/mlpol/ - New year plans

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I don't believe in new year promises. Usually such things fail, at least for me. I have a new method that I developed in the beginning of this year that has given me great results in productivity.

I have been planning to post a thread on /ub/ to explain how the strategy or method works but my selfishness keeps me dragging my feet. I guess, I want. Idk, credit for it or something.

Then again the few people I explained it to, kinda rolled their eyes and didn't think much of it. "Well, if it works for you that's good." So that's probably the response I'm gonna get here as well. And maybe that's what I wish but at the same time I believe it could help and it hurts me when people suffer so if I don't share I'd feel guilty.

But it took this guy that couldn't get his life together to finish perform some great feats and keep a daily and consistent increase in output. I got results from it, maybe you can too. I probably have ADD but this last year, you probably couldn't tell.

Fuck it, let's do this. You probably won't care for this much anyway.^^ My method has no real name but I have referred to it as "the one-minute rule" on occasion. Already here, I have a good guess as to what associations you have with time related productivity strategies. You assume, because that's what I would also do so no shade, that the rule is work for a minute at the time. A bit short, you think, usually these types of methods are at least five if not twenty-five minutes long.

But my method isn't that. It's not work in five minutes, then break. Its one minute break and then do a pre-planned, concrete task, that is the absolute bar minimum of a greater-whole of another task by the principle of divide and conquer. The task should be so small that you pride thinks it's too small for you and that it's essentially nothing.

So if your goal for today is to read a book, you apply this method by reading, after one minute of break/leisure activity, not one chapter, not one page, not one paragraph, not one sentence, but one word.

Now, you probably thinking that's too small and you will never finish a book if you have stop a take a one-min break after every word and you be right but I will expand on this at the bottom of this post. I'm not the best at presenting my ideas.

This is because what really keeps one from doing something is usually starting it.

This helps me in every facet of my life at this point and I still feel like I'm only tapping into a percentage of it's potential. For example of how it helps me, I use it in my strength training to or when I run. It helps me push myself since I don't drag my feet in performing whatever exercise I doing.

Procrastinating is after all very natural and something I assume we all do. It might even be healthy since we all do it, despite what this high-productivity society says.

I just don't wanna come off as pretentious. It has worked for me but perhaps that's just because of circumstances and such. Idk.

Give it a shot if you feel like it. But let me at least outline how it works:
1. Have a task in mind you want to do. (Let's say washing the dishes.)
2. Answer the question, what is the absolute smallest thing you can do that contributes to this task being finished. (You do this before or after the minute and it should be something like, if we use washing the dishes as our main task, first just put one the tap. After next min, grab the brush and sweep once over a plate's surface. Next minute drip detergent onto them dirty dishes.)
3. Set a timer for leisure activity. During this time you can do whatever you feel like, so long it's something you can stop at a moment's notice.
4. Do this minimum task outlined in (2) and go back to (2). (Now, here is the interesting thing about this whole method. You're probably thinking that you get nothing done by stopping your task with a minute break after each minimum thing you do. You would never finish those dishes is what you're thinking, and you're right. However, there's a strange phenomena that happens when you do this. )

When you turn on the tap to wash the dishes and your task is done for that minute, something, I can't place prompts you to do a bit more since well that was easy and you're already there.

So what happens is that this method is only really used in the beginning to get you started on doing a thing, because eventually you will just do it one your own.

I have some theory on why this happens but it's not really crystallized yet so, idk why but it happens. So this method is really good at getting me, started one doing a thing and that's usually all I need to get it done.

Idk, if this was helpful. Anyway, thanks for listening to my ted talk.