It seems that we humans are just terrible at handling ‘big’ tasks. Last week my hard drive got corrupt and I spent a week in what felt like limbo in trying to recover the files. In the meantime however I felt like I couldn’t do any real work!

Right after I managed to fix it (luckily didn’t lose anything) there was another ‘ultra-urgent’ crisis that needed handling. The result is all the day to day admin gets pushed away. You don’t notice it at first but sooner or later you start it feeling building up with a lot of guilt as well.

When you do get your time back, you just don’t know where to start!

Sometimes we take on a project that we become almost obsessive about (i.e. it eats into your personal time) and you carry on doing it for hours at a time while delaying other important things. We could be doing it for fun (a hobby project), or we could be doing it out of emergency, or being too goal focused (to get it out the way). This is fine for a while, but the problem with these time-consuming tasks is one loses track of when to cut off and revert back to other things. It is important to not lose sight of that cut off limit.

The result is you lose sight of prioritization skills, and not to mention forgetting to eating properly! (Smaller regular meals).

It seems we lose track of being able to keep everything in our heads if we put too much emphasis on one task. That is why there is real value in dividing a task into smaller manageable bits. (I’m sure everyone can identify with taking on something that spans more than a day and then feeling disapointed when you don’t finish in the time you set yourself). So divide and conquer and try to organise your work in a way that is more fulfilling for yourself.

Below the layer of immediate sensory awareness but above the layer of the observer lies a layer of emotion which is like a rich, colorful tapestry. This fabric can be tangled or nice and smooth – depending on a variety of factors. A lot of emotions are based off of interpretations of one’s current situation and how that compares to an expected state. Other emotions happily occur independently such as a spontaneous happy mood that can occur out of no-where.

As a fabric or cloth has a particular weave, we have a varying number of feelings interacting and vying for attention. Our emotional state is represented by a particular point on this ‘Emotional fabric’, and the point is determined as a function of time. This point, depending on the weave could have any number of threads that are interwoven and either pulling against or supporting each other. These threads represent emotions which could be conflicting with or re-inforcing each other.

If some of the threads are too tight these threads can be pulling hard against each other, and this would distort the overall shape of the cloth. Or the threads could all be of equal, soft tension where the ying balances the yang, and the push balances the pull. This would make the cloth softer, without having strain or undue tension. This is obviously the more desired state.

So how can we use this analogy? Well unfortunately our underlying tensions have a way of getting away with themselves without regular attention. So you should spend some time each day to objectively pay some care to your emotional fabric and examine if it is smooth and calm or in a state of panic.

The best time for this, I feel, is immediately after waking. Quite often I may discover I have a sense of subversive panic. Paying attention to this awakes the inner observer. Without doing this, the tension would have happily proceeded without being noticed, but nevertheless affecting the day. All it takes is a few calming words of support to banish these tensions and return to a state of serenity – which, lets face it, is how the morning should be enjoyed!

Unmade decisions and putting off deciding on inevitable events, especially when you know they are unavoidable, brings about tension to your daily life. Especially as the event draws closer.

What is the one thing we are avoiding today?

Having decided on and resolved these uncertainties in the immediate future bring peace of mind, even though it may not be the optimal choice. There is peace in just accepting this outcome along with the less than perfect parts that accompany it. This is better than constantly trying to second guess oneself.

It may seem, at first to not be very present-moment thinking to make choices about the future. But it is even less so to procrastinate making a decision if you know it needs to be made. Since what you are really trying to do, by leaving your options open, is to constantly re-evaluate your options, constantly concerning yourself with what is best. This adds to stress and worry about the future. It is better to choose the best outcome now, accept it and make your peace with it.

Your life will be simpler, since it is far easier to navigate around an existing plan (even with its imperfections) then it is to juggle several plans at once.

Recognize when the time comes for making choices.

Move towards acceptance of the future and away from the continual evaluation of how each outcome will make you feel.

For the decisions you may be putting off, you will probably already have an internal feeling of what direction you need to go with. It is important to pay attention to this.

If you have managed to clear up something that has long been troubling you, you will experience a great sense of relief.

Now, having made the choice, visualize the plan failing, and accept this too. You will be at peace as well, whichever way the wind blows.

