Happy Friday!

Liminal Journaling

What do you do when you’re stuck? When your productivity has skidded to a halt?

One simple tip is this: when the work stops, write about why the work is stopped. This is a variety of what many call Interstitial Journaling, which I call Liminal Journaling. It’s writing in the transition spaces—moving into work, moving (or not) between tasks or contexts.

By writing about why the work is stopped, I can learn about myself and my relationship with work. In other words, it can get me unstuck now, and help me avoid being stuck in the future.

But what happens when you don’t know what to write about? When your Liminal Journaling is just as stuck as your productivity is?

💡Use the Productivity Paralysis Checklist 💡

👆 That’s your weekend upgrade

Work through these questions if your productivity is stuck.

1. Is the task unclear?

A well-formed task should start with a verb and clearly state what you need to do. “Jackson email” is not a clear task. “Respond to email from Jed Jackson about management concerns” is much better. When you read it, you’ll know what to do and why. And if your email client allows, include a direct link to the email. That makes it practically foolproof.

“But R.J., I know what ‘Jackson email’ means.”

You may know that now. But you won’t know it tomorrow. You’ll be lucky if you know by the end of today.

Write tasks so clearly that someone else would know exactly what to do. (Because by tomorrow, you essentially are someone else!)

2. Do you need to break the task down further?

Let’s revisit our “Respond to email from Jed Jackson about management concerns” task. What happens when you open the email back up and find that Jed needs a list of your clients, an invoice for the Peterman project, tickets to the fundraising gala, and your detailed opinion on who he should hire for Andrea’s old job?

Whoops. Your task was written clearly, but it’s really several tasks. You close the email, reminding yourself to allow more time the next time you open it.

But, of course, you won’t remember to allow more time. Don’t trust your memory. Instead, break the task down into the actual tasks you need to complete. Prepare client list to send to Jed. Buy tickets to the fundraising gala. And so forth. Make them subtasks to the original if you like, but make sure they’re clear and doable on their own.

3. Do you have the correct context clear in your mind?

You won’t succeed at preparing a client list if the client spreadsheet is on your work computer and you’re sitting on a train with only your phone. And you won’t get those gala tickets if you need to physically buy them from Marla in the next office down the hall, but you’re sitting at your desk and Marla’s not in today.

Some tasks have to be done in a certain place, at a certain time, with a specific person, or using a specific tool. If you’re hung up because you’re never in the right context, get that fixed!

4. Are there any prerequisites you’re skipping?

Turns out you don’t have Peterman’s business address on file, and you won’t be getting that invoice done until you have it. Unfortunately, that relies on Mr. Peterman sending you the address. Your prerequisite here is getting in touch with him and his sending you the information you need.

Most prerequisite problems arise from mishandled “hot pan” tasks (I’m drawing here on an analogy from the excellent book Everything in Its Place). When an order is called into a restaurant kitchen, a pan goes on the stove first thing, so it’s ready to cook when the ingredients are ready.

Likewise, if I need information about the Peterman project before I can create an invoice, I should send an email to Mr. Peterman before I do anything else. Then I can get other work done while waiting for the response. Otherwise I’m stuck because I can’t move forward until the prerequisite conditions are met.

5. Is this an ongoing task that could be reframed as a recurring task?

Some tasks defy breaking down further. When I’m writing music, for instance, I can’t specify in my task list that I should write an F chord in measure 43. I just want to be prompted to do the work.

But when work is ongoing, we hesitate. It’s too big for one work session, so it never gets started in any work session.

If writing a detailed analysis of who we should hire to fill Andrea’s old job is going to require a few iterations, frame it as a recurring task. “Make a pass at detailed analysis for Andrea’s replacement” could recur, say, three times, to ensure that you give it the time and attention it requires while not being dissuaded because you can’t do it all at once.

How can Tana help?

​Tana is the Tool for Thought that I use for productivity, creativity, and notes.

Instead of using the flowchart pictured above, when I’m working in Tana I can simply call up an instance of my Productivity Paralysis Checklist. It is a supertag that “extends” both the Liminal Journaling supertag and the Procedure supertag—which means, it has fields for writing and a field for the checklist.

It is so easy to call this checklist into service whenever I get stuck in my work—and it’s easy to build for yourself! (Try out my Tana for Tasks course to build your Tana productivity skills.)

What do I do next?

(1) Take 2 minutes and answer this question: What’s one thing I learned in this newsletter that I can put into practice right away?

By committing to a specific action, you make it much more likely you’ll do it.

(2) Take a few minutes to build your own Productivity Paralysis Checklist.

And next time you’re stuck, use it!

If this was valuable for you:

Share the newsletter with someone you think would also get value from it! https://rjn.st/weekend-upgrade-newsletters​

Until next time, friends:

We all get stuck sometimes—just make sure you’re ready to get un-stuck!

R.J. rjn.st/links​