Think Hacks

Do you feel busy but not accomplished?

There is a craze these days surrounding GTD. 43 folders, Life Hacker, and many others have picked up on the productivity bandwagon. On these sites you’ll find tons of productivity information.

But is productivity the same as accomplishment? Cal Newport says no.

And he’s not alone.

In this article, I explore 5 principles gleamed from Extreme Programming you can use to finish more projects.

The trouble with GTD

GTD is a wonderful system with many adherents. It can organize your life and remove the stress of having too much to do.

Cal Newport’s point is that productivity can keep you busy with endless todo lists filled with infinitesimally small next actions. You’ll never run out of things to do. But do you actually finish any of your projects this way?

I would have to say no. I’ve done GTD. I know how to keep my todo lists filled, how to go through each action and accomplish them. I feel terribly organized. But I don’t feel like I get anything finished, precisely because I’m not ever thinking about finishing, only working.

In order to finish things, you have to be able to identify the most valuable part of your project. I’ve started writing many articles, but I haven’t gotten past the introduction. I wanted my introduction to be perfect, but there’s no value in an introduction without the main body of an article! It’s crazy to start there.

You need to work on the most important part first, then expand it from there. And it’s important that at the end of each expansion, the article is in a “completed” state. That means that if I left it the way it was, it could stand on it’s own. An article without an introduction stands up much better that an introduction without an article. This is an application of the Pareto Principle. Bloggers like Tim Ferris have written about applying the Pareto Principle.

I’ve taken these principles from Extreme Programming, a software development process. I find that they translate well to any project.

How to Get Things Finished

Here are a few tips for finishing your projects. I’ll use the example of writing this blog article to illustrate the points.

1. Write your tests (objectives) first

An objective is simply a statement of what you want to accomplish from your project. You set objectives precisely so that you know when you’ve finished your work. Without a well-formed objective, you won’t know when to stop, and you might keep tweaking unimportant things endlessly.

To help write well-formed objectives, we can use the SMART system:

• Specific: Precisely what do you want to accomplish?
• Measurable: You must be able to measure whether you have accomplished it.
• Achievable: Is this objective possible to achieve?
• Realistic: Can I achieve this objective with the resources I have available?
• Timely: Set a deadline.

Example:

I have many objectives for writing this blog article. Here is a malformed objective: “Write a good article about using extreme programming techniques for any kind of project.”

• This objective is not specific. What will go in the article? What is the scope?
• This objective is not measurable. What does “good” mean?
• This objective is achievable and realistic. But I won’t know if I have achieved it.
• This objective is not timely. When does it need to be accomplished?

Since our objective doesn’t meet the criteria, we should reform it: “The article must lists these 5 principles: Test first, One Test at a time, Do The Simplest Thing, Don’t break your tests, and Stop when you’re done; deadline: 1 pm.”

Now it is SMART. And notice that my deadline is for that objective, not the whole, finished article.

2. Set only one objective at a time, starting with the most important

Often, we’ll bog ourselves down with too many objectives. Each is achievable on its own, but they’re not all equally important. So I try to find the most important objective first.

I ask myself “What is the next most vital thing that I want to accomplish with this project? If I could accomplish only one more thing with this project, what would give the most value?”

Don’t just start from the beginning, start with the most valuable part of the project. What is the meat of the thing?

When you’ve accomplished that, then add a new objective.

Example

The objective I wrote in the previous step was my most important. Without that list of things, there’s not content. After I accomplished that, I set another objective: “The article must give one brief explanation of each point listed in the first objective by 1:15pm”

3. Do the simplest thing possible to achieve the objective

When there’s only one objective, it’s easy to figure out what the simplest thing to do is. Too often we try to accomplish too much at a time, and wind up not accomplishing much at all. It’s important not to look too far down the road, because you can’t predict how things will change. So don’t anticipate other objectives in the future. This, along with Principle 2, is equivalent to focus on one thing at a time.

Example

For my first objective, I just listed out the descriptions of the principles. They are still visible as the numbered list of descriptions in this article. I did nothing more. This created a skeleton for my post.

For my second objective, I filled in one explanation for each principle. This fleshed out my post a bit.

4. Do not break your achieved objectives

Even when you add new objectives, don’t backtrack by undoing previous work. At the end of accomplishing each objective, all objectives must still remain accomplished.

Example

After I added an explanation to each principle, I made sure that my first objective was still accomplished, and it was, so I could move on and add another objective. One of my objectives is to list all of my objectives in the article. I make sure not to break that objective when I add new objectives.

5. Stop when you’re done

You set your objectives precisely to know when you’re finished. Don’t waste your time working on a project if you have no more objectives.

Example

One of my objectives was “Link to at least 10 other pages in the article by 2pm.” Once I had 10, I stopped. I can always add more objectives later, and there were more important objectives to add first.

My Objectives

As an added bonus, here are my objectives for writing this article. Remember, I wrote one at a time, and accomplished it before moving on.

1. The article must lists these 5 principles: Test first, One Test at a time, Do The Simplest Thing, Don’t break your tests, and Stop when you’re done; deadline: 1 pm
2. The article must give one brief explanation of each point listed in the first objective by 1:15pm
3. The article must give an example that touches on each point listed in the first objective by 1:45pm
4. The article must contain a 30 line introduction that explains why productivity doesn’t accomplish projects by 2:10pm
5. The article must list all of the objectives I used to write this article at the end of it by 2:15pm.
6. The article must link to at least 10 other pages in the article, with descriptive title attributes, by 2:30pm.
7. The article must use heading tags for titles, the principles, and the examples by 2:40pm.
8. The article must not have any noticeable formatting problems by 3:00pm.
9. The article must have at least 10 tags by 3:05pm.
10. The article must trackback to 5 related articles by 3:15pm.

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