Join Dean & Dan as they continue discussing the concept of working in 10 minute blocks (and the listener suggestion of calling each block, a Jackson).
Links:
StrategicCoach.com
DeanJackson.com
Transcript: The Joy of Procrastination Ep023
Dean: Mr. Sullivan.
Dan: Hey Dean Jackson.
Dean: The one and only.
Dan: It's the Jackson times system where instead of using our you use Jackson's.
Dean: Isn't that funny?
Dan: Yeah. I mean I think that it was missing just one last bit of viral quality before it goes totally viral and I haven't realized it until your friend sent in that suggestion. So I want to tell you and then we'll tell our listeners what this is all about in case they're coming in here.
Dean: Okay.
Dan: Over the last seven days and I just did my accounting for the past week, I had seven Jackson time days and on average, I averaged 32.3 Jacksons per day, okay? Now there was a day when I only had 24 Jacksons but then I had days where there were 36 Jacksons, but the average for the seven days is 32.3. My goal was 30 a day but I didn't hit it on every day, but I did average 32.3 Jackson time units.
Dean: Oh my goodness. Let me read this email from Spiros Spatoros who I've not met, who sent an email to us titled, "The Joy of Procrastination" and he said, "Hi Dean. I'm sure I'm not alone in saying that I love your recent construct of breaking down time into 10-minute units and the allocation of 100 usable units a day. It got me to thinking and so I have an idea for you. Instead of calling a unit, why not give them a more distinctive, marketable name and so ... drum roll, please, maestro, how about calling a unit a Jackson. I can hear it now, I allocated three Jacksons to that. That's only worth two Jacksons. That task will take 10 Jacksons overall. How many Jacksons should I allocate to this? How many Jacksons did that take? Jackson time to MC Hammer's "You Can't Touch This." I'd love to know what you and Dan think. Well here you go Spiros, this is what we think. It's pretty funny.
Dan: Well, we've just give Spiros maximum feedback on the idea.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: Yeah. It took me ... I have to tell you it took me one twentieth of a Jackson to think that that was a great idea.
Dean: So funny. Well my love for intellectual property creators or idea disseminators has to now have me go back to ... once I mentioned when I brought it up, the media article that suggested that idea of 100 units. So I have to go back and determine who that was so we can properly give them the credit for it and maybe we'll call it their last name. I can't take credit for the concept but it was passing on something that I read and we have adopted this. I love it.
Dan: Yeah, well the interesting thing about it is that if you look at how things make their way in the world and how they get named, it's not necessarily the person who had the original idea, it was the person who ... and usually and you collaborated with me, we had a vehicle for collaboration, which is the podcast, The Joy of Procrastination.
Dean: Right.
Dan: So we had a vehicle.
Dean: That's right.
Dan: Then we also had an audience. We had an audience to get it out to. So often times ... Edison is not first creator of the field light bulb.
Dean: That's right.
Dan: Nut he was the entrepreneur who had a ready-made system for producing it and packaging it, but mostly importantly, he created an electrical system where the light ... he was the first one to create a ... I think it was a 10 block by 10 block grid in New York City-
Dean: Yes.
Dan: Where with the press of a button one evening, he electrified but it was filled up with light bulbs. So it's interesting how ideas get developed in the world but the actually get developed in the world through widespread use.
Dean: That's right.
Dan: So that's how it happens.
Dean: I wonder. I thought about the-
Dan: I'm holding out that when all the research is done on this 100, 10-minute things, that people say, "Well, that's not quite fair because Dean didn't come up with the idea," but I'm holding out that in the end it'll be a Jackson.
Dean: Well, we could do whatever we want.
Dan: Of course we can.
Dean: We can make them Jackson standard units, there we go, JSU. I'm all for that.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: I was thinking about it as I've been experimenting because it does feel like a very useful tool. Just like you, I have been really enjoying the play with that because what I really love about it is the things that we've kind of eluded to and I confirm now, after we've been doing it for however many weeks we've been experimenting with this…
Dan: Actually it's two. It's two official weeks right now and yet for me it's-
Dean: It feels natural.
