In school, all the other kids who hadn’t started their assignments would freak out the night before it was due. Not me. Not because I’d planned it out weeks in advance and gotten things done the smart way. Heck no! I was just as unprepared as everybody else.
I had tried the “smart way” once. It was stupid, because I’d already refined my last-minute technique and was getting good grades, but I decided that I would be “responsible” and plan and research several weeks in advance and write the piece in responsible little chunks.
It sucked. Really sucked. It seemed my teacher agreed, because my grade sucked even more. Fortunately I managed to follow that assignment up with a last-minuter that was apparently so good it retroactively improved the assignment before it and gave me a better grade; little did the teacher know I wrote that assignment pretty drunk, and neither did my dad—which is a moot point now because he reads Lifehack.
Instead of letting the pressure to pull a last-minute assignment out of the hat get to me, I used it. Pressure is a fuel and if you embrace it rather than letting it get you emotional, you can put things off to the last minute and still do a good job, harnessing the energy that pressure builds up.
The way I embraced pressure as a motivator is probably what drove me to begin a Journalism degree I never finished (I suppose there just wasn’t enough pressure!) and, more importantly, what piqued my curiosity about how the mind works and how to get the best results from this piece of advanced technology that comes with no manual. In other words, leaving my high school assignments to the last minute is directly responsible for the fact that I write for a productivity blog today!
When we’re working on something without a sense of urgency and pressure, we’re usually stopping to check email or chat with the guy in the next cubicle in the process. When pressure kicks in, so does a great deal of focus and a degree of tunnel-vision that prevents us from getting distracted by unimportant things. I find that if I don’t feel like I’m intellectually alert enough to complete a task earlier in the day, by the time the pressure is on this problem doesn’t exist anymore and I’ve suddenly got the capacity to take it on.
So what’s the key to the second part of that headline—how to use pressure to get more done without freaking out?
It’s really simple: trust your mind.
Trust your mind to cope with the pressure and know that you’ll deliver what is needed, given the right amount of time (Parkinson’s Law at work).
Trust pressure to kick in at the right time; if it kicks in too late, there’s a good chance you’ve mentally underestimated the time the task will take to complete. Dissect the work in advance so you have an accurate estimate of the time it’ll take to complete and the requisite sense of pressure will kick in when it needs to kick in.
Most objections to this way of working come up when people claim it won’t work for projects that take more than a couple of hours to complete. That’s not true—if you know how long the job will take and when it needs to be done by, pressure can kick in days or weeks in advance. That said, I only ever utilize pressure to help me produce when the task takes less than two or three hours.
This isn’t always the best way to work. I don’t use this technique for 80% of the work that I do. But it comes in handy for the other 20% that I need extra motivation for—things I really don’t feel like doing, such as writing an article on a topic I hate, or doing the dishes (invite some guests over and see how this works!).
Today, of course, grades don’t motivate me to complete tasks; it’s the knowledge that if I don’t finish my articles by the deadline I don’t get paid, or the fact that if I don’t take the garbage out now the wife will hide the remote from me.
Disclaimer: this way of working is pretty irresponsible. Irresponsible is not to say unproductive, it’s just to say that if other people are relying on you, you should think twice. If it gets results for you, and you are able to produce good work with “just enough” time, use it. But don’t rely on it for something really important unless you’re confident it works for you. Also, know what kind of tasks this applies to—writing an article might suit, but planning a marketing campaign probably doesn’t!
Offering a unique perspective and insight on productivity based on his experience as a writer, musician, family man and manager, Joel Falconer has been published online and off, and brings to Lifehack's readers practical advice you can use to be more efficient and effective.
