☆ The Four Laws of Simplicity, and How to Apply Them to Life

The Four Laws of Simplicity, and How to Apply Them to Life

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. – Leonardo da Vinci

BY LEO BABAUTA

The problem with many books and guides on simplifying your clutter, your work life, your desk, your life, is that they are usually too darn complicated.

We need a simple method of simplifying.

It’s been nearly a decade since I first started trying to simplify my life, and in those years I’ve struggled with clutter, I’ve had surges and ebbs of complications and simplicity, I’ve tried dozens of methods of simplifying from as many sources. It’s been an interesting journey, although not one that I can recommend to everyone. If you’re looking to simplify a certain aspect of your life, you don’t want to go through that kind of confusion.

So I’ve boiled it down to a simple method of Four Laws of Simplicity (apologies to John Maeda) that you can use on any area of your life, and in fact on your life as a whole:

1. Collect everything in one place.

2. Choose the essential.

3. Eliminate the rest.

4. Organize the remaining stuff neatly and nicely.

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. – Confucius

To illustrate, let’s take a quick look at how to declutter a drawer. Let’s say this is the worst junk drawer in your home — it has take-out menus from restaurants that closed down a dozen years ago, manuals for computers that used DOS as their primary OS, tools that you have no idea how to use, more rubber bands, paper clips and chopsticks than you can ever use, mementos from your unfortunate foray into rubber stamp hobbying, souvenirs from that Mexico City trip you’d rather forget about, not to mention a funky smell that reminds you of gym class.

You could spend all day sorting through such a mess and still have a mess. (Or more likely, you’ll close the drawer and forget about it.) But let’s see how the 4-step method would be applied to our drawer:

1. Collect. Take out everything and put it in a pile. Empty the entire drawer, and pile it all on a counter or a table. Take everything out, down to the last paper clip.

2. Choose. Pick out only the few things you love and use and that are important to you. Just sort through the pile, picking out the really essential stuff. Be very selective. Put the important stuff you pick out into a separate, smaller pile.

3. Eliminate. Toss the rest out. You know you’ll never need those manuals again. Don’t be sentimental with this step. Either throw everything into a big trash bag, or find a new home for some of the items if you think someone might have a use for them — donate them to charity or give them to a friend who would love them. And yes, you have to toss out all the chopsticks.

4. Organize. Put back the essential things, neatly, with space around things. Clean the drawer out first, of course, and put the very small pile of things you chose back in the drawer, grouping like things together and leaving space around the groups. Having space around things makes everything look neater and simpler.

That’s it. You now have a very nice, simplified junk drawer, with (let’s hope) a much less funky smell.

This simple method can be applied to every area of your life. My suggestion is to focus on one area at a time, apply the method, and then move to the next area. So, if you just wanted to simplify a couple areas of your life, you could focus on one per week, but if you wanted to simplify your entire life, I’d do one area every couple of days until you’re done.

Here are some examples of how you could apply the above method to other areas of your life:

Closets. Focus on one area of the closet at a time — a shelf at a time for instance. Take everything off the shelf and put it in a pile on the floor. Pick out only the really important stuff that you love and use. Put the rest in a box to donate. Put the important stuff back on the shelf, grouping like things together and leaving space around the groups. You could use containers for groups of things, using clear containers and labeling them. Or just leave the shelves fairly empty, and get rid of most of your stuff. Move on to the next area. My suggestion is to leave the floor of your closet clear — it makes it look much nicer and simpler.

Your desk. Clear everything off the surface of your desk (excepting, perhaps, you computer and phone). For the surface of the desk, I would suggest only putting your inbox and a nice photo or two, and nothing else. Put supplies in a drawer, and file the papers. Toss out the rest. Then do the drawers of your desk the same way, one at a time, leaving space in each drawer. It’s so much more relaxing to work in a simplified environment. After you’re done with the desk, do your walls.