Dan: I'm approaching every day, both looking back and looking forward at the next day, I'm looking at in terms of how do I break things down into these 10-block units?
Dean: Yes, and what I love about it and the things that I can confirm now about it are the ... I like that it's moving it away from chronological time with still maintaining the element of 10 chronological minutes, but having those blocks you can start a minute at any time, which I love that and this idea that it's not about blocking off certain times, but getting in, just like the step counter, getting in your Jacksons over the course of the day and I love that that's really feeling great.
I find that I'm paying attention to and it's helping me become a better time estimator because I'm not paying attention just like we've talk about that, I know now that what can I do in 10 minutes, 20 minutes? I definitely have a sense for what one, two, three units and my favorite as I've blocked off 50-minute focus finders, which is really five blocks on, one block off kind of thing, is a nice ... I'd never want to go more than five in a row. So I get a sense of what those are. I think there's really something to this, just like what you were saying, like looking at your cumulative, your totals during the day and not that we're keeping track of every single thing but I'm assuming that when you say that you averaged 32.3 units per day, that those are intentionally directed units that are not just going downstream kind of thing.
Dan: The other thing, Dean, that I'm sure you've discovered. It's not 10 times of just anything.
Dean: Right.
Dan: The 10 times activities that deserve measurement are of a much higher quality than the other ... you know, there's lots of ... there's 70 ... let's say I do 30 in a day, there's 70 that I was doing something but it wasn't significant enough that it would be bracketed.
Dean: It wasn't 10 X activities.
Dan: No, it wasn't. It was very, very interesting because I had two workshops this week and I was saying because workshops go for nine in the morning till five in the afternoon, but there's an hour of getting ready so our team always meets around eight o'clock to get everything ready and we have roughly 25-30 minute going through everything, what's going on with everybody on the team because it's a strategic coach practice that you start every meeting with a positive focus about what you're excited about period, not necessarily about the meeting, but just to get everybody in the room with a very positive energy.
Then at the end of the meeting, prior to a workshop, I say, "Okay now, I'd like each person to just say what your intention is for your role and what the value is that you're gonna get out of spending eight hours in the workshop with the clients," and that's how we part.
Then after the workshop we get together again and this time, we just spend the whole period talking about what was of use, things that they noticed that were new and everything else, so we surround the eight hours that we're spending with the clients with our own experiences, the backstage team, of course, who are front stage that day because they're interacting with the clients.
I was looking at it and on Thursday and Friday ... first of all I made a projection. I'm gonna find 20 units, Jackson, I'm gonna find ... I didn't know about it then, so this is a ... I'm using an earlier usage here, I want everybody to understand but I just called them blocks, that was name, they were 10-minute blocks. Then I found 20 on Thursday and I said, "Well that's it for the day because I have to pay attention to the workshop," and then the next day, 18 of them repeated, 18 of those blocks and now I'm looking, I have two more workshops tomorrow and Monday and then Tuesday and I'm digging deeper.
I'm pointing out here that once you get the valuable 10-minute period as a measuring stick, then all of a sudden is I'm scrutinizing the workshop and saying, "What is it that I'm do?" and it's generally, it takes two forms, it's where I'm delivering original content, so I'm onstage and the other one is where there's a discussion going on about the client's experience with the new material and things that they're discovering and I said, "That's very valuable stuff." The third one would be where I get an idea for a diagram and I go up to the whiteboard and…
Dean: That's one of my favorite…
Dan: I diagram and so that's what I've come up. I suspect that by this time next week, I'll probably have identified 25 in the workshop but I can both anticipate those. Like at the beginning of the day, I know which ones are valuable so I don't want to swap those off. I want to make sure that the value that I created or derived from the previous workshop, that I get that again and then find some new stuff but there's very definitely this new measurement unit is changing my experience of my day.
Dean: Mine too, yeah. It's exciting, isn't it. It's like the ... I hope that people are experimenting along with us.
