Speaker 1: You and I are finite beings, my friend. That's a
Speaker 1: pretty abstract concept until you think about just how much
Speaker 1: stuff we need to get done every day. Oliver Berkman,
Speaker 1: who's a Guardian columnist and best selling author, says, the
Speaker 1: amount of things that we could potentially do every day
Speaker 1: is by definition infinite, and a finite being with an
Speaker 1: infinitely long to do list is not a happy being.
Speaker 1: This causes most of us to start our days feeling
Speaker 1: like we're in productivity debt and our to do list
Speaker 1: is our ticket back to zero, back to a clean
Speaker 1: balance sheet. But according to Oliver, this is really a
Speaker 1: ticket to misery. So how has Oliver done a mental
Speaker 1: reframe on his days to lead to a happier but
Speaker 1: still productive life.
Speaker 2: My name is doctor Amantha Imba.
Speaker 1: I'm an organizational psychologist and the founder of behavioral science
Speaker 1: consultancy Inventium, and this is how I work, a show
Speaker 1: about how.
Speaker 2: To help you do your best work.
Speaker 1: On today is my Favorite Tip episode, we go back
Speaker 1: to an interview from the past and I pick out
Speaker 1: my favorite tip from the interview. In today's show, I
Speaker 1: speak with Oliver Berkman and we start by talking about
Speaker 1: Oliver's done list and why he created one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that is an incredibly simple notion. That is just
Speaker 3: the idea that in addition to all these lists that
Speaker 3: we keep our systems, that we have to tell us
Speaker 3: and organize all the things we have not yet done,
Speaker 3: the sort of terrible weight of the not yet completed things.
Speaker 3: Cut yourself some slack, keep a list that you add
Speaker 3: to of the things that you complete, right, keep keep
Speaker 3: a record of what you do. Some of the ways
Speaker 3: that people organize there there to do is will naturally
Speaker 3: create these, Right if you're sort of moving things among
Speaker 3: columns on a can ban board or something like that,
Speaker 3: you're going to naturally come up with a list of
Speaker 3: completed items. But if you're the just have a sort
Speaker 3: of regular to do list, like keep one other list
Speaker 3: where you literally write something down every time you've you've
Speaker 3: crossed it off one list, or even if you wasn't
Speaker 3: on that list, you know, if you do it, write
Speaker 3: it on the done list. I think you know, on
Speaker 3: the simplest level, it's just nice to remind yourself that
Speaker 3: that you sort of almost always, even when you feel
Speaker 3: like a day didn't go very productively, you actually probably
Speaker 3: did a whole lot of stuff. It's incredibly easy to
Speaker 3: forget the sort of number of genuinely worthwhile things that
Speaker 3: you did on a subtler level. I think it helps
Speaker 3: challenge this notion that a lot of people have and
Speaker 3: that I certainly am still to some extent afflicted by
Speaker 3: that you sort of start each morning in a condition
Speaker 3: of what I called productivity debt. You know that like
Speaker 3: you owe it to yourself or maybe to your boss
Speaker 3: or something to like to sort of pay off this
Speaker 3: debt through being productive, and hopefully on a really good
Speaker 3: day you might get back up to like zero balance.
Speaker 3: You might get yourself out of overdraft and out of
Speaker 3: debt and back to zero, which is a really kind
Speaker 3: of I mean, there are lots of reasons for it,
Speaker 3: but it's a really unfortunate and self punishing way to
Speaker 3: frame work. And it's tied into all these kind of
Speaker 3: ideas that people have about their self worth and about
Speaker 3: the idea that they're not really justifying their existence on
Speaker 3: the planet. Not really don't really have a right to
Speaker 3: exist unless they unless they sort of pull off a
Speaker 3: certain amount of tasks. Obviously, people are in jobs where
Speaker 3: they do, in another sense, have to do a certain
Speaker 3: amount of tasks to get paid, but in this existential sense,
Speaker 3: you know, I think a lot of people have, certainly
Speaker 3: me historically, have tied up their sense of sort of
Speaker 3: basic adequacy as a human with how productive they're being.
Speaker 3: And the great thing about a done list is it
Speaker 3: sort of rewires this a bit, and it helps you
Speaker 3: to think, well, how about you start the morning at
Speaker 3: zero and everything that you do is extra, like it's
Speaker 3: a deposit into your productivity bank account instead of just
Speaker 3: paying off a debt. Why not think about it that way?
Speaker 3: Why not think that you're absolutely enough as you are,
Speaker 3: and then if you manage to do a whole lot
Speaker 3: of cool things today, that's all extra and it's all great.
Speaker 2: That's so cool.
Speaker 1: I love that reframe because I've never been able to
Speaker 1: consistently keep a done list, even though I really like
Speaker 1: the advice and interesting. I've recently changed my workflow around
Speaker 1: how I managed tasks, and I was listening to you
Speaker 1: talk about your to do this strategy and the long
Speaker 1: list and the short list, or I think in the
Speaker 1: book you referred to it as an open list and
Speaker 1: a closed list, which really yeah, which really resonated with me,
Speaker 1: And I've recently someone put me onto this software called Motion. Annoyingly,
Speaker 1: there are two calendar software is called Motion and for
Speaker 1: anyone that is interested, it's Usemotion dot io dot com.
Speaker 1: And how it works is that you have your combines
Speaker 1: your task list and I guess this would be the
Speaker 1: well I guess the closed list with your calendar, so
Speaker 1: you're seeing both on the same screen and you enter
Speaker 1: your tasks on the left hand side, and you assign
Speaker 1: an approximate time of how long they would take to complete,
Speaker 1: and then you drag and drop them into your calendar,
Speaker 1: so it sort of automatically timeboxes for you in terms
Speaker 1: of that task then becomes a meeting with yourself and
Speaker 1: then when you finish the task, like normally, what would
Speaker 1: happen if you were just doing normal timeboxing is time
Speaker 1: would pass and you would have.
Speaker 2: Finished the task. But with this, you actually get to
Speaker 2: ticket off and it stays in your calendar, but it's
Speaker 2: kind of grade out, so like you get to the
Speaker 2: end of the day and you feel that sense of
Speaker 2: achievement or progress because everything you've completed is still there,
Speaker 2: but it's ticked off, and you get to tick it
Speaker 2: off as you go through your day, which also you
Speaker 2: know it's just good in terms of giving you that
Speaker 2: dopamine hit as you go throughout it. But it's also
Speaker 2: good in terms of not over scheduling yourself because you
Speaker 2: kind of like you like if you treat that task
Speaker 2: list as the closed list, and then you make sure
Speaker 2: that you have time to fit everything physically into your calendar,
Speaker 2: then you kind of end up with this perfectly balanced calendar.
Speaker 1: I find that is it for today's show. But if
Speaker 1: you're looking for more tips to improve the way that
Speaker 1: you work, I write a short fortnightly newsletter that contains
Speaker 1: three cool things that I've discovered that help me work better,
Speaker 1: from research findings to software to gadgets that I'm loving.
Speaker 1: You can sign up for that at Howiwork dot co.
Speaker 1: That's how I Work dot co. How I Work is
Speaker 1: produced by Inventium with production support from dead Set Studios.
Speaker 1: And thank you to Martin Nimba, who does the audio
Speaker 1: mix for every episode and makes everything sound so much.
Speaker 2: Better than it would have otherwise.
Speaker 1: See you next time.