In these distraction-riddled times, it’s incredibly easy to not be earning any money.
Here’s a way to stop doing that.
This is a story about a part-time freelance writer (hi there) who found himself with lots of things he wanted to do, many of which didn’t help his fledgling career at all. He knew how to destroy the world so he could sit down and work – that wasn’t the problem. No, the thorn in his paw was that he never quite knew what he should be doing next.
So he made himself a bucket list.
Ah, bucket lists. Wonderful things. As the name suggests, these are imaginary receptacles that you sling everything into, willy-nilly. You add things to the end of them and you do the things at the top of them, crossing entries off with a different pen that has a nice thick nib so the line is sufficiently solid-looking. A permanent marker pen is great; it squeaks. The squeak of victory.
Here are my problems with bucket lists:
1. I list the easiest things.
2. Then I list the hardest things.
Easiest things: do the washing-up, order train tickets online, ring a friend, catch up on blog comments, read the latest at World Hum, oil the chain on my bike, go shopping…
Hardest things: finish my Radio 4 Afternoon Play pitch, get healthier, make $1m, win the Nobel peace prize, learn to dance, have a fulltime sustainable writing income, be adored by millions, etc.
And so here’s my experience of working through a bucket list: YAY! YAY! YAY! YAY! Oh.
Brick wall.
So then I cheat by changing the rules: I don’t have to do them in order. I can skip the tricky ones and do the others first. And so that’s what I do. And my life is suddenly in danger of being an inexhaustible series of easy wins, lined up in front of me, all the way to the horizon. To infinity and beyond.
But you feel busy. You feel dynamic. Yay yay YAY.
Generally, I bucket-think myself into long-term inactivity. Oh, sure, I’m getting stuff done, but it’s the easy, shallow stuff, not the jobs I know I really should be doing. Why? Because they’re usually too big to cross off.
One way round this is to break your big wins into little ones that will fit on your attention-deficient bucket list – but in doing so, you run the risk of treating them superficially, of always trying to hurry on to the next one. Goal-based living, see: it wears you out, turns you into a box-ticker, obsessed with achievement at the expense of experience. You don’t dig deep because the next thing is always on your mind because your list is still so damn long.
So then I tried prioritizing my list and stick to a rigid order.
1. [Important stuff].
2. [Slightly less important stuff].
………
48,962. Do the washing up
And this failed because I like the thrill of chaos and variety. I’m not a program – I’m a person. A thing designed to thrive on the different and the unexpected and the aimlessly fun. If I did nothing but the most important things, I’d feel shackled, unable to goof around and pick tasks creatively, on a whim. (Also, I’d have a lot of washing-up to do).
Cubicle-thinking, I call it.
So then I made myself a very strong coffee, got a big piece of paper and wrote lots of foul language all over it. This calmed me. Then I turned the paper over and scribbled a few ideas. One stuck.
And here it is. A better way to manage my bucket-brain. And my version is all about Money (the great enabler of Fun).
Here comes my train of thought. Please stand behind the yellow line, thank you.
1. I need to be doing 3 types of Stuff. (a) Stuff directly for Money, (b) Stuff indirectly for Money, and (c) Stuff almost certainly not for Money in any conceivable way.
2. Let’s call those Red (No Money), Amber (Some Money) and Green (YAY Money).
3. So now I take my precious, inadequate bucket list and I chop it up, scattering the contents into these three categories.
eg.
GREEN: Work on radio play idea; write freelance blog post for [online market]; pitch magazine article; work on book.
AMBER: Networking; research writing markets & job offers; vocation-related reading; work on blog’s SEO profile; planning travel; sitting in the garden, thinking hard about things.
RED: See how many Pringles I can fit into my mouth at one time without choking; reading purely for fun; watching season 6 of The Shield; going for a walk to see if I can get myself lost (which is the best way to explore your neighbourhood); hanging out with friends; sitting in the garden, thinking aimlessly about things.
4. When I’m done with chopping up my bucket list, I get three big pieces of paper. (They’re different colours).
5. And I fill them.
6. Then (this is the tricky bit) I divide up my free time between Red, Amber and Green activities. Then I do only what’s on each of those lists within those designated parts of my day. I can switch between things or pick on a whim – but only within those limits.
This proportioning is the difficult bit. You have to be realistic. Need a complete day off? It’s all Red. Want to be super-productive? Push the proportion of Green and Amber up as far as you dare. And so on
The great thing is that all three lists should have roughly the same amount of things on them if I’m healthily focussed on my work. Too much on the Red list? Slacker, j’accuse. Nothing on the Green list? It seems you’ve been neglecting Amber, my friend. Nothing on Red? FUN IS FUTILE, NUMBER ONE. YOU WILL ALL BE ASSIMILATED. etc.
Right now, this productivity method suits me nicely. It’s bucket-listing, yet not. It’s prioritizing, yet not. Best of both worlds, yet not quite either.
Any of the above struck a chord with you?
Images: lanchongzi, wwarby, Doug88888, longhorndave and AlanCleaver_2000.
Writing things on coloured paper, then cutting them up and rematching them all cohesively? That’s my LIFE. You’ll be an EFL teacher yet, Mike …
So, how many Pringles *can* you fit in your mouth at once? Enquiring minds need to know.
How many?
All of them.
And you reckon I’m perfect EFL material? Great! I’ve always wanted to have minions, running errands, doing all the dull things in my life, and not getting paid as they perform their demeaning tasks silently or, ideally, sobbing pitifully. And maybe I can put the less useful ones down the mines, actually get some kind of income out of them. Yes.
