The Deletist

Last year I read a book called The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg.  One of the many things I learned is habits save us time and energy.  Doing something habitually spares our brains from constantly making decisions.  For example, when getting dressed in the morning, I don’t decide which leg goes in the pants first.  It’s automatic.  When I get home I automatically put my keys in the same place. I don’t have to think about where to put them, or where to find them, later.

If I wanted to wake up to a clean kitchen, I was going to have to make emptying the dish drainer a habit.  As I mentioned previously, several things were working against me:

• Bad stacker
• Prolific creator of dirty dishes
• Extreme annoyance and dislike for the task

How was I going to recondition myself?

I started small by working on the emotional aspect.  I stopped expending energy on chastising myself for not doing the dreaded task, which only succeeded in decreasing what little motivation I had.  Instead, I focused my energies on thinking of ways to trick myself into the emptying habit.  Here are a few of my more successful tactics:

• 5-minute sprints – In the beginning when I felt tired and annoyed, I would challenge myself to empty dishes for 5 minutes and then quit.  I quickly noticed it only took 2 minutes.  I found this oddly motivating, even though it did make me feel a bit silly for being sooo resistant.
• 2-minute rule – The Getting Things Done method by David Allen has a simple rule, if you can do something in 2 minutes or less, do it right away.  It was harder to make excuses now that I knew it only took 2 minutes, max!
• Positive reinforcement – I liked the results.  Sink and dishes remained clean. Doing small amounts frequently made it easy to maintain.  This gave me encouragement.
• Finding time – I found ways to reallocate my time.  For example when waiting for bread to toast, I trained myself to empty the dish drainer before checking my phone.

It’s slowly becoming a habit to empty the dish drainer asap and keep it that way.  Despite my best efforts, old habits are hard to change.  Stay tuned for the final part in the series when I share strategies for getting back on track.

When I lived in NYC I developed a terrific habit of keeping my kitchen immaculate. The constant threat of vermin motivated me to make sure every dish was washed and every surface cleaned before going to bed.

I haven’t lived in NYC for over 10 years, but I maintained my standards for years after moving to other cities. Over time, without the vermin threat, I started to let things slide. I routinely went to bed leaving the sink piled high with dishes to greet me in the morning. In fact, I seemed to always have dirty dishes in the kitchen. It really started to bother me. I knew I was capable of keeping a clean kitchen, so what was causing the slippage?

Over the next several weeks I observed my dishwashing habits and how I felt about it. In time I realized the problem was not the dirty dishes. The real problem was not emptying the dish drainer regularly. Consequently when I wanted to wash dishes, the dish drainer would be full making a simple task into an onerous two-step process. And since I was usually tired, it was easy for me to convince myself to do it when I had more energy. Inevitably, I always woke up to a sink full of dirty dishes to be washed before going to work, which was unpleasant and costing me valuable time in the morning.

Other factors that were working against me:

1. I create an obscene amount of dirty dishes.
2. I stack things terribly in the dish drainer. I can’t be bothered to wash things a certain way for stacking purposes.
3. I hate emptying the dish drainer. Totally irrational, but it’s one of my least favorite tasks.

Armed with this information, I created a strategy to achieve my goal: waking up to a clean sink. Now I wake up to a clean sink about 80-90% of the time. The trick for me was diagnosing the right habit to change. The bottleneck was not from the large volume of dirty dishes. It was a direct result of not emptying the dish drainer routinely. Once I figured out how to keep the dish drainer empty, everything else fell into place.

Stay tuned for next week’s installment when I share my habit transformation methods.

A friend of mine, after reading my previous posting on procrastination, commented that I was almost the complete opposite of her in how I managed to get tasks done. She was of the opinion that sometimes it was better to put a task aside until she felt energized to do it. That way the task seemed to flow. She felt good about the process and the end result.

My friend is a wise woman and offered yet another perspective on procrastination. Sometimes I actually prevent myself from getting things done because I let the priorities guide me instead of energy levels. This is especially the case with some dreaded deadlines (e.g. tax filing) or boring, routine administrative tasks (e.g. entering in expenses). When I have something mandatory to do, sometimes I will spend the whole day working up the energy and motivation to get started rather than just doing what I feel like.

A few weeks ago I was slogging through some work so I could go out and walk around the park. It was a beautiful day. Sunshine beamed into my office and the breeze felt just right. *sigh* Instead of going outside when the weather was great and I was energized, I forced myself to finish the task. By then it was too late to go out because it took me so dang long to get into it. In hindsight I should’ve just gone for the walk for motivation, rather than pretending to be focused, which wasted more hours than the walk would have.

I often forget that energy levels matter when it comes to getting things done. The process of how we accomplish our tasks counts too. Naturally I almost always feel energized to do the more creative parts of my business (i.e. writing Deletist blog postings!), but will often push those aside to tackle more urgent, or obligatory, items. I’d like to always match tasks with energy levels. Then reality shows up in the form of bills, deadlines, meetings, etc.

So again, I come back to wondering about the question in my previous posting. If I decide to “wait” on doing certain tasks until I feel the right energy level, am I procrastinating? Or am I expending time and energy more efficiently?

Recently a friend of mine asked me on two separate occasions if I procrastinated.  At first I stuttered because I like to think of myself as someone that doesn’t procrastinate.  Time is precious and valuable to me so I’m always looking for the most efficient way to do something.  A long time ago I discovered that by procrastinating I spend more time trying not to think about something than the time it would take me to actually do it.  And of course there are dreaded tasks that I procrastinate on, conveniently forget about, or continually rank as a low, low priority.  I was even delaying writing this blog post which is normally something I enjoy doing each week.  It must be the subject matter….

I do have one task I habitually procrastinate on, much to my detriment, but normally I’m quite diligent about getting things done right away.  However, my friend’s question caused me to think about it for a moment.  As a consultant, I’m constantly reprioritizing my tasks based on urgency and deadlines.  On occasion I may procrastinate by lounging around watching TV, but more often I’m getting something done in place of something else.  If I push a task of lesser importance to the bottom of the list in favor of doing something more immediate, is that procrastinating?

I’ve also found the erratic schedule and shifting priorities is a strong motivator for me to stay on top of my tasks allowing me flexibility when something unexpected happens.  Something always pops up at a random time that is both urgent and time consuming.  This means for certain tasks I have developed a habit of doing them immediately to get them off my list and out of my mind.  Recently, my brother sent me an article about this exact habit, which is called “pre-crastination,” rushing to get things done for the sake of completing them.  Consequently some things, like email responses, may be sent off hastily without thinking it through.

I’m not sure there’s a perfect solution, but I allow myself to do whatever I want as long as it’s productive.  I have a mental list of “productive” activities that evolves constantly.  On occasion, I have even been able to justify watching TV, napping, or teaching myself how to make kettle corn as productive activities.  Most of all, I strive for efficiency and balance.