Find More Time to Write, Part II
With Multitasking and a Distraction Action Plan
It’s a gift when last-week Catherine does this-week Catherine a solid and writes Shelf Life ahead of time. I have a hard cutoff for Shelf Life length at 2,750 words so the moment an essay gets longer than that it becomes a two-parter. I love when an essay grows out of hand and becomes a two-parter. This is how I give myself the gift of time. As I discussed in last Thursday’s installment, when I group like tasks I can be more efficient because I’m already in the right “mode” for that type of task. When I’m already in writing mode—in Shelf Life writing mode, specifically—I can knock out more text faster than if I stop and come back another day and have to get back into writing mode.
Interestingly, after writing Shelf Life I often go on to write other things the same day—again, because I’m “in writing mode”—and, in fact, if I don’t, I find my brain is sometimes so clogged with writing that it’s hard to sleep or do something else. I haven’t yet discovered the secret for turning the idea tap back off once it’s going. I put my brain into its “writing voice” and it doesn’t go back to normal, relaxed brain for a while. When I figure that part out you can be sure I’ll write a Shelf Life about it.
Anyway, thanks last-week me. You’re a mensch.
Today I’m continuing this tale as old as time management. Not all of us have as much time available for writing—or for whatever it is we want to fit into our busy day!—as we would like. Since no one can get more time, I’m offering my strategies for maximizing the time we have with task efficiency and planning. You will not find suggestions for things to stop doing—no getting up earlier, no going to bed later, no giving up your leisure time in exchange for productivity time. Just suggestions for making the most of what you’ve got.
Multitask When It Makes Sense (Don’t When It Doesn’t)
Science shows that people are bad at multitasking. That’s the takeaway. Most of us think we’re good at multitasking but if only 2.5 percent of the population is actually good at multitasking then most of us are wrong. This is the Dunning-Kruger effect in action.
As I suggested above, multitasking is inferior to task-grouping and knocking out like tasks in succession so you don’t have to do as much task-switching, which is usually bad for time management. So when do you want to multitask?
Okay, funny story time. This is the funny story from the 1990s I promised last week. I was talking with a colleague the other day and I said I try never to be idle (unless I’m resting or during leisure time). That if I have empty time I fill it with something. She said, “Hey, me too! I learned that when I used to work at a place called The Cosmetic Center. Their mandate to workers was to never be idle and if you didn’t have a customer to be straightening or cleaning or restocking bags or doing something. You were never allowed to be still.” I lost my mind because I, too, used to work at The Cosmetic Center and that is also where I learned this tactic. This is a true story. She didn’t believe me until I cited the exact location I worked at and the dates I worked there (hint: in the 1990s).
The Cosmetic Center is gone now (it was a precursor to Ulta and Sephora). Another funny story is that every retail place I ever worked has since gone out of business. My departure is too devastating to survive.
True multitasking is for the birds but filling dead time with something useful is for winners. Here are some examples:
I dictate voice notes (speech-to-text) about what I’m writing when I drive.
I listen to an audiobook while I walk the dog.
While waiting for something to cook (or boil or whatever), I clean the kitchen.
Any time I’m waiting on something to happen, and I know about how long I have to wait, I try to cram in a quick task or chore that will take about that much time. That’s one fewer task or chore for me to do another time.
One activity I try to avoid multitasking is eating. When I’m eating I try to just be eating and not working, reading, scrolling Twitter, or anything else (talking to my partner is okay). Eating time is just for eating. I take eating way too seriously to mess around with it.
Identify Your Distraction Patterns
Pop quiz, hotshot: Does this sound like you? “This will only take a minute, I’m going to go ahead and do it now and then go back to what I was doing.” My distraction downfall is things that will “only take a minute.” The worst one is email. I’m in the middle of something, an email comes in, and I pause what I’m doing to see if the email is urgent. It’s not urgent, but now I’ve scanned it and I know it will only take a moment to find the information the person needs, answer their question, and get them moving forward with their own thing.
