Essentialism is the secret of success for Tiny Wings and the people who do it all

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Are you terribly short of time? You rush from one task to the next, but you still can't say at the end of the day, “How fruitful have I done”? Writer and trainer Niklas Goeke felt the same way, but learned how to manage time and affairs and in this article shares the methods he now uses.

Essentialism is not about getting more done in less time, but about doing only what needs to be done.

Greg McKeown author of Essentialism

Yes, I have never been able to boast that I feel a sense of accomplishment at the end of the day, even if I spent it very productively. But I found two secrets that helped me get on the path of essentialism and focus like a laser sight on things that need to be completed.

Now my to-do list for the day looks something like this:

Sketch the outline for the article

Not bad, huh? Just wonderful! Done the task and enjoy the moment. I would have patented this technique, but it is just the result of my irrepressible gaming. I will explain everything in more detail.

Something you are doing wrong right now

Right now. I'm sure. You are doing something wrong. And you don't even fully realize it. Look up at the top of your browser. What do you see? Something like this?

Not two, not three, but all 10 tabs are open. And how long have you been working with such a screen? Day? A week? Month? It looks like you are suffering from chronic brain multitasking. And these tabs are just the tip of the iceberg. And there is no doubt that your productivity suffers from this.

For every multitasking project, you punish yourself with loss of quality, wasted time, and stress. If you do not believe me and think that you have everything under control, play it. I bet you won't last a minute. Here is my result:

First lesson:we cannot multitask. And if you say you can, chances are you're lying to yourself. Why is it so difficult to play this game? Let's take a look at what happens in the brain when you play.

How multitasking affects skill levels

Without going into details, let's look at the very essence. When you do one task, your brain works like this: both hemispheres are involved and work together.

But as soon as even a second task is added, the left hemisphere switches to it, while the right one continues to work on the previous one. That is, the hemispheres work independently of each other, pursuing different goals. If you are constantly switching between the two tasks, on an MRI it will look something like this:

Instead of one brain working at full capacity on a task, you now have two less powerful halves that work for short periods. And if the brain has only two halves, then what happens when you connect the third task? That's right: chaos!

In one study, participants were asked to arrange letters according to alphabetical order, color, and size (uppercase and lowercase). Participants constantly forgot about one of the tasks, and made many mistakes in two performed ones.

Plus, multitasking takes 40% longer to complete than focusing on one task. This is because the brain, like a computer processor, allocates time to each task. Whenever you switch tasks, it has to restore the context. Imagine that on a computer you switch from application to application: you need to extract data from memory, update, load pictures. It takes time. Therefore, the more time you continuously work on one task, the better the result you will get.

How Essentialism and Tiny Wings are related

Is there an app or video game similar to the one you played at the beginning of the article? No. Because she's not funny. She's stressful.

Here's the story of playing right …

In February 2011, German developer Andreas Illiger released Tiny Wings. The game has sold 10 million copies. And the humble developer became a millionaire overnight.

Zero budget. No marketing. Without a team. Only focus on the task.

Andreas wanted to make a game that even one and a half year olds can play. As a true essentialist, he focused on only one aspect of the game.

There are so many destructive and negative games around that I wanted to make one that brings happiness.

Andreas Illiger

One-year-old children cannot think in multitasking mode, so Andreas made the simplest game that immerses you in a joyful state: a tiny and cute main character, rhythmic music and the simplest gameplay he could think of.

There is no level system or mind-blowing graphics, but there is one key component of gami cation: motivation. Players are driven by the desire to get positive emotions, to feel happiness, pleasure. And that's what they find in Tiny Wings.

You are a birdie with tiny wings that wants to fly high in the sky. The only thing to do is to tap the screen with your finger in time to make the bird jump on the hills. On the way, you need to collect coins. The pace of the game is accelerating, and your task is only to tap and tap on the screen, over and over again.

And when you make progress in the game, you want to keep playing. This is the same "flowing state" described by the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. You can get into the flow by achieving a balance between task complexity and skill, when you are not bored or disappointed. This is why the game is addictive.

And here's the second lesson:when you focus on one task, you do it well.

Let's see how these two lessons can be used in everyday life.

What does all this have to do with productivity

First, I dare say that you are deceiving yourself. Make you believe things that aren't true.

Let's say this is your to-do list:

1. Take out the trash.
2. Work on the project.
3. Go for groceries.
4. Have lunch.
5. Reply to emails.
6. Go to workout.
7. Swim.
8. Choose a gift for mom.
9. Send a proposal to the client.
10. Call a doctor.

The usual list, huh? What does he look like at the end of the day? Isn't that right?

