Matt's Idea Blog

Matt's Idea Blog has moved! Please update your feed

2008-03-28T12:21:00.000-07:00

My blog's new home at http://matthewcornell.org/blog/ is up and running. The feed for it is:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/ideamatt

If this is not the one you're subscribed to, you'll need to update your reader. This is the case if you're directly subscribed to any of the Blogger feeds [1]. Importantly, if you're subscribed to the redundant feed http://feeds.feedburner.com/MattsIdeaBlog, please update to the one above.

All posts, tags, and comments have been transferred, and old posts should redirect to their equivalents on the new site. It will probably take a little while to get kinks out, and I'm grateful for your patience. Please contact me with comments, questions, or issues. I'm sorry for the inconvenience.

See you there!

matt

P.S. Kudos to drupaler (AKA Nauris), who's taking care of this [2] for me via GetAFreelancer [3]. Highly recommended.

References

[1] Following are all the old ones I know about; you'll need to update to http://feeds.feedburner.com/ideamatt if you're subscribed to one of them:
- http://ideamatt.blogspot.com/atom.xml
- http://ideamatt.blogspot.com/rss.xml
- http://ideamatt.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss
[2] This is my second outsourcing experiement. The first was The 4-hour Workweek Applied: How I Spent $100, Saved Hours, And Boosted My Reading Workflow, FYI. This one was much riskier, but has worked out very well so far.
[3] I posted the project on both GetAFreelancer and Elance. The former garnered more responses, with a lower average bid.

My Academic Productivity post is up

2008-03-24T17:52:00.000-07:00

Jose Quesada's fine readers over at Academic Productivity (one of my regular destinations) have asked me some great questions around the unique productivity challenges faculty face. I have tremendous respect for education, and I very much enjoy working with the folks in these fields. Their jobs are some of the most broad and demanding I've encountered in my practice. You can read my thoughts here: Matthew Cornell answers to your academic productivity questions. Even if you're not in academia, I think you'll enjoy the ideas there. I talk about adopting a method without its taking over, the tension between productivity and creativity, social networking for academics, and the crazy hours and the price of success.

Note: I'll be out of commission the next week or two. Concordantly, the switch to matthewcornell.org should be finished soon. The new (and only) feed will be http://feeds.feedburner.com/ideamatt.

A heads up: Switching to matthewcornell.org in the near future

2008-03-17T06:35:00.000-07:00

Just a quick notice that I'll be moving this blog to www.matthewcornell.org in the next few weeks, and you may see some side-effects - including re-postings - as I play with backing up [1] my posts. (Side note: I'll be outsourcing this transfer - see The 4-hour workweek applied: How I spent $100, saved hours, and boosted my reading workflow for another example.) I checked back and see that this is #193, and my first was on 4/5/05.

Reader question: Any tips for doing this? I'm planning on using FeedBurner (which frankly I haven't 100% figured out), and my site's built on Drupal.

There are many unknowns, which means there will be some LessonsLearned (see Some thoughts from tracking "lessons learned" for a year). FYI I'm using GetAFreelancer.com this time - the project is move Blogger blog to existing Drupal-based site, and I've selected the winner.

The reason I'm coverting is to drive traffic to get more work. Thanks for your patience, and stay tuned [2].

Resources

[1]And yes, I do have the original HTML backed up, plus comments saved as email. A few possibilities: How do I create a backup of my entire blog? and Download All Your Blogs with Blogger Backup, Easy Restoration
[2] A little post preview: My interview at Academic Productivity, plus my recent interview with Kerry Gleeson.

An idea (and question) dump from the big-arse text file

2008-03-09T19:44:00.000-07:00

You know those crisis weeks when everything comes to a head, and then you get whacked by some nasty - and urgent - surprises? Well I've had three weeks of those, which explains the slow post rate. I apologize for that.

So rather than my usual long, link-rich, in-depth, and rather dry article (the patented Ideamatt style ;-) I'd like to tap into my pickle jar [1] and ask you some questions around productivity and living. Any thoughts would definitely be welcome.

Living (and suffering) with grace

How do you cope with life's curve balls? Last week I got some nasty medical news [2] that I'm having trouble coping with, and I'm looking for ideas. So far I've had great benefit from Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. I'll also be re-studying Full Catastrophe Living to ready myself for pain (you might enjoy this interview with him).

Is it possible to live out of ... the inbox?

You've read a hundred times that base 0 is a best practice for staying on top. However, that's not the only perspective. For example, The Hamster Revolution talks about deciding an optimum number of emails you'd like to have in your Inbox, and it's easy to find systems that use email flags to mark actionable messages. So is it possible to have a principled system based on the inbox? In my workshops I ask participants to list ways we use the inbox, and get answers like action reminding, reference, waiting for, even junk. So we'd need a system of tagging, I guess. Possibly related: Noguchi Filing System (sorry the images are gone).

The quality-quantity time myth

I forget where this comes from, but the standard line of spending "quality time" with our loved ones is bunk. Instead, spend quality time at work (go read Koch's The 80/20 Principle [3]) and quantity time with your family. Big idea. I wonder if the myth came about as a rationalization for working too much...

Dimming the lights

Do you notice cycles in your work - perhaps during an intense week - in which one big project overwhelms everything else? I know someone who calls this "dimming the lights," and it provides some really interesting challenges to staying on top. The main problem is other work gets sacrificed, creating crises, and work backlogs build so high that good productivity habits are at risk. Does this happen to you? How do you deal with it?

There is no "set and forget" in self-management

For other aspects of our lives, some habits are set and forget - once they're adopted, they're rather self-sustaining. It seems to me that staying on top of our lives isn't like that. Rather, it's a process of mastery [4]. But is there always a risk of falling back on old habits?

Desquamate your desktop

What can we learn about productivity from the medical profession? For example, Triage and checklists (you might enjoy The Checklist)...

William Morris and simplicity

What can we learn from the Arts and Crafts movement about elegant self-management? William Morris talked about values like craftsmanship, simplicity of expression, individuality, and usefulness in his designs. Anything we can learn?

Principled use of Selective Perception

In The Achievement Factors, the authors talk about seeing clearly, and the idea of selective exposure - avoiding exposing ourselves to information with which we disagree. (Related: The process of Selective Perception.) Seems there are two ways to use this. First, by only allowing into our minds those things that support our beliefs. A positive example: Visualizing the shape of your future. A negative example: Getting stuck in a worldview that's harmful to future goals [5]. Do you actively use this in your life?

Do you know about "Po?"

Among some of the great ideas in Mind Performance Hacks is the that of "Po," from De Bono's book Po: Beyond Yes and No. Suggested use is to interrupt mental interpretations of negative events. Anyone familiar with this?

The best gifts are either loved or hated

It seems that in-between gifts are almost not worth it. Do the best gifts take a chance? (Related: How to help people.)

Productivity tips from Hibatchi chefs

While watching a Hibachi chef, I was struck by parallels to our workspaces, including planning (collecting ingredients), focus (distraction = pain and bad food), and the diverge/converge cycle of mess during work. Any other cuisines we can learn from?

Don't throw away "bad" files

I've had files I didn't want to keep around due to negative mental associations, but I kept them anyway - for a sense of completeness, I suppose. Guess what? They really came in handy later. What's up with that?

Finally, how are you unconventional and eccentric?

From The 80/20 Principle: Be unconventional and eccentric in your use of time. In my continuing marketing thinking, there's a bunch of conventional ideas I'm throwing out - but isn't that dangerous? Darn right, and I'm taking some risks in my choices. But eccentric... That's an interesting one. Have you adopted either or both of these?

References

[1] For thoughts in idea capture, check out My Big-Arse Text File - a Poor Man's Wiki+Blog+PIM.
[2] Nothing life-threatening thank god, but for me these issues are a big deal (the one-two punch of surgery and pain).
[3] Trust me: I strongly suspect you don't fully understand the ideas without reading it. Simple example: the two numbers needn't sum to 100 ;-)
[4] See George Leonard's great little book Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment.
[5] I just heard a mind-blowing interview with Richard Dawkins, who comes to mind re: mental models, evolution, and our species' future. A major hero of mine, along with Carl Sagan and James Randi, among many others.

A Blast from the past & A little shout out

2008-02-26T19:46:00.000-08:00

Apologies for the delayed post - I've been out of town on personal and business trips, I'm preparing for up-coming workshops and one-on-one work, plus continuing my switch to the Mac (!), so a short post this week.

A few blasts from the past

For my new readers, here are a few past posts you may not have seen:

Lots of GTD-related posts

Some GTD-related articles you might not have seen:

Shout Out

I always enjoy hearing success stories and good news from friends and readers, so here's a little tip of the hat.

Photographer and buddy Steven Vote continues to take great pictures.
The great folks at Rokenbok showed what customer service means when I lost a part. Hey - How can a former engineer resist these toys?
I connected with the other Matthew Cornell not too long ago. Him: Painter, Me: helper of successful, overloaded, smarties. (Question: A while back I believe I came across a book about a person's quest to meet everyone on the web with his name. Took a year or so, IIRC. Anyone know the book?)
I recently received a surprise copy of Heidi Roizen's Skinny Songs - upbeat music that encourages keeping the pounds off. Great idea, and timely - check out What GTD and Weight Watchers have in common.
Pam's "Escape from Cubicle Nation" book is real, and coming!
Colleague Taco Oosterkamp has released his book on using Outlook productively.
Kudos to Tracy Welsh and her company's super-useful program WebDrive - I used it for years before switching to the Mac.
Tatsuya Nakagawa and friends have come out with their book Overcoming Inventoritis: The Silent Killer of Innovation
Andrew Flusche has a nice "crash course" on copyright fair use.
Ted Vickey's book 101 Fitness Games for Kids at Camp is out.
Bob Walsh's marketing and selling ebook MicroISV Sites that Sell is out, and it's a great value.
Michael Sampson wrote a whitepaper The 7 Pillars of IT-Enabled Team Productivity: The Microsoft SharePoint 2007 Analysis
Peter Radizeski's written SELLECOM: 101 Ideas for Marketing in the Telecom Jungle
And finally, thanks to Alvin Soon, Nicholas Bate, Steve Spalding, and everyone else who's reminded me how important it is to give public acknowledgement.

Have some recent good news of your own to share? Let me know!

Three indecisiveness phrases, and when (not) to use them

2008-02-11T15:12:00.001-08:00

I'd like to tell you about three phrases you and I use that actually mean the opposite, and, when used improperly, hurt productivity and weaken your mind (Gasp!) Fear not, I'll also share the only times they are OK to use. And I'll start with a biggie.

"Let me think about it"

This is a classic in being indecisive. Situation: Have you ever been asked for something or had an offer made to you and you answered "Let me think about it"? Typically what this answer really means is "The answer is no, but I don't want to disappoint you so I'm going to pretend to think about it." Implied in this is "...and I hope you forget to bring it up again." Nasty!

