I’m the norm, the average, the everyman. See that graph that shows average distribution and average sales? Wherever everybody else is, that’s me. See that gradual slope showing slow takeup, or the flat portion that shows the average level of conversions being next to nothing? That’s where I lie, where I sit, where I cuddle up to everybody else as a voracious consumer of everything and a rewarder of nothing, well, almost nothing.

But…

Somewhere there is a graph that shows a peak, a spike, and outlier, someone who isn’t the same as everybody else. Someone who produces, not consumes, someone who is different and exceptional. Someone who pours passion into their craft and endlessly pursues perfection and is proud of what they achieve, every time. That peak is me. That spike is me. That distorting statistic is me, and only me, while around me everyone else crashes back into their slump of normality and continues their daily grind.

We all have a graph or a chart like that. We all have a peak and a spike and a statistic that marks us out from the rest and makes us different and special. I just don’t know where that graph is yet. Do you know yours?

The 100 day programme that I was on to improve my productivity and help me achieve some lofty goals ended up achieving something else entirely – I managed to turn the lens upon myself and expose my own procrastination, sloth and general lack of function over 100 days.

I started with some goals. To write a book, learn to program, and other even less carefully articulated desires that ended up on the scrapheap of my inability to simply undertake a single task every day. As a result, some 60 days in, I rebooted the whole process and started all over again, reclaiming the last 40 days in the name of simplification and testing my own abilities.

I learnt a lot from the last 40 days. I learnt that I could re-energise myself into at least updating my workbook every day, continually re-iterating my desire to do something, and in the process realised that this is definitely a marathon, and not a sprint. Now I update my workbook every day, remind myself what I’m doing this for, and feeling a sense of satisfaction that I am finally getting somewhere.

To be honest, my initial goals are small, and I don’t manage all of them every day. But I am clear with myself as to why I haven’t done a particular task, I find myself motivated to do something about it everyday, and in turn I am learning new skills.

Right now, i’m establishing a practice of mindfulness, slowly and painfully learning javascript, and teaching myself to touch-type. The typing exercise sprang out of the continual workbook updating, and my desire to actually type things for a living and be more efficient in the process.

I have a renewed sense of optimism, coupled with a healthy dose of reality. Hopefully in another 92 days I will be able to document the successes I have managed this time around.

Photo by vbecker on Flickr

The sad fact is that my lofty goals have fallen, and I have been struggling to simply complete the goal worksheet every day. As of right now, that is my only daily task. That itself has been hard work.

I took up this challenge as a way of motivating myself to get something done. I had a number of things I wanted to do, and I never seemed to find the time to do them or feel sufficiently organised to get them sorted out. I figured that using the 100 day programme as an anchor for all the things I wanted to do would be a good way of managing my progress.

But, as these things do, my time and my sense of purpose changed. My daily priorities would shift like flowing sand, and I would ultimately be entirely at the whim of my energy levels for the day. These were not high – the day job requires a very, very early start and a relatively late finish, leaving me little time or energy to do my own thing.

This led to less commitment to getting the tasks done. in fact, I found myself simply forgetting to fill in the worksheet as my day had dragged me off in a different direction. Things slipped, tasks didn’t get done, and I ended up feeling bad and making things worse every time I opened the damned worksheet.

After nearly 60 days of this, i couldn’t take it any more. I had two choices – abandon the thing entirely, and add this to the long list of things i’ve tried and failed, or be honest with myself about what I am able to do and the time and motivation I have to do it.

I am back at the beginning. My major projects have been abandoned, and I am concentrating on filling in the worksheet every day. It’s a long way from the big projects I had envisaged, but i am back on the path of daily achievements and getting things done – and that’s the point of this, after all.

Photo by Rick Harrison on Flickr

The odd thing about this is that for every single thing I fail to do, or every time I slip a bit on achieving every single one of my goals, I have a reason. Not necessarily an excuse, but a reason. That reason might well be an excuse – I can’t work out today, my muscles hurt and that means they need more time to recover or I’ll damage myself or It’s raining outside or I just need to service that one more thing on the bike before I take it out or I just don’t want to do this today, or it could be a real reason; I just, at some point in my psyche, don’t want to do it, or can’t start.

Before I go off on another tirade about Procrastination, and how it’s a disease, and how it makes things really, genuinely hard for us poor sufferers, I ought to be mindful of that fact that this, in itself, is an excuse.

When I was diagnosed with cancer, and I was presented with the forms to sign so that the clinic to which I had been transferred could start treatment, did I consider carefully if the information they had was right? Did I need to weigh up the pros and cons of getting started? Did I have to consider all the ways I could make myself more comfortable before I could agree to the treatment?