Your work tasks. Have a long to-do list (or a bunch of long context lists)? Spend a little time adding every task or project you can think of to your lists, until it’s as complete as you can (GTD’s brain dump works for this). Then choose only the tasks that you really want to do, or that will give you the absolute most long-term benefit, and put those on a separate, shorter list. The rest of the stuff? See if you can eliminate them, or delegate them, or at least put them on a someday/maybe list to be considered later. Then only focus on your short list, trying to choose the three most important things on the list to do each day.

Your commitments. Make a list of all your commitments in your life, from work to personal. Include hobbies, clubs, online groups, civic groups, your kids’ activities, sports, home stuff, etc. Anything that regularly takes up your time. Now pick out the few of those that really give you value, enjoyment, long-term benefits. Toss the rest, if possible. It might be difficult to do that, but you can get out of commitments if you just tell people that you don’t have the time anymore. This will leave you with a life that only has the commitments you really enjoy and want to do. Leave space around them, instead of filling up your life.

Your wardrobe. Do you really need 40 T-shirts? Or 40 pairs of shoes? How many jeans do you actually wear? One drawer or section of your closet at a time, put everything on your bed in a pile, choose the clothes you really love and actually wear on a regular basis, donate the rest, and put the ones you love back in your drawers or closet. Leave space around the clothes — don’t stuff your drawers full.

A room. If you’d like to simplify your cluttered rooms, start with the furniture. Which ones do you love and use? Get rid of the rest. Now clear every flat surface in the room, from counters to tables to shelves to desktops. Choose the stuff you love, and get rid of the rest. Leave the flat surfaces as clear as possible, only putting back a few choice objects. Now do the drawers and cabinets the same way. Also do everything on your floor that’s not a piece of furniture, leaving the floor as clear as humanly possible.

Your email inbox. Have an email inbox full of clutter? Dump all your emails in your inbox into a folder. Scan through the folder, choosing only a few to reply to and putting those in a separate folder. Delete or archive the rest.

As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness. – Henry David Thoreau

☆ Faith in Humanity: How to Bring People Closer, and Restore Kindness

Faith in Humanity: How to Bring People Closer, and Restore Kindness

BY LEO BABAUTA

The other day I was at the DMV here on Guam, renewing my registration for both my vehicles. I got there early, as I hate lines, but realized that I forgot an important document.

Well, the woman at the DMV saved me about an hour’s worth of driving and waiting in line by paying me a kindness … she accepted my registration by interpreting the regulations in a favorable way.

And that kindness just made my day.

It’s amazing what a little kindness can do for you. I drove away from the DMV with a great feeling, with a love for humanity, with a desire to do good for others and pay her kindness forward.

I’ve since paid my debt of gratitude forward in a bunch of ways, but it’s gotten me thinking about kindness and humanity in a broader sense. I have an enormous faith in humanity … but I think we all need to work to bring kindness back to our modern society.

While running with my sister at the local track yesterday, we were talking about kindness and courtesy in our society. My sister, Katrina, has noticed that people are less courteous and more rude to each other nowadays. They don’t say simple things like “Thank you” or open doors for each other or even smile at strangers.

I’m not sure if things on this front have gotten worse in recent years, but if it has, I suspect the change isn’t in people, it’s in the loss of a sense of community. It’s that we don’t come together enough, and are separated from each other in many ways.

The Effect of Anonymity
What happens when people get in cars and then converge on the roads? For some reason, they become rude, inconsiderate jerks (for the most part). But if these same people were to meet face-to-face, and have to spend time together and get to know each other, they would most likely make an attempt at being nice, at the very least.

When we’re in cars, we can barely see the other drivers. We certainly don’t care what they think, and we know they don’t know who we are. Sure, some people are considerate drivers, but for the most part, people are aggressive and uncaring when they’re in their cars.

That’s the effect of anonymity.

When we actually get to know people, we usually act differently. We want to be seen as good in other people’s eyes (the social component of the human animal), and as such, we’ll usually go out of our way to be nice — if we interact with the person on a personal level, not an anonymous level.

