Once upon a time, there was a farmer. This farmer lived in a different age than his forefathers, who were also farmers.

Instead of specializing in tomatoes or cotton as his ancestors had done, our farmer was gifted with the ability to decide every day what to plant and nurture. By the time the next day rolled around, the previous day’s crops were ready for harvest. (In these fields, crops grew very fast.)

While making decisions about his daily planting priorities, the farmer also thought about the meaning of life. Was the purpose of his existence all about ears of corn and bushels of strawberries? No, of course not. The farmer knew he wanted something more than the tasks he worked on while the sun was coming up.

The farmer also knew that in some areas of his life, he wanted to slow down and breathe easy. He did that already, reading Zen Habits every day on his mobile device while plowing the fields. He did not check email until the sun reached high noon, and he maintained few possessions that did not bring joy to his life or regular maintenance for his tractor.

The farmer was in good health, had a loving family, and kept up a routine of picking through carrots and alfalfa each week.

But the farmer knew that this routine was not enough. Deep inside his soul, the farmer wanted a challenge.

The farmer decided he should set out to build something that would improve the state of the world. But what would it be?

At first he was perplexed. “I’m just a farmer,” he thought. But then, as he was bringing in a bumper crop of sweet potatoes one afternoon, he began to understand that there was much more he could offer the world than the vegetables he harvested during his day job.

Once he started to think in this new way, the ideas kept coming. Should he begin a community tractor pull, bringing together the neighbors for a friendly competition? Write a highly-trafficked blog on cotton pesticides (“7 Simple Ways to Keep Production High”)? Distribute his excess starter crops to an enterprising young farmer in a land far away?

He wasn’t exactly sure which project he would choose, and he knew he might change his mind later. But in determining to begin something, the farmer felt a surge of confidence rush over him. The possibilities were as plentiful as the colors in the sunset he viewed each evening from the rocking chair on the porch.

What would the farmer build? How would he ultimately change the world?

As the moon rose over his latest crop and the farmer sat in the chair, he thought about the possibilities and said to himself, “I’m ready.” And then the farmer got off his porch and went to work.

Chris Guillebeau is the author of The Art of Non-Conformity blog and bestselling book. You can download his new manifesto on creating a legacy project, The Tower, for free.

I never thought I would laugh at how busy I used to be. I was serious about my ability to be superwoman. I could work 40+ hours a week, raise a child, volunteer when anyone asked, exercise, travel, cook, and clean. I could do it all, and then some.

Everyone was doing it all, so I did too. I didn’t want to do it all. Doing it all made me exhausted. Doing it all cost me friendships. Doing it all cost me my health. My busyness wasn’t even a little bit silly.

Becoming less busy was not an accident, but a decision I made on purpose. I made the decision that a busy life wasn’t a life for me. Being a good person, loving wife, mother and friend…that was the life I wanted. Next to that, I wanted the freedom to do things that made my heart sing instead of things that weighed me down.

Until I intentionally left a life of chronic busyness, I couldn’t see how silly it really was. The silliness of busyness is that sometimes you are so busy, you can’t recognize you are in trouble. You are so overwhelmed that you can’t figure out how to change. You are so used to being busy that you create more work to make your life even busier.

You may be lost in the silliness of busyness if…

• Your usual response to “how are you?” is “so busy”, “crazy busy” or “busy but good”
• You spend time worrying about how busy you are going to be tomorrow
• You get angry when your spouse or friends aren’t as busy as you
• Your busy life keeps you up at night thinking about everything you didn’t get done
• You make a point of letting people know that you stay at the office after hours
• You check email several times a day
• You zone out during conversations thinking about everything you have to do
• You volunteer for things you don’t care about
• You spend time complaining about how busy you are
• You make list after list to make sure you don’t forget anything during your busy day
• You allocate time each day to clean your desk or organize your stuff
• You regularly eat in your car
• You use a phone in the car because “it’s the only time you have to talk”

If you are anything like me, you are busy because you want to be or because you don’t know how to be un-busy. You are busy out of misdirected guilt because you think if you do enough, you will be enough. When you decide that it is ok to live life your way, you can stop being busy and start doing things that matter. You can talk about your meaningful day instead of ranting about your busy schedule. Decide today that you are enough, even if you never do anything, accomplish anything or produce anything ever again. You are enough.