Dan: Yeah, I think that's the spirit of it, like we're not necessarily gonna call our team lawyer, for coach or John Farrell and Silicon Valley to get this patented. I would just be happy that it just becomes increasingly useful out there and it's great, but you know this is kind of scientific. One of the things that I find about science, science always happens when there's a new tool created. In other words, it's not somebody thinking up a new invention, usually there's a new tool. There's a wonderful book that we bought for every member of the 10 X Program, we have about 550 in the program, so I bought 550 books and I gave it out and it's called "How We Got To Now". Really interesting book by a man by the name of Steven Johnson and he talks about grasp and what happened in Venice when, for one reason or another, sort of turmoil in the Middle East, in the Asian countries, in Turkey and everything else, a lot of glass makers, glass blowers descended upon Venice and ended up with this very, very massive, kind of critical mass of glass blowers who were very innovative and then Venice became the glass capital of pretty well the world at that time.
What they did is they started getting tremendous clarity of glass. In other words, you would look at it and there weren't imperfections in it but the other thing is that create flat glass and then cut the glass into circles and they could also do this with curved glass and they noticed, depending on which side was up, you could either make things ... you could look through it and see things as either bigger or smaller because it was convexed.
All of a sudden, along the way, I don't know how it happened or who did it, someone said, "Hey, this would be neat if we took two of them and we created an iron frame or a metal frame around them that hung from your ears, you could actually wear these if you had poor eyesight and this would give you increased eyesight if you were doing work which really required that you be able to see things up close," and that just went viral. They talk about the microchip these days-
Dean: You're right.
Dan: And they talk about cell phones and things but that whole notion that you could take all the guild trades in Europe, starting in Venice and then spreading out through Italy and you could increase the eyesight of literally tens of thousands, it was probably hundreds of thousands of people and then a century or two later, Gutenberg invented moveable type and he was able to create a printing press, where you just had the letters of the alphabet in an already pre-formed way and then you could create a whole page and then you could take those letters and you could create another page and the author, Steven Johnson, said, "Well," he said, "Probably everybody in Europe in a very short period of time discovered that they were longsighted and that they couldn't read this new, the proliferation of printed things coming out.
Dean: Right, right.
Dan: Then so this printing innovation required another innovation, which was glasses so that people could see things that were right in front of them with much greater clarity. The whole thing about innovation is that somebody creates a new tool, which allows people, almost instantaneously to take and experience they were already having in an entirely new way. Well, the one experience all humans have and are absolutely experts on it is having time. We have time every day, but we've been taught since children to see with a set of measurements, days, and so forward, but you've given them a new tool.
In our podcast two weeks ago, you suddenly foisted it on me. I literally say foisted it on me because I'm a prisoner ... you know, I'm a ...
Dean: Yes, and like it, yeah.
Dan: Yeah, and that was payback because I foisted the whole notion of not feeling about procrastination.
Dean: Right, exactly.
Dan: Yeah. So it's a really, really interesting thing to have an idea. If we treat this just as a new idea that's useful, like how that person inspired to actually write you a very meaningful email and he had little ... he did a lot with it.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: Here's to Spiros. Shout out to Spiros.
Dean: Here's to Spiros, that's right.
Dan: That was a great email.
Dean: I wondered Dan. We think about playing around with time like this and playing around with procrastination, I was thinking about when procrastination sort of entered into our history here. Thinking about back in ... was this the kind of thing that Seneca and Socrates, were they talking about procrastination and productivity back then? I wonder when that kind of made it's way into our world?
Dan: Yeah, well, I've read Seneca, I've read the Greek and Roman philosophers and if they had talked about it I would have remembered it.
Dean: Right.
Dan: In other words, I don't remember any examination of this particular mental process, yet the one that is world famous is Hamlet and Shakespeare's Hamlet. It's Hamlet procrastinating onstage for two-and-a-half hours.
Shakespeare is the first known writer who has the characters onstage reveal to the audience what they thinking process is that he's going through. It happens a lot. Hamlet is the most famous but Macbeth you have Richard ... these are just Shakespeare plays that I'm really familiar with, Richard III, Othello and the characters have monologues onstage but it's a monologue in front of the audience where the character, Merchant of Venice, Shylock talks, who reveals to the audience what he's thinking.