Our Divided Society
As my sister Katrina pointed out, our society is changing in a number of ways … all of them in some way dividing us as individuals:

1. Less religious. A much smaller proportion of our population is religious these days, which means fewer people are going to church. This means they don’t get together in the same way they used to, praying, doing community projects, getting to know each other. Some people may think that’s a good thing, as they are against organized religion, but the truth is that there hasn’t been a strong unifying non-secular organization emerge to take the place that church used to take in our community and in our lives.

2. Television and other media. Much more of our time is spent indoors these days, watching TV, playing video games, playing or working on the Internet, watching movies, etc. This means we are separated from each other. We don’t get together as a community anymore, we don’t play outside as much (or if we do, it’s in individual ways for the most part), we don’t meet face-to-face.

3. Car society. In the days of yore, people used to walk on the streets. People would see each other on the streets and say hi, stop and chat. Kids used to play in the streets. But cars have overrun our streets, and they are no longer safe for kids or pedestrians or bikes. We are forced into cars, because there’s no better way to get around (for the most part — in some cities, mass transit is a viable alternative, but not where I live). And when we’re in cars, as I mentioned above, we are separated from our fellow human beings.

Amish Barn Raising
When I think about ways we can come together as a community, to interact in more personal and positive ways, I think of the Amish barn raising tradition. The community comes together to help a family … this is the kind of tradition where people help each other out, get to know each other, and bond.

I think about that, and I wonder if there are ways we could get the community together, helping each other out. There are already some of these kinds of activities, such as community cleanups, Habitat for Humanity, other charity organizations, and the like. These are amazing ways to bring people together, in a common cause of helping others.

I’d like to see more of these kinds of things. I don’t have the answers, but I do know that if we make an effort to organize ways to help each other out, and come together, our communities will be better off. People will get to know each other, and will be kinder to each other.

That’s my hope, at least.

My Faith in Humanity
Call me naive or hopelessly optimistic, but I have a very positive view of humanity. Sure, we see greed and rudeness and abuse and selfishness every day. But I believe that’s more a symptom of the systems in our society, rather than of an evil human race.

I have faith in humanity.

I often leave my car doors unlocked. I carry cash around, just ready for a mugger to take it from me. I give money to people who say they need it, if I have it, not worrying about whether they’ll spend it on food or drugs or whatever.

Recently a reader asked for a way to buy the Zen To Done ebook in some other way than PayPal. I didn’t have a good way to do that, so I emailed him the book and asked him to mail me a check — having faith that he’d do it. Not only did he mail me a check, but he added an extra $40 to the total, with a note that the extra money was for copies he planned to give to friends and for my hard work here at Zen Habits.

That guy made my day. He proved that my faith in humanity is justified. I keep his note in the book I’m reading as a bookmark, so that I see it several times a day.

You guys, the readers of Zen Habits, are incredibly giving, kind, encouraging, supportive, generous.

I meet people every day who are friendly, who do me kindnesses, who lift my spirits.

Humanity is a wonderful thing. People are amazing, beautiful creatures.

What we need are ways to bring out the best in people. To bring them together. To have them help each other, instead of trying to outdo each other.

We need freer systems, instead of the authoritarian ones that oppress us now. We need cooperative systems, instead of the competitive ones we have now. We need unifying systems, instead of the divisive ones that exist today.

We need change. And as Gandhi famously said, “We must be the change we want to see in the world.”

I hope to be that change. I hope you will too.

Pay It Forward, Zen Habits edition
So how can I start this change, in some small way, and have it have little ripples throughout the world?

There are so many ways, but I’m going to take a page from Oprah. She did a “Pay It Forward” episode where she gave 300 audience members $1,000 each, with a camcorder and a challenge to spend the money on charity or individuals in acts of kindness. (See also: Pay It Forward Foundation)

I do not have $1,000 to give away, let alone $300,000. So I ask myself, “Self, what do I have that I can give to people?” And self answered: you have an ebook, and you have blog traffic that you can use to help smaller bloggers. Neither of those are amazing gifts, but they’re small acts of kindness that I’d like to give away.