How to be less busy

• be unproductive on purpose
• only check email 2X per day
• delete email and toss mail that you don’t need to read
• turn your phone and computer off when you aren’t working
• turn everything off in the car (except the car)
• put your ipad down
• read The Power of Less
• help someone
• do less, be more
• stop trying to keep up, measure up or catch up

While you may think that you are making sacrifices for others by being busy, you are likely sacrificing the same relationships you think you are saving. Get real, make time and consider what is most important to you. Then do that first. The rest can wait.

Courtney Carver is the author of Simple Ways to Be More with Less. Read more from Courtney at her blog, Be More with Less, or follow her on twitter.

Your first thought as you look at this article will be, “I’ll read this later.”

But don’t. Let the urge to switch to a new task pass. Read this now.

It’ll take you two minutes. It’ll save you countless hours.

I’ve written the book on ending procrastination, but I’ve since come up with a very simple technique for beating everyone’s favorite nemesis. It is incredibly easy, but as with anything, it takes a little practice.

Try it now:

Identify the most important thing you have to do today.

Decide to do just the first little part of it — just the first minute, or even 30 seconds of it. Getting started is the only thing in the world that matters.

Clear away distractions. Turn everything off. Close all programs. There should just be you, and your task.

Sit there, and focus on getting started. Not doing the whole task, just starting.

Pay attention to your mind, as it starts to have urges to switch to another task. You will have urges to check email or Facebook or Twitter or your favorite website. You will want to play a game or make a call or do another task. Notice these urges.

But don’t move. Notice the urges, but sit still, and let them pass. Urges build up in intensity, then pass, like a wave. Let each one pass.

Notice also your mind trying to justify not doing the task. Also let these self-rationalizing thoughts pass.

Now just take one small action to get started. As tiny a step as possible.

Get started, and the rest will flow.

A little while back I ran into a friend, Susan O’Connell (Zen Master and Vice President of the San Francisco Zen Center), and she did something old fashioned.

When I said we should have tea sometime, she immediately went to her bag and got out her paper calendar, and suggested we make a date right then.

I said, “No, you’re busy, we can set a date later.”

She said she tries to only deal with something once.

It’s an old-fashioned piece of productivity advice, and something that I’ve done in the past, but it works.

Deal with something once. Do it now. Then it’s off your mind, and you can fully focus on the next matter.

Do most of us do this? We might read a bunch of emails, and say, “I’ll reply to those later. I’ll decide later.” We might see a bill or other piece of mail, and put it aside for later.

We put off small decisions and tasks for later, and they pile up, weighing on us at the back of our minds, pulling on us until we collapse under the weight of “later”.

Try dealing with it immediately.

If you open an email, make a decision on it immediately. Schedule the appointment in your calendar, reply, do a small task it requires, or if it takes too long, then you can put it on a to-do list — but avoid this if possible. David Allen suggests a two-minute rule: if the task can be done in less than two minutes, do it now. I suggest five minutes, even up to 10, as that means you have one less thing to worry about.

At any rate, archive the email once you’ve dealt with it, or delete it. You’re done with that. Move to the next, and repeat.

This applies to everything else: mail, paperwork, phone calls, requests from others. Deal with them immediately, or schedule a date to deal with it later if necessary.

When you are finished using something, put it away immediately and avoid a mess later. This is also how I keep clutter at bay. When you’re cooking, wash the items as you go to avoid a huge kitchen mess.

When your child asks for attention, give it to her now.

When your wife starts talking to you, put away the laptop, iPad or mobile device, and talk to her now.

What this means is that you deal with each thing in the moment, and then move to the next. Your mind isn’t pulled in a million directions at once.

It’s contrary to advice I’ve given before, because what it sometimes means is that you are often moving at the whim of other people’s requests — what they think is important, not you. And this can be a problem. You don’t want to just be reactive. I prefer to do what I think is important.