Obviously, I don’t leave people waiting forever for a response. That said, when I’m super busy and I have a lot of work tasks to get through and I’m short on time, I do need to triage email. This doesn’t mean putting emails off for a long time, but limiting my email responding periods to, say, three times a day—first thing in the morning, last thing before I sign off, and midday. For the midday email check in, right before or after taking a lunch break (if I’m going to get one of those) or right after a meeting are ideal because at those times I’m already disengaged from whatever I was doing so I’m not interrupting anything. Then, I can draft all my email responses at one time (grouping like tasks).
When I’m writing, I’m frequently distracted by opening a web browser to verify something on the internet: “Is this an appropriate name for a person in 15th-century France? Does any language have a word for this concept that I can borrow for my story? Is there already a book titled this? What are all the available synonyms for ‘happenstance’?” Since I know opening a web browser puts my whole writing session in jeopardy, I developed my thirty-second rule to help me avoid the trigger that sets off the distracted behavior.
Frequent task switching can cause a focus deficit and each time we get distracted from one thing by another thing, there’s a chance we’ll set off a distraction chain reaction and never get back to the original thing. This is like when I go from my office to the kitchen to get a glass of water, and then I see my keys are on the kitchen counter, so I put down the glass and take the keys to my purse, and then I see I left shoes in the entryway so I take those up to the bedroom, and then in the bedroom I see I left my laptop on the night table, so I take my laptop back to my office to plug it in, and then I sit down and go back to work, but I never got water.
The thirty-second rule is great in the moment, but if you want to train your brain away from distraction in the long run, I have a solution for that too. As a person with ADHD diagnosed late in life, I had no choice but to develop these strategies and coping mechanisms. Check out the intercept-redirect strategy I shared in Redirection Insurrection, which is about how to train your brain to notice when it’s doing something you don’t want and gently direct it back to what you do want it to do.
Don’t Borrow From Petra to Pay Pauline
Finally: Yes, I finally got to the finally part. This advice comes from my own experience. When you’re planning out how you want to group tasks, or how you’re going to put tasks into modules and schedule your day, don’t overbook yourself and don’t take time away from the things already you do that you enjoy or that are good for your health and well-being. For instance, if you watch TV or play video games to unwind, you might find it tempting when you’re getting into the spirit of productivity to say, “I’m going to cut out TV time and replace it with writing time!” There’s nothing wrong with trying that to see how it feels, but don’t make it a rule for yourself—for example, “No TV time each day till I’ve written 500 words!”
First, that’s going to make writing those 500 words feel like a chore and a drag. Second, leisure time is important. We live in a society that places the importance of monetary earning and productivity above all and deemphasizes the importance of leisure time for health and wellness, often casting leisure as wasted time that could be better used for something productive. This is just a terrible way of looking at life. Leisure time is important. Nobody can fire on all cylinders all the time forever. If watching TV or playing video games or just scrolling Facebook is how you unwind and relax, don’t look at that as “wasted” time that you should replace with “productive” time. Leisure time is productive time. It insulates you against burnout.
Take it from me: Burnt-out time is truly wasted time. When you’re burnt out you become less productive at everything. Brain feels foggy all the time, because it’s diverting resources to managing dangerous levels of stress. If you borrow from your leisure time to create more productive time, you risk burning out and becoming less productive than you were when you gave yourself time to relax and unwind and enjoy fun stuff.
I know several people for whom writing is the leisure activity of choice, and good for y’all. You’ve got it made in the shade.
The most important advice I have for time management is not to overschedule yourself to the degree that you stress yourself out, and not to hold your own feet to the fire when it comes to productivity or accomplishments. Remember the simple strategy (from Make a Magnificent To-Do List) of migrating tasks on your to-do list to a future day. Didn’t get everything done today (or you can see that you won’t get to everything)? Migrate some less-urgent stuff to the next day. Don’t beat yourself up because you didn’t cross everything off the list in one day. Like literally never beat yourself up, feeling bad is the enemy of productivity and also this isn’t (spoiler alert) Fight Club.
Okay, that’s it. That’s all my time-management strategies, or at least all the ones I can think of right now. Maybe there will be a Part III someday if I remember more.
In my mind, today’s article and last week’s Part I dovetail nicely with Marginal Gains and Writing from earlier this month; so make sure you read that if you haven’t. How much time can you scrape out of these tidbits to spend on writing? Fifteen minutes? Twenty-five minutes? Remember, when something feels too little to be worthwhile, that small increases can compound over time into something tremendous.
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