Half a year ago, a friend of mine sent me a link to a guest post on Zen Habits by Jerry Kolber. It’s a great inspiring article about getting more (or, at least some) things done. I have few articles like that and revisit them about once a month to keep my productivity momentum. So after 4th or 5th time revisiting the article, I decided to buy a book by Leo Babauta called “The power of LESS”. Audiobook actually. I haven’t “read” it all yet but I think it will bring some good changes to my life. It’s not the first productivity book I read and actually they all brought some good changes. What I already like about this book is that it does not make you think changes will come easy. Or rather, they will not come fast. To give you an idea – I’m in the chapter V now where the author tells how to create new habits. It takes about a month to create a new habit. You can only create one habit at a time. Additionally author gives 12 habits he recommends to create within next year. So there you go – you’re married with this book (which is under 200 pages if you have the paper edition or in one iphone if you’re like me with audiobook) for next year at least. But I’m a slow reader, so I kind of like the idea even though there’s more than 20 books on the queue anyway.
So what is about Single-tasking? Well, that’s just a habit recommended on the book that I would like to start from. I tried to single-task for couple days and indeed, I am already getting some things done. I don’t mean to say I’m cool now, no way. I just tried it once and I liked it. Otherwise I am stuck trying to get way too many things done – stuck so badly that I can no longer get even simplest things done, like finishing reading a book. And I don’t even [actively] twitter or use facebook which I though would be biggest performance killers. I am only adding new feeds to google reader but really it was about 5 months since I last read any of the >600 unread articles.
Well OK, my Beautiful Wife gave a birth to our first kid 5 months ago which I believe could be related. But he is 5 months soon (tomorrow), yesterday he started crawling, soon he will have new foods added in addition to mother’s milk, learn to sit, walk, run.. I guess I also have to move on 
.
This article is meant to help me develop this new habit. “How?” you might ask. Well, here’s the deal – as per Leo, to create a new habit I have to:
- Select one habit for a challenge. (Single-tasking)
- Write down my plan (see below)
- Post my goal publicly (there you have it)
- Report on my progress daily (see comments)
- Celebrate my new habit (done)
As you may have guessed, I’m planning to use this blog (do you mind?) to publicly post my goal and also – to report on my progress in the comments. I think writing an article as an update every day could be an overstretch while the goal is really to keep things simple. What else? Ah, the plan. For a plan I need to state:
- what my goal will be each day
- when I’ll do it
- what my trigger will be
- what event will immediately precede the habit that is already part of my routine
- whom I will report to
1. About the goal. For me single-tasking means no multi-tasking. Actually I like word context-switching better to make a clear distinction from doing things in parallel – we do not actually have quad-core brains and so often confused multi-tasking is really just an illusion of parallel work. So what we really do is switch between different contexts and tasks. Some are good at switching the gear, some aren’t. I’m not which is why I think minimizing distractions and trying to concentrate on one goal at a time matters the most to me personally. My goal each day is to identify the distractions, find a solution for them, catch my self if I start to hesitate and “read” the chapter about single-tasking on the book once in a while (like once a day?) to remind me how I can keep practicing to stay focused.
2. When I’ll do it? Well, it’s really all about doing it all the time. Hardest part will be my job I think. I work for Percona as a MySQL performance consultant and in addition to always being accessible to colleagues, customers and family via email, phone, IRC and other IMs, I also often work with multiple customers at a time, eat my lunch, have conversation with my wife (did I mention I work remotely?) and upload cool new weekend photos to flickr. All of that is not really a requirement – it’s just how I’m used to work thinking that way I’ll be able to accomplish more. Yeah right.. Time for a change, no?
3. Trigger? Well since the goal is to do it permanently, I hope it’s safe to say catching my self context-switching should trigger single-tasking.
4. Preceding event. I have a habit to plan my day before I check the email or sign into IMs. I open my calendar, todo manager and then juggle the tasks so they fit in the day, take note of the meetings I have etc. Sometimes I find myself opening personal email, flickr some other distractions at the same time. If I manage to control myself at this step, it should be easier throughout the day too.
