Day killer

I went through a lot of little things, but the main problems remained. “Although it really worked,” says Olegapro .

When I started working as a freelancer, I responded to letters in the morning, then I dealt with the documents. And only then, at about eight o'clock in the evening, I sat down to draw a design.

Letters came different:

• Delight and gratitude - they are the most pleasant, and the easiest to answer them
• From potential clients with questions like, “Are you interested in taking up the project?” And “Are you available for my project?” Are also very pleasant, promising profits. They are also easy and pleasant to answer, especially if they do not report anything on the merits of the project.

Then billing and contracting took place: it was an unpleasant, but simple work. Since I never did business on my own, I sometimes had to kill Google for a few hours, studying sample documents and legislation.
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Finally, when I had no other reason to postpone work, on pain of losing a client, I sat down to a real job: what I actually know how to do and what I get money for: draw a design. It is not difficult to assume that the real work suffered the most as it was postponed for later.

What is the most unpleasant thing?

There are two types: where you need to think a lot and where you can screw up .

Thinking a lot

The hardest thing in design is to come up with a design. Therefore, designers postpone this moment as far as possible, doing other supposedly useful things: read LiveJournal (but only the design communities!), Respond to mail, browse the news (ostensibly to know the context). I am not to do the design:

• Cleaned shoes
• I studied alternative payment acceptance services: what if you could pay a lower commission?
• I wrote to friends on Facebook and endlessly stitched Refresh, waiting for an answer
• Put music, change tracks and end up downloading new music
• Even doing dumbbells! From morning and hours to five in the evening.

Some of these activities are called mental work, but only formally: in fact, they serve to get rid of mental labor; from things that require the most concentration.

Screw up

How hard it is to force yourself to make an unpleasant call! Most calls are microconflict. People rarely call to show their courtesies. Rather, resolve some conflict of interest, albeit very small.

• Learn about the terms of delivery? They want to do less and take a little more, and vice versa.
• Make an appointment? Everyone wants a closer look at their office.
• Remind to pay the bill? There is a conflict here.

All this is microconversation. I am already silent about the situation when a client expresses himself in terms of “Damn that day when I learned about VisualPharm ”. Any negotiations are liable to fail.

Who hurries us to help?

We are in a hurry to help two loyal assistants appointed by society: wine and Lyuli .

You can blame yourself: guilt is a strong motivator. You can wait for external exposure: lyuley from the chief or the wife.



Such methods do not work on me; on the contrary, I resist. Since childhood, I am forced to do only those things that I don’t want to do:

• Play Octyabryatsky game We buy a chicken instead of a yard game in the king
• Put the socks in place instead of doing something more interesting.
• And many, many lessons instead of computers, drawing, fishing, and card games.

In both cases, I was not only forced by my parents, octo-leaders and teachers, but also by the inner voice of conscience. So, I considered myself an irresponsible Oktyabrenko because I didn’t stick to sing:

Turkey tails baldy,
Duck ta-ti-ta.

I need something more powerful than a boss or a voice of conscience. Wines and Lyuli are weak helpers.

The most important thing

The most important thing is one, maximum two. How to distinguish it from the rest? I ask myself the question: “Will I be pleased with the present day if I only do it”?

Today I have two important things to do: write this article and help rewrite the resume:



The next day - one thing: add task to the bag:



I do not single out my important business; I plan it on the eve and, having woken up, I know in person. First I do it, then the rest.

When I started writing this article, I used Highrise . Now I switched to a more functional thing - OmniFocus .



But any list of cases will fit:

• Ta-da lists
• Remember the Milk
• or paper notebook

How not to be distracted from important business

It is easy to jump off important business. Check how things are on Facebook, pull a seagull or even get out on the table. How to keep the focus? Remove irritants. The following things distract me.

People

Familiar people will always be distracting: I did it with colleagues, family, ICQ and just acquaintances. Therefore, I go where strangers are: in cafes, parks, libraries, beaches, or I work in a tram.

If you constantly go to one cafe, you make friends. Therefore, to constantly go to one place is not an option. Pretty waitress, throwing a tender replica, flying past - this is wonderful. But not when you are drawing a design, inventing a superbag or writing an article about an important business a long day.

Sounds

Russia is a noisy country. It is believed that if you turn on the radio “Europe Plus”, then the comfort of this will increase.

Lenin Library - a place where the cult of silence reigns. Anyone can get there. The only requirement is age from 18 years. The first time you need to pay 100 rubles for the reader.

For other places there are soundproof headphones. I like Etymotic , I wear the third pair (I lost the previous two), from inexpensive ones - Koss Pathfinder .

Computer

Facebook, LiveJournal, news and even Wikipedia - they can fill my day entirely. I block them with the SelfControl program (only for Mac, if you know a Windows equivalent, write in the comments). It blocks sites that you say to it, tightly - even a reboot does not help:



You can also track your performance with RescueTime . Here is my effectiveness:



That is, about half of the cases I perceive as undesirable. See this fat purple area? This is mail (Gmail and Sparrow) and Skype.



Sparrow is a good customer. I don’t like the concept itself: spend so much time on email.

Own thoughts

They have no end:
- Well, how can you be such a person. And yet he believes that he is right!
- Aah, what for was to tell Mikhail Yakovlevich a joke about an inhabitant of Odessa, a moron blah.
- Epta money will never be, and what? As it bothered, to search for everything, to plug holes.

Humanity is lucky with a big brain. Thanks to him, we have a lot of food, and we are the largest population of mammals on the planet. And at the same time, we received an internal tormentor, driving vile thoughts. Got a calm moment to relax? It was not there: the brain starts the only thing that can: think, think, think. And it is impossible to turn it off.



Or maybe? He cannot be told not to think, but he can be trained . Professor Jonathan Heidt from the University of Virginia identifies three effective ways of training:

1. Meditation
2. Cognitive psychology
3. Antidepressants

I decided to stop at this and not to write more about the methods. If you are meditating or under prozac, welcome to the comments. In the last article there were meditators and many others who found their own ways to solve problems. And it is beautiful. Thank you for reading and Wellcome in the comments.

UPD: Ha ha ha, kament of the day: “You say that SelfControl helps you ... I put it and what do you think happened? I did not jump on other sites, I climbed to dig into the software and look what it does and how. Then I went to the Internet to look for analogues for other OSs. ” Sayber

UPD November 2013: I supplemented my arsenal with applications for routines (well-established sequences of actions): Routines , an awesome thing Stickk (and not only awesome - she fined me hundreds of dollars!), And also I make my Last Hour application for this and that.

UPD November 2013: I wanted to write a FAQ on the article, but did not write. Therefore, I simply cite a link to comments that are close to me: about Jan Frank , about gestalt therapy and of course about hardware .