On the nature of time

A formula of motivation

When reading last year, I came across the following formula for describing motivation:

How much you want to do it   =   Confidence you can do it   *   Perceived Value of doing it
                                 ----------------------------------------------------------
                                 Proneness to being distracted * How long you have to do it

I’d be grateful if anyone can source this for me, as I can’t find the reference and would love to link to it!

It seems simple enough, but it’s suprisingly effective at helping us out of a motivation pit. We’ve all had times when we have had something we need to do, yet we cannot seem to bring ourselves to get on with it. It’s like we’ve fallen into a pit of despair about a certain task and cannot get out.

So what can we do to boost our motivation? This formula gives us a few tools to help us complete that task. They’re listed here in the order in which I’ve found them useful:

Break it down

If it’s too big to imagine completing it, break it down: what’s the next thing you can do to progress it? Do that, then rinse and repeat. This is one of the main things I learnt from GTD.

Ensure you can do it

This is all about raising our confidence in whether we can get it done. Remind yourself that you have ability and knowledge to not only do it well, but knock it out the park! If you don’t, either get someone to help you with the task or schedule another task to find out what you need to know. Both these things will raise your confidence and increase your motivation.

Remind yourself why you’re doing it

In other words, raise your perception of the value gained through doing the task. What is the task achieving for your? What good things will happen when it’s done? Remember, the tasks you feel the least like doing are the ones you feel best about having done: there’s value in that in itself. After this, if you still cannot see the value, why are you doing this in the first place?

Reduce distractions

Some distraction is inevitable, but we can work hard to overcome it. This is where I’ve found the pomodoro technique very useful. Change your environment and space to help you concentrate on what you’re doing. Tracking your distractions and intentionally overcoming them can be very effective in helping to get something done.

Raise the bottom

When do you have to do it by? If it’s in six months time, then you’re unlikely to want to bother now. But if the task is going to take six months (such as writing a dissertation, for example), then you will naturally doubt you can do it, and you’re really going to struggle to get started.

Instead, break the task down, and think: “If I’m going to get this done, I have to do this first thing by next week at the latest.” That will raise your confidence level (smaller task) and artificially reduce your deadline, both increasing your motivation.

Do it later

In a week you’ll have less time to get it done, and therefore you’ll be a bit more motivated. I’ve found this is the least effective, as it plays into my natural tendency to procrastinate, but sometimes we have to question why we’re doing this now at all, and get on with the really important tasks.

Hope this formula helps you as much as it’s helped me.

Pomodoros help you refactor

"If you finish a task while the Pomodoro is still ticking, the following rule applies: If a Pomodoro Begins, It Has to Ring. It’s a good idea to take advantage of the opportunity for overlearning, using the remaining portion of the Pomodoro to review or repeat what you’ve done, make small improvements, and note down what you’ve learned until the Pomodoro rings."

– Francesco Cirillo, The Pomodoro Technique

What’s the single most important part of Test Driven Development not to miss? Refactoring. What’s the part of TDD that’s most often missed? Refactoring.

With refactoring, we work our way toward a great design, clean code, and flexible organic tests. Without refactoring, we have ugly brittle test suites and uglier code. We know this. What I don’t always do is take advantage of the moments I have when I can effectively refactor for free.

At the end of a task, when the build is running, I’ve previously let my mind wander to the next thing, or check email, surf the net, and generally get out of the zone. This bad habit has been highlighted to me in my use of the pomodoro technique recently.

I was doing the same for the shorter pauses during normal TDD. My pomodoros statistics were telling me that I’m very bad at concentrating whilst coding: the average time spent before I let my mind wander was 11.67 minutes. I was allowing my mind to drift whilst Rails started up to run whatever test I was working on. Not good.

Time to improve

This week, I’ve been trying to take the time to look at my code critically for areas of improvement. A pomodoro is indivisible, which means I’m not allowed to think about anything else.

And guess what? I always find something to improve, and I feel that little bit better about my code.

The also helps with the thing I’ve missed most about not pairing: that other person’s critical eye on what you’re doing, always thinking about the code being written. During the natural pauses, you can be that other person and ensure the code you write is great. Being two people is more fun, too.

Blogging again after a long hiatus

It has been a long time since I wrote on this blog. Roughly 10% of the world’s population wasn’t even alive yet when I last posted - that’s sobering!

How to lead your life

Some of us might say that we aren’t leaders. However, we are all leaders of at least one thing: our own lives. We determine the way that we should go, what we spend today doing. If we allow our life to happen to us, then the our lives will be determined by the whim of others and not ourselves.

It’s quite possible for us to lead our lives without actually leading our lives, so in 2017 I’ve decided to try to do better at living a life that counts.

As a first step, I spent the first part of the week trying to simplify my life down to the core essence of what I want to focus on. Here’s my list today:

• Build relationship with Ellie and the kids.
• Continue my current fitness training regime.
• Try to live according to the teaching of Jesus in my community. This is separate from what people might think of as “being a Christian”, but that’s a topic for another time.
• Work to create systems that make people’s lives better. I’m currently doing this for money for various organisations, and by creating fun video games.
• Teach and train people how to lead others and be amazing - that’s why I’m writing this post.
• Improve my writing skills and range.

If something I’m doing doesn’t fit into this list, then I’ve decided to work towards removing it from my life.

More than ever in this present age of mass distraction, our headspace is the key limiting factor to productivity and achievement. It’s a resource to be managed and conserved. I’m only a week in, but have benefited hugely from the reduced focus already, and my job satisfaction is much improved.

If you made a list such as the one above, what would be on it? What should we remove in order to conserve headspace, and to focus on what counts?

Introducing Morning Pages

I’ve written before about the value of Morning Pages - a way of clearing your head in the mornings by writing down three pages on everything you’re thinking and feeling.

In order to write my words, I used 750words.com for a number of years, but I’ve become a little disenfranchised with having private writings stored permanently in the cloud. I also write fastest in vim, which means writing into a website slows me down. What I really wanted was to store my words privately on my laptop, and yet also include a public incentive system: this is what made 750words.com so effective at keeping me motivated.

gem install morning-pages

The result is the morning-pages gem. The gem has been available for a while, but starting today it’ll record your progress on a central website. It only ever uploads aggregate statistics: the code is open source so you can check it out for yourself to make sure.

For instructions, see the accompanying website. There aren’t any aggregate stats yet, but in future you’ll be able to see any word streaks, what times of day you are most likely to write, etc. I’ve got some nice ideas for visualisation which I’ll add as time permits: if you’re impatient you can always fork the website code and create whatever stats you want!

What do I use my words for?

Writing three pages is still something I try and do each day: I had a 170 day streak going at one point. I use my words to plan and order my day, to negotiate with myself about what I can realistically achieve, and for prayer and meditation - I’ve found I pray best at the point of a metaphorical pen.

Do you try to write each day? What do you use your words for?