A Unified Theory of Albert's 2012

It's been a while since I've blogged. I can feel a little anxiety, a little tightness in my chest, likely representing some silly fears: "How do I choose which blog concept to start off with? What if it takes a really long time to get back into the blogging mentality? What if it's obvious that I'm out of practice? What if…" Actually I found myself struggling to explain the anxiety while writing that, so I'm not so anxious anymore. I let it go.

It often feels like the same problems plague us year after year. Everyone has bad habits they'd rather eliminate (wasting time on the Internet, poor eating, unnecessary arguing with loved ones, anxiety in X or Y situation, etc). A big one: procrastination. I was going to write this blog entry on Friday but I put it off just to watch Netflix. I did procrastinate- just not nearly as long as I used to, and I didn't beat myself up over it. Same goes for everything else nowadays.

So how did I actually write this blog entry? I just started. I told myself, "Let's just see where this goes. Quality doesn't matter. Two paragraphs, go." Now I'm on my third.

Now, "Just start" probably sounds like really trivial advice. I probably heard this "Just start" advice years ago, and it never helped me stop procrastinating for all these years. So why do I claim that this one little trivial statement is now making a marked difference in my life and my work?

Because in 2012, I deliberately and consciously focused on this little piece of advice. It's one thing to be aware of an idea. It's quite another to focus on an idea long enough to realize when it's applicable and then to execute it. I wake myself up frequently from my daily routine and remind myself that I need to "just start." If I can say I accomplished anything this year, it's that I have trained myself to pay attention to what I'm doing, and more importantly, what I'm thinking at any given time. This is way easier said than done. It took a year of recognizing this was the underlying problem and several months of serious work. 

The Actual Grand Unified Theory

So what unifies all my pursuits in 2012 is my awareness of what I'm doing. For the rest of the blog entry, I'd like to break this up into three synergistic ideas and then offer some lessons that go along with each one. It's not particularly organized or detailed, but many received deeper treatment in past posts, and many will in the future.

1. Think about thoughts. You can call it "Mindfulness" if you want, but this essentially allows me to be my own psychologist. This allows me to figure out which thoughts are getting in my way, and which ones will help me achieve my goals.

• Stop repeatedly thinking about things. Pointless. Replaying bad memories, regrets, future fantasies, upcoming deadlines, someone who was inexplicably mean, something wrong in my life. The solution was simple: think about what I can do about the situation today. If I can do something, do it. If not, think about something else.
• Stop stressing. I used to think stress was a necessary evil that helps get stuff done. But stress is only correlative. Thinking objectively about the problem and executing a solution is what actually gets stuff done. Stress hormones only cloud the mind: they're evolved for fight-or-flight. To get stuff done without stress, I re-frame situations to motivate myself positively: treat the task as an opportunity, not an obligation
• Stop judging other people. It's easy to do this subconsciously. These judgments will never make a single difference in the real world. It's a waste of brain power.
• Instead, pay attention to the present. This makes it easier to appreciate what I have, and it prevents me from engaging in the useless thought processes listed above.
• Keep a journal of my thoughts, ideas, important events. I now write down 1 to 5 things a day about my thoughts and daily situations, plus specific things I could have done to handle them better. Then I do them next time.

2. Deliberate Practice. Thinking about thinking allows me remind myself frequently to implement behavioral changes, so I can break old habits and develop new skills. Deliberately expose self to small challenges and then take on progressively more difficult challenges. Treating things as practice frees me to experiment, so I am more likely to make progress.