1. Take out the trash.
2. Work on the project.
3. Go for groceries.
4. Have lunch.
5. Reply to emails.
6. Go to workout.
7. Swim.
8. Choose a gift for mom.
9. Send a proposal to the client.
10. Call a doctor.

It took a little longer than you expected to write the proposal to the client. A whole day, to be exact. All you had time to do besides this was to take out the trash and answer letters.

This is the main disadvantage of lists. You fool yourself into thinking you know ahead of time how much you can get done in a day.

How to take the path of essentialism

What structure should you choose to organize your day if the to-do list from the previous paragraph doesn't work? Remember the Tiny Wings lesson: spend all your energy on one thing and you will get amazing results.

Single-tasking is the trend of all the recent business books, and I encourage you to support it. Let's learn from the great essentialist. In his book Essentialism, Greg McKeon shows two images that explain single-tasking.

If you sleep 8 hours a day, you have 16 hours of wakefulness. Let's say you spend 4 hours on yourself: shower, walk, exercise. There are 12 hours left, and they must be spent on achieving goals.

Each hand is one hour:

1. Blog post.
2. Promotion in social networks.
3. Drafting and invoicing.
4. Working on a client project.
5. Calls to potential clients.
6. A meeting.
7. Procrastination and watching videos on YouTube.
8. Thinking through a long-term business strategy.
9. Market research.
10. Current letters.
11. Answers to customer questions.
12. The path from home to office and from office to home.

Lots of things to do. And on some days they manage to remake them. But even then you have no sense of progress.

Now, for a second, imagine spending your day like this:

What happens if you spend all 12 hours on one task? Will you write not 1 hour, but 12? If you write 500 words per hour, then in 12 you will write 6,000 words! This is the progress you will see. Many books have no more than 25,000 words. Yes, you can write a book in 4 days. Yes, a whole book. Of course, you can hardly devote 12 hours to one lesson. But even if it will be 4 hours or 6 hours, it is still enough to quickly finish some big business.

Just compare the pictures. When will you arrive faster from point A to point B?

When you're focused, your results grow exponentially. Well, enough talk and pictures, let's take action!

Three Steps to Achieve Consuming Focus

Follow these three steps to keep your to-do list with only one task each day. I do this in Evernote, you can use Trello, Wunderlist, pen and paper - however you wish.

Step one: make a list of actions

I got this idea in David Allen's book How to Get Things Done. It is about breaking a big task into tiny pieces. For example, my goal for August was to successfully post two guest posts. This is how I crumbled this task.

1. Analyze popular posts on this topic.
2. Come up with a title for the post.
3. Write a plan for the post.
4. Write an introduction.
5. Add a life story to the post.
6. Add scientific reasoning to the post.
7. Write about the first step.
8. Write about the second step.
9. Write about the third step.
10. Write a conclusion.
11. Insert pictures.
12. Edit post.
13. Submit post.

One step should take no more than 25 minutes, and the steps should be so simple that even a four-year-old can understand the instructions.

Step two: choose the most important task for the next day

Choose one item. If you have already tried and wrote the actions in the order in which they should be performed, then just select the next item. Write the day's work on a sticker and hang it on the monitor. This is your goal for the next 24 hours.

The business of the day is to make a plan for fasting.

And it is also advisable to put a reminder that will ring at the moment when you usually start working, and remind you to start with the work of the day.

Step three: learn not to be distracted by using the shopping cart

This shopping cart can be created in the same application that you use to create your to-do list. There you put everything that distracts you. This is what I'm talking about …

As soon as you are immersed in work, a message arrives in the messenger:

Damn!

Damn!

Yes, the trees are sticks! Even if after all the messages you return to work, and do not decide to drink tea and take a break, thoughts about these croissant donuts will spin in your head and it will be impossible to concentrate. These thoughts must be put out of my head. Throw away in your basket. All messages, calls, letters, notifications, memories - we ruthlessly throw everything into it.

Basket:

1. Buy croissants.
2. To wash a car.
3. Stop by the pharmacy for vitamins.

How to use this system for maximum productivity

When the reminder of the beginning of working hours rings in the morning, look at the business of the day. Set a timer for 25 minutes and start working. Throw away any distractions, external and internal, so you can deal with them later.

If for some reason you can't finish the day's work in 25 minutes, take a break for 5 minutes. Do anything other than work: walk the dog, vacuum the floor of the room, do a few squats, or walk down the hallway of the office. Of course, you have to finish the day's work in the next 25 minutes, otherwise you screwed up something when you made the list.

The beauty of this system is that I started my day by writing an article outline. And now I am writing her last words, although only 5 hours have passed.