I once heard that former British Prime Minister Mrs Thatcher said “Happiness is a ticked off list”. I have no idea if that’s true, but regardless of how one might have felt about her politics, I can certainly relate to that statement. I always write a to-do list for every project, and having recently completed a major one, I realised something about the process that causes it all to break down.

You see, as detailed as my lists are, I’ve realized that there are certain types of items that don’t appear on there. At best these unlisted tasks can slow things down, and at worst they can grind a project to a halt. I call these my hidden barrier tasks, perhaps an illustration is in order.;

My to-do list for the project of publishing my first e-anthology of short stories:

• Obtain a professionally designed book cover
• Format document in line with style guide
• Sort out PayPal
• Sort out PO Box for press releases
• Write sales blurb
• Write copyright notice and appendix
• Create landing page for e-book purchasers
• Research e-book pricing and decide on a price
• Publish e-book

Note how each of those seem perfectly reasonable and pretty detailed in some cases. When I was writing the list, I knew that some tasks would be relatively quick to execute and more straight forward than others. What I didn’t realise was that there were other tasks I had to tackle before the project could be completed. What it should have said was:

• Get over reluctance to ask my busy best friend for help
• Obtain a professionally designed book cover
• Format master document in line with style guide
• Sort out PayPal
• Sort out PO Box for press releases
• Figure out what the essence of the anthology is
• Write sales blurb
• Write copyright notice and appendix
• Create landing page for e-book purchasers
• Get over extreme block about charging money for my creative writing
• Research e-book pricing and decide on a price
• Push past the fear of failure
• Publish e-book

When I look at that second list, I feel like a fool! Those four hidden barrier tasks stalled the launch of my anthology by at least a week. The first of them was resolved in a conversation with the aforementioned best friend who turned out to be delighted to help.

Project launch delayed by: 1 day.

The second required consultation with a reader, as I am far too close to the stories to see them with enough objectivity.

Project launch delayed by: 3 hours (plus a huge amount of frustration incurred by my inability to write a sales blurb for my own project!).

The third hidden task really stalled the project, which was still secret at the time. It ultimately required the creation of a secret project support group of lovely people who were prepared to listen to my plan, look at specific concerns I had and then give me feedback and lots of kind encouragement. They also encouraged me to blog about it, and that helped immensely too. The lesson I learnt at that stage was that developing things in secret might lead to a grand unveiling, but doing something way beyond your comfort zone in secret is a recipe for procrastination.

Project launch delayed by: 5 days (ouch).

The fourth hidden barrier, well, that’s still there, but I have that fear with everything (even writing this post)! I did just have to take a deep breath and push the publish button regardless of the fear. But becoming aware of that fear made it easier to deal with, and squeeze past.

Project launch delayed by: 1 hour (that was me actively fretting about whether to click the button -  it was probably hours and hours spread over the last month).

I guess that’s what this is all about: awareness. So the next time I write a to-do list, I’m going to take a moment to see how I feel about each task, rather than a purely logic-based, practical appraisal of what needs to be done. After all, it was the emotional side of it that slowed me down, but bringing them out into the open helped me immensely. I’ll also be sure to prioritize tackling those previously hidden barrier tasks, to make sure the project proceeds more smoothly.

So, do you have a big project on the go? Or a to-do list the length of Italy? Are there any items on it that are taking far longer than they should, or just aren’t being tackled at all? Maybe there is a hidden barrier task that needs to be drawn out before you can continue? I hope this helps!

You can get Emma’s e-book, From Dark Places, here.

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This is a guest post by Francis Wade of Time Management 2.0.

Most professionals can name a handful of time management systems that they have come across in their professional careers. They can probably also list a few people here and there who have embraced these systems and are quite happy using them. If they were to think of improving their productivity they would probably look to adopt one of the systems they have heard about, and take a course, read a book or visit a few websites in order to learn what to do.

What if the way we think about time management is completely confused, and the fact is that we are each walking around using unique systems of our own creation?

Perhaps our time management systems are like fingerprints – one of a kind. The most recent research has focused on the fact that habits, rituals and practices are the building blocks of ALL time management systems, whether we realize it or not. It implies that the habit patterns that we use on a daily basis were especially created by us, even if we didn’t do so consciously.

The fact that our habit pattern is utterly unique implies that our time management systems must also be one of a kind. In other words, there are some four billion time management systems walking around, one for each person on the planet.

