Diet advice applies to our productivity as well.

In August of 2004 I stumbled upon an article in the newspaper entitled “Lots of low-carb snacks equal high-carb intake.” This article explains that when we have more choice in what we eat, we tend to eat more:

But one thing low-carb diets have going for them, researchers say, is monotony. When entire supermarket aisles are off limits, people tend to become bored and eat less.

I can attest to the truth behind this article. In November of 2003 I started the Atkins diet. Over the first year I lost 91 pounds. That was still about 45 pounds shy of my goal. I had discovered a few low-carb versions of some favorite foods (especially sweets) not too long after starting Atkins. At first I kept my consumption of these foods to just enough to satisfy my craving. Then, in the spring of 2004 I discovered low-carb ice cream…in many different flavors. I hit a major plateau in my weight loss. Eventually, I started slowly gaining back some of the weight I had lost. Shortly thereafter I started occasionally “cheating” and eating other high-carb foods—not just the low-carb versions. When I finally came to my senses about three weeks ago, I had gained back nearly 60 of the 91 pounds I had originally lost.

When I read the aforementioned article, I cut it out and placed it in my tickler file so I would see it at least once a month. I knew what I needed to do, but lacked the internal desire at the time to do anything about it. Finally, I pulled myself together and got back in gear. In the last three weeks, I’ve done really good about not snacking at night and only eating healthy low-carb meals. I’ve lost 13 pounds so far (10 the first week, 3 the second, 0 the third—but I’m not discouraged.) I think the only low-carb version of a traditional food that I have eaten is some low-carb steak sauce which didn’t elicit a desire to eat more steak nor use more sauce. Other than that I’m sticking to my meats, cheese, eggs, and green vegetables. After the first week, this hasn’t been too much or a challenge. At this point I’ve just decided to say no to low-carb deserts, breads, pastas, chips, and drinks. I’ve decreased my options and that in turn decreases my desire to eat more.

Here’s more supporting evidence from the article:

Research shows that the more variety of foods offered, the more people eat. For example, in one study, moviegoers ate on average 31 pieces of M&M’s when given a bowl with seven colors. With 10 colors, consumption rose to 52 pieces.

The same phenomenon occurred with jelly beans. With more color, consumption jumped from 12 pieces on average to 23. For whatever reason, choice encourages eating.

Let’s see how we can apply this advice to our life and our productivity levels.

Has anyone ever asked you to do something that you didn’t really have the time to do? You probably told them something like, “My plate is just too full right now.” We often refer to the things that are on our projects list, next actions list, and in our life in general as “our plate.” Perhaps one of the reasons that our plate is too full is because we have too many choices of stuff to pile on it.

I know in my own life that the Internet is a great tool. I can’t imagine life without it anymore. At the same time it has opened me up to so many things that I would like to know more about and get involved in. I just don’t have the bandwidth in my life to take them on. Yet, sometimes I try. Then I get discouraged when I don’t have the time to do everything that I need or want to do. Sometimes I begin to do the things I want to do at the expense of the things that need to be done.

I’ve noticed that if I have a small task list of 5 or 6 things, I’m more likely to complete those 5 or 6 things from that list than I am likely to complete 5 or 6 things from a list of 50 things. When the choice of 50 things to do I get distracted and even more things tend to show up. I’ve been breaking my next action lists down into small groups of related types of activities. For example on one project this week I had about 15 business logic programming changes to make, about 10 front end changes to make, about 8 documentation changes to make, and about 5 things that involved other people. I created separate lists for the 15, 10, and 8 items, and added the final 5 to my general @work next actions list. I worked on like-minded tasks together and got them knocked out faster than I possibly could have by having all 38 items on my @work list along with everything else that is there. Too much choice about what I have to do tends to breed laziness and procrastination on my part.

Another area for me is blog reading. Earlier this year I gracefully bowed out of most of the discussion boards I was participating in. My discussion board usage started with just the GTD_Palm Yahoo! Group and expanded to probably a dozen groups as I realized that I had more choices. Although I originally stopped this to give me more time to be productive, I can see now that I have replaced my discussion board habit with a blog habit. I now have 38 feeds listed in BlogLines. There is just too much choice out there. I really need to make some decisions about which of these are actually contributing positively to my life, and how much time I want to spend reading them.

With so many options in our world today, we must be very careful what we allow to enter our life. The fact that we have so many available choices can make us fat and lazy.