Don’t Get Things Out Early

When you’re getting ready to work on a project, like baking a pie for a Christmas party, it seems as if you can save time by getting the materials out in advance. You know you need to bake the pie tomorrow, so you put the flour, pie pan, rolling pin, and all the other things you’ll need out on the table. Then, you think, when you’re ready to start on the pie, all you need to do is show up and start baking.

This doesn’t work nearly as well as it seems it should. It ends up taking more time when you try to save time this way.

Deadlines: Don’t Wait Until the Last Minute

Time pressure and deadlines go together, particularly as a deadline approaches. If the last-minute efforts that go along with wrestling with deadlines are a source of stress, you can make your life easier by changing the way you think of deadlines.

Making Email Less Alarming

After email becomes a habit, you can stop noticing how intrusive it is. Most email programs automatically check for new email every minute, and they sound an alarm whenever a new message comes in.

An alarm! Every minute! That’s appropriate, of course, if you’re receiving email messages about fires that you have to go put out. But if you’re not working at the fire house, you can easily take steps to make email less alarming. This can save you time and can make life noticeably less stressful.

The Psychology of Busy

Chris Brogan today writes, “You’re Not As Busy As You Think.” “Busy,” Brogan suggests, could be a psychological pattern of avoiding some things (“all the tasks I can’t seem to master in life, like paying bills on time”) or seeking other things in ways that may not be so practical and may not even be consciously acknowledged (visibility and feedback are two things we may spend time seeking without any particular purpose in mind).

In economic theory, the way to be less busy is to drop work on low-priority objectives. This requires recognizing the low-priority objectives in your work, which is not always easily done. Brogan suggests that you look at the things you do over and over again, and “Ask yourself quite honestly what purpose this activity serves.”

December is the busiest month for many people, and most of the time pressure that people face is unnecessary. During December I’ll be offering several ideas of simple ways to be less busy.

Open Thread and Request for Stories, Questions, and Photos

I am happy to see comments on my blog, and I am adding this “Open Thread” post to make it easier to discuss issues that aren’t so specifically related to the topic of a specific post.

Today Is “One Day”

Today is One Day.

The day can be written is 11/11/11 or 11-11-11, in all ones, so if any day can stake a claim as being One Day, surely this is it.

I just thought I’d mention this in case there is anything you said you would do “one day,” that you still haven’t done. Today is the day!

Starting a New Chapter

My new experience as a novelist has persuaded me that we have a greater capacity for change than we give ourselves credit for. If we are willing to apply a disciplined imagination to one specific change at a time, I believe we can make changes one after another, day after day, just as a novelist might write a new chapter in a novel every day.

Read about this in the Shamanic Economist blog: “Starting a New Chapter, Today.”

“Maybe Things Will Get Better Next Year”

People who follow U.S. economic policy saw two threshold moments today.

This morning, it was a speech from the head of the Federal Reserve Bank, who for the first time suggested that the economy might improve faster if the causes of its problems could be addressed.

Then tonight, the president addressed Congress with a call-to-action speech on the economy. Even with all the advance billing the speech got, it was startling to see from a president who until today had seemed content to just muddle through.