• How to Double Your Productivity with the Escalation Principle

    by Alexander Becker on October 02, 2006 | Link

    You are bored? Do something else. You don't feel like working on your project right now? Choose a different one. The combined probability that all of your current projects are causing you headaches is much lower than that of any one offender. What do you feel like doing? Make sure that, whatever it is, it is in line and in accordance with your overall vision. When you come back, let's see what real work we can get done.

    Sometimes, progress comes to a sudden halt. Fatigue leads to procrastination. We all learn and teach, over and over, that baby steps are the cure to help overcome and solve stuck processes.

    The optimized version of baby steps is alternating, interleaving baby steps. There are lots of them and every single one counts.

    Certain types of work are not suited for extended time stretches. The successful completion of some tasks is dependent on factors like the time of day and the respective levels of energy while other tasks are best dealt with when broken down into smaller and smaller increments.

    The idea and the trick is to always have more than one project in progress. Ideally, you work simultaneously on multiple projects, as diverse as possible, at any one time. For fastest results, it pays off to tackle various aspects of the same job, always alternating and cycling between tasks until completion of the whole project.

    Even the most arduous task is eventually completed when progress is being made ever so slightly, provided you never give up.

    Choose two or more tasks that are unattractive, even repelling. Somehow these tasks are always important and often crucial steps on the path towards breathtaking success. Start working on one nasty part of your project and do so as long as you can stand it. Even if you are able to get only 5 minutes of productive work done, switch over to the next gruesome task. Grind away another 5 minutes and see if there is more resisting work to conquer and to ultimately defeat. The beauty of this approach is that in the end, you have two projects completed instead of one -- or even worse -- none.

    I completely understand and even preach that you ideally want to love your work and deal with it happily and peacefully. Yet, sometimes when your work doesn't seem to love you, and it is not possible to delegate or defer, who am I to not allow you to fight back and prevail. The objective is to leave the specific to-dos behind you in order to use the accomplishments as stepping stones leading to the bigger, broader tasks. Don't worry, it's absolutely just to put in whatever it takes to arrive at the destination where you deserve to be.

    To recapitulate: Work as long as you can on task #1 of your project, as soon as procrastination sets in, change to task #2, when you hit the wall, switch to task #3, instead of quitting and losing time, eventually continue with task #4 or even go back to task #1 of your outstanding work. Repeat.

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