Hard to Make, Easy to Break

Good habits are hard to make, easy to break. I should know. I’m back in recovery again after having built, and then broken some really good habits. If I examine them, maybe I will learn something and be able to keep things going the next time.

And this post is further proof of how hard it can be to repair a broken habit. I started writing it on 7/26. The stuff that’s highlighted like this was written on 8/11 when I finally got the goddamn thing off my desk. But in the course of it I think I learned something. I hope I did.

So with that in mind, let’s proceed first to the data then the examination.

What Happened

In May I decided I was going to write. I was going to do it regularly and diligently. I started writing, and as I  wrote I found good tools and configured them so my writing was easier and smoother. And I made a resolution: if I opened a web page with something useful, I would not close the page unless I’d written about it. I worked diligently on my other writing projects. And the results showed it.

	TWR	RSILT	WPFW	BWAS*	Other	Total
May	5	10	2	0	0	17
June	8	35	6	0	0	49
July	13	2	4	3	0	22
Total	26	47	12	3	0	88

This does not include daily pages, which are a well established habit for me, and it does not include my first ever stage play, started in June and finished in July.

And this does not count August which has been pretty much been a washout up to now.

To read the stats: my blogfest in May started near the end of the month, so those first 17 posts have to be extrapolated to the whole month. June was a rockin’ month. I was in a pretty steady state, with continuing improvements. And in July the roof caved in. Why? And what can I learn?

What happened in July?

The obvious and wrong answer was my computer problems. I feel like I have been fighting it all month. But that’s not true. It crashed the weekend I went down to Boston: that was July 10th. It’s only been two weeks that I’ve been fighting it. It just seems like forever.

Then I thought it might be Evernote. Once I started using Evernote I just clipped interesting web pages instead of blogging about them. Turns out this is half the story. I blogged about Evernote on July 6th. My Evernote notebooks show that I started clipping on July 3rd – and I started clipping articles about Social Media. Ahh!

So another answer: At the start of July Mira and I decided to work on a blog. That sent me into another round of process improvements—including Evernote. I let Evernote be a proxy for blogging what I learned about. Then the computer crashed. And things got worse from there.

And the last answer: I just lost momentum, and did not know how to gain it back. And here’s the proof. I started this particular post on 7/26 (or before—that’s the date of the last draft before I picked it up on 8/11)

Now what do I do?

Well, this is a first step [I wrote in my original draft]. I’m writing stuff in the blog. But it’s not enough. I’ve gotten out of some really good habits, and into some bad ones. Just getting myself to write this post was a real struggle. I kept wandering off, surfing web pages and NOT WRITING!

So the answer to this seems to be: put the discipline back into your life.

Really?

That was my remedy on 7/26. “Put discipline back in your life.” And where did it get me? Nowhere. Why? Because “Put discipline back in your life” is a slogan. It’s not a behavior.

And worse, I’ve got bad Beliefs. “I’ve lost control.” “I don’t know what to do.” “I can’t handle it.” All that old shit.

Well, I can handle it. And here’s how I’m going to do it.

My Daily Pages is a fully established, very reliable habit. When I started doing the Pages it was partly with the idea of making it a keystone or foundation (depending on your metaphor) for other good habits.

I got myself into the writing habit and when I lost it I did not have a reflexive way to recover. So I was unstable

What will stabilize me? My answer is good, tight management. I need to managed, or coached until the habit is set, and to intercede if I slip.

Right now I need management at a very granular level. A day is too long a time. The right level of granularity is: a Pomodoro  at a time.

So here’s the current plan.

I will build on Pages. I will start each day with Pages, rather than doing them “some time during the day.” I will follow the Pages with Daily Planning. I will figure out some things that I am going to do—or at least attempt that day. Then start to work on the plan a Pomodoro at a time. Each time, write some notes. Coach yourself on a continuing basis.

Ellis cautions that to make changes it’s necessary to approach the problem both cognitively and behaviorally, and to reward the right result and penalize the wrong one. So: if no pages, I will take a cold shower. I hate cold showers. I have a strong incentive to avoid them. I will avoid them.

Will it work? Time will tell. Pages work. Building on Pages just might work.

