Today’s MicroTask is proofreading a post I HAD started yesterday. I don’t usually proofread or do a second draft, though I am warming to the practice now that I am seeing the advantage to working in multiple small steps. For someone as impatient as me, this is a big transition.

The day started with a meeting, when I drove to a local coffee shop to drop off of wine for a local art award show. I figured I might as well stay and try to do some work while I was there.

But what to do for a micro task? I checked my mail and looked at blog traffic, and saw my unfinished post from yesterday. Why not “just read it” in a manner similar to “just looking into the box” yesterday? And so it was decided. Not having the MicroTask form available to write on, I used an index card from my bag.

There was a momentary struggle with focus as I forced myself to start rereading the article. I immediately saw a problem with phrasing, and fell into improving it the flow. After a couple of hours, I had a stronger draft (I’ll review it a third time tomorrow), and also got in a few improvements on the MicroTask sheet itself. The day was capped by a work session followed by a curry dinner with friends. All in all, a rather productive day.

It seems that my microtasks, as annoying small as they had first seemed, are actually gateways into doing some useful work. There’s something in the back of my mind that is yelling out warnings, though, about how losing one’s self in tasks of small consequence is a waste of potential, but this feeling of getting things done by merely having the guts to LOOK at them and letting my mind get to work feels very good. Learning to pick the right mindset for a given situation may be a good way to learn how to harness those good feelings in service of sustainable productivity.

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Today’s MicroTask is even tinier than yesterday’s: Look inside a box.

There has been a large box full of paper samples sitting in my living room for a couple of months. It’s been a symbol both of future project excitement and how much I dislike clutter. I’d avoided looking inside the box because I wasn’t ready to kick off that project.

Looking around for today’s microtask, I spied the paper box for the zillionth time, uglying-up the corner of the living room. “I’ll just look inside the box,” I told myself. I winced inwardly as I wrote this down, thinking it to be a ridiculously small task. It felt STUPIDLY small, but small is the criteria of this month’s challenge.

So I looked inside the box. I found a book I’d been looking for, Ray Oldenburg’s The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community. I also found an envelope full of carbonless copy paper, which you can get digitally printed these days; I’d been thinking that might be the basis of a fun product. Underneath that were several labeled 12×19″ envelopes with the paper samples that I remembered, and under the envelopes was a thick block of more paper. I figured they must be extra samples that didn’t make it into the envelopes.

“I should probably make a list of the paper samples here,” I thought, seeing that each envelope had a code identifying its contents. So I started sorting through them manually, discovering that what I thought were extra samples were actually 20 more samples from three other paper mills. Neato!

I immediately thought that I should cut the samples up and assemble paper testing kits, then send them to fountain pen aficionados like this guy to gather their opinions. Assembling kits would mean assembling envelopes and addresses, which would mean I needed to ship them all out. That would be a good reason to give Endicia, the digital postage service, a workout. Which would mean I finally could use the digital postage scale that has been lurking in the basement for a year.

I went into the basement to look for the scale, and saw my old ink jet printer, a wide Canon iX6520. “I wonder if I can print on 12×19 inch paper with this thing,” I wondered, and to my surprise the carriage was wide enough. That meant I could print an identifying code on the papee, which I could cut into smaller strips, and then pack into an envelope for mailing. While I was in the basement, I checked to see if my rotary paper cutter would work, but it was not wide enough. So I got on Amazon and ordered a CARL 18″ rotary cutter (was tempted by the more expensive Dahle and Rotatrim, but didn’t give in); my dinky old cutter will get donated to someone who needs it for smaller papercraft. I just have to wait a couple of days for it to arrive.

I am somewhat amazed that starting with just “look in a box” led to a burst of chained productive activity. It felt good, and even better I didn’t spend a lot of time planning my day to death. Could all my work be this drama-free and still yield meaningful reward?

Today I also had a pretty big insight on the nature between MISSION and CONNECTION as motivating forces, but I’ll save that for another day.

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Today’s MicroTask seems so tiny that I’m almost embarrassed by it. It’s just adding some content to Project 1404, my music composition 10-year goal. I’d been thinking about how to start it, first buying a book. I realized recently that the monthly piano karaoke I’ve been doing probably counts as well, as I’m being exposed to a lot of music that I otherwise would not be aware of.

So that took about five minutes to do. I actually feel good at having made some progress, but before that I felt that this micro task was SO SMALL I should feel embarrassed about it. Why do I have this attitude? Interested readers can delve into my thoughts on this after the jump. (more…)

Today’s MicroTask comes at the end of a lazy morning. After processing several thoughts related to procrastination, I finally picked something: schedule an eye exam. I have been putting this off for…sheesh, three years?!? Has it been that long? Do I hate using the phone that much? This fits with the pursue greater health and strength goal for the year. Heck, tomorrow I might even go to the gym!

pause

Ha ha ha! But seriously, maybe I will. Micro tasks are about making SMALL bits of progress, incomplete and seemingly insignificant in themselves, but building toward a payoff in the annoyingly-distant future. It feels like having a single ant for breakfast, if I were an aardvark.

More thoughts about how I’ve been feeling about goals, particularly being trapped by them, are after the jump. (more…)

As I wrote in my last groundhog day resolutions review, this month I am going to see how I like making very small amounts of progress. I tend to like to complete things in one pass, so forcing myself to take things step-by-step will either teach me new levels of patience, or I will go insane.

I’m calling these small steps “Micro Tasks”, and as I describe on the Microtask Challenge Page they have the following characteristics:

• Any tangible step I can take quickly, in around 15 minutes
• Is NOT complete in itself
• When combined with something else, becomes part of a finished piece of work.
• Is related to one of my 2015 Goals

Today being the first day, I blanked on what to do. How do I even take a tiny step? So in the spirit of doing something quickly, I made a daily worksheet that had my goals printed on them. I reused some clipart from my friend Brad Fitzpatrick, sized it to fit two on a page, and boom. Done. Actually, it took about an hour, but I feel at least I’m moving.

Impressions and Observations

• It took longer than I thought it would take, maybe an hour.
• Maybe what matters more is that I only took a couple of minutes to decide what to do. And then, with that goal set, I forgot about the future.
• I feel kind of antsy still, wanting to do something more to the sheet, but I am deliberately not doing it.
• I wish I had a color printer that didn’t waste so much ink. Suppressing desire to research and price toner-based color laser printers.
• At a loss at what to do next. Oh, I printed out my goals on the worksheet. I am creating and sharing by writing this blog post, but that category is really for fun things related to my other interests, through really short posts and pictures.
• A new rule I need to make is do just one thing toward the goals. Perhaps I need to make another worksheet for the personal project goals too.

That’ll do it for now!

UPDATE: Here’s the sheet at the end of the day.

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