Life is not perfect. There is always some hussle and bustle and life never goes on for too long without something happening having undertones bordering on stressful, or possibly even annoying. Even if you are having the most spectacular day ever, its not common to bump into someone who is not sharing your happy mood, and ends up ruining your day too. This is all part of the rich tapestry of our life, and this post isn’t about reaching some imagined ideal.

However, sometimes we make things harder for ourselves. Especially if we end up avoiding dealing with something that is bothering us. It is usually easier to not think about these things, but unfortunately your brain is not able to deny the existence of something simply by pushing it out of your brain. It is also not even possible to completely forget about something you are avoiding – the subsconsious has this habit of bringing it up to at various intervals.

So you have a choice of living each day with a small worrying feeling at the back of your mind or to address it and sort it out forever. If you take the first route, the typical outcome is that you end up doing things too late and the worry escalates and escalates until you are forced into action. Not a pleasant outcome to always leave things to the last minute. Since, like I started off in the beginning, it would be impossible to address all worries at one go, since we are usually busy enough already, one should go about this practically. It is for this reason that I suggest focussing on the single biggest thing we are avoiding.

Take one minute, to look inward and ask yourself: ‘If there is one thing that I am avoiding unecessarily and that I can do something about, what would it be? How would I feel once I took the first steps in solving this issue?’

Now to take some advice from David Allan, you do not need to plan out each and every step of this project. I say ‘Project’ because it may help you to think about it this way, even if it is a personal issue and not work related. Trying to think about each step in the plan can often become so complex, that this may be the very reason you hit a roadblock. So I encourage you to avoid thinking about the entire situation, but to ask yourself only what the next step is. Compared to the end goal, the next step is often incredibly simple and may be something like ‘Post a letter’ or ‘Write an email’ in order to find out more information.

It is important not to put off this simple step with the excuse that you are too busy. Often the next step is tiny enough that one can easily slot it into a busy work schedule.

Another common roadblock is imagining a possible negative outcome at some point in the plan. This one often holds me back. Often this type of roadblock is so hidden by the mind that you have to force yourself to ask yourself: ‘What is holding me back from doing the next step’?
Solving this is something that will need more attention than this blog post, but you can try by playing out the imagined negative outcome in your mind to it’s utmost final conclusion and asking yourself if it is really as bad as you imagined.

So, to end off, I encourage you to make your life better by tackling that thing that is holding you back, head on.

I noticed that for whatever peculiar reason (perhaps it’s after the latest browser updates) that after logging in successfully all of sudden the website kept prompting you to login again if you were to shut down the browser and load it up again. I have fixed this by altering the cookie functionality to remember you for 30 days. Previously it was set as the default which seemed safe at the time.

EverydayTasks takes your privacy seriously, and no personal details other than your username are stored in the cookie. In fact the site should in theory work just as well without cookies, except of course the obvious necessity to enter your login details each time you load the new browser.

Eventually, I would like to give users the ability to choose how long they wish their login to be remembered. Currently it is for 30 days, and don’t worry, all traces can be deleted by clicking on the ‘logout’ on the top right at any time.

Don’t forget to on a regular basis go through all contexts and all projects in a systematic and objective way. Your goal is to tie up all the loose ends.

Here’s how:

• Marking items complete that have been completed
• Eliminate any superfluous items or things you do not really consciously plan on doing

• Review projects for next steps, and add them in if necessary
• Make sure it is clear in your description what needs to be DONE. One way of doing this is to start sentences with an ACTION word.
• Review all items top to bottom, with no exceptions
• Do not get caught up DOING any of the items as you review. It may help to imagine stepping into the shoes of someone else who is overseeing the work. The only permissible exception to this rule is if doing the work will take less than approximately 2-3 minutes, otherwise you might never finish the review.
• A weekly review will work for most people, but you can adjust this to what suits you.

Hello all. Have you ever sat down, and thought about what core, essentials you need in your life to qualify as ‘truly living’ life? I think you’ll find it quite hard if not impossible. However one thought has been going through my head recently, and that it is that whatever the definition of what life should be like to be enjoyable, one does seem to have a very clear internal picture of whether one is ‘living’ or not right at this moment (i.e. if you are happy with life or not right now). One day you could wake up and realise you could choose to do anything you wanted that day and you would conclude ‘This is the life’ or ‘What more could one possibly want than this’. On the very next day, you could open a letter demanding some tax form or other errand to be completed and you might reach a very different conclusion. In this case you might say to yourself ‘Let me just get this one task out the way. Then I can start enjoying life again’. The enjoyable things of life can often seem to pale when something is hanging over one’s head. Often when we feel the burden of such a task that is unpleasant to us we can feel as if we are ‘not really living’. As if you are just going through the motions and waiting for time to pass till things get better.