In this case, you're is using the phrase as a crutch, and it has a cost:

It's going to dog you until it's resolved.
You're misleading someone and wasting their time; it's disrespectful.
You're training yourself to be indirect and less decisive.

What you're really doing trading is clarity for a temporary reprieve in disappointing someone. It's a bad practice. If you know the answer, train yourself to be direct (but sensitive) and get closure right then. If you want to leave the bridge open, fine, but not if you really don't want to discuss the issue again.

That said, this phrase does have a few specific productive uses:

You need to collect more information. However, ask yourself whether this is an excuse to put off deciding. It's frequently better to make a decision early on, with less than 100% of possible information, than to strive for perfection. Most decisions can be mitigated later.
You need to clear or verify it with someone else. In this case, commit to a specific date to get back to them, no longer than a few days.
Germination: You really might have to let it germinate. The blogosphere is rife with creativity stories around the subconscious, and hey - who am I to take away your productive shower time ;-) But be honest about whether you really need to sit on it.

Here are a few rules if you do decide to defer:

Only one defer allowed per person. Think of it as a rare coupon you don't want to squander.
Make your decision time bound: Limit how much you're willing to spend on it, and don't make it too big - one hour max, say.
Commit to a decision by a specific date (no longer than a week), and tell it to them. Then keep your word.

"Let's get together sometime"

This really means "I'm not interested (or mildly interested), but not enough to follow through." The solution here is simple: Pick a date. I found myself weaseling out last week. I really did want to get together with a friend and peer, but I was having a weak moment and used the phrase. It felt weird. Thank goodness she called me on it and said "Let's set a date. how about next Monday at lunch time?"

A common variation: "We'll be in touch" - sadly not uncommon when applying for a job or sending an unwanted proposal. Please, put me out of my misery and get it over with! (I'm told companies sometimes get so inundated with resumes that they make it easier on themselves by not sending "sorry" letters. I don't respect this practice. Disclaimer: I've never been in the hiring role.)

"Interesting"

This is a true classic, and often means "That's really uninteresting" and/or "I disagree but don't want to get into it with you." To be fair, this can also mean "I don't understand or agree, but I'm willing to think about it." Also, it rally depends on the tone.

Instead of saying this, try getting into question asking mode and being genuinely curious. (For more, see How to help people, step 1.)

(An example: I once sent a resume to a company, waited a few weeks, heard nothing, then called the hiring person. She said "We got your resume. It was ... interesting." Her tone made me think "We thought your use of crayons for the resume was innovative." Not getting hired worked out much better, BTW.)

Others?

Do you have any favorites? A few others:

"Send me a brochure" ("I'm not interested, but I won't say so.")
"That's something" ("I have no idea what to do with this gift.")
"She's not here right now" ("She's here, but she doesn't want to talk to you."
"Thank you for sharing" ("That was wildly inappropriate. Save it for you psychiatrist."

What GTD and Weight Watchers have in common

2008-02-05T07:59:00.000-08:00

One of the personal changes I was surprised by when adopting David Allen's work was how relatively efforlessly I lost 15 pounds [1]. In my case a simple engineering-based approach worked: Calories in < average calories burned. But keeping it off can be a challenge. What helped a lot was my wife's adopting the Weight Watcher's ("WW" from here on) program [2], which not only opened my eyes to how I thought about eating, but also kicked off some thinking about how WW and GTD are very much alike.

Following are some observations. As always, your thoughts and clarifications are very welcome.

Both are caused by a mismatch between abundance and old brains

Clearly we're not wired to to handle abundance - WW: Too much food available [3]. GTD: Too many demands and requests for our attention. As a result we make poor choices that impact our health and happiness. WW: We eat too many calories (and too many unhealthy ones), which overtaxes our bodies, causes self image problems, and cuts lifespan. GTD: We try to do it all, and don't do the highest impact work, which causes stress, hurts our lives outside of work, and can certainly cut lifespan.

The cause is our 100,000 year old brains, which aren't well prepared for these modern challenges. "Aha - here's some food. Better eat now while I have the chance! I know I'll store the unused bits for the lean times." (Filling up opportunistically doesn't apply to a full fridge.) "Gahh! Email, the phone, my Blackberry - I'm ready to tear my hair out!" (Fight or flight doesn't apply to a boardroom, a research lab, or your office.)

Sure, in another thousand or two generations we might have better brain structures to manage this (assuming no environmental changes - not likely), but that's no help to those of us suffering right now. Note: I would *love* to hear from you about minds and abundance, and recommended reading of leading theories.

Both address a huge gap: Self-management

This is the mind blower that got me into this work: Given the above mismatch, we're just plain not taught a principled method to manage these problems. And we're talking about two of the most fundamental things we do in life (eating and working). (Want another one: moving our bodies - see Reflections on Alexander Technique and personal productivity.)

So as I think of it, WW and GTD seek to provide systems, thinking, and tools to solve their respective problems.

Both are difficult, and not a silver bullet

The bad news? Quick fixes won't cut it. This includes fad diets that result in short-term gains (e.g., dehydrating) and tips and tricks to working better (e.g., a one-time office purge). Instead, changes like these require major habit adjustments, and those take time. It's a process of mastery (see George Leonard's great little book Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment).

So there's a heavy requirement for WW and GTD "users:"

Realize there's a problem (WW: overweight; GTD: overloaded).
Be exposed to a new and principled way of thinking.
Adopt principled ideas and tools for change.
Form habits via practice and support, using experiences of improvement and relief to build inertia.

Both come down to transparency, limits, and choice

Both methods help to address the problems in (at least) three ways.

First, they provide information about what we let into our lives, and concrete mechanisms for tracking. For WW, this is around "points" (a combination of calories and fiber content, as I understand it). Practitioners learn about the foods they eat and the associated points, which leads to making better choices. They're tracked using various tools. For example, I was surprised by the high impact of oils in cooking (including dressings). For GTD, we decide the work involved in everything entering our lives, and track it all in lists and our calendar.

By making this information explicit, there's a kind of transparency to our world: It's all up front, and allows our being aware of our behavior - something that wasn't possible before with such clarity.

Second, both systems acknowledge there are limits, which lets us make those important trade-offs (WW: diet; GTD: action). In WW this is captured via limiting points. There are different programs to structure this, but they all involve a reasonable budget, which you work to stay within. However, in GTD this is actually a rather significant limitation. The calendar has built-in limits, but there's nothing explicit to keep us from adding unlimited work to our lists. I talked about this some in Extreme GTD: How low can you go (or: Can we 80-20 GTD?), esp. Mark Forster's take on "closed lists" in Do It Tomorrow.

Finally, they both come down to choice: The actions we take result in consequences, so we must choose with care. Interestingly, choice has (at least) two implications:

1) Self-responsibility: Making conscious choices about our lives removes the excuse to be passive and then complain about it. Example: I might need to make an important but difficult conversation, but instead of biting the bullet and doing it I might put it off and complain about relationship.

Another example: When I'm teaching clients best practices for personal productivity [4], it's highly empowering - too much so for some people. (Not too many, thankfully - plunking down money tends to motivate commitment.) For example, if I really get my act together after adopting the work, I can no longer claim it's out of my hands, or it's somebody else's fault - I explicitly take responsibility. This is not necessarily comfortable (at least initially), and can be a big change.

2) Things not chosen. Mark makes this point: deciding to do something means you've decided not to do something else. For example, spending time watching TV means not spending time with my daughter and wife. Or eating that slice of cake means I've blown some big points, and will limit the rest of the day.

Wrap up

I admit my knowledge of WW is a bit sketchy, but I like thinking about the overlap. In fact, I can't stop thinking about these things, so hey!

What do you think? Any parallels you've drawn? Are you reminded of other programs?

References

[1]"Missing: 15 pounds. Description: Heavy, yellowish in color. Distinguishing characteristics: Makes wet sucking sound when moving with curious rolling/oozing gait. Reward: None." ;-)
[2] Check out the Wikipedia article and the official site.
[3]I realize that many people in the world don't have enough food, and it breaks my heart. For something related that made me think, check out What the World Eats, Part I. I was really surprised by the big differences in how much/month different families spend, and how healthy the diets of the less industrialized families looked. Except for Chad, which didn't have enough.
[4]As usual, I want to be very clear that I have no association with David Allen or his company. His work has been a huge influence, but I continue to combine the best practices from many sources (which I share here) into my work.

I promise I will...

2008-01-31T09:41:00.000-08:00

...not try to sell you: I will look for ways to help you, esp. before we work together (if ever)
...not work with you if I don't think I can help: and I'll be very clear about it, even if we disagree
...not worry about "giving away the farm" to you: I know that sharing genuinely useful information always pays off
...be genuinely curious about your work: and have fun getting to know you
...continually absorb and synthesize the best ideas from my field: and share them freely with you
...respect you, your work, your organization: no exceptions
...treat our relationship as confidential: no exceptions
...be attuned to where we are in the process: and we'll change gears or take a short walk
...notice anything that may hamper our project: and tell you immediately
...give you every reason to trust me: and no reasons not to
...take responsibility for my mistakes: and apologize with humility
...see opportunities to apply my skills, knowledge, and experience to help you: regardless of where that ends up being
...support and encourage you during our project: and long after
...not judge where your self management skills currently are: hey - we've none of us been taught this stuff
...push back when needed: but tactfully and within reason
...sometimes send bulky bumpy delightful packages: :-)

A conversation with Mark Hurst, web usability expert and author of "Bit literacy"

2008-01-23T10:28:00.000-08:00

Recently I had a nice conversation with Mark Hurst, a leader of the online "customer experience" movement, and author of Bit Literacy: Productivity in the Age of Information and E-mail Overload (see the book's site and sample chapter). Additionally, he's contributed to the web usability field in many other ways. For more, see his bio, his company, his newsletter, and his blog. (You might also enjoy his 2008 Gift Guide & Almanac, which is fun has a few more good tips.)

Bit literacy is a good, short book that I've mentioned before [1]. It has helpful ideas around managing email, documents, file naming, photos, and more. I particularly like his file naming scheme [2], which I shared with client who found it helpful as a kind of simple version control convention.

Mark stresses that the book is not just about email and getting the inbox to zero (a major change for most of us). It's about managing effectively all the bitstreams coming into our lives. Mark says the world has changed, but most people haven't caught up yet - the always-on lifestyle, urgency, and haste make us neither effective nor sustainable. Here's how he puts it:

Five, ten or twenty years from now, the bits will increase exponentially: email, web, phones and PDAs. Without proper training, users everywhere will face an increasingly urgent problem of overload. Now is the moment to learn bit literacy. It's like getting in shape on a slow-moving treadmill before it speeds up to a sprinting pace.

I hope you enjoy it.