I’ve got a new blog (Oh no! Not another!!!) Yes. It’s a personal one. To give myself that feedback and create a sense of history. It’s a personal blog. I may or may not make it public later on. We’ll see.

Today, under this new regime, I’ve done my pages, made my plan and made two posts in the personal blog.  I’ve completed two Pomodoros of varying sizes.

This one will make three of each.

We’ll see what happens.

ABC+D=?

My continued investigation into addiction has led me to Albert Ellis, one of the originators of cognitive/behavioral therapy. His particular therapy brand is called REBT, for Rational Emotional Behavioral Therapy.

Like most cognitive approaches, Ellis’s focuses on the links between perception, belief and behavior, and works to change the behavior by changing belief. ABC+D is an acronym describing his method.

The goal of REBT is helping people reach their goals more effectively—or at all. So REBT starts with defining goals. Then judge your actions this way: “Did that get me closer to my goal?” If so, then that action is good. If not, then bad. Regardless of the Consequence, you can use the ABC+D model to analyze what happened, and find better ways to reach the goal.

So let’s define terms.

A = Activating Event. An Activating Event is something noteworthy in pursuit of a goal. The event might block or delay reaching the goal. It might be a distraction. It might be a success.

B = Belief. A belief is something that you hold to be true. Activating Events do not result in behavior; according to Ellis’ model the event is interpreted, and action is prescribed according to beliefs. Change the belief, you change behavior.

C = Consequences. These are the results of some Activating Event. I might be a change in what you have been doing—or it might be no change.

All, right, this is nice and theoretical. Let’s take an example to see how it’s applied. Since I’m writing this post, and since I often have trouble finishing what I write (or do), I’ll use this as an example. My goal is to finish this blog post. Along the way there might be Activating Events that result in negative Consequence (I give up).

Of course sometimes the Consequence is that I succeed. We’ll look at that another time. It’s more useful (right now) to consider failure modes.

How do I fail? Often I I sit down to write then I find myself searching for something on the Web. Or I might find myself down in the kitchen looking in the refrigerator for something to eat. Whatever the case, I am not writing, so I am not reaching my goal. Something is getting in the way.

In this analysis we have one part of ABC—the Consequence. We have C, but we don’t have A and B. Now it’s time for detective some detective work. What’s the Activating Event? And what’s the Belief?

For me, a common Activating Event is this: I stop writing for a moment. Perhaps I review what I’ve read, and I decide I don’t like it. It might be missing something. It might be not well thought out. I might think that the argument is weak and has to be presented differently. Perhaps I don’t know what I might do next. The Activating Event is some disruption in my writing flow.

Fine. We have some examples of Activating Events. What Beliefs do I have that lead me to the undesirable Consequences? Doing a bit of introspection about writing failures, I dredge up these beliefs:

• I don’t know what to do next. This is a handy all-purpose Belief that leads me to “step back and think about things” or “take a break and see what comes to me.” These require some subordinate Beliefs:
  • I have no way to figure out what to do next. If I did, then I’d be doing it.
  • If I take a break, what to do next might come to me.
  • I need to do some more research. Then I’ll know.
• This post isn’t going to be good—or good enough, so it’s a waste of time to work on it. I should work on something else.
• I really should be working on something that’s more important.
• I should be enjoying this—and I’m not.

Most of these beliefs lead to my undesired Consequence. One belief leads to a good Consequence. “I should be working on something more important” could lead me to work the more important project. It’s the others that are problems.

So now I’ve got a bad Consequence, an Activating Event, and a few representative Beliefs. That leads us to Ellis’s D step: Disputing.

Disputing is central to most forms of cognitive therapy. Activating events will happen—although sometimes we can do things to prevent them. For example if a person has a problem overeating and seeing a refrigerator full of favorite foods is a common Activating Event that leads to a binge—the probability of that Consequence can be lowered by leaving the refrigerator empty or filling it with foods that don’t lead to temptation. No Activating Event, no Consequence.

