This year at SXSWi, I was invited to take part in 20×2, an event where 20 people are given 2 minutes each to answer an “open-ended question”. The question this year was “What is the difference?”

I was blown away by the range and quality of the other participants’ answers. This was my humble effort, delivered as a straight-up talk.

The difference, in a word, is passion.

In all our pursuits and endeavours, it is passion which leads to the creation of the genuinely great, or the superlative experience.

Thank about it – who do you most associate with passion; Steve Jobs and his irritatingly exquisite products, painstakingly put together by folks who care about the minutest details or… well… Bill Gates?

I’ve seen the effects of passion in the panels I’ve attended here at South by Southwest. All of the best panels have been hosted by people with a genuine passion for what they’re talking about.

In all honesty, some of them have had so little real content that they’ve actually subtracted from the sum of human knowledge.

But when that nebulous non-content is delivered with infectious passion, it still has value. The raw emotion itself inspires, leading us to new insights and ideas.

The greatest music ever produced, from the snarl of the Sex Pistols to the intricate scales of Rachmaninov, is fired through with deep, passionate enthusiasm and dedication. And the same is true for every other creative field:

The writing of Dickens or Ginsberg or Phillip Pullman; the art of Rothko or Monet; superlative graphic design or exquisitely prepared food by chefs like Thomas Keller – passion informs all of these things.

Life… is better with passion. It crackles with electricity a little more; sings a little more.

So my plea to all of you is this: let go of all those other influences on the things you do. Shut out the shareholders, investors, editors or producers; ignore the spreadsheets, monthly growth charts and budgets. Whatever it is you do in life; however you do it, feed your creativity with your passions, be they kittens or cushions, candles or cattle-prods, cocktails or cave-paintings.

Channel that energy into everything you do. It’s the easiest, most fulfilling way to truly make a difference.

So what are we up against?

Procrastination has one major root cause – fear. There are many sources of fear; some (fear of death, fear of pain) are hard-wired into all of us; others (fear of embarassment, fear of inconvenience, fear of failure) are learned responses to past conditions. All fears originate in the subconscious, and herein lies the problem.

Our subconscious has a highly vivid imagination – it’s always looking out for the wildest, worst scenario that could befall us, and steering us clear. Sometimes that’s good – it’s what stops us accepting rides home with drunks and playing with matches. Other times, it’s disastrous, holding us back from speaking in public, paying a bill or asking that cute stranger if they fancy a coffee. Our subconscious, designed to keep us safe from harm, has a hard time differentiating between Real Harm (certain death) and Not Actually Harm (“sorry, I’m dating someone”).

The very thing which makes us human – the ability to spot patterns, imagine scenarios and weigh up alternatives – can be a crippling burden if left in the control of the subconscious. Luckily, all those things also combine to afford us a defence against ourselves – rationality.

Fighting fear with rationality takes some practice, but it’s a useful skill to have. Training yourself to fight your subconscious knee-jerk reaction against getting something done provides you with a better chance of fighting stronger, more primally-driven fears (fear of flying, or spiders, or clowns).

Take that, fear!

Overcoming fear-driven procrastination is a fairly simple process. First, you need to recognise that you’re procrastinating. If there’s a simple one-step task that’s been on your todo list for several weeks, that’s it right there. It’s very rare that you don’t have time to do simple things – even when I was working 16-hour days finalising Flickr’s international launch, I still had time to pay rent, wash up dishes and so on.

Once you’ve found your procrastinated task, you need to consider it for a moment. Just think of the task at hand, and wait for that little itch; that “put it off for now” urge to rise in your mind. This is your subconscious kicking in with the fear. Grab that feeling and pick it apart. Why are you stalling? Your mind will likely offer up very sensible-sounding reasons for the delay, and in doing so, it betrays the fear which is driving it.