My feeling ... you know there's a professor at Yale, his name is Harold Bloom and he's made his life into the study of Shakespeare as the beginning of modern experience. What he means by that is that it may be that this internalization of people being off by themselves and thinking about their thinking may not have always been there and right around Shakespeare's time, the whole notion of individualism starts to come into human affairs.
So humans are aware that they're not just a member of a group, they're actually an individual apart from the group and that they have almost unlimited amount of individual experience that other people don't know what's actually happening, this is just happening within the head of the individual, but in Shakespeare, the great power of Shakespeare is that he actually goes in and allows the audience and the reader to go inside the person's head and actually see how, what kind of conversation that's going on there.
Dean: Yeah and it's fascinating 'cause I looked at the ... only when you look back like this can you see the impact of something like what you were talking about with glass and as someone whose worn contact lenses since I was 14, every day since I was 14, I can't function without them. Imagine what kind of a life I would have had prior to corrective eyeglasses. It's funny how ... and maybe you would say, "Well, until the printing press, there was really no need for ... that's when it really amplified the fact that we can't really see fine print," and maybe people just get used to everything is blurry or whatever, but there was no need for it to be that crystal clear.
Dan: Yeah. Yeah, and probably people had enhanced farsighted because there was a lot of danger in the world and the quicker you could pick up a distant danger-
Dean: Yeah you don't want to-
Dan: The more you prevented it from being a close by danger. I think at the Bowman, one of the great new weapons of oar happened in the 1300s, and it was the English longbow and it was a long bow because it was longer than a person was high. It was generally a higher and people were shorter. People were shorter in those days, the average ... Bowman might have been 5'2", 5'3" maybe everything else but they were enormously strong and they were enormously strong because they had to be because there's a particular wood found in Britain and not much elsewhere, which is called yew and it's one of the few woods, it maybe the only wood, but it's certainly one of few woods that in a branch you will have the grain going ... if you cut it in half, if you took the branch and cut it in half, you would notice that and so you looked at it at the end so it was circular, that halfway up the grain would be going sideways and down at the bottom the grain would be going longways and it's just a peculiar natural thing, but what it does is it gives it on one hand tremendous strength, on the other hand, tremendous flexibility.
Dean: Oh yeah, yeah.
Dan: So strength and flexibility. So the longbow could generate tremendous velocities but the bowmen could hit a person from 100 years off, you think of a football field, they could fire and hit with force to kill someone they could go through chainmail at 100 yards.
Well that would have required, first all, incredible long sight, they would have had to be tremendously longsighted to do this and apparently just lethal and they could first as many 10 arrows a minute.
Dean: Right, it just struck me ... it just struck me that you ... I was thinking about mail, I thought you were talking about change mail, you could go through male armor.
Dan: This was high delivery mail.
Dean: Yes, I gotcha right, right, right.
Dan: Yeah, but there's that scene ... what's that, you know, the Mel Gibson film "Braveheart" where the arrows come in.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: But they would have come in faster and there would have been a lot more of them then they could actually portray in the film because they could keep it up for a couple minutes and hardly anything would survive when they came in, so that was the thing, but probably, just to go back to your comment about all of the sudden with reading, all of sudden, "Yikes, we can't do this unless we improve our eyesight," so that's a big deal.
Just taking a look at this because I know you're a great experimenter when you get a new thing, if you had to say three things that are different now as a result of this innovation, Dean, so you thought about it probably a little bit before you started with me.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: Okay, so let's say ... how long were you pondering it to the point where you would use it as part of your podcast, so that was two weeks-
Dean: Again, I would never keep anything that important from you, so it was only a matter of between the time I read it and the time I talked to you next because I knew immediately that it would be a big thing.
Dan: Oh, wow.
Dean: For me, because I find it so ... it felt right in all kinds of ways and then, in having the conversation with you, it felt like we hit on the idea that 100 feels like an abundance and the fact that we're only looking to direct a third of them. So that 30% is really the highest value things. I just love experimenting with it.
I would say if there were three things that have been the biggest potential game changers for me are that idea of removing it from chronological time and the fact that we're only talking about today's 100 units, we only get today's 'cause I can't spend tomorrow's and I can't do anything, I can't bring the ones that I had yesterday, you only get these 100 today.
