local specialties as we could, and end the day on a night train bound for another city. We were moving. I got pretty terrible food poisoning along the way to complete the package, but still had a great time. It reminded me how much I love traveling around, being mobile and seeing the world. There will be more travel related musings coming up in the short term, as far as I’m concerned.

Get Your Hands Dirty

I was recently commissioned by a friend to do some sumi ink paintings. I can’t say they were the best ever, but it was another rediscovery of doing something. For the time being, I’m setting aside digital art and returning to physical drawing and properly getting strokes down. I am trying to get my hands on another drawing tablet, but for the mean time I’m going to return to pen/pencil/brush and paper. Sunday night will continue to be my anchor day for getting things up.

Don’t Get Cocky, Kid.

I’m trying to do a lot. I know this. I had previously played with doing just one Chinese sentence a day, and even that fell through since I still have no vocabulary to draw from to make those sentences. The first 6 months of this blogs redirection has been, for the most part, a success. I disappeared for the last month and lost momentum. In that case, I failed. On the other hand, this is exactly why this blog was created. To show case the struggles and pit falls of life design and learning and how best to overcome those hurdles and achieve the optimal routine (an article on flow will be written soon, I swear to God). I was able to mostly hit my art goals for the period that that was my focus. I did set up methods suggested here to learn several new juggling patterns as well as create a home gym and working environment.

This..Your…Trek Amongst The Stars

There are some very potentially interesting things happening in the next few months. I’m powering up, and getting ready jump around. I am going to be extremely busy if I am worth beans at all. A hint of what’s to come:

Speak 30 minutes in Mandarin
Learn Javascript basics
Learn Python basicsLearn Ruby basics (maybe)
Massive research project on positive psychology
Massive research project into gamification and game design/theory
Continue drawing
Continue reading a book every week
Pare down apartment and belongings
Design next travel adventure

Pork-chop Sandwiches!

This is all fun and great typing out a long list of things I want to do. It already is a little dangerous because listing can give the sense that you’ve already accomplished something and that a rest is in order. I honestly hope that isn’t what becomes of me, but only time will tell. I’m back again after a long, long hiatus but I’m excited to see where they all leads. From how things seemed to be headed, I can only promise one update (Sunday night) a week. If I feel that content is too thin, I’m going to start reposting articles that I find particularly relevant, or that are worth a fun read. I’d like to try and keep material on this site original, so we’ll see how much that gets incorporated.

All right. Enouffa that. Let’s get some work done.
Here’s to a new year, and new projects.

Let’s do something stupid interesting.

Shopping and Spending Money: Manging the Inflow

I’ve been knocked down by a pretty bad cold for the last week, but I’m finally pulling through. Thought I’d celebrate with a post!

This may sound a little obvious, but these simple rules have really helped me in curbing what I buy, when I buy, and what items make it into the apartment.

Rule 1:Would I buy another one if this one broke or was lost/stolen?

If my chef knife disintegrated in it’s drawer over night, I would absolutely be out buying another one. If my colored pencils went missing….mmmaybe I’d just be lazy, stay at home and carry on. This also helps me figure out where my priority items are. The ones that I actually care about. Knowing this, I can make sure to keep them in working order, and pay special attention to them. This has helped point me in direction of what I like and what I enjoy doing. Right now in my life, that is essential because any direction, indication, or hint as to what I enjoy doing is helpful in navigating me towards certain jobs or professions and away from others. Sometimes the answer to this is the expensive thing (computer). This is where you start really taking care of your stuff, doing updates, managing your use a little more intelligently, or in my case, using it for all it’s worth while it’s around. Thinking about a thing when it’s broken or gone gives you that “you only realize how much you care when it’s gone” perspective early. Advantage you.

Rule 2: Have a specific answer for how this item will enhance your practice/progress or significantly reduce stress in your life.

This is the harder one, in my opinion. Have an answer for why you should be buying the thing, what purpose it would be filling, and if it will make a significant difference. I understand I’m looking at this from a more frugal perspective, and for those that have the money and can manage it, go ahead and buy the best tool. No reason not to. Just make sure it does what you want. I’m not quite in that cash bracket yet, plus the frugal game is a fun one. What will give you the most results for the least amount of money? It’s an adventure!

