How to write papers more effectively

Essay writing season is about to start here at University College Roosevelt, the small liberal arts college in the Netherlands where I teach.  In one of the courses I’m teaching this semester about Religious and Philosophical Ethics, my students are already researching topics to write about, and at the end of this week I’ll meet with them to discuss which topics will work best. After that we go into full-fledged ‘research mode’ - no more group classes, but individual research time with me as a writing coach. 

I’ve discovered, over the years, that my number one job as a research and writing coach is trying to get my students to start on time with their project. We had a class last week in which I gave my students ‘the speech’. ‘Start on time!’, I told them. ‘You have enough time to write the paper, but don’t let that time go to waste! Help out your future self, and start writing and researching now!’

I know from experience, of course, that not all of them will listen to me. In a few weeks from now, as we approach the final deadline, some of them will not be writing or researching but – you guessed it - procrastinating. 😀 (If this sounds familiar, and like most students you also regularly have trouble finding the drive to get started with that big scary paper, why not begin by reading my blog post on procrastination from a few years ago).

Regardless of what kind of student you are, though  – an early starter or a procrastinator who only starts at the last possible moment - there will come a time when you need to start doing some actual work. And chances are that you will have far less time than you’d like. That’s a fact of life when you’re a student – at some point the clock starts ticking, and you’ll be under some kind of time pressure. Even if you started early, there will come a time when you discover that you have less time to finish the paper than you’d hoped for. If that sounds familiar, then this blog post is for you. Here, in no particular order, are the top tips I share with my students to help them stay organised and stay sane during the research process so that they can survive essay writing season and meet their deadlines - even if they started working on their project just a little bit too late.

1. Plan your week

In the final weeks of the semester, when things get busy but you still need to find time to work on your big final papers, you really ought to consider planning your time a bit more proactively. What I myself always do in such circumstances is to make a rough weekplan over the weekend. I strongly recommend that you do the same. During the weekend, look at the week ahead. Plan out your schedule, and then identify some gaps in your schedule where you can work in an undistracted manner for at least one or two hours on your bigger projects. For myself, I’ve found that I stay motived best if I make these chunks of time relatively short, and to plan them as early in the day as possible. It’s easier for me to stay motivated to actually make the most of these chunks of time if they’re short. If I tell myself I’m going to write all day, and I know the writing will be hard, guess what happens? It feels so painful in advance that I’ll put it off. But one or two hours early in the day, when I still have energy, and I can surf the caffeine wave of the first cup of coffee of the day? Works much better.

A good source to look at for more tips like this - how to plan your time better, and how to make sure you don’t get distracted when you actually sit down to write that important final paper - are the first two chapters of my own little book Make Lists Not Fists: A Student Survival Guide to Stress-free Productivity. You can download the first two chapters for free at bit.ly/listsnotfists.

2. Use Zotero for your references

Zotero is a free open-source app for Mac and Pc which is a real life-saver – it’s a database for all your references which you can also use to fully automatize your referencing in Word or Open Office. At the end of your project, it can then make a bibliography automatically for you, in the output style of your choice (APA, MLA, etc). At Masters or PhD level, you’d be a fool note to use something like Zotero – so why not start learning how to use it now, even if you’re only a Bachelor student? For a short video on how to install it and use it go here. 

One of the most useful features of Zotero is its integration with Microsoft Word - for that to work, you'll need to install the  Word plugin which comes with Mendeley. Instructions for how to do that are in the video. Make sure you use the stand-alone version of Word, not the browser version which Microsoft also provide you with. If the plugin doesn't work with your version of Word, then it will always work with the version of  Open Office available as a free download here. The text editor which comes with this suite of Open Office programs is just as good as Microsoft Office, works beautifully with Zotero, and is free!

3. Use digital sources

Being efficient at using digital sources is one of the best ways to save time during research, I find. You can go from discovering an article or book to reading it in five minutes. Also, you can do keyword searches in digital sources – which is especially helpful if you’re dealing with brick-sized books. Yes, these usually have an index, but a keyword search often brings up passages that you wouldn’t have found through the index, and at a speed which is far higher. Of course none of this means you shouldn’t also go to the library – do check out what they have, it might just be that they have books relevant to your research project. But in the first instance, relying on digital sources can be a real life-saver.

For me, the number one benefit of using digital sources is annotation. Most digital sources are pdfs, and most pdf reading software like Adobe Acrobat allows you to annotate your pdf, which means you can highlight key passages that you think are most important. What most pdf reading software doesn’t allow you to do, however, is to then export your annotations as a text file. Trust me, this is a feature you really want! If the software you’re using has this feature, you can easily create a helpful overview of what you’ve highlighted with just a few clicks. From this file, you can then copy-paste key quotes straight into your paper, without needing to search through the entire pdf to find them.

Guess what? You can do this with Zotero, mentioned in the tip above. And for free! Once you discover this killer feature of Zotero, you’ll be shaking your head and wondering how you ever lived without it. It’s explained in the Zotero video mentioned above at roughly 4 minutes. This feature doesn’t just work for pdfs - Zotero will also allow you to highlight epub files. Really, really useful.

4. Organize your notes in a systematic way

While working on your paper you’re likely to do quite a bit of brainstorming, especially in the early stages. You’ll probably end up doing quite a bit of writing that doesn’t necessarily end up in the project itself, but which is still helpful to jot down, and which you might want to look at at again at a later stage. There are many different ways to do this, of course. You could do it all by hand in a research journal, or you could create a large collection of word documents. No matter how you write down your thoughts, however, you’ll also need some way of organising them so you don’t lose track of what is where.

For this, I myself use a note-taking app called Evernote. I have digital notebooks in it for all my writing projects, and within those notebooks I store all the notes relevant to that project. Sometimes I even have several notebooks for a single project: one with ideas for sources, one with brainstorm notes, and one with ideas for things I still need to fix, to give some examples. I used to just write down ideas in word documents, but I would always lose track of what was where and never actually reread what I wrote. If I put my notes in Evernote, however, I actually remember where they are, can easily find them again, and then work with them as the project progresses.

Evernote used to be free, and I always recommended it to my students. Over the years, however, it’s got quite expensive. You can still create a free account, but then you can only create one notebook, which is pretty useless. And the cheapest ‘paid for’ plan is over a 100 euros, which is for most students too expensive. I still use Evernote: it’s simple, reliable and ‘just works’ for me. But if money matters, you might want to look at competing products that do roughly the same for very little or even no money.