But a balance can be struck. When you deal with email or other types of communication, do it now. When you decide to work on something important, clear everything else, shut down communication, and just focus on that one important task. Don’t bounce around.

I’ve been doing this, mostly, ever since Susan reminded me of this little productivity trick, and it works beautifully. I’m not perfect — there are a couple tasks I’ve been putting off, mostly because I don’t have the ability to do them immediately, but for the majority of things I’ve been pretty good at dealing with things now.

Try it, and practice throughout your day, and let me know how it works for you.

For the past three weeks I’ve been standing while I work, instead of my usual sitting. I have some interesting results to share with you in a moment, but first let me tell you why I’ve been doing all this standing.

It all started after a couple of tweets came across my radar in the same day about the negative health effects of sitting. It turns out that sitting all day every day for work might not be good for your health and wellness. Who would have thought?

The studies and experiments I found really caught my attention, partly because I’ve been sitting through 40- to 60-hour work weeks every week for the better part of 15 years. Now that I’m in my mid-30s, I’m starting to really consider my current health and habits and trying to do a better job of giving myself the best shot at living a long and active life.

Here’s the evidence about what sitting can do to you:

• Multiple medical studies (like this one in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise and this one in the American Journal of Epidemiology) have shown that sitting greatly increases the rate of all-cause mortality, especially from causes including cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity. In particular, that first study showed that people who sit for most of the day are 54 percent more likely to die of heart attacks.
• Even if you exercise, the longer you sit the greater the chances you will die.
• Sitting shuts down the circulation of a fat-absorbing enzyme called lipase. In another study, scientists found that standing up engages muscles and promotes the distribution of lipase, which prompts the body to process fat and cholesterol, independent of the amount of time spent exercising.

It turns out that some of these studies of how sitting down can negatively affect your health have been around for a while. I seem to remember hearing about them a couple of years ago, but brushed it all off, thinking that my modest exercise regimen was counteracting all the sitting.

These studies seem to show the opposite. No matter if you exercise, sitting too much is dangerous to your health.

Of course, there are two sides to every story. Too much sitting may kill you, but what about too much standing?

A review of 43 studies by the American Journal of Preventative Medicine found only a weak correlation between sitting and mortality.

In a Time Magazine report, a researcher on Ergonomics from Cornell noted that “Standing to work has long known to be problematic, it is more tiring, it dramatically increases the risks of carotid atherosclerosis (ninefold) because of the additional load on the circulatory system, and it also increases the risks of varicose veins, so standing all day is unhealthy.”

OK, so it may be a little more complicated than just sitting vs. standing. As always, personally I’m going to assume that too much of either is probably a bad thing.

Given that I was sitting through 100% of my work day, and probably 85% of my total day, after reading all these studies I decided to try doing a lot more standing.

About three weeks ago I rustled up some boxes from around the house, put the boxes on my desk, perched my laptop on top of the boxes and pushed my chair out of the way. I’ve since been standing up for the majority of my work day for the past few weeks.

There are also purpose-built desks you can buy to set up a standing (or even treadmill arrangement), but I’m happy now with my boxes at a height where my arms bend at about 90 degrees while typing.

At first the standing was rather uncomfortable. During the first few days I could only get through a couple of hours at a time before taking a sitting break. Now I can stand most of the day if I decide to, with little breaks to walk around every hour or two.

There’s no question, standing takes more energy and tends to make you sore compared to sitting. For a little foot cushion I’ve folded up a yoga mat and have been standing on that, which is more comfortable for me than just standing on the hard wood floors.

