The All-Purpose Recipe for Success

Five Ways to Get Things Finished

By Amy Barr, Lively Classical Guide at The Lukeion Project

It’s a new year and, for many, a new semester. Many of us, despite our current situation, feel a sense of optimism or at least hope that things will improve. This is certainly true if we can gain better control of our own habits. I’m far from expert in this area but I can let you in on a few secrets that help me run a Latin program, write blogs, and keep a mini farm fed and watered even while I get most weekends off. Here are a few ideas to help:

What Gets Scheduled Gets Done

I’m a big fan of my Full Focus Planner by Michael Hyatt. If you don’t want to get a version of his planner, find (or build) any system that works for you. Anyone who learns how scheduling priority tasks is the best method to finishing them will agree with another famous scheduler, Stephen Covey who said, “the key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.”

Each day I schedule my “Big 3” things to finish before my day is done. These goals must be bigger than something that takes only 5-10 minutes to complete and they should be in addition to other scheduled tasks, plus they must move you forward through your vast to-do list for the week. Each day and week I schedule Big 3 goals, then each quarter and year I have other scheduled priorities, my smaller goals all helping push me closer to completing grander annual goals.  

Most of you should start with just a daily Big 3. If you are a student, your Big 3 might be “prepare for and complete Latin quiz,” followed by “finish flash cards for chapter 11,” and then “complete outline for Friday’s essay.” If they are in your Big 3, don’t stop working until you finish, even if the actual deadline isn’t for several days. If you finish everything early, the extra time belongs to you! In other words, you are creating new deadlines for yourself and you are sticking to them.

Keep Sacrosanct Time Boundaries and Rewards

There are a variety of methods to keep one’s time boundaries firm in defense of others who might want to trounce all over them. Many of us have a friend or sibling who regularly gets us embroiled in epic level time-wasting! Your biggest enemy will likely be yourself. You might schedule an hour to work on something included in your Big 3 only to discover you just wasted that precious time on something foolish. How do you outwit your worst schedule enemy when he or she is yourself?

First, decide on a limited work period during which you will focus fully (25 minutes is a good starting point, some do better with 20, others with 35). Second, get rid of all time wasters. Visit the restroom, get a drink, put away your phone, get away from video, hide your favorite book, tune into music without words, etc. Finally, set a timer and keep working until you’ve completed the whole time period focused at your task (yes, start the timer again if you get distracted). Include a small celebration each time you successfully complete your whole time block without getting distracted. Stand up, stretch, watch a cat video, read a few pages of your book, whatever. Celebrate the little win. Take only 5 minutes and get back to it.

Now, repeat again and again. Soon you’ll discover that you have improved skills on focus and concentration so that sometimes you keep working past the little deadline without thinking about it. The Pomodoro Technique recommends that you give yourself an even bigger treat at the end of four sessions but, again, celebrate that win.    

Perfectionism is the Mother of Procrastination

I love to watch reality competitions in which skilled and creative people compete to make the best bake, best blown glass, best sword, or best creative project during a set period. Invariably there will be a competitor who laments (sometimes quite proudly) that he or she is a perfectionist. Isn’t that a good thing when you are competing for who’s best at something? Watch enough of these shows and you’ll discover that most perfectionist fall apart early in the fight. They struggle with time management and they lose perspective on priorities. Perfectionism is the mother of procrastination. They reason they should spend extra time on a certain detail because perfect is better! Prioritizing perfection over completion always has similar results. 

Completion is Always Better than Perfection

In these same reality competitions, expect to see contestants who—often through no particular fault of their own—will have everything fall apart for them: The bread doesn’t rise, the metal cracks, the glass breaks, they get conked in the head, or they turn an ankle. Perfectionist often give up at this point. “If it can’t be done perfectly,” they reason, “why do it at all?!” 

Nothing could be further from the truth. Life is so full of imperfection that you might as well snuggle up to it and make if your friend. Only finishers stay in the competition. Nobody cares how perfectly you start a task if it is never done. Completion wins over perfection, every time.

Positive Thinking as a Powerful Tool

I know (and am related to) a fair number of people who believe it is poor form to be too optimistic about anything. They prefer to take a dim view of the weather, their skills/talents, and their prospects. If everything falls apart, nobody can ever accuse them of being too optimistic, as though that is a bad thing. When looking at the future (a day, week, or year) there's no default. We must choose our outlook. We can choose to “hope for the best” or “plan for the worst.” Most of us do a bit of both. Let me encourage you to allow the pendulum to swing more frequently toward “hope for the best,” you’ll find that even when things don’t go as smoothly as you’d like, you’ll whether life better. In the long run, it is always better to be considered too optimistic. Give it a try.