Here’s how I’ll do that:

1. Free ebooks. The first 30 people who comment on this post, asking for an ebook, will get a free Zen To Done ebook emailed to them. All you have to do, in the comment, is say that you promise to pay the gift forward with some act of kindness to another person (not a relative) in your community. The act can be small or big, and you don’t have to specify what it is. I will trust you to do it.

2. Link to your blog. I can’t link to every blogger in the world, but I would like to link to some who will return the favor with an act of kindness in the real world. All you have to do is write a post on your blog explaining what kind of kindness you’ll do to pay it forward, and link to this post. If your link doesn’t appear in the trackbacks section below (next to the comments), email me to let me know about your post (zenhabits at the gmail). If it appears in the trackbacks, I’ll see it, so don’t email me. In a few days, I will link up to all the bloggers who linked to me in a new post, called “The Bloggers of Kindness”. I can’t guarantee a lot of traffic, but it’s the best I can do.

3. Just be kind. If you aren’t a blogger or don’t need an ebook, you can still participate. If you read and enjoy this blog, consider Zen Habits and the time I spend on it my gift to you … and just pay it forward with an act of kindness in your community, to an individual or charity. And ask those people to pay it forward to others, and to continue that chain of kindness as far as possible.

Here’s Ben Franklin on this concept:

I do not pretend to give such a Sum; I only lend it to you. When you […] meet with another honest Man in similar Distress, you must pay me by lending this Sum to him; enjoining him to discharge the Debt by a like operation, when he shall be able, and shall meet with another opportunity. I hope it may thus go thro’ many hands, before it meets with a Knave that will stop its Progress. This is a trick of mine for doing a deal of good with a little money.

☆ How to Doggedly Pursue Your Dreams in the Face of Naysayers

How to Doggedly Pursue Your Dreams in the Face of Naysayers

BY LEO BABAUTA

What do you do if you have a dream, but everyone around you keeps telling you to be more realistic and to give up the dream? What if they want you to pursue a more “sensible” and traditional career route?

You ignore them. You shut out the naysayers, and you stay focused on your dream.

It’s the only way. Because in our lives, we will always have naysayers, we will always have negative people, and if we listen to them, we will never pursue our dreams.

Today we’ll look at how to do that, and to make those dreams a reality.

Reader Valerie asked me recently:

I’m barely 17 (turning 18 next February), and I have set goals for my life. But in the world that we live in, where everyone’s encouraged to get a steady job, find someone to settle down with, and have a family, I rarely find support for my “crazy” dreams. I want to live in Hong Kong, work in the fashion industry, and I refuse to get married before I turn 30, if I even find someone to marry.

I know that my goals and dreams are completely in my grasp, but with all these speeches about “the real world” that people my age hear constantly, I tend to doubt myself a lot. How can I stay true to myself and stay motivated?

Look at Valerie: she has a dream, and she’s ready to take the plunge, to take a risk, to change her life just to make that dream come true. She knows what she wants, she has a plan, she’s willing to do more than most of us are willing to do to get what she wants.

And yet, she has doubts, because dreams such as hers are not considered realistic. Those doubts, my friends, are what will stop any of us from achieving our dreams.

Doubts are The Enemy
We all have doubts, and they’re unavoidable. And sometimes, it’s good to be realistic, because you need to be able to analyze whether a dream is achievable or not.

But if the only thing stopping you is fears and doubts, and not some insurmountable obstacle, then you need to banish those fears and doubts.

Why? Because a doubt, as innocuous as it may seem at first, has a way of creeping its way into your subconscious, into the depths of your heart, like some kind of black and evil creature that has infiltrated your body. The doubt lingers at the back of your head, without you being aware of it, and will eventually conquer your dreams if you let it.