This is such a hard question because if the thing is shiny enough, you will come up with answers that make sense to you as ‘need to have’ features. I recently bought a new laptop. I was looking between 3 computers. A Maingear custom gaming laptop that was the sexiest thing I had seen in the laptop world at $3,700. One of my rules was that the laptop couldn’t cost more than the desktop build I had been playing with, and this definitely broke that rule. It still took me weeks to talk myself out of the price telling myself that the graphics performance would make up for it through subjective enjoyment, or that the screen size would increase productivity (this is a valid point, graphics is not at this price). The other laptops I was considering were the unreleased Zenbook Infinity ultrabook, (~$1500), or the Lenovo y510p around $1300. The problem was deciding which functionality was more important: gpu (games, video editing), small size for travel, or eating for the foreseeable future.

I ended up splitting the difference and went with the y510p winning in with the gaming side, and grabbing a computer only slightly larger than my current macbook. If I had the disposable, It wouldn’t have been a question. I would have bought the $3k beast or wait a little longer and grab the most ludicrous ultrabook. I leaned towards gaming since I predict everything else is going to become easier and easier to just do on the smartphone. Seeing how the galaxy s4 already surpasses the specs and capabilities of my 4 year old macbook, I’m prettty sure that our favorite little smart computers are going to continue to very applicable in our daily lives. Look out for wearable tech in the next few years. With curvable 4k screens not far off in the distance, be ready. Saving up now for future rig.

Rule 3: When I really have the urge to buy something, I pretend I’m being paid the sticker price NOT to buy the item.

The main thing is that you’re going to be able to work better, smarter, or faster with the things you buy. If I find a new pen or a new Chinese character book, they had better allow me to cut something out of my current routine, or accomplish twice as much. They should be upgrades, not just new things. The y510p has a 1080×1920 display which is like night and day when working in photoshop with all that space I can actually SEE what I’m doing. I work faster, and don’t waste time moving through windows. The vast majority of things that I end up gushing over ultimately don’t add to my projects, and that’s the worst foul possible. Take a week or two to stop thinking about large purchases. If you can wait through it, maybe it’s not as urgent as you’re hyping yourself into believing.

Cut out the fat, and remove those things aren’t helping you out. The quickest way is to stop their migration into your house zone and filter them out in they buying process. Look for quality and the long game. If you can wait, then wait. Something better will be ready for you when you actually need it.

Art Progress: Week 7, the Tablet

It’s a little crazy to look at the weeks slowly get larger on this blog. That’s the kind of feedback that really helps me out, honestly. Seeing that something more than just a few drops of art practice in the bucket of sucking are slowly making a difference. At the seven week mark, I have spent at least 49 hours drawing. This means I’ve passed the 20 hour mark for being decent at a thing, and now rolling toward the end of the second month of practice, I can say that it would be a bit weird to think of what I’d do if I didn’t draw for a least a little bit each day.

Something that has drastically made a difference in both my enthusiasm and ability to start practicing for the day has come in a small rectangle shape. After my sister dropped by, I was lucky enough to leave the exchange up one drawing tablet.

This has really helped me get in the mood for drawing and take a step closer toward what i want to do with this stuff. This week I’ve been breaking it in and figuring out how to draw again when I can’t ‘see’ what I’m drawing, or ‘feel’ the paper or ink/graphite. I’ll still be working with physical tools in the future, but if ever I needed an affordable and portable solution for my artwork, this has got to be it. Extremely thin, feels well enough put together, but no so expensive feeling that I’m going to be too delicate with it. A good travel buddy. What would be amazing is if I could figure out how to get it to work on my phone. If anyone knows how to get a drawing tablet to connect and work with android smartphones, leave a comment below!

This Weeks Practice

I’ve also made the decision to finally rebuff my Deviantart page which will (once updated) be the home for my past, current, and future artwork. Imgur is useful in a pinch, but I don’t feel it offers the amount of browsability something like Deviantart can. This, in itself is another stepping stone I’ll be balancing my online content on until I’ve learned enough html or web design know how to take charge of my own site. This week, you get imgur albums again. Things will be easier when photoshop is playing nice and letting me save in manageable file sizes. Until then, no full size wallpapers for anyone just yet.

This was one of the first practices. Check out how things are progressing in the link below!

Week 7 progress

Momentum over Motivation

“Just do it”

–Most above the poverty line.