So far, my standing desk experiment has had several positive outcomes, with just a few slight negatives. Here are my results:

• This is the most exciting and useful benefit so far: I have more energy during the work day. I haven’t experienced the same mid-afternoon lulls that I used to while sitting. I’m also more energized during phone calls, Skype sessions and while recording video and audio. This is a huge benefit and adds to the energy gains I found after quitting my coffee habit last year.
• I have lost three pounds over the past three weeks, despite exercising less than usual (due to a cold) and making no changes to my diet. I’m not sure if this is directly related to standing, but keep in mind that an average person will burn 60 more calories an hour when standing versus sitting. That’s 2,400 extra calories a week if you add 8 hours of standing, 5 days a week. A pound of body fat equals about 3,500 calories, so the weight loss actually makes sense.
• I’m more likely to be working while in front of my laptop as opposed to the occasional stretches of sitting like a zombie I used to fall prey to. It’s harder to nod off or lose focus when standing.
• On the slightly negative side, I definitely feel fatigued in the legs and back after a long day of standing. On the other hand, it feels great when I do sit down, I don’t have that numb in the rear end and legs feeling anymore, and I can stand without fatigue much longer when at concerts and other standing events.

In all, I’m really happy to have made the change and recommend that people try standing at least a little bit throughout the day. The increased energy and focus is worth the effort, even if the long-term health benefits don’t turn out to be so major.

If you give standing a try, remember that you’ll need to ease into it for about a week before standing becomes more comfortable. Reach out on Twitter and tell me (@CorbettBarr) or Leo (@zen_habits) about your results.

Read more about sitting (and standing) and the associated health implications:

• The Dangers of Sitting at Work — and Standing (Time Magazine)
• Infographic: Sitting is Killing You (Medical Billing and Coding)
• Why and How I Switched to a Standing Desk (Smarterware)
• Prolonged Sitting Boosts Bad Health (WebMD)
• Sitting is not bad for you (i-thought.org)

Corbett Barr writes about lifestyle businesses at CorbettBarr.com and about how to get more visitors for your website or blog at Think Traffic. Follow him on Twitter.

Imagine getting a full day’s work done by noon. Sounds impossible, right? But it really shouldn’t be. If you eliminated all the time you spend procrastinating, distracted or stalled, getting a full day of work done by noon could be realized.

But being so productive is easier said than done. Most productivity advice comes in one of two flavors. Either slogans like, “Do it now!” which rarely work long-term, or complex systems like GTD, which work well, but require dozens of lists and obsessive dedication to pull off.

I want to share with you a third alternative. An approach that uses the psychology of procrastination to keep you focused while being simple enough that it needs little effort to maintain.

The Psychology of Procrastination

Before I explain the cure, let’s look at the illness. Everybody procrastinates. But if you ask why, most people will shrug and say something about lacking self-discipline or motivation.

Maybe that’s true in some cases. But for most people, I wouldn’t blame laziness or apathy. Instead, I want to suggest some non-obvious causes of procrastination that I’ve found create the biggest problems.

Procrastination Cause #1: Not Knowing When to Stop

Procrastination isn’t mostly about knowing when to start. It’s about knowing when to stop.

At first, this doesn’t make much sense. You need to begin in order to finish, and if you began, you would no longer be procrastinating. But this logic is misleading.

A big cause of procrastination is fear of the infinite to-do list. This is the underlying stress that comes from feeling that there is too much work ahead, and so any effort won’t make much of a dent in the short term.

You can short-circuit this stress by having a clearly defined end-point for your work. With a finish line in sight, it is much easier to summon up the energy to sprint ahead and cross it.

Procrastination Cause #2: Measuring Work in Hours, Not Tasks

Measuring work by hours spent, not tasks accomplished, is an accounting simplification from the industrial age. If you work in a creative or knowledge-based field, work completed matters infinitely more than raw hours invested.

The saying, “what is measured, improves,” applies. When you measure your work by the hours spent, you don’t invest the same energy and focus that you would if you measured by tasks finished.

Even if your job forces you to work on the clock, you can use your personal productivity system to get more done. Switching to a task-based system allows you to focus on work finished, not hours wasted.

Procrastination Cause #3: Using Time-Management

One book changed my life. It was a relatively unheard-of title, The Power of Full Engagement. In it, the authors show why time management is a lousy way to get work done. Instead, they suggest an alternative: energy management.

