Little Big Tomatoes

About 2 months ago I posted an article about the low information diet. This is the follow up on how this little exercise went. When I started the diet, I decided that I wasn’t going to do anything that would distract me from doing my pre-planned tasks. I felt that it would be an interesting little exercise, something to do just for fun!

This exercise was definitely an eye-opener for me. It helped me to understand that I spend an awful lot of time doing stuff that results in little or no value. Feeling exhausted and uncomfortable when thinking back to how the day just passed, another day gone by and I did not achieve anything! Once I started to live by the rules, I noticed something weird. I had time and I got work done! I read books and actually finished them, instead of putting them down after reading 20-50 pages or just not touching them at all.

Another important thing was that I realized that I used these time-consuming tasks to postpone important tasks, to fill it up my time and make me look busy. When I had to write an important email, or do something that would move me out from my comfort zone, I always felt that I had to choose between the important stuff and the easy stuff. Of course, I did pick the easy ones 9 out of 10 times – "Reading the latest Micro ISV Digest or some other random article will do no harm."

But this time around, there was no straying off to read blog posts or browse the web, so that after a while, I had to force myself to do the important stuff and after a while I figured out that they are not that hard, and they can be done in no time. At the end of the day I felt that I had achieved something. This was a good feeling!

I also had a free day scheduled. Every Saturday, I would allow myself to do all the stuff that I couldn’t do during the week. I could finish reading every single web site and blog in about 2 hours on that day and it was just as much fun, but definitely taking less time than checking them twice a day. I guess batching works with blog reading, too!

After two weeks, I slowly slipped backed into my old habits, but I started to think about my tasks and their importance, and sometimes I can force myself to stop doing the easy things and start doing the hard ones! And this is promising, right? There is hope even for me!

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