Original post:  http://bearlamp.com.au/productivity-list-notch-system/

This is a write up of my current to do list system.  My system and the method of this write up is based on Mark Forster's to do lists.  If you are familiar with The Final Version Perfected you will be able to recognise elements from that system. 

It's not perfect, but it has been working for a few weeks now.  I have difficulty often with tasks of variable "size" and variable "time" (these are both a measure of "getting it done").  I started with the FVP and modified as I felt like it.  This is my Notch system.

I am confident, and I have not yet written about it - as far as I can tell, telling someone your final system is a bit like giving to someone in the pre-industrial revolution, "a working 2010 car" and expecting them to use that to build their own.  If they are a very very good engineer they will work out how to take it apart and how to put it back together so that they can build their own and get driving.  Of course systems are not that complicated, and maybe it's not so hard to give someone a to-do list system and hope they can make use of it.  I also don't credit myself for using a working car in contrast to being in the pre-industrial revolution era.

I believe the trick that underpins systems, the one that doesn't get mentioned often enough when we talk about systems that do or don't work for us, is the underlying meta-system of trying things and iterating on the results.

Having said all that about cars and underlying iterative systems...  This is where I am today.

To start, make a list of all the tasks that you want to do today in any order that they come to mind.  If you are confident that things cannot be done today, they don't belong on the list.  i.e. tasks requiring a specific geographic location that you are not intending on visiting today.  Consider things that might be due, things that are large are acceptable.  

--I make assumptions that significantly small tasks of under 5 minutes don't belong on the list, and regular activities don't need reminding (i.e. dinner with friends).

Example list:
Dogs
Space
write
Sanding
Emails
Battery blocks

Next to each task, write how long you predict it will take.  These will be wrong, that's okay - one of the things we are training is predictive power over future tasks, another is acceptance of the total time you do or do not have in your day.

Example list:
Dogs - 1.5hr
Space - 20mins
write - 1hr
Sanding - 3hrs
Emails - 5hrs
Battery blocks - 3hrs

An important thing that time-estimates can reveal is whether you were planning to surprise yourself by completing more than 24 hours of "expected work" in an 8 hour work day.  With that in mind it might be worthwhile planning what you wont to do today.  Hold onto this thought for now.  (my example list has 13hrs and 50 mins on it)

Look down the list and decide either what you will do first, or what you will do last (or both) and number them accordingly.  

Example list:
Dogs - 1.5hr
Space - 20mins
2. write - 1hr
6. Sanding - 3hrs
1. Emails - 5hrs
Battery blocks - 3hrs

Example list:
4. Dogs - 1.5hr
1. Space - 20mins
3. write - 1hr
5. Sanding - 3hrs
2. Emails - 5hrs
4. Battery blocks - 3hrs

If you find that two tasks are equal, number them the same number.  It doesn't really matter.  Do either of them first!  You can decide later when you get to that number.  If they are equally important then doing either of them is winning at deciding what to do.

After the list is numbered, do the first thing.  If you don't want to do that, you can reconsider the numbers, or just do the next thing instead.

After some period of time you might find yourself bored of whatever task you are on, or for whatever reason doing something else.  (I will sometimes do a bit of email while taking a moment from other tasks).  Don't worry!  This system has you covered.  Any time you feel like it - look to your list and put a notch next to tasks that you have done.

Example list:
4. Dogs - 1.5hr 
1. Space - 20mins - |
3. write - 1hr - ||
5. Sanding - 3hrs
2. Emails - 5hrs - ||
4. Battery blocks - 3hrs

I did the number 1 and I finished so I crossed it out, but I didn't finish 2.  What I did was do one "notch" of work on 2, and then do a notch on 3, then go back to 2 for another "notch", and go ahead and do another notch on 3.  

I use notches because sometimes I don't finish a task but I put a volume of effort into it.  In either time or in depth of work required.  Sometimes a notch will be a really hard 10 minute stretch, or a really easy two hour streak.  The notch time is the time it takes you to come back to the list and consider doing the other tasks.