• Think about thoughts. What, again? Well, the issue is that it's difficult. Or more precisely, it's hard to remember to think about thoughts, and some thoughts are so powerful and ingrained that they take persistence to eliminate.
• Social anxiety. Everyone experiences social anxiety in at least one situation. It can be eliminated through practice. Identify the situation that makes you anxious (eg public speaking). Deliberately put yourself in that situation (offer to give a toast at a party) rather than waiting for some obligation to force you into it (eg best man toast). Observe your anxieties. Acknowledge them. Explain to yourself why they are irrational (they usually are). Think of something specific you can do at the moment (e.g. poke fun at yourself and get the audience laughing). From that point forward, you already win, because you already made progress. Everything else is just fun, and if you embarass yourself, who cares?
• Honesty. I don't just mean not telling lies. I mean revealing things to other people that may bring judgment. I've discovered that when I reveal risky things to people, they will trust me more, not less. No one believes that anyone else is perfect, so revealing a secret won't hurt. This is really difficult, especially society says such things are stigmatized (this is a self-fulfilling prophecy, unfortunately). Difficulty can be overcome with practice.
• Generating ideas and being creative. You can train yourself to be creative. You can train yourself to not accept things the way they are and to constantly ask "what if?" Just practice writing down ideas.
• Take deliberate breaks. If I keep working until I'm exhausted, I'll involuntarily take a much longer break and actually get less done. I also stop thinking about thinking, so I fall back on old bad habits (eg wasting time on the Internet). Instead, I now take frequent, short breaks. It's hard to remember to do this, so I practice it.

3. Life is an experiment. There are no stakes, only opportunities. My brain pays attention at a much deeper level while experiencing or doing something new.

• Try new things, all the time. This felt like the longest year of my life- in a good way, because I deliberately tried lots of new things. Also, trying new things has made discover that I can do things that I always told myself that I couldn't do. I never thought I'd ever be able to walk up to a random cute girl in a cafe and take her out on an instant date.  I never thought I would ever train for a triathlon. I never thought I'd actually have a blog, even though I wanted one.
• Meeting a new person and don't know what to say? Conversation turning boring? Try saying something provocative and risky, something that you personally find entertaining or funny. Play with the other person's reactions. If they are turned off by it, who cares? It's not a person you'd get along with anyways, if they don't share your sense of humor. And if they do find it hilarious, you've just found yourself a friend.
• Make your own way. Don't be afraid to stick out, no matter how uncomfortable it is to have others judging you. Don't get stuck in the mindset "College => job => stable career => significant other => marriage => house in the suburbs." Society tells you that this is what you're supposed to do. You might be 100% happy doing this, but you should do it because of reasons that you have established for yourself, not because society tells you to. If you're doing it for your own reasons, you will get more out of it. And this might not be what you want to do, and you should not let friends or family pressure you into following a set path. 
• Never be afraid of failure. I realized that I was dramatically overestimating the consequences of my choices. Once I started taking risks, I started seeing that small, fun risks are everywhere.

Finally, laugh at yourself. I'm laughing at this blog entry right now.

I'm lost. What's my purpose in life?

I have a personal mission statement and constitution. I try to review it at least once a week to revise it and reflect on how well I've lived it the last week, and to plan on how I'll better live it.  In my constitution I have principles and values written out, such as "I will have fun at failing," and "I will not judge other people." Sometimes I succeed, sometimes it's like I've forgotten this list exists. What is perhaps more important than the constitution is the mission statement. I have not been very happy with the life purpose I've defined for myself. It's vague but it's the best one I've come up with. The only thing I'm really happy with is that I deliberately chose a purpose that I thought most other people wouldn't understand on any level (I'm weird- I embrace it). I'm told that reflecting on my life purpose should bring me to tears. That you can find your life purpose by sitting down and writing hundreds of "life purpose" statements until you find the one that makes you cry. I've tried that, but nothing gives me that emotional "umph." And I've been worried that I can't find it.

Sometimes I think, hey I just need to focus. #1 Work on finding a proper life goal everyday. #2 Have some flexible plan for advancing that life goal each and every day. #3 Make sure by the end of each day I've met some milestone and feel like I've made progress. Then things will work out.

Not only is this focus hard, I'm also not sure it's the best plan anymore. I've been worried that I don't have a satisfying life purpose, but I think now that the worrying is the real problem. It's occupying me with trying to find some "ideal" life path and so I feel like I don't have enough time to experiment with new things. 