The basic concept is that your energy, not time, is what matters when getting work done. It only takes a casual observation to realize this is true. With a lot of focus and enthusiasm you can often get done triple the work in the same period of time. Whereas, working a 16-hour day instead of an 8-hour one is just a recipe for burnout.

From this perspective, procrastination isn’t always a character defect; it often happens because you’re exhausted. If you manage your work in bursts of extreme productivity followed by energy recovery, you’ll perform better.

The Really Simple Productivity System

Taking these three principles: know when to stop; tasks, not time; and energy management, I’ve managed to build an extremely simple system for getting work done.

When I first started using this approach, my productivity doubled. Before I adjusted to my new level of productivity, I quite often finished a formerly full day’s work before noon. Now I’ve been using it for over three years without difficulties, and I’ll share it with you here.

The system breaks down to just three rules:

1. At the end of each week, make a new to-do list entitled, “Weekly Goals”. Write everything you want to accomplish in the next seven days.
2. Every night, make a new to-do list entitled, “Daily Goals”. Pull from your weekly list and routine every task you want to finish tomorrow.
3. During your workday, focus only on completing the daily list. Pretend your other work doesn’t exist. When you’ve finished the daily list, you’re done for the day and you’re not allowed to add more work.

Three rules and two to-do lists is such a brainless system it’s easy to miss the psychological power of it.

First, by making your daily goals the entirety of work you can accomplish, you develop a laser focus to get everything done. Knowing you can relax guilt-free after finishing makes you far more motivated to work hard than traditional, infinite to-do list systems.

Second, the weekly goals avoid meta-procrastination, in making deliberately small daily goals lists which miss your important work. This also helps minimize the guilt for relaxing, by knowing you’re on track throughout the week, even if you finish early on one day.

Finally, it’s easy to maintain. Systems such as GTD work well for hyper-organized individuals, but I’m just too disorganized to keep it up. I wanted an approach where I spent time focusing on getting work done, not worrying about all the lists and action item folders I had created.

Can You Use This System in a 9-5 Job?

For students, freelancers, entrepreneurs or employees in a results-only work environment, this system will work as-is. But what if you can’t end your day at 2pm, just because you’ve finished all your daily goals?

First, your employers are paying for you to accomplish work, not just sit at a desk. In Tim Ferriss’ bestseller, The 4-Hour Workweek, he discusses a lot of negotiation tactics to enable you to work less, provided your productivity increases. It may not work for everyone, but it’s worth considering.

Second, you can modify this approach to subdivide your work into hard and important tasks and easy, less important tasks. Similar to Leo’s own most-important-tasks idea, you can make your daily goals consist of the hard, difficult work you normally find yourself procrastinating on. Then, if you finish early you can do the easier work that typically fills your distractions.

Stress Less, Accomplish More

An unexpected side-effect from starting this system was my stress levels went way down. Because I was no longer feeling guilty about finishing my workday, and I was procrastinating less, a lot of stress vanished.

Simple tools are often the best. This one can be done with a single piece of paper, pencil and three rules. But it encapsulates a lot of the tricks to avoid procrastination that more complex systems possess, without the stress of maintaining them.

Scott Young writes a popular self-improvement blog. If you liked this article, you can join Scott’s free newsletter, Learn Faster, Achieve More, to get your free copy of his rapid learning ebook.

‘There are two kinds of people, those who finish what they start and so on.’ ~Robert Byrne

Post written by Leo Babauta.

The early draft of this post sat in my system for about a week. How’s that for irony?

Many of us are good at starting things — it’s the finishing that we need help with.

The truth is, it might seem funny that my post on “How to Finish” sat unfinished for 7 days, but I’m actually decent at finishing. I start a whole bunch of articles and books, and let those ideas germinate. When I’m ready to focus on them, I get them to done pretty easily.

How? Many people wrote in to ask me to write a post called “How to Finish” after I wrote about How to Start. Reader Anthony Zullo, for example, asked:

“You know when you get to the middle of a project, like a novel and start to lose motivation. Well, how do you develop that motivation after you’re half way up the hill but not yet walking downhill yet?”

I don’t have all the answers, but I’ll gladly share what works for me.

