Mac in Five: How to get started on your New Year’s resolution.
By Dr. Joe Kim
Achieving a goal is never easy, and it’s notoriously difficult to get started on New Year’s resolutions in particular. This week, McMaster prof and psychologist Joe Kim breaks down the process into four clear steps, which you can in fact use all year long.
The Psychology of Productive Behaviour
Sitting in front of you is the neglected report, file or presentation that needs to get done but is collecting digital dust. Or it’s the New Year and you have decided on an ambitious new goal for yourself.
Let’s face it — sometimes, it can be difficult to get started. There are competing demands and a cat video that must be seen to be believed. But the biggest distraction can be busy work — minor tasks that scream urgency but have low importance in moving a project forward. A good example is that blinking email icon you try to resist, because it can lead you down the virtual rabbit hole of the internet.
An elegant solution is to set the occasion for deep work — focused, uninterrupted effort on a demanding task.
- Pick the task to be completed and set a total time budget:
This part is simple. Let’s say it’s a report, and you have two hours available. The problem is that while working on this project, you start thinking about the many other things you need or want to do. - Prepare a work environment for deep work:
This part is harder, but will improve with practice. The ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task is crucial to help you complete tasks in less time. The key to deep work is to focus on a single task and eliminate distractions. If you are preparing a report, only have the essential application open, maximized to fill the screen with everything else closed. If possible, go offline to further isolate your efforts. - Use behavioural principles to motivate and reinforce in stages:
Think like a psychologist: the target behavioural response is task completion. Set a timer and engage in deep work for 25 minutes. Why 25 minutes? It’s long enough to get into a flow, but not too long to seem overwhelming. Keep in mind that a response followed by a reward becomes reinforced. When the timer goes off, follow it with a five-minute reward: coffee break, exercise, email, cat videos. Now, rinse, lather, repeat until the task gets done. Of course, you can tweak this set-up to your needs. There is evidence to suggest that blocks of 90 minutes, followed by a 20-minute break, is optimal. Personally, I like cycles of 45 minutes followed by a 10-minute break. - Cue the deep “work-reward” relationship:
Psychologists call a cue that signals a behaviour relationship an occasion-setter. This cue can be anything you want, including a miniature desk-sized garden gnome. Looking at my garden gnome (his name is Bruce) reminds me that if I just work for the next 45 minutes, Bruce will allow me a fun break to do whatever I want.
Does this sound silly and unnecessary? Setting the occasion for deep work helped me to get this “Mac in Five” article completed on time. Often, I find that just getting started gives me the motivation and momentum to carry through and finish. And isn’t that what being productive is all about?
Dr. Joe Kim directs the Education & Cognition Laboratory which investigates how principles of attention, memory and learning can inform instructional design, training and educational policy.
Please visit edcog.mcmaster.ca to learn more about the fifth annual McMaster Symposium on Education & Cognition, which took place on July 27–28, 2017.
Follow him on Twitter @ProfJoeKim
Learn more from our Mac in Five series.
