photo credit: s,B – Michael Brenton-King
of The Wachoo Wachoo

It seems to me that the greatest risk facing creative, driven people today is not obscurity. It’s burnout.

I read this in a blog entry today:

“Let’s be honest, when was the last time you felt as though you had enough time to do the things you wanted to do in one day?”

Very good question. If you’re anything like most of the folks I know, you’re running just about as hard as you can to get as much crammed into a day as you can.

I have to wonder how healthy a thing this is.

Think about it. You can try to give 16 ounces of water into a 12 ounce glass, but it will just overflow and make a mess. Put 12 ounces in, and it’s hard to move, likely to spill. But put eight ounces in the glass, and you’ve got a winning proposition.
There is nothing wrong with ambition, but surely the stress we put on ourselves (and our families) when pushing it too far is bad for us. There is nothing wrong with wanting to achieve, but can you do it without wasting yourself in the process?

It seems to me that, unless someone finds a way to slow time itself, the only option to getting everything you want to get done in a day is to want to do less stuff.

When I was a consultant, we use to talk about “managing client expectations.” This is, of course, corporate-speak for preparing a client to be told “no” when they asked for things that were out of the scope of the project. Managing life is not so different, but out here we call it self-discipline.

The “mind” is a child. You know that I mean…that loud, chattering part of yourself that craves the candy you should not have, distracts you, criticizes your work, reminds you that you don’t really want to be at work that day. It’s contrary, argumentative, and is generally a pain in the ass. The mind craves information like the body craves food. It will always want to gorge itself. Treat your mind like a client. Manage expectations. This is the sort of thing that project managers have to deal with all the time from clients. Clients want and want and want. Nothing wrong with that, it’s the way of things. A good project manager has to be able to say no politely but firmly. Basically…you need to be that project manager. I am fairly certain that is what “being an adult” means. Having the self-discipline to manage your life in a healthy manner.

This is what we need to do to our spinning monkey-minds. There may be things that we truly want to do…but we need to plan them. This is the glory of creating lists. I’m convinced that one of the reasons that David Allen’s [[[GTD]]] system is so successful is that is distracts the mind by giving a system to play with, thereby getting it out of the way so that you, the doer, can get things done. The mind loves lists. At first, it will protest, but after you get into it, it will love the structure of it. Simple lists give the monkey something to play with for a while, and in the mean time, you can focus on what is in front of you, and get it done. Then move on to the next thing. But keep it short. Keep it realistic. Pick a day where you do NOTHING on a list. Rest. Recharge. Then come back strong the next day.

A while back, I interviewed a good friend who converted to Judaism. He is very strict about the Sabbath, and he works in the information technology field. According to him, he is more productive now that he takes that time away from the work. Far more so then when he was scrambling and strung out trying to make crazy deadline after crazy self-imposed deadline.

Having deadlines is a form of self-disciple, absolutely. But the converse is also true. It’s become easier than ever to say yes, to take on something new, to commit and commit can commit. Do you have what it takes to fall back, regroup, and keep your sanity?

Email is a particular problem. It’s probably the worst of all the offending mediums of communication as far as sheer emotional baggage. For me, it hits with two distinct emotions:

1. The first time you load it after an extended period, there’s the dread of learning just how much is waiting there for you.
2. Throughout the day, it sits and nags at you like a small child, tugging at you so that it’s impossible to stay focused.

Once upon a time it was really cool to get new email. Now, it’s more of an inward groan. “What do they want from me now?”

Email is really something that most of us need to look at differently.

1. It is rarely urgent. When was the last time you got a truly urgent email? It happens, but not nearly as often as it feels like it does. The constant cycle of checking email fosters a sense of false urgency, and the stress can just be overwhelming.
2. It fosters the endless loop We’ve all done it…checking the email every five minutes, waiting for…what? What are we looking for exactly? It’s a bit like channel surfing when you know there is nothing on.
3. It’s a lousy medium for discussion By this, I meant that it is easy to take things out of context, read them wrong, and get upset. We approach email with whatever emotional baggage we have going on, and it’s very easy to skim and email and read into it something that is just not there. Or worse, misread it.
4. It’s a constant distraction I know folks who have their email clients checking every minute for new email. Personally, it would drive me mad. It’s like being pecked to death by ducks. Every time you get rolling on something, there is a PING! and someone else has something to say to you or ask from you.

In my case, I had several email addresses all coming into my Mail.app. I really felt like I needed to simplify, and in accordance with trying to keep my workarea clear until I wanted to deal with outside world, I did the following:

1. Consolidation: I pointed ALL of my email addresses except for my work email to my Gmail account. Now I have one place I need to go to get all my mail. This also helps with email archiving…I have a constant backup of everything I receive. In the case of my work email, it’s already a Gmail account. The nice thing about having them separated is that I don’t have to see the most recent demands from work if I’m off hours or on the weekend, whereas when I was using Mail.app, I had everything rolling in whenever it checked the servers.
2. Stopped using my desktop client: My desktop email client no longer pulls my email from the servers. I don’t have email waiting for me on my desktop anymore. When I want to check my mail, I have to manually go to Gmail. It’s more of an action, and because of that, it’s less like being nagged and more like proactively processing requests. It’s a slightly more positive mindset. I don’t feel like the email is as much of an intrusion because than it coming to me, I go to it at a time of my choosing.
3. Use the phone for urgent matters: If there is a problem with work, they now know to call me, not send me an email. If Evo finds a major issue with Podiobooks.com, he knows to call me. Most of the folks that I have serious dealings with out there have my phone number.