This seems to be effective for tasks that will need a break, you still get some credit for a notch but you don't get to cross it out yet.  A notch is up to you.  but really it's just a way to keep track of how much of the thing you hacked away.  Some tasks take 5 notches, some take 1.  If it's the end of the day and a task is incomplete but has 4 notches done - you get to feel like you did complete 4 notches even though other tasks were completed in 1 notch.  This task is clearly bigger and harder to complete.

I like that this listing permits larger tasks to be on the same list as "one notch" sized tasks.  In the sense that you can still track the productivity and progress even without completing the tasks.

Where this system fails:

• On days like today, where I don't feel like writing out the list (most of my day is ugh, getting out of bed was hard).  Happens about once a month for me.  But also a workaround seems to be to write a list the night before, or look at yesterdays list for clues about where to begin.  Still - failure mode happens.
  
• On days with other fixed appointments - sometimes it's hard to decide what to do in the limited time frame, but that's where estimates come in, as well as thinking backwards for time management, as described in that post.
• For really really big tasks.  I have a task that is likely to take at least 20 hours over two days and it requires me to be in a set place and work on nothing else during that time.  That task has not made it onto this list system and probably never would.  In the mean time, lots of small tasks are getting done.
  

Meta: this took 2 hours to write.  Today has been a day full of suck and I don't know why but at least I wrote this out.

Original post: http://bearlamp.com.au/doing-the-causation-backwards/

About two years ago, when I first got my smart phone (yes, later than most of the other humans).  I was new to apps, and I was new to environments.  When I decided on what apps should be on my home screen, I picked the ones that I thought I would use most often.

My home screen started with:

• google bar (the top of the page)
• calendar
• facebook
• notepad app (half the page)
• ingress (because I play)
• maps
• camera
• torch

My home screen has barely changed.  I don't play ingress very often these days, but that's by choice, however I was seeing the facebook notifications far too often.  Ending up on facebook far too often for what I wanted.

Recently I decided to try out some tracking systems that include 1/0 metrics.  It looks something like this:

I wanted this in a place where I could see it and fill it out every day, and at the same time I began to question why I have my facebook app on my front page.  This link is now on my front page and I easily fill it out once a day (a win for a habit successfully implemented).

The concept that I want to impart today is that the causation goes the wrong way.  Instead of wanting apps that I regularly use on my front page so that I can easily access them - I want apps that I want to use regularly on my front page.  That way I will tend to develop habits of regularly using them instead of the other ones.  

Fridge

This applies to the refrigerator too.  Instead of the things you use and eat all the time being at the front (assuming they might be different), you want the foods that you want to eat most readily accessible and at the front.  If this means healthy foods at the front - do that.  If this means having a fruit bowl on the table - do that.

TV

This applies to TV too.  If you find book-reading more interesting than TV watching but find yourself watching a lot of TV all the same; put the remotes in a harder to reach place and leave really good books lying around.

Computer shortcuts

Want to play less games?  Get to Reddit less?  Maybe put the games in slightly harder to access places.  Buried in other folders.  Delete the auto-fill in your browser that completes to Reddit.  Want to do equations by hand more often than using a calculator (for practicing math purposes) - make the calculator slightly harder to get to, and make sure you have a pen/paper handy around the computer.

Junk food

Do you have a candy cupboard?  Find yourself eating too much of it.  A simple answer would be to empty it, and don't fill it again.  But an alternative that still lets you have candy in the house is to place slightly healthier and tasty food choices in front of the candy.  for example dried fruit - still sweet and bite-sized, in a similar class of choices to Candy, but significantly healthier.  Some days you will reach past the dried fruit for the chocolate, and many more days you will reach for the dried fruits.

The meta strategy

Without creating more examples.  There are often behaviours you want to do better, actions that you want to take instead of other actions, or behaviours that have a "better form" than you might otherwise be doing.  

The strategy is:

1. Take 5 minutes writing out what you usually do on a daily basis
2. For each one, consider if this is the optimum form of the action, (or one that leads to acceptable levels of results) - don't be afraid to dream of the possible optimal actions.
   
