The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.
— Mark Twain
Defining what real doing looks like, on the most basic level, and organizing placeholder reminders that we can trust, are master keys to productivity enhancement.
These are learnable techniques, and ones that we can continue to get better at.
Often even the simplest things are stuck because we haven't made a final decision yet about the next action. People in my seminars often have things on their lists like "Get a tune-up for the car." Is "Get a tune-up" a next action? Not unless you're walking out with wrench in hand, dressed for grease.
"So, what's the next action?"
"Uh, I need to take the car to the garage. Oh, yeah, I need to find out if the garage can take it. I guess I need to call the garage and make the appointment."
"Do you have the number?"
"Darn, no… I don't have the number for the garage. Fred recommended that garage to me, and I don't have the number. I knew something was missing in the equation."
Without a next action, there remains a potentially infinite gap between current reality and what you need to do.
And that's often what happens with so many things for so many people. We glance at the project, and some part of us thinks, "I don't quite have all the pieces between here and there." We know something is missing, but we're not sure what it is exactly, so we quit.
"So, what's the next action?""I need to get the number. I guess I could get it from Fred.""Do you have Fred's number?""I have Fred's number!" So the next action really is "Call Fred for the number of the garage."
Did you notice how many steps had to be tracked back before we actually got to the real next action on this project? That's typical. Most people have many things just like that on their lists.
It's really the smartest people who have the highest number of undecided things in their lives and on their lists. Why is that? Think of how our bodies respond to the images we hold in our minds. It appears that the nervous system can't tell the difference between a well-imagined thought and reality. To prove this to yourself, picture yourself walking into a supermarket and going over to the brightly lit fruit-and-vegetable section. Are you there? OK, now go to the citrus bins — oranges, grapefruits, lemons. Now see the big pile of yellow lemons. There's a cutting board and a knife next to them. Take one of those big yellow lemons and cut it in half. Smell that citrus smell! It's really juicy, and there's lemon juice trickling onto the board. Now take a half lemon and cut that in half, so you have a quarter lemon wedge in your hands. OK, now — remember how you did this as a kid? — put that quarter of a lemon in your mouth and bite into it! Scrunch!
Bright people have the capability of freaking out faster and more dramatically than anyone else.
If you played along with me, you probably noticed that the saliva content in your mouth increased at least a bit. Your body was actually trying to process citric acid! And it was just in your mind.
If your body responds to the pictures you give it, how are you likely to feel physically when you think about, say, doing your taxes? Are you sending yourself "easy," "let's go," completion, success, and "I'm a winner!" pictures? Probably not. For just that reason, what kinds of people would logically be the most resistant to being reminded about a project like that — that is, who would procrastinate the most? Of course, it would be the most creative, sensitive, and intelligent people! Because their sensitivity gives them the capability of producing in their minds lurid nightmare scenarios about what might be involved in doing the project, and all the negative consequences that might occur if it weren't done perfectly! They just freak out in an instant and quit!
I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.
— Mark
Who doesn't procrastinate? Often it's the insensitive oafs who just take something and start plodding forward, unaware of all the things that could go wrong. Everyone else tends to get hung up about all kinds of things.
Do my taxes? Oh, no! It's not going to be that easy. It's going to be different this year, I'm sure. I saw the forms — they look different. There are probably new rules I'm going to have to figure out. I might have to read all that damn material. Long form, short form, medium form? File together, file separate? We'll probably want to claim deductions, but if we do we'll have to back them up, and that means we'll need all the receipts. Oh, my God — I don't know if we really have all the receipts we'd need and what if we didn't have all the receipts but we claimed the deductions anyway and we got audited? Audited? Oh, no — the IRS — JAIL!!
And so a lot of people put themselves in jail, just glancing at their 1040 tax forms. Because they're so smart, sensitive, and creative. In my many years of coaching individuals, this pattern has been borne out more times than I can count — usually it's the brightest and most sophisticated folks who have the most stuck piles, in their offices, homes, and heads. Most of the executives I work with have at least several big, complex, and amorphous projects stacked either on a credenza or on a mental shelf. There always seem to be hobgoblin thoughts lurking inside them — "If we don't look at or think about the projects, maybe they'll stay quiet!"
Ceasing negative imaging will always cause your energy to increase.
So what's the solution? There's always having a drink. Numb it out. Dumb it down. Notice what happens to many people when they get a little alcohol on the brain. It should drop their energy immediately, because it's a depressant; often, though, the energy lifts, at least initially. Why? The alcohol is depressing something — it's shutting down the negative self-talk and uncomfortable visions that are going on in these folks' minds. Of course my energy will increase if I stop depressing myself with overwhelming pictures of not handling something successfully. But the numb-out solutions are temporary at best. The "stuff doesn't go away. And unfortunately, when we numb ourselves out, we can't do it selectively— the source of inspiration and enthusiasm and personal energy also seems to get numbed.
Intelligent Dumbing Down
There is another solution: intelligently dumbing down your brain by figuring out the next action. You'll invariably feel a relieving of pressure about anything you have a commitment to change or do, when you decide on the very next physical action required to move it forward. Nothing, essentially, will change in the world. But shifting your focus to something that your mind perceives as a doable, completeable task will create a real increase in positive energy, direction, and motivation. If you truly captured all the things that have your attention during the mind-sweep, go through the list again now and decide on the single very next action to take on every one of them. Notice what happens to your energy.
No matter how big and tough a problem may be, get rid of confusion by taking one little step toward solution. Do something.