Society teaches us to focus on the career progression (in science it's undergrad => grad student => post-doc => junior faculty => tenure), or the life progression significant other => married => family => house in suburbs. If you don't make progress, others are trained to ask you why you haven't. Some people are happy with it, but a lot of people aren't. Some people think it's necessary, and they don't want to wander off it because it's risky. But you know what? I think a lot of it has to do with life/career progressions being pre-defined for you.  If you find your own reason to get married and buy a house that you won't pay off for 10 years, a reason that is made for you and only you, you'll be a lot happier with it.

This pre-defined path through life can sometimes feel like a prison. So we rebel against it, and we often go overboard and rebel in unhealthy ways. People party a lot, do drugs, cheat on their significant others, quit their jobs without a plan. Most of the time people do this to a lesser extreme, where we might simply lose focus on our work and do our own thing for a while. We might grow in new ways, but then reality sets in and your boss yells at you and you realize your peers have published 3 papers while you have nothing to show. So you freak out and go back to the pre-defined path. You feel bad. Nothing you feel bad about can ever be maintained (omg I HAVE to do this or else my career tanks). So it starts to fail. You work long hours but your work doesn't go anywhere, and it's because you feel bad about it. It's a hell-on-earth prison. So you rebel against it, and it starts all over again.

These are meanderings. We have to deal with societal expectations, but we also have to find our own way. Finding a correct balance- no, the correct MIX of the two is critical. And what's the best way to address something that is critical? Find a way to make it fun. Then you'll do it each and every day, and you won't worry about it.

I recently served on a panel to discuss graduate and medical school with a group of high schoolers applying to college. Every other question was along the lines of "What should I be doing right now to make sure I get into medical school?" It didn't bother me so much that they already "knew" what they wanted to do right out of high school- sure, it's naive, but I have confidence that they'll properly re-evaluate once they are exposed to more life choices during college. What did bother me was that they thought they would be trapped in whatever career path they chose, so they were scared to death that if they didn't optimize everything in their education that they would be stuck in some unhappy mediocre position. That they had to choose their career path NOW so that they could do everything right in the pre-defined life progression. Society is pushing students to imagine some ideal path through life, and if you just follow that you'll be all set for life. I was sucked into this for way too long, until I really started to reflect on what I wanted to get out of life.

Over the past year, I've been focusing on internalizing the mantra "Don't think life is good vs. life is bad. Think about what you can do right now to make it better, regardless of whether it's subjectively good or bad." It's self-managing your own thoughts. But I've really only been applying it to the "what" and the "how" of life. Not the "why" quite yet, and I realized this month that this has been a constant source of distress that I haven't been able to really address until recently.

My goal now is to be lost. And I'm going to have a ton of fun doing it.

Last-minute edit: Yesterday I found a life purpose statement that brings me to tears. But that just moves the bar up, and I bet tomorrow I will subjectively feel just as lost. Finally, this post was motivated by the first question in this Q&A by James Altucher. I have found his blog to one of the most thought-provoking ones out there, even if I don't agree with him. And his honesty is an inspiration to anyone who feels like they have hide their failures to prevent society from judging them- which is everyone.

August goals; capturing your thoughts on paper

20th post! Not doing any special post to celebrate- I'm just noting it. I considered an epic, deep post (yeah, right) but today is going to have to be quick- it's a busy week as usual.

You all know that I was a little obsessed for a while with setting goals and tracking them. I developed a single system in Evernote and stuck with it. The rigidity was definitely worth it- I developed a lot of discipline and I got used to reminding myself of my goals frequently. Furthermore, I really liked having just a few primary goals for the month that I stick by, not letting myself get so excited about other ideas that I lose focus. What I've found is that this really makes me feel like I have a "theme of the month" which is great motivation. But now I've moved into an experimental phase, playing with incentives and expanding my thoughts on what I truly want to accomplish. You know, the "why" rather than the "what." Recently I've tried two new systems, one of which is described below in my August goals. I think I'll save the other for a post in the near future (it's a web + smartphone app).