3. Make the better option more available in your life.
   
4. Make it easier for yourself to do the better option.
5. Check progress in a month (put a reminder in your diary) and iterate on solutionspace
6. Winning!

We know about System 1 and System 2.  We live some of our life in S1 and some in S2.  S2 know's it's not always going to be "in charge" and making deliberate actions but it does have periods of lucid thought in which to set up S1 with better easiest-path behaviours and actions.  This applies to planning, setting up a workspace, avoiding the pain of paying and many more.

Think: How can I set this up so that I do the better possible path in the future with the least effort?

Meta: this post took 2hrs to write.

Originally posted here: http://bearlamp.com.au/people-who-lie-about-how-much-they-eat-are-jerks/

Weight loss journey is a long and complicated problem solving adventure.  This is one small factor that adds to the confusion.  You probably have that one friend.  Appears to eat a whole bunch, and yet doesn't put on weight.  If you ever had that conversation it goes something like,

"How are you so thin?"
"raah raah metabolism"
"raah raah I dont know why I don't put on weight"
"Take advantage of the habit"

Well I have had enough.  You're wrong.  You're lying and you probably don't even know it.  It's not possible. (Within a reasonable scope of human variation) Calories and energy are a black box system.  Calories in, work out, leftovers become weight gain, deficit is weight loss.  If a human could eat significantly more calories for the same amount of work and not put on weight we would be prodding them in a lab for breaking the laws of physics on conservation of mass and conservation of energy.

So this is you, you say you gain weight no matter what you eat and that's scientifically impossible.  Now what?  You probably don't mean to break the laws of physics (and you probably don't actually break them).  You genuinely absentmindedly don't notice when you scoff down whole plates of food and when you skip dinner because you didn't feel like it (and absentmindedly balance the calories automatically).  It's all the same to you because you naturally do that.

This very likely is about habits, and natural habits that people have.  If for example John has the habit of getting home and going to the fridge, making dinner because it's usually the evening.  Wendy doesn't have the habit.  She eats when she is hungry.  Not having a set mealtime sometimes means that she gets tired-hungry and has a state of being too exhausted to decide what to eat and too hungry to do anything else that would help solve the problem.  But for Wendy she doesn't get home and automatically cook dinner.  (good things and bad things come from habits.)

Wendy and john go to a big lunch together.  They both eat 150% of the calories they should be eating for that meal, and they don't mind - enjoying food is part of enjoying life.  It was a fancy restaurant with good food.  Later that evening when Wendy gets home she doesn't feel hungry and goes off to read a book or talk to friends on the internet.  Eventually she has a light snack (of 10% of her "dinner" calories) and heads off to totalling 160% of the calories for the two meals.  Effectively under-eating for the day.  John on the other hand, has his habit of heading home and making dinner.  Even after the big lunch, his automatic systems take over and he makes and ordinary dinner of 100% of his calories for that meal.  John's total for that day is 250% for two meals or effectively half a meal extra for that day.

If W and J do this every week (assuming the rest of their diets are perfectly balanced), John will have an upwards trajectory and Wendy will have a downwards one.  John might ask Wendy how she stays so skinny, and Wendy wouldn't know.  After all they eat about the same amount when they are together.

No one understands this.  

What can we do about it?

1. We can hire scientists to follow both J and W around for a week and write down every time they eat something. (this is impractical - maybe if we are in an isolated environment like a weekend retreat it would be easier to do this)
2. We can get them to self report via an app (but people are usually pretty bad at that)
3. We can try ask more specifically, "what do you eat in a day?", or "what have you eaten since this time yesterday?" and gather data points to try to build a picture of what a person eats.
4. We can search for people with similar habits around food to us and ask them how they stay healthy.
5. We can look for people with successful habits around food, ask them for advice and then figure out why that advice works, and how to make that advice work for us.

On the noticing level.  You should notice that every single thing that you eat adds to your caloric intake. Every single piece of work you do adds to your burn.  It's easier to eat another piece of chocolate (for 5 seconds) than run another 15minutes to burn that chocolate off.  If something is not working towards your dieting success it's probably working against it.

Meta: this took one hour to write.