Gimme dat Moto-vashion

How can you spot someone with a lot of motivation? Generally you point them out based on what they are doing, and if they are zooming around being busy, or keeping to a work out schedule, you might remark, “Wow, they are really motivated to accomplish their goal”. It is common place to speak about motivation as this magical thing that once we finish a quest or journey of mind we just… have it, and can go out and get things done. There are few problems with this, firstly that the logic is somewhat circular. We are commenting on someone’s motivation based on observing actions we assume must have needed motivation to accomplish. Why do I work hard? Because I have motivation. How can you tell that I have motivation? Because, how else am able to make myself work? If I were to crank out 5 posts today, but then not update for a large span of time, you might conclude that maybe I really didn’t have the motivation to keep updating. Maybe I the motivation got lost somewhere. But, if I scheduled those posts to automatically release once a week over 5 weeks? Motivated. Why? Because our perception of motivation comes from the perceived persistence of a person rather than their day to day or hour to hour results. These continued behaviors over a period of time is what the general public will use to reverse engineer a definition of motivation. But isn’t motivation needed at the beginning, when I’m starting a new behavior? Yep, and that’s why we’re looking into it. What good is being motivated in hind-sight when you can’t utilize in the now? There’s one more thing here. Motivation is sometimes seen as the ability to make yourself do something that isn’t really pleasurable. Hm. I bet our automatic behaviors could help us ‘make’ ourselves do a thing or two.

Truth

Apart from looking at motivation in a somewhat backwards fashion, we also make another assumption when we deem someone motivated: we believe they are doing the activity because they want to be doing it. I was not at all motivated to finish my thesis because I enjoyed the writing of it, or even the topic that I ended up doing. However, because of deadlines I was reinforced by the calm after the flurry, as well as ‘rewarded’ by avoiding the punishment of failure. The result? I laboriously spent a long time doing something I didn’t want to, but definitely engaged in the target behavior: writing. This can be troubling for many who are trying to get into something new, or make a difference in their daily routine. There is a feeling of guilt that if you don’t lllooove the thing, you might not actually be motivated to do it.

This can cause over-thinking, stress, and premature quitting because there wasn’t a profound feeling personal investment. Some quick notes on this. We are pretty bad at predicting how happy certain events will make us in the future. We also are pretty good at using cognitive dissonance to look back and assume we did things because we kind of liked them, or we won’t have done it (especially if you continue doing a thing over and over). At this point we’re bad at guessing what will make us happy, but also look back and assume we must have been happy to justify pointless tasks. Hmm. Not looking too hot. Let’s switch moods and find a way to take advantage of this all.

 Understanding the Beast

Motivation can be split up into two different categories: unconditioned, and conditioned motivating operations. Motivating operation (MO) is “an event or operation that temporarily affects the effectiveness of a reinforcer or punisher and the behavior that would lead up to them. Unconditioned MO’s (UCMO) are those things that have never been taught to us, but nonetheless effect our behavior, and how we value the reinforcement/punishment for that behavior. For instance, if I’m full getting reinforced with a hamburger for doing whatever may not cause me to leap out and engage in burger getting behavior. However, if I was starving? That would definitely alter how effective a burger is as  reinforcement, and would definitely alter my burger getting behavior into overload. The presence of the burger is an unconditioned MO (technically, it’s the hunger)  that, when present, increases the chance I perform a behavior and how hard I will try for those tasty rewards. This is the kind we will focus on, but know that there are MO’s that do the opposite (decrease effectiveness of reinforcer/punishment and thus the behavior leading to get it). Conditioned MO’s (CMO’s) are MO’s that have been taught to us, or that have been conditioned to us to be MO’s. Similarly, these follow the the trend of deprivation and satiation to control how effective they are. Take away my computer? Ok. that sucks but I can deal with it. I’ve been on here a lot lately. I’m pretty satiated on internet feels to last me a while. Now do that same thing when I haven’t had a computer for a month? Well..

The take away here? Just be aware that there are specific vocab for things, and often not used in the same way. Especially because people focus on the CMO’s, and assume they are conscious somehow. We don’t always remember the UCMO’s, or the whole unconditioned side just in general. Let’s focus on just that and make starting something as painless as we can.

“Change the gravitational constant of the universe. You just do it! Aaghh!”

Start Baby

This is why it is so important to just get out and do something, and why the task needs to be small and doable. It only takes about 4 to 5 times to get a habit going, and about 20 days straight to get to the point where it would feel weird NOT to. I’ve found the first benchmark is a “Yeah, ok, there’s time for this” realization, and that around day 20 you look back, and start getting excited at your progress. That’s when you dig in because it becomes something your personally invested in. Enter positive upward spirals (more on this in November).

