Dear Reader,
I ended my last entry with two questions: How do I go from 0 to 1? and How do I go from motionless to being in motion? Normally in physics “an object at rest will stay at rest until some kind of force acts upon it.” That can be an external force, like being bumped, or possibly an internal force like internal combustion or for humans, intrinsic motivation.
Getting me in motion on this experiment required a little bit of both options. I already had the initial drive to do the experiment and have been talking about it for months - but talking isn’t doing.
I had a call with a blogging consultant to help me move forward on blogging, another thing I’ve been dragging my feet on. We started talking about my experiment idea and she was very enthusiastic and encouraging to move forward with it- that this could be the first thing I start blogging about. She also helped me get to the bottom of several of my reservations around writing publicly.
A combination of my intrinsic desire, plus her external encouragement - additionally of course with me paying her to edit a few of my blog posts this month (which means accountability and deadlines to actually do the darn thing) is what has finally pushed me into motion. We had our call late on Monday, so Tuesday of this week is when I finally started getting into gear.
The results are in… and they’re a bit disappointing
Already by 10 AM on Tuesday I’d checked my phone, email, and multiple social media platforms several times. The final straw that eventually jolted my awareness however, was an absent-minded click over to Facebook. I was in the middle of something, and I mean very much IN THE MIDDLE of responding to an important client email, when my mouse, outside of my control, opened a new tab and I typed “FACE” into the URL bar. This auto-fills Facebook since I type it in so often. I don’t even consider myself to be much of a Facebook user - I haven’t posted in several years and leave messages and friend requests unanswered.
As soon as it opened I was stunned. What am I doing in Facebook? Why did I open it in the first place? How did that all happen so quickly??
It’s all about boredom
I realized that I wanted to eliminate boredom, boredom I didn’t even know I had, by feeling some kind of quick jolt of distraction with Facebook. Usually I just scroll the feed and exit out. Sometimes I scroll the feed a lot longer than I think.
As soon as it opened, I shut it back down and pulled out a 3x5 index card. I wrote “Facebook” and gave myself a tick mark.
The tracking sheet:
Throughout the day I added all of the other items on my “automatic response” list. It looks something like this:
Phone (9)
Email (11)
Instagram (7)
Facebook (2)
Slack (12)
Then I started a second column. The first column was “actual use” - times I went to any of those platforms. The second column was for “suppressed urge” - any time I wanted, or was about to go to one of those platforms but stopped myself and got back to work.
SAMPLE TRACKING CARD if you want to give it a try
Sample Card Side A
Sample Card Side B
What I’m learning
Today’s lesson was learning just how incredibly ingrained these actions are, how immediately and subconsciously (and unconsciously) they happen. Although I was aware I checked a lot, I wasn’t aware that I checked THIS much, and how much time and energy is being wasted by checking these actions over and over again! Also, the measurements above are only the ones I caught, and I was being fairly lenient with myself. I’m sure that actual numbers, or numbers on a normal non-tracking day, would be much higher. And before I began the experiment I really thought I had more control of these things than I do. This is definitely an unpleasant shock.
I now have a few full days of tracking with this card system, examples pictured above. I think the rest of this week will likely go on in this way, and next week will be the start of implementing some new strategies to help me bypass these ingrained habits. I’ve come up with some ideas, and I’ll share more about them next week, but I’m already feeling some resistance toward implementing them.
Some progress?
Already the urges are starting to become a tiny bit less severe, but the automatic responses are still very strong. I’m not sure how to count accurately when I jump from email, to slack, to email, to a text, to email…. Does that count as email 3 times? Task switching is obviously also a problem for me. So I'm thinking that any time I leave one app and go to another (or tab), it counts as a tick on the card. This will be a more accurate way of capturing all of the time I waste jumping around tasks.
What do you think? Have you tried tracking and becoming aware of unconscious usage? How many times do you open your favorite app each day? I wonder if it would shock you like it’s shocked me?
Sincerely,
Lana
Lana Kitcher is a Productivity and Efficiency Coach, working with entrepreneurs and business owners to “Do Less, Better.” Lana has a passion for helping founders use work hours more efficiently so that they can make time and space for the joys of life.
Lana is also the founder of Bird by Bird, an online community for women starting their businesses. Connect with Lana on Instagram @LanaKitcher.