My August goals are:

1) Make tally marks each time I lose focus at work. This is a neat trick and it's helped me a lot in the last week. Essentially I have a sticky note on my laptop keyboard that says "Focus." I catch myself every time I feel like I'm about to do something unrelated to the task at hand (such as randomly checking Facebook or the news for no reason), unless I explicitly give myself permission to do it. I make a tally mark, remind myself of why the task I was performing was important, and get back to work. If I actually get to the point of checking Facebook and getting distracted, then I make two tally marks. During breaks, I may explicitly give myself permission to visit a particular website, and even then I make sure I don't continue clicking on links forever.

1a) Make tally marks each time I find myself having negative thoughts. This is auxiliary to the first point, and is accomplished in the exact same way. There's no point to worrying incessantly about something. Whether something is going badly or not is useless information to me- in fact it will just distract me from doing what I need to do. If something is worrying me, then I should ask myself "Can I do anything about it? Right now?" If the answer is no, I stop worrying and focus on something I can actually influence. If the answer is yes, I either do it or make plans to do it. This is a game I've been playing in my head for a while, and I found that having an object (piece of paper) to dump this on helps me push away the thoughts that are bothering me. That brings me to my next goal.

2) Keep a pocket Moleskine journal. I've resisted keeping a dedicated paper journal for many months now. I figured- I have Evernote to record all my thoughts! Everything backed up in one place! But it's just too clunky on my iPhone while I'm on the go, and I really need to be able to draw diagrams and integrate them with the text. Accessing a stickied page in a paper journal is so much faster than pulling up the relevant note on my computer. I tried a Hipster PDA for a bit but it didn't work out. Anyways, I've used this for the past week to develop my thought processes on my values, my short- and long-term goals, my ideas, etc. Putting it on paper (or Evernote) helps you pare down the bazillion things going on in your head to just the most important things. I originally disliked the lack of structure in the Moleskine (and you can't copy/paste templates like in Evernote)- but I've come to understand that forcing yourself create a system from scratch for organizing your thoughts is important for, well, personalizing your personal development. By the way, if you haven't started recording your thoughts and goals in any way, I highly recommend you start. If time is a worry, just know that it will save you time. Here's a wealth of productivity systems you can implement in a Moleskine.

My red Moleskine. On my computer for size comparison- it fits neatly into my pocket.

A page from my Moleskine. I made a thought process flowchart in response to feeling guilty about not getting enough done in lab. I asked myself a couple of key questions that completely modified my perceptions and put the work I did that day in context. In the end I concluded that my other priorities were more pressing and so I was at peace with myself. Those key questions are labeled 1, 2, 3, and 4 in the flowchart and lead to specific actions I should take (eg not worry or find a specific way to fix it). Then I solidified it in a Moleskine flowchart- so I can refer back to it in the future so I don't stress myself out in the future unnecessarily.

3) Be productive in the evenings learning information or a new skill that is unrelated to labwork. I don't think I have time this month to keep a consistent side project up on top of my Moleskine experimentation, so I figure why not just keep my mind fresh. I'm reading a book about dishonesty (thanks Dale!), learning some coding, learning some memory tricks, doing logic puzzles, and whatever else. The primary reason I'm keeping busy at night is that I've found it helps me sleep a lot better than if I just watch 30 YouTube videos.

Finally, I have started using a productivity web app for my goal tracking. I'm using it to remind myself of a bunch of other goals that I'd ideally like to accomplish a few times a week. Because of the way the website works, I don't need to think about them as much as my primary goals, so I don't have the focus issue that arises when I have too many goals. I will share after I explore it a bit more.

Update: Tracking my Monthly Goals

I briefly mentioned at the beginning of one of my recent blog posts that May felt like it lasted the equivalent of 3 months. It's still true- when it's Tuesday, the weekend feels like it happened a week ago. Why? I couldn't really put my finger down on this until I started thinking about this blog post. I realized I'm spending far more of my waking hours fully conscious. I'm no longer shutting down my brain for hours everyday by wasting time on the Internet. I'm deliberately planning and working towards my goals and developing my habits. Therefore, it feels like I have three times as much… time. Concrete accomplishments and productivity are a natural and happy outcome, but they are almost incidental at this point.