But most Activating Events can’t be prevented. Sometimes my writing flows and it’s all I can do to type as fast as I think. But sometimes I stop I might step back and wonder “How is this going?” That event might not be preventable. Or I just stop. There are no words coming to me. Here the leverage point is Belief. So let’s look at these Beliefs. But before we do this, let’s clarify my goal.

When I’m writing my goal is not to write something great, or necessarily even good. It’s just to write. My fundamental Belief is that if I practice enough, study my practice, and make adjustments, eventually I’ll get good.

With that in mind I can Dispute the Belief “I have no way to figure out what to do next,” by saying: “Yes, you do. You can just write whatever comes to mind. Eventually you’ll find something that makes sense. Or not. But at least you’ll be writing, which is the goal.”

Or I can Dispute “I’ll take a break and see what comes to mind,” by reminding myself: “If you take a break you’re likely to quit. Better to stay in your chair and keep going.”

Or I can Dispute “I really should be enjoying this, but I’m not,” with “It would be nice if you were enjoying this, but the writing process is not always enjoyable. What is enjoyable is finishing what you’ve started. So even though you are not enjoying this, keep going,”

Or I can Dispute “This post isn’t going to be good, or good enough,” with: your goal is to get a first draft done. Once you finish the draft you can criticize it and make it better.”

Or after enough frustration I get the belief Belief: “This is getting nowhere. I’m never going to be good writer.”

I can also Dispute it. “You may not ever be a good writer, but that’s not the goal. It’s to write at whatever level of quality you can achieve, and by practice get better. “

Examining, Disputing and changing these Beliefs might lead to a different Consequence: finishing the goddamn post. And if you are reading it, then indeed it has. As I’ve been writing this post, I’ve stopped from time to time and briefly reflected on what I’m doing. Some, but not all, of these troubling Beliefs have arisen. And I’ve Disputed them.

The result: as of this draft I’ve more than 1,260 words written. I haven’t gone off chasing the new. I’m pretty pleased with what I’ve written—and even more pleased that I’ve written.

Now I’ll answer the question that titled the article:

ABC+D = this post.

And more generally:

ABC+D = goals reached more often.

Related articles

• Rational Emotive Therapy Approach to Counseling (rumorsofglory.net): In this post, the author extends the ABCD acronym all the way to F.
• One Strong Belief: A Blog Post (sanjaysabarwal.com)

Technorati Tags: Ellis,Cognitive Therapy,CBT,REBT,Writing

Personal Productivity 101

What's freed up some of my time has been was a series of improvements in personal organization and productivity, the latest of which has been adopting David Allen's "Getting Things Done" approach to organizing work.

I first came on GTD reading some of the "life hacking" blogs. More on life hacking later. In any case, my interest was piqued; I read some more and decided to adopt his principles of organization.

"Get everything out of your head and into a trusted system." Lots of energy is wasted remembering all the things you have to do and want to do. Allen says all this stuff takes mental RAM. You spend so much RAM keeping your lists, and organizing inside your head that there's no RAM left over to run the more sophisticated programs needed to actually get stuff done.

So I decided to take the plunge and three weeks after adopting the method, my work email Inbox is empty. The in boxes for my several personal email aliases are all empty. Everything that I have even vaguely thought of doing--from 15 ideas for TWR posts to grand intentions like "practice piano" are all in one single system and now capable of being organized. And being organized bit by bit.

What I found was--as predicted by Allen--that as I freed my mind my productivity went up. I got more work done, faster. And the faster I got creative ideas (like TWR posts) out of my head, the faster new ones arrived.

So here's my current system for personal productivity.

Of course it's mainly computer based. The main tools are Google Desktop Search, Outlook, and my Browser.

Here's an overview.

Desktop Search
I've been bouncing back and forth between Google and Microsoft desktop search products for a few years and for the forseeable future I've settled on and I'm going to stay with Google. They both take days to index your disk, but once you've done it, the search is blindingly fast. Google's is just nicer and so fast and easy to access that I'm not likely to change.

GDS has a search dialog that pops up if you press Cntrl twice; it starts searching incrementally as you type; and if you don't see what you're looking for right away, you can hit return and a browser comes up with everything that matches. From that point you can change criteria, winnow things down, and ultimately find what you want. There are some tricks to configuring it, I'll talk about later.