The simplicity is to just start. As a professional procrastinator, and lover of lists, I would have lists and lists of the things I was going to accomplish or that I wanted to do, and that alone made me feel pretty good. Like I was going somewhere. This is a false first step. The first step is actually doing the thing. During college, I stopped paying attention to the normal workout routine that I had been living for years. Wake up, class, eat, class, homework, sleep, repeat. I meant to go work out, but never really did, and nothing ever stuck. So, I just started doing 10 push ups whenever I thought about it. That was the rule. Think about working out? Do something. After about the fourth time, it was time to stop being silly and move to the gym. This spanned into the longest I’ve ever continuously kept an optional work out schedule. “Motivation” may have been the spark for the behavior (I really do intend to do x), but that’s definitely not what kept me going. That was thanks to momentum.

I see momentum as kind of like the glue to behaviors. If momentum wasn’t there, you wouldn’t quite keep going from beginning to end of a behavior. It’s what keeps the blinders on while you’re working. This is what the “Well, I guess I’m this far. Might as well do ___”, or “I suppose I could do one more set/drawing/dish/etc” in the early stages. Later on, it turns into something called ‘flow’ (wait for November!). You just have to get deep enough your first few times to get a better understanding of the task ahead. Knowing if the task is giant, or could be done in ten minutes could effect the way you go about your routine (look, an MO). This could also be called ‘determination’. Depending on how you want to split hairs, one may be more biased toward fore knowledge of progress rather that just the head down intent to get from point A to as close to point B as possible. Either way, it is this crucial piece that really messes people. They have the spark, they have the intent, and they have even gotten through a first lesson…but what makes it stick? What makes them come back for more, especially if you aren’t in to it? As we’ve looked at here, it maybe be a combination of different MO’s that alter the effectiveness of the reward. And if motivation is really just making yourself start something, there are many ways you can set up an environment to cue yourself to begin behaviors. Lastly, it just takes a few little successes to ‘get the ball rolling’. Let it roll as slowly as you are comfortable, and I think you’ll be surprised what you can learn to do/improve on in a short amount of time.

References:
Gilbert, D. T. (2007). Stumbling on happiness. New York: Vintage Books (google book preview)
Star Trek video

Do Everything, Achieve Nothing

Today has a post, but first things first.
Let me tell you about homestuck.

The Story
Halo 4

Forward unto rants

Halo 4 was supposed to be the chosen one. The world was a buzz with the return of Master Chief, Spartan 117 and to everyone’s surprise Microsoft pulled off a great mini-series Forward Unto Dawn. The halo series had been out for more than a decade now and had been paired with quality novels picking up before, during, and in between game events. What may come as a surprise to many, Halo  has an incredibly deep plot, and rich history. Not only that, but the way that the story was developed leaves almost infinite possibilities to expand the narrative in even more interesting ways. All of this was coming together wonderfully. The most interesting parts of the novels and games were coming together in what looked to be a Halo story for the “hard-core” Halo fan. For residents of Halo Nation, this was epic. It is an odd fandom when you have about 50/50 who exclusively play multiplayer, or who play mostly single player and have also read every scrap of plot and lore possible. After more than ten years, it seemed like what was once only tucked away into the books was going to get lovingly integrated into Halo 4.

This didn’t happen.
For why?

One simple thing, and the point of today’s post: they did everything, so they had time for nothing.

Halo 4’s story was so ambitious that they tried to provide practically 2 to 3 stories worth of content and connections into one game and have it work. I have my own issues about what story they chose to tell, but for what they tried to do, there just wasn’t time in one game to accomplish it. I’ve read and discussed just about everything possible in this canon, and it took me more than 2 play throughs to figure out what was going on, and to understand the scope what what 343 really had tried to do. There was just so much going on in their story, that players couldn’t properly follow any one line of thought. By bringing in plot lines and characters from everywhere, the story ended up being awkwardly paced, ill explained, huge jumps of logic, and to be quite honest, I’m pretty sure included some space magic at one point (or at the least ‘plot majyicks’).

