Too tired to think!
Which is exactly the state I’m in right now.
It’s why I have had the last 9 articles in draft for the WordPress 101… for almost 2 weeks! No energy to finish them.
It’s why household chores have piled up. Not going into details here… you do NOT want to know.
It’s why even though I need to get some serious exercise, the very thought of exercise creeps me out.
So… what to do?
Excellent question!
Being productive when exhausted
Being productive when you’re absolutely dead tired, when cannot concentrate, and your focus is limited to what’s on TV can be done. The key is follow this simple procedure exactly.
Let go the BS
The first thing is to simply let go of everything that “must” get done. If you have non-negotiables, like picking up the kids, list those out. But these non-negotiables should ALL be induced by real, external relationship and people requirements.
Scrubbing the bathtub doesn’t count.
If your list of non-negotiables takes up all your time, and you don’t have any time for yourself, you can stop reading here. There’s nothing further I can say that will help you in anyway… if you have no control over any of your time.
Choose one, simple, necessary goal
The second thing is to visualize a necessary task that furthers your goals. I suggest using Dave’s Market Quadrant to pick something that you like to do, and pays you back in the future. This must be a specific task. Something where you can “see” it finished in your mind’s eye.
Extinguish distraction
Third: Close down everything else: email, RSS reader, phone, all of it. Just turn it all off. I don’t mean turn the ringers off, I mean power off everything you can.
I pride myself on being able to handle a wide variety of activities simultaneously, and I bet you do too. When I’m well-rested, I can write 2 or 3 blog posts or articles on different topics, while cooking dinner, keeping up with email and RSS, and handling phone and txt messages.
But only when I’m well-rested!
Execute under time constraint
Fourth: Create a hard deadline for stopping work. You don’t have to finish, you just have to stop working at the specified time. One great way to do this is to commit to something social. For example, this evening, I’m going to dinner with my friend David and his wife Jessica. They’re in for a couple of days from Cornell, great time to catch up… and great excuse to stop working. This time constraint often motivates me to get a fair bit of work done, and I believe it will work for you.
Create fine grained task list
The fifth and final step is to get started by writing down all the tasks you need to accomplish to implement your vision. For example, I need to build a “bribe box” for Website In A Weekend newsletter, such that people feel good about trading their email address for information they can use to improve their WordPress websites. This is easy in principle… in practice, there’s a bit of work to it:
- Deal with Thesis Theme CSS issues [link]. This is going to require printing out the style sheets.
- Construct the div and form elements of the box.
- Write that copy.
- Handle the images.
- Deal with bribebox css.
As I start working through these tasks, I’ll create subtasks, and fill in the details on each task and subtask as I go. Some of the tasks I don’t really know how to do, like create compelling images that will convert. I’ll write up and implement what I can, leaving just a very small amount of work to outsource if necessary.
Even if I don’t finish all the work by the time I leave for dinner in the evening, I’ll know what I got done, and what needs to be done. Furthermore, I’ll use this list of tasks as a basis for an article on the same topic on Website In A Weekend.
Better sleep makes you more productive
The scientific evidence is in: the better your sleep, the more productive (and happier) you are going to be. Setting your own sleep schedule is yet one more benefit to being an entrepreneur! If you haven’t set your own sleep, and you’re not getting enough sleep, you have only yourself to blame.
And in case you were wondering, this article comes to you in the same manner as several other articles: very often, I get a lot of good work done when I’m supposed to be doing something else!
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Are you, perchance, a fan of the David Allen GTD method and its philosophical descendants? I take the whole GTD thing (or any methodology, really) with a grain of salt, but there are useful patterns in there; your sections about working under a time constraint and creating fine-grained task lists mesh very well with what he teaches.
I’ve found myself suffering a lot from lack of sleep in recent years, which I think is caused by insomnia. Everyone will give you tidbits of advice on how to prevent insomnia, so like a good engineer, I started gathering data on myself.
For 30 days, I logged at what times I woke up, fell asleep (best guess +/- 30min), drank coffee, went to the gym, etc.
The result, with 30 days of data? None of it matters. I can drink no coffee at all for two days, or have two cups in one afternoon, and it makes no measurable difference to what time I manage to fall asleep. I can go to the gym, or not, and it makes no difference. I can go jogging or not, same deal. The only thing that actually has an impact is taking Diphenhydramine HCl (works brilliantly!), but I’m too afraid of developing a dependency on it to use it regularly.
So I still have insomnia as bad as ever, but at least now I can drink coffee in the afternoon without fretting about whether it’s a mistake.
Coffee has been very very good to me!
I haven’t read any of the GTD material. I’m sure it’s good. I should probably look into it more.
Very interesting data you have collected there. Would you like to write a guest post here going into detail? I’d sure love to have it!
As for suffering from lack of sleep, I can definitely relate. What I’ve done is more or less separated the “suffering” from the “lack of sleep.” I’m able to keep my mood relatively stable and upbeat, even when I’m really tired. And that helps a lot!
Good to hear from you again!