5. And, as I mentioned, I will be reporting here. If you ever feel I was discouraged, please encourage me so I get back on track 
.
Shall we?
37 comments ↓
Day 1. So today is kind of my first day with this. Though really I have changed some things during the weekend while listening to the book which I think are looking very good for now.
You see the thing is – quite often while working on something (I mean really working – like doing a performance review) if I am interrupted, I can’t remember quickly what I was working on. When this happens, rather than trying to think – I do something silly – I open personal email, flickr, facebook, twitter, youtube.. well basically anything that comes to my mind, just to avoid thinking – in this case – to figure out what was I working on. It was totally automatic, I did not have to think about it. And then I would waste like half an hour doing whatever has drawn my attention. Not to mention I was also running google notifier to notify me instantly about new personal emails where I get updates from flickr, youtube etc.
So what did I do about it? Well – first – I’ve removed Google Notifier from startup items and shut it down. Then – I’ve set two reminders in my calendar when exactly I should check and what. So now I check them all sequentially rather than spontaneously and having reminders keep me calm knowing I won’t miss them. And whenever I’m about to type gm.. in the URL bar, I stop my self. So far this works like a charm!
Day 2. I can’t say I failed today but it was surely a much more challenging day. It started Okay as usually, I even spent some kind-of-dedicated time to listen to the chapter V, however the day had few gotchas.
First of, while working with customer – I had to wait for some process to finish in order to make conclusions based on results. I did not know how long the process will take so I wasn’t sure should I wait or switch the context instead for example – work with another customer. In the end – the process took 1.5h however instead of doing something silly during that time (like checking personal email, flickr, twitter.. you know), I decided to keep on working on the performance review as really results from the long process were needed only for the small part of the review and once I though about it – I could well continue working. Just in case you’d be wondering – we bill customers for the actual work so these 1.5h of wait time wouldn’t really be billed to the customer – so in that case the other logical choice could be to work with another customer but it’s a bit more complicated than that and so essentially I would kind of have to start multi-tasking.
The other thing was our weekly conference call. It was reeeaaally hard to stay focused on the call and not to do something else, especially as I had just started to work with customer few hours before the call. So I caught myself working on the case several times and it was really hard not to fall back into it – so hard that I did fall again and again. Actually for me personally it’s really important to stay focused – especially on the group calls – otherwise if I don’t, I miss whatever was said during the time I was doing something else. I even used to keep my eyes closed so I’m not doing anything else, but eventually I have dropped that and continued to pretend I’m there while really I was missing a lot of what was being told. So as I can see, single-tasking is really a habit I need to create ASAP.
Otherwise I’m still successful at NOT doing personal thingies at random times and I feel really good about it. Also today I figured it’s a good idea to fill in the gaps that I’m usually spending with family in my work calendar so they are seen as busy times and can’t be requested for meetings by co-workers and customers.
BTW, I’ve finished Chapter VI yesterday and now am a little confused. It was all about starting small and it kind of contradicts something I’ve said in the original post. The thing is related to when I’m going to do my habit – for single-tasking author suggests to start with staying focused for at least 15 minutes first. I’m not very sure how well that will work for me if I would allow making concessions but on the other hand, starting large drastically reduces chances of success.. Well, I’ll have to think about it some more.. that’s all for today.
good read… keep them coming
Day 3. Even on the third day one can already see the reasoning behind principle 6 – “start small”. Especially when few bad days come in a row, it’s harder and harder to keep up. It would not be so hard if you started small and by now would only try to focus for say 15 minutes on one task. Now that I listened to the Chapter 6 once more, I realized that really this was my biggest mistake and a reason why a lot of positive changes did not hold for more than a month. My ambitions were just too big to keep the momentum infinite and then eventually one failure would lead to another and so on..
