On a recent episode of Security Now I heard a great story1 about doing hard work. In this story Alex Lindsay had to do a hard 3D problem on a Commodore 64. His first shot at the problem took 4 months, then due to the unstable nature of computers at the time he lost all his work in a crash.
After picking up his emotions from the floor, he took another stab at the problem and got it working in 4 weeks. It was only then that he really understood the problem though so he went back and did the whole job a third time, in just a few days.
He now says that he lives by that three phase approach when tackling hard problems.
Do it.
Do it better.
Do it right.
There aren't any easy answers
At some point you just have to start when you're tackling a hard problem. In the example above, if Alex spent all his time thinking about the perfect way to do something and asking people about it, he would have made no progress. Most times the reason a problem is engaging is that it is hard. If it was an easy problem that anyone could solve, would you be interested in it?
Interesting problems are hard. Interesting problems take effort. Interesting problems have dead ends, and scopes that you don't understand until you've made an attempt at solving them.
Often the act of solving a hard problem teaches you so much about the scope of the problem and it's possible solutions that it's only after your first attempt at a solution that you understand the full weight of the problem enough to solve the problem properly.
Time
Another important point is that Alex put the time into solving the problem. He sat down and did the work, three times in fact.
In every domain I've helped people be more productive, this is their biggest issue. Most people don't sit down and do the work. They delay wondering if they have the best solution. Is this the best task management software, what folders are the best for organizing my notes? Should I use tags and folders at all or just rely on search.
None of that work is sitting down with your thoughts and hashing them out so they are something usable. After a very brief setup time-frame, the only thing that is productive if you want to have interesting thoughts is reading, working your notes, and writing. Massaging your system isn't in that list.
If we go back to Alex's example, you get three kicks at organizing yourself.
Do it once, with what you think are the best tools. I'd recommend a few weeks of research (usually 2) then get a system going.
Live with the system for at least 3 months.
Then you get your second kick at the can so you can do it better. Revamp whatever system you have knowing about the pain points you have after your 3 month trial. You have 2 weeks to settle on this system.
Live with that system for at least 12 months.
Then you get to do it right, again you have 2 weeks to settle on this system.
From now on anything that's not moving notes forward in your system, or tasks forward if we're talking task management, is masturbation. You can only revisit your system every 12 months and you only have 2 weeks to make any tweaks.
The point to any system is to accomplish something.
What have you accomplished this week?