A very obvious choice is Onenote, made by Microsoft. All UCR students have a Microsoft 365 account which will allow to download all of Microsofts software packages for free. This means you can always download the latest version of Word or Excel, for free, at office.com. Here you can also download Onenote. It’s a simple, elegant app, and works quite well. It has the same basic structure as Evernote: you create digital notebooks, as many as you want, and then you can store notes relevant to that notebook inside each of them. 

Another option to look at is Notion, an app which is highly similar to Evernote as well and that has got very popular in recent years. Unlike Evernote, however, it’s completely free: Notion will only charge you if you want to use it with an entire team, which for students isn’t a necessary option at all.

No matter which note-taking app you go for: make sure you can sync your notes across all your devices. It can be really helpful to have access to your notes on your tablet, or on your phone.

5. Use a to-do app at all times while researching or writing

I heavily rely on a digital todo app for almost everything in my life, not just research. I use Microsoft todo, which I strongly recommend. It’s free and extremely good. I have lists in this app for almost every area of my life: a list for each course I teach, a today list, a week list, a shopping list - you name it. Learning how to use a todo app properly is one of the best time management ‘hacks’ I can recommend. It took me many years to perfect my own system, and if you’re curious to see what it is, read the remaining chapters of my little book Make Lists Not Fists. I’ve shared chapters 1 and 2 with you already (which you can download for free), which deal with ‘offline’ tips for planning and making sure you work in a focussed manner. The remaining chapters explain how I use a todo app to organise my life. They describe a system that I’ve taught to many students, and although it’s not for everyone, I definitely have made a few ‘converts’ over the years. I still get the occasional email from alumni who write because they want to tell me that they’re still working with the system I’ve taught them. 

Perhaps, though, you don’t want to have your whole life in a todo app. Everyone is different. You might already have a time management system that works for you, and that is fine. Even if that is the case, though, I still strongly recommend that you use a todo app for your research process. I’ve discovered over the years that it’s the perfect tool to make sure you stay on task, and to prevent yourself from getting distracted.

Research is difficult. No matter what you are doing, you’re constantly going to get little ideas for different things you could be looking into as well. While you’re writing, you might suddenly remember another source that is relevant and that you haven’t looked at yet. While reading a journal article, you’ll come across references to other sources that also look promising. And when searching databases like Jstor to hunt down a very specific source, you’re likely to stumble across other articles that also look promising.

That’s what I’ve discovered over the years: it can be very challenging to stay on task while doing research. No matter what you are doing, there are always countless other avenues you could be pursuing. It’s almost never a good idea, however, to abandon ship and start doing such tasks the moment the idea for them comes up. Quite frequently, such ideas for other things you could also be doing are forms of ‘covert procrastination’, for example. While you’re writing that difficult introduction to an important chapter, suddenly you remember that there is one article you haven’t looked at yet. It’s not super important, and you don’t really need to look at it now. But doing so is easier than writing, and before you know it, you’ve dropped everything and have switched to that other, easier task.

Not good.

It’s very important to develop some ‘staying on task’ muscle when writing a large, difficult project like a final paper. But it’s also important to remember all those little ideas that come up while you’re working. For this a todo app is perfect. For each writing project that I work on, I always create one or two lists in my todo app in which I am constantly dumping these little ideas as I work. I usually tidy it up a bit at the end of the day, by deleting some ideas, prioritising some others, and making sure there isn’t anything still something in the list that I really wanted to do on that particular day. This, I’ve found, is a very healthy habit. Stay on task, and dump ideas for other things you could look into in your todo app, then look at the list you’ve created at a later stage. 

Make Lists Not Fists - opening chapters

I'm making the first two chapters of my book on time management for students (entitled: Make Lists Not Fists - A Student Survival Guide to Stress-Free Productivity) available for free as a digital download. You can download and/or read them here.

The content of these chapters covers the basics - what I feel everyone should be doing to get organised. It's what I talk to my students about when they come in complaining of missing deadlines, or struggling to start on time with bigger projects. For most people, just putting the advice from these two chapters into practice will make all the difference. If you're really motivated to become better at time management, you could choose to read the rest of the book too, which will teach you how to set up a to-do list system so solid that nothing small will ever slip through the net anymore. Most students I advise, however, read chapters 1 and 2, apply what they learned, and find that that covers their basic needs. So start with those. If you want to go deeper (and I think you'll enjoy doing so): the whole book is available on Amazon. 

If you feel that you're already pretty organised - I still think that you'll get some tips that you can use from these chapters, especially chapter two. The rest of the book is also warmly recommended, of course - it describes how I myself work, and what I do to stay sane, and keep my stress levels at a manageable level. 

Lastly: if you liked what you read, help me with my mission to destress the world and share this blog post with others! I don't make any money with this book, both the ebook and the hardcopy are set to the lowest price Amazon will allow. The ebook is only $0.99, and I would happily offer it for free if Amazon would let me. This whole project is very much a 'not for profit' project for me. Whatever comes in in royalties on a yearly basis is usually not even enough to buy me a coffee. I don't care. I make pretty good coffee at home. 😄  What I do care about: helping people find ways to organise themselves that work. I myself suffered hugely from lack of organisational skills as a student, and would have benefited hugely if someone had sat me down and showed me how to organise myself properly. That is why I ended up writing down my own discoveries about this topic in this little book - not to make huge sums of money (I don't) but in the hope that others can benefit from what I discovered. Especially students need this knowledge, I think. But... it's hard to get the word out there. People are set in their ways, and don't pick up a book about time management because it doesn't sound - well, fun, you know? Well, I did have fun learning about time management, and I had fun writing this book, and the students who I've given it to over the years usually tell me they enjoyed it too, and many have told me that it completely changed their ways of working. So if you also enjoyed what you read, or found it useful: help me spread the word. Share the link to this blog post as much as you'd like - that way people can find the download link above, and, if they want to, have a look at the other blog posts collected here - all collected in one place as my 'top tips' about a variety of productivity-related issues. There are 'social media sharing' buttons below. Thanks!

Digital Minimalism: experiments in distraction-free living

I’m a big fan of Cal Newport’s book Deep Work, in which he makes an impassioned argument for the value of doing creative and meaningful work in a distraction-free manner. Newport (a computer scientist at Georgetown University, and author of a blog about productivity called Study Hacks) defines deep work as follows:

Deep Work: Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.

