Working in spurs by alternating projects

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I have been changing a bit my working methodology. I pick a project and I work on it intensely, and when I see that my attention or motivation goes down (which tends to happen abruptly), I switch tasks. Sometimes I keep cycling on tasks, but I always find myself doing something that I want to do. And maybe I also find that after a short time (e.g., after half an hour or an hour), I do not want to do that anymore. It is ok, I just look at my list of tasks and I pick the one that "calls" me the most.

Curiously, tasks with a coming deadline tend to be on top of my "want-to-do list". I said that ironically, of course. Deadlines are powerful motivators. But I do not pick tasks based only on deadlines. For tasks that are especially energy-consuming, like refereeing a paper, I prefer to work in short bursts, of around half an hour. A bit every day towards the deadline, rather than dedicating continuous hours close to the deadline. Honestly, it makes everything much more enjoyable and I have more energy because I encounter less inner resistance.

This way of working requires a bit of organisation, but not the classical way of dividing the day into time slots and assigning to those time slots a given task. The only thing that is needed for this "intuitive" organization is a clear list of tasks, a clear list of priorities, and a clear list of deadlines. Jumping from task to task make look random, but it is not. It has more to do with keeping the energy levels of the brain up and changing tasks does that. 

This constant cycle between projects in which I work in spurs with high intensity is working really well so far. Also, it has an extra advantage: since I tend to dedicate a bit of time to every project quite often, I am on top of all of them and I do not need to dedicate extra time to "remember where I was" (which is always daunting).



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