So it keeps me focused in the moment and feeling abundant about the time for today 'cause that is really a big reality, that we often find that the things that take a lot of time that you're not gonna be able to get done in one day, it's kind of been, in my mind sometimes, a little more overwhelming or cast a bigger shadow on my calendar, on my day and the way that I think about it, but having this knowledge that I have these 100 and I can deploy them only today, that's been a good thing and removing them from the chronological so that it's not ... I don't have to commit a whole hour to something. I find that my in between things are much more productive. That I can use that in between times 'cause I'll often block often times for conversation or things on my calendar and so now knowing that I can deploy these in between things has really been helpful.
It almost immediately brings ... helps me eliminate delay in doing some of the things that can be done in one 10-minute block. Like I might feel like I can just get something going, started, initiated, even if it's ... certainly in that 10 minutes, I can set up and make notes or think or brainstorm about what I want a conversation to be about and set all that up for a future time.
I'll tell you what's interesting. Something that you said, and I forget who you were referring to but you said something about an attorney whose policy was, "I will never return your phone call today, but I will always return your phone call tomorrow." It was an interesting thing-
Dan: He was the top defense attorney for 25 or 30 years in Canada, not just in Toronto, but in Canada. There was just over a 15 year period probably, five or six major headline were ... what I would call spotlight cases, people followed these cases. Actually a television series was made on him and his cases, so he was a very-
Dean: Really, wow.
Dan: Yeah, very, very famous lawyer but always defense, frequently murder and sometimes high financial ... you know-
Dean: Would it be he still watch the ... is it a series I could find on YouTube?
Dan: Yeah, Eddie Greenspan ... I think it was Eddie Greenspan, I'm not sure now. I might be getting mixed up with someone else, but I know he was very, very prominent. Back in ... this was in 1970s, 1980s and he was charging $500 an hour in 1980, which is like, with inflation, it's probably about 1.2, 1.3 million ... I'm sorry, $1300, it would probably be about $1300, a pricey guy.
His whole point to the person, and this is at the prospect stage, he's telling somebody who wants him to be the lawyer, he says, "Well, we got to get agreement. Something right here. I will never return your phone call the day you phone me, I will always return that phone call the next day," and people would say, "I'm paying you $100 an hour, you'll answer my phone call if it's in the middle of the night." He says, "Now," he says, "Can you see the clarity that's coming into our discussion right now? Can you see that we will not work together? Isn't this wonderful, right up front?" It's not like I'm going to practice this a couple weeks and you're gonna get really annoyed with me. You're not gonna get annoyed with me because we're never going to start. Let me repeat, I will never return your phone call today, I will always return your phone call tomorrow." If you wanted him, those were the rules.
So along that line, what I was saying about using a 10-minute block to set up a conversation is I've been having a thing of trying to use that 10 minutes to block for a future date, tomorrow or whenever, if I'm going to have a one hour conversation with somebody or a 30 minute conversation with somebody to get that on the calendar but not today.
Dean: Yes.
Dan: Not like all of a sudden I'm gonna wake up and hope to have a 60 minute conversation with somebody as one of my things that hasn't been pre-arranged.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: But in 10 minutes I can decide 'cause i always have my conversation with procrastination to say, "Who do I need to talk to?"
Dean: Yep.
Dan: They always know, they always give me the list of who I need to talk to and as I look down that list 'cause in 10 minutes I can make a list of 10 people that I need to talk to and maybe more, but I can set that up then, choose who are the ones that I need to talk to first and one 10-minute unit I can establish a really good summary of what I want to accomplish with that phone call, almost like a mini impact filter for the conversation.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: Then I can initiate the conversation…
Dean: Scheduling up.
Dan: Yes, exactly. Initiate the scheduling of it with a nice, thoughtful email or a text that's not just a rushed thing. It feels like that's enough time to do something like that and I really like that. I think it's been a very good use of ... if I can use a 50 minute focus finder, which has been my go-to unit of stringing together five of these units, now that we think about the 10 minute as the pixel of this, the smallest unit that we break it down to, that it is a very good use for me. If I can set up five or six conversations in a 50 minute focus finder, that feels really great.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: It's made the quality my preparedness for the conversations so much better too.