Now that you know your fear you can consciously work against it. Almost all procrastination-driving fears are irrational, and there’s an easy way to test the irrationality of the fear – ask yourself “will this situation change 3 months from now?” Only if the answer is “yes” is there a possibility that you’re rationally deferring a task. An example of a rational fear might be a cost which you can’t (or can only just barely) afford to pay right now, but which will be easier in the medium-term.

If the fear is honestly rational then you can consider putting the task off until the situation changes, but you must follow 3 golden rules:

1. Don’t defer if it will be disadvantageous – if you need to get a medical opinion or pay a bill which will otherwise go into debt collection, find a way to do it now.
2. Work out a reasonable deadline by which you believe conditions will have changed.
3. Regardless of the situation, only ever defer a task once – otherwise, you’re just tricking yourself into more procrastination.

Most fears are irrational. Dentistry will hurt as much in 3 months as it will now – probably moreso. Not paying an overdue bill because you’re embarrassed to talk to the customer care center about it means you’ll be embarrassed to speak with a debt collector in 6 weeks’ time…

Now comes the rational thought. Work through each fear (there may be several) to find a counterpoint, and once you’re done bolster your case against yourself by listing the concrete advantages of acting now.

Let’s put it into practice, dispelling two of my own big procrastination-points…

Folding Laundry

It sounds ridiculous, but I have a real problem with this. I can often find the two-hour window at home needed to do laundry, but once it’s done it’ll sit in my bedroom in a laundry bag. I can go several weeks picking items out of the bag as I need to wear them; on occasions I’ve gone through a whole laundry load without ever actually putting it away. Why?

Grabbing the fear

When I think about folding laundry, I think:

• It’ll take ages, and I have other things to do which are surely more important.
• Folding laundry is a waste of time – picking it out of the bag works fine.
• I don’t want to be bored. Let’s watch TV instead.

Rational responses

• Even a big load of laundry only actually takes 15 minutes to put away.
• Leaving it in the bag makes it increasingly creased, making you look like a slob. Plus, you spend 5-10 minutes every morning hunting through a pile of clothes instead of finding them in a drawer.
• Okay, it’s not the most interesting task in the world. But it leaves you free to think about some other stuff for a minute. And, brain, TV rots you.

Advantages to completion

• Saving those 5-10 minutes a day hunting for clothes when I should be on the way to work.
• Comfort – not having a bedroom floor strewn with piles of clothes.
• Looking less like I just crawled out of a bush.

Job done – folding laundry isn’t the most amazing way of spending time, but it’s worth it in the long-run. It would be silly to not just get it done.

Getting the car serviced

Bad, bad, bad. I’ve missed a minor and a major service since I moved to San Francisco – I’ve literally been procrastinating this one for a year and a half! The fears driving the procrastination have shifted and multiplied, but the end result is the same… no service.

Grabbing the fear

Whenever I think about actually booking a service and taking the car down there, I think

• I’m 40 miles from the garage who used to do it; how will I find a reliable place to do it now?
• It’ll be inconvenient – I have to get from the garage after dropping the car off, and go back to pick it up.
• I’m embarrassed – it’s so long since I got a service that I’m going to look like a right plum when I take the car in now.

Rational responses

• There’s an official dealer in town; you should at least try them – if they’re bad, you’ll know to go somewhere else. And a bad service (unless they disconnect the brakes or something) is preferable to letting the car deteriorate forever.
• Take a day when you can work from home; take the car in early and use taxis to get to and from there. Yeah, it’s inconvenient, but it’s less inconvenient than breaking down halfway to Tahoe in mid-January.
• The damage is done. If you look like a plum, you look like a plum. Better to be “the plum who didn’t get a service for a year and a half” than “the plum who didn’t get a service for 3 years”

Advantages to completion

• Peace of mind – the car’s less likely to fail
• Value – a car which has been serviced at least semi-regularly will trade-in for more than one which hasn’t seen a mechanic in years
• Fuel efficiency, easier driving – tightening things up, changing the oil, rotating the tires… all make for a smoother-running vehicle
• Getting back “on the horse” – next time the car’s due for a service, you’ll know where to take it, and you won’t be embarrassed at having missed the last n services.

