The Artistic Outlaw

I was tele-communicating with a co-worker today, and we got on the topic of “Inbox Zero” and being on top of things, or trying to be.

I’m not a fan of “Inbox Zero” or “E-mail Bankruptcy” or “Getting Things Done“. I feel they all add an extra unnecessary step/series of steps to the end goal of accomplishing things. Maybe, I’m too old school, or too efficient at multi-tasking but the idea of writing a list of things to do before actually doing those things causes my brain to start doing increasingly dangerous stunts without a stunt coordinator.

I want to introduce you to a new name for a concept I’ve been using forever, I call it.

Procrastination Zero.

It’s the simplest plan of all time, it has a single rule and it works. I’ve been utilizing it for seven years now—albeit without a fancy name.

The Rule: When something needs to be done, do it.

“Well Jim.” You say, “That sounds too easy to be true, I can’t just do things as they come up. I’m a busy person!!”

I know. Me too. Always. Yet, for some inexplicable reason doing things when they come up always keeps me ahead of the curve. Crazy-talk I know!

How does this work?

As I said earlier. You just do things as they come up. Simple. You don’t write things down, you don’t put things off until tomorrow. You just do them. Right away.

But I don’t have all the info/stuff I need to finish the task!

Which means you don’t have a task then. Isn’t that odd? Basically if someone tells you about something they need done, but they can’t get you all the info/stuff to do it until Wednesday, then you have not been assigned/given a task at all. And it can wait until Wednesday when the task is actually available to do, but do it as soon as it’s ready to go.

Wait! I don’t have time to do things as they come up, I’m swamped.

Right… Two things are happening here. One; You’re a liar and probably a dirty procrastinator as well (only slightly kidding). Two; You’re honest, but also have a problem saying no. Which is why you’ve accepted more tasks than you can actually accomplish (I still do this with personal projects, sorry Brad and Greg).

To solve this problem, simply stop lying and procrastinating. Or in the second more probable use case, start saying no. Firmly but, politely. It’s real easy, the work still needs to get done, it’ll just be more graciously distributed, easing your mind and work load quite a lot.

But I have 1000 e-mails from the last month in my Inbox.

Really? You sure? Try using a junk filter. If in the very uncommon case that you are buried in legitimate e-mails, try answering them as they come in. You’re not required to write a novel or even a novella for e-mail communications. The point is to be fast, if your correspondents need to wait a week or longer to hear back from you they’d have been better off using traditional mail.

The average e-mail can be answered in less than 30 seconds, and 3 sentences. Anything that takes more thought or a longer response should have the following reply sent; “Hi Name, Let’s schedule a phone call to discuss this. When is good for you?”

Phone calls can cover a lot of info in a short period, plus a real voice and tone go a long way to squashing time-wasting miscommunications. Is the other party too busy for a phone call? Link them to this article, they need it.

So that’s it. Start today!

Procrastination Zero! Guess what you’re done!