Is there something wrong with thinking in this way? Should we all be following one system instead of infinitely many? While it’s possible to teach groups of people to goose-step in unison in some settings, companies should not be encouraging their employees to take the same approach to managing their time. The fact is, needs differ from one person to the next, and it would be a mistake to try to implement the CEO’s habit pattern, for example, in the life of all employees.

Why so?

First there is the fact that habits are quite difficult to change. New rituals are hard to establish, and old ones are tough to quit. It’s the misguided executive who wastes the company’s money and time trying to get all the employees to follow a single time management system.

Secondly, the CEO’s lifestyle is very different from that of employees. While he may be a black belt in time management, the front-line employees may simply not need such sophisticated skills, nor even want them. Sauce for the goose is not sauce for the gander, if top performance from employees is what is most desired.

This isn’t to say that companies shouldn’t encourage employees to be more productive. Instead, they should help employees learn how to manage and upgrade their own time management systems, in order to achieve their individual goals. This kind of assistance would start by helping employees to see and understand the time management systems they have been using on a daily basis, without being fully aware of them. Then, once they gain some understanding, it’s not too hard to teach employees how to perform upgrades to their system using best practices taken from wherever they can be found.

In this way, each employee ends up with a custom system, plus a pathway for steady improvement. That’s the way to tap into the creativity of each person on the payroll, as a way to ultimately achieving superior results.

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Firstly, there is your mindset. If you’re still carrying around a NYR mentality, then you need to ditch it permanently. It will only hold you back. It’s not enough to just say you’re going to do something, you have to consider how much you mean it, and how you’re actually going to achieve it. Once you start thing in those terms, you’re halfway there. However, there are also two other matters to think about:

• Be honest
  Don’t let peer pressure cloud your decisions. Don’t let the latest scare stories in newspapera drive you into things that deep down you don’t want to do. There is a big difference between feeling like doing something, and having the motivation and desire to follow that up for months and even years. There are many things I’d like to do, but enough to show dedication to it far into the future. No. Do you really want to quit smoking and no longer have the calming buzz of a cigarette between your fingers? Do you really want to be debt-free by the end of the year and forever miss out on the regular shopping indulgences? Be honest with yourself.
• Be realistic
  Combined with being honest is being realistic about what you want to achieve. Traditional self-help gibberish tells you to reach for the stars! Anything is possible! Hmm, no. Being realistic isn’t about dumbing down your goals, it’s about taking out the puppy dogs and fairies and turning a fantasy into something that you may actually be able to make happen. Unlike a football team which has a shouting manager and big pay packet to motivate them into getting back up after a bad run of results, you’ll only have yourself. Dream big, sure, but don’t get too carried away.

I must stress that though many people have achieved amazing things in their lives, they didn’t do it by having hopefully optimistic designs for their life. They were realistic and turned that realism into action.

Now that you have the right mindset for creating goals that you can actually achieve, you need to actually decide what it is you want to achieve and how you’re going to do it. It’s time to be strategic and smart and do some serious planning. Below are several very varied techniques to help you really analyze your life and inspire some some lean and mean goals to pursue through 2010.

• Horizons of focus
  You don’t have to be a GTD fan to take advantage of this common-sense breakdown of your life. I personally, never really got into it, but it clearly has value to many people. Essentially, there are six levels of focus, ranging from the big vision of your life at the top, to your daily activity at the bottom. How does everything align up? You can check out a previous post I wrote for full details on how to implement it.
• My own approach
  If that’s a little too much for you, last year I experimented with my own approach which is actually something I still use. Essentially, you start in the middle, considering what current goals you have or want to do, then going a level to consider what actions you need to take to achieve them, and up a level to see how those goals fit into your big vision.
• SWOT analysis
  This may bring back a few memories for those who did business studies at school. SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Yes, it is possible to apply it to your life, your finances, work, play, social life, hobbies and interests etc. Check out this post for a really good understanding of how it works.
• SMART goals
  Another oldie but goodie. Again, it’s not something I’ve ever actively used but you can’t deny the value in it. SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable, realistic (that word again!) and timeframed. If your goals don’t follow all of those criteria, you can forget about it. More details on this technique can be found here.

This is only the tip of the iceberg, and there are many other techniques out there, but hopefully this will give you a taster. It might seem overkill, and a little unnecessary to put your personal life under such scrutiny, but perhaps the fact we give our work life too much attention and our personal life so little is why many people are unhappy. Do you have any favorite practices for coming up with and setting goals? Why not share them in the comments or on Twitter? Hopefully this time next year, the idea of having new year’s resolutions will be a thing of the past!

