It’s true! Work expands to fill any container you set for it. However, the key is in how you control it, and I know just what makes the difference.
I give my best tips:
- How to accomplish a lot by daily sprints.
- Why CONSTRAINING your resource is a good thing.
- How to build a habit of reaching your sprint goals.
When you build a habit to get things done, it feels awesome!
– David Wood
To find out more about Chris Dorris and view the full episode, go to https://christopherdorris.com/mental-toughness-podcast-tough-talks/
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– TRANSCRIPT –
David Wood: [00:00:00] Let’s suppose you and I sat down today and we’re going to do a sprint. We’ve put time in our calendar. Two hour blocks, nine to 11 every morning, we’re going to do sprints. This is where we turn off messaging. We can’t get pinged by anything. There’s a sign on our door. Family knows about it.
We’re all set to do something. We constrain our resource by giving ourself only two hours. And we set a specific goal. We’re not going to just work on the website for two hours. Two hours I will have a draft website with bio photos, pain points and benefits. I’ll list those four things. And then I would constrain it even further.
25 minute sprints. That’s all I got for those. Now I’m going to do the first 25 minutes sprint. I will draft my bio complete draft, bad draft. It doesn’t matter, but I’ll have a draft of my bio 25 minutes. Go. Timer is set. That’s going to get done that shit’s going to get done. Might not be a good job, but it’s going to be done.
And I know if I don’t get it done, I’ll be late on my second goal the second sprint is where I choose the images and I get them up on the web. I’ve got twenty-five minutes. Chris game on. No game on. Now what’ll happen because the human mind is like a monkey on crack. What’ll happen is you write it down.
You’ve turned everything off, but you haven’t turned the mind off. So you might find, as you went to send an email to someone, you saw an email and now you’re responding to them. That’s fine. You want to catch yourself? This is about awareness, but you wouldn’t even know if you hadn’t built a time constraint with a very specific goal.
You’d just be walking. You’d be busy. This makes you look at it. And you’ll be like, oh my God, how did I get? Now I’m responding to John Lee Dumas, his offer of a free journal and whatever. And I’m putting in my shipping address. David step away from the shiny object. I’ll say it out loud. Step away, sir. So I back off and I get back to what’s written down in front of me because I’ve got to just say it.
You say it to yourself. I say it out loud. Step away from the shiny object. One, one podcast hosts was calling the monkey treats. If the human mind is like a monkey on crack there’s a monkey on crack. There’s a monkey treat. And another thing I do sometimes is I’ll cowork. I’ll have someone on the line with me and we’ll set what we’re going to do.
And in two hours, we’re going to check in and I don’t want the embarrassment. I’ve had it multiple times, but you show up a few times and realize, holy crap. I said, I do this and I got a quarter of it done because I did a bunch of other stuff. Now, maybe some of that other stuff was useful. Maybe it wasn’t, but I’m like, David, you can’t speak.
And then have it happen in the world. You cannot do that. It’s not happening. So what are you going to do? So I’ll change it up the next time I change it up again. I’m getting better. You build a habit of actually nailing something in a sprint, and then it feels awesome. At the end of two hours, you said you do four tasks, you got all four done.
It feels really good. And I want listeners to have that feeling at the end of every day. And at the end of every quarter, and at the end of every year, I said, what I do.