Today is an update on the goals I established at the beginning of the month.

I had 5 goals that I established for myself this month. These are, of course, in addition to everyday work.

• Focus: An incredibly important meta-goal. I'm trying to stop myself from becoming distracted by cool-sounding goals other than the 5 I've listed here. It's way too easy to move from goal to goal because of the allure of novelty, at the expense of never fully internalizing any habit and never satisfactorily completing any goal. I have specific criteria for checking this off each day, based on how many of the following goals I finish each day and how early in the day I finish them.
• Idea habit: The most enjoyable goal so far. Each morning I spend up to 30 minutes coming up with lists of ~10 ideas, to actively develop my creativity. These can be relevant to my day or not. Some example lists.
• Wake up at 6am: This one is fantastic when I actually do it because it's a productivity bonanza. However, waking up early is not a priority when I have evening social obligations or when I'm hosting someone at my place.
• Reading habit: Keeping up with the literature is critical to any career in science, and I've been neglecting it. I try to read at least an hour each day, or read to the point that I feel like I've gained an important insight. I'm also trying to develop a systematic way to proceed through the literature, but I've made minimal progress.
• Long-term lab plan: This one didn't really work out as I hoped. I've been treating it as a two-step process. First, developing a list of experiments that would be critical for proving a case in a manuscript. Second, putting it into a calendar format with 1-3 critical experiments I could perform each day in addition to run-of-the-mill labwork. However, I haven't actually done the second part because the first part keeps on changing (ah the realities of science).

I'm using Evernote to keep track of both my "Big Rocks" for each week as well as my progress on goals.

And how have I actually been doing? This morning I'm experimenting with graphing my results and seeing if it's useful.

Yes, I used Microsoft Excel to do this. So sue me.

Clearly, I'm having bursts of productivity (at the beginning of each week, I noticed) and then I slip up as the week goes on. That's just good to keep in mind as I finish the month- I don't necessarily have a plan to correct it. Notably, I'm pretty happy that my reading/plan habits are hovering in the 60-80% range, and the idea habit is a stunning success.

Observations on how I can keep up each habit:

• Focus: When I have an idea for a self-improvement project, I just write it down in a note in Evernote and then forget about it until it's time to make next month's goals. Don't want to get distracted. Also, waking up early gives me a boost of motivation that allows me to finish all my goals early in the day.
• Idea habit: Just continue my excitement over being creative each day. Also, I want to try mixing my already-generated ideas in non-intuitive combinations. That's also one reason why I share my ideas- because maybe one of your ideas will have sex with mine have a bunch of little baby ideas.
• Wake up at 6am: Have something I'm excited to do that day. My buddy Jake mentioned this piece of wisdom: "If you don't know why you're getting up in the morning, you should just go back to sleep."
• Reading habit: I can really only accomplish this when I drag myself away from lab to a cafe somewhere and tell myself "OK you are going to read now." Perhaps I should start reserving a specific timeslot for this each day.
• Plan: Just start with the calendar. Use the calendar as my mechanism for generating experimental ideas, rather than trying to list out all experiments first and then stick them into a calendar.

Finally, I have another habit that I've picked up even though I'm not actively focusing on it. And its quite simple: try something new everyday.

How I'm stopping myself from mindlessly wasting time on the Internet

As promised, I've written a continuation of my last post, "I like my prefrontal cortex but it naps too often," where I semi-ranted about my addiction to wasting time on the Internet. It can be summarized as two conundrums: 1) The flexibility and power of the computer/Internet is both a blessing and a curse, both a tool of incredible productivity and incredible distraction. 2) Once you start being distracted and wasting time on the web, you can't stop. Your prefrontal cortex goes into hibernation and your biological ability to refocus on work is clamped down.