GDS changed both my document and email filing strategies because it's much easier to grab a document out of a bucket using GDS, than to waste the time coming up with an appropriate filing system and then trying to navigate to the document you want. For example, I have a few Word documents that use frequently. One is the running status document in which I keep notes in for my job. Instead of opening word and navigating to it, I double-Ctrl, pop up GDS, and by the time I've typed "ru" GDS has found the document at put it at the top of th e list. A mouse click and it's open. Or a right click and I can open the folder.

GDS not only indexes all my documents (.doc, pdf, txt, etc) it also indexes all my email and can get me rapidly to the one I want--so rapidly that putting emails in folders also became a waste of time, and I stopped doing it.

Email
My email world has changed in two ways. First, I've nuked almost all the email folders in which I had tediously and carefully filed things, only to occasionally fail to find them. I also used to keep stuff in my Inbox as a kind of todo list/reminder list. Then my Inbox started getting bloated and became useless for that purpose. Now my Inbox is empty.

I used to keep things in deleted mail when I either really wanted them gone or when I wanted them out of the way. GDS could find them quickly, even if deleted (and even in some cases if the trash was emptied.) Now the only things that go in Deleted are things I really want GONE. The rest go a reference folder. And to first order (not completely) that's the end of my folders.

But my email world has changed even more dramatically after installing an addin called Jello.Dashboard, which uses the Outlook API and puts a GTD-friendly layer on top of Outlook. I'll go through Jello in detail in another post.

Browser
My usual browser is Firefox. A. got me hooked on its tabbed browsing feature; I switched and have never let go. I use Explorer when Firefox does not work properly and in some other special cases that I'll talk about.

Now one of the problems with browser-based tools is that they often use cookies to retain your identity. For example, all Google services require a Google-validated identity--which is either a Google email account or some other email account that you can prove you have access to. I've got a Google identity based on my employment email account; I've also got a personal Google account, which I don't use very much, and for various reasons I'll talk about later, have several other Google aliases which I use. For historical reasons I also have one Yahoo account. As a result I've had to find a way to keep several Firefox browsers open at once, each with its own environment, history, cookie list and so on. Again I'll talk about how to do that in another post.

How work works
So given all of this, here's how my system works. Steady state is: nothing in my inbox, everything in a bunch of lists kept in Outlook and I work off the lists.

Of course mail keeps flying in at night and through the day. So first thing in the morning and periodically during the day I check my work Inbox; and at last once a day I check my others. I process each Inbox to zero, in good GTD style. Meaning: I look at each entry and either handle it on the spot, or put it in a known place, according to its kind, for handling later.

Then I cycle through the known places. Emails that require more than 2 minutes (the GTD approved cutoff) go in the place (the Context in GTD-speak) called @Emails. Phone calls go in @Calls. And so on. A place for everything an everything in its place. I can usually blast my emails and calls down to zero, then go to @Meetings, where I've kept notes for the people that I talk to periodically in more depth, decide if it's time to call one of them or set up a call, and then rocket through that list. I've got other lists as well for other kinds of activities, which are done in batches--all of a kind--based on where I am at the time. There's even a list called @Home with all the honey-do items that I've spent my life ducking to the detriment of my marital relationship. Now they seem to be getting done. For once in my life I'm more aware of "stuff to be done" than she is.

There are also projects and someday lists, which I'll also talk about later.

In my pocket I keep a spiral bound notebook and when something comes up that I want to do--even someday--it goes in the notebook and later into my system. If I don't happen to have the notebook with me, then it gets written down somewhere else and stuck somewhere that I won't lose it and be sure to see it--for example in my wallet wrapped around whatever money I happen to have.

So everything gets out of my head; either gets directly into the Outlook-based system on my computer, or gets there indirectly through a piece of paper, or an email I ask someone else to write me. But it gets there.

And that points out a flaw in my current system: backups. I need to find a way to back up my system more often then I currently back up my computer which is about once a week. Given the importance of my system that's a task that I need to carry out and so (just a minute, please while I put that into my system) I'll attend to that later, but for now this is the end of this post.