On getting started

From early on, Mark noticed we aren't being served well by current technology, and found that there is a more fundamental and insidious problem with it today: people do not have the skills they need in order to do practically anything. Beyond using the web, we lack the skills to survive in a world dominated by email and other digital communications.

Over the years, these observations about technology (plus an admitted "obsessive interest in being efficient") led to his perspective on the process and cost of creating bits, and his eventual development of what Hurst calls "a simple, fast, and easy to learn system for being bit literate." He says it took him about ten years to develop that system.

Influences

Mark lists Richard Saul Wurman's Information Anxiety as a tremendous influence, a book he says is still pertinent. They met through a mutual friend, after which Mark wrote an essay for the 2000 edition. He then spoke at TED in 2001, which Wurman founded. He says the experience of speaking at TED was a big influence in his later starting Good Experience Live (Gel) conference.

He says the culture of "UNIX Geeks" was extremely influential, especially its design principles, how it is built, and the pervasive use a simple file format.

Definition of productivity

On what productivity means, Mark says people have a certain amount of stuff they need to get done, so the faster they get it done, the more time we get to spend on our personal lives - playing games or spending time with friends and family. He says there's a reason they call it work :-) Because of its contribution to quality of life, Mark says there's a bit of paradox; if you want to focus on things outside of work, then you really need to first focus on work itself - how effectively you're doing it. This leads to important feelings of liberation, his readers claim, from the "shackles of email," endless to-do lists, or whatever was dragging them down. This being able to be free to live life in a more meaningful way is ultimately what Bit Literacy is aiming at.

Mark points out that many current productivity systems are based on previous systems that were built for managing the flow of paper, and to apply systems for paper productivity to our new digital world is not appropriate. He thinks the systems still have value for the paper aspects of our lives, but new tools and perspectives are required. (Note: I disagree with this approach. I think the simplicity of a system that encompasses all aspects of inputs - atoms as well as bits - is important. YMMV.)

Forming new productivity habits

On how to create new habits, Hurst says there's a range of adoption levels, but those who seriously apply the method tend to stick with it. This is because experiencing the resulting gains, even for a day, is a "no brainer," leads to continuing the method. He notes that simply getting started (what he calls induction) isn't enough - they need to do a week or two of a steady state [3]. Once they do that, Mark says, they'll will never forget what that felt like.

He points out that some people encounter the book then apply their own misleading litmus tests. Either whether they've seen any of it before (using a quick scan), or a technical buzzword bingo test, where they scan for certain terms (AJAX, tags, or taxonomies). However, he says some very high tech geeks have completely embraced the method, and have written about it on their blogs [4].

What I find really interesting is the idea that people can resist, perhaps at the subconscious level, adopting systems like this. Mark and I agree that with the resulting freedom comes with responsibility for our lives, which is a big shift. He's fine with that and sees his role as to simply to invite them to learn that there's another way to think about work, and give them a new choice.

To-do lists

Mark's view of to-do lists is significantly different from systems like GTD. To managing to-dos, he says the list needs to be outside the email program (and not on paper), and have four components:

Each is associated with a particular day,
users can create new ones via email,
each has a priority ranking within its day
each can contain detail and summary information.

His Gootodo program (inexpensive, but not free) does this. (Interestingly, scheduling action in the calendar is one simplification that popped out of my extreme GTD analysis.)

I liked his thought on to-do lifecycles: creation, inactivity, activation, and completion. A second dimension classifies them as active (those we have to work on today), and inactive (those that become relevant in the future). This means on a given today, you have only one list, and there's no metadata to worry about.

"The Matrix" and Bit literacy

On a surprising note, Mark drew a comparison to The Matrix, and the climactic scene in which Neo is fighting the agents, gets cornered, and cannot escape. At that point he has the big revelation in which he sees the world differently and at the bit level. Mark says Neo sees that the danger, fears, and challenges that have been dogging him are really just an illusion that he can control in the bit world. He says no, the bullets stop, float, and fall down. Helping computer users do this is an nice metaphor.

Having too much to do

Like GTD, actually knowing exactly how much we've comitted to is a great first step to limiting it. (I know when I work with clients, this is often the first time they've seen the entirety of their lives in one place, and it's usually a shock. This often leads to hard choices and difficult conversations, but I think it's the only principled way to start improving our lives, that is, focusing on what's meaningful.)

He says the system can only let you know that you have too many; you have to manage them yourself. It's an issue that you have to adjust.

Media diet and information overload

To combat information overload (a $650 BLN drag on the economy [5]), mark has a nice section on the Media Diet - a "constantly pruned set of publications that keep us informed about what matters most to us professionally and personally." The Media Diet portfolio has two main components: the lineup and tryouts. His model: Create a media portfolio with two main components: Lineup and Tryouts. Lineup: Those that've earned their place as your most valuable sources. (The three types: Stars, Scans, and Targets.) Candidate sources get into the lineup by going through a tryout phase. (Guidelines: Be discerning, be intentional, and be biased toward rejecting.)

He encourages us to be discerning, be intentional, and remember we have to limit the total. Also, we have to do maintenance on these by asking the question "Is this source worth my time?"

Wrap-up

For his single best productivity tip, Mark says "Read the book." :-) He also suggests trying the Dvorak keyboard.

I'll let Mark sum finish up:

Today, it's harder and harder to be done. Just as we answer one email, two more come in. Just as we finish one project, we are reminded that another is behind schedule. We only partially listen to the music or watch the video which is downloaded, because we're too busy downloading another to put in the queue. Bit literacy grants the possibility of being done not just occasionally, but on a regular basis in order to work more productively and enjoy a fuller life outside of work.

Thanks again, Mark.

References

[1] See Extreme GTD: How low can you go (or: Can we 80-20 GTD?), How to help people, and An interview with Chris Crouch, creator of the GO System.
[2] The template is initials-date-topic.extension - initials of the person who created the file, the creation date and the topic or keyword. For the creation date, use the MMDD format. Example: mc-0123-hurst-interview.odt
[3] Here's his steady-state method for emails:
1. Read all personal emails, then delete them,
2. delete all spam, and
3. engage FYIs and action items, then delete them. To do so, delete or file all FYIs (optionally reading them first), finish all quick two minute to-dos and then delete them, then move all big to-dos to a separate to-do list then delete them.
[4] Reviews: Michael Sampson has a review Michael Sampson, Jeff Hester, and Scott Priestley's on 37signals.
[5] See Is Information Overload a Billion Drag on the Economy?

Extreme GTD: How low can you go (or: Can we 80-20 GTD?)

2008-01-14T10:31:00.000-08:00

I had a great question from one of my coaching clients who happens to be familiar with GTD [1]. He wondered whether a simpler version of Allen's work was possible, say one that fits the spirit of the 80/20 Principle, maybe even something like 90-20 [2]. The reasoning is that the system can seem overly complex, with a significant barrier to entry.

So in IdeaMatt fashion I took this as a challenge and spent some time on an exercise of to figure out what's possible, given the various systems I've studied [3]. My goal was to stay true to my understanding of the the essential GTD habits, including workflow phases, processing and organizing (e.g., two minute rule, "sticky" inputs, and front-end decision making), and effective reminder systems. I wanted to look at as radical change as possible within these confines, rather than incremental adoption or simpler tools. (Note: A search for "GTD lite" and the like turned up some nice thinking on the topic, but a good number addressed adoption/tools, and not necessarily a shift in the method itself [4].) See below [5] for others who have looked at this.

My conclusion: An 80-20 version just ain't possible. This is both a testament to Allen's crisp system, as well as to the necessary rigor to back up the goal of a clear and focused mind. Following is a summary - you can read some background detail below. but I wanted to share the resulting simplified approach. I'd really love to hear your thoughts on this...

A simplified GTD-compatible system (~70-80)

This is the best I could figure out without incorporating more (relatively) radical ideas [3]. As in any simplification, there are serious trade-offs, with the biggest risk being keeping things out of your head. Note: I've thrown in some percentages estimating amount of simplification:

Collection: No change (capture everything, fixed # collecting points). Maybe maintain a single inbox for everything that you carry with you.
Processing: Use the 5Ds: DELETE, DEPOSIT (file), DELEGATE, DO (two minute rule), DEFER. ~20% simpler
Projects list: No change (master list of work requiring two or more steps).
Calendar: No change. BUT:
Actions: Schedule all actions on the calendar. No actions list, no contexts. 40%
Waiting For: None; use the calendar. This means you do hard scheduling of all follow-ups. 20%
Tickler: None; use the calendar. 0-30%
Filing [6]: No labeler (gasp!) No change in reference and project files. 10%
Someday/Maybe: None. 20%
Checklists: None; schedule as recurring reminders in calendar (daily, weekly, etc.) 10%
Agendas: None; keep with project materials (but OK to have "projects" for on-going meetings). 10%
Weekly review: None (!); do incrementally via daily review, say the night before (a common best practice). Review daily: calendar ~one week out (gets actions, waiting for, reminders), mind sweep. Opportunistically: projects. 30%

Importantly, to make this work you'll have to have an electronic calendar. Otherwise there's too much work moving actions around. Also, using it for ticklers and waiting for items probably requires electronic reminding.

What I like about this: 1) Simple. The calendar does most everything, with support by the projects list (which I really wanted to get rid of - thoughts?). 2) Implements what Mark Forster calls closed lists, which help to define limits on our work, a common complaint about GTD.

What I dislike: 1) Potentially too much forwarding of unfinished items. David Allen makes a strong argument for separate action lists. 2) Risk of cluttering up the mind, esp. from removing the weekly review, Someday/Maybe, and checklists.

Interestingly, once this emerged I recognized similarity to other calendar-centric systems like Bit Literacy (with its scheduling of all actions) and Do It Tomorrow (with its closed lists).

What do you think? Are you using anything similar? Should we create a name for this? ;-)

References

[1] As usual, I want to be very clear that I have no association with David Allen or his company. His work has been a huge influence, but I continue to combine the best practices from many sources (which I share here) into my work.
[2] I've found it's not uncommon for people to be confused about the numbers. For example, they don't need to add to 100. This means you should watch out for misleading graphics. For example, do a Google image search for 80-20 and look for pie charts. Regarding the concept itself, here's a nice summary from Richard Koch's book:
Overall, keep in mind that a few things are always much more important than most things. Keep the vital few in the forefront of your brain. Keep reviewing whether you are spending more time and effort on the vital few rather than on the trivial many.
[3] You can read about some of those quite different from GTD here: Some thoughts from the book "Getting Organized" by Chris Crouch, A GTD-er's perspective on Mission Control's "Productivity and Accomplishment" workshop, How to process stuff - A comparison of TRAF, the "Four Ds", and GTD's workflow diagram, and Some thoughts on the book "The Instant Productivity Toolkit".
[4] That's not to say that simplifying tools doesn't provide an opportunity. There's a nice discussion of this angle in Leo's post Simplifying David Allen’s Complicated GTD Setup.
[5] Additional thinking on simplified GTD:
- Zen To Done (ZTD): The Ultimate Simple Productivity System - Covers incremental adoption, changes in doing (including High Value Tasks), reducing inputs, and integrating goals - all great ideas.
- apply the 80/20 rule to GTD - Uses a weekly scheduling of actions with a one-month time horizon. others go on a pending list.
- Feature: Practicing Simplified GTD - Reduces tracking and reminding to three lists (To-do, Projects, Someday/Maybe).
- "GTD Lite" | 43 Folders - Two lists (Actions, Projects), daily review only. (Lots on implementation and tools.)
- GTD Lite on the davico forums - Mostly about simplifying planning. Also this thread - includes a variation for kids (three lists: Projects, Actions, Someday/Maybe).
[6] Note: Many systems use an action-folder or Kanban approach, but that's a big change from action lists. Examples: The Anxiety of Getting Things Done and Ask E.T.: Thinking and Paper (scroll to "This is a follow-up").