In short, I’d be a total idiot not to book a service right this second.

Have a think about it next time you get “the itch” – what are you putting off and, when you analyse it, why?

The wonderfully illustrative picture on this piece comes from FredArmitage on Flickr.

I’m talking about jumping feet-first into a new area of knowledge or expertise, and trying to “climb your way up” through torrents of information, advice and opinion so that you build your own “world view” of the domain in question and possibly, if you invest the right time in the right places, become an expert (or at least a competent amateur) in the field in question.

I think most people have done it at least once in their lives – if only when studying at university or learning a trade. I can immediately think of 3 times that I’ve done it – getting used to the realm of literary criticism at UCL, first learning my way around the internet, perl and linux around 1998, and properly acquainting myself with the rich and impossibly complicated world of independent music, starting last year.

The reason I’m writing about this feeling now is that I’ve just embarked on a new “problem domain” – money.

I’ve not had a stellar track record with the Green Stuff in my life so far. Nothing completely disastrous, you understand (no bankruptcy, no unrecoverable debt, no defaults on bill payments), but I have considerably less to my name right now than I’d like.

Involvement in various startups with bad luck (or bad judgement) and a mildly expensive “life reset” move to America have seen various debts and setbacks which mean I’ve never really got the headlong push down the “savings chute” that I’ve always hoped for in the back of my mind. After some hard work, that situation is finally coming to a resolution and (barring any further disasters), I’m just a few months away from 100% debt-freedom, and a chance to start putting some money to real work for me.

So, as I see it, now is the time to sit down and look at really making that work – finally get an idea of how all the different sharp-toothed cogs of the economy fit together, and how best to squeeze them for a decent return on any money I can set aside in the future. Hey, I’ve got some catching up to do!

As to the Bewilderment Zone, being in the throes of it again is giving me a chance to analyse it, and compare my current loose-footed stumbling with strange financial concepts with my loose-footed stumblings, a year and a half ago, with a slew of interconnected musicians, labels, styles and local music scenes I couldn’t fathom.

Bewilderment is a powerful foe to battle, and I believe it’s the reason that a lot of people aren’t better acquainted with areas like money and investment. Standing at the bottom of Mount Information, staring skywards to the rarified peaks occupied by people who Get It, you wonder how you’re ever going to make it up there. After all, you’re wearing battered Tennis Shoes and you forgot to bring a coat. At this point, another foe – Procrastination – joins the fray. “Climb the mountain tomorrow”, he whispers. “You don’t need to get involved in all that now. You might hurt yourself.”

The thing to do at this point is to turn and look back across the landscape of your life. Look at the other hills and mountains you’ve scaled before this one – it might only be Algebra at age 13, or it might be linux or indie bands – the point is, you’ve almost certainly been here before.

Two years ago, I would have looked at you blankly if you’d said the name Sufjan Stevens. Now I can enthuse on the high points of his work, and that of all the other artists connected to him who are now emerging into their own bright careers.

I made it up that particular mountain, and although the process once seemed daunting I found that as I progressed, it was enjoyable. Not only did I find a bunch of music I loved, I also reveled in each new revelation and the feeling of increased insight as I made it another few inches skyward.

The risks in this new area are, of course, rather greater than in others. Make a wrong turn on the American indie scene and the worst you’ll end up with is a few unlistenable albums languishing in iTunes. Make a wrong turn investing and you can lose thousands of dollars. But there are tools which can help. You can build experimental portfolios on Yahoo! Finance, for example; see how they fare and learn from the mistakes. Utimately, the issue of money is just too important to be laissez-faire about. I’m not looking to be the next Warren Buffet, but I’d sure like to retire comfortably at a reasonable age, and I’m far more likely to do that if I’m a bit clever with my cash while I’m still young enough to benefit.