The book is full of tips and strategies on how you can embed more deep work in your life, and I use its first chapter as a reading assignment in one of my undergraduate courses. I purposely make it the very first reading of the semester, as it’s a great way to get my students to reflect on their own study habits and have them discuss with each other whether they’re open to changing these habits so they can embed more deep work in their schedule. Without fail, our discussions gravitate towards a single subject: the constant distractions they face from the digital world. “I would like to do more deep work,” my students tell me, “but it’s just too hard. I get distracted. I check my Facebook. I get lured into a Whatsapp conversation with a friend. I go on Youtube after fifteen minutes of reading my textbook and get sucked into a black hole of endless cat videos.” Especially last semester, when for a large part of the semester all educational activities shifted to digital platforms because of the Corona virus, my students reported a losing battle with digital procrastination. They were behind the computer for hours on end, which meant that all their favourite digital distractions were never more than a mouse-click away. As the day wore on and they got more and more tired, the temptation to procrastinate often proved too strong for them.

Newport’s latest book, which is called Digital Minimalism, is about exactly this topic: how to make sure your digital addictions don’t get the better of you and live life on your own terms. I read it with great interest over the summer, and consider it the perfect follow-up to Deep Work. My own students are usually won over by Newport’s argument that doing more deep work is a good thing, but they get side-tracked far too easily because of digital distractions, all their noble intentions of doing a deep work session constantly shipwrecked on the rocks of Netflix, Youtube or Instagram. Digital Minimalism, in which Newport argues that our lives will be infinitely better and more rewarding if we filter out most of our online addictions, is the perfect book for these students. What I discovered as I read it - and this surprised me somewhat - was that it was also a bit of wake-up call for me. I didn’t really consider myself a digital media junkie. I check Facebook for maybe ten, fifteen minutes a day, I hang out on Youtube for maybe an hour a day, I watch some Netflix occasionally but don’t binge, and I hate Whatsapp groups with a passion and leave as soon as someone adds me to one. After reading Newport’s book and experimenting with some of his practical suggestions, however, I’m now convinced that I really, really want to make some further changes to my online behaviour, especially in these strange times where the corona virus is forcing me to spend more hours behind the computer than I’d like to and my eyes often hurt at the end of the day from staring and squinting at a screen for far too long. Here are some of the most important takeaways I got from the book, which explain why, now that the summer is over and the semester has started again, I have every intent of becoming a digital minimalist. 

Insight #1: Many digital tools were intentionally build to be hyper addictive

Newport spends quite a lot of time explaining why many apps and media platforms are so addictive, and points out that almost all of them were designed after a careful study of principles used in the gambling industry. For me, this insight - that many apps and social media platforms turn your smartphone into the equivalent of a slot machine - really hit home. The apps that I use the most all offer what Newport calls intermittent positive reinforcement, or - in simpler English - unpredictable feedback. Just like a slot machine, it’s hard to predict what will come up when you open an app like Facebook or Youtube: something good, something mediocre, or something dreadfully boring? As Newport points out, it’s exactly this unpredictability that makes these apps so addictive. Our brains are hard-wired to find an environment with unpredictable feedback irresistible. We love playing the ‘what did I get?’ game that such an environment provides us with. Youtube - which, until I read Newport’s book, I spent quite a bit of time on - is built exactly according to this principle. The homepage refreshes every day, and serves up a new selection of clips that are all tailored exactly to what youtube’s algorithm thinks you will like. But here’s the thing: they’re not all good. Quite a few of them are duds. Almost every day, however, there are one or two clips that are pure gold. After careful reflection, I can now see that it is exactly this unpredictability that I found irresistible. When given the choice between reading a book in the evening or going on Youtube, Youtube almost always won. I can now see why: I simply love playing the ‘what did I get?’ game just a little bit too much. Same with Facebook: almost everything in my feed is dull, dull, dull. Every once in a while, though, something fantastic and worthwhile will show up. It’s exactly this mixture of boring, mediocre and exciting, all stirred together with an touch of randomness and unpredictability, that keeps us coming back to these apps. Once I saw that mechanism, I couldn’t un-see it, and I didn’t like what I saw.

Insight #2: Doing a digital detox is clarifying

Apart from analysing why we’re so drawn to digital distractions in the first place, Newport also gives advice on how to do battle with these distractions. One  of his most extreme pieces of advice is this: doing a full-fledged ‘digital detox’, during which you cut out all your digital addictions for a whole month. Completely. Yes, that sounds radical. Perhaps it is. Newport argues rather convincingly, however, that it’s also necessary. The idea behind the detox is that for many of us, our favourite digital toys have become associated with deeply ingrained habits. It’s very, very hard to get rid of habits through sheer will-power alone. The way to start from scratch again, then, is to first get rid of the habits altogether. That means using your favourite addictions only sparingly, or better yet, not at all, for a sustained period of time (Newport suggests a month). Check your Whatsapp and email only a few times during the day instead of incessantly, turn off your lock-screen notifications on your smartphone so you don’t see incoming messages, and completely give up on non-essential apps such as Facebook and Youtube.

    I didn’t think I needed a detox before I started reading the book, but once I was halfway through, I figured I might as well try it. The results were surprising. I discovered how much Facebook, Youtube, and ‘random Googling’ had become deeply ingrained habits. I found myself constantly taking out my phone during moments where I would normally have checked Facebook, a pattern of behaviour which lasted more than three weeks. Same with Youtube: I’d find my finger hovering over the app symbol only to remember that my intent was not to use it. 

    It’s this realisation - that these apps got under my skin, and had undermined my free will to a certain extent - that’s probably been the biggest eye-opener for me. I was forced to admit that yes, even I - who considered myself a proto digital minimalist - had grown into just a little bit of an addict as time wore on.  That insight - that I’d become an addict - was a real eye-opener for me. I just don’t like the idea of being addicted to anything, unless it’s to coffee. Coffee addiction is fine in my book. Don’t you dare call my coffee addiction a problem - I will unfriend you faster than you can say ‘Iced latté frappuccino’ 🙂. But addiction to anything else? Count me out. 

Insight #3: If you’re going to succeed at digital minimalism, you need to replace digital with consciously chosen off-line activities

I was somewhat surprised to discover that Newport devotes an entire chapter in the book to the concept of leisure. How should you spend your free time, if you’re not going to spend it binge-watching The Crown or watching a five hour Joe Rogan interview on Youtube with some guy who used to be a journalist but now believes that aliens build the Aztec pyramids? At first the fact that Newport spotlights this topic puzzled me a little bit, but it now makes complete sense to me. As soon as you stop being a digital junkie, you’re going to have a whole lot of extra free time on your hands, and if you don’t consciously make a plan for something rewarding to do with all those extra hours, you’re going to be back on social media within the blink of an eye. For me, the most obvious way to spend this extra free time would be to read more. I always notice when I go on holiday that I find reading for hours on end  infinitely more rewarding than watching youtube clips. Newport’s book has made me adamant that after this year’s summer holiday I’ll be staying offline much more, and that I will read much, much more. Newport, however, gives great advice about what else to do with your time apart from reading. Above all, I was inspired by his suggestion to do more ‘analogue’ creative work. Build something. Fix something. Do hard manual labour. As human beings, we’re hard-wired to find working with tools rewarding. So we should do more of it - simple as that. 