For a while now I have felt like what I'm doing with my life only superficially resembles what I want to be doing with my life- sure, I'm in an MD/PhD program studying aging and longevity, while still having a social life and keeping fit. But if I actually look at what I'm spending my time doing, it feels like relatively little is dedicated to my long-term goals. Would I ever tell myself or another person that my goal in life is to waste time on the Internet? No? Then why I am spending so much of my time doing it?

Before we start, I'm loving the comments- keep 'em coming! Share your own experiences with the Internet below- we always make fun ourselves for wasting time but it's usually hard to get a good conversation going on about how to actually fix it.

A closer look at the problem- where can we intervene?
I started looking more carefully at what exactly happens when I suddenly lose 3 hours of my day to wasting time on the Internet. In particular, I looked at how these sessions begin.

1. URL autocomplete. My biggest enemy. On my computer Internet browser, I can click the URL bar and press "f" and autocomplete will take me to Facebook. Same for "g" (gmail), "h" (huffingtonpost), "t" (the crimson), "e" (en.wikipedia.org), "i" (intrade), "n" (nytimes), "d" (daily show) and "y" (youtube). Therefore, I can randomly hit keys on my keyboard and I get automatic reward. What could be simpler?
2. Random cues/distractions scattered in every window. Obviously, there are links, and I don't have much control over that. But there also used to be about 20 tabs open in my browser, and my eye skimming any one of them could distract me. Also, a whole bunch of different programs open. I used to check my e-mail all the time and find thousands of junk e-mails I hadn't bothered to delete, as well as a bunch of important e-mails I had been putting off. All of these things can trigger Googling things related to the cue/distraction and checking relevant web pages, which inevitably leads me down the path of clicking links. It also doesn't even help that some of the cues are work-related, because that just makes me anxious that I'm not doing my work.
3. Random distractions everywhere else (not on my screen). This includes my phone, the clutter on my desk, my kitchen, other people, little tasks I need to do around the lab. Real life being messy just makes me more likely to want to just look at my computer.
4. Lack of motivation. I'm procrastinating (duh) on my work. The best pearl I've heard about procrastination is that I'm procrastinating because I haven't thought about why my task is important. Sure, I may know generally why worm genetics can reveal all sorts of insights into diseases of human aging, but this bird's-eye view doesn't cut it on a day-to-day basis. I need to get specific about why I should be focusing on my work, or else I'll be inclined to start hitting random keys on URL autocomplete.

These combine to form the following scenario: I am overwhelmed by the stuff I need to do, and the distractions everywhere around me prevent me from thinking about why I should be doing the work I need to do. Thus my habit of wasting time kicks in and I start hitting random buttons and my URL autocomplete takes me to pages I check way too frequently and then I'm on the road to clicking link after link, and by then my brain has shut down.

Any solutions?

Now that I've better delineated the challenges, I can give an overview of the solutions I've been working on.

• Don't bring my laptop home. Only use an iPad at home for Internet consumption
• Compartmentalize my day. Lab is for work. Home is for personal development, reading, and entertainment. Cafe can be more flexible, but I give myself a pre-defined goal beforehand (like writing this blogpost right now).
• Give myself a routine at work to prevent me from getting distracted.
• Organize my stuff. All the time.

Internet consumption: only on my iPad, and only at home

I leave my MacBook at lab, and I only use an iPad at home. This was surprisingly helpful, and I think it pretty much solves the URL autocomplete and random cues/distractions problems. I of course need all of the functions/features of a computer to do my work at lab, but I really don't need it at home. I didn't buy an iPad until the most recent iteration because my computer could do everything an iPad could do and more. But I discovered that the limitations of an iPad are actually an advantage.

