I spent some while earlier looking for the best place to send you when I mentioned a fella named Merlin Mann: he does a lot of productivity work, he is very entertaining, but he’s also hard to pin down. Strictly speaking his current best place is probably his Back to Work podcast but I don’t honestly enjoy the format of that. So instead I pointed you at his old website, 43Folders, which he hasn’t updated in years upon years but still stands and is still replete with great ideas.
Including the Productivity Dash.
Hand on heart, I’ve read his site many times over the years and I simply missed this. And I like it so much that I want to show you:
My favorite tonic for procrastination—which I have mentioned in passing previously—is what I call a dash, which is simply a short burst of focused activity during which you force yourself to do nothing but work on the procrastinated item for a very short period of time—perhaps as little as just one minute. By breaking a few tiny pebbles off of your perceived monolith, you end up psyching yourself out of your stupor, as well as making much-needed progress on your overdue project. Neat, huh?
Kick procrastination’s ass: run a dash – Merlin Mann (8 September 2005)
He wrote that nine years ago. Tell me I don’t bring news to you quickly. There’s not a gigantic amount more to that article than you’ve just read or that you can readily infer, but do read it all and do take it as a good starting point to explore that whole site. Amusingly, Mann says somewhere in it that you shouldn’t be reading a site about productivity, you should be being productive. I want to agree with him, but…
Quick and completely unrelated aside? I’m listening to iTunes Radio and a station I made by picking 4 Non-Blondes as the starting point. It is a terrific station, I am addicted to it now, and as I typed that title above – Kick procrastination’s ass – and specifically as I was on the last word there, I was listening to You Get What Give by the New Radicals and the lyric:
Come around
We’ll kick your ass in!
I just wanted to share that with you. Carry on.