Tackling 4 High-Priority Missions Simulatenously

Recently I was starting to feel a little overwhelmed by my projects. I had a lot going on, was working hard, but felt like I didn't have a good grasp on the sheer amount there was to do. Let me assure you, this is nothing new. I often give myself way more than I can handle, and then try to figure out after the fact how to do it all. I don't recommend trying to manage numerous critical goals at one time; in fact, having a single goal at one time is often more than enough. But if you're running through life at full speed and need some way of taking charge of it all, this guide may be of some help.

So I decided to stop and think about what I was doing, what was of high priority, and figure out how to focus on those things.  I was able to break them down into 4 "missions:" Get Married, Go Home, Find a Job, and Learn Japanese.  I'll save you the details, but I wrote a Japanese blog about them here. :p

Out of all the crazy things in my life, these are the ones I determined needed the most attention.  In doing so, I replaced two of my previous somewhat-vague goals of Language Teaching and Psychology, and kept Japanese.  After narrowing them down, I thought about how I could utilize the time management techniques I know to make things easier.  There's nothing fancy here I haven't already explained.  I decided not to make a Goal Calendar for each mission (except for Japanese which I'm using already), primarily due to their short timelines of about 2-3 months.  However, I did utilize some principles that you'll find familiar if you read that post.  Well, let's get started.

1. Prioritize missions - this could be a post in itself, but try to figure out what in your life currently demands the most attention.  Not because you have to do it, but because you choose to do it.  Dare I say you want to do it, because this is your life dagnabit!
2. Define missions - what does it mean to say that you've completed that goal?  Where da' finish line at?  One clear, straightforward sentence should suffice.
3. Create mission timelines - decide not only when you want to finish the goal, but when you want to start as well.  Give yourself some time to make the below preparations and look forward to your mission.
4. Commit to missions - make a public commitment that you're going to complete your goals, and it'll be harder to back out later (see this post and the right column on this blog for my example).  You don't have to write it on your blog, or even online, as long as you tell a few people who can (hopefully) give you some support along the way.
5. Prepare mission environments - it can be paper, it can be electronic - whatever medium you use to get things done, use that.  It needs to be something you refer to everyday, or often enough that you won't forget to check.  But if you're already using the below items everyday what's the point of mentioning it?  So you can take full advantage of them; if you don't use them now, I suggest you start.  BTW, my solutions below are all cloud-related.  You're free to use pen/pencil and paper, just think about how much time you're wasting, trees your killing, and liabilities you're creating without a saved backup on the interwebs ready to be used any time and anywhere. :)
1. Notebook - I set up a(n electronic) notebook on Evernote for each mission, and enter whatever comes to mind related to that specific goal. It's a thought dumper.  A rough draft.  It doesn't need to be perfect, just get what you're thinking out of your head, and what you're researching into one place.  Sometimes we get overwhelmed because we simply don't know what we need to do, so this is a way of becoming aware of it all.  After refining your thoughts a bit, begin to come up with a list of general tasks.
2. Folders - any and all files related to the goals go in their own special folder in Dropbox.  Manila folders and regular plastic folders work fine too.  Think of this as another way of dumping things you find related to your goal into one place.
3. Tasks - after coming up with general tasks in my notebook, I made task lists on Remember the Milk for each mission.  When you actually enter the tasks, however, they should be well-defined and very simple, easy to start and finish without requiring many steps.  The most pressing matter is figuring out how to make measurable progress no matter how small; if you need to research something, fine, but that should be a task on its own and the details can come later.  Another thing that's helping me is ordering the tasks sequentially, such that I know the order in which to perform all the tasks.  I then choose about 2 or 3 from each mission to aim to complete before the end of the week.
6. Reward missions - pay yourself for working on each of your goals.  I pay myself every week in hours, as discussed in my schedules post.  My goal is 20 hours a week, and lately I've been racking in around 15 for my 4 missions.  This is enough for me, but consider giving yourself an external reward for progress on your goal.
7. Manage missions - timeboxing, batching, etc.  In particular, timeboxing helps me to keep track of the time I pay myself in, and to start as much as possible.