Email is probably the number one intrusion in our lives today, and it’s all because of a misunderstanding. Email does not give you 24/7 access to anyone. Email is a glorified answering machine, nothing more. “I’m not here right now, please leave a message.” Not, “I’m sitting here waiting and watching for your email.” Making the shift from email as anything more than a simple messaging system will allow you to step away and get other things done, or even turn off the computer all together and go outside.

There are a great many excellent articles out there about how to tame your email. My personal favorite is Merlin Mann’s Inbox Zero series. I highly recommend either reading the series and/or watching his presentation to the folks a Google this past summer. His tips have really helped me process things faster and keep on an even keel. I get somewhere around one hundred fifty email messages a day, and while that’s not as many as some, I was still finding myself overwhelmed. Merlin’s talk was just what I needed to shift my perspective on email and start getting things done.

Next time: Dealing with The Social

(note: I’m heading to DragonCon this weekend, so I’m not sure when the next piece will be posted. It all depends on when I have time to write it. It will be up by next Wednesday, but I hope to get to it sooner.)

It’s Sunday evening, around 6pm. I walk upstairs to put the laundry away and pull out a few things to get ready for the week. I switch on the light in my bedroom and there, across the room, is my desk, and on this desk, this very laptop. It sits there, the screen dark, but I can see that it is on. I can feel the heaviness growing…a feeling like I’ve just been ambushed, but I cannot leave. it’s like some sort of Stockholm Syndrome…it holds me hostage, but I do so love the attention…

I set the laundry basket down and sit down at my desk. I pause. There’s nothing that I really need to be doing, but I could check my email. I mean..it’s sitting there in the auto-hiding dock. All I have to do is move the mouse and…there…ah…I can see that I have fifty-nine new emails. Well, shit…what the hell? It’s Sunday…what could possibly be happening? Are they from work? Should I be checking my work email, just to be ready for tomorrow?

”Don’t do it,” an inner voice says. “That way lies madness.”

I ignore the inner voice because I’m feeling skeptical of inner voices at the moment. What harm could it do? I open the email and start to read…

…and before I know it it’s 11pm. I’ve been answering non-urgent email, surfing, twittering and doing everything but what I came upstairs to do: get ready for the week.

Sound familiar? If you’re anything like me, you really do enjoy the connection you have to your friends on the Internet. But…let’s face it…the moment you sit down at your desk it’s like being sprayed in the face with a firehose, or worse, it’s like you’re taken over by a sense of false urgency. Answering email, reading feeds…like you’re trying madly to catch up.

I hate that feeling, and that feeling was my first target when trying to reform my computer-using habits. I started with my desktop. Even before you connect, this is your greeting, your first interface. It’s a bit like waking up in the morning.

How do you like to start your day? I mean…when you wake up, do you like to get up, get some coffee in the relative silence, focus a little and think about what you’d like to do that day? Or do you prefer opening your eyes and having ten people at the foot of your bed shouting for your attention while the clock radio blares music and ads at the same time?

My first step was to reconsider how to use my desktop. I wanted sessions at my laptop to be more calm, more focused.

0) It’s tool. You’re the master. Don’t let it convince you otherwise.

I make this point zero because it forms the basis of everything that comes after in this series of essays. Yes, yes…this is just common sense, but most of us have a fairly personal relationship with our computers. It’s an extension of us, not just a little box we type on.

But really…let’s face it…it’s just a little box we type on.

It’s not your friend. It’s a tool, a means to an end, and nothing more. Want to write a novel? You could do it by hand. No, really, you could; and if you’re anything like me, you’d want to personalize that as well…pretty journal, new pen, slew of writing guides, etc. Still…all of that is window dressing. The action of writing is about pen on paper, not about the books you have or the pen or the special journal. Using your computer is not about the pretty wallpaper or the slick Yahoo Widgets. It’s a means to an end, an action machine. A tool. Use it like one. Make it personal if you like, but never confuse it with your Self.

1) Turn off all auto-startup programs

Email. Twitter. Skype. AIM. iChat. IRC. How many do you have starting up the moment you log into your computer? I used to have all of those, and the moment I logged in, I’d watch the email count increase with a sense of dread, the twitterific box would pop up, and Skype messages would start immediately. It’s enough to make you want to run and hide. Why? I thought I was being efficient. By having all of those things start up, I knew I’d be ready and waiting for whatever people needed from me.

The truth is that I shouldn’t have been worrying as much about responding to the others…I should have been focusing on what I needed to accomplish first, and then processed other things a little bit at a time.