A sketch of my analysis

This is a bit rough, but I hope it's useful to your comments or critiques. Broken down by workflow phase.

collect
- skip: no. o/w don't know incoming work, clutter (paper, mental), leads to missing work
- just one bucket? (impossible)
- don't do mind sweep (head full)
- reduce (just manages, but still need collection)
- process
- skip: no. o/w work unidentified, falls through cracks, etc. maybe combine conceptually with organize?
- FAT (sure, but less rigorous). the problem: what to do with Act? must go to: do (now), delegate (other), defer (later)
organize
- skip: no. need places; o/w clutter
- filing: radical: one file (Gmail model), organized say by date. prob: hard to find? time not always best way to index -> very difficult to find paper related to projects
- filing: no labeler (10%)
- all actions on calendar? prob: usual GTD, plus project actions hard to track?
- no projects list, say use project folders themselves for list. prob: not all projects need folders. have to carry folders instead of single list. hard to remind/review next steps
- no waiting for, say use tickler. prob: none?
- no tickler, say use calender. prob: none?
- no someday/maybe: yes, if don't mind not tracking (mind fills)
- no checklists: yes, but on mind. maybe put in calendar (daily, weekly, monthly, ...)
- no agendas (keep with projects)
review
- skip daily tickler: yes, if using calendar
- skip daily calendar: no. prob: would have to look 2 weeks ahead every day, say night before
- skip daily actions: no, but simpler if all scheduled on calendar
- skip daily waiting for: yes, say if on calendar
- skip weekly mind sweep: yes, if done daily
- skip weekly someday/maybe: yes, if not tracking
- skip weekly projects & plans: maybe. prob: projects not up to date, actions not happening, blind-sided by problems
- skip weekly calendar: yes, if done daily
- skip weekly actions: yes, if done daily
- skip action support: yes, but might slip through cracks
do
- put on calendar: see above

How to help people

2008-01-08T10:00:00.000-08:00

As I continue building my personal productivity practice, one of the biggest shifts in my thinking is around networking [1]. I've moved from the common "palm down" perspective [2] to the "palm up" variety, in which I work to learn what people care about, and think about afterwards how I can be of service, i.e., how I can help them. I'm reminded of this idea, from my self help formulary:

Life = The people you meet + What you create together

What's hit me recently is that I needed to make changes in the way I interact with people in order to better help them. The question is, how do we create an environment that fosters this kind of giving?

Here's a straightforward process that's helped me:

1. When meeting someone, come with an attitude of genuine curiosity.

Think of yourself as a detective. Your job is to listen and ask good questions about what she cares about, loves, is challenged by, and is excited about. Learning to do this may take some work (it did for me) because many of us want to talk about ourselves, show how smart we are, and feel like we're contributing to the conversation. Another risk is, giving unsolicited advice [3].

It helps to have rapport-establishing skills, and I've found Nicholas Boothman's How to Make People Like You in 90 Seconds or Less very helpful - see my review here. You might also enjoy Questions that Work.

This leads to a test:

After meeting someone, do you now know enough to spot ways to help him?

(Note: I recommend against the "Is there any way I can help you?" finish to a conversation. It sounds contrived to me, and might really be sending the message "Look how willing I am to help you." Often the answer is "hmmm." Much better to use my approach. Arguments to the contrary are welcome.)

Remember, when meeting with someone the only things you should be asking about are ones dedicated to providing value. Avoid the instinct to focus on the short-term and your benefit; it's about relationship-building and long term connections.

2. Maintain a steady, reliable, and valuable atom/bitstream

Now that you know what's potentially valuable to people in your network, you have to find corresponding artifacts. You'll want to select sources that provide this potential. These will be in the form of articles (HBR has some great ones), books (reading-related posts here), blogs (learn how to read them quickly here), and your experiences working, learning, and living.

Because these sources are often digital, you'll need an effective way of managing them. I like Mark Hurst's [4] concise little book Bit Literacy. Mark has a lot to say about the topic - highly recommended. For example, one idea is to create a media diet portfolio with two main components: The Lineup and Tryouts. The lineup contains the sources you are most likely to stick with. He breaks them down further into three types: stars (consistently valuable), scans (give some relevant information via a quick read), and targets (special-purpose sources). Tryouts are sources you're thinking of adding to your diet. Mark says to be discerning, intentional, and remember you have to limit the total.

This step's corresponding test:

Is my media diet consistently valuable to me and my network?

Ask this regularly, and prune/adjust as needed.

3. When you come across something of potential value, share it

This is self explanatory, but will depend on your having a free enough mind [5] to put together mentally the two parts.

That said, here are a few tips:

Instead of emailing, print and send information with a note. It's personal, fun, and after all - who gets excited about receiving an email? "Oh boy - I got an email from Matt! What a unique and memorable way to communicate." :-)
Point out why you thought she'd be interested.
Provide contact information. After all, starting a conversation around the topics is golden.
Send thick packages - it's more memorable. Plus, what fun to surprise and delight people. My favorites items Super Spy Night Pens and NASA stickers (it helps to have cool clients).
Consider giving books. I am surprised and humbled when I receive a book from my network, and I now don't think twice about shipping one when I see the opportunity. (Side note: Joining Amazon Prime has helped with this.) You might want to check out Tim Sanders' post Prescribe a book to a bizmate.

Unsurprisingly (at least to you, maybe) I've found doing this whole process to very satisfying. I've never been good at giving, and these ideas have helped me a lot. (This also explains why I've had trouble buying gifts in the past - the most meaningful ones are based on knowing the giftee.) Interestingly, I now find myself feeling rather disappointed when I can't help someone.

Oops - there's the doorbell, so I need to go. It's our piano tuner. For the past two weeks my wife's been grousing about how out of tune her instrument is, and how frustrating a few sticky keys. Can't wait to see her face next time she plays!

References

[1] You can find my networking-related posts here.
[2] See Networking Tips from the White House, which is an interview with Christine Comaford-Lynch, author of Rules for Renegades: How to Make More Money, Rock Your Career, and Revel in Your Individuality. (NB: I haven't read it yet.)
[3] I've heard (but found no sources) that people giving advice feel better afterwards, but those receiving it feel worse. Any citations?
[4] Interview forthcoming.
[5] If this is hard, considering hiring someone to help ;-)

A conversation with Marilyn Paul, author of "It's hard to make a difference when you can't find your keys"

2008-01-03T11:44:00.000-08:00

Another treat in my interview series (kickoff post, all posts), I'm very pleased to share highlights from an hour with Dr. Marilyn Paul, author of the best-selling It's Hard to Make a Difference When You Can't Find Your Keys (The Seven-Step Path to Becoming Truly Organized) (personal and consulting sites). Not only is her book one of the top 10 in Amazon's self-help/time management category, it's also the first time management book recommended to me when starting my practice (the world repository of all knowledge says I read it read on 2005-10-01).

Like her book, our conversation covered a lot of topics, and I came away highly impressed. I hope you enjoy it! (If you'd like to hear more from Marilyn, check out this NPR interview from a while back: Overcoming E-Mail Overload at Work. I've pulled out her tips below [1].)

Getting started, and the book's origins

Like many of the leaders I've met in my field, Marilyn's story is rather non-traditional [2]. She has a Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from the School of Management at Yale University, and got started in the work of time management, organizing, and productivity because she struggled with these issues and realized she needed help. Having read a ton of organizing books and finding they didn't work, she decided to apply the principles of organizational Change Management - her speciality [3] - to herself. This came about after she sought out existing information and advice, but didn't get the help she needed.

As she evolved a new process and started sharing it via local workshops around the Boston area. In a lovely example of wild success, those workshops were overflowing (requiring her to turn people away), and she was inundated with requests for more events, and for the material. She kept doing the work, teaching and applying it to herself (in areas like clearing up the clutter and learning more about running on time), and over time collected lots of material. Then a friend looked at her workbook (fifty pages at the time) workbook and workshop, and said "This is a book." In a great example of Synchronicity, the next week after she bumped into three people were literary agents, one of them said she would work with her, and one thing went to another. Neat!

I asked Marilyn the total time from start to finish for this process, which she figured ("good question") to be about ten years.

Definition of productivity

Paul said she had worked with people on issues of productivity, but had not been considering it to be her issue. However, she pointed out that productivity is not really her focus either. She elaborated that she thinks of productivity as part of the "equation of living a good life," along with other important factors such as creating sanity in your home, having good relationships and connections, etc.

Paul said she's not sure the word "productivity" applies to life as a whole - it's part of the question how do we make work meaningful and valuable, and how do we do what we care about - Ready, Aim, Fire, rather than Ready, Fire, Aim [4]. As she puts it, it is not productivity so much that drives her as how do we live the best life that we can, given how different we each are. For GTD practitioners, this will seem a bit controversial - Allen's work is intentionally bottom-up (first get your life together, which makes room for uncovering what your life should be about). More on this below.

(An aside: I asked Marilyn the differences between "Organizing," "Productivity," and "Time management." I like her answer: Basically we don't need to make them distinct because there's lots of overlap. This makes my marketing a bit more challenging though!)

Influences

When asked about her influences, Paul said that, in terms of how she thinks of her work - organizational change - one great influence was Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization (see this FastCompany article for more on his work). This launched a field called Systems Thinking, based on what he called five disciplines for change. They include Team Learning, Shared Visioning, Personal Mastery, and Mental Models. And it's Mental Models that has to deal with how we use our minds (my favorite topic).

Other influences include Finding Time: How Corporations, Individuals, and Families Can Benefit from New Work Practices (Collection on Technology and Work) and The Secret Pulse of Time: Making Sense of Life's Scarcest Commodity.

Goals

On the importance of goals (think top-down), Marilyn said having clarity about them is crucial. While some people are very aware of their goals, many of us aren't (I wasn't), which means we're probably working from outdated ones (e.g., those from high school or college). This is especially relevant in the face of big changes like setting up life with a partner or having children. For example, these can kick off the need for work in emotional or spiritual areas.