Obviously a new life await me.
I will, of course, be testing that grandiose statement. And they’re going to be cheese and onion flavoured. The Pringles, that is, not your foreign students. Classrooms are stinky enough without adding overly-flavoured children into the mix.
you forgot the, actual, important stuff. nowhere do i see :
Play more computer games than there is actually time for
Give Darren money for stuff (this should increase exponentially)
forget to do important things, due to excessive pringle eating.
come on man, get a grip!
I believe “getting a grip” and your list of “important stuff” are two concepts that don’t belong on the same continent.
I’m speaking from now, of course, not historically.
One day I have a dream of finding a way to sell all the computery stuff I’ve bought from you *back* to you, at a profit. Possibly while you’re being held down & threatened by members of my elite Financial Protection Shock Troops.
If you have a Super Green day, do you TURN green, rip off your shirt, and go on a cash-spending rampage?
No, it’s the opposite – it’s a cash-earning rampage. “Hyperentrepreneuric shock”, the medical profession calls it. Everything you do earns money. You turn the kettle on to make a cup of tea, and you reinvent the kettle by accident. You sit down, and a light goes on in your mind and you know how all lower back problems could be solved by a small piece of extremely expensive surgery.
The only way to stop yourself going into financial shock is to be incredibly philanthropic until you’ve got your wallet under control again.
Admittedly, this is a medical emergency I’m willing to try out. For the good of science, and all that.
I really, really like this. A lot. As in, I think I’m going to give it a shot. Thanks so much for the idea.
Except, I’m going to skip the colored paper. I have very little to do with paper of any kind these days, so I’m going to do it all on my computer. But that’s okay, because I looove doing color coded spreadsheets. Uh, maybe that’s just me…but I’m gonna count it as an amber activity, nonetheless, heh.
Colouring in columns and rows is an essential part of truly bonding with Excel. Only beaten by wild pie-charting.
No wishy-washy colours, now. BIG, BOLD, BRIGHT. Hideous, even. Or it won’t work.
I almost couldn’t get past “attention-deficient bucket list “. I was cracking up, and I was in a really quiet place at the university. lol…You know, I’ve tried to make bucket lists, and I just keep completing everything on them. There’s just sooo easy for me. ; )
Sounds like your lists aren’t wildly ambitious enough. Or, you’re just too damn awesome.
I’m glad I’m not alone in this world
I don’t know about all those traffic lights. I’d be blind 
I’ll admit, I asked around and read around before writing this post. And we nearly all seem to treat bucket lists the same way. The way described above. You’re very much not alone.
What’s a traffic light?
You’re not fooling me, mate. Cairo has some of the fanciest and most sophisticated traffic lights in the world:
http://www.elkoshary.com/features/life-saving-traffic-lights-introduced-cairo
Of course, the question is “why Cairo?” – which I think you’ve answered already there.
All sounds way too organized for me but, I like the pictures!
too funny! An excellent solution to this dreadful bucket list idea of organising your life.
Just shared this on facebook for all my friends who take achieving goals too seriously
what a cool idea, I might give it a go! nice post
great,
reading through I couldn’t see what the answer was to the pringles dans la bouche?? how many?? but hey. Anyway i’m all for colour. I once spent an entire year making colour coded revision timetables!! of course by the time one was complete I hadn’t done what i had set out to do, so had to reschedule hence the whole year was spent making timetables but not actually revising. The thing is…. do what brings u joy, what ever it is green red or amber, do it because it bring u joy, when u resonate with joy anything is possible.
I saw this on Sue’s facebook but don’t think I take my achieving goals too seriously, I achieve lots of goals but I’m having great fun doing so since I started doing what brings me joy!!
thanks for posting this it’s a great read
warm regards
Jenni
Great, fun look at the life of a freelancer.
When someone asks me about my goals,
I reply: “Bucket this!”
I have to ask, how much time did you spend devising this system, making charts, cutting up sugar paper and browsing stationery departments for the very best different coloured pens? And how much time did you spend, er, Achieving?
This is the best procrastinatory meander I’ve heard in a long time – sounds very much like my second year of uni: “If I can just perfect this system of note-taking and paper-organising and referencing page A with article B using a graph and brightly coloured post-its, I can totally get a first. OH NO, the post-its are the wrong colour and I can’t get to the post-it shop til next week, well there’s NO point trying to do any work now then, time to watch Countdown!”
Actually, I’m lying. I never watched Countdown.
I can teach you how to dance. Me? Been a dancer for … er, 19 years now? *puts rose between teeth*
Shall we crack on then?
You’re on.
‘Ave yer seen me dancin’? Like, *really* dancin’?
*makes awful, awful shapes*
I should add that I have two left feet.
They’s not mine, though. They’re Great Great Grandfather “Double Lefty” Clem’s famous left feet. In formaldehyde. Family heirloom. They come out at family gatherings. Which admittedly don’t happen much these days, people aren’t keen on turning up for some reason.
Oh, don’t worry about that. You’ll be waltzing like a mofo (what? Mofos waltz) by the time I’m done with you. Then we’ll have scones. And tea. And it will be good.
I approve of your suggestion.
As long as the scones and tea aren’t first. They tend to slosh during backflips and splits and stuff.
Also, I am very much a list person. I’ve never created a bucket list though, it seems too morbid for me. What *must* you do before you’re too old to move, whilst some unfortunate yet well-meaning nurse cares for your nether regions because you’re incapable of doing so yourself?
Er, I’d better just stick to my “do it today or the world will implode” lists. Safer bet.