I went around and logged the things I happen to be doing in a spreadsheet for three weeks.
Assuming those are mostly the things I'll be doing going forward I've categorized them into action-cards. Those have groupings by space (home, out, job) and time (night, noon, morning).
One card is titled BURN. If you play that card you can do whatever for 25 minutes, but you can't play two in a row. I set a timer.
Then I have to choose a card to play, from the things I actually do.
Set a timer. When that's up choose a card again.
There is a card called SLEEP, it has a checklist. Similarly EAT/COOK has both instructions and time limits.
I ended up with more than 15 but less than 30 cards. And the single point of failure is in set-timer to choose card loop. This goes away after about 20 days where it becomes a habit.
There was another point of failure, but now there is a CALLS card that is limited to two times a day, and the phone is otherwise offline. Battery life is 5x.
At first I was like "but with those rules you could play BURN every other card, and that's not good" then I realized that if I'd only wasted half of an average waking day for the last couple decades, I'd probably be god-emperor of humanity.
This does seem quite a bit like the Pomodoro method. Was that an inspiration? Did you try it and it didn't work? If so, why do you think that is?
It is like, let's assume that those methods work for people; there is something to them. But they also don't make any tangible models with which to make predictions, so they are not complete. They don't operate the whole picture, just a part of a system that people will frequently mess up.
Or maybe we can say: something about maintaining focus, or starting tasks for pomo; and understanding where you're coming from, where you're going and what to adjust for GTD.
A gym analogy would be: tracking your training program is GTD, having proper form is pomo. But nutrition and sleep are missing.
It may be the artifact of thinking of these things in scientific terms, reductionist and unfeeling. And feeling is important. Your reality is communicated to you by your perception, which is seated where your feeling is to be found. Everybody has the same amount of time in a day, yet the use of it is the thing that makes all the difference in a person's life. There is a whole dimension to be explored and perhaps a science to be established in that basic aspect of reality. It has to become a book, or many books, not just a single word like "discipline" or "executive function".
This field right now resembles witchcraft. We have rituals to perform, that sometimes work. We have myths to explain the "sometimes" part, but they involve dead relatives and phantom trauma. It clearly isn't even measuring the right things or it would be possible to solve it by maths, by stats and neural networks.
And so I've been feeling around. Trying to understand what different states of mind are like, what are they conducive of, and how to key myself into one or the other.
The pomo and GTD methods I come to understand like so:
- Do something, then feel different. Body first, head follows.
- Things take time. Getting with things takes 20-25 minutes, specifically.
- You can do meaningful progress in two half-hour stretches.
- A thing that takes less than 20 minutes is a "shit shoveling" kind of thing. You gotta do some early in the day. I've seen people say "seek discomfort". Procrastination behaviours are the exact opposite of that and are habitual, and as such can be learned and equally unlearned in about three weeks time. If it has a time-limit it is about to be over with, that's how I start doing those things I don't feel like doing. I mean, one can plough through 20 minutes of pretty much anything, right? And then it's done with. There will never be a better time, I won't ever feel it easier to start; avoiding it will form a habit, and so will engaging it.
- If you keep, update, review, throw out and re-do a model of how you're doing you won't be running through these assessment and progress tracking tasks when you're trying to go to sleep or devote your attention to a task at hand. There is a category of tasks where you're "playing" where you'll focus without effort. That is because they are meaningful to you. You should look forward to this, every day, schedule and prepare for it. Fun will not just find you, happiness will not just happen, and if you don't plan for resting it won't just somehow cram itself into your schedule.
- The BURN card is about keeping moving, not getting hung up on any one thing. Gautama said attachment leads to suffering. Gurjieff said "always have an aim".
- The other cards are about "do what you can, use what you have, where you are". This may sound like some high-productivity self-coaching nonsense, but it is actually a disaster recovery strategy. It gets you out of a hole and keeps you out. A thing that's not moving is often a dead thing. Should be moving.
- Nobody can help you. Except you can help you. Really, you can. Expect delightful developments.
- Eating/fasting, sleeping/caffeinating should be done in a controlled manner if you're to help yourself. Those are the climate to which your moods are the weather. Knowing good food and the time when it is good for you, bad sleep from good sleep and how to do it are the base rock on which you build. If you don't do it, everything shifts all the time, like sand. Or sinks like a bog.
This is a really interesting technique! I'm happy this is working so well for you. Would make an interesting app though I suppose that would put you back on your phone.
Yeah, it would have to take over my phone excepting the two CALLS windows a day.
Otherwise I'll find it very easy to BURN away.
And the most noticeable thing it did to my well being is a drastic reduction in ambient anxiety and proclivity to negative emotion. It is like what SSRI are supposed to be, but for real.
A reduction in overall ambient anxiety is definitely a worthy goal for anyone. Do you feel like this might be partially due to the fact that being on your phone less gave you less access over all time to be exposed to the news?
No, that would be old news. I was never, ever the guy to pick up my phone aimlessly. It was always to a) swipe away the bullshit, and b) do the important thing. I don't think I am in any way affected by the dopey loops the news pull on you. In fact, I check out news when I overhear something or when there is no development for weeks on an issue that directly affects me. Never otherwise.
I went around and logged the things I happen to be doing in a spreadsheet for three weeks.
Assuming those are mostly the things I'll be doing going forward I've categorized them into action-cards. Those have groupings by space (home, out, job) and time (night, noon, morning).
One card is titled BURN. If you play that card you can do whatever for 25 minutes, but you can't play two in a row. I set a timer.
Then I have to choose a card to play, from the things I actually do.
Set a timer. When that's up choose a card again.
There is a card called SLEEP, it has a checklist. Similarly EAT/COOK has both instructions and time limits.
I ended up with more than 15 but less than 30 cards. And the single point of failure is in set-timer to choose card loop. This goes away after about 20 days where it becomes a habit.
There was another point of failure, but now there is a CALLS card that is limited to two times a day, and the phone is otherwise offline. Battery life is 5x.
Contentness is 1.0
Try it.