    This is a forgotten art - the art of fixing things. When I compare myself to my father, who grew up in a time long before there were any digital distractions to speak of, I see such a difference. My father has spent a lifetime of trying to fix things. He’s not afraid to get his hands dirty and will have a crack at trying to fix any piece of equipment which stops working as it should.  My father calls me when his iPad stops working, and I can fix that for him. But when a machine in my own household stops working which is not digital? Well, in such cases my first hunch is to call an expert. Most often, the expert is my father. If he can’t fix it, my inclination is to bin whatever stopped working and buy a new one. I think most of us are like that these days. Newport’s convinced me that I could do things differently - not for the sake of it, but because doing manual work is highly rewarding. This rule doesn’t just apply to fixing things that are broken - making something from scratch will do just as nicely. Knit a sweater. Paint. Draw. Play a musical instrument. Anything goes - as long as you’re using your hands. Your life will be all the better for it.

Postscript:

“Your life will be all the better for it” - that was originally going to be the sentence with which I was going to end this blog post. Now that I’ve had a chance to live according to my new ‘digital minimalism’ philosophy for a while (I wrote this blog post a couple of weeks ago, and am only now polishing it up) I have to say that I”m no longer one hundred percent convinced about this statement. My wife has - somewhat unexpectedly -become just a little bit too enthusiastic about the project, and has taken to suggesting ‘analogue’ projects that will tie in neatly with my new digital minimalist philosophy with a devilish look of glee in her eyes. Without fail, these ‘suggestions’ are all in the category ‘chores around the house that need doing but which will give no one in full possession of all their mental faculties any kind of satisfaction whatsoever’, such as putting up shelves, doing the dishes, or - worst of all - gardening. Needless to say, this is not what I envisioned when I embarked on my digital detox. I pictured myself doing romantic ‘old world’ projects such as building a guitar from scratch or fixing my coffee roaster when it breaks down with nothing but a screw-driver and a pair of pliers (it did, and I did, thank you very much). I’ve tried to explain that there is an important difference between ‘chores’ and ‘projects’ to my wife at multiple occasions but she is yet to be convinced of the validity of my arguments. 🙂

    All joking aside, the sailing has been pretty smooth, actually. I don’t miss Youtube and Facebook at all, am giving Netflix a wide birth, and have instead watched several complex and overly long documentaries on the BBC which normally I’d have avoided like the bubonic plague. Much to my surprise, I enjoyed them tremendously. I’m reading a lot, and I’m also writing much more than I normally would have. It’s the beginning of the semester and things are hectic right now, yet I’m managing to find little pockets of time and brainspace to work on projects that I thought would have to go on the back-burner. I hadn’t planned on completing this blog post this early on in the semester, but here it is - hopefully you enjoyed it. I do apologise for having to deliver it to you through digital means, though. Last time I checked, using carrier pigeons or telegrams were not highly effective ways of reaching a large audience. 🙂

Further reflections on Theodore Roosevelt: why you should never become good at just one thing

I’ve become a little obsessed with Theodore Roosevelt, ever since I began reading Edmund Morris’s The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (a biography of Roosevelt's younger years). As I explained in last week’s blog post about Roosevelt’s study habits, the book is great (it quite rightfully won Morris the Pulitzer). It’s full of anecdotes about how extremely well-versed Roosevelt was in a wide variety of fields, which I rather enjoy. For example this one (also quoted in last week’s blog post):

A few weeks ago, when the British Embassy’s new councillor, Sir Esmé Howard, mentioned a spell of diplomatic duty in Crete, Roosevelt immediately and learnedly began to discuss the archeological digs at Knossos. He then asked if Howard was by any chance descended from “Belted Will” of Border fame—quoting Scott on the subject, to the councillor’s mystification. The President is also capable of declaiming German poetry to Lutheran preachers, and comparing recently resuscitated Gaelic letters with Hopi Indian lyrics. He is recognized as the world authority on big American game mammals, and is an ornithologist of some note. Stooping to pick a speck of brown fluff off the White House lawn, he will murmur, “Very early for a fox sparrow!” Roosevelt is equally at home with experts in naval strategy, forestry, Greek drama, cowpunching, metaphysics, protective coloration, and football techniques.

Roosevelt was a true Renaissance man - by the time he died, he’d written over thirty books and hundreds of articles, about topics as far removed as ornithology and naval strategy. That’s unique, and for me inspiring to read about.

Don’t get me wrong, though: for all his obvious greatness, I certainly don’t think we should idolise Roosevelt blindly. There are plenty of things about his character and his ideas that don’t work for me. Despite the fact that he was strongly in favour of equal rights for women (including the right to vote), he believed a woman’s natural role was to bear children and run the family home. He glorified war and violent struggle. He was a cultural elitist who fervently believed in the superiority of the values and norms of his own group, and appears to have looked down on the cultures of ethnic minorities. The jury is out on whether these ‘shadow qualities’ of Roosevelt are representative of him in his later years - Morris, for one, appears to conclude that they are mostly characteristic of Roosevelt as a young man, and claims that he became much more appreciative of other cultures and ethnicities as time went on. But in The Rise, which deals with Roosevelt’s younger years, those shadow qualities are sometimes on full display, which occasionally makes for some unpleasant reading. The book is also hard to read: it’s the size of a phonebook and contains LONG passages about American politics in the 1890s which for me are just not that interesting. Every time I think that I’m going to give up on the book, however, I’ll come across a passage where I’m suddenly hooked again, where Roosevelt practically leaps of the page and inspires me. I’ve come to realize that those passages all deal with a single topic: Roosevelt’s attitude to work.

Two things stand out for me here. One: his extreme aptitude at time management, a topic I covered in my previous blog post on Roosevelt. He was extremely disciplined, and very, very skilled at making the most of his time. But that’s not all I find inspiring. A second aspect of Roosevelt's attitude to work which I find fascinating is this: he didn’t put all his eggs in one basket. He had a wide range of interests, and he simply refused to focus on only one. After he graduated from Harvard in 1880 (where he did a classic, broad liberal arts and sciences bachelor program) he went to Columbia to study law. And here’s where things get a little odd: despite the fact that his law studies kept him busy, and despite the fact that he was recently married and increasingly involved in local politics, he decided to write a book on naval history.

