According to this article: The Heisenberg uncertainty principle states that it is impossible to know simultaneously the exact position and momentum of a particle. That is, the more exactly the position is determined, the less known the momentum, and vice versa. This principle is not a statement about the limits of technology, but a fundamental limit on what can be known about a particle at any given moment. This uncertainty arises because the act of measuring affects the object being measured.
There are so many books, blogs, etc., about focus, productivity and such. Many of them are focused on people working in the corporate world, running in the fast lane, climbing the ladder or whatever. Good luck to ‘em. This blog isn’t about running in the hamster wheel, finding who moved your cheese, or coloring your parachute.
This is about finding your own satisfaction and trying to achieve it. So, as much as I like to read other blogs, and watch TED talks and devour books about productivity, I don’t just want to regurgitate them in digestible form for you.
I want to encourage you to explore your own experiences with your own desires for your achievement. This is about experimenting, not taking some “expert’s” word for it.
For example, for the last four months I’ve been trying to achieve a high level of expertise with a particular magic technique.
The effect of the technique is to be able to find out which card is missing from a fifty-two card deck just by looking through the deck once. Optimally, I’d like to be able to do this within thirty seconds.
I started working on this technique decades ago, but realized it was going to take a lot more effort and time in training than I was willing to put into it at the time. Originally it took me about two minutes on average, with a success rate of finding the exact card of about 30%
Five and a half months ago, I decided to take the plunge and make the effort to master this trick. I figured that it would take about three months at an hour and a half training each day. I have missed almost no days of training, but still am at only about down to about an average of 60 seconds, and up to about a 60% hit rate.
I realized when I started that three months might be too little time (I was right!) and decided that after that, I’d stick with it for however long might take. I did not intend to throw away three months work. Now I’m at about double that, and am thinking that it may take a year. But whatever it takes…
The point I want to make is about one of my training techniques. I have been measuring my time with a stopwatch. For the first three months I measured every attempt, and I keep a record of it all on a spreadsheet, so I can keep track of my progress. I want to see what works and what doesn’t.
After three months, I thought, “What would happen if I don’t time it? Will my time improve?” I still kept track of my success rate, just not the seconds it took.
After a few days of this, I noticed that my success rate was going up. But I didn’t know how long it was taking. Was the hit rate going up because I was taking more time? Less time didn’t seem to make much sense. But after awhile, I realized that sometimes I felt like I was going really fast and getting into the “flow.”
Other times I’d deliberately go slower to try and concentrate harder.
When I started timing again, I noticed that my times and success rates had actually gotten worse.
Then I stopped timing again, and my success rates went up, once again, I might have been sacrificing that much needed speed.
It seems like, that because of the Uncertainty Principle (“uncertainty arises because the act of measuring affects the object being measured”) I could never be sure if not timing was making me go faster or slower.
Once I resumed timing again, I noticed that my speed and accuracy were finally getting better.
I make no assumtions, but I suspect that the act of timing makes me a bit self-conscious, and I am actually faster when I don’t time, and practicing like that makes me actually better. But obviously I can’t prove this, because I don’t know my times when I don’t measure them.
At present, I am timing about half of my trials each day, and foregoing the timing on the other half. If I make significant progress like this, I think that will show that foregoing the timing is generally helping. It’s all trial and error. I have many more months to go, I imagine, until I reach my goal of 100% accuracy in under 30 seconds, but it is fascinating to watch the progress.
So what has this got to do with you and your projects? Obviously it depends on your projects. If you are working on something with a speed/success ratio, you might want to try the timing/no timing method, and play around with when you time and when you don’t. I strongly suggest that whatever you do, you keep track of your progress over time in some way, as in a spreadsheet. (See Macro-Measurements for Positive Habits .)
What if you a sculptor, a screen-writer, a music composer, a fashion designer, athlete, etc., and want to create more works? Some people wait for their Muse to motivate them. Others start at a certain time each day and work for a certain time.
I’d encourage you to try both methods for awhile, alternately, and measure how much you’ve gotten done. I realize that a lot of things like the above are not exactly piece-work, and are hard to measure objectively. But you can do it subjectively by keeping a daily work journal and recording how you felt and how much you felt you got done and how you feel about the quality of it each day.
Give it some time before you make a final judgement, though. I know as a writer, I’ve always waited for my Muse. This has given me thousands of pages of notes over the years, and almost no finished work. I love doing it this way, though. It brings me enjoyment, and I am not trying to be a published fiction-writer.
On the other hand, this blog is something I want to actually get written and “out there” so that it may help other people. My Muse just isn’t bringing it. So now when I sit down to write, I set a timer. More about getting writing done later, though.
Your thoughts?
