Half-open loops

[kewms]

Maybe you should just go ahead and do some of these items?

It's like dirty dishes. At some point, it's better to just wash the stupid things than to figure out more and more sophisticated ways to ignore them.

If you are easily distracted by clutter, it's probably easier to get rid of the clutter than to try to change your response to it.

Katherine

[Jay Levitt]

Well, I tried that for a few weeks.. the apartment's a lot cleaner now, but I didn't get anything else done! It's the typical problem with the "do it now" approach - in the process of doing one task, you'll notice three others.

I think it could be just "starting pains", though.

[Barb]

Try setting a timer for 15 minutes and cleaning for only that long every day. If you focus on one room, every day for a week for just 15 mins. a day, your place will stay much cleaner and you won't have so much to distract you. Declutter first, though.

[Brent]

Do you find that you often remember/think of/are reminded of things that are already on your list?

(snip)

Now, that's neither important nor urgent, and so it's not something I want to spend time on today, or tomorrow. I've categorized it, and prioritized it, and made a project for it, and all that. So, in theory, I can forget about it, and I will get to it when its priority grows or my more important tasks get done.

But every day, when I do my stretches on the carpet next to that chair, I'm staring at it for half an hour. (Yes, I can do stretches somewhere else. It's an example. Work with me!) So I can't help but notice the rips.

Yes, I was like this early in my implementation of GTD. It went away.

I wouldn't worry about it. It takes time, but once you deeply trust your system, your brain will skip over those things.

When you've spent decades relying on your brain to remind yourself of work to be done, your brain won't just STOP. It has a job to do, and it's going to do it. It has to be retrained, repeatedly, over time.

[sdann]

Well, I tried that for a few weeks.. the apartment's a lot cleaner now, but I didn't get anything else done! It's the typical problem with the "do it now" approach - in the process of doing one task, you'll notice three others.

I think it could be just "starting pains", though.

I think it is just starting pains. It takes a lot more work to get something up to our standard than it does to maintain it. I believe that is exactly how it is with GTD. Set the timer, get some momentum going, and then stop and move onto the next thing. When you notice the 2 or 3 other things you need to do, write them in you uct. It'll still be there for your next clean-up session.

[Jay Levitt]

When you've spent decades relying on your brain to remind yourself of work to be done, your brain won't just STOP. It has a job to do, and it's going to do it. It has to be retrained, repeatedly, over time.

Oooo, that's good...

And especially true for an engineer/designer type like me. I am trained/incented/genetically programmed to constantly look around, identify problems, and come up with solutions. For everything.

Engineer Identification Test

You walk into a room and notice that a picture is hanging crooked.
You...

A. Straighten it.
B. Ignore it.
C. Buy a CAD system and spend the next six months designing a solar-powered, self-adjusting picture frame while often stating aloud your belief that the inventor of the nail was a total moron.

The correct answer is "C" but partial credit can be given to anybody who writes "It depends" in the margin of the test.

[Jay Levitt]

I'm going to try keeping track of what these actual things are, instead of coming up with inept metaphors, and I'll check back next week with some real examples.

Checking back in. I'm not writing any more than that here, because instead of writing up a clear, concise summary of what I've learned this week, I captured an idea into my UCT to write that summary. I'll post back in a few weeks.

But that's a big clue right there.

[mmurray]

Engineer Identification Test

At the risk of going OT ... A few years back I was at the supermarket checkout setting all my stuff from the trolley onto the belt. As any sensible person does (!) I was putting all the tins together in similar sizes, then all the paper things, all the bottles etc. The woman in front of me looks at me and says `are you an engineer -- my son in law always sorts his groceries like that'. I said `no I'm a mathematician' and she, of course, says -- `same thing'.

Following on from this I decided to put my groceries on the belt at random -- took a little effort but it was amusing to watch my internal reactions to doing this.

If this stuff is really obsessive you could try the behaviour modification technique: look at the torn chair and say out loud `I need to repair that rip'. Count how many times you have to say it until your mind gets bored and wanders onto something else. Repeat that many times as often as needed.

Or try a meditation course -- they have some good insights into thoughts and how they get to us.

Michael

[kewms]

The problem with sorting your groceries like that is that they stay sorted as they go past the checker and into the bags. The resulting bags weigh 30 or 40 pounds, fail, and dump your groceries all over the parking lot. Where at least a few of the glass bottles break.

Randomness is your friend.

Katherine

[Jay Levitt]

Following on from this I decided to put my groceries on the belt at random -- took a little effort but it was amusing to watch my internal reactions to doing this.

LOL! Of course, as an obsessive mathematician, it must secretly bother you that your arrangements are only pseudo-random, and that human-generated pseudo-random sequences are affected by - well, I forget if it's really the gambler's fallacy, or the sample-size fallacy, or one of its cousins. Or maybe you're carrying the Rand book around with you.

I confess to organizing my groceries on the belt as well, though not by category (but I've never tried intentionally un-categorizing things either). I do try to face the bar codes down, so the cashier doesn't have to twist the products as much (RSI prevention), and I try to pack the belt as tightly as possible so I can get started bagging while the cashier's still scanning.

If this stuff is really obsessive you could try the behaviour modification technique: look at the torn chair and say out loud `I need to repair that rip'. Count how many times you have to say it until your mind gets bored and wanders onto something else. Repeat that many times as often as needed.

I think that's "exposure-response prevention"; it's supposed to be highly effective, and researching it' is one of the 170 things in my inbox to do once I process and organize them