   

Yes, you read that right: naval history. A topic that has nothing whatsoever to do with law or politics. Is that a little crazy? Yes, it is. But it’s also kind of cool.        

The book was eventually published as The Naval War of 1812, and covers the naval strategies and technologies used in the war of 1812 between the U.S. and the U.K.. Like anything Roosevelt did, he worked on it with conviction and intensity. He really, really put in the hours. He read hundreds of books and used every free moment of his time to write it after he had done his research. Morris gives the following anecdote which illustrates to which extremes Roosevelt went to find the time to work on his book:

Owen Wister has left an anecdote of this period which reads like the opening scene of a Victorian drawing-room comedy. It is the pre-dinner hour; Theodore, standing on one leg at the bookcases in his New York house, is sketching a diagram for The Naval War of 1812. In rushes Alice [Roosevelt, Theodore's wife, RR], exclaiming in a plaintive drawl, “We’re dining out in twenty minutes, and Teddy’s drawing little ships!”

The hard work paid off, though. The book was published in 1882 and received gushing reviews from most critics.  It went through three print runs in a relatively short amount of time. University lecturers adopted it as a textbook in their courses. Morris even goes as far as to say that the book remained the defining work on the topic for over a hundred years.

I’m not saying we should emulate Roosevelt’s every move here. I’m certainly not recommending you work as hard as he did, especially if you’re recently married (as a culture, I think we’ve become a lot less forgiving of our spouses’ obsessions than poor Alice Roosevelt was, which means you might find yourself being handed divorce papers faster than you can say ‘naval strategies and technologies’ 🙂). Nevertheless, I do think there’s a lesson to be learned here. Roosevelt never ever allowed himself to be pigeonholed, and I find that admirable. He never settled on having just one or two identities - lawyer, politician, husband. Instead, he allowed himself to have a wide range of different identities. He was, during his time at Columbia, a law student, politician, husband AND a researcher and writer on naval history. That’s a strategy he never abandoned, which means that by the time he became president he had written so many books that they provided him with a steady stream of income (it appears he used his modest presidential salary mostly to fund lavish banquets for his guests). Roosevelt, then, was an early adopter of what productivity writer Tim Ferris calls diversifying your identity, a concept I wrote about in a blog post last year. Ferris describes this concept like this:

When you have money, it’s always smart to diversify your investments. That way if one of them goes south, you don’t lose everything. It’s also smart to diversify your identity, to invest your self-esteem and what you care about into a variety of different areas — business, social life, relationships, philanthropy, athletics — so that when one goes south, you’re not completely screwed over and emotionally wrecked.

Ferris claims that this is not only a more fulfilling way to live, but also a way to deal with the sheer unpredictability of the future. If you don’t put all your eggs in one basket, you’re not totally screwed if one of your baskets breaks. If you’re trying to be a concert pianist but don’t manage to do well, it will help you feel better about yourself if there are other areas of life in which you’re doing well. That strategy only works, however, if you identify with all of those efforts. I think that was always Roosevelt’s secret: he never thought of himself as only one thing. Even when he was president he was writing books and papers on topics that had nothing to do with politics, and if you can find the time to do it, there’s a lot of wisdom in that way of living, I think. The world is a rich and endlessly fascinating place, and there’s so much to explore. Roosevelt simply refused to stop exploring.

I find that inspiring - it gives me the conviction to keep doing that in my own life. I’ve always had many interests, and I’ve never really picked a single one to focus on. I’ve always felt a little guilty about that. Reading about Roosevelt’s life takes away some of that guilt, and makes me feel better about my choices. Why shouldn’t I be a University lecturer, an academic researcher, a musician, and author of a book and a blog about how to organise yourself? Why not wear all those different hats? I’ll probably never write a classic scholarly work on naval strategy, but I’ll certainly have a more rich and rewarding life than if I only focussed on one area of expertise. Which means that I will now stop writing this blog post and focus on some other areas of life that demand my attention. I’m just not sure which one to focus on first: learn how to play blues guitar like Joe Bonamassa, work on my French so I can become as fluent as Bradley Cooper, or continue with my Theodore Roosevelt reading project? Or how about this: why not take a break and go running, or even do nothing? Argh, how to choose! Theodore oh Theodore, however did you do it? 🙂

How to study like Teddy Roosevelt

Theodore Roosevelt is known as one of America’s greatest and most popular presidents. Along with George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, his face is depicted on mount Rushmore. He was adored by the American public, and was widely praised for his diplomatic skills - he received a nobel peace prize in 1906 for ending the Russo-Japanese war. He became president when he was only 42 - one of the youngest American presidents ever.

Those achievements alone are already something most of us can only read about in awe, and they make Theodore - or Teddy, as he is often lovingly referred to - stand out as remarkable. But what makes Roosevelt even more unique is that he was a true Renaissance man. Apart from his political career he also had a distinguished career as a writer and scholar: during his lifetime he managed to publish forty books and hundreds of articles. He was also an avid sportsman, and achieved high levels of proficiency in horseriding, boxing, rowing, and tennis. In The rise of Theodore Roosevelt, the fantastic biography of Theodore by Edmund Morris, a long string of often amusing anecdotes is given about the level of proficiency he was able to achieve in all these fields. To give but one example (the whole book is full of similar passages):

A few weeks ago, when the British Embassy’s new councillor, Sir Esmé Howard, mentioned a spell of diplomatic duty in Crete, Roosevelt immediately and learnedly began to discuss the archeological digs at Knossos. He then asked if Howard was by any chance descended from “Belted Will” of Border fame—quoting Scott on the subject, to the councillor’s mystification. The President is also capable of declaiming German poetry to Lutheran preachers, and comparing recently resuscitated Gaelic letters with Hopi Indian lyrics. He is recognized as the world authority on big American game mammals, and is an ornithologist of some note. Stooping to pick a speck of brown fluff off the White House lawn, he will murmur, “Very early for a fox sparrow!” Roosevelt is equally at home with experts in naval strategy, forestry, Greek drama, cowpunching, metaphysics, protective coloration, and football techniques.

How on earth was Roosevelt able to become an expert in all those things? Talent of course had something to do with it, but it’s not the entire story. Roosevelt appears to have had not only talent and discipline, but also a way of organizing his time that really, really worked for him, and it’s in the latter category that I think we have to look if we want to understand Roosevelt’s extraordinary productivity.  His secret? To block out distraction, divide work into subtasks, and then work on a subtask for a relatively short chunk of time with intensity. Morris, in his biography of Roosevelt, writes that Roosevelt already worked like this as a student at Harvard. He would look at his schedule - for both sports (which he did a lot of) and lectures, and then take note of where the free hours were. He’d then make a plan for what to work on during those free hours.