Motivation

For me, finishing is all about motivation. If you’re having a difficult time finishing, it’s best to look closely at why you want to finish in the first place.

If the task or project isn’t something you want to do, consider the consequences of dropping it. I’ve done this often and it’s a relief when I finally drop something I didn’t really want to do in the first place.

If you really do want to do the task/project, ask why. What do you get out of it? Do you love doing it? Is there some benefit you’ll get? Visualize that — it might get you going.

If you need more motivation, find a way to give yourself some public accountability. Set a deadline, do a blog post, tweet about finishing. A little positive public pressure can be a good thing.

Get Moving

In my post, How to Start, I shared a tip for getting going:

Make it ridiculously easy to get started. Make the task so small, so easy, you can’t say no — make it just 1 minute long, for example, or even just 20 seconds.

Use the same tip for finishing: break your task into tiny little mini-steps, and just get started on each one by making them so easy you can’t *not* do it. And keep doing that, repeatedly, until you’re done.

It’s that simple. If you can’t write a whole chapter of your book or report, just write a paragraph or two. Take a walk around for a minute, then write another paragraph or two. Keep doing this until you’re done.

Then go out and tell the world you finished. It’s awesome.

‘If you can’t write your idea on the back of my calling card, you don’t have a clear idea.’ ~David Belasco

Post written by Leo Babauta.

One of the worst problems I’ve seen when people send me emails is amazingly common: they’re way too long.

I’m a fairly busy guy, but who isn’t busy? I try to be responsive but when I get an incredibly long email there is no way I’ll answer quickly. If an email is short, I’ll shoot out a reply as soon as I read it.

So why send long emails?

Here’s a rule: a long email is never necessary. Never.

Why am I writing this? Is it a rant against people who’ve emailed me? No, it’s a general problem that I’ve seen with email, and I hope this will help people write more effectively.

How I Use Email

I’ve written before about how I ditched email. That’s only 90% true. I still do email on a limited scope — mostly for people I collaborate with (partners, designers, printers, etc.). I also respond to customer emails (refunds, download problems).

For reader feedback and comments, I use Twitter. For family communication (like my family on Guam and other parts of the world), I use Facebook (I don’t “friend” anyone other than family, and have fewer than 100 friends on FB).

That said, my email problem isn’t unique to my situation. No matter how you use email, no one you’re emailing wants to read a long essay or respond to 10 questions. We are all busy, and we all value our time.

When I do email, I try to get through all of it quickly. I don’t like to be stuck doing email all day, so I get in, read and respond or archive/trash, and get out.

When someone sends me a long email, it’s likely to be archived. If I absolutely have to respond, I probably won’t do it that day.

Please note: this post is not just about me. It’s about anyone who is busy and who values his or her time. If you send that person a long email, you are saying you don’t value his time, and you’re saying you haven’t thought out what’s important. And you’re decreasing your odds of getting a response.

Why Long Emails Suck

A few brief reasons:

• It takes too long to read. I don’t have a lot of time to read, and by sending me an essay you are saying your email is more important than the other things I have to read.
• It doesn’t respect my time. When you send me an email, you’re making a request on my time (to read, process, respond). If you send a long email, you haven’t edited. You haven’t decided what’s most important. You are saying, in effect, that I have to do that instead. You’re sending a message that your time is more important than mine.
• You don’t get to the point. What’s the main point you’re trying to make? What’s your main question? Spit it out, or it will get buried.
• You ask too many questions. I won’t be able to answer all of them without half an hour of my valuable day. So don’t ask so many — just ask one or two.
• I won’t respond. If you’re looking for me to read the email right away, or worse yet, do something for you, good luck with that. I’m not a diva, but I also have things to do and can’t get to every long email. And there are many of them, not just yours.