Anyway, so here’s my highlights for today. First of, I had a rather bad personal day – well let’s just say the kid was not in the mood, then there was a trip we had to make, also we did not have too much sleep the night before and so on. As a result I’ve spent a big part of my day with family, even when in theory I could have (and was ought to) worked at the same time. I think it was a good decision to focus on my family matters rather than pretending I can also work at the same time. But what I didn’t do (I really should get used to doing this) is give a heads-up to my team that “I have personal matters to take care of and I’ll be late due to this”.
I had some unwanted interruptions from skype contacts. I’m not yet sure how to handle that – I want family and some friends to interrupt me even if I’m in deepest focus, but I want to silently ignore most contacts unless I check for activity myself. In the end I think I’ll have to teach my f&f phone is the way to get my immediate attention and otherwise have skype off for most of the day. For now I’ll stick to DND and think about it a bit more as this is not just skype but IM problem in general.
The other thing I’m still struggling with is “focusing on one thing at a time” practice. On one hand – I’m not fully sure if that’s just the single-tasking practice or essentially a way to live (I tend to believe latter is true). On the other hand – I really have hard time doing this in some situations. I’ll give you few examples: (1) driving on a highway. This is so boring that I can’t imagine not listening to some podcast or audiobook or just music while doing so. While as per book, I should focus on driving and enjoy it, think of the road, speed (I use cruise control), wheels, and so on, well – drive. (2) washing dishes (again, focus on washing dishes, do not wander) (3) peeling potatoes,.. You get the idea. It just feels like a waste of time if you didn’t do something useful during the 2h drive. But really I think I just need to practice more to understand. I’ll keep on doing so. For now all I say is it’s hard. But then again, I should start small and I think in a nutshell – I’m successful at this – at least now I think I should not be wandering before I start wandering.
Day 4. I’m reliably going forward with this. Day 4 wasn’t very productive after all, but things happen and I have my own reasons. Today I’ve actually been intentionally multi-tasking or rather context switching very intensively. But what is important – I was fully aware of that and the loss in overall productivity. So I’ve been switching back and forth between single task at work and family time because that was the best choice under these circumstances – I had a well-in-advance scheduled task with customer which required little attention (just occasional guidance) and I also had to help my wife with the kid a little. To make it fair for the customer I have agreed I will show up every once in a while and he can call if something is needed urgently. So basically today I have traded productivity for the ability to be in two places at the same time.
I think I’m also doing better with focusing on a task at hand. Not that I keep myself focused longer, but I’m more and more aware of it – when I eat, when I’m taking a walk, when I’m trying to get some sleep, etc. I still catch myself having second-thoughts often, actually more often than before. But isn’t that the point?
On the other hand, today I have caught myself opening flickr (or facebook) while being stuck with some task at work. I have stopped myself and forced to close the tab but it was first time during these few days that I went this far, so I have to keep my eyes wide open.
Also today I have listened to the Chapter VII of the book. I think article I have linked in the original post summarizes that chapter quite well so I won’t try to beat it. However, I though you might wanna know what are the other two articles that keep my momentum so I’ll share them here. One is by Merlin Mann called Real Advice Hurts. Merlin Mann is a blogger I’ve been reading for a long time. Sometimes I hate him for being rude but really he is a good guy and this blog post is one of his best articles in my opinion. Another article is by Oliver Burkeman who I barely know – this was recommended by the same friend that I mentioned earlier in the original post. It is called “We’re all too busy, but is it just an excuse?”. Enjoy!
Day 5. I had a day off from work today and had a great time with my family. So there was really just one “task” always on my mind and no second thoughts
. I’ll keep you posted but it’s a weekend coming and I don’t plan to work on anything. Yet, I still have to be careful and focus on a task at hand even if that’s not work. Have a great weekend!
Days 6-8. You might think I’ve been slacking off… Well indeed I have. I had my Friday off and then I also had a long weekend – all with my family and friends. No computers allowed! Having said that, I was well conscious of single-tasking all of this time. I really feel that narrowing focus works well for me – the less I have to think about, the more I think of it.
