Kick Your Ass Idea #121 – Draw a WHEN Diagram

Hey, summer’s nearly over, and even though we haven’t been in school since a few gajillion millenia before people ran out of Kryptonite to throw at the ankylosaurs on their way home from alchemy class, we thought we’d lighten things up with a way to make academics a lot more fun.

Remember those Venn diagrams teachers used to make us draw? We’d take three subject areas – represented by circles – and overlap part of each circle. The area where all three circles overlapped was supposed to tell us something about how the topics inter-related. For example, if your skills, your passion, and the thing you do for money overlap, then you’re golden! You’ll never feel like you’re “working” another day in your life.

Actually, we can’t recall anything nearly so practical in the Venn diagrams our teachers had us draw, but we have a suggestion for a way to make the exercise both helpful and a little silly. Instead of drawing VENN diagrams, why don’t you try drawing WHEN diagrams? It can help you figure out what to concentrate on, what to do next, and what to try to avoid altogether. Like your homework.

It’s almost as simple as slaying a dragon with a crack pipe. Suppose you have three areas of responsibility (like HOME, FAMILY, and FIND THE GOLDEN CHALICE). Jot down a list of the top 15 – 20 to-do items you’ve chiseled on your stone tablet. Then find the one thing you absolutely have to do NOW! That goes in the middle (right where it says “NOW!” silly). Next, find the three things that you really should do right after the thing you should do right now and put them in the part of the circles labeled “LATER!” All the other stuff goes in the big part of the circles called “A lot later…” When you you finish the NOW item, pick the most urgent LATER! item and promote it to NOW! A single A Lot Later… item gets promoted to LATER! and so on and so forth.

Here’s the secret part that actually helps you get stuff done in a totally kick ass sequence: don’t refill the A Lot Later… part of the circles. Let ’em get completely drained while you promote everything up the ladder. Once your circles are empty, celebrate a little. Take a trip to the LaBrea tar pits, dig for emeralds, or go tilt at some windmills. There’ll be plenty of items waiting for your next stone tablet when you get back, refreshed and more super than ever.

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