Rules for Short, Effective Emails

Ignore these rules at your peril:

1. Keep it to 5 sentences. No more. I stole this from five.sentenc.es of course, but I’ve used it for years and it works. I usually try to do fewer than 5.
2. Figure out your main point. If you think you need more than 5 sentences, you haven’t figured out the key thing you want to say. Take a second to figure it out, and stick to just that.
3. Ask one thing. Don’t ask 10 questions, just ask one. Or two at the most. You’re much more likely to get an answer quickly.
4. Edit. If you stretched it to 8 sentences, cut out 3.
5. Link. If you need to refer to info, include a link to it on the web.
6. Post it. If the info you need to share isn’t on the web, put it there. Create a long answer or long background document (then edit it to the essential info) and post it online. Use your blog, or one of the many free tools for posting info. Create an FAQ if it’s useful. Link to it in your email.

This post, by the way, is an example of the last rule.

‘Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.’ ~William James

Post written by Leo Babauta.

I’d like to share with you my ebook: The Little Guide to Un-Procrastination.

It’s something many people have been asking for — procrastination is a problem we all struggle with, and something I only began to overcome in the last few years.

And yes, I know you’re going to say you’ll read it later! But don’t. Here’s why:

1. This book will help you figure out why you procrastinate, what fears are stopping you, whether you’re really motivated to do what you know you should be doing — and how to address these issues.
2. You’ll learn a simple method that works extremely well for me — in fact I used it to write & design this ebook in three days.
3. And most of all: because procrastination might be stopping you from achieving your dreams.

What Do I Get?

You’ll get a short, concise guide to beating procrastination, in digital format (PDF, with Kindle & epub coming soon). It’s full of all the best methods, tips, and advice I have on procrastination — things I’ve tested that actually work (see My Story). See the table of contents below.

You’ll also get:

• An interview with Tim Ferriss (phenomenally best-selling author of The Four-Hour Workweek & The Four-Hour Body) where he shares his favorite procrastination tricks, how he tackled his latest (massive) book project, and how he productively procrastinates.
• An interview with Zen Master and entrepreneur Mary Jaksch (one of the most productive people I know), who shares some very practical Zen-inspired tips for beating procrastination, for motivating yourself to exercise, for turning tasks you dislike into things you love.

The Table of Contents

There are 18 brief chapters:

1. My Procrastination Story
2. Why Procrastination Hurts Us
3. When Procrastination is Good
4. Why We Procrastinate
5. A Simple Method
6. Fine-tune Your Motivation
7. Choosing Important Tasks
8. Find Your Best Time
9. Create a Distraction-free Workspace
10. Single-tasking
11. The Art of the Small
12. Fear & Procrastination
13. Reduce Friction to Get to Done
14. Kill Choice
15. More Procrastination Remedies
16. Engineer Habit Change
17. Procrastination Questions, Answered

Buy The Little Guide to Un-Procrastination here for $11.95, including the bonus interviews.

Questions

Q: Is this book in print format?
A: No. It’s a digital book only. If you buy it here, it comes in two formats: PDF and epub (for the iPad, for example). It’s also available for the Kindle.

Q: Can I buy it in the Kindle Store?
A: Yes. It’s on sale in the Kindle Store for $7.99, but that only includes the ebook, not the interviews.

Q: How long is this book?
A: It’s short — purposefully so. I didn’t want anyone to put off reading the book, so I kept it very concise. The PDF version is just 65 (short) pages. You won’t have trouble getting to the meat of the book, or getting to the end of it.

Q: I just bought your other book, Focus. How different are the two books?
A: There is definitely a fair amount of overlap. They cover similar methods for clearing distractions and single-tasking, and of course have the same philosophy. This book is aimed at people who are specifically looking for answers to the problem of procrastination, and is shorter, has fewer of the bonus resources, and is much cheaper. Focus is a broader manifesto looking at the problem of distraction in our modern lives, and how to solve that.

Q: Is there an affiliate program for the ebook?
A: No.

I confess to being as prone to the distractions of the Internet as anyone else: I will start reading about something that interests me and disappear down the rabbit hole for hours (even days) at a time.

But my ability to focus on a single task has dramatically improved, and that one habit has changed my life.