So here I go again. Sure, I keep forgetting exactly what ETF means (and how ETFs work), but I now at least know it’s a type of fund. A week ago, I wasn’t even aware of subprime mortgages, much less why they matter and why they’re threatening various areas of the American economy right now.

Already, I’ve taken a few steps, and the whole thing is fascinating – the movements of markets, the complicated effects of financial events on other parts of the markets; step back and they become weird insights into human nature and society in general. I may share more on what I learn once I’m a bit further up the mountain. In the meantime I’ll be avoiding Bewilderment and Procrastination and trying not to stumble too much.

The image used at the top of this post is by Klobetime on Flickr, and seemed… eerily relevant

I always feel terrible where I hit a point where I can’t seem to get things done, although a host of evidence indicates that I’m not alone in this, from sites like lifehacker and diyplanner to the instant cult status of the “Getting Things Done” method.

I think a whole book on getting your act together is a little much – the key for me at least is simplicity in a method. And I’ve finally started to work myself out of the unproductivity hole with a very simple method indeed, so I thought I’d share it.

My big problem is that many tasks just don’t seem to fit in my head. A task like “tidy the apartment”, “write an article” or even “go shopping” just seem to require an unsummonable amount of energy (the size of task deemed “unmanageable” varies depending on how tired I really am.)

But a few basic thought exercises can save me from this paralysis. I tend to actually write out my “game plan” as I form it. The basic method goes as follows:

1. Identify the minimum number of actions needed to complete the task. I think of this as “rough cutting” things – removing any extraneous detail so I can see the basic framework.
2. For each action you need to perform, cut that into the smallest chunks possible.
3. Organise your list of actions into the best possible “flow”. In some cases, this can work best as an iterative process – do some groundwork first, then go back and refine it later.
4. Perform the actions in order, one by one. If you can’t do everything today, get as far as you can.

And that’s it. If you have a written game-plan it can help as a motivator, since you can physically tick off each action as you complete it, giving yourself a physical record of progress made.

As a real-world example, I’ve been tackling the “tidy the apartment” task recently. Not only does my flat get pretty untidy (laundry not folded away, papers not filed, pots and pans in the wrong places), but many of my storage spaces aren’t arranged optimally, so it’s harder to keep things in order once they’re tidied.

To fix this, I came up with a two-stage plan: first, put everything in a place (the best currently available), and then reorganise bit-by-bit so that everything has a right place.

The gameplan has about 50 separate tasks on it, split out by individual room (I can feel more progress if the kitchen is now “done”, even if the lounge looks like a pigsty).

So a small part of my gameplan ended up looking like this…

• Put everything in “a place”
• Kitchen
• Tidy away all cookware/crockery/cutlery
• Gather all nightstand glasses, coffee mugs etc. into the kitchen
• Separate them into manageable “sinkful” batches
• Wash each batch, drying items and putting them in the correct cupboards
• Clean the kitchen
• Wash the stovetop
• Wipe down surfaces
• Wash the floor
• Hoover the dining room carpet
• Clean the sink (and scrub scratches from the enamel)
• Reorganise the kitchen space
• Move infrequently-used appliances into cupboards.
• Reposition the microwave to maximise counter space.
• Make the coffee machine more accessible.
• Collect wooden spoons, spatulas etc. into a single place.
• Arrange salt/oil etc. into a single space near the cooker.
• Bathroom
• …

I find this a satisfying list to complete – most of the tasks took 20-30 minutes at the most, and every few completed “subtasks”, I could tick off one of the main “header” goals as well. In a few hours the kitchen was tidier, cleaner and less cluttered.

I’ve completed the first phase of the “tidy apartment” plan already, so that the place is now looking spotless, even if everything isn’t yet stowed away quite how I’d like it.

And a task which seemed insurmountable a few days ago is now well within my reach.

The approach is really nothing new, and as I understand it a similar methodology underpins “Getting Things Done”. But it’s really working for me, and I’m far happier as a result.

Yay productivity!