That doesn’t sound very remarkable, does it? Almost all students do that. Most fail to stick to their schedule. Roosevelt didn’t.

What Roosevelt also intuitively understood was that, during the two hours he had for doing a reading assignment, he should do nothing else. He was extremely good at blocking out distraction. When he was with other people, he was social; when he played sports, he played sports. And when he was studying? Well, then he studied -  intensely. Because he was on such a tight schedule, he knew he only had limited time to finish whatever task he was working on - the clock was ticking. Somehow, having that time limit helped him to stay focussed.

Cal Newport, author of the famous blog about student productivity Study Hacks, calls this kind of work - intense, focussed, without distraction - deep work. He claims that it’s becoming harder to achieve in this age of eternal distraction, and he’s probably right about that. It must have been easier for Roosevelt to block out distraction than it is for students nowadays. He didn’t have a phone. He wasn’t on social media. There were no cat videos on youtube to lure him away from his ornithology books. But there must have been some distraction. It would have been difficult even at Harvard in 1867 to stay focussed. If it wasn’t, every Harvard student of Roosevelt’s year would have graduated with a string of published papers to their name. Needless to say, they didn’t. That means, in other words, that it must be possible to transfer Roosevelt’s method to our own day and age. But how do you do that? How do you study like Teddy Roosevelt? Cal Newport, who discusses Roosevelt’s study habits in his book Deep Work, gives the following advice on how to apply Roosevelt’s method to your own academic life:

Identify a deep task (that is, something that requires deep work to complete) that’s high on your priority list. Estimate how long you’d normally put aside for an obligation of this type, then give yourself a hard deadline that drastically reduces this time. If possible, commit publicly to the deadline—for example, by telling the person expecting the finished project when they should expect it. If this isn’t possible (or if it puts your job in jeopardy), then motivate yourself by setting a countdown timer on your phone and propping it up where you can’t avoid seeing it as you work.

At this point, there should be only one possible way to get the deep task done in time: working with great intensity—no e- mail breaks, no daydreaming, no Facebook browsing, no repeated trips to the coffee machine. Like Roosevelt at Harvard, attack the task with every free neuron until it gives way under your unwavering barrage of concentration.

Try this experiment no more than once a week at first - giving your brain practice with intensity, but also giving it (and your stress levels) time to rest in between. Once you feel confident in your ability to trade concentration for completion time, increase the frequency of these Roosevelt dashes. Remember, however, to always keep your self-imposed deadlines right at the edge of feasibility. You should be able to consistently beat the buzzer (or at least be close), but to do so should require teeth-gritting concentration.

To those wise words I would add: perhaps experiment a bit with ways to restrict temptation, which is always right under our noses these days now that all of us are constantly hooked up to that great dopamine-producing slotmachine we call the internet. Give your phone to your flatmate, and ask them to only give it back after two hours. Turn off your internet router. Experiment with apps that block the internet on your phone or laptop, like Cold Turkey -  whatever works for you (for more ideas on dealing with distraction, read Newport’s book Deep Work- it’s great). Doing something like that is also a clear signal to your subconscious that you mean business, and that it should put its incessant requests for cat videos or netflix binges on hold. Then work with great intensity for a relatively short amount of time on your task, and try and get it done within the assigned timespan. Do this for only a few tasks in the first week you try it, then gradually do this more and more until it becomes second nature. Who knows - you might become as good at it as Theodore. You probably won’t win the Nobel peace prize or end up on mount Rushmore (last time I checked it was already quite full with presidential-looking faces up there). But it probably will do wonders for your academic achievements. Ornithology or naval strategy, anyone?

Procrastination: why we postpone what is urgent (and what we can do to stop doing so)

I’m teaching a course on Eastern philosophy this semester, which focuses on the core ideas and practices of Hinduism, Buddhism and Daoism. In one of the last  classes of the semester I discussed the Dao-De-Jing with my students, an ancient Chinese text from around 600 B.C. It’s one of the core texts of Daoism and, along with the bible, one of the most translated texts on the planet. It was written in a time period marked by violence and chaos – a period often referred to as the ‘Warring States Period’ - and its content is quite clearly a response to that chaos. It constantly warns against the dangers of using excessive force and violence, and advocates a life style of balance, harmony and tranquility. One of my favourite passages from the text is this one:

Prevent trouble before it arises.

Put things in order before they exist.

The giant pine tree

grows from a tiny sprout.

The journey of a thousand miles

starts from beneath your feet.

Rushing into action, you fail.

Trying to grasp things, you lose them.

Forcing a project to completion,

you ruin what was almost ripe.

Dao-De-Jing, chapter 64 (translation Stephen Mitchell)

I think it’s safe to say that, like most Westerners, most of my students do not live their lives like this. Unlike what the Dao-De-Jing advises, a considerable number of them are rushing or forcing frequently – when deadlines for exams or papers draw near, when they are late for a class or social activity, when they forgot to do something important - the opportunities for stress and last minute bursts of panicked activity are endless when you're a college student. Nevertheless, when I asked my students whether they thought that it was possible to be more Daoist while at college, they all acceded that this was possible. When I asked them what could be done to make that happen the very first point that was raised was this: ‘You’d need to start on time with all your assignments.’ 

‘But I don’t do this of course,’ the student who raised the point said, looking – dare I say it – a tad bit guilty. I looked around the rest of the class. They all looked equally guilty. 

None of them objected to the point that was raised: that they would be seriously less stressed if they started on time with everything they had to do. Everyone also agreed that being less stressed and doing less rushing would be a good thing. Yet somehow they’d all become convinced of the fact that starting on time with working on their projects was an impossible feat; so impossible that they might as well give up trying. Procrastination, my students seemed to say, is simply part and parcel of student life. It’s unavoidable, like bad weather. And here’s the thing: I understand where they’re coming from. When I was a student myself I was seriously good at procrastination. I was so good at it that I once spent six months without attending a single lecture or working on a single assignment (yes, you could still do that when I was a student without immediately getting kicked out). And when I did finally decide to put in the hours? Well, then I only got serious about it at the very last moment. I really needed the rush of being close to a deadline to get serious about whatever task was at hand. That meant I spent long periods doing almost nothing, followed by short periods of very intense stress and panic. I think it's safe to say that I paid a heavy price for that strategy – I frequently exhausted myself because I had to pull all-nighters or because there was not enough time to take breaks. Yet it never dawned on me that I should change my strategy. For me, like my students, procrastination was something that I considered a fact of life, something I simply accepted. It was just how things were. But is that really true? Is starting on time really something that’s impossible to do? I’ve thought a lot about that question in recent years, and have become convinced that it isn’t – there are ways of working that help us to almost completely eradicate procrastination from our lives. But why is doing that so hard? Why do so many of us procrastinate – even if it seriously affects the quality of our life? In this blog post I’ll write out my thoughts on these questions, and explain why I think we procrastinate - along with some suggestions for how we might change this behavior. 