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You’d think that in 2010, we’d have all wised up when it comes to making goals and sticking to them, but year on year we put ourselves through this yearly ritual, fueled by magazines, media types, self-help gurus and bloggers (yes, I’ve been guilty of it in my early days). The problem isn’t setting the goals (though actually even that can sometimes be a pain as I shall discuss shortly), it’s how you’re actually going to achieve them, but the NYR (as I shall refer to it from now on) has been around for so long that it’s impossible to change the general perception of what is required from it. In many ways it’s like a simple to-do list. People think it’s enough to just write down or declare everything that needs doing and they will be miraculously energized to take action. Unfortunately it’s only one part of a bigger solutions, not the full answer.

And then there is all the expectation attached to it. Oh my, so much expectation and enthusiasm! If only I could harness the energy I feel at the start of a new year and spread it out evenly over the entire twelve months I’d be… well, amongst many things, I’d be a very happy and fulfilled person. Unfortunately, NYR enthusiasm is very much like an overinflated balloon (probably blown up by a very drunk person at 11.59PM on New Year’s Eve). Let’s set silly, over-reaching goals for the year and act all surprised when it pops in our face! All it takes is one cigarette a few day’s later or getting tempted by that juicy bun with the strawberry on top two weeks from now, and that balloon will go byebyes. Oh well, there is always next year… The result? Another person who doesn’t have a clue how to achieve their goals, dreams and aspirations.

The new year is a great time to re-evaluate your aims, wipe the slate clean where necessary and make realistic, achievable goals backed up by concrete, clearly defined steps to help you achieve them… just not flaky wishlists because you felt like it. It’s sounds geeky, it sounds serious and businessy, but people never quit bad habits or make big changes in their life by fooling around. There is something about the human psyche that loves a new start (even if in reality, it’s the same old you just carried over to the next year) so this year don’t make the same mistakes of the past – set some smart goals, but please don’t call them new year’s resolutions (though, feel free to suggest alternative names).

If you want more on how exactly to create such goals be sure to check out my next post on Thursday. Subscribe to the feed, follow me on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook to get notified and stay up to date.

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Whenever I have had a big change in my life, such as going to university which would require lots of study, or getting a full time job that would need lots of attention, people have always said that I would have to forget about doing this and that. There would be no time for having fun, or indulging in hobbies. Forget about any other goals and dreams you may have, I’d have to knuckle down and focus on my studies or work. In other words I’d have to prioritize. Not likely!

If you need to do a bunch of things, then they are all important to you at some level otherwise they wouldn’t be on your radar. So why should you have to pick and choose which is more valuable? Which is priority A? Which is low priority? To me, prioritizing involves sacrifice. It’s the equivalent of deciding whether to drop your son off at football training or drop your daughter off at her piano class. And I don’t believe you should have to sacrifice.

Prioritizing is the medicine you take after you’ve caught a bad case of Excessive Workload or you have the painful symptoms of Lack Of Time. As is typically the case with any answer to what ails people in the 21st century, the focus is on managing the symptoms rather than preventing the problem in the first place.

If you had enough work to fill up your 9-to-5 workday without any overtime, would you need to prioritize? Would it matter which tasks came first? Likewise, if you had twelve uninterrupted hours each day to do all the work you needed to do, would it again matter which order you did it? Would you even have to contemplate which projects were more important than the other? Ideal scenarios they may be, but it is possible to use your time more efficiently and trim your workload of excess baggage. So why are you putting so much focus on prioritizing?

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As I just said, this syndrome is rife in the modern world, because the way we live our lives and  the way society functions – from business practices to what our kids are taught at school – makes our exposure to ‘Someday’ disease a certainty. However, I believe there are ways to combat it. In the same way washing your hands regularly can stop you catching colds, the following five practices can stop you becoming infected by ‘Someday’ disease.