I've been rolling with Japanese like a motherlover as usual, but I completed revamped the other 3 missions according to the above.  I'm making great progress so far, trying to work on one task from each mission every day.  So on any given day I'm doing 1 thing for the wedding, 1 thing for job searching, and 1 thing for preparing to go home.  Since my environment is set up with the missions plastered all over the place, I'm not going to forget easily, or let others forget either (sorry, honey!).  I reward myself to increase motivation, but the core motivation comes from the discipline of knowing what you want.  That's why they're high-priority missions in your life - because you choose them.  Our decisions are a powerful force in our motivation levels.

Again, not recommending you try 2, 4, or 10 critical goals at once.  But if that's where you are in life, I hope this helped.

Marrying the Woman I Love

As mentioned in a recent post, the countdown has officially begun.  The big day is 7/7/2012, and I couldn't be more excited to be marrying my best friend, the girl of my dreams.

It's hard to believe it's less than a month away now!  Both of us have been pretty busy these last few weeks, but my fiance has been especially wrapped up in the planning.  She's currently residing in her hometown of Guam making preparations - meeting with the church, deciding arrangements for the reception venue, making and sending out invitations, contacting other professionals... the list goes on and on.  Luckily, her best friend is in town from California to make the process go a bit smoother, and along with other family members she has plenty of support.

Still, it's not an easy task to plan for around 200 guests at one of the nicest venues on the island, and I want to support her as much as possible.  I wish I could be there to help, but I'm working full time here in Japan and I'm told I would just mess it up if I got too involved anyway. ;)  So I'm focusing on the little things that I can do, like making the website and getting information from people (addresses, suit sizes, etc.).  I'm excited to see what an American wedding is like when it's not in a movie (I've only been to one Japanese wedding before); figures the first one would be my own. lol

Aside from the wedding itself and the sheer size, I'm looking forward to seeing people for the first time in a while.  First and foremost, two months is too long to spend apart from the one you love.  Secondly, we're really excited to have family and friends fly in from my hometown of Maryland.  We haven't been back in 2 years, so it'll be a preview of sorts prior to heading back a month later.

My fiance and I have actually been engaged for quite a while, almost 2 and a half years to be exact.  I'm just realizing that's over half of the total 4 and a half years that we've been together!  I popped the question at the top of a snow-frosted mountain in my ancestor's hometown of Pennsylvania, about half a year before we both came to Japan and lived here as a couple.  It was the start of our lives together, halfway around the world from where we started.  If I didn't stress it enough before, I couldn't have survived here in Japan without her.  The transition hasn't always been easy... but we had each other, and sometimes her family too when they came with us on trips to places like Hokkaido and Tokyo. hahaha

Come to think of it, our relationship has been full of renewed beginnings.  Like when I went to Japan for the first time, separating from her for about 6 months.  Fortunately I was able to make a side trip to Guam on my way there, and then she came to visit me during my stay.  If it's not already painfully obvious, we like to take trips together. ~_^  After I graduated college, she began to spend more time in the states, and hence with me as well.

Living together for the past 2 years in Japan has definitely brought new light to our relationship, and in spite of occasional hardships we made it work.  I love you honey, and I can't wait to take the next step and start our lives together, once again.

Cutting Slack with Batching

Hey guys, here to mention a quick (maybe? perhaps?) time management technique that I've been consciously applying for the past couple months to the beat of hours of time saved per week.  It's called Batching, and I'm betting you already use it to some extent.

Since I'm from Maryland, I'm going to explain it through the example of catching crabs.  The delicious kind you dip in Old Bay, not the kind that makes you scratch down there.  When I was growing up, during summers we would drive to the beach and my dad would set up a metal crab trap with some raw chicken as bait (see Exhibit A above), and throw it into the canal.  Now it's waiting time.  Question: If two vehicles of equal size are traveling at a velocity of 50 mph toward each other... how often are you going to check the trap?  Each time you check, there may or may not be any crabs; if there are, you dump them into the bucket and head home.  If there aren't, you take the bucket and head home.  No matter how many crabs are in the trap (equal to or above 0), it usually takes more or less the same amount of time.  Why?  Because most of it involves stopping what you're doing, putting on some pants, walking outside to the canal, pulling up the trap and inspecting it, putting it back in and walking back.  If you're going to check it every 10 minutes you might as well set up camp right there, but if you don't check it all day the bait will disappear without you knowing or the crabs could escape.