Wub muggin’

At just about every juncture, and in every task, we have been told to strive and multitask. In school, when working, when socializing, it all is about doing as many things at possible all at once, and supposedly saving time in the long run. Unfortunately, we humans just aren’t that good at it. If needed, I’ll find some research to cite, but at this point, I think these findings are starting to be common knowledge, so I won’t dwell on them. Rather, here is an interesting thought exercise that can help to narrow a spazzed mind used to trying to do 8 things at once.

Exercise:

1. Just take notice of when you are stretched thin, and why. This can be having 3 conversation boxes open at once, or any other number of things. For me, this generally occurs for me when cooking, or when I’m on a computer. Take notice, and if possible, remove yourself from one or more of those tasks.

2. If they can wait, que them for later. Deal with as few things at a time, and you’ll faster through your tasks. I’ve found this even when trying to relax and eat something while watching a series or a movie. I end up missing parts of the movie when I eat, or more likely, I watch the whole thing, then look down at my cold, sad food.

3. Once you’ve practiced paring down the number of tasks you do at a time down to just one at a time, you’ll have set yourself up for better environment for flow. For now, just think of flow as being ‘in the game’. You’re fully engaged with the task at hand, and as such, produce higher quality materials in fractions of the time.You’ll also find that flow states come and go and mostly never visit when you need them. Take heart that what you practice, you get better at, and eventually it will be easier to set up flow states.  (I will be talking MUCH more about flow later. If there are questions, please comment and I’ll try to answer them in that upcoming post)

4. Lastly, things are simple. With simplicity, comes a lack of freaking out, or stressing for no reason. Keep your nose to the grindstone of your particular task and don’t worry about the others. If at all else, everyone can use a little less stress.

The sideways lesson for this, is that by getting into this habit, you’re setting yourself up to be managed. By you. With more habits. By doing one task at a time, without distractions, you end up finishing faster. Completing tasks is intrinsically rewarding. Doubly so if the task was self imposed. And triply so if it means you can brag to social outlet. Learning to zero in on just one thing at a time is like training wheels for self-improvement.

ONE MORE THING!

The last step of the exercise is to extend it to your whole day. Sit down with some paper, and take a dedicated amount of time to make a list. Make a category for Today, This Week, This Month, This Year, and then under each write no more than 3 tasks that HAVE to be done. Fill this out. I find it better to work backwards (from ‘year’ to ‘today’).

Credit for this next part goes to Tim Ferriss, and I strongly recommend reading his book, 4 Hour Work-Week. As I have mentioned already, you have to have good reasons for doing things, meeting deadlines and the like or there is no motivation to do it. Tim Ferriss poses the question, “What one thing would change everything?”. Get out another piece of paper, make the same categories, but this time, you only get to write one thing.

This will also feed into your lack of stress for the day. By singling out the 3 tasks that would make the day productive, you’ve effectively done away with other distraction tasks and can focus on those more important tasks sooner, and with greater assurance that you’re progressing.

Wrap up:
We suck at multitasking. What we end up doing is many things, and none of them done well. In order to combat this and take advantage of flow states, manage your schedule to focus on one item at a time. For bonus points, expand this to your week, month, and year goals.
“What is the one thing that would change everything?”

Deadlines Keep Your Projects Alive

We’ve all had days like this

Deadlines. Accursed number-dates from the nether, that fill you with dread and get pushed under the stack until everything else has been shuffled under and your paper resurfaces. This was a problem for me throughout college, and I’m willing to bet quite a few others.

Despite this, deadlines can be helpful. Like so many things that end up being good for you, they are a pain at first, but in the end, you start liking them (or at least despising them less). Deadlines help keep you focused on a task, but more importantly they keep you focused on the end goal. What has to happen by ‘X’ time in order to pull this off? What are the benchmarks? What constitutes ‘good enough’ if I can’t finish completely?
A little obvious, but deadlines give you a time limit to do the action. This can sometimes be enough to get into a new habit. If you forget to work today, you better pick it up tomorrow to keep on pace. Deadlines also can help organize other items outside the immediate task that may have once been clutter. For example, If I I have the badly worded deadline of “I want to have this book read by the end of the week”, then that also means I need to think about, and manage my other daily activities in order to even set aside that book reading time.

So. How do you set up an an effective deadline?

