A little trick for all of us whose mantra is “later”
Your Problem
Almost everyone procrastinates. Perhaps it is part of human nature, and some just do it more than others — but it is almost always a negative phenomenon. It usually manifests in the same way. You begin working on some task, usually a larger one that requires a lot of thinking and/or decision-making. Within a minute or two, your mind is wandering, and before you know it you have 50 tiny little tabs open in your browser. You’ve lost your way, and you’re no closer to being done with the task that you started.
Luckily, I’ve found a little trick to help you leverage this irritating tendency to let your mind wander, and turn in into something beneficial. Actually it can really provide two beneficial things: humility (we all need a little of it sometimes) and intelligence.
The DKL
The trick is this: construct a “Don’t Know List” (DKL for short). Take about 5 minutes and write a list of some things that you just don’t know. Start with things that are way outside of anything you could be expected to know for your job and your normal daily life. Here’s an example:
I don’t know anything about the Nitrogen Cycle.
I really don’t know about the Nitrogen cycle. I know it has some role in soil quality, farming, and the environment in general. But I don’t know how it works, what the benefit of nitrogen is, or what a beneficial level is in soil. Having this item on your list will keep you from spouting off as if you know about the nitrogen cycle, and keep you from embarrassing yourself in front of some savvy farmers.
Okay. Let’s go with a less benign example:
I don’t know anything about the Iran nuclear deal.
Working With the List
Once you get 5–10 things on this list, you might begin to feel as if you’re some kind of dunce. After all, look at all the things you don’t know! Don’t fret; that’s actually a good thing. We can all use a little humility, as we’ve been reminded going back over 2,000 years. Humility can often garner more respect from others than showing off how much you (think) you know. This “don’t know list” can help you to begin your practice of being more humble. That’s an instant effect, enjoy it. Now on to actually using the list.
Now that you’ve got your list, take some time to go through it and cross out the things that you are not interested in getting a deeper knowledge of right now. You can do this simply by just asking yourself: would learning about this thing now have a foreseeable positive impact on my life in the next 6 months? If you don’t immediately answer “yes”, then cross it off the list. You can always come back to it at some other time, if it pops up again. Try to limit the remaining items to no more than 3 things.
With your now smaller list of things you don’t really know, put the phrase “learn about” in front of each on a new, clean list. The next time you’re doing some other task, and start feeling that old wanderlust, itching to open a new tab on your browser, open up the DKL list, and just google something related to the first term. Then just go from there, and record bullet points of things you learn under that item in your DKL list. Keep going until you get tired, or until you begin to realize that the task you put off to do this task really needs your attention again. You just may learn a thing or two.
A great place to start the DKL list is as a stack of notebooks in your Evernote account. Just make a notebook for each item on the DKL list, and use that notebook to begin taking notes as you go on your inevitable excursions through Wikipedia, Wolfram Alpha, and other mainstays of cyber-vagabonds. You might catch yourself developing a serious interest in one of the items on your list, as evidenced by the building up of links and bullet points under it. Keep it up!
Reap the Rewards
I would suggest taking a look at your DKL periodically. There’s not set time to do this, but maybe shoot for every few months. Look at the items and ask a similar question to the one you did at the start: do you see a continuing value-add in your life by keeping this as a thing to develop knowledge about? For all the “no” answers, file them away. For all the “yes” answers (hopefully just one), keep it live, and sweep away the others (or other).
After that, start the process over again. Avoid becoming an DKL hoarder, and keeping the same few subjects on the list. Why do I say that? Simple — familiarity breeds contempt. The more the items on your DKL seem like projects or structured work, the more likely it is that you’ll stop using them as your procrastination outlet. Then before you know it, you’re reading about Disco Demolition Night on Wikipedia (true story, it happened to me recently), and you’re wondering how you got there.
So keep your side-interests fresh. Use the DKL. Become more humble, and become a better procrastinator.