Did I fuck. I signed the forms they stuck under my nose, even though I was scared shitless, then I lay back and let them do whatever the hell they wanted to make sure that they got that goddammed thing out of me.

Oh sure, it’s easy to avoid the procrastination argument when you have a serious illness, and your preparation for it is entirely passive – I let them do everything they needed to do, and all I needed to do was show up at the right place at the right time – but I did think of other things that I could have put off.

I was confined to bed. Bed rest, they called it. In fact, I had multiple DVTs in my right thigh and getting up and walking around was considered to be a bad thing. I could have laid in that bed for the first five days and let them do everything for me, but I was damned if I was going to let that happen. I got up, and walked to the loo. Sure, it was twenty feet away, and the journey took me ten minutes, and every other man in the ward said it aged me by twenty years, what with the staggering and the leaning on my pump stand and the hair falling out and the heaving of my breath as I forced my oxygen starved leg muscles to work, but I did it.

I kept on doing it. The next morning I took a shower, even though I had an IV line in the back of my left hand and I didn’t read the instructions on the shower room door and subsequently flooded the floor. I cleaned myself. It took me an hour to get up, walk to the shower, wash myself and walk back. It took me another half an hour to pull my clothes on, and I was knackered when I finished. But I did it.

I didn’t need to think about it, I didn’t need to worry about the results, or what would happen if it didn’t work properly, or what was the best way to do it, or what tools were needed for success, or what success even meant. I did it. It was really fucking hard, and I had cancer, so I could have been forgiven by any well meaning soul if I had said “Screw it, this is too difficult” and collapsed on my bed like a stroppy sixteen year old, but I didn’t. Every day I got up and did something that made me feel like a human being and made me feel like I had a chance to beat this thing and go back to living a normal life.

Merlin Mann came up with a perfect way to describe this, in Back to Work episode 87 – “Nothing to Declare But My Coconuts”. He called it “Grit”. It’s the thing that makes you get up every day and just do what you have to do regardless of the consequences. Some might call it determination, or sheer bloodymindedness, but I like the term Grit – it reminds me of old westerns for some reason.

The point that I am trying to make in a horribly roundabout way is that for some things in my life, when the chips were down and life was lined up against me, when all the cliches I can think of were staring me in the face, I had Grit. I had cancer, and with the help of lots of incredibly well qualified people, I beat it. And every day I got up and did something that proved to myself that I was alive, and a normal functioning human being, and I was proud of myself.

So my procrastination today, and every other day, when I set myself a target and utterly failed to care enough to do something about getting towards that target, even with little baby steps, is bullshit. It’s complete and utter crap. I know that I can drive myself to do things when I need to; I know I can get up and go when others would have sat down and cried and simply given up. And this knowledge is there, every day, and it makes every other excuse I have just complete and utter bullshit.

If I didn’t care about my life, I could have not signed those forms eighteen months ago and let the cancer kill me. I’ve been given a second chance at life, so why am I wasting it?

Photo by Tobias Lindman on Flickr

Well, I have learnt a multitude of things about my ability to put things off, that’s for sure. One of the wonderfully simple things about this 100 day programme is the way it creeps up on you. I have set myself three goals, and am making progress on two of them – losing weight and being fitter – but the third has me royally stumped.

I set myself the task of writing the first draft of the novel idea that has been floating around in my head. If i’m right, so far I have managed almost nothing on that particular taks, although I have managed to write a whole screed everyday about why I think i’m failing.

My wife is firmly of the belief that I manage to overanalyse and overplan everything I do, and she is absolutely right. I use this planning as a method to avoid doing anything on any task that is difficult to achieve in my eyes, but I never manage to pin down quite why it’s hard to do. I – like most others who manage to put things off – can show you a detailed plan that sets out what is going to be done, and all the myriad steps required to get there, and it can be planned using a huge variety of tools and methods and harnessing skill sets etc, but the thing that is crucial to all these steps is actually managing to do anything about them, and that crucial part is completely missing.

Oh dear.

I have a vision in my head that shows my shiny novel all finished and gaining fantastic reviews from everyone who reads it. Sadly, that vision is never going to be acheived if I don’t get started.

I have a plan to do small steps every day and gradually plod towards my goal, but that plan is largely ignored simply because the first step requires that I commit to the whole of the plan, and that just seems too scary.

I’ve tried to give up on the thing all together. I’ve tried to admit to myself that if I can’t get started, then perhaps it’s something I don’t want to do, but that doesn’t work either – if you don’t want to do something, and you give up on it, surely that means that the thought never enters your head again? er, nope. It keeps coming back. Somewhere in me, there is the desire to actually write this damned novel, and it won’t go away regardless of how many times I try and fail.

