Rearden Metal

Once, I was working in my home office and had to keep getting up to collect papers, folders and other items. I had a box in the passageway that I had to walk around, and every time I passed it, one of the flaps would catch me in the side. Time and time again, I’d get up, walk past the box, get caught by the flap, and get more and more annoyed.

Why do we do this? I know the answer was to simply move the box out of the way, but for a long time I was tolerating something in my space not being right, and this was draining my creative energy.

I have found that at times, I need to remind myself to become intolerant. To look at my desk, and the one single receipt that I have not bothered to file in my in tray. To throw away the pen that doesn’t work, that is still in the pot - you know, the won that we pick up, try to use, fail to get writing with, and then replace only to begin this silly cycle the next time we need to jot down a note.

Is your phone cable all twisted, so that each time you make a call a small part of you curses it?
Have you emptied your in-tray?
How many of your pens don’t actually work?
Is that mark on the window, the one that catches your gaze each time you dream, still there?

What are you tolerating that’s sapping your productivity?

When you need to remember something but are not able to write a note for yourself, for instance when driving in the car, I have found this little tip to work well. Place something where it really should not be but make it as unusual as possible. Then as you place the object think about the thought you need to remember later.

Then when you finish you’re journey, and look at the out of sync object, you will find that you remember the idea you ‘attached’ to it.

Today I had a huge amount of work to do, mostly writing. I had got to the point where I was feeling a huge resistance to carry on, together with anxiety that I would not be able to finish my work. It was at this point that I remembered advice given to me from a number of sources, to break the task down into smaller actions.

I went one further and broke it down into tiny actions, actions that on their own seemed almost embarassingly small. But then when I inputted them into my outline I had 6 actions that would result in success, and any of them I could mentally handle.

This was enough to get me out of my rut. Once the resistance was overcome, I actually managed to work my way through two of my actions, and get back on track.

So, if your actions/todo’s on a project are making you feel overwhelmed, or if you seem to be avoiding doing them, break them down until they can be completed in 5 minutes or less. And then notice how you feel.

My Moleskine is a thinking tool, something for me to be creative with. My Palm is a reference tool, something for me to store data in, as well as reminders, diary dates etc.

For a while I have felt uncomfortable. Part of me wanted to use my palm in a system that fitted my needs 100%. Another part of me knew that the tactile, free flowing, pen on paper based notebook system just ‘felt’ better and more creative. But I also really appreciated the fact that I could use my favourite software Lifebalance to implement my personal life and project planning system, the palm was much better at handling addresses, phone numbers and all of the other notes I entered into it, yet I just could not enter information into it my way. My way being one that changes constantly - lists, pictures, diagrams, mindmaps.

It was whilst simply sitting down and brainstorming with my new moleskine notebook and Pilot pen that I drew the following:

And then I think I made a breakthrough. Moleskine make great points about how many famous artists and writers used their notebooks. But they didn’t use them for the creation of works of arts, or write books with them. They used them for notes, and then processed the notes elsewhere. I think that using a notebook for dreaming and idea creation is a great idea. Then I can process the work into my palm as data for later retrieval.

Best of both worlds. I can create and dream however I want and enjoy the process.

I can then file the information as action lists, notes, diagrams (I can even scan the pages as images and save them on the Palm’s SD card, for efficient retrieval in my personal data store.

I hope this works, I’ll keep you posted.