Dean: Yeah, compare that with what would happen previously.
Dan: What would happen previously is I've always been sort of resistant to putting things on my calendar in the future because for all the reasons that we talked about.
Dean: Or preparing ahead of time for what may be four weeks down the road or whatever the time period is.
Dan: Right, yes. It's amazing what a difference such a small amount of time can actually make because when you really think about it, the 10 minutes only focused and present is a luxurious amount of time.
Dean: Yeah. It's enough, but it also feels good to establish that as the smallest unit of time that I deal with. It makes you feel bigger in a way, right? We're not counting minutes for the-
Dan: Well, the interesting thing is that I've ceased thinking ... in other words, I'm not thinking in smaller, like I haven't gone to a half Jackson or something like that.
Dean: No, exactly.
Dan: No.
Dean: You can't get anything done in a half Jackson.
Dan: Yeah, or a double Jackson. Bartender, just give me a double Jackson please. Anyway, here's the interest thing. So it's around noon and I go on checking time more intensively when I hit noon on Sunday because I've got to be set up, I've got to have my scorecard out.
This morning when I got up I made sure my cell phone was fully charged.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: So there's this preparation that I'm very, very sensitive to, but I had 28 minutes before I would have to phone through and we were in Chicago last week and we got back close to midnight on Friday and Babs and I are big packers, we're not economical packers so there's a lot of stuff that we take with us and bring back, even though we have a home in Chicago and I've got wardrobe, there's still stuff.
Usually if we came back during the week, we have a housekeeper and she's fantastic and we'll leave in the morning, the place is a mess, we get back at five o'clock and all order has been restored but not on Saturday and Sunday because she doesn't work. So our bags are still half-packed and I have laundry and the other thing is that the kitchen gets messy. We have lots of stuff, we take stuff out of cupboard, we don't put it back.
Now I make sure the dishes are all done before I go to bed at night. I can't stand getting up in the morning and having dishes not clean, so I make sure that all dishes are in the dishwasher and it's doing its work overnight.
So when I looked at my watch I had 28 minutes and I said, "You know, I can go and get all the laundry, get downstairs, put in the washer and put the detergent in and that'll be going, so it'll go while I'm talking to Dean and then I'll throw in the dryer afterwards." I did it in nine minutes, nine out of 10 minutes, the whole thing.
The other thing is, I don't know if you've noticed this, but if I'm operating within a 10-minute unit, I'm far less distractable away from just the one thing I have to do during that 10 minutes.
Dean: Yeah, I find that too.
Dan: I become very, very immune to distractions because I only have to do this for 10 minutes.
Dean: That's what I've noticed exactly, is I can focus for 10 minutes. That's absolutely.
Dan: Well, we know we can hyperfocus for periods of time because it goes along with the ADD.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: People say, "Well, ADD people can't focus." No when they have one thing that's really important to them, that they're actually hyperfocused. That's why most of us are really good salespeople because sales are exciting, I mean, you can make a sale in 10 minutes, that's the other thing.
The other thing I did is I came back upstairs and I still had 15 minutes and I said, "I bet I can get all the dishes ... I bet I can take some dishes out of the dishwasher and get all the other dishes," and I had everything cleaned up and in the dishwasher three minutes before I sat down to talk to you. That's coming from downstairs and getting my…
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: Now in the old days I just would have blown that half hour period away.
Dean: Yeah, exactly because you would have…
Dan: I don't have enough time to start anything, I don't have enough time to get into anything and then I'm going be just into it and then I'm gonna break and I said, "it's not worth the bother. Let's read the paper or something." So, that's a change of behavior. My feeling is that it's not a powerful idea unless it changes behavior.