And when this happens, the doubt is more powerful than you realize. When you are making the tough decisions, like whether to apply for college or to go off to Hong Kong and pursue your dreams, your dreams will lose out, because of that doubt in the back of your head. When you think about yourself, your self-image will not be of that person you want to be, but the person that others want you to be.

Doubts will keep you in a job you hate, just because you’re afraid to go do what you really want to do. Doubts will keep you with a person who abuses you, because you don’t think you deserve better.

How to Banish Doubts in Three Steps
As doubts are so insidious, how do you beat them? It’s three simple steps, but each one is a bit more difficult than they sound:

1. Become aware. Doubt gets its power mostly because it is in our subconscious, and we’re not aware of the effects it has on us. Instead, we have to bring it to the forefront of our minds. And that means concentrating on our thoughts, and trying to search out those doubts and negative thoughts as they come up. The ones that say, “Maybe I can’t do this. Maybe it’s not realistic.” If you make a conscious effort to be aware of these doubts, you can catch them and beat them.
2. Squash the doubt. Once you’ve become aware of the doubt, imagine that the doubt is an ugly little bug. Now step on it, and squash it with the bottom of your shoe. Not literally, of course, but in your mind. Exterminate it. Do not let it live and spread!
3. Replace it with something positive. Now that you’ve squashed the doubt, replace it with positive thoughts. It sounds corny, but trust me, this works: think to yourself, “I can do this! Others have done it, and so can I! Nothing will stop me.” Or something along those lines, appropriate to whatever it is you’re doing.

You have to continue to be vigilant, and be aware of your doubts before they stop you cold in your tracks. This is a constant process as you pursue your dreams, not a one-time thing. Doubts, like insects, will continue to come back, even after you’ve killed the first wave or two. You can’t let them thrive and overcome you.

What to Do About Naysayers
So what about those external negative factors — the naysayers? Those friends and family and people in authority who tell you to stop dreaming, to be realistic, to take a more traditional path? Those who tell you that you can’t do something?

You have to learn to block them out. Or, if you have a contrarian streak in you, learn to let those naysayers fuel your determination — make it your desire to prove the naysayers wrong!

How do you block out naysayers? The same way you block out doubts and negative thoughts in your own head: you squash them. OK, don’t literally squash another person. But when they say something negative, or something that is likely to cause doubts in your head, take that thought (in your head) and squash it. Then replace it with something positive.

If someone is constantly bringing you down and constantly making you feel like you can’t do something, you might consider removing them from your life. This sounds drastic, and it can be, but the truth is that having a life full of negative people will drag you down to their level, and stop you from doing what you want to do. I’m not saying you should get a divorce or never see your mother again (if they’re the naysayers), but I am saying that you should pick your friends carefully.

Instead, surround yourself with positive, encouraging people. If you have friends like that, you can do anything.

How to Take the Plunge
So you’ve blocked out the naysayers, you’ve learned to become aware of your doubts and to squash them … and you’re ready to pursue your dreams.

But you’re afraid to take the plunge.

It can be very helpful to do a lot of research and to carefully plan your plunge. But once you’ve done that research and planning, you still have to take the plunge. How do you do that?

Imagine that you need to swim out to a boat on a lake, and you’re standing on the dock, looking down at the icy cold water. You are afraid to dive into that water, but you know you need to take that plunge to get to your boat. So how do you do it? Do you go in one toe at a time? Do you stand there for awhile, waiting for the right moment? Do you wait for someone to give you a push?

No. You have to just do it — just dive in! You’ve already done all the thinking you need to do. Just dive in.

Once you’re in, it’ll be freezing, but you’re in. You now have no choice but to swim to the boat. And once you’ve gotten to the boat, you’ll be glad you took that plunge.

That’s how it is with your dreams. You can’t wait for the right moment to come along, or for someone to give you a push, or for the lake to heat up. Just dive right in!

Once you’re in, you’re committed, and you have to go for it. You don’t want to turn back once you’ve taken the plunge. Now you’re more likely to achieve your dreams.

