Analysis paralysis - Please help!!!

Hi, I've been visiting Zen Habits for some time but I'm new to the forum - and I desperately need some help! I apologise for the long post, but you guys are my therapist!!

My situation is this: I am a very busy guy. My day job involves managing multiple projects, juggling this with technical work, advising others, attending courses and conferences, etc, etc. On top of that, I also run a part time photography business with my wife, with the intention that eventually we will "downshift" and do that full time. So although in theory I could put the business on hold, I really want to work hard to get it off the ground. Add to that the fact that the house needs repainting, the garden clearing, oh, and I'm a keen mountain biker and hiker, and I've just taken up rock climbing. Yes, you've guessed it, I'm a bit short of time.

But that's not the problem. I know that I can fit all these things into my life - I've done so in the past - but lately I've been struggling. To achieve all these goals I know I need to be ultra-effective, prioritising my tasks rigorously, but now I'm really struggling. I often don't know where to start, and that leads to the "P" word - Procrastination.

Planning I'm good at (I think). I use http://todoist.com because it handles projects and tasks with sub tasks, and sub-sub tasks. Many of my projects are so complex that I cannot imagine working without this hierarchical structure. But then comes the problem. I have all these projects and tasks nicely mapped out. But then I come to prioritise them, and I hit a blank wall. How do I decide whether to do some work for a project due in a month's time, or to write a memo that my boss may or may not remember they asked me to do urgently for next week, or to take a half hour break and write a post for my photography website - or use that half hour to plan my next photo shoot. (Or put it all off and post a question on zenhabits instead Wink

.) I used to use llamagraphic's life balance on a palm device, because it has a fuzzy prioritisation thingum', but I found myself spending more time prioritising than doing, so I switched to todoist. But todoist just has a rudimentary prioritising system with garish colours that put me off using them. The net result? I find myself either fire-fighting, dealing with those critically urgent "quadrant I" issues (in Stephen Covey-speak) or putting it all off and doing those "quadrant IV" (neither important nor urgent) things like watching a movie and surfing the net.

Any advice from others would be extremely helpful. I've read all the time management articles there are and could probably write an essay on the subject - but theory is one thing. I'm looking for other people's personal experience on how they handle this sort of problem in practise, rather than in theory! I know many are a big fan of GTD, but I cannot figure out how to do it when prioritisation and balancing multiple projects is such a critical part of my life. Plus, "contexts" are not really an issue for me because I can do most of my things most places, most of the time. And I feel I need a hierarchical structure to manage complex projects...

Phew! There's no wonder I'm stressed. Please help and put me out of my misery!!

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The couch potato spends their time watching TV - to avoid getting things done.
The Zen potato spends their time setting goals - to avoid getting things done.
www.paulmaguirephoto.com

Interestingly, I love mapping everything out, but hate doing it. It just seems so boring.
If you are familiar at all with the Secret or the law of attractions, try to focus on a project - perhaps on that is urgent - and do this:
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2007/12/how-to-take-action-consistently/

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Avi Marcus
http://www.AviMarcus.net - Practical Personal Development.
With drive, direction and a plan, you can accomplish anything!

zenpotato wrote:

Planning I'm good at (I think). I use http://todoist.com because it handles projects and tasks with sub tasks, and sub-sub tasks. Many of my projects are so complex that I cannot imagine working without this hierarchical structure. But then comes the problem. I have all these projects and tasks nicely mapped out. But then I come to prioritise them, and I hit a blank wall. How do I decide whether to do some work for a project due in a month's time, or to write a memo that my boss may or may not remember they asked me to do urgently for next week, or to take a half hour break and write a post for my photography website - or use that half hour to plan my next photo shoot. (Or put it all off and post a question on zenhabits instead Wink

.) I used to use llamagraphic's life balance on a palm device, because it has a fuzzy prioritisation thingum', but I found myself spending more time prioritising than doing, so I switched to todoist. But todoist just has a rudimentary prioritising system with garish colours that put me off using them. The net result? I find myself either fire-fighting, dealing with those critically urgent "quadrant I" issues (in Stephen Covey-speak) or putting it all off and doing those "quadrant IV" (neither important nor urgent) things like watching a movie and surfing the net.