She said it has to do with inspiration and aspiration, which inform everything else and which her work helps connect up. The goal is for us to live an inspired life, rather than the more typical "dragging ourselves through the day." Otherwise, we are too tired and don't have time to rest, relax, and connect.

Marilyn describes this goal discovery process as on-going. She says that in today's world many people have a lot of choice [5], and we don't really know how to work with them to even identify what our skills and abilities are. To illustrate she gives this quote from Nietzsche: "The greatest folly of mankind is that we forget what we are trying to do."

On the lack of self-management training

We talked a good bit about one of my favorite realizations in starting this work: that very few of us have been taught the essential skills and tools to manage ourselves. In workshops I point out that this is true regardless of background or education. The irony is that my clients (and readers) are very smart, and decide (often at a subconscious level) that self-management shouldn't be that hard. I continue to discover there are many reasons why that's not the case - information overload, the difficulty of changing habits (more next), procrastination, and perfectionism to name a few.

Marilyn took this further to say it's a curriculum that should be standard in high schools and colleges. By the end of high school, students should know how to use their talent via to do lists and other basics. Beyond that, she says we should also know personal traits like when our "prime time" is (e.g., being a morning person), how we are going to work with our biological givens, and then, if we procrastinate, why? What are my issues, what am dealing with, etc. See her book for much more on this.

Habits

An important topic I continue to explore is why is this work so difficult to adopt, which percolates down to changing habits. Paul acknowledges it's very hard to change habits, and is a major motivator in writing her book. She says you have to start with an strong desire to change (which, she pointed out, is what happened with me and kicked off my whole process), and that is probably what happens with people who really are able to make a change.

She frames this as the first stage of the work, and involves assessing what is at stake. Examples include not finding the stuff in your office, piles on your desk, or being a nice guy but having apologize a lot. Each of these has costs, and once people are aware of them (say in checking email vs. working on goals) they're more motivated to change. (My Alexander Technique [6] teacher calls this "making meaning," a phrase I like.)

This goes to addressing the top-down vs. bottom-up issue. Paul argues that people who make a change (e.g., adopting new self-management tools - a bottom-up process) have already realized they can't go on with the old behaviors because something important's at stake. However, the process is iterative: Feel some pain, get some initial help (e.g., read a book or get a tool), try it out, experience some improvement, and repeat. (In fact, this is why I cheated when asked the my ultimate productivity tip. There is no single tip - it's a process, and starting people on the road is what I do.)

For more on building a new habit, I have an excerpt from her book below [7].

Getting clients

I asked Marilyn how she built her practice. Interestingly, she is not out on the circuit, and is only teaching on the East Coast. The people who come to her are capable and competent people in many, many ways, who have tried other work, but the ways they organize themselves and manage their time are getting in their way. They are also dealing with health issues (e.g., issues around weight, chronic fatigue, and family issues, marital issues), which Paul deals with as part of addressing their whole life, not just isolated aspects.

Much of her work is word of mouth - personal referral - with some clients learning about her through through her website, workshops, and her book, which is becoming a huge contributor to her practice.

Work awareness, courage

Marilyn is developing a concept she calls Phantom Workload. I'll let her explain it:

By Phantom workload we mean the extra, redundant, unnecessary work that is created through procrastination (e.g., now I have to run to the PO to FedEx my mortgage payment instead of putting it in the mail or paying on line), through avoidance (e.g., now I have to have a long two hour conversation with my failing employee because I avoided giving good helpful feedback in a timely way because I didn't know what to say), or using quick fixes (e.g., we'll promise the customer what he or she wants - a common quick fix - only now we have a product that they want, but it is full of bugs and they are really disappointed in us, we are losing our credibility with them - very time consuming and expensive).

As part of this, Paul points out it takes courage to change these kinds of behaviors, and we want to be in a workplace where people are rewarded and respected for this. We want to be working with people who are addressing that quality in themselves, so that when you speak up and say something unpopular, someone else will support you rather than shoot you down. This means that when her team works with organizations, they target those issues because, as she puts it, courage is a big part of time management.

Here's a scenario: You are in your office, someone walks in the door, knock, knock, knock, can I come in? You stand up, walk over to the door, and say," How can I help you?" In that little moment of standing up, walking to the door right next to them, and saying that, you are signaling some important points about the conversation - how long you can talk, that your time is important, etc. This can be personally challenging to do, but is very different from saying, "Sure, I can help. Come in and sit down." Good stuff!

The meta question

In answer to my "meta" question ("What haven't I asked you that you have a good answer to?") Paul said one of the big questions that people have around productivity is creating a frame of mind. How do we create a productive frame of mind, decide what that is, and how do we shift from an action-oriented productive frame of mind to a different kind of focus, e.g., where we can say "It is a beautiful day." She thinks those require some changes in our brain so that we can move back and forth and selectively choose different states of mind. I think this is huge.

Thanks, Marilyn!

References

[1] Her tips for managing your email:
1. Meet as a team to review e-mail use. Identify what works, what doesn't, and why. Create a trial period for improvement: Meet to discuss after a week.
2. Use subject-line protocols to speed communication: a.) No reply needed - NRN; b.) Thank you - TY; c.) Need response by date and time - NRB 10/30 3:00 pm; d.) Use subject line for whole message: Meet 10:00 10/30 Okay? END
3. Determine who needs to be copied on what, what needs to be read, and what needs to be filed.
4. Keep e-mails short. Most should be no more than 1-10 sentences. Communicate your main point in the first sentence or two. Don't make readers work because you don't have time to focus.
5. Don't deliver bad news in an e-mail message. If it's urgent, pick up the phone. Use tone of voice to indicate concern, but not anger.
6. After two rounds of problem-solving on e-mail, pick up the phone.
7. Don't hide behind e-mail. Any sensitive communications should be done in person.
8. If you can't answer a request immediately, let the other party know when you can respond, or if you can't.
9. NO EMOTIONAL E-MAILS: To resolve a conflict, schedule a meeting or use the phone. E-mail arguments tend to be huge time-wasters. Never send a hasty, irritated response to an annoying e-mail -- jobs have been lost that way.
[2] I don't mean to slight other professions. By traditional I mean a more structured path to work, such as through college, training, or apprenticiships. Believe me, I make no judments about how someone comes to do wokrk they love. And because there are as many routes as there are people, there are lots of good stories to share!
[3] Change Manager is definitely a cool job title - see Genius, purpose, and cool job descriptions - What are *you* built to do?
[4] This is a really interesting point, and you can make arguments both ways. RAF has value in being more principled - moving from goals/purpose to action. However, smart people (my consulting market, essentially) often suffer from "analysis paralysis" (AKA "too smart to start"), so some action before direction can help get unstuck. Also, we often over-plan (esp. small-to-medium sized projects), and RFA helps move us along the action-discovery-reflect cycle (which I just made up). Steve Pavlina calls thisfailing your way forward.
[5] For example see The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less.
[6] See Reflections on Alexander Technique and personal productivity.
[7] On building a new habit:
1. Pick one small habit that you'd really like to change.
2. Estimate what it costs you to keep this habit.
3. Become aware of your thoughts that accompany this habit.
4. Check your deeply held beliefs for validity.
5. Create a picture of a new, better habit. Actually act it out.
6. Remind yourself of how your new habit will nurture your vision and purpose.
7. Interrupt the old habit with a shout, music, or a "No!"
8. Reinforce your new behavior with new thoughts.
9. Reward yourself for the new behavior.
10. Get lots of support; ask for help from all your support sources.

Happy end-of-year, and a short collection of ideas, both serious and trivial

2007-12-22T07:14:00.000-08:00

(A relatively short post, as I'm in recovery.)

Five things that are easier with crutches

I broke a leg bone in half a week ago[1], so I have some tips for you should you need crutches.

Palm calluses useful for chandelier-swinging.
Improved ability to re-slip on ice. Advantage: Already have crutches.
Like some kinds of work (e.g., writing), slow and steady is often more productive than fast and reckless.
Can use to point and press buttons.
Hyper-developed right leg more impressive than pre-accident, and draws attention away from shrunken chicken-stick broken leg.
Increases pan handling donations, esp. when combined with weary slouch.
And finally, children just love to play with them!

Three things you didn't know about me

One of my teeth is rotated 90 degrees from normal
I was raised by a family of wild cats. While they treated me with love and like one of their own, I have some residual bad habits like using my tongue to clean myself, and an aversion to toilets - I prefer a litter box. Thank god for my portable litter box!
Ezra Cornell, the founder of Cornell University, is my great-great uncle. Sadly, family scholarships were dropped before I graduated high school. (This one's actually true.)

How to actually take time off during your holiday

In Holiday Hacks: 12 Radical (and Slightly Naughty) Ways to Stay Productive the author suggests ways to work during time off. Here's what I said:

The real question is how you want to use your time "off" from work. Without a recharge, it's arguable that you've squandered an important opportunity to make your brain work better.

I recommend treating it like a vacation: Don't work! Like taking a vacation, prepare before it starts by getting caught up, verifying projects are in a happy state, and dealing with anything that you know will come up during the break, e.g., bills, party planning, buying gifts, etc.

Also, I want to acknowledge the people who have to work while many of us take breaks, e.g., people who work in hospitals and provide health care, fire and police workers, 24/7 customer support reps, etc. (Please add yourself in the comments - I know I'm skipping lots of other important work.)

You might also enjoy A few thoughts on vacations & GTD, used time management books, a few productivity tips, and heroes - both super *and* real.

(BTW, I've been on a superhero kick, and enjoyed reading Soon I Will Be Invincible: A Novel and Hero. Guilty pleasure, but while laid up I've not been up to reading one book, each day, one hour each.)

Places where our cat throws up (with solutions)

While I am concerned about genetically modified foods (apparently tomatoes are common), there's one creature I'd be perfectly happy seeing modified: felis domesticus. Why? Because the thing's digestive system ain't there yet. I love our 15 year old animal, but it pukes on everything. Examples:

The floor - most common. Best choice: Wood floors. Worst choice: Carpet. Disadvantage: Usually found when stepped on in bare feet. Solution: Daily hosing-down of all walking surfaces with bleach/fluorohydric acid mixture.
Beds - also common. Best choice: None. Advantage: Usually caught in the act, allowing prompt action. Solution: Sleep on floor.
And finally, a new one: The vacuum cleaner! A twisty, somewhat self-referential target that gave me a chuckle. Left in place for holiday humor.

Finally, even if you don't celebrate the arbitrary point in our planet's orbit around the sun, I'd like to wish you a good new year. Thanks to you all for reading - I'm humbled and grateful.

References

[1] Prognosis: 6-8 weeks to start walking on it, 3-4 months before it's healed and I'm mountain biking again. Thank goodness I have tele-coaching and local consulting during the next month or so! I'd be very unhappy leading one of my workshops sitting down. (I move around a lot, have many activities, and generally we have a lot of fun.)

