Be Pushy

The most important advice for me personally I've heard lately, from
writer Dave Holmes.

http://myyearofeverything.tumblr.com/post/607422936/b-e

"BE AGGRESSIVE. Pretend you're giving it all up and going back to school
in a year. Act like you have one year to make it work before you give up
and try something else. What haven't you done? Where aren't you being
aggressive enough? Go do it and embarrass yourself with your pushiness-
after all, you'll be doing something else in a year anyway, so who cares
what people think? Push until you feel uncomfortable, and then double
it. The trick is: when you do that, good things start happening right
away, and you get yourself to a point where you can't imagine giving up,
one year from now or ever."

How (and Why) to Stop Multitasking

Eyeopening stuff from Peter Bregman's essay:

http://blogs.hbr.org/bregman/2010/05/how-and-why-to-stop-multitaski.html

WHAT YOU GET FROM NOT MULTITASKING:
- It was delightful. "I never realized how significantly a short moment
of checking my email disengaged me from the people and things right
there in front of me."
- My stress dropped dramatically. Research shows that multitasking isn't
just inefficient, it's stressful.
I made significant progress on challenging projects
- I lost all patience for things I felt were not a good use of my time
"Since I wasn't doing anything else, I got bored much more quickly. I
had no tolerance for wasted time."
- I had tremendous patience for things I felt were useful and enjoyable.
HOW TO DO IT:
- the best way to avoid interruptions is to turn them off. Write in the
morning, disconnect. "most of us shouldn't trust ourselves. "
- Use your loss of patience to your advantage. Create unrealistically
short deadlines. Cut all meetings in half. Give yourself a third of the
time you think you need to accomplish something.

One strategy I thought of just now for helping myself stay on task:
write down on my pad of paper: "I AM writing a blog entry" or "I AM
reanalyzing the gaze data" At least then I can't fool myself into
thinking that doing this other thing is what I'm supposed to be doing.