I won’t go into details day by day – that would be boring while I really did not have too many chances to multi-task. One interesting thing though – my wife had a chance to read this post and she said this book is not for women. She said that if she were to single-task, we would all die of hunger – and she has a point. If you haven’t seen Ken Robinson’s talk on TED where he says that Schools Kill Creativity, I highly recommend to do so. In his talk he also explains how women are different in the ability to multi-task and I feel the same way about it (It was almost a dejavu when I first saw this). Anyway, luckily or not – I’m a man and single-tasking for me is very important, so I’ll keep on working on it.
I’m half-way through the book now – I have listened to few chapters from the second part called “In practice” where Leo speaks how his principles work in practice. Some of his techniques could be applied at my work, some couldn’t – I’m sure no productivity book can be universal (even Time Management for System Administrators didn’t fully work for me being a system administrator at a time) but all in all it’s great book and I’m looking forward to next chapters. In the end I’ll try to make a review for this book as a separate post but for now I will just keep on listening – I want to get the big picture first.
Day 9. I had a tough day today so I’ll be brief.
Today we had a weekly conference call again which went quite good – at least first part of it. After last week’s post on how hard it is to stay focused on the conference call, I got some feedback from the same friend that has pointed me to the original article at zenhabits.net. He said he had the very same problem and solved it by focusing on taking call minutes on the white sheet of paper. I’ve tried it and it worked great. But then I had to take a baby for few minutes since my wife only has two hands. And she had a very hungry husband to take care of :^)
Otherwise, I had a very long, exhausting and diverse day. Yet, I’m very glad that not for once, ever since I challenged myself to single-task, did I give up for temptation to open my personal email, flickr, twitter, facebook or anything like it to distract me from a task at hand. Most of the days I would open these only once and then process all in batch. Having email notifier off and reminder on helped a great deal of course.
Having said that, I still find it hard to find a flow while I’m not at work i.e. avoiding meta-thinking while doing basic stuff like peeling potatoes, brushing teeth, taking a shower etc. I can focus on having a shower first 30 seconds, but then it gets really booooring and second thoughts come. I wonder if that’s okay..
Day 10. I had a shorter workday- to compensate for a night shift I had as Shift Support Captain. That was the last night shift that I had scheduled early in advance while I was still working nights mainly. Anyway, with regard to single-tasking the day was great. I think I’m thinking less about it though. Not sure if that means I’m doing better so I don’t even have to think or that I lost focus on it. Nevertheless I’ll try to get the focus back – I don’t believe 10 days is enough to create a habit.
Today I realized I should not be checking my personal email and other Inboxes like flickr, facebook, twitter twice a day – instead I should only do it after I finish the work and do it only once – I already made appropriate adjustments to my calendar which works as a reminder for me. The problem was that when I checked it first time, I lost track of time and wasted to much time on something I don’t even remember now. By the end of workday I process things faster since I’m eager to run to my family.
Inside the book, Leo talked about filing today. Even though I don’t have too many things to file, I still find the subject very topical – I can make a big mess with three paper sheets on my desk. So he had some good suggestions on making it simple – actually you can find them all here.
Day 11. I have to go to bed shortly so I’ll be brief this time.
I had an increased number of tasks to handle so it was harder to stay focused and I had to watch myself carefully. I was also being poked by colleague on IRC in the middle of something. Even though he asked for something quick (taking 15-20 mins) I have resisted the urge and told him I’ll finish whatever I was doing, set the countdown timer (we have an irc bot who in charge of this) and finished my task.
I had no time for the book and in general little time for anything else. Now half of the internet is disconnected so I won’t even be checking any of my personal inboxes.
Day 12. I had just finished my last working day. Tried to focus more on single-tasking and to be honest – was still catching my self context switching quite often. I’ll have to some spend time re-reading my own thoughts here and earlier chapters of the book to remind me how bad that is
. Not sure If I’ll be around computer over the weekend so if anything – I’ll keep you posted on Monday evening.
Days 13-14. Another great weekend with my family! As usually on weekends I had little time to do more than one thing at a time, so it all went really great.