Bloke redux, the 15 minute emergency office, and a short automation experiment

2007-12-11T16:15:00.000-08:00

A little grab-bag post today.

First, yesterday in Western MA, USA, we had a beautiful, exciting, and hazardous ice storm. The latter I experienced first hand (first foot, actually) when I slipped on a near-frictionless driveway and broke my leg (fibular fracture). This is three months on the heels of a broken thumb, so I feel a bit like warmed-over poo. And yes, there's some self-judgment involved as well.

So this week some short, but hopefully high-value mini entries [1].

Moving offices

Because my office is upstairs, I needed to set up one on our first floor. (What - Matt stop working!?) With my dear wife's help, we got it done in 15 minutes. I think this is remarkable. All it took was moving down:

Action system (already portable; and remember, it's only a calendar and three lists - Projects, Actions, and Waiting For)
Laptop computer and headset
Portable phone
Stacking shelves (inbox, action support, working project folders [2])
Desktop supplies (many in one place - my spinning organizer)
Mail-related items (envelopes, stamps, and thank you cards)
Printer
Legal pad (supports my collection habit)

(For how much such a system simplifies moving the entire office, see Another GTD Plus - Moving offices made much easier.)

Windows text automation tools experiment

Over the last month I've been trying a few tools to automate my computer workflow on Windows [3]. In the productivity blogosphere, reviewing and using tools like text expansion and auto-completion is common, so I thought I'd give some a whirl. I looked at two categories: Text auto-completion (in which the program figures out the word/phrase you're typing and types it for you), and text expansion (in which you tell the program which word/phrase it should type). In other words, programs where it decides vs. when you decide. (Note: This separation is fuzzy - there's crossover between the two.)

The verdict: The latter class is much more useful and flexible, and

For auto-completion I tried these programs: LetMeType, IntelliComplete Professional, As-U-Type, and AutoTyping. My conclusion: Increasing typing speed would provide more benefit, due to completion not being 100% (which is probably impossible). Put another way, it was slower cycling through completions searching for the correct one. That said, of the ones I tried, LetMeType was the most usable.

(Side note: Interestingly, I had trouble finding one that was under active development. Makes me think either a) it's a dead end, or b) no one's created a great tool yet. Opportunity?)

For text expansion I looked researched a bunch of them [4], and ended up trying AutoHotkey first. It is free, powerful, under active development, and has a supportive user community. My conclusion: It's pretty darn neat, passed the "I'll keep using it" test, and was good enough to not try any others. And its scripting library can do about anything. I haven't integrated it deeply with Firefox yet, but I hope it will replace CoScripter (I like tool consolidation if possible). It supports UI macros as well (click here, etc.) There's a nice introduction at lifehacker: Hack Attack: Knock down repetitive email with AutoHotKey.

Note that I used the geeky edit-a-text-file approach, and did find the syntax to be a bit confusing at first. I believe there's a graphical front end, though. If you want a friendlier UI, definitely check out ActiveWords - it is pretty, but still has a large scripting library.

Mac users may want to check out this Spell Catcher vs. TextExpander vs. Typinator vs. TypeIt4Me, etc..

So tell me: What's your experience around this been? Got a favorite you can't live with? Do tell!

Resources

[1] Yes, I realize that most blogs are only entries like this. I look at it a competitive advantage - more depth, but fewer posts.
[2] I am very careful about recommending this to clients. Before working with me, most people have tried some kind of system for managing working files - either stacked on surfaces or sitting upright in step folder stands. The main problem with these is using them as action reminders. Why? Because when they have 10 minutes, it takes far to long to find the next action. Just determining the action from one folder could take 10 minutes! Instead, the best practice is to have a centralized action list from all projects. This frees up folders to do what they're meant to: hold project-related materials. This changes the nature of having folders on desks from action reminders to support - it's merely a convenience to save a few seconds looking through their (A-Z!) filing drawers.
[3] I would *love* to switch to a Mac - Windows' instability and inefficiency (and this is on XP, not Vista) drives me nuts. What's holding me back? One-button laptops, and PowerPoint and Quicken compatibility. I realize the latter can be solved by virtualizing Windows, but that seems like missing the point. I'm open to convincing, though...
[4] The top candidates seemed to be ActiveWords, AutoHotkey, and Texter, but there are many other worthies as well.

A nice surprise: A short email interview with UK productivity expert Nicholas Bate

2007-12-03T12:10:00.000-08:00

One of the great things about my series of interviews with top productivity consultants [1] (along with lots of new ideas) is discovering thinkers I've not previously heard of. I'm pleased to share a short email interview with Nicholas Bate (site, blog), who came to my attention when I received a surprise box of books and playing cards [2] from London, including Being the Best: The A-Z of Personal Success, JfDI! Just Do It: The Definitive Guide to Realising Your Dreams, and Get a Life: Setting your 'Life Compass' for Success.

For a taste of his thinking, check out his free ebooks (I found the first, Boost Your Productivity, stimulating):

Two things about Nicholas: First, his knowledge seems both deep and wide, something I admire. Second, his blog is in the category of brief, frequent, and high-value, something I also admire. (I'm regularly tempted to switch to that approach to free up time for other projects. Not yet, though.) His post How to Think Like Albert Einstein is one of the funniest and shortest ones I've come across in a while, with You were there: invention of the light bulb, 125 years ago.. running a close second. :-)

Here's another characteristic post, this one on productivity: 6 Ways to be More on Top of Things:

Have a definitive list of what 'things' are: the master list.
Review that list once per day. (Re-) prioritise.
Prioritise by pay-off. Not who's shouting, what's easy nor what's urgent.
Say no to low value tasks otherwise you say no to high value stuff (such as your Life).
Take time out every day to think. It's the unique distinction of humans.
Regularly scan the diary for what is coming up.

I'm continuing to line up interviews, including some big names you'll definitely know. Now on to Nicholas's interview.

How did you get your start?

I just started. I had no guaranteed clients, but I did know this was something I really wanted to do. If you have a strong passion within you to do something, I encourage you to do it. It may not be easy, but it will work out eventually. Passion leads to ability. Ability leads to competence. And people want and will pay for competence.

What were the biggest factors in your success?

Becoming special. Identify a few things you are really, really good at and then become awesome at those. Don’t try and do everything. Don’t be too concerned about your competitors and be careful about responding to the customer; lead the customer!

How did you build your clientele?

I really believe there is only one way: word of mouth. You can accelerate that of course in many ways, but essentially you must have a product which people tell others about with sufficient enthusiasm that they wish to buy it.

How do you to ensure (as much as possible) that clients "get it," i.e., that it sticks?

Two main approaches: on seminars and in my books I do a lot of "pattern-breaking." Secondly I help maintain momentum through my blog.

What's your market focus/niche?

Business/commercial. Work/life balance. Productivity.

How do you summarize your method, and how did you develop it?

A concept called "personal compass." The metaphor being of course to decide your direction, etc. Most productivity methods I believe are too tactical; without a big enough why, people cannot keep their motivation. I encourage people to discover and set their compass; that then keeps them motivated.

How do you stay on top of the field (reading, tools, assistants, outsourcing)?

I read books and increasingly blogs. I used to go on workshops, and have attended those of the many thought leaders I respect.

How did your books come about? What's your muse?

The desire to capture my teachings and ideas so that students who wished could study them in more detail.

What were your biggest influences in developing your method?

Practicing managers who were effective: I noticed what they actual did, a process known as modeling excellence [3].

Who were your mentors?

None really. I simply read anything and attended anything of those I admired/respected.

What products and services do you sell?

Workshops and keynotes.

How do you apply the 80/20 principle to your practice?

I attempt to do a very few things astonishingly well.

How did you decide pricing? Is it fixed, or more like Value-Based Fees?

Value-based. This is important as you cannot double the time you have but you can double the value you offer.

What role did networking play, and how do you stay on top?

A small part for me.

What strategic partnerships did you form?

None so far.

How do you delight and surprise your clients?

I work at a higher standard than they ever expect!

Who are your competitors/peers?

Everybody yet nobody!

Update: For Pascal - here's a little blurb from Nicholas:

After a career in sales and marketing in the IT industry, culminating in leading sector marketing for Research Machines, Oxford, UK Nicholas launched Strategic Edge. His clients include Avanade, Barclays, BBC, BG Group, Lilly, Marks & Spencer, Microsoft, MSN amongst others.

Nicholas carried out research in the field of Molecular Biophysics at Magdalen College, Oxford University and is an NLP Master Practitioner, MBTI (levels 1 and 2) accredited and a qualified (PGCE) teacher. As well as instigating the Strategic Edge research programme, he has spent time studying with many of the recognised practitioners in the fields of business and personal development.

References

[1] Previous interviewees (tagged interviews) include Sally McGhee, Chris Crouch, Laura Stack and Mark Forster.
[2]How can I resist someone who uses playing cards for promotion and education? I'm actively working on a set of Personal Productivity Playing Cards, starting with a recent LinkedIn question (How do I go about producing custom educational playing cards?).
[3] Modeling Excellence

Genius, purpose, and cool job descriptions - What are you built to do?

2007-11-26T13:55:00.000-08:00

Over the past year or so I've been collecting job descriptions I think are tres cool, i.e., stimulating to me. I'm sure this started when I was planting the seeds of my career change - when I was actively thinking about finding my "thing," what Dick Richards calls our genius (see Is Your Genius at Work?: 4 Key Questions to Ask Before Your Next Career Move - Dwayne's got a nice article on it here).

I worked through that book a while ago, but I'll admit it was difficult and I didn't get it down to two words. (What I love about Richards' approach is he has you get it down to one gerund - a verb that ends with the suffix ing - and one noun, e.g., Digging Deeper.)

Reflecting on this process after some time, I've realized two things. First, my primary motivation for doing personal productivity consulting is to help people free up their minds so their genius can come through - either by making space to hear what it is, or by turning their smart ideas into action [1]. This is the big picture, and the main reason to get on top of everything.

The second realization is that my personal one (Richards says you only have one - I disagree) is something like this (apologies for the dry language):

Read tons of books.
Discover ideas that can potentially change personal world views - radically.
Experiment with them on myself.
Teach the most valuable ones to others.

Provide terrific value to others, add money, and repeat. (Haven't got it down to two words, obviously ;-)

So - here are some of the more interesting job descriptions. Do any of them give you ideas about your genius? Please share!