Dean: Right. I think you've hit on something that is really, I think, an insight for me here 'cause I've been paying attention to what's happening and just like you said, what I find myself doing and the word I was looking for or kind of thinking about it as a buffet, in a way, that I've got this constant buffet of all of the things that I'm procrastinating or I could do and if I start looking at them with this eye of, "Well, what could I do in 10 minutes here?" To think that through and just like you're saying, now you know because you have an experience for it, that you can go downstairs, switch out the laundry, turn everything around in one unit, you know that that's a possibility. You have now an experience that the entire dish situation can be handled in one 10-minute unit.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: So they don't have this ... because we often look at the ... it's almost a different perspective in a way, right? Like we'll typically look at that thing as a wall without knowing, maybe we overestimate how long something is gonna take or how distasteful it's gonna be. It's one of our cognitive biases.
Dan: Here's just a thought. That generally and I'm noticing there's a difference between individual time and social time, okay?
Dean: Yep.
Dan: I procrastinate when I get the two of them mixed up.
Dean: Hm. Say more about that.
Dan: If I think about just the examples that I used, the laundry and the dishes, I had no social thoughts.
Dean: Right.
Dan: I wasn't thinking about someone else, I wasn't thinking ...
Dean: Yes.
Dan: There was a task to be done, there was a timeframe for doing it and it had to be done within that timeframe because at 12:30 I have social time, I have a very, very important social appointment.
Dean: Yes.
Dan: So I could move all considerations of social to 12:30 and it just freed me up from all social considerations for those two achievements. The other thing is, they're done they're done.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: I wasn't thinking about the dishes or the laundry when I got on the phone with you.
Dean: Right, it's over, it's done. I like that.
Dan: Yeah, and I just notice more and more that I've traded a protection between Dan just being 100% involved with this activity but only for 10 minutes and Dan being involved fully, with full attention in a conversation with someone else, okay? So I've separated out those two and I'm not mixing ... I think a lot of my procrastination in life, where I was mixing those two, I would get involved in an activity and then my mind would go to some sort of, "Gee, I wonder how so-and-so is gonna feel about this, and I wonder what this is gonna happen, and I wonder how this is gonna impact," and I've drawn a line down the middle and I says, "Social thoughts on this side, individual thoughts on this." They're kind of like intentionality thoughts.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: It's kind of like that. I just saw that in your conversation there.
Dean: like that.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: I feel like we're just making so much ... this is evolving so quickly here. I think it would be helpful for me, let's kind of like re-establish here what we've got so far because I'm sensing a whole...
Dan: Yeah, well we have ... yeah, we're one Jackson away from upgrading now.
Dean: Perfect.
Dan: Yeah. In terms of the procrastination because this has been very much, the last week has been very much a non-procrastination week for me.
Dean: Okay.
Dan: I haven't procrastinated this week and I'll just sum it up with two or three points and that is, looking back, it was a very satisfying week, okay?
Dean: Yes.
Dan: It was tremendously satisfying that the main goal for the week was to do 30, 10-minute, in my language blocks a day and that was my goal each day, to get 30 in and then it was my daily job, was to make good use of the 30. I was giving myself a goal of 30 that I wanted to reach, but I was giving myself a budget of 30. I have 30, which is five hours when you add them up, there are six to an hour.
Dean: Yeah. Just for clarity, are you including your three things for the day into those.
Dan: Yep.
Dean: Okay.
Dan: Oh sure.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: Yeah, but what I'm doing with the three now the night before is I'm actually giving a unit estimate of how much those things are going to take.
Dean: Right.
Dan: I used the word blocks this week, so three blocks for this, four blocks for this, and everything else. We have a little mini form of the impact filter, which is called the fast filter.
Dean: Right, that's the index card one that I was talking about.
Dan: Yeah, the index card one and you say ... I've altered it a little bit because I just put in, instead of project, I just put in tomorrow and then I put in the date and I call it the overnight filter. I do it at nighttime so I'm primed, but since there's five where the success criteria is, there's five boxes, I said, "Well, I'll just expand it to five for me three."
Then I write in what the five are and then I put in the blocks and I put in the overall budget to get all my blocks done and it's less than 30, it's in the teens.
I have other things, like I got exercise and Babs and I meditate, so that's two blocks, it's 20 minutes and now we're doing it in the evening and it's kind of funny, I said, "Let's meditate 'cause I know it's a sure two blocks."