• Capture your thoughts
  Anything that involves substantial time or effort invariably needs planning, preparation and a clear head dedicated to thinking about it. That means you need to free your mind up from the burden of remembering stuff and capture those thoughts onto something external, like a notepad or onto your PC. A general doesn’t plan tactics and strategies in his head, he uses a tactical display. Likewise, a teacher doesn’t keep his lessons in his head, he uses presentations, notes and whiteboards.
• Break it down
  This is a crucial step. Society is no longer geared towards a get-up-and-go mentality. Nowadays, it seems like everything requires copious amounts of tedious paperwork and planning, and numerous chores in order to get any real work done. With all confusion it’s no wonder people procrastinate. Something like traveling around Europe or even learning to snowboard poses numerous challenges. The best way to overcome that complexity and confusion is to break it down into bitesize chunks of activity.
• Decide what really matters
  It’s time to be realistic and admit you can’t do everything. But if you really question yourself, you’d probably admit half of those things you say you want do are just pipe dreams or nice sounding ideas anyway. Many people would say they want to learn a new language, go traveling around Australian or learn to play the piano but how genuinely motivated are you to do something about it? What really matters to you? What do you really want to do? Don’t spread yourself thin. Identify the vital few that matter and forget about the rest – they will only serve to distract you.
• Apply Parkinson’s law
  Time management as we know it only serves to feed the ‘Someday’ disease, as discussed in a previous post. Instead, forget what you know about managing your time and apply Parkinson’s law. Work expands to fill the time available to it, as does our perception of the work. The more time you give something, the more of it you are likely to waste it and leave something till someday in the future. As stressful as the prospect of being tight with your time and even tighter with deadlines might seem, it is a very powerful way to spur yourself into action.
• Overcome that first hurdle
  Momentum. We all need it to get things done, but we vastly underestimate quite how much it’s required. The hardest part of any project is often the very beginning when you have no momentum to take those first few steps. Like driving a car, once you’ve got moving and out of first gear, the journey becomes considerably easier. So, be aware of that first hurdle and put extra focus into clearing it. Things will become much easier from then on.

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I think that everybody gets Someday disease (also known as Someday syndrome) nowadays, it’s as widespread as the common cold. Whether it be a big hobby you want to try or that company revamp you’d like to implement, that classic film you’ve always wanted to see or that friend you feel like catching up with, ask yourself why you’re putting off doing all these things. Then consider this quote by Tim Ferriss of The 4-Hour Work Week which probably sums it up best:

“Conditions are never perfect. ‘Someday’ is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you. If it’s important to you and you want to do it ‘eventually’, just do it and correct course along the way.”

From my experience I’ve found Someday disease manifests itself with a certain mindset. A sufferer of the disease will believe that conditions have to be just right – that they have to know enough, have enough, etc. In other words they believe all pieces of the jigsaw have to be in place before then can take action. This is well intentioned but in the real world grossly naive.

When it comes to overcoming Someday disease you have to change your perceptions and realize, as Tim Ferris pointed out, that conditions will never be perfect for you to start and that it’s easier too just set off and correct course as you go, rather than waiting around for the right winds in order to set sail. With all this in mind, the following are the two key mantras you need to follow if you want to break free from this ‘Someday’ mentality.

• There is never such a thing as the right time
  When you’re waiting for the right time to do something, what you’re really saying is you’re waiting till you’ve run out of excuses to start. Very rarely will everything come together perfectly and at the right time. You might have enough money but not enough time, you might have a great idea but not enough knowledge or experience… whatever the excuse understand that things will never come together unless you take action first.
• You learn more by taking action
  Reading and researching or waiting till you have enough experience is all well and good, but none of it compares to practical training in the field. You learn the most by doing and from making mistakes. However, putting yourself out like that can be scary or unpleasant, so we’ll often slip into the ‘right time’ excuse until we feel like we know and understand enough.

Next week I will do a followup piece that looks at several practical techniques to help you overcome the influence of Someday disease. However, in the meantime remember the two rules above and share your experiences in the comments.

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Emergency! You’ve fallen off the productivity wagon. You’re tired, you’re feeling down, you’re procrastinating, you might even be a little hungover, and you feel like chucking that to-do list in the bin. We’ve all been there, and more often than not when you’ve lost your momentum it’s doubly hard to get it back again. That’s why I’ve created this guide for just such emergencies. It covers five suggestions that I personally use. The key focus is to get that momentum back and get the wagon rolling again and that’s what the following will help you to do.

