56. Doing Only 1 Thing 🔗
October 14, 2020
In which I declare that prioritization is the communism of attention management, confess I can only bootstrap one fresh orientation per day, and explore why Covid's elimination of third places has robbed me of the location changes that used to supply second winds.
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Prioritization is the communism of attention management 😖
Do or do not. There is no priority.
Once you make a list of things that need doing, and prioritize them according to any metric at all, you can guarantee you will want to do something that’s not in the list at all.
Do or do not. There is no priority.
Once you make a list of things that need doing, and prioritize them according to any metric at all, you can guarantee you will want to do something that’s not in the list at all.
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I have never once in my life actually worked down and through a prioritized list, though I’ve often made them.
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Every prioritized list for me is simple a reverse-neglect order.
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I can only do things in my peripheral vision
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How to hit the bulls eye.
Step 1: throw the dart
Step 2: paint the bulls eye
Step 1: throw the dart
Step 2: paint the bulls eye
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This tweet is true, but the dark side is that there are days I fall into the prioritization trap and do zero things instead of 1 thing.
I’m a bit like Bender. I can only do 1 thing in a day, big or small. So an easy meeting that takes an hour uses up my day just as much as a 10 hour heavy lift writing an essay. So I’m most productive when I have a series of day-sized things to do. https://t.co/Xt3qDNuYNs
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Some days I do end up doing multiple things, but only when I’m being driven by other people’s priorities. And then it wipes me out. Left to my own devices I’m on the 1 thing/day plan.
Damn what a week. I did more than one thing per day on at least 3 days. How the hell do you guys do this all the time.
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I did 1 thing on my own initiative today, and 2 small client things that didn’t require any initiative on my part. The scarce commodity is initiative I think. Reactive autopilot is merely draining, since it uses an existing fixed orientation or borrowed orientation.
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So to say you can only do 1 thing per day is to say you can only bootstrap an orientation on your own once per day. I’m currently on 1/day, but when younger I could do 3-4/day. Without even taking a nap.
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Manager time vs maker time is a special case. A manager doing 4 one-hour things and a maker doing one 4-hour thing are both likely in a single orientation throughout. Most managers only have a single “business” orientation. They run through several situations between breaks.
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Real breaks are the “tells” of reorientation. A nap is the most extreme reset.
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One way Covid has been hard on me is that my reset breaks used to be location changes. No third place means no second wind in a day.
Orientation = new wind 🤔
Orientation = new wind 🤔
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I can’t even do a little mid-day loop walk these days because of heat and pollution.
And the “gym” instead of being a pleasant break is an annoying reconfiguration of bedroom (we have a weight bench and bowflex weights but it’s in a cramped space that takes some confit to useO
And the “gym” instead of being a pleasant break is an annoying reconfiguration of bedroom (we have a weight bench and bowflex weights but it’s in a cramped space that takes some confit to useO
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Considering the cycling thing some life hacker types do, where for 3 weeks you’re mainly on one project. Hard to do around consulting since that’s unpredictable demand.
My work-week is 2 days earmarked for writing 2 newsletters and 3 open days.
My work-week is 2 days earmarked for writing 2 newsletters and 3 open days.
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1-2 of those days are typically consulting, so typically I only have 1 day a week to do pure initiative things
(writing is not reactive, but is not full-stack orientation either, more like half-stack)
(writing is not reactive, but is not full-stack orientation either, more like half-stack)
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Hmm. Context switching and reorientation might be one of the main affordances of public and communal spaces. If everybody is trapped indoors, general reorientation rates go way down. Public = quadruple jeopardy right now: covid, heat, pollution, trumpism.