Reason #1: We procrastinate because we are overwhelmed. 

The number one reason why I think we procrastinate is because human beings have an inborn tendency to avoid pain. And the bigger a project, the longer our to-do list, the more intense the pressure we are under, the more the things we have to do become associated with pain. So we go into hiding. We pretend the project, the to-do list, the pressure – whatever feels too painful - isn’t there. We put it off until tomorrow. ‘I’ll relax right now’, we tell ourselves. ‘But tomorrow – then I’ll start on my big scary 5000 word paper’. 

The only problem is that we don’t. Because tomorrow that paper still feels equally scary. And the day after that? Same thing. It becomes the thing we don’t want to look at. Somehow, I’ve come to realize, human beings are really good at convincing themselves that not thinking about something is a good idea. And sometimes it is. Fact of the matter is, though, that often it isn’t. 

            So how to handle this perfectly natural tendency of the human mind? One of the best ways I’ve discovered along the path of trying to overcome my own procrastination tendencies is to use the power of habit. Facing the things that are painful in life, that are a little scary, takes a great deal of will-power. Sometimes things are so scary and painful that we simply cannot muster up that will-power, and then we’ve lost the battle. We retreat and go into our comfort zone, whatever that may be (looking at random videos on youtube, checking facebook – pick your poison). But here’s something that not many people realize: there’s a way to face what is scary and painful that does not require tons of will-power, and that is by using the power of habit. Develop a daily routine – a habit, in other words - that makes looking at that scary to-do list or thinking about how to tackle that difficult project something that is simply built into what you do every day. 

Using the power of habit has been the number one breakthrough that has helped me to reduce procrastination to manageable levels. My own way of working – as described in my short time management book for students (or anyone else with a busy life)  Make Lists Not Fists – centers heavily on doing what I call in my book the 'morning ritual', a morning routine which involves cleaning up my to-do lists, looking at all my deadlines, and then creating a to-do list for that specific day. I do that every single morning of every single work day. Because it’s a habit it requires zero will power. Not a single cell in my body protests that I do this. I don’t have to think about it – I boot up the computer, grab a cup of coffee, and complete my morning ritual. After I’m done, I’ve looked at all my scary deadlines, and I’ve decided when and how I’m going to work on them. Now that I’ve got that helicopter view of everything that’s asking for my attention, I’m way less intimidated, and it’s much, much easier to muster up the motivation to do the actual work. 

Reason #2: We procrastinate because we try to do too much in one go.

Here’s something else I’ve come to realize: it’s much, much easier to muster up the motivation for a small task than for a huge task. The reason why so many of us procrastinate, I think, is because we often define our tasks as tasks that are too big, that feel too overwhelming. It’s wise, therefore, to split up big tasks into a series of smaller tasks, and spread them out over a longer period of time. With this blog post, for example, rather than sitting down in one session and writing the whole thing out in one go, I’ve split the writing process up in a series of small, thirty minute sessions. It’s easy to motivate myself to sit down and write for thirty minutes. But mustering up the motivation to write a whole blog post in one go, which would probably take hours? Here’s how my unconscious would have responded, in all likelihood: ‘Sounds painful. I’d rather not do it. I think I’ll try to get us to check out some random videos on youtube. Hmmm… perhaps there are new Daily Show and Joe Rogan clips that we can check out. Yes! Let’s do that!’

            With really big projects, therefore, don’t tell yourself something generic like ‘I’m going to write my paper now’, without a time limitation and without a task specification. To the part of you that wants to avoid pain and suffering (in most of us a highly influential part 😀) that sounds like a terrible ordeal. But if you add a time limitation, as well as a precise task specification, it feels much lighter. ‘I’m going to write the introduction of my paper for 45 minutes, and then I’m going to take a short break’ – that sounds doable. Which means you’re much more likely to actually go out and do it. Work like that over a sustained period of time – a series of days, let’s say – and guess what? You have your paper. Chances are the paper is better, too – because you’ve had plenty of time to come up with fresh creative ideas in between each writing session. This method, however, only works if you start on time – which you’ll probably only be able to do if you use the power of habit mentioned in point one above.

            (Chopping up big tasks into a series of timed smaller tasks, by the way, is what the pomodoro method is all about, which advises you to work in blocks of 25 minutes with a 5 minute break after each session. I don’t think the method only works with 25 minute blocks, though – do experiment with different time periods. But timing yourself, and being specific about what you will work on during each block – that is the secret of this method’s success, and something I highly recommend.)

Reason #3: We procrastinate because we think we have to feel motivated before we start working.

Here is what most of us believe in regards to motivation, I think: You have to wait until you feel motivated to do something before you go out and do it. But here’s a thought: what if you don’t have to feel motivated? What if you could just do whatever needs doing, regardless of whether you feel motivated or not? That point is made frequently by British journalist Oliver Burkeman, who writes about productivity, motivation and self-help for the Guardian. In a short article in which he explains this idea in detail, he summarizes it as follows: 

Don’t wait until you feel like doing something. When you’re mired in negative emotions about work, resist the urge to try to stamp them out. Instead, get a little distance — step away from your desk, focus on your breath for a few seconds — and then just feel the negativity, without trying to banish it. Then take action alongside the emotion.

Burkeman makes the same point in his book The Antidote, a book I’m often recommending to friends and colleagues (I even use as it as a textbook in one of my courses). In that book he puts it like this: 

Who says you need to wait until you ‘feel like’ doing something in order to start doing it? The problem, from this perspective, isn’t that you don’t feel motivated; it’s that you imagine you need to feel motivated. … If you can regard your thoughts and emotions about whatever you’re procrastinating on as passing weather, you’ll realise that your reluctance about working isn’t something that needs to be eradicated or transformed into positivity. You can coexist with it. You can note the procrastinatory feelings and work anyway.

Many of my students have told me that just reading that passage in the book changed their whole perspective on procrastination. It’s a radical but overwhelmingly simple thought: what if you could just start? What if you didn’t have to wait until you ‘feel’ like starting? It’s on this simple premiss that Morita Therapy is based, and it’s one that I wholeheartedly subscribe to. I try to put it into practice regularly. And guess what? If you use the power of habit, andyou chop big tasks up into a series of smaller tasks, it’s much easier to just get started, regardless of how you feel.

