In the last post we began exploring quantification. There are lots of creative ways that you can use to measure your progress on a micro or macro scale.
A classic micro-measure method is “The Paperclip Method.” The basic way it works is this:
Have a bunch of small, simple objects (paper clips, pennies, etc.) Determine the amount of actions you want to take- say you have to plane and sand ten boards for your woodworking project -and put that many of the objects on one side of your desk. So there’d be, say, ten paper clips on the left side of your desk. Each time you finish a board, move a paper clip over to the other side of the desk.
This is an astonishingly simple way of having a quick visual reminder of what you have accomplished, and what you still have to accomplish. For some reason, having a measuring device like this will motivate you to get more done. To hell with thinking of the work, you just have to get those paper clips moved over! Each time you do, you will get an irrational sense of accomplishment. Try it!
Say you are doing calligraphy for a client. You have to get 80 invitations for a wedding done by Thursday. Got eighty cents? Put them in a pile on the one side of the desk, and I guarantee you will be more motivated to move pennies than to move envelopes. You’ll find creative ways to stack them. You’ll want to see the stacks grow. You won’t be able to go to sleep until you “finish just one more stack.”
I’m a magician, so I do a lot of practicing with cards. If I’m working on a move, and I need to practice it 100 times today, I line up seven playing cards, face-down, on my table. Now I use them as a binary counting device. Face up cards count as ones, and face down cards are zeros. After each move, I turn cards face up or down accordingly, until I have reached a hundred. (That’s the furthest two cards to the left face up, and the third from the right also face up, with the rest face down – 1100100 in binary.) Sure, I could have just used the tally system with paper and pen, used paper clips, etc., but why not be creative?
Apropos playing cards – when I was in college, a loooong time ago, I was in pretty good shape. But I had a roommate who was in astounding shape. He introduced me to the following way to make sure we got our push-ups done every day. We did a “deck” of pushups. He did it like this:
He shuffled a full deck of cards and turned the top one over. Then he did that many pushups. If it was a six, he did six pushups. (Aces were 1, Jacks 11, Queens 12, and Kings 13.) At no time did he have to do more than 13 pushups in a row. Easy! Sure, but not if you realize that if you add up all the cards in a deck you get 364. That was 364 pushups in a day! In bite-size nuggets.
I wasn’t in that kind of shape, so I used the deck like this:
I’d just cut a bunch of cards and do that many pushups. Later in the day I’d do the same again, until I used up the deck. I only did 52 pushups a day, and generally not more than a dozen at a time. I don’t think I could have done 52 pushups in a row to begin. But after months of this, I could – not every day – but every few days or so. But I could do 52 in small groups every day, so I used the deck most days. It got me in the habit of doing my “pushies” every day. (At least while I was in college.) Looking at a dozen or so in each set made me never dread having to do a whole lot of reps in a row.
These are just some ways to do micro-measurements. I’m sure you can cook up some of your own, or maybe you have a pet method of measuring a difficult task. Write a comment and let me know your favorite, or if you can use something you’ve read here.
Next post we’ll talk about “macro measurements.”