1. URL autocomplete is technically there on the iPad, but the awkwardness of the keyboard makes it so my hands can't efficiently do it without some thought. Thus, the lower portions of my brain can't compel my hands to start doing this. It also makes it harder for me to perpetuate time-wasting sessions. After all, I do frequently hit dead ends on the Internet (no more links to follow). At that point, I can stop and think, or I can randomly hit buttons for URL autocomplete or click on bookmarks on my MacBook. But on my iPad, I'm left with no choice but to stop and think about what I should be doing next.
2. It's simply a different interface than my computer. All my old habits just don't work in the same way and it's easier to shake them. It's likely starting anew! For example, it's much harder to navigate the web on an iPad. Maybe I'm just not good at it yet, but the very existence of the obstacle means it's impossible to go on autopilot. And again, it is the autopilot mode which makes these time-wasting sessions possible.
3. iPads only have one window open at a time. That means no cues to distract me. That means I can focus on my Kindle app book without seeing the YouTube window I left open on the side. Furthermore, it's more difficult to shift from app to app than it is to click around on a computer, so again, I avoid autopilot.

Compartmentalize

Most importantly, I CAN'T do my work on my iPad. This can be a good thing assuming I combine it with my next strategy, compartmentalization. I tell myself I'm not going to be doing lab-related things at home so I no longer feel guilty that I'm not doing work. Likewise, at lab I don't feel like I'm depriving myself of Internet entertainment because I am reserving that for when I get home. At home I can focus on personal development goals, or read a good book on my Kindle iPad app. And if I do just feel like vegging out and wasting time on the Internet, the prospect of work no longer hovers over me and makes me anxious, so the time-wasting actually does help me relax.

Routine- distract from the distractions
So if I don't bring my computer home, then what about work? The challenge is that I need my computer to do my work, so I have to deal with the possibility of distraction. But I find that having a routine stops me from defaulting to time-wasting. I let myself slip from my routine this week, and despite working longer hours I got a lot less stuff done. The routine is as follows:

1. I already have my first major task of the day prepped the night before. This can be a blog entry, a major lab task/experiment, reading a paper, working on a grant, etc. I do that first thing.
2. Put my laptop away into my drawer (assuming I had to take it out in the first place). I write down (on paper) everything I need to do that day. Think about why I need to do each item. Usually I combine this with organizing my desk since I likely have notes and images scattered around my desk from the previous day's work.
3. Only then do I take my laptop out of my drawer, look over my (electronic) lab notebook to finish up my to-do list. I close all tabs and programs not relevant to my current tasks.
4. Come up with a general plan for the day (consulting Google Calendar) and since I'm already thinking about my work, it's pretty easy to just get out of my chair and start prepping my reagents.
5. Select a task (or a collection of related tasks), remind myself of why it's important, then set a 50-90 minute timer. Work on it uninterrupted. Once I've identified why the task is important, it's much easier to perform computer tasks without getting distracted. Then take a break, but don't open my computer unless I'm planning on going through e-mail or organizing my electronic lab notebook. Set a 10-15 minute timer for this break, then go back to work.

I also copy the single-window nature of the iPad as much as possible on my MacBook. I close out of windows and browser tabs as frequently as possible to prevent me from getting distracted.

Organize

This applies to pretty much everything- e-mail, desk clutter, browser tabs, lab notebook, Evernote, lists. I doubt I have anything right now to contribute to the expansive body of advice on how to get organized, except to say that if you're wondering how to get organized and don't have time to explore all of the online advice and experiment with it, I'd recommend a very short and simple book called Zen to Done.

Final thoughts

I should reiterate that I still look at Facebook and I still look at random crap on the Internet. I think it's actually pretty important because I discover random useful things that way. Distraction can be a good thing, if and only if it gives me new ideas, lets me look at my work with fresh eyes, or helps me genuinely relax. The goal, of course, is to prevent it from snowballing into a waste of 3 hours of my life.