Reason #4: We procrastinate because we don’t realize fully that we pay a high price for doing so.

When we procrastinate, we don’t think long-term. We think only in terms of present benefits. Right now, in this exact moment, there isn’t really that much of a price to be paid for procrastination. I could spend the rest of the morning drinking coffee, reading the paper, and neglecting my to-do lists and my email inbox. But later on in the day I’ll have to pay the price. It would entail showing up unprepared for the class I have teach, and guess what? I’ll get my butt kicked by my students, who will ask me difficult questions and look at me funnily as I stammer and stutter and go red in the face. And here’s what makes such small acts of procrastination even more problematic: if you procrastinate repeatedly, the price you pay becomes higher and higher. All that time you’ve wasted stacks up, and in the end life will kick you in the butt – hard. As Stephen Fry puts it in his autobiography Moab is my washpot, life is seriously unkind if you give up on what needs doing: “Life, that can shower you with so much splendour, is unremittingly cruel to those who have given up.”

One way to stop procrastinating so much, then, is to become conscious of this high price. I know of no better thinker who has driven this point home than Jordan Peterson, a clinical psychologist whose ideas have gone viral in the last two years, especially because so many of his lectures and interviews are on youtube  (where many of his lectures get millions of views) and because he is critical of some of the ideas associated with the political left such as identity politics (which has led to protests and walk-outs during some of his public lectures).  Don’t dismiss Peterson because you disagree with his ideas about politics - when it comes to life advice, I find that his comments are frequently spot on. Here he is, for example, explaining why wasting time as a student is something that you end up paying for – big time. He makes similar points in his book Twelve Rules for Life,  in which he puts forward twelve rules that together sum up what he considers 'essential' life advice - the advice, in other words, which he's shared with his patients over the course of his career. One of the twelve rules he outlines is the following: Treat yourself like someone you are responsible helping. In the chapter of Twelve Rules which covers that particular rule (chapter 2), he makes the point that simply focussing on what makes you happy in the short-term (which we do when procrastinate) is the equivalent of giving a child candy all the time - it makes the child happy momentarily, but it's no good for them in the long-term:

To treat yourself as if you were someone you are responsible for helping is [...] to consider what would be truly good for you. This is not “what you want.” It is also not “what would make you happy.” Every time you give a child something sweet, you make that child happy. That does not mean that you should do nothing for children except feed them candy. “Happy” is by no means synonymous with “good.”

That strikes me as a very sensible point indeed. When we decide on how to act, we need to take the whole of our life into account - not just the present moment. If we focus on the present moment only - which we do when we procrastinate - there will at some point be a price to pay. It may take a while before the payment is due, but it will need to be paid at some point - no exceptions. Becoming conscious of that price - for example by watching Peterson's lecture on the topic - may therefore be an effective strategy to help battle our tendencies to procrastinate.

Afterthought #1: Is all procrastination bad?

Answer: no, it isn’t. A little bit of procrastination, when used wisely and in moderation, is probably healthy. Sticking to a strict regiment of tasks with military precision and without any small acts of procrastination is killing for the parts of you that are creative and playful, and you desperately want those parts on board if you want life to be fun and rewarding. But procrastinate wisely. Keep an eye on the clock. Don’t get lost in it – procrastinating for hours on end is probably one of the worst feelings you can have as a human being (and we’ve all been there 😀). Give yourself permission to procrastinate,  but do so only when you can really afford to. Also, consider putting a time limit on your procrastination sessions. Doing things that are fun but relatively meaningless can be great, but doing so for hours on end? Most of the time, the feeling that leaves you with is suboptimal to say the least.

I still procrastinate myself, although I’m nowhere near as bad as I used to be. In that sense, I consider myself a recovering procrastinator. It still creeps in sometimes without me noticing it – for example because I spend too much time on a task that is fun, meaningful but not super urgent. Like writing this blog post. Yesterday, for example, I scheduled thirty minutes for writing it, but I was in the zone and kept writing. That meant I spent the rest of the day playing catch-up, with just a little bit too little time for everything else, which meant I was – blinks guiltily – rushing. But I’m getting better and better at recognizing when I’m doing this, and it happens less and less. When I get lost in useless activities, it’s almost always at a time when there’s no harm in it, like in the evening when I didn’t have anything important to do anyway. It eats up the time I would have spent reading a quality book, but it doesn’t mess up my planning. (For me, my poison is youtube – before I know it, I’ve spent the whole evening looking at clips about Brian May’s guitar and Eric Clapton explaining why he wrote Layla.)

It’s certainly possible to reduce procrastination to almost zero levels, then – to that I can testify. But will doing that automatically mean you will no longer be rushing, so that you’ll end up living the life of tranquility and peace which the Daoists advocate? Probably not. Not procrastinating simply means that you are not spending your time on useless activities during time periods when you really can’t afford doing. Doing that doesn’t automatically turn you into the Western equivalent of a Zen monk. In order to make sure that ‘no procrastination’ also leads to ‘no rushing’, you need to take one more step: leave some space in your day. Don’t plan it chock-a-block full with useful activities. Start on time with your projects, but use the time that this frees up to leave some breathing room in your schedule. Do that consistently, and perhaps at some point you’ll reduce your stress levels to such an extent that you can proudly call yourself a Western Daoist. 

Afterthought #2: Sometimes procrastination is telling you to change direction.

Here’s a final thought: if none of the advice given in this blog post works for you (after getting serious about it for a sustained period of time – you’ll need some time to learn new habits and clean up your act) you might need to think about whether what you’re trying to achieve is really what you ought to be doing with your life. Sometimes the fact that we cannot muster the motivation to do something simply means that it isn’t something we really ought to be doing anyway. If you hate every single minute you spend doing something, then maybe it simply means that there are more worthwhile pursuits to consider. That’s also very much a Daoist idea: that every person has their own inner nature, which means that each and everyone of us will flourish in some circumstances and do poorly in other circumstances. As Benjamin Hoff puts it in his excellent Tao of Pooh: “When you know and respect your Inner Nature, you know where you belong. You also know where you don't belong.” And that’s very good advice. The problem is that it’s quite difficult to tell the difference between where you belong and where you don't belong sometimes. The fact that you're procrastinating a lot doesn't have to mean that what you're doing is not right for you. Most of the time, I think, it’s just a sign that you need to get organized and clean up your life. So try that first. Working in the right way has a tendency to change the feel and quality of almost every single thing you do into something more enjoyable. If you’ve tried that, though, and you still hate what you do, consider changing direction. If your tail is dragging, check your path.