So plan it out, do your research … but when you’re ready, just dive right in. And don’t look back.

How to Stay Motivated
How do you keep your motivation levels high in the face of adversity and obstacles that are sure to come up? Motivation goes up and down, and comes in waves. It’s impossible to keep it high all the time.

Here are a few suggestions:

1. Keep the end in mind. Have a clear picture in your head of exactly how you want your dream to turn out in the end. Know where you’ll be, what it’ll look like, how it will feel. Know exactly what needs to happen for your dream to be a success — how will you know you’ve arrived? Keep this clear picture in your head as much as possible.
2. Stay focused. Don’t get distracted by other goals or pursuits. If you are tempted to pursue other dreams, do so only with the awareness that you are abandoning your current dream, at least for now. If you don’t want to do that, then fight off the temptation of those other pursuits. For now, just stick with this one goal.
3. Get inspired. Who else is achieving this dream, or other dreams? Read about them, talk to them, email them. Go to websites that inspire you. Read books that inspire you. Inspiration is one of the keys to achieving any dream.
4. Celebrate any success. Anything, however small, that you achieve is a cause for joyous celebration. Really. If you’re writing a novel, and you’ve created a great character sketch, celebrate! If you’ve written your first few paragraphs, celebrate! Your dream will be achieved in baby steps, not in leaps and bounds. Every step is a cause for celebration … with enough steps, you’ll get there.

☆ Haiku Productivity: Limit Your Projects to Achieve Completion

Haiku Productivity: Limit Your Projects to Achieve Completion

BY LEO BABAUTA

How many projects do you have on your projects list? How many balls can you keep in the air?

I submit that the more projects you have, the less likely you are to complete each one. And the reverse is also true: the fewer projects you have, the more likely you are to complete them.

If you recall my Haiku Productivity post (subtitle: The Fine Art of Limiting Yourself to the Essential), I recommended that you set limits for everything you do … forcing yourself to choose only the most essential, and nothing more. Three Most Important Tasks a day, and One Goal, were a couple of the keys to Haiku Productivity.

Today, I recommend that you limit yourself to three projects. Only three.

This application of Haiku Productivity may be one of the most useful and powerful (along with the two I mentioned above), transforming your ability to get projects done from one of juggling to one of focused completion.

Why Haiku Productivity Projects are powerful
Aside from our goals, our projects are one of the most fundamental and important units of our work (and personal) lives. Our ability to complete projects makes a big difference in our lives.

Sure, it’s good to knock a bunch of tasks off our lists … and I’ll acknowledge that (as David Allen says) we cannot “do projects” but only do actions. But doing an action only gets us a step further toward completing something major. We can complete a whole host of random actions without actually completing something major.

Projects are much bigger steps toward something major — and in fact are often the major things themselves. If you get a project done, you’ve done something worthwhile, something notable, something that will gain you recognition and satisfaction and long-term benefits. A task can’t do that.

And so, our ability to complete projects is something that can have a major effect on our lives. If we can get projects done, we can change the world.

It starts with completing tasks, of course, but completing projects means that you’re completing tasks with a focus on what you really want to get done, not just doing random acts of activity. So let’s figure out how to get projects done.

Why too many projects is a problem
Take out your project list, and count the number of projects on the list. If you don’t have a project list, take a few minutes to make a quick one: all the projects in your life, from getting your car fixed to finishing that report to planning that party to training for that marathon. Anything that takes multiple actions.

If you have a long list, there are several likely scenarios (or variations on these):

• You’re getting a few of the projects done but some have been on the list for a little while and a few have been on there for a long while. The ones that have been on there longer are nagging on your psyche, and stressing you out a bit.
• You’re doing them GTD-style, with a next-action for each one written on one of your context to-do lists, so that you’re always moving each project forward. Each day, you try to do as many of the next-actions on your context lists as possible, but of course you can only do 3-7 of them a day (unless they’re really small) and so your entire list of projects is moving along glacially, with new projects being added daily. The project list grows longer, and very few projects are getting done.
• You’re juggling a whole bunch of projects, and having a hard time managing all of them, and not completing many. More projects keep being added. It’s really stressing you out.
• You’ve got timelines and actions for each project, but because of the large number of projects, you are constantly pushing the timelines back, which stresses you out.