Attention Management Consultant (from Fatigue from information overload has a remedy, expert says)
Balance Expert (from The Oracle of Organization)
Brain Calisthenics Coach (from As Minds Age, What.s Next? Brain Calisthenics)
Brain Trainer (from Brain Training
Continuous Self-Improvement Guru (from Continuously Increase Productivity by Embracing the Optimization Mentality)
Culture Coach (from NPR: Intercultural Relationships: Can They Work?)
Defective Systems Detective (from Do it tomorrow)
Director of Insights & Innovation (from the IdeaFlow blog)
Doctor of Invention (from this blog)
Experience Designer (from Top Jobs 2007)
Flexibility Consultant (from A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder - a stimulating read, but ask me about its flaws)
Freak (from #49: FREAKS RULE! in 100 Ways to Help You Succeed/Make Money, Part 1)
Joyologist (from A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future)
Knowledge Champion (from Wikis Are Alive and Kicking in the Enterprise)
Labyrinth Designer (from Labyrinth Society)
Master Craftsman of Value (from The Fred Factor: How passion in your work and life can turn the ordinary into the extraordinary)
Member, [Technology] Simplicity Advisory Board (from Thinking Simple At Philips)
Passion Catalyst (from Curt Rosengren)
Professional Amateur (from Marcel Wanders Studio)
Wooden Roller Coaster Designer (from Marketplace: Day in the Work Life: Building quite a ride)

References

[1] I'm leading a marketing study group using Middleton's Action Plan Marketing workbook, and we just did the meme section. I'm still working on mine, but they alll have to do with smart people, and helping turn their ideas/inspiration into action.

A conversation with Sally McGhee, productivity pioneer and author of "Take Back Your Life"

2007-11-20T11:31:00.000-08:00

Continuing my interview series with the top experts in personal productivity comes another deep and wide-ranging conversation, this time with Sally McGhee, CEO of McGhee Productivity Solutions and author of Take Back Your Life!: Using Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 to Get Organized and Stay Organized.

If her name sounds familiar, that's no surprise. Her book is one of Amazon's best sellers in categories like Outlook and E-mail. And her experience and knowledge in the field go back twenty years - she was a partner in a company with David Allen, where she helped formulate the essential ideas of modern productivity practices like GTD (which she's taken in significant new directions - more below), and has worked with luminaries like Tony Buzan [1]. She's also an active Microsoft partner and contributor [2].

I'm very happy to share highlights from our delightful conversation. Enjoy!

Getting started in the field

Sally started out in her early teens in London, working with inspiring people like Buckminster Fuller, Tony Buzan [1], and Michael Wolf, who ran a corporate identity company. It was Michael who suggested that she was so organized, she ought to get into the business. She took this to heart and in her early 20s created a company that produced a paper-based time management system, one that she says was futuristic and included features like mind-mapping pages.

She sold that company, did coaching work with Jinny Ditzler [3] at a company called Results Unlimited (prior to its becomming Best Year Yet), and started a similar company in the US. She sold that company to work with Russell Bishop [4], who hired her and David Allen to work as a team [5]. Finally, they closed the company, with David and her parting ways. He created Getting Things Done, and Sally went on to found McGhee Productivity Solutions. (Check out their workflow model - it has some surprises, esp. around integrating goals. More on this below.)

Sally said working with these people (esp. Fuller) crafted what she calls her "psychological aspects in becoming a global citizen." This led to an early and continuing urge to make an impact, which she wanted to do in the corporate world, where she saw a need for education (it's where most people continue on-going learning after leaving school). I respect that she's taken many steps to move her closer to her goal.

Personal productivity and its larger implications

As I continue getting to know leaders like Sally, and as I get deeper into the field, I'm struck that it quickly explodes into every part of life [6]. Sally agreed, and says she's as much a student of life today than she's ever been. She continues to explore how to improve the quality of life for herself, her neighbors, her community, and the people her company interacts with in the corporate world.

She says this helps her in leading the field by redefining the meaning of productivity in the corporate world. It has to do with sustainability and values, starts with their Take Back Your Life training, but expands into programs that deal with how to create what she calls "sustainable cultures that combine increased performance with and work/life balance." This involves determining what processes need to be changed, and creating objectives that cascade down and up. It all connects to the four values she teaches - alignment, focus, integrity and accountability. (She cites Megatrends 2010: The Rise of Conscious Capitalism as a good source around this topic.)

The progression of clients from workflow to values

I asked Sally about whether clients come to her seeking these higher levels, or just dealing with the daily overload. She says that initially her clients come to them because they have a level of pain, e.g., around email, misaligned objectives, mergers and acquisitions, or accountability in the culture. Her experience is the larger culture conversations tend to happen at the more senior levels, and that the pain points lower down are around being disorganized. (She rattled off a bunch of symptoms including things falling through the cracks, being overwhelmed, not getting things done, no work/life balance, working too many hours, the kids call their phone, Blackberries, etc. Sound familiar?)

Once her company goes in and does their work, there's often an unexpected surprise where people realize there's a lifestyle change involved (something I've experienced very deeply, and which resulted in a major career change). She says not everyone takes it on, but many do.

Measuring productivity improvements

One area that sets Sally's company apart is their use of quantitative metrics. She says they use them because they want to foster sustainable productivity, not "quick fixes." They measure simple things, but continue creating more advanced levels of them. The simple ones include inbox size (before starting then six weeks after the program), time spent processing email, time spent on activities towards objectives, and time spent working at home. She compares these to more common evaluation forms that give a sense of initial enthusiasm, but don't track longer impact.

They support continued adoption via post-seminar services like webinars (which participants listen to a month afterwards) and before and after surveys. She says the webinar supports attendees in a review process of their system, and gives them an opportunity to acknowledge accomplishments and identify improvement areas.

They have larger programs, as well as products like her book and their Outlook add-in.

Top-down vs. bottom-up

In systems for self-management I've seen two major lines of thought. One is primarily bottom-up, like Allen's. The assumption is you have to get on top of your incoming stuff before you can free up your mind. On the other end of the spectrum is the type popularized by Stephen Covey, i.e., driven by purpose/vision (popularized by the image of climbing the ladder of success only to find it was leaning against the wrong wall).

When I asked Sally her take on this, she gave a good answer: that she doesn't know if there is ever one right answer. She went on to say the organizational context is important. For the most effective and expedient results, she ideally starts with an individual (Executive), then moves down to the team, and then the organization. On the individual level, Sally argues you definitely have to clear your mind in order to be able to see the "wood for the trees." When your email is empty and all your actions are in one place, it is easier to (as Allen puts it) get things done. However, she says there are many people working efficiently, but not getting the right things done - which fits more around the Covey technology.

She went on to talk about four fundamental paradigm shifts that need to take place with people. Her 2007 edition details these; here's my understanding of them:

You must be selective - you are never going to get it all done. It's not about getting everything done, it is about getting the right things done. Then the question becomes, "What are the right things?" These are her Meaningful Objectives which, in her system, drive projects and actions. Questioning whether your actions relate directly to these helps make good decisions and to be selective. She says this moves you from a place of "coping and surviving to causing and thriving." Most of her clients are at the former level.
You must manage your life from the calendar, not the to-do list. This is because the to-do list is infinite, the calendar is not. (This a consistent with Mark Forster's ideas around closed lists - see Do it tomorrow.) This gets you thinking about boundaries and limits, where people get the reality of, "Oh, my god, I can't put a 15-pound sugar bag into a 5-pound space." :-) Her book describes the weekly process of choosing which actions to move to the calendar. These are the ones you're absolutely committed to doing that week.
You must make yourself as important as other people. This is important because we often feel that we must react to others' needs, thinking that's the only way to make a difference. This leads to not honoring those actions or time blocks we've made with ourselves (i.e., agreements). She says this isn't selfish because the individual's objectives should be aligned with the organization's objectives.
You must be proactive, not reactive. She describes this in terms of trading instant gratification or a reaction for larger goals, and of standing back to do course corrections (reviewing and planning).

She finished by saying not all individuals or organizations are ready for these shifts.

Outlook, working with Microsoft

Unlike Allen's system, Sally works solely with Outlook. She says she saw Outlook as one of the best tools for implementing productivity improvements, what she calls an Integrated Management System. Her first consideration wasn't the market share (at the time it wasn't at the top), but the program's sophistication and potential. But she says her company is not just about the technology - they use technology "as a tool for helping people sustain long-term change by daily practice within the software. So the software does make a difference." Of course now that the program is the de facto corporate standard (with world-wide distribution) she's in a strong position.

Getting clients

Her clients initially came via referral, as a result of producing value in people's lives, but of course the book now generates a lot of business. In addition they use their webinars, software, PR, and their Microsoft relationship to open up enterprise accounts - their primary market.

Networking

Not surprisingly, Sally said networking is extraordinarily important because it creates community, which she thinks is required to make an impact. As puts it, "Things just happen more easily that way, and more quickly. There's more learning to be done, there's more contribution to be made. It moves it from 'either/or' to 'and'." She said she had to work on the networking piece, but getting through any personal discomfort was well worth it.

Biggest success factors

She described a number of factors, including: working with an amazing team of people - picking great people who are really committed; walking the talk (practicing the principles they teach); and communicating authentically, straight, taking a powerful stance for your vision, and not backing down.

She says her personal success has to do with having a vision and walking towards it. But the success comes from a group of people "who have tremendous heart and tremendous vision, and who work the process inside the company."

Future plans

She plans to write a thought-leadership book next year about cultural change and how to sustain what she calls "true productivity" - performance without sacrificing work/life balance, and supporting operating from values. It will be based on their experience with programs that are creating now, i.e., case studies with real examples. Sally wants it to be a larger-scale how-to book, separate from software.

Thanks, Sally!

References

[1] See Buzan's official portal, Wikipedia article. Selected books: The Mind Map Book: How to Use Radiant Thinking to Maximize Your Brain's Untapped Potential, Use Both Sides of Your Brain: New Mind-Mapping Techniques, Third Edition (Plume), and (hey!) The Speed Reading Book (check out Reading gone wild! How to read five books a week).
[2]You'll find a list of their articles here.
[3] See Ditzler's profile and well-known book Your Best Year Yet!: Ten Questions for Making the Next Twelve Months Your Most Successful Ever. You'll find a detailed summary here, including a great list of questions to ask in your yearly review:
1. What did I accomplish?
2. What were my biggest disappointments?
3. What did I learn?
4. How do I limit myself, and how can I stop?
5. What are my personal values?
6. What roles do I play in my life?
7. Which role is my major focus for the next year?
8. What are my goals for each role?
9. What are my top ten goals for the next year?
10. How can I make sure I achieve them?
[4] One of the founders of Insight Seminars.
[5] Productivity Development Group (PDG)
[6] I mentioned some of these areas in A geek "gets" networking: The strange magic of connecting with others, including work/career, wealth/money, personal growth and development, and networking. See the discussion at What the heck *is* productivity all about?.