While a few years ago I couldn’t sit down to work on something without quickly switching to email or one of my favorite Internet forums or sites, today I can sit down and write. I can clear away distractions, when I set my mind to it, and do one thing. And that changes everything: you lose yourself in that task, become so immersed that you pour everything you have into the work, and it becomes a meditative, transformative experience. Your happiness increases, stress goes down, and work improves.

I know that lots of people have trouble focusing one one task for very long, and so I thought I’d share a few things that have worked for me.

Focus Best Practices

There is no one way to find focus, but what works for me is to clear everything away and create a little space of tranquil focus. Some tips for doing that:

• Close the browser and your email program. If you need to work in the browser then make sure no tabs or windows are open other than the one you absolutely need.
• Turn off all notifications. Trying to focus while something is notifying you of an incoming email or tweet or Facebook update is impossible.
• Turn off the Internet. Shut off your connection, unplug your router, or best yet, go to a place where the is no Internet (yes, those still exist). This is the absolute best way to find focus.
• Close all programs and windows other than what you need for this one task.
• Have a very important task to do. Not just “check email” but “write chapter in my novel” or “write that kick-ass blog post I’ve been planning” or “write that new Android app”.
• Clear your desk. No need to spend all day on this — shove everything in a drawer or put it in a box to be sorted later. Don’t fiddle with this now. In fact, don’t fiddle with anything — don’t worry about the perfect setup or perfect notebook for writing or the perfect anything.
• Plug in the headphones. If you have people around who might distract you, wearing headphones and playing some good, peaceful music is perfect.
• Use a simple program. For writing, I like plain text editors (TextEdit, TextWrangler) or writing programs that block everything out (OmmWriter, WriteRoom). No distractions.

Once you have this environment (and you shouldn’t spend more than a few minutes setting it up), get going on your task. Do nothing but that one task. Don’t switch to another task. Having trouble doing that? Read on.

How to Increase Your Focus Abilities

If you can’t focus on one task for very long, don’t worry. That’s normal. Our brains have been trained by technology and society to switch tasks often.

One way we’ve been trained is that switching to check email or blog updates or Facebook/Twitter is rewarding — we are rewarded with a little nugget of satisfaction in that someone has sent us a message (social validation!) or we have something new and interesting to read (shiny and bright!). Switching tasks becomes a positive feedback cycle that is hard to beat by single-tasking.

The way to beat that is to set up a positive feedback cycle for focusing. Here’s how:

1. Start small. You only need to focus for one minute at first. Clear everything away, pick your one important task, and just do it for one minute without switching. This is hard to do in the beginning but if you consciously focus on focusing, you can do it. It’s just a minute.
2. Reward yourself. The reward for focusing for one minute can be one minute (or 30 seconds) of checking whatever you want. Email, Facebook, whatever. Or get up and take a one-minute walk. Stretch, drink some water, massage your neck, enjoy your small victory. Empires are created with small victories.
3. Repeat. Keep doing one minute focus, one minute reward (or 1 minute to 30 seconds if you like) for about half an hour (15 of each). You’re done. Repeat that later in the day. Rejoice in how much work you got done! And notice how you’ve set up a positive feedback cycle for focusing.
4. Increase in small steps. Tomorrow, make it two minutes on, one minute off. Repeat that for 30 minutes, do it later in the day too. Feel free to go wild and do three focus sessions in a day if you like, but it’s not necessary.
5. Keep taking baby steps. I think you can see the pattern by now. Make it three minutes on, one minute off on the third day, then 4:1, then 5:1. When you get to 10 minutes, be crazy and take a 2 minute break. When you get to 20 minutes, take a 3 minute break. At 30 minutes of focus, you’ve earned a 5 minute break. And once you’re at 30 minutes, you can stay there. No need to become a monk.

Set up a positive feedback cycle for single-tasking focus and you’ll reverse the years of training your mind has gotten to switch tasks. You’ll get more important work done, and it won’t seem hard. You’ll find that focus becomes a form of meditation. It’s a beautiful, beautiful thing, and you can thank me by sending me a craft beer from your hometown.

Or buy my book on this topic — called focus — and I’ll use the money to buy myself a beer.