Last weekend, I spent three solid days in a Tai Chi workshop. I thoroughly enjoyed the vibrant energy flowing around, and the chance to ’step out of reality’ for a while to learn more Tai Chi. When it finished, I felt a bit sad that every day was not like that. I then questioned my daily patterns. Usually I have this feeling of a constant pressure of various admin to do . If often feels so never ending that I often start my mornings off trying to get it out of the way so I can feel more relaxed in the day. But there is no magic point that arrives where I think ‘Yes – I’ve completed it now I can rest’. Its like the more time I spend on it the more that needs to be done, tidied, sorted and so forth.

I think the more you give attention to something, the more it grows, so maybe its time to banish administration work (filling out forms, chasing up companies etc) to perhaps a block time once a week, or some time that is not my peak time. Instead of the ‘morning administration hour’ I’d like to start the day off with something I enjoy doing. After preparing a healthy juice to wake me up , stretching, and a brief meditation, I’d like to spend an hour each morning doing something which will make the day worthwhile which for me is learning something new. I love learning things and applying my brain to something. For other people it might be something different, but for me its improving something however small. In order to eliminate any last minute cop-outs, It is vital that I set myself a small goal of what to accomplish in that hour on the day before. So when the day arrives I don’t need to debate with myself if I really want to do it – I just start. At the very end of the hour in the last 5 minutes I should again decide what to do on the next day – write it down and place it somewhere I will see it the next morning.

Another interesting phrase I heard this week: ‘It takes courage to be happy’.

To be truly efficient, the best time to be reminded about something is at a time when you are actually able to carry out the task. It sounds simple, but it makes sense. If you are reminded about something when you are unable to do anything about it you only add to a sense of worry. As an example, the best time to be reminded about your shopping list is when you are actually out shopping, and not when you are in-front of your desk. You may also want to delay doing something now, so that you can do it for example when you are travelling home from work on the bus or train. This effect can be achieved by using Contexts.

Some contexts that you may use are:

• At my desk
• Shopping & Errands
• On the bus/train
• At home

Using basic contexts like these will neatly split out tasks that you need to do at home, apart from those that you need to do at work. The result is a simpler and more concise task list.

A Context can also be thought of as a ‘work-mode’ or a ‘frame of mind’. When you are in a particular frame of mind, the only items on your task list you wish to see are the items relevant to the task at hand.

If ideas occur to you related to tasks other than what you are working (this is natural when you are thinking in a free flowing mode) then you should still make a note of these. These would typically be recorded under a different context. The result is that you don’t lose out on a potentially great idea, but it doesn’t interfere with your current task at hand either.

To avoid:

Creating too many contexts: You will not feel calm about your workload if you feel you need to be constantly scanning through all the contexts. Note that a Context is not a Project, and you should be careful if your context starts to sound like one. Create a project for this instead.

In the past I have been inspired by many email sorting processes such as the ZenToDone system from my favourite blog of all time ‘ZenHabits’. ZTD is in turn based off the famous GTD system developed by David Allen. I have also interviewed a few people such as the author of ‘TheTechTreeHouse’. All these people claim to have wonderful 100% clean email inboxes all perfectly managed, the likes of which I have to sheepishly admit I find difficult to imitate.

Last week I made notes of some bad email habits. To examine the situation more carefully, this week I asked myself: What is an email by its very nature? Each email is a piece of information. As such, each email has some content and also may or may not require an action from us. The informational content inside the email can be as varied and as complex as a written language can portray. Certainly this might mean an infinite number of meanings, and it would be futile to develop an approach that could cater for all these possibilities. Usually as we internalise the content we also become aware of some actions we may need to carry out as a result.

As can be seen from my previous post, the biggest trap one can fall into is getting lost in the content of the email. To empty our inbox, we must not lose sight of our goal: which is to sort the emails, not to necessarily understand them at present. That can come later. We only need to understand enough of each to adequately sort them.

I recommend setting aside a piece of time on a regular basis to sort all the emails. How often you do this depends on the frequency and amount of emails you receive. You should aim for at least an hour, at least once a week. As it requires some concentration and block time you may want to do this in a quieter time of day. I found the first work hour on a Monday morning works for me.