-Adventure Time

As will be the theme with nearly all behavior links, a common theme is going to be precise wording of the task at hand. Deadlines need to be specific if they are going to work. Get out the micromanaging ruler, and figure out how long tasks are going to take, and find an appropriate deadline. As an example, let’s look back at our book reading. A week is a decent amount of time to read most books, but what was wrong with the wording? Oddly, what was missing that seems obvious, is a start time. Even just adding “In a week, starting from Saturday, I will read this book”- makes for better.
More details.
“I will start reading X on Saturday at 7pm, and I will finish next Saturday by 7pm”
I SAID MOAR DETAILS!
“I will start reading X on Saturday at 7pm, and I will finish next Saturday by 7 pm. I will read in  3 hour sessions each night (7-10pm) to accomplish this.”
That’s looking pretty good! We have defined the behavior we want to engage in, we have the time that it must be done within, and we have some smaller defined ways of how to get there (reading 3 hours a day). It is important to make sure that this smaller packet is doable. Nothing kills a habit faster than having your plans for self improvement crumble and break down. This brings us to the next crucial point in deadlines.

Consequences

Deadlines are only as powerful as the commitment you put in to completing them, and the consequences that will befall you for not reaching your goal in time. For instance, I was supposed to have this post up at least a week ago, but there was really only my own personal discomfort to deal with if I didn’t get it up in time. Bad deadline. Instead, I could have the consequence “If I do not finish my weekly post by xpm on xday, I owe you $100”. Well, that makes things a little more real. I feel a little more likely to write my posts now that I know failure to do so well be throwing away substantial amounts of money. This is the key. On the flip side, the reward need to be just as good, if not better for completing the task on time. If the reward, or punishment for any goal or deadline is lame, then you will be lame when setting out to do it. But if that reward is big enough, or that punishment foreboding enough then you’ll have enough motivation to keep chipping away at whatever you’re trying to accomplish. You want to add these in the form of “if, then” statements. “If I reach my deadline of yaddah yaddah, then I will go out and have a fabulous steak dinner. If I do not reach my deadline, I owe Melisa $100”.

For bonus incentive points, take a look at http://www.stickk.com/about.php
These guys are doing a lot of good for those who want to start a habit, but have always had trouble. This is great even if you haven’t had trouble. Stickk will ask you to input some info upfront, and then ask you for an anit-charity, and the amount you would like to donate. This is a great tactic to keep you on track. If you do not complete your task in the set time, then stickk will automatically transfer your funds to the loathsome organization of your choosing. Now, you can view your tasks in a different way. Rather than being a chore, it is a way to scam those scruffy nerfherders out of some money. Or maybe you’d like to roleplay and pretend that your actions are bravely standing up to your original values and blocking whatever sum might be heading toward, say, the KKK, or Exon oil. The point is, we don’t like giving money away, and we reeally don’t like giving it to organizations we are opposed to. Stickk won’t stop there though. If you choose to give it control of your facebook, or other social networking sites, it will deliver a letter to publicly announce that you failed in your attempt. More incentive. For some, this may be a little extreme, but in many cases that is what is necessary in order to get things done. At some point or the other, we all hit procrastination.

9,999 more words to go

Some of us can get quite good at just sprinting, and getting everything done an hour before a due date. While this may seem feverish, and poor in planning, it’s actually not that bad. For instance, the task was finished not in a week, or even a day, but in just a few hours of mad scrambling. If not for that deadline, there would have been no scrambling, and no reason to try to hurry. Deadlines force us into action, and all of a sudden we start finding that tasks that COULD have taken much longer to finish at a leisurely pace can actually be completed in much shorter time frames. With fast approaching deadlines, we tend to focus in and prioritize in a way that you just wouldn’t if given all the time in the world. You make decisions, and act on them, and as soon as you realize that maybe this wasn’t the best way to go about things, you either think creatively to make it work anyway, or abort as soon as you can to avoid wasting more time.

Think of things this way. When doing a task that has no deadline, how fast do you work? How much of your time is spent actually working? My biggest problem is dumping time into getting my work environment ready for working. I tidy up, I make tea, maybe a sandwich to go with the tea, maybe relax and get some web comics out of the way so that I won’t feel like checking them later, type-type, oh my tea is cold, better fix that…and so on. Very little actual doing despite the pleasant atmosphere. Now, if I gave myself the challenge of completing my blog post in 1 hour, then maybe I blaze through, finish earlier than I would, and take the extra time to properly fake out. But either way, giving yourself deadline forces you to make some decisions and act, which is by far the most important thing to forming habits and keeping them.