So, that’s where I am at the moment. I am mindful of what I eat, and have managed to cut out the desire to eat unwholesome food almost completely – a great surpise considered how much I thought I enjoyed it. I’ve managed to instill the desire to go to the Gym regularly, although that desire is a fledgling thing that still requires nurturing, but the book escapes me completely.

Continuing down this programme will force me to confront that as an issue every day. Whether or not I do anything about it, however, is something else entirely.

Photo by Major Clanger on Flickr

It’s easy to get sentimental about what Steve did to revolutionise the modern method of computing, and how Apple changed the phone, tablet and music player markets beyond all belief, but for me these revolutions are important.

For me, Apple is embodied in the changes that Steve started and his passion to do things right is a reason why I type this note on my new Macbook Air after 22 years of Windows based computing.

I strive every day to make tiny changes that will – one day – allow me to demonstrate the sheer passion and drive that Steve Jobs showed in every day of his life.

Thank you, Steve, and rest in peace.

After 22 years of using assorted PCs, a large number of which I built myself, others which my varied employers either provided to me or insisted I used, I am sufficiently enraptured by the Apple fanclub that I have moved over to a Mac.

I’m typing this in Byword on my brand new Macbook Air. Before I eulogise too much about this particular piece of hardware, I must confess that I have been using it for all of two hours now. That said, it has been a seamless experience and an utter joy. For once, I’m using an operating system that is designed to just get out of your way and let you get on with the important things in life, the things that you use a computer for, rather than the endless minutiae of changing screensavers and wallpaper.

I spent all of ten minutes setting this machine up the way I liked it, and the majority of that was picking a wallpaper image that wasn’t the same as every other mac I’ve seen, and setting up the dock and trackpad. Everything else is standard.

It helps, of course, that I have been essentially Windows free in my personal life for over nine months now. For Christmas 2011, my wife gave me an iPad and I gave her my Acer laptop that was, until that day, my pride and joy. It’s a fantastic little machine, light and fast, and she uses it just fine. I started my grand experiment of trying to live without a laptop at home and attempted to use an iPad as my sole computing device.

Of course, work still depends on a Windows machine, but it is old and slow, not to say incredibly thick and heavy. It handles my work tasks just fine, but by god it weighs a ton and makes noise.

At home, the iPad beckoned. Every computing task I could think of was accomplished, to some degree of success, on the iPad. I filled in forms, I typed entries for this blog, I did all manner of stuff. A few things required the eventual purchase of a small netbook – for example, downloading countless hours of podcasts for my lengthy daily commute, for which I use an ancient iPod that is useless without a tether to a PC – but using that machine was a hideous experience and it was powered up reluctantly.

After time, however, the iPad became a barrier. Web browsing is still a beautifully tactile task, as is catching up with Instapaper articles, but long form writing – such as the book which eludes my best efforts to start it, thanks to the previously mentioned demon procrastination – and posts such as this one, are incredibly hard to manage. Some people manage to type just fine on the sheet of glass that is the iPad keyboard, but I never took to it. Perhaps it’s my great big fat fingers.

So I am now a Mac user. No doubt I will be accused of being a fanboy by many friends who never understand how important a frictionless PC is to me, but I revel in the experience. I am almost certain my writing will improve as a result, and my personal productivity will soar.

At last, I own a computer that I love using.

I’ve always been a procrastinator. This is a term that is bandied about by many, and I know that I procrastinate on different things and some not at all – I don’t need a task list or calendar entries or external motivators to play a game or eat ice cream, for example. But I do have a genuine struggle to get some things done, and these are things that I really want to do.

That previous sentence sounds like utter rubbish. How can I not do things that I really want to do? The casual observer would say that I don’t actually want to do them at all, if I really wanted to do them then nothing would stop me. That’s partially true – I continually want to do them, but I still fail to get started.

I’ve taken on the 100 day programme in order to get a grip on this. I know it’s necessary, as it’s not just limited to tasks I want to achieve at home, difficult jobs at work also suffer and that is just not acceptable.

8 days ago I defined what I wanted to achieve:

• lose weight and get down to sixteen stones in weight (i’m currently 17 and a half)
• eat better by cutting out junk food
• save sufficient money to buy a Macbook Air
• write the novel that’s continually rattling around in my head.

My performance in all of these tasks bar one has been pretty good. While I’m not showing an immediate weight loss, I have instilled the habit of regular gym attendance. I’ve excelled myself in cutting down on junk food, and in the process have come to realise just how many times during the day I would be tempted.

