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Why change is so hard and how to make it happen

Jiri Novotny — Mon, 07 May 2012 11:24:50 +0000

In computing, there is a term “FIFO”. It’s an acronym which means “First in, first out” and refers to queue processing. I find it very useful to look at our conscious part of brain, the evolutionary youngest neocortex, in the same way.

It is very important to understand this process, because it actually happens every time we want to make a change – be it our thinking, behavior or habits. Once you understand how this works, and apply the one proven technique I am going to teach you in this post, you will be able to make sustainable and meaningful changes in your life.

What do I mean exactly by looking at our neocortex using the FIFO concept? Well, it means that if you put thought A into your brain, and then put in thoughts B, C, D and E, the original thought A will be pushed down in the queue by the new thoughts. And once you put enough new thoughts in, the original desired thought A will get pushed completely out of your mind by the newly upcoming thoughts. Just small residue in your subconscious mind will be left.

One of the biggest challenges of life in the modern society is that new thoughts are forced into your mind all the time, whether you like it or not – advertising and distractions being just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

The problem: You want to make a change, so you put the thought of change into your mind, and sooner than you think, it’s being pushed out by other stuff – while nothing has really changed.

Because in the FIFO analogy, all thoughts are eventually replaced by new thoughts, it is vital to keep putting the desired thought into your mind daily. That way, you will be able to maintain focus and attention, which is crucial for any meaningful change. And if you put in the desired thought enough times, e.g. on 30 to 60 consecutive days, its imprint in subconscious mind will become significant and self-sustaining for some time.

Time management expert, Mark Forster, says this the best in the introduction of his book Get Everything Done and Still Have Time To Play: “(…) regular focused attention is the key to virtually every problem and challenge, and the more we learn how to direct and focus our attention the more skilled we will be at life. This is because anything that we give our attention to will start to change.”

And how do you actually do this? It is deceptively simple:

Create a sheet of paper that contains both your vision (how you want your life to look like), and goals (what you want to achieve in the next 3 to 12 months to get closer to your vision).
Read it every single day (and don’t skip or stop)

Sounds easy and not that new, right? But the devil is in the details.

First, this works great for goals and can be made even more effective with visualization. And second, there is one significant but not obvious benefit.

When it comes to goal achivement, applying this concept is especially powerful. In the book Master Your Workday Now, Michael Linenberger describes a concept of “spinning goals”. In his metaphor, each idea in our mind has a spin velocity, and just as with a gyroscope, when the velocity is high enough, it is very hard to divert its course. Daily reading of your goals or vision is thus referred to as “spinning” and increases the energy of desired thoughts and ideas in your mind. Michael argues that this is extremely important if we want remain on track to achieving our goals and fulfilling our vision. His is a similar concept of what I am describing here, just seen from a different angle.

But Michael adds one very significant addition to this: Visualization. It is well established, especially in the athletics field, that visualizing something before actually doing it increases the performance very significantly. He argues that it is very important to visualize your vision every time you read it.

The hidden benefits of daily focus

There is one huge benefit of this technique that is not obvious.

In the breakthrough book The Power of Full Engagement, the authors (Dr. Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz) emphasize the importance of physical, emotional, mental and spiritual energy for any meaningful achievement (and sustainable productivity). While the physical energy can’t be harnessed using our minds and requires proper exercise and nutrition, the 3 other energy sources (mental, emotional, and spiritual) can be all renewed by regularly reading and visualizing your goals and vision.

It is not just my personal experience that if you have a well written vision statement, just reading it will make you feel great (emotional). It will also help you focus (mental), as it will make clear what you need to do. And it can even show you the high-level big picture of your contribution and purpose (spiritual).

How to write your vision and goals

The vision should state how your ideal life looks like, and your goals should eventually take you there.

Good vision is written as it was already true (for example, “I am very energetic and passionate about my work, because…” and not “I want to be energetic and passionate about my work, because…”), and arouses very positive emotions on you (“I am the king of the tennis court, the other guy shouldn’t even bother showing up” or “I am the ultimate business ninja”). As a rule of thumb, if reading your vision makes you crack up inside and brighten up, it’s written well.

I think it’s best to have a single sheet of paper with both your vision and list of goals, and to read it every morning, and ideally in the evening as well. Post it somewhere you can see it daily and make it a ritual of reviewing it every day. Create reminders. Heck, print and post it on multiple locations. It is crucial that you read and visualize it every single day.

By reading your vision and goals every day, you will keep pushing the positive thoughts to the front of the thought FIFO queue in your mind. This will not just help you to stay on track, focus, and embed the thought into your sub-consciousness permanently, but ultimately provide you with the much needed energy to make this change happen.

This makes change not just possible, but much easier and enjoyable.

Your action steps:

Write a vision statement for your life. Use active voice and emotional expressions. Reading and visualizing it should feel great.
Write and append a list of goals that will move you closer to your vision.
Post it somewhere you can see it.
Make absolutely sure that you will read and visualize it every day. Decide exactly when and how you are going to read it. Decide how you will remind yourself to read it.
Read (and visualize it) every day.
As your vision evolves and goals get accomplished, update your vision statement.

PS: I maintain my vision statement and list of goals in a memo in my own Swift To-Do List 7 for Windows, which I’ve been developing for the last 7 years. If you could use a task and notes organizer, then definitely download the fully functional 30-day trial. You will love it.

- By Jiri Novotny+, the obsessed author of the number one to-do list software for Windows, Swift To-Do List. Jiri’s life quest is to become productivity and achievement world-class expert to empower others to achieve their full potential.

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Why change is so hard and how to make it happen is a post from: Swift To-Do List Blog

What are you not going to do?