Your problem could be multitasking. You seem to try to do several things at once, or jumping in the middle of one process into the middle of another process, then getting back to where you started, having to think again what the initial position was. This doesn't work too well. The more complex the tasks the more time you lose if you multitask.

Try to block specific times only for specific areas of your life. So let's say you decide to work for 2 hours on a project, prioritize only the tasks in that project and get them done and don't think about other projects. Always start with highest priority items, the critical tasks that the project cannot succeed without, and let the others for later.

You can try http://www.Gtdagenda.com , It may have the best pioritization system, with a Priority 1 line that clearly separates the rest.

Thank you so much for your advice. I think you're both absolutely right: I'm trying to do all my projects at the same time, rather than saying "right, today I will focus on project X".

Also, something that had occured to me since writing the post is that the one piece of GTD methodology that I do not employ properly is identifying next actions for each project. If I haven't correctly identified the next action needed on each project, then no wonder I am struggling to choose what is the priority.

My only concern is that if I rigorously identify a next action for each of my projects, as GTD suggests, and do those, then I am ending up "multitasking" again: doing one task for each and every one of my projects before moving onto the next task. I need to do this to some degree, because the reality of my work is that my projects run in parallel, but as you've suggested, I also need to focus on the project/task at hand.

Any suggestions as to how best to maintain that balance in practical terms?

_________________
The couch potato spends their time watching TV - to avoid getting things done.
The Zen potato spends their time setting goals - to avoid getting things done.
www.paulmaguirephoto.com

Can you get these things done in flow? Multi-tasking is bad, but if you can keep the flow going then it doesn't at least make such a big bumb.

But is absolutely must that you keep thinking about two or more tasks at a time?
You could try to timeblock your tasks. Block#1 is for project one, and at that time you think and do only project one. Block#2 is for project 2 , and then comes block#1 again. For example, you could have two different projects with 10 minute blocks for each. And for this to work you should inform everyone around you for these times, when to, and when not to, contact you.

	zenpotato wrote:
	Also, something that had occured to me since writing the post is that the one piece of GTD methodology that I do not employ properly is identifying next actions for each project. If I haven't correctly identified the next action needed on each project, then no wonder I am struggling to choose what is the priority.

This is because GTD's next actions somehow conflict with prioritization philosophy.

You can prioritize only the sub-projects, and then in each sub-project work the tasks one by one using the next actions technique. So no priority discrimination for the tasks, just get them one by one until the subproject is done. But use some prioritization for the upper levels, so you end up with a result that matters.

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http://www.Gtdagenda.com - use Gtdagenda to manage your Projects and get things done. Now with an Android App.

I can empathize with your dilemma. I think I've got the original T-shirt!

What has helped me is two fold. First, I learned that I couldn't beat up on myself because I couldn't do 26 hours worth of activities in a 24 hour day. NOBODY could! So it didn't help me to keep asking, "what's wrong with me," because nothing was. I was just trying to do the impossible.

The second thing that helped was to start paying attention to my resistance. Any time my proscrastination stopped being a useful tool for short-energy bursts and started being a real hinderance, I knew I had to listen. What was it trying to tell me? Usually that I needed to slow down a bit. That I needed to build in some relaxing things that I enjoyed doing without contaminating my 'free' time not being present in the moment by worrying about what NEEDED to be done.

Sometimes, I found out, I just needed to indulge that little kid inside who wanted to PLAY, not work, and then come back to the work a little more refreshed.

Good luck! You've got a great life ahead of you! G.

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Grace Kleppin at http://www.facetothesun.com

Steve Pavlina makes all his short term choices in one minute.

Reflect how, when you go to the non-urgent and non-important thing, how you'll regret it, that you are knowingly making the worst choice, and think of how rewarding it would be to exert yourself a little to choose to do what appears to be the most important (and don't argue with yourself too much, just give yourself a minute and then if still undecided, flip a coin to decide).

But then long term choices such as what job to pursue should be made with lots of journaling, mindmapping, and outlining.

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Make this hour rewardingly challenging. Push yourself.