With some help from my wife, I managed to re-listen Part 1 from the book. Well, kind of.. I did try to listen, but had really hard time – I’ve been meta-thinking all the time. I had some project on my mind which I could not get out of my head. It’s kind of related to the book anyway. More on that later (no, not later today, later this month or rather this year). Well anyway, I was just eager to get it started and now that I did start, it feels much better and I think I’ll be able to try again – it really is important to get things right from that Part 1 so I’ll need to recap few more times.
The book has got some attention from my wife too which I think is great since she has the same pressure from the internet that I do. Being able to help each other on the way to simple productivity and habit changes I think is critical since we’re really the closest person to each other to relay on.
Day 15. I can’t believe I’m in the middle of this – feels so good! And really not because of the middle but rather because I’m getting better at single-tasking. Some problems still exist, but I believe the awareness will eventually bring change.
I had just finished another workday and I was watching myself work. To my surprise – not only I was always keeping my inbox (and filter-based subfolders) empty, but I was also noting tasks in todo manager and then closing email application. I had very few distractions from IMs, but not for a second I wandered into flickr, gmail, twitter or any other place unrelated to work. I was working with a customer – consistently, continuously, concentrated.. – just the way I wanted to see myself work for a long time.
I’m sure that keeping myself focused on single-tasking for remaining 15 days will help me get rid of the remaining issues which I couldn’t actually see today (but they do pop up every now and then).
Day 16. Good progress – it seems I’m finally getting some things done. Really, I feel like I have a much better control of my time, well most of the time. Not only was I doing multiple things at a time in the past, but also quite often I’d find myself too excited about something and totally loose track of time. On one hand that’s kind of the flow we desire, but on the other hand I couldn’t stop myself so I would end up overdoing one thing and being late with other things. Now, if possible – I only allow myself to do this much.
Say I’m reading a book. If I’m too excited, I wouldn’t stop even after 3 chapters, even knowing I’ll have to work late on other things or will have to postpone them (and tell others I’m late with things). Now – I would limit myself to say one chapter for today and, the most wonderful thing – I would actually stop where I have agreed with myself. It sounds silly, but it makes a whole world of a difference.
I used to have the same issue with de-cluttering – either there’s a total mess around me or I’m stuck de-cluttering for the whole day. I haven’t tried to de-clutter lately, I wonder if I could do one drawer at a time..
Day 17. I had a shift again. Shifts are always hard in terms of single-tasking. If there’s little activity and you want to only do your shift – after you’ve done all the checking you remain sitting next to computer and just waiting..
But I had a way different shift today – I did have few active customers, some work to be done for my own customers, few colleagues came in earlier and I also was keeping baby a company every now and then. So overall, not a very productive day as you might guess
But SSC days are rarely productive, so I don’t mind.
I was also driving couple hours and me and my wife we were both listening to the book. Well, I guess it just wasn’t a good day for single-tasking. But I acknowledge that and promise to work further on getting things better. I guess it’s okay to slip occasionally, especially if you realize this is happening and understand the consequences.
…need to form a habit for daily 10 mins keyboard practice…:)
thanks for the tips
Day 18. It’s soo late already and I haven’t checked my email yet. Busy day, but quite good – except for few interruptions over IRC. Good progress with things, but can’t write much – need to get to bed before sun shows up
@kev – wish you all the best. Indeed, 10 mins doesn’t seem much, the challenge is to do it daily. But surely achievable if you follow the rules
Day 19. Last couple days we’re visiting my wife’s parents and I’m putting myself in a very non-productive working conditions – I’m hanging around with my laptop in the living room where people walk by, where they have a chance to chat with me, where TV is making noise etc. Did I miss my parents-in-law? Do I just want to spend time with my wife and kid rather than work? I have no other explanation why I don’t just hide somewhere – I’m aware of the fact I’m not overly productive here and I know wireless is all over the house.