• Do something, anything!
  This may go against a lot of what I talk about here – focusing on the right things and not doing stuff for the sake of it – but the one advantage of just doing anything is that it’s a quick and cheap way of getting some momentum behind you. Sometimes when you just can’t be bothered, doing a bunch of small and irrelevant but easy tasks like organizing the contents of a drawer or de-cluttering your book collection can give you the forward motion you need to focus on those bigger obstacles.
• Get a good nights sleep
  It’s a simple one this. If you’re tired, hungover or generally overwhelmed with everything, make sure you get a good night’s sleep. It’s hard to regain your productivity if you can’t think clearly or have a banging headache. You may be surprised how  much your productivity is tied up with your energy levels. The best way to get recharged is to get sleep!
• Clear the decks
  I hate loose ends. They are a distraction and a major drain on your resources. Often, I’ll ignore them or let them slip under the radar because, all they really are is annoying, finicky little chores. However, when you’ve fallen off the wagon those loose ends create the muddy ground which makes getting moving again twice as hard. A little time spent clearing the decks now – moving your paperwork into folders or tidying up your home – will make things much easier when you finally get back on track.
• Have a major mind sweep
  If the metaphorical muddy puddles of having loose ends lying around everywhere isn’t bad enough, than the weeds and vines of uncaptured thoughts swirling around your head is likely to keep you rooted to the spot. Print out a trigger list, take a seat and start capturing all those thoughts, things to do and creative ideas that are swirling around inside your brain.  Better out than in as they say.
• Start ASAP
  Fallen off the wagon? Get back on now. Don’t put it off. Don’t look for a fresh start with a new week, day, month or anything like that, you will just drive yourself mad waiting around to take action. Even if it just involves doing one of the tips in this post, don’t wait to regain that sense of purpose. Waiting for the idea time to pick yourself up again or waiting to achieve that spark of productive magic means you’ll be waiting around for a long time. It’s like playing a game of football. If you get tackled and loose the ball, you get back up again and keep playing – you don’t wait till the next match to start playing again.

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Back to school
Thankfully, by and large it’s not our fault as I will hopefully demonstrate today. To make the point, let’s go right back to when we were school kids. At my school at least, classes always lasted 45 minutes. I never figured out why but according to the teachers that’s exactly how long it took (plus homework) to teach a concept, idea or subject. This was all well and good but occasionally I’d understand the subject in much less time than this (and no doubt a few other kids in class would too). Of course, we couldn’t say anything or go off and do something more constructive. We’d have to sit there, hide our boredom and pass the rest of the time in the best way we could, otherwise face getting shouted at by the teacher.

Back to work
Naturally we grew up and entered the big wide world of work where everything was… exactly the same. School days of 9AM to 3.30PM (for me at least) were replaced with work days of 9AM till 5PM (again, there are variations on this but the principle remains the same). We couldn’t finish our work early or fly through it with efficient ease because the boss would shout at us for taking it easy while the rest of the workforce were still trudging along doing the work that you had finished several hours ago. And so, we’d drag our work out, come up with pointless activities and make sure it filled up our time so as to look busy. Go figure.

My point is…
What I hope is apparent from my example is that society as a whole is geared towards wasting time. From the moment we enter school we’re in an environment where dragging work out, taking your time and generally being inefficient is the norm. That manifests itself all the way to the world of work so it’s no wonder that our entire mindset is geared that way. Take checking your email inbox as a prime example. What should be a simple five minute task if you focused on it, often becomes thirty minutes of dawdling just to pass the time till the bell goes or the workday is over. When society is like this, how do you break free?

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In the 21st century it’s no longer a simple matter of picking up a pen and writing or getting your tools out to build something. You can no longer stand in front of a metaphorical conveyor belt and crank widgets all day long because what’s coming down that line is multi-layered, multi-faceted, time consuming and complicated.

Now excuse me while I go on a long analogy worthy of Gregory House. Nowadays the road from A to B is no longer smooth and straight like a Roman road. It’s potholed, snakes all over the place and has numerous pitstops along the way. It’s difficult to make the journey when you’re faced with that. That’s why we need travel guides – Getting Things Done, 7 Habits, Zen To Done, Do It Tomorrow, The 4-Hour Work Week – so that we are better prepared to navigate all of those bumpy roads and make the journey easier. But at the end of the day you still have to hop in the car and get moving. You still have to just do it. You still have to stop procrastinating and get on with it. The old advice applies now more than ever.

What I’m trying to say is that the doing habit has become increasingly lost in a world which on one hand expects instant results and allows you to pick and choose what you want, but on the other hand is dumbfounded by just what it actually takes to do something nowadays. Getting 7 Zen Habits Done In 4 Hours is great (invaluable?) for giving you a direction and guidence and making the whole process easier, but it’s still not going to mean you’ll do anything. That’s a habit you need to rediscover or develop through commitment and repetition to the original rule of productivity – just do it.

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