The money saving goal has been greatly helped by a big chunk of commission from work, so that’s not been too hard to achieve – although, admittedly, that means I haven’t set sufficient controls in place to save money regularly, but I am still mindful of how I spend money and the desire to avoid eating casual snacks and junk food takes me away from the places where I would also casually spend money.

The elephant in the room is the novel. Despite my ability to document daily – in the workbook that is offered by Elle – how I am getting on with hitting my daily targets, I am really struggling with getting started on my novel. As a part of my daily writing, I am slowly starting to understand why this has become an issue.

As all chronic procrastinators do – and every book on the subject sets out to solve – I can see my book as a finished product. A massive tome that stretches for hundreds of pages and is intricately woven into a story that embodies countless characters and complex plotlines. Unfortunately for my overactive imagination, that situation is yet to arise as I haven’t even started a plotline yet, and my characters are barely formed. As a result, every time I start, all I see is the massive mountain to climb and I stop before I manage anything useful.

Elle rightly points out that projects set as goals should be scary, and should differ from the norm of day to day life. You can’t achieve a goal by doing the same thing day after day, and therefore the steps you take should be scary. The problem comes when trying to blend this with the procrastinators take on things – when a project becomes scary, it looks like it’s too hard to achieve it, and an avenue is opened to put things off and therefore fail to achieve anything. That’s exactly what I am doing.

Just getting started is a great thing in principle, but in practice it’s hard to do. Perhaps having written about it, I can now go ahead and try to address the very problem I face.

But, in summary, I must say that I am seeing changes in my behaviour already. As much as this can be a challenge and be scary in places, the very concept of doing something daily, over a hundred day process, instills mindfulness of the goals with daily reinforcement. That is something that every other programme or process I have used has failed to do, and I must say I’m optimistic about the habit forming that is resulting from this one.

This is indicative of an underlying problem, one that many others like me will recognise. Procrastination is a real thing that damages the life chances of a lot of people and for me is a real issue. I have tried many things to address this issue, and the collection of todo lists is one of them. The most pervasive one, if you will – as it ultimately leads to the solution. Tick off all the boxes, and your work is done.

Of course, us procrastinators know that it is rarely that simple. The very heart of procrastination itself is that regardless of the number of lists we have in our possession, and the number of items on those lists, the key to solving the issue is actually doing the work.

That in itself is difficult, and leads to a whole heap of books and guides and methods of solving the problem at hand. I have tried many, and today I try one more. This one has the benefit of enabling the slow and careful addressing of the problem, through many many steps – in total, a hundred days of work.

So today I start the hundred day work plan, courtesy of Elle Bradshaw’s site Motivate Me. I intend to follow this plan every day, and also intend to journal my progress as regularly as I can.

Small steps, every day, will hopefully result in success. I really hope so.

“Murder your darlings” Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (1863 – 1944)

According to the high venerated Wikipedia Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch encouraged his students to murder their darlings, or quickly kill off those things they thought dear to them, in order to start afresh and anew. It’s a very good point. It also applies to those things that started off as fun, but over time became more of an obligation, and lost their lustre in doing so.

Back at the beginning of 2012, I started a little blog called Bloody Complaining. This was to be my dumping ground for all the complaints that my friends had to listen to every time I saw them; I had used the more traditional location of the Facebook status update to share these with the world previously, but I just came across as a whinger. Nobody likes to be thought of as a whinger.

Over seven months, I piled all my likes and dislikes into this sounding off point. I had set myself the high bar of posting every day and never repeating myself; this was incredibly easy for the first month and got progressively harder as the months wore on.

I found myself struggling to complain. The adage of never repeating myself was designed for the benefit of my many readers, or so I thought, but looking back at the early posts I realised – too late – that they were generic and any complaining on the same broad point could be seen as repetition. I had ruined my chances before I started.

It became a chore, this little complaining blog. Days would go by without an update, and then I would hurry to backfill the missing days. Often I found myself documenting seven or more complaints at once, and then inserting them carefully into the timeline. These complaints became weaker and weaker and my outrage dimmed, rending the last few posts little more than a bit of a moan.

And then July came, and I posted on the first two days, but ran out of steam. My iPad showed my Omnifocus reminder to post a new complaint every day, but I didn’t. I let each day lapse, and the distance between the last post and the current day grew larger and larger.

By the end of July, the gap was just too large, and it occurred to me that this fun little experiment had run its’ course. I was no longer able to complain as vociferously as I had done before, and the creation of new posts was no longer something I looked forward to, but something that was just hard work.

So yesterday I posted my last post. I may well keep the blog there as a reminder of what I managed – over 180 separate complaints is no mean feat, after all – but is now a static piece of memories for me.

I murdered my darling, and today it finally occurred to me what that phrase means. It was a necessary murder.