The main challenge for me in breaking this bad habit (wasting time on the Internet) was that it was interconnected with a bunch of other bad habits (like abusing URL autocomplete, being disorganized, not thinking about why I'm doing my work frequently enough, and letting stuff build on my laptop windows and my desk). I'm still working out the kinks of this, because it's impossible to address a whole bunch of habits at the same time- you get distracted if you try. Thus, it has taken me many months to implement a system that had any meaningful impact on productivity. But frankly, it took me years to acknowledge that I had a problem with Internet time-wasting in the first place. And the most important thing I discovered? The very process of eliminating a bad habit is fun- even better than the satisfaction of eliminating it at the end.

I like my prefrontal cortex but it naps too often

Hello blog readers! It's a busy week, so this will have to be a shorter blog entry than normal, and I'm going to split it into two parts- one for today and one for the weekend.

I thought I'd write about something I've been very pleased about in the last 2 months. Today's entry will be about the problem I've been frustrated with for years, and the weekend's entry will be about the solution I discovered (I promise). For the last 5 years or so I always knew that I was wasting a ton of time on the Internet, often on mind-numbing things like stupid Youtube videos and memes. Amusing myself for a few minutes is a good thing, but doing it for hours is just silly. It doesn't have to be that way- if I can stay focused, the Internet becomes a great resource for educating myself, completing my goals, developing skills, and staying in touch with friends. Even the totally random stuff that is completely unrelated to my work can be useful if it stimulates my brain. In fact the Internet is sometimes my only resource, because I often don't need anything else to get stuff done. However, what happens in practice is that I will think, "Oh I'll just check this one page," and soon enough I've lost 2 hours and I don't feel like anything I did was interesting or useful. Those 2 hours are like a black hole, but I postulate that what's happening on the other side of the event horizon is that I actually lose my biological ability to make a conscious choice to shift gears and actually get some work done.

Sure, you can say, oh that's just an excuse. But really, there are a few things about the Internet that can create a perfect storm that, in my opinion, can rob you of your free will. And this is key- IMHO, the Internet is the best thing in the world if you control it. It's the worst if it controls you. So how might it actually rob you of your free will in practice? Mind-numbing Internet material, by definition I suppose, doesn't take much active thought to process. You plop yourself down and you are entertained- and your lower brain regions (the ones that evolved before the sapience of the frontal cortex) love those reward mechanisms to death, so it is perfectly happy performing it on auto-loop. It's a lot like TV. Your basal metabolic rate sitting and watching TV is lower than when you're just sitting, and that's because your brain goes into some sort of auto-hibernate mode and burns fewer calories. The seat of your free will- your frontal cortex- is forced to take a nap by the rest of the brain.

And then every page is littered with distractions. Every link and every image on the page can catch your attention and present you with a new page that is equally filled with links and images designed to distract you. Wasting time on the Internet is a habit that's hard to break because of the constant reinforcement. But of course, is this all bad? Doesn't everyone need some R&R? The average American watches like 6 hours of TV per day, so should I really be so concerned about losing my evenings to wasting time on the Internet? But in actuality, even though the Internet is activating reward circuits, it is not relaxing at all. The entire time, I'm anxious because I know I'm capable of getting my work done at a computer, and I feel guilty. And the computer offers LOTS of opportunities to get stuff done, which both makes me feel more guilty, and overwhelms me with work choices at a time when my frontal cortex is inactive, so I'm less likely to actually go do work.

So we're left with the fact that doing mind-numbing things on the Internet is unproductive, addicting, and provokes anxiety. It can be relaxing at the start, which is probably why we all chose to do it, but then it easily spirals out of control. Again, I will present something that's helped me with a lot of these issues in my next blog entry.

I'd just like to leave you with an observation. When I started this blog, I got a lot of comments along the lines of "how the heck do you have time to write a blog?" Simply put, I'm just shifting time away from mind-numbing R&R (which is not even so relaxing) in favor of creative and intellectually satisfying R&R (like online courses, Skyping, etc). And that is the type of rejuvenating activity that makes me more productive at work the next day because 1) I don't need to wake up my conscious mind again when I'm done (because it never shut off) and 2) it gives me a chance to reflect on my life goals so that I am more committed to my work.


Keep reading Part 2.