I have a new toy. Courtesy of Minimal Mac I have a new productivity tool on my iPhone – tenplustwo. It is based on an old Merlin Mann productivity hack, which I have be inspired to revisit here.
In one of the less original names around, Mann’s (10+2)*5 Hack is a clever way to squeeze some quality concentration out of yourself, whilst still allowing some time for procrastination/internet-faffery.
Read the article yourself, but as a quick crib sheet:
- Use a timer;
- Focus on doing work for just 10 minutes. That’s all. But NO faffing;
- Have two minutes doing anything you like;
- Repeat 5 times; and
- You have now got 50 minutes solid concentration out of yourself out of an hour.
And the iPhone app does this with nice friendly pictures/colours/fonts. An impressive combination of theory and practice. What more could you want on a Monday morning.
Want to know the interesting thing? It doesn’t help me whatsoever. Not a jot. My ‘effective concentration’ – ie. how long my concentration manifests itself as ‘doing stuff’ rather than ‘blankly staring at stuff’ – is WAY less than 10 minutes, and it was interesting to find that out. If I actually spend 8 WHOLE MINUTES trying to do one thing, then it will take me twice as long to complete it (no, that isn’t 20 minutes. Think about it).
It is that distraction that helps me get stuff done. If I just sat here and and tried only to write (this IS technically writing) this post, then it would take me around two hours. However, if I carry on as normal I’ll still get it done in 2 hours, but will also have got my inbox to zero (of course I would), made a couple of phone calls, and read a couple of RSS feeds. Which would you take?
I could make the 10 minutes less to match my strobe-like attention span. I think the optimum would be 1 minute ‘doing’ and 12 second break. But I’m dyslexic, so it takes me most of the break to work out that it is time to break. Not really an option.
What I have realised is that it is the constant flicking between things of interest that makes me productive. And this is a personal thing. I need to be spending a minute on this, then a minute on that. What turns ‘doing’ into ‘producing’ is making sure that there is a fair amount of tasks amongst the things I am flicking between. As I complete them, then I must replace them with other nurtrition, rather than the junk food of RSS and filling other people’s inboxes with viral crap.
Great. I use the (10+2)*5 to give me prompts that I should be checking that my ‘protfolio’ is spead appropriately – enough work, and enough play.
So what are your action points from reading this? Well, try these:
- Read Merlin’s article
- Try the (10+2)*5 hack yourself
- Whether it works or not, think how it changed what you normally do – what did you learn?
