05 Do it Tomorrow

Quick Start Guide  How to get everything done by doing it tomorrow  1 Put all the work that you are behind on in backlog folders (email, paper, etc.) and put it where you can’t see it.  2 Collect all your incoming work during the day and deal with it in one batch the following day. Group together similar activities like email, paper, phone calls and tasks. Aim to clear the lot every day.  3 If anything is too urgent to leave to the following day, write it down on a separate list and action it at a convenient time during the day. Never take even the simplest action without writing it down first.  4 Spend some time on clearing the contents of the backlog folders first thing every day. When you’ve finally cleared them, find something else you want to get sorted and start doing that first thing every day instead.  If you follow this simple process you will be totally on top of new work by tomorrow and you will be well on your way to clearing your backlog.  This book will tell you much more about how to do this, but the method essentially consists of these four steps.

What This Book Is About | 1 To complain about a shortage of time is like a fish in the sea complaining that it has a shortage of water.  This book is about getting you to be 100 per cent creative, ordered and effective.  In my first two books I explored some very different ways of overcoming the problem of how we control our work and our time. In ‘Get Everything Done and Still Have Time to Play’ I looked at the problems of the traditional methods of time management and then examined some better ways. In ‘How to Make Your Dreams Come True’ I tried to get away from the whole concept of managing time, and instead looked at how we can get our goals to pull us towards them.  Both my books got a good reception from many people. Nevertheless, inevitably the ideas in them have done little to affect society at large. The problems and pressures of modern life are still there and if anything the pressures we put ourselves under at work have got even worse. Just the other day I received some questions from a journalist who was writing an article about time management. These are very typical of the sort of questions I get asked over and over again. • I am always rushing. How can I stop?  • I always have to eat fast. How can I slow down? • I am always having to multitask: How can I focus better? • I always feel guilty about not spending more time with my family. What can I do about it? • I never have time to exercise. How can I find the time?  • How can I find the time to take a holiday? I’m far too busy.

These are pretty common questions. The journalist was asking them because he believed the public would be interested in the answers, but they were also questions that he needed answering for himself.  These questions all imply that we have a shortage of time. Is this really true? Do we have a shortage of time? No, we don’t. Time is the medium in which we exist. To complain about a shortage of time is like a fish in the sea complaining that it has a shortage of water. The next time that you complain that ‘there aren’t enough hours in the day’, imagine for a moment that the day was lengthened to forty-eight hours. Would that enable you to be on top of your work? Not likely! You would almost certainly be just as behind as before.  It struck me as significant that the journalist found it necessary to ask me the questions that he did. They sounded like the inverse of the sort of advice that we give ourselves or our friends and family all the time. In fact his questions could easily be turned into simple rules for living:  • Don’t rush.  • Take time to eat properly.  • Focus on one thing at a time.  • Make sufficient time for your family.  • Take adequate exercise.  • Go on regular holidays. 

WHAT THIS BOOK IS ABOUT | 3 Really all that he and his readers have to do is to decide to keep to these rules, surely?  However, life is never as simple as that. What we decide to do and what we actually do are two different things. If you think of the decisions you have made over the past year, how many of them have been satisfactorily carried to a conclusion or are progressing properly to that end? If you are like most people, you will have acted on some of your decisions, I’m sure. But I’m also sure that a large proportion will have fallen by the wayside.  So a simple decision such as to take time to eat properly is in fact very difficult to carry out. Our new rule may work for a few days or a few weeks, but it won’t be long before the pressures of work force us to make an exception to it. Before many days are up the exception will have become the rule and we are right back where we started. However much we rationalise the reasons why our decision didn’t get carried out, we know deep in the heart of us that it was not really the circumstances that were to blame. We secretly acknowledge that there is something missing from our ability to carry out a decision once we have made it.  In fact if we are honest it sometimes feels as if it is easier to get other people to do what we want them to do than it is to get ourselves to do what we want to do. We like to think of ourselves as a sort of separate entity sitting in our body controlling it, but when we look at the way we behave most of the time that is not really the case. The body controls itself most of the time. We have a delusion of control. That’s what it is — a delusion.

DO IT TOMORROW | 4 If we want to see how little control we have over ourselves, all most of us have to do is to look in the mirror. You might like to do that now. Ask yourself as you look at your image:  • Is my health the way I want it to be?  • Is my fitness the way I want it to be?  • Is my weight the way I want it to be?  • Is the way I am dressed the way I want it to be?  I am not asking you here to assess what sort of body you were born with, but what you have made of it and how good a state of repair you are keeping it in.  It may be that you are healthy, fit, slim and well-dressed. In which case have a look round at the state of your office or workplace: • Is it as well organised as you want it to be?  • Is it as tidy as you want it to be? • Do all your office systems (filing, invoicing, correspondence, etc.) work the way you want them to work?  If so, then you probably don’t need to be reading this book. I've just asked you to look at two aspects of your life that are under your direct control and are very little influenced by outside factors. If these things which are solely affected by you are not the way you want them to be, then in what sense can you be said to be in control at all? 