译文:
怎样因势利导利用压力而不抓狂
每每在交作业前一天晚上，还没完成作业的在校孩子们总会感到很崩溃。但我除外。不是因为我早在几个星期前就计划并出色地完成了。绝对不是！我跟大家一样没有好好准备。
我曾尝试过这种“聪明的办法”。其实我早已完善了我的临时抱佛脚技术并且拿了高分，但我仍决定要“对自己负责”，要提前几个星期做计划和调查，然后抽一点时间认真的完成报告。我觉得那一次很傻。
这种“聪明的方法”烂透了，十分烂。似乎我的老师也同意我的看法，因为我拿了个更烂的分数。庆幸的是，我后来成功地以临时抱佛脚法及时完成老师布置的任务。临时抱佛脚法显然很好，它逆转性地提高了我的作业质量，让我拿了更高的分数。老师不会知道我在写作业时醉醺醺的。我爸爸也不知道——不是现在只是个假设了，因为他最近在看《生活骇客》。
我利用压力，而不是让它变戏法似的把拖到最后一秒的作业拿出来给我。压力是燃料。如果你欣然接受它，不情绪化地看待它，有效地利用它带来的能量，你能把作业拖到最后一秒却仍能很好地完成。
我把压力看做动力的方式很有可能是导致我没有完成新闻学学士学业的原因。（我猜想肯定是压力不够大！）更重要的是，我好奇的关于大脑怎样运作和如何从这项先进技术中得到最好结果这样的问题没有一个现成的手册。换句话说，把我的高中作业拖到最后一秒是直接导致我今天在博客这么多产。
如果我们做事情的时候没有紧迫感和压力，我们通常会在这个过程中停下来查看邮箱，或去隔壁间与别人聊天。当压力紧逼时，大量注意力和关注力的投入会让我们免受不关紧要的事情的干扰。我发现如果我不够机敏以完成任务，等到压力不成问题的时候。我发现如果我太早着手工作，我就不能充分发挥我的智慧。可当压力到来时这样的问题就迎刃而解，我就突然有能力去完成它了。
那么标题后半部分的关键是什么——怎样利用压力而不感到崩溃？
很简单：相信你的才智。
相信你自己能处理好压力，明白在恰好足够的时间内你可以催产出你需要的东西。（帕金森工作原理）
相信压力会在恰当的时刻降临；如果压力来得太晚，这很可能是你在心理上过低估计了你所要完成的时间。提前仔细研究工作，这样你便能正确的估计你所要的时间。压力便会适时来临。
对于这种方法，有很多人加以反对。他们声称对于需要花费不仅仅是几个小时工夫的工程来说，这个方法不能奏效。那是不对的——如果你知道这项工作需要花费多长时间，并知道什么时候你应该开始着手工作，你会在好几天或好几个月前就感觉到有压力。虽然是这么说，我只会在完成一些只要花两三个小时的工作的时候才会这样利用压力。
这也不是完成工作的做好方法。有80%的工作我不会使用这种技巧去完成。但在剩下的20%的工作中，我觉得使用这个技巧很方便。这些是我真的不喜欢做的事情，例如写一篇关于某个我不喜欢的话题的文章，或是洗碗（你可以邀请客人来看看我是怎么利用这个技巧去做的！）
当然，今天，分数没能为我完成任务而提供动力；提供动力的是如果我不在截止日期内完成我的文章我就不能得到薪水，如果我现在不把垃圾拿去丢我的老婆会不理我。
免责声明：这种工作方式是非常不负责任的。但不负责任并不是说没有结果，我只是说其它人都依赖于你，你要三思而行。如果你能得到好结果，并且能在刚刚足够的时间里很好地完成工作，那就采用这种方式吧。但如果有些事情真的很重要，你不要依赖这种方法，除非你非常自信它对你奏效。同时，认识到它适用于哪种类型的任务——写作可能合适，但策划一个市场企划很可能就不行！
乔尔福尔克纳以其作为一个作者、音乐家、丈夫和经理的亲身经历，在看待工作效率的问题上给我们提供了其独特的见解。他的书已经出版，在网上也有发表。他给“生活骇客”读者们带来了实用的建议，让你应用得越来越高效。