In this situation, most people develop a routine so they're not checking too often or too little, right?  However, this routine fails way too often to extend to more everyday tasks, the type that are made so convenient by proximity and technology that you don't notice a large chunk of your time adding up.  That's time that could be going toward your goals, high-order priorities, top-secret missions, etc. but is instead disintegrating in the face of "have to" tasks.

The worst culprit: e-mail.

Checking email is a habit engrained into our society.  We wake up, we check email.  We're about to leave for work, we check email.  We arrive at work, we check email.  And what happens when we check email?  We get Facebook and Google+ notifications, so we go to our web browsers and make a comment, then find an interesting article that someone posted.  Well reading one article never drowned a baby, so pop open another tab and read it, and oooh a link to a video on YouTube.  Man that was awesome, you guys gotta check this out - share it with some friends, batabing bataboom.  We've been awake for less than 2 hours and we've already spent over 45 minutes "just checking email."  It's a distraction, and yet because we depend on it for work, school, family, and friends it feels justifiable.  We'll often check it at least every hour, and if you have a notification system it's even worse!  You know as soon as something comes in, and no matter what you're in the middle of, no matter what it's distracting you from, email suddenly becomes PRIORITY NUMBER ONE.  It could be the mayor asking us to save another drowning baby!

So what I've gone and done is batched my email checking time to: once per day.  That's right, you just heard a part of the internet explode.  Gone are the days of waiting for email notifications and going straight for the inbox as soon as the bell goes off.  What are we, dogs in an experiment by some dude named Pavlov?  And when I do check email, since I know it's the only time I'll do it that day I'm much much more likely to actually respond then and there rather than put it off.  I also strategically created the habit of checking as soon as I get back from work, sometimes with a little bit of timeboxing sprinkles to save even more time.  While it's tempting to check first thing in the morning, managing to avoid this has been a hidden secret to increased productivity at the beginning of the day.

If you want, you can limit your email checking even more, like once per week.  This is especially true if you own a business (!), which I learned thanks to The 4-Hour Workweek, by being smart about your communication methods and giving responsibility to your underlings employees outsourced folks. ~_^  With email batching comes the understanding that "emergencies" are often not emergencies at all.  Problems often take care of themselves without you need to do anything.  If you're really worried about people expecting your reply right away, you can set up an auto-response saying you only check email at x time(s), as a way of training those people.  Besides, if someone really needs to contact you, that's why we have cellphones.  And texting.  Put yourself in the cockpit and choose to do things by your own time convenience.

Many people will recognize "Batching" as a technique not only associated with time batching for one task between longer intervals, but as task batching to tackle several similar tasks at the same time.  You can combine both time batching and task batching to do simple things such as waiting until you have a few errands before going out and doing them in one go, or waiting to go to the post office until you have a few letters/boxes you want to send, or making all of your phone calls at once.  That sort of thing.  You want to put stuff off as long as possible, and then do a lot at once.  I've applied batching to things like:

• Checking post mail (once or twice a week)
• Balancing my check book (once every 2 weeks)
• Adding to my address book (once a month)
• Washing dishes (once every 3 days, so it takes about as long as a TV show episode, which I listen to and use as a timebox while washing)
• Writing my Japan experiences (twice a week, based on the limits of my horrible memory)
• Other cleaning and organizing

Batching works especially fantastically if you have a digital task manager (like Remember the Milk) that can handle recurring tasks.  Or if you can work it into your daily routine it will be an even stronger tool.  You can set up your batching schedule and don't even have to think about it.

The moral of the story: don't waste your time doing something multiple times, if you can get the same or better results doing it less often.  Get the stuff you have to do out of the way so you can focus on what you want to do.

Syk3 out!