If your inbox is the type to be literally overflowing from emails a year old and you have not already done so, I suggest that you first move those older than a specified time period (for example a month) all into the archive folder without looking at them. These should be old enough that you can be pretty sure are too old to be relevant. However they will still be there in your archive if you ever need them. If you attempt to sort every single one of these old emails, chances are that you will never finish and you will be setting yourself up for failure.

With that out the way, at least once a week, process the entire list of emails from top to bottom, without exception. Imagine that it is not yourself who will carry out the actions of the emails, you are only organising them for that person. If a particular email seems too hard to sort, then it may help you to imagine you have a rather unsympathetic friend watching your progress over your shoulder. If you say ‘I can’t sort this one right now’, he will reply ‘Why not?’. As you try to desperately come up with an excuse, it may help you to actively categorise the email.

This diagram shows how we will process the email:

Lets look at our thinking pattern for each email:

Easy Emails
If this email requires no action from you, and know you will never need to refer to this again, delete it!
This is the most fun part, and I want you to be really strict about it! Let spam jokes, and irrelevant cc’ed emails begone! Have your finger ready on that delete button and show those emails who is boss. If you notice yourself arguing to keep it, I want you to ask yourself a second question: If I never see this email ever again in my life, will I be the worse off for it? If the answer is no, blast it.

If the email survived we now have some more questions.

Action Review

When is the action required, and how long will it take?

Action required will take very quick
As a guideline ‘very quick’ is less than a few minutes. If it will take you less time to action it then it will to write up in your todo list, it should be done right away. A simple email reply, falls in this category.

Action needed today
Write the item up in you @today list. This is the list of things you have decided to tackle today.

Action needed later
Add the item to your @todo list.

Who doesn’t like the concept of a completely clear inbox? All tasks efficiently dealt with. No outstanding ‘urgent’ requests remaining. Nothing hanging over your head to ‘come back to later when you have more time’. Well this post isn’t about that sort of inbox. Its a lighthearted post about its evil twin the messy inbox. An inbox clogged up with irrelevant emails. And the excuses we use to justify bad email habit behaviour. You know who you are!

In a future post I will examine some good email habits. The first step to overcoming bad email habits however, is to identify our own mental blocks standing in the way between us and a potential email utopia.

Okay, so lets paint the picture. I am opening my inbox right now with a bold determination to sort this mess out! I have set aside some time this week (an hour perhaps) to do nothing else but clear out that inbox. Nothing is going to stand in my way. So lets take a look at that first email there. Oh dear. Perhaps this wasn’t a good example to start off with. Perhaps, we should move onto the next one and it will be much easier …

If this sounds familiar to you then you are not alone. Some emails are easier to tidy than others. Over the course of a week I tried to record my reactions whenever I came up with a difficult email to sort/classify/delete. I invite you to do the same before we move on to some healthy email habits next week. For the sake of clarity I would like to reiterate I am in no way condoning this sort of behaviour, but quite the opposite. Here is my list of internal responses to various difficult emails:

Wow! Fascinating! Let me research more on this or phone someone about it…
Not a good way to start off our allocated time to clear out those emails is it? We got a bit distracted and well the rest is history..

I’d like some to respond in detail but now now…
So the email stays in the inbox marked read…

I don’t have time to do this
Well why not leave it in the inbox, to ‘come back to later’ when you spontaneously have too much time on your hands? Along with all the other emails still waiting…

I don’t want to do this
But equally I can’t delete it because it was allocated by my boss. Perhaps I can just wait and see if everyone forgets about it?

Wow the next email sure looks more interesting than this one
How about I read that one first and ‘come back later’. (Don’t hold your breath).

Interrupted
My phone rings with some new random urgent request of the day and the time allocated to clearing the inbox is gone.

Easy Access
I have written the essence of this in my @todo list, but I want to keep the email easy to find in my inbox so its ‘easy to reply to’. Or worse, it has file attachments I want to keep and refer to in the upcoming week.

Too many inboxes!
I like to organize the content I am receiving so I make sure that work emails don’t arrive in my personal inbox and vice versa.
A few others were created for other reasons (e.g. catching spam). However now I’m finding that there are just too many to manage effectively and some don’t get read.

Thats all for now. I did enjoy compiling the list. Let me know if you have any others!