Your desktop is a little piece of silent, sacred space. When you start up your computer, it should be with a sense of peace, not the sense of waiting for an ambush. It should be peaceful, zen-like, and allow you to focus before getting to work. To my way of thinking, having email, Skype, AIM, and Twitterific all open at startup is a bit like walking into your office or cube only to find several people shouting at you at once, all vying for your attention. Why would you do that to yourself?

Yes…I know it’s nice to hear from friends, and without our chat and twitter, we can sometimes feel a bit alone. But that’s rather the point. Example: if I sit down to write, should I:

1. Write

or

1. Write
   1. Write a line
   2. Read the Twitter that just popped up
   3. Twitter that I’m writing
   4. Change my Skype Shout-out that I’m writing
   5. Check the email that just came in
   6. Answer a twitter question about what I’m writing
   7. Re-read the line I just wrote…
   8. etc.

Obviously, the answer is the former, not the latter. And, if you’re anything like me, you feel yourself getting tense just reading the second list. Sadly, I’ve done the latter before. I’m not proud.

The key here is making your desktop almost like a separate space. Some of you who have played online games will know what I mean by this: when you sit down at your desktop, you should have a sense of place. It’s almost like you enter a clean room, decorated how you like it, but without distractions. It gives you time to wake up and compose yourself before you step out into the world.

2) Tidy Your Desktop

I’m stealing this one directly from Merlin Mann. On an episode of MacBreak, he showed how Path Finder can be used to hide all the icons on your desktop, including the Trash bin. Additionally, if you want to work with a completely blank space, you can use MenuShade, and then use Hazel to autotidy your desktop files.

Merlin likes to work with a completely blank, black desktop, but I’m a big fan of digital art, so using Backdrop and MenuShade did not work out so well for me. Backdrop kept popping up when I didn’t need it, and MenuShade left a black (or pale, due to transparency settings) at the top of my desktop. Both are great programs for what they do, but I didn’t need them. It was enough for me to have Path Finder hide everything (you Windows folks can do this with a right-click on the desktop).

Hazel tidies my downloaded files and other bits and pieces. For instance, any PDF I download automatically gets moved to my ToRead folder. Any zipped files that are not opened in three days get deleted. It’s a great tool, and well worth the price.

3) Clean and Autohide The Dock

Like many, I’m a huge Quicksilver fan. Because Quicksilver makes things so easy to launch, I have no need to extra bits in my dock. I almost never use it. Because of that, I’ve removed all of my apps.

Well…almost all. The Dockables remain. Dockables are tiny apps that allow you to trigger certain actions from your dock, like shutdown, eject, sleep, log out, etc. In truth…I could probably get rid of those as well and just trigger them from Quicksilver as well.

I should mention that while Windows cannot run Quicksilver, I found that using SlickRun can accomplish much the same thing. By setting up triggers in SlickRun, you can run just about anything with a simple key combination. I highly recommend it.

After all that, I autohide my dock. It not needed for much, so why have it take up real estate?

4) When you’re not sitting in front of it, TURN IT OFF

No, really. Shut it down. Close the lid, turn off the monitor. When I leave my computer on and open, I’m that much more likely to move the mouse and “check on things” (read: get sucked in) whenever I walk in front of it. When it is off, I tend to not want to start it up unless I have something I need to do. It’s a small hurdle (my laptop starts much faster since I stopped allowing things to autostart), but it’s enough to keep my ass out of the chair unless it needs to be there. This leads to me actually block out time to work instead of digitally grazing all day long. I can focus on other things, away from the umbilical of the network connection.

These were the first steps I took, and so far, they’ve truly helped my peace of mind when I’m working. However…this was just the start. The next task was to deal with the dreaded, the evil…the Email.

Wednesday:Dealing with Email

I have a love/hate relationship with my computer. I truly enjoy working on it…my Macbook is a wonderful piece of technology, and doing anything from writing code to developing fiction on it is a dream. In this way, it’s a fantastic, comfortable tool.

On the other hand, it’s also my ball and chain, or my accurately , my boulder and firehose. From the moment I log in, I’m rolling the huge boulder of my commitments uphill while being blasted with information from the firehose that is the Interweb. My computer lurks there, waiting to vomit up the next round of emails that need my attention, the to-do list that never seems to get any shorter, the endless list of RSS feeds and podcasts that I need to listen to. I feel perpetually behind and pummeled, and because of that, I’m reluctant to sit down in front of the damnable machine.

I’m not the only one, judging by the sheer number of lifehack/productivity blogs out there. Well…I’m trying to get control of things, so I thought I’d write about it in case something I’m doing might help someone out there.

The goal: To streamline my infolife to a point where it is not only manageable, but progress can be made. I want to be able to sit down at my computer and work on things without feeling pulled in so many different directions. It’s not the computer’s fault, after all. It’s my state of mind. At the end of the day, what I’m really managing is myself…not the computer.

Next: Part 1: Clearing the Workspace