Dean: It's great.
Dan: It's a give me.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: I got my closed and I'm sitting in a chair. Who wouldn't want to sit in a chair and get credit for two blocks. The brain is so clever.
Dean: I think that is fascinating. That's the best.
Dan: So that's mine, but here's the thing. I didn't procrastinate and the other thing is I don't feel a need to do 50 blocks.
Dean: No, that's too much.
Dan: I know I've got 70 others but I have no need to get the numbers higher. It's not like, "Gee, I wasted a lot of blocks." I didn't have that feeling at all.
Dean: No, and then you can feel fully free in those blocks when you're ... it's okay. I'm just drifting here ... I love it. As Ned Halliwell would always say, "Like a toddler at a picnic," you know? That's the kind of structure. I've got that with 70 of the blocks, it's so great.
Well, that's my thing for this week, is I'm gonna average out my actual blocks then. That's a good, like how you were keeping track of them, like your step-counter. I mentioned that but I haven't actually done the tally at the end of the time. I've just noticed myself being present in those 10.
Dan: Yeah, like do my overnight filter is a block. I can do that whole thing, I can my satisfy myself, I thought through tomorrow and I build it in and where it plays it best and worst thing, I put what's the best mindset for tomorrow, worst mindset for tomorrow. I find I might alter the overall impact filter on that because it's not best and worst results because you've already handled that, you've handled the best result with the ideal outcome and with the success criteria and there was always a bit of an issue about that but with the best mindset, worst mindset, I think that gives it a sharper clarity.
Dean: Yeah.
Dan: I think the best way for me to look at tomorrow is the worst way for me to look at tomorrow, that's I think is more of the valuable distinction.
Dean: Yeah. Well, I can't remember a time I was more excited about heading into a new week. It's like a new toy we've got here trying to-
Dan: And the thing is in the blocks, in the Jackson ... I'm just gonna call them Jacksons.
Dean: Okay.
Dan: I'm sorry, I'm gonna be the first viral use of the term, that every day is complete because you got a fresh start, you always get a fresh start.
Dean: Yes.
Dan: I think that the feeling of always getting a fresh start makes life light.
Dean: It does, that's absolutely it and that you get 100 of them. That you get 100 every day.
Dan: Yeah.
Dean: It truly ... it sounds so weird for us to even say it but when you have ... I'm just sharing the actual experience that I have of starting the day with a feeling of abundance and even when you look at it right now, it's 1:30, 1:28 in the afternoon, and to know that there is still 40 units plus left is really, it's a great thing, there's room to even pull it out at the end here.
It's so exciting that way, but I do find that having this kind of thing is like you get to bring that positive energy to it, that rather than trying to put things off because I don't have to do them now, you didn't have to do the dishes now, you didn't have to do the laundry now, but the sense of, "I can do it now and get that over with," now being that one 10-minute, is, I think it's exciting, it's invigorating.
Dan: Yeah. Just one last thought. If it always takes me five minutes, I still get credit for the 10.
Dean: That's exactly right. Yes, exactly. That's what I'm saying, even within ... that's what I was saying about setting up and establishing a conversation of looking at it and doing and setting my intention of what thinking about the communication that I want to have and writing the email or text to set it up because it's a luxurious amount of time to do that in.
Dan: Yeah, so I think only two absolute lifetime totally committed procrastinators could come up with this thing.
Dean: I think you're absolutely right. This has been a delightful use of six Jacksons.
Dan: Oh, yeah. This is a six Jackson. Like a movie reviews on the ... This was a huge waste of 12 Jacksons. Talk about Rotten Tomatoes.
Dean: Oh, that's so funny, yeah, right. That's exactly right. Very funny.
Dan: All righty.
Dean: Okay Dan. Well, I know I'm gonna have an exciting week. I think we're on schedule for next week.
Dan: Yep, next week and I'm gonna ... now that I have a full seven days, a conscious seven days, now I can start developing more distinctions.
Dean: I think so too, yes.
Dan: All right.
Dean: I can't wait.
Dan: Yep, okay.
Dean: Thanks Dan bye.
Dan: Okay, bye.