Write Scribe

This post describes how haiku productivity has simplified my days, removed distractions and helped me get things done. Now, I’ll admit I’m a bit of a “to do” junkie, and I’ve tried many systems with more or less success. Haiku productivity is the first that has got me really focused on achieving the things I want to and avoiding distractions.

The post starts by giving you a short definition of haiku productivity so you’ll know what I’m talking about. Then I’ll show you by example with some of my own haiku limits. One thing haiku productivity excels at is managing distractions, so I’m going to talk about those. Finally, I’ll share my very minimalist and simple haiku limit tracking trick that really works.

So, after this minimal introduction let’s start with the main act…

Haiku Productivity

I learned the Haiku productivity idea in a post on the Zen Habits blog. A haiku is a minimalist Japanese poem that uses only 17 “syllables” (it’s not quite the same thing as syllables but close enough for our purposes). Haiku productivity is inspired by this idea of minimalism and aims to reduce the “stuff” cluttering up your life as far as possible.

Instead of setting as many goals and tasks as possible you do the opposite, set as few as possible. As an example, Leo at Zen Habits describes his haiku productivity limits: only one goal or project at any time, no more than five lines in an email, etc.

Setting limits

To a Gemini who has trouble staying focused this sounded like a good idea. I made myself a list of haiku minimums to achieve, scrubbing my list of waiting projects to select as few as possible to focus on.

Where the haiku approach really excels is in dealing with distractions, which is why it’s a good idea to set yourself some distraction limits.

Limit distractions

I love reading. Don’t you? If you do you know how hard it is to tear yourself away from your favourite blogs and feeds. However, reading doesn’t pay (I guess that makes it a bit like crime, in a way?), I wanted to reduce my habit to do the other stuff that pays instead, whilst still enjoying reading a little.

I set myself a limit of ten RSS feeds and over the course of two or three days I gradually pruned my RSS reader down to this limit. I also set a limit to read no more than six blog posts each day, either directly from the feed or by clicking through to linked posts.

Haiku limits turn fighting your favourite distractions into a fun game you can try to win each day. I think this is one reason they are so effective. However, I came up against one problem the haiku productivity blogs didn’t solve.

Enough already?

It was a simple problem. How do you know when you’ve read enough blogs, or emails, or whatever? Counting RSS feeds was easy, just set it once and that’s it. But what about an activity like feed reading, that can be done in several goes during the day?

Now the old, non-haiku, me could have gone off in search of the perfect haiku limit and task tracking system. I could have subscribed to newsletters on the topic, bought books, even attended training courses. But not the new, haiku minimalist that I had become, no the new me wanted simple. Got to be simple…

Haiku pebbles

My simple solution to this problem is a bunch of little pebbles. I use little rounded ones that I found near my home. You can use acorns, or coloured marbles, or little plastic farm animals or anything else you like.

All you have to do is gather the number of little pebbles that matches your haiku limit. In my case I use six pebbles for blog posts. Put these in a little pot on your desk, or wherever you read blogs. You’ll also need a second little pot, you’ll see why in just a second. I painted and used two empty yoghurt pots for the job.

Now, each time I open a blog post to read I take a pebble from my haiku limit pot and put it into the other. When there are no more pebbles, I stop reading.

At the start of a new day I tip the pebbles back into the first pot and I can read again.

Well, that’s my simple system and it has controlled my blog reading habit these past two and a half weeks. Maybe haiku will help you, too? If you want to track several haiku limits you just need more pots, or different coloured pebbles.

Remember, haiku productivity is the art of setting limits to remove clutter from your life. Set them for the projects in your life and for distractions, too. Use a simple haiku pebble system to track your progress and feel happy when you “win” the day.

If you enjoyed this post maybe you’ll enjoy some of my haiku poems?

Today is the first of my Friday haiku’s (or at least it will be if my attempt to schedule it works). I’ve recently discovered these 17 syllable Japanese poems and I thought it would be fun to create some. I’ll be posting a new one here every Friday.

Today’s haiku follows on from yesterday’s post about ideas, or more precisely how to remember them easily.

Ideas are social
They like not to live alone
Make them a warm home

Thanks for reading, and if you liked the haiku drop by next Friday for another.

I’m going to show you seven easy methods to retain ideas for your writing. Ideas are important to writers but they have a habit of popping up in inconvenient times and places.

Many writers encourage use of a notebook to capture ideas so you don’t lose them, but this is not always practical. How many of your ideas occur in the shower? Or just when you’ve left your notebook at home?

That’s where these handy memory methods come in. They’ll help you capture and store your ideas in one place you are sure to always have handy. Your mind can remember ideas far better than you think, if you know how.

