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?