PP: Planning Prevents Procrastination (And Stress)

There have been many times where I have absolutely dreaded doing something I needed to do. Many years ago, it was homework. Now, it's some of my work. In the end, it's still the same: you wait too long to get started because you can't wrap your mind around how you are going to get it all done. Once you start doing it though, you realize it's not that big a deal and you should have started long ago so that you wouldn't be rushing.

It's not about laziness, and that's not just me being stubborn and denying I'm lazy. The real reason is planning. If I said you need to build a house and get it done within 2 years, you probably wouldn't get a hammer out today and get to it. 2 years, you'd say. I have *plenty* of time. Before you know it, a year has passed and all you've done is thought about working on the house a half dozen times. Now you're panicking (as you should be).

If instead I gave you a very long yet very thorough list of steps to take to make the house (including a list of everything to buy, whom to call and when, and each step took anywhere from a few minutes to a couple of hours) you probably *would* start right away and not feel so stressed out.

The difference, of course, is knowing what to do and breaking it down to bite-sized pieces.

The only reason I bring this up is to remind myself that nothing is too big to handle. No matter what it is, if I step back and really plan things through, it becomes much easier to accomplish. A great side-effect of this is that you discover things that you need to clarify and discuss much earlier on in the process.

The planning part is fairly self-explanatory, but there is one important thing to remember: don't expect to be able to plan every single item from the beginning. It's just not possible to think of everything little step months in advanced. Be as detailed as possible, but revisit every your plan every so often and add more details. There's nothing wrong with going back and adding so much detail that you end up doubling your initial list. That's not a step back. If anything, it makes moving forward even easier because things are now even more clear.

(I didn't even reread what I wrote, so not all of this is going to make sense)

Switching Gears Is Hard!

I love what I do. I work for myself. I go to sleep whenever I want. I wake up whenever I want. I take a vacation whenever I want.

With so much freedom, discipline becomes very important in being productive. It's dangerously easy to end the day having done absolutely no work. While this is ok, and downright necessary, sometimes, it can easily turn into a bad habit.

I try to counter that by writing a detailed to-do list the night before and knowing exactly what I am going to work on. Having vague tasks like "Work on Bob's project" is ambiguous and just makes me procrastinate doing the work, since I don't really know what to work on. "Finish video encoding module" is much easier to start and finish.

That solves half the problem. The other half, which is far more difficult, is switching gears. Once I work on one project and finish what I needed to do for that day, I need to start on the next project. While it sounds easy, it ends up being quite a bitch!

I've tried taking breaks, and I just end up taking an all-day break. If I separate my sit-down work with work meetings, I have absolutely no desire to work again after the meeting.

Even now, when I should get started on the next project, I'm writing a blog post! Anyone have any suggestions?