Otherwise I’ve been good at single-tasking when it comes to working on a single task inside the computer. And overall I’m seeing good results – I’ve even contributed something to our company wiki — something I haven’t done for a while. But yeah, all the noise is distracting and things get done slower than they used to for last couple of weeks.
BTW it’s Friday now so I’ll keep you posted on Monday.
Now that’s my husband
) Keep it up, dear! 
Sorry for distractions: we really do want to spend all the time in the world with you!
Likewise, my darling. It’s really hard to live with you and work – I’d rather just live with you
Days 20-21. Quality family time over the weekend. Now both me and my wife are trying to cut on any kind of noise as much as possible to try to get concentrated and there’s still a lot of noise around (especially when we’re visiting our relatives =)
We found some things to be hard – for example, what if you want the TV off but you still want to be with your family who want the TV on? You could just go hide somewhere but then you’re alone again. Should you give up and just watch the TV? We’d prefer to read a book or write something on the computer but does it make sense to try do it while people are chatting to you and the TV is chatting to you? I guess instead of trying to do all at once, we should first spend half an hour with family and the TV and then go hide and do whatever is on our mind. There’s other noise too, but TV seems to be most intrusive.
Day 22. What a long day! Quite productive, but I’m still figuring how to reduce distractions from company IRC channel. Ignoring would be kind of like sitting in the office, someone comes to your desk and says: Hi, Aurimas, what is up?! – and I would reply in 30 minutes. Well I got better with handling incoming requests over IRC – by putting them in todo, setting a countdown timer for the task or by not committing to it, but occasionally I would get involved in 20 minutes long conversation which inevitably breaks whatever I’ve been doing. That happened couple times today and I hate it – especially because there’s usually no good reason for the conversation. Must do something about it.
Otherwise, single-tasking has become an easy process. I would just close all I do not need for the task (email, irrelevant browser tabs, applications I won’t need soon etc.) and do what I have to do. I truly never open gmail or whatever else unless it is absolutely necessary (don’t remember that happening) and I’m now way better at sending ideas, incoming requests, disturbing thoughts et al to my todo manager inbox.
Oh, one more thing – tons of incoming email to process. At some point we were better at that, but I feel we’re back for bad again. Maybe it’s because of the Monday, but even if I process email in batch – it takes a LOT of my time. We used to use email for working with customers, not anymore – but still there’s so much email that I can hardly do it in one go – I need to take breaks in between. Looks like figuring how to optimize email may well become my next goal. We’ll see about that though.
And what about distractions from your family? You aren’t “not writing” about how bad we are at allowing daddy to work just because you know that I’m reading this, are you?
)
Did I mention it’s really hard to live with you and work?
It sure is. I’ll write about that once I figure out how I can get better at this which seems like mission impossible now.. 
I was thinking of trying headphones with some wife-n-kid-noise-canseling music but then I though – what if my wife suddenly badly needed my help? It would be really bad to find you were calling my name and I couldn’t hear anything. Like in some horror movie. Otherwise for now I’m just ignoring you – so you have to call me twice or thrice before I get the signal.
What would be your suggestions, darling?
Day 23. Pretty bad focus day at work. Conference day, but the conference went pretty good actually. With few interruptions now and then, I got some good notes (I used digital notebook fully filling the screen this time) and was able to focus most of the time. However, IRC is still the single biggest performance killer for now, though mostly because I loose control myself – when someone starts speaking to me, I get involved too much without realizing how it just interrupted whatever I’ve been doing. I have to be more careful with this and set some policies for myself, like if I feel the conversation is going to be >2 mins long (or if it already is), decide whether I’m going to make a note of where I’m with current task and get involved in the chat or politely tell the other person I’m currently working and get back to the task at hand. Sometimes I do the latter, but it doesn’t always work. However, I’m still good with other achievements which motivates me to go further.