Time for the methods.

Here is a list of seven ways you can fix and retain ideas in your memory. The methods I’m sharing are by no means the only ones, but they work well for me. Experiment and adapt them to find what works best for you.

1. Put Your Idea In a Safe Place
2. Put Your Idea In a Crazy Place
3. Put Your Idea In Rhyme
4. Put Your Idea In Song
5. Hook Your Idea to Your Senses
6. Make Your Idea Famous
7. Defend Your Idea

Put Your Idea In a Safe Place

The first thing to do is make a place in your mind to put your ideas. Create an image of a safe and welcoming place where your ideas will feel right at home. Make your image as real as possible, use lots of vivid details.

Maybe you’ll put your ideas in a treasure chest? Maybe you prefer to stick them to the trees in your secret clearing in the woods?

When your idea comes take a couple of moments to fix it clearly. You might like to picture it in writing. Then, visualize yourself putting it safely into your storage area. All you have to do to get it back is return to the clearing and pick your idea off the tree.

Put Your Idea In a Crazy Place

Stashing your idea away in a safe place is one solution, but you can have a lot more fun if you put it in a crazy place. And when I say crazy, I mean really crazy, the crazier the better. Here’s one suggestion, picture yourself eating in a restaurant with a penguin. Over dessert (ice cream, naturally) the penguin starts telling you about a great idea for that ACME widget brochure you’re working on.

Now, you might not be good at remembering things about ACME widgets, but you sure will remember conversing over ice cream with the penguin.

Put Your Idea In Rhyme

An idea in rhyme
Sticks around a long time

Keep your idea by putting it into rhyming phrases. Play it romantic poet or New York rapper, just remember, this tip’s a cracker.

Put Your Idea In Song

You know how you hear those catchy song choruses on the radio and can’t get them out of your head? Well, put your idea to some music you know well and you’ll be humming it all day long. Combine this with a rhyme and your idea is there for all time.

I love blues music and it works wonderfully for this.

Woke up this mornin’,
Ideas fillin’ my head,
Crawlin’ on the ceiling,
And hoppin’ on my bed…

Hook Ideas to Your Senses

Hand over your idea to a part of your body. Maybe your elbow is good at this? Touch your elbow while you think or talk about your idea. Now when you touch your elbow again the idea will be there for you.

You can make this even more effective by giving your idea a smell, a taste or a sound as well.

Put Your Idea In the News

Put your idea in the spotlights and you won’t be able to get away from it. For example, imagine your idea in a TV news item. Make it dramatic and give it the whole works with live from the scene reports and interviews with bewildered eye witnesses.

A variation I like is to imagine a newspaper headline carrying the idea, “Writer Recalls 20 Lost Ideas”. Imagine yourself walking past a newsstand where your headline is displayed in big bold letters on the day’s newspaper.

Give Your Idea an Award

Your idea is good enough to win an award, right? So imagine that it has. Give it an Oscar, the Nobel prize, or best widget writing of the year award.

See yourself as you step up amidst thundering applause to receive the award. Then, in your acceptance speech, tearfully thank this great idea that made it all possible…

Defend Your Idea

Ever been in a meeting or a conversation where someone attacks your idea or view? What happens? Unless you’re a Zen master you probably get all worked up and emotional about defending your point of view. That emotion can help you remember your ideas, too.

Have an imaginary person debunk your idea. Feel how worked up that makes you and defend your idea as vigorously as you can.

The important thing with all these methods is to treat your idea well. Welcome it, give it some attention, spend a little time having fun with it. Your idea will be happy and stick around. Let’s review the methods now, choose one that appeals to you most, you’ll need it in just a minute:

1. Put your idea in a safe place, create your own ideas drawer
2. Put your idea in a crazy place, the crazier the better for recall. Have fun with this one.
3. Put your idea in rhyme, works all the time!
4. Put your idea in song and you’ll never be blue again.
5. Hook your idea to your senses. I recommend you use this with any of the other methods to give your idea a physical existence.
6. Make your idea famous, put it in the newspaper or on TV.
7. Defend your idea. Dammit, you believe in it don’t you?

These seven methods will help you hang on to those valuable ideas in any circumstance. Even better, ideas will enjoy coming to visit you, they’ll tell their friends and you’ll get lots of repeat business. The best part is it’s easy and lots of fun.

If you really want to remember your ideas, put the favourite you chose into practice right now. Use your favourite method on itself so you’ll remember it when you next have an idea to keep. Consider describing your “idea memory” in the comments, I’d love to hear any blues songs, crazy situations or other scenes you come up with.