Jiri Novotny — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 16:13:42 +0000

I’ve recently finished book called “Do It Tomorrow and Other Secrets of Time Management” by Mark Forster. It’s about efficiency, productivity and creativity – you know, the usual stuff I read. But I actually enjoyed this book more than usual.

The book talks about 7 principles, and I see a common theme between the principles. It’s the question What are you NOT going to do? (By the way, the word “decision” originally means “to cut off from”. So – are you decisive?)

I think that Mark Forster is brilliant; a true time management veteran with a lot of experience under his belt. Some of the ideas and principles he presents are truly eye-opening. It’s so easy to forget them – or worse, never realize them.

Because the book doesn’t present a coherent productivity system (Such as GTD or One Minute To-Do List), it can help you even if you are already organized or use some organizing system.

It is mainly a collection of principles and concepts that you can use to improve your efficiency and creativity, and make your output more predictable and streamlined.

In this post, I am going to summarize the 7 main principles presented in the Do It Tomorrow and provide additional insights of my own.

#1 Commitment vs. Interests

We can have many interests (e.g. writing), but only a fairly limited amount of commitments (e.g. getting a regular column published in a local newspaper).

Was Beethoven interested in music?

Was Einstein interested in physics?

Was Bill Gates interested in software?

Was Abraham Lincoln interested in politics?

You get the idea.

Most people have many interests, often conflicting. That’s because they have no clear vision.

If you are committed to something, it means excluding everything else that might conflict with that commitment. So, by definition, we can have only a very small amount of commitments. Commitments are the deciding factor when it comes to success in your personal and work life.

Whenever you are thinking about starting something, you also must think about stopping something else.

Do many things badly, or be excellent at a few things.

#2 Have a Clear Vision

Good vision includes what you are not going to do.

Our vision should bring us clarity and focus. Far too often, vision statements act as smokescreens – don’t make that mistake! Just ask yourself: “What am I actually trying to achieve?” Make it sharp and narrow.

#3 One Thing at a Time

It is well known that multi-tasking diminishes your productivity, but the same goes for being committed to too many projects.

It is best to focus on one thing, finish it, and then go to the next thing.

We tend to think that unsuccessful people sit on their butts and do nothing, but the opposite is often true – they do so many things that they never properly finish anything. Ever heard the term “Serial entrepreneur”? These are entrepreneurs that build a series of successful businesses – and they do it one at a time.

As Steve Jobs said: “Real artists ship”. So be a real artist.

#4 Little and Often

Whenever you are tackling a large task or project, it is best to work on it in smaller chunks, but often. This applies to learning a foreign language, learning to play a musical instrument, exercise, and many other things. Our mind is the most effective when it has the time to properly incubate and develop the project. Forcing yourself to do large things in one sitting builds resistance and diminishes your creativity. Great ideas often come from sub-conscious, and take time to incubate.

And, of course, the key here is consistency. Once you commit to a project, put the effort in with religious consistency. Every day is best.

#5 Define your Limits

Counter-intuitively, we are the most creative when we are limited. In the book “Made to Stick”, many examples of this principle were presented. For example, try to think of 5 white things that you have at home. Then try to think 5 white things that you have in your fridge. For most, the latter is easier, yet it is more limited.

It is the limitations that encourage creativity.

What this means to you is that you should have very clear boundaries between your projects, both personal and work related. Once again, decide what you are not going to do.

Having no focus and no boundaries is a deceptive illusion of freedom that goes nowhere.

This is also the reason why working on a particular task in a strictly defined time burst works (Pomodoro).

#6 Closed Lists

Closed list is a list with a line drawn at the bottom, so nothing can be added to it. It is the opposite of open list, which grows endlessly.

It is easier to work with closed lists for multiple reasons. First, it’s motivating – the closed list can get only shorter, but open lists gets longer. Second, it acts as a buffer between you and new incoming work. It enables you to properly plan your work and then execute it without being distracted with new things. Closed lists reduce randomness.

One example of closed list is dealing with email in batches at specified times of the day, rather than dealing with it randomly during the day. Another example of closed list is a checklist.

When you create a to-do list, it always tends to get longer, because you will put the new incoming tasks to it. The idea of Do It Tomorrow, however, is to close the list – and do all the new incoming things the next day – tomorrow. Hence the name of the book – “Do It Tomorrow“.

Closed lists are a very effective tool for clearing backlogs: You can just seal your to-do list and isolate it as a backlog, then start completely anew. First, make sure you handle all the new incoming tasks, and second, slowly work through your backlog, which is now a closed list. Because it is a closed list, it will eventually grow to zero and you will clear it.

#7 Reduce Random Factors

Interruptions are the number one reason for preventing people to complete their work. Today, it is truer than ever.

While we probably can’t completely eliminate random distractions and interruptions, we can (and should) minimize them.

By the way, Eben Pagan, who is an extremely successful internet marketer and businessman, said that eliminating distractions might be the most important business skill of all – and his entrepreneurial training programs cover hundreds of skills! So this is definitely something to think about. (And if you want to learn how to focus, check out my post Are You a Zen Coder or Distraction-Junkie?).

With the right approach, you can be proactive, not reactive.

Do you run your day, or does it run you?

- By Jiri Novotny+, the obsessed author of task management software for Windows, Swift To-Do List. Jiri’s life quest is to become productivity and achievement world-class expert to empower others. His current main goal is to create the best task and notes organizer for Windows.

PS: If you could use task and notes organizer for Windows, then definitely download free 30-day trial version of Swift To-Do List Jiri has been working on for over 7 years now. You will be amazed.

What are you not going to do? is a post from: Swift To-Do List Blog