Day 24. This weekend, I must listen to first part of the book again – I think I’m loosing my track with focus. Today, I caught myself multi-tasking several times and it took an effort to drag myself back. Once, while writing a blog article, I even caught myself on youtube! Of course, I’ve forced myself to close the movie half-way through it, but only getting there struck me. Still think of it a lot, but if I get a little stressed- bad things start happening…
Quite funny conversation of Husband and Wife in public blog… keep it going… nice read indeed
Day 25. I’ve had a chance to listen to first chapter of the book again today and I must say it did inspire me again, so today I had a very powerful day – lots of work done, no multi-tasking, no long conversations on IRC about weather, no youtube or anything of that kind. More days like that, please!
@audrius: yeah, with baby around now we barely find time to chat realtime, so we do that in blogs. :p Feel free to chime in with your wife
Day 26. I love IRC! When it is silent. (Well, except that one time, when I found my wife (and those other times when we were speaking over irc=)). I had a very productive day, but mostly because no one was bothering me over our company IRC. This doesn’t happenn often, but today it did and it felt so well. That reminds me how important it is to have more control over interruptions, but I’m not sure yet how to achieve it with IRC…
The bad thing about our IRC is that in our virtual company we must use it to kind of replace “being at your desk” in the office. That means:
So I can’t just ignore everyone or be offline all together, moreover I have to make sure my computer shakes when someone calls my name. Not using IRC or not responding to pings doesn’t work.
That means I must learn to control the conversation after it has started and identify quickly if it’s going to be a one minute chat or half an hour one. Before all of this (i.e. the single-tasking challenge) I used to quickly respond to question and then immediately switch back to what I’m doing and wait until my name is called again. I though it worked, but really after switching back I would anyway wander for a few seconds or even a minute. I still do it the same way, but I’m thinking that should be changed. In the real office when someone comes to you, you don’t work in between his sentences, do you? (Only in this virtual case, most likely the other party is doing the same in between my sentences)
But I propose this:
When someone texts me, before answering I should mark somewhere what exactly I’m doing right now (the task itself is usually a top thing in my TODO manager, so I would just have to make some notes next to task) and then start and finish the conversation. Very seldom it’s just a YES/NO question, but even if that’s the case – taking a notes won’t hurt, on contrary- it will help to focus better on that task at hand. The outcome of the conversation should be (1) a finished uninterruptible conversation if it takes < = 2 minutes, (2) a scheduled conversation if it would otherwise take > 2 minutes OR (3) a finished long conversation if it’s urgent and can’t be postponed. The great thing about it is that even if I have to go with 3rd option, I have notes on what I was doing before that so once this is finished, I can quite easily switch back.
So that’s my challenge for the next week. In the meantime, it’s weekend so I’ll keep you posted in couple days.
Days 27-28. Another weekend has come to an end – time flies… Pity. But at least I spent a lot of it with my family which feels great! As after every weekend, I don’t have much to tell about single-tasking. It all went pretty well, I wonder if weekends even count. I mean weekend has two days and now after weekend I’m two days to the final goal of 30 days. So is it fair?
Anyway, after this period of 30 days, I plan to keep irregular updates on the single-tasking, especially if something does go wrong. I feel like it’s still very slippery and I’d rather not fall back into the doom of multi-tasking.
Day 29. What a day… lots of work done. Just a quick update here before I leave to bed. Good progress with IRC “thing”- it didn’t eat a lot of my time and I’ve been successfully taking notes on whatever I’ve been doing before talking to someone. And very good progress with single-tasking overall- really productive day because of the narrow focus.
Last day?
Yup, the one
Day 30. By now I should be a single-tasking expert I guess. In fact, I feel pretty good at it indeed
I plan to make a summary of all the mess in comments into a separate blog post, stay tuned!
BTW, having done something every day 30 days in a row feels both good and weird. I feel like I haven’t done anything like that in my life.. Even writing comments here 30 days in a row feels non-doable, not to mention the habit of single-tasking. Furthermore, I’m getting good feedback on increased productivity from my superiors (I didn’t even ask for it =).
It proves the concept and encourages me to take a new challenge. Not sure what’s it gonna be yet, but we have some ideas with my wife. Again, stay tuned
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