WHAT THIS BOOK IS ABOUT | 5 A lot of this difficulty is due to the way our brains are organised. We have the illusion that we are a single person who acts in a ‘unified’ way. But: it takes only a little reflection (and examination of our actions, as above) to realise that this is not the case at all. Our brains are made up of numerous different parts which deal with different things and often have different agendas. I am now going to make a gross oversimplification and say that we have a rational brain and a reactive brain. This is not really a very scientific description, but talking about two brains in this way is useful for the practical purposes of managing our time. For a start, it helps us to understand why we have so much difficulty with implementing decisions. You can imagine the rational brain as being like a government agency busy drawing up plans and regulations which it intends to impose on the rest of the body. It has all sorts of ideas about business expansion,  family welfare, exercise and healthy eating, just to name a few. As with most government agencies, the plans work fine until they come up against reality. In the case of the internal workings of the brain, the reality is that the rational brain’s plans come up against the reactive brain. Imagine the reactive brain as a lizard sitting on a rock in the sun. If it sees a threat, such as a predator, it scuttles under the rock and freezes. If it sees a juicy bug which has strayed too close, it will snap it up. It doesn’t have to think about it. It acts as a pre-programmed reaction. It really doesn’t care that much at all about the rational brain’s plans. The only thing it cares about is whether they constitute a threat or a nice juicy bug. This part of the brain is hugely important for our survival. Can you imagine using rational thought processes to avoid running over a child who runs out in front of your car? You need a quick reaction to an immediate threat. This is fundamental.

Do it tomorrow | 6  However, when it comes to making decisions and plans it is the rational brain that we should be using. If we run our days on the basis of the reactive brain, our work will consist of reacting to one stimulus after another.  Come to think of it, that is quite a good description of how many people do in fact run their days. They are constantly fire-fighting, rushing from one thing to another, unable to keep their attention on anything long enough to think it through. The reactive brain is not a good work master.  Whenever we get a conflict between the rational brain and the reactive brain, the reactive brain usually wins because it is the stronger. We can make our plans about taking exercise every day, but there will come a day when it’s too cold or raining too hard. The reactive brain regards this as a threat, and our rational plan goes out of the window. Or we decide to go on a diet and make rational decisions about what we can and cannot eat. But along comes a piece of chocolate cake and our reactive brain couldn’t care less what our rational brain thinks — it snaps it up like a very juicy bug!  You may be wondering by now how anyone ever succeeds in getting fit or losing weight or carrying out any sort of rational plan. Obviously people do, so the reactive brain doesn’t have things its own way the whole time. The reason why it doesn’t is that the rational brain has one great advantage over the reactive brain ~ it is intelligent and the reactive brain isn't.

WHAT THIS BOOK IS ABOUT | 7 This means that the rational brain can work out strategies to control the reactive brain —  just as the government puts in a whole structure of inspectors, police, law courts, form-filling, officials and so forth to ensure the implementation of its plans.  No one would take the slightest notice of anything the government said without this structure.  Success at a project is very rarely a matter of ‘willpower’. It’s usually a matter of having set up a good structure to support the carrying out of the project. Your project needs the mental and physical equivalents of the government’s controlling structures. And just as no-one would take any notice of the government without the structure, so your reactive brain won’t take the slightest notice of your rational brain’s plans without its structures to keep it under control.  There are all sorts of ways one can set up these structures. I will be exploring some in this book, but in reality there is no limit  to the possibilities. What one is always aiming for is to make it easier to do the right thing than the wrong one. Is it easier for you to fill in your tax return than not to fill it in? Obviously in the natural way of things, it’s much easier not to fill it in. But the government has put a structure in place that would make it very difficult for you not to fill it in - whether you like it or not!  In the long run it is easier to fill it in; and that’s what most of us eventually do, however unwillingly. One of the key areas in which the rational brain needs to be able to control the reactive brain. is the area of resistance and procrastination. Resistance to doing. a task is largely a matter of the reactive brain seeing the task as a threat. The rational brain, can tell the reactive brain as much as it likes about how important it is to get the task done. So long as the reactive brain regards the task as a threat, it will keep the brakes firmly on. 

DO IT TOMORROW | 8 The rational brain has to be subtle here and persuade the reactive brain that there is no threat. The easiest way to do this is for you to pretend to yourself that you are not going to do the task. Remember that the reactive brain is not intelligent, and is therefore not capable of fathoming out the strategies of the rational brain.  A phrase such as ‘I’m not really going to write that report now, but I’ll just get the file out’ will cause the reactive brain to switch the resistance off. Since getting the file out on its own is not perceived as a threat, the reactive brain has no reason to maintain the feelings of resistance. Very often the result is that the entire report gets written.  This is just one way in which we can use the power of the rational brain to work out strategies to control the reactive brain. Our aim is not to get rid of the reactive brain, but to ensure that both parts of the brain are working together rather than fighting each other. In the above example we started with a conflict: the rational brain had the intention of writing the report, while the reactive brain was resisting it as a threat. Once the resistance was switched off, both the rational brain and the reactive brain were freed to co-operate in the writing of the report.  If we were able to do this — to get the reactive brain to co-operate all the time in the plans made by the rational brain, we would be able to carry out the decisions that we make much more consistently than most of us do at the moment. Our ideal sequence would be Thought — Decision — Action. It would mean that our rational brain was controlling all the other parts of the brain to produce the desired result.