There may be other scenarios. And then, you may be able to have a long project list and complete all of them without problem, and not get stressed out. If so, you probably don’t need this article. :)

In any case, you can see how a long project list can lead to stress and a lack of completion of any of them.

How Haiku Producitivity Projects Works
So the rule of Haiku Productivity Projects is to choose the three projects you most want to get done soon. Perhaps the most important projects, or perhaps the ones you’re almost finished with, or some combination. But choose three, and only three.

But why not just one project? If you read the second paragraph of this article carefully, you saw that I said ” the fewer projects you have, the more likely you are to complete them.” The logical conclusion, of course, is that one project at a time is the best — you’re sure to complete it!

And this is true. But imagine that to finish this project, you’re waiting on information or an action from someone else. And you know this happens all the time. So in this case, if you only had one project, you’d be stalled with nothing to do but read Zen Habits (what a shame that would be!).

So pick three projects: if one gets stalled, you can work on another. Although I’m not a fan of multi-tasking at the task level, I recommend multi-tasking at the project level (but then “multi-tasking” would be a misnomer … let’s coin a word: “multi-projecting”). But only on a limited basis: too much multi-projecting leads to incompletion and stress.

So three projects. Start with a new index card (or blank text file, or whatever you use to make lists), and write “Three Projects” at the top. Then list your three projects, with the desired outcome next to each (“submit to editor”, “email finished code to team leader”, “make my Porsche look like new”, “beat Fred323 at WoW Level 70”).

Below that, I have an “On Deck” lineup of the next projects that will go on my Three Projects list. This list can grow long, but I don’t work on any of them or worry about any of them until I’ve crossed out all three projects on my Three Projects list.

Then: you focus only on those Three Projects until they’re completed. Work in bursts to make sure you get them done. Really focus on them. Worry about nothing else. Even put off your routine daily tasks until later in the day, after you’ve worked hard on at least one of your three projects. See if you can get all three done this week. Clear off an entire day to complete one project. Make sure that most of your Three Most Important Tasks (MITs) each day are tasks that move one or more of these projects forward.

Do what it takes to complete all three.

Then go to your On Deck list, and choose the next three.

Why Haiku Productivity Projects works
It works because it allows you to focus, and thus to complete. It works because it forces you to choose the most important projects, and to put the rest on hold until those three are completed.

It works because you’re not letting all the new, incoming stuff put the more important stuff on hold.

It works because it simplifies project management greatly, and focuses on the essential.

But what if you don’t control your projects?
There are some of you who have your projects set by your boss, and can’t just decide to do only three and put the rest on hold.

If so, you might not be able to apply Haiku Productivity to your projects. But before you decide that’s the case, consider whether you can do one of these strategies:

• Accept as many projects as your boss gives you (or alternatively, as few as you can), but focus only on finishing three of them over the next few days (or over the next week). Surely your boss can’t expect you to complete your entire project list in a few days.
• Talk to your boss and tell him you are really trying to work on completing your projects, rather than just incrementally moving them along. Tell him you want to focus on just a few at a time, get them done, and then focus on the next few. He’ll probably like this idea, if you really execute it. Allow him to choose the three he’d like you to focus on first.
• Alternatively, if your boss piles more stuff on you, when your list is already full, show him your project list and ask him to choose which you should work on, and which you should put on hold, realizing that you only have a finite amount of time to work on them. Or at least ask him which three are the most important right now. If he won’t let you choose, then choose yourself.
• If none of the above strategies work, still just focus on three, but when your boss asks for progress on the others, renegotiate to get more time on those while you complete the first three. He’ll be happy when you get the three done, so there shouldn’t be a problem.