Some tasty morsels from the Ideamatt self help formulary

2007-11-12T19:20:00.000-08:00

A light post this week, I wanted to share a few select formulas for productivity and self help I've been collecting. Hopefully some will resonate. Let's hear yours! -- matt

Event + Response = Outcome: From The Success Principles [1]
Flow = Work + Play: From Psychologists now know what makes people happy
Productivity = What x When: From Nicholas Bate On being productive
Effectiveness = Creativity x Order: From Do it tomorrow
Effectiveness = Knowledge x Focus: From Nick Duffill via Eric Mack
Luck = Preparation + Opportunity: From To Do Doing Done
Productivity = Clarity - Interruptions + Rested: From My Productivity Equation is C - I + R = P. What's Yours?
Productivity = Value / Time (where Value = Impact x Endurance x Essence x Volume): From What Is Productivity?
Intention + Commitment = Reality: From The Instant Productivity Toolkit
The "Worth It" factor = Effort * Fulfillment * "Necessity/right-thing-to-do factor": From CrazyBusy
Success = Work + Play + "Keep your mouth shut": From Albert Einstein
Talent x Relationships = Productivity ("the success formula that never fails"): From Time Power
Life = The people you meet + What you create together: A gem from Networking Tips from the White House

And finally (and appropriately) - from The End:

And, in the end, the love you take
Is equal to the love you make.

References

[1] See E + R = O (Event + Response = Outcome) - dealing appropriately with "cringe" Inbox items.

An interview with Chris Crouch, creator of the GO System

2007-11-07T18:52:00.000-08:00

Continuing my interview series [1] with the top experts in personal productivity, I'm very pleased to share highlights from my conversation with Chris Crouch, creator of the GO System and author of Getting Organized: Learning How to Focus, Organize and Prioritize. Chris's company runs a certification program and sells products like an implementation kit. You can find some of his articles here.

I wrote about Chris's book a few months ago (see Some thoughts from the book "Getting Organized" by Chris Crouch), and I'm grateful he took time to share from his deep and wide-ranging knowledge and interests. So if you like big ideas and lots of great book references, enjoy!

Getting started in the field

Chris got his start somewhat by accident. He was a CPA in a big eight firm, which had a rigorous working environment and required employees to handle a lot in order to survive (sound familiar?) He soon realized he needed to change his old way of doing things, which wasn't working. That lead to his studying the field of personal productivity, which he naturally took to.

This eventually brought him to the attention of the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, who asked him to teach others. They made him an executive in the company, with carte blanche to go anywhere, do anything, and get any resources needed (books, or tapes, or new hires) to sift out the ideas that made the most sense.

He says it's been a long journey, but it stared with a passion, rather than being a job or hobby. I love how he put it: It was something that I couldn't stop studying if I wanted to. Exactly!

Influences and models

Some influential thinkers of Chris's:

Robert Fritz, author of The Path of Least Resistance: Learning to Become the Creative Force in Your Own Life. He calls it an organic way of looking at creating desired results in your life.
Jonathan Livingston Seagull, due to the lessons between the lines.
As a Man Thinketh
Hyrum Smith's book 10 Natural Laws of Successful Time and Life Management. (Note: Smith eventually merged with Stephen Covey to create Franklin Planning.)
Karen Kingston's book Clear Your Clutter With Feng Shui

You'll note there aren't many traditional organizing books here. Chris owns books like those too, but points out that people who need help aren't likely to read a 300 page book on organizing.

Challenges to getting organized

Chris talked a lot about personal issues standing in the way of being productive, what he likens to a Gordian knot. He claims you have to untie it one piece at a time. Some tools he recommends to deal with psychological issues are Transactional analysis and Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy.

In his book he writes about six reasons people get disorganized [2], and points out that dealing incoming items (e.g., paper, calls, emails) is the one most books address, though it's not the real issue. He says getting down into personality issues is where you can really do some good. Chris gives procrastination as a good example, with at least a dozen causes. (One of the primary ones is perfectionism, which he claims usually goes back to childhood experiences of trying to get it too right, where the price of a making mistakes is too high.)

To balance the seriousness of these big issues, Chris encourages an attitude of having fun unravelling them - of understand ourselves better.

Top-down vs. bottom-up approaches

I asked Chris about the idea that some advocates promote - that most of us are too overloaded with the day-to-day influx and commitments to think about bigger issues. David Allen is best known for this, and compares it to more "top-down" philosophies like Stephen Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People which stress starting from purpose and vision, then drilling down to projects and action.

I was surprised that he emphatically disagrees with this. Chris uses a puzzle-solving exercise to show how vision is essential. In this problem, you randomly mix the pieces of a child's puzzle and put it together. He identifies three approaches: 1) Randomly pick up pieces and try to fit them together (what I'd call brute-force search), 2) lay the pieces out and look for patterns (color, shape, pattern, etc.), and 3) look at the picture on the box. :-)

Which is better? The first is possible (see the Infinite monkey theorem) but makes you ... well, a monkey. The second is an improvement, and applies what Fritz calls a Current Assessment. But the third starts with a vision, which Chris says is the best. In other words, "Where do I want to go?" is the Fritz's Clear Vision, "Where am I now?" is the Current Assessment, and the final step is an action plan.

He says claiming starting bottom-up is a false economy, akin to the Tortoise and the Hare story. There are rare exceptions where the vision doesn't come first - acute situations requiring immediate attention (a fire or injury, say) - something many of us are in perpetually - but he says we should quickly calm down to work back up to the higher levels.

Getting clients

To build a practice, Chris found what works best is to do 30 minute preview presentations (lunch & learns) at company meetings. This works well because the audience gets to see your content, gets to experience it, and get to experience you. Doing these programs removes the two fears potential clients have in bringing in someone new - content that might not be good, and a speaker who doesn't motivate - either of which can make the sponsor look bad.

In addition, he wrote many white papers and got them published quickly. NAPO was one of his big target markets, so he wrote about what it takes to be successful in the organizing business, and how to develop business clients. He says these papers help ensure that only serious prospects would call: they have taken the time to read 20 pages, which filters out those less interested. This means he's reduced the odds of wasting time on the others. (Seems a nice application of The 80/20 Principle.)

Staying on top of the field

Continued learning about personal productivity is something Chris loves, what he calls increasing his profound knowledge. Chris tracks news, books, and ideas using a hybrid paper/electronic system. Everything, regardless of storage form, is indexed by Paper Tiger software. He enters titles, notes, and keywords for the items, then uses the system to search for related work as needed. The program then spits out a filing code indicating where the information is stored. (My big-arse text file does this, albeit in a seat-of-the-pants manner. But the point is to use something that works.)

He's also a fan of taking concepts apart using mind mapping [3]. He says the process helps extract the usable insights, and helps him digest and play with them for a while. After doing this, he says it's smarter than your memory - it's starting to get encoded in your brain.

The importance of networking

Chris started his business by applying concepts from The Tipping Point (summary here). He asked two of his best friends to learn his system, use it for a few weeks, and if they liked it, to help spread the word. As a result, they connected Chris with influential people in their companies, and the work spread. Once he had a small base of supporters, it started to feed on itself and led to people who heard about him becoming new clients - viral marketing. He points out he's never made a cold call.

Mythology, passion, and having a calling

I asked Chris about his biggest factors in his success, and he was very clear: his personal passion overrides everything. He says operating from your passion is what people notice and are attracted to. This idea led to a discussion of Joseph Campbell, and the The Hero's Journey, of which Chris is a big fan.

He calls the journey a template for life, the opposite of Thoreau's "quiet desperation" [4]. Chris says most people haven't found their true calling in life, or they know it but refuse it. And the template says the result is either life will dry up for you, or you will get kicked back out into the real adventure. "You'll get fired or something like that." (Or quit :-)

To learn more, he recommends starting with The Writer's Journey by Christopher Vogler.

Major Overhauls vs. small steps

We talked about whether big productivity improvements can come from small steps, or if the "one big push" approach (which David Allen's book describes) is better. In his experience the piecemeal approach (a little here and there) doesn't work near as well as taking a big breath and doing it over a day or two. He says once you do that you are less likely to let it slip back out of order - it taps into it feeling so good.

His thought is that if you are ready to "end the clutter madness," to go into your office and gut it: Take everything out except the furniture, then put back only the things that really need to be there. And be ruthless about what goes back in there.

Email

Chris says approaches to handle email have to consider the personal component. He doesn't see books on the topic addressing the underlying issues - they only deal with the symptoms. For example, none ask "Why would someone come into their office and turn their time, energy, and focus toward answering emails, when they know they have much higher priority work?" This connects to the above discussion about challenges in getting organized.

He thinks little hacks (e.g., setting alarms) are fine, but a serious email problem that's eating up all of your time requires a radical intervention he calls truncation [5]: Cut out email entirely for one month. By making it unavailable, your nervous system will adjust to not having it. When you bring it back up, give only certain people your email address, and start fresh.

(Note: He likes the book Bit Literacy: Productivity in the Age of Information and E-mail Overload by Mark Hurst.)

Personal workload capacity

(Refer to the graphic below in the following discussion.) Chris recommends we don't overload ourselves, and demonstrates with his workload capacity graph [6]. The horizontal axis represents time, the vertical one stands for workload, and the green line in the middle (from left to right) is your workload capacity - the maximum workload you're comfortable with.

Most people operate like the red wave - sometimes the workload is above their capacity, but its OK because sometimes it's below. Others operate in the severely overloaded mode - the blue wave. This is a hopeless situation where they are always above their capacity. A final possibility is to work totally below the line, but occasionally touch it at the highest point in the cycle (the yellow wave).

That's where Chris lives.

He stays way below his capacity on purpose, and doesn't over-promise. He claims it eliminates a lot of these issues other people have. For example, by not over-scheduling he has flexibility to handle interruptions (and opportunities, like talking to me), and can more easily be present with people he works with. He says they're often surprised he's available and willing to take time to talk.

(This led to a discussion about flow, and what we can do to work within - or increase - our capacity. I won't go into that here, but refer to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's - pronounced "ME-high CHICK-sent-me-high-ee" - oft-mentioned book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience for detail. There's a nice visual summary in this article.)

Final tip on productivity

I asked Chris to give one final suggestion about being more productive, and he referred again to Joseph Campbell's advice to "Follow your bliss." He says a lot of people wouldn't understand what that has to do with productivity, but it's the ultimate answer. Chris followed this up with another Campbell quote, "Where you stumble, there is your treasure." (This from his interview by Michael Toms, An Open Life.)

Here's how Chris put it:

If you get on a true path that is in alignment with your calling, a lot of these other little things will fall by the wayside. And when you do that, that means you don't spend too much time, effort, or energy on things that aren't congruent with that path. It fixes almost everything.

References

[1] What can you learn from the world's best productivity consultants? Let's ask!
[2]Six things that typically hold us back from making progress:
- efficiently handling incoming items,
- prioritizing your workload,
- time management
- project management,
- personality issues, and
- psychological issues
[3] He uses Mindjet.
[4] Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them. (via BrainyQuote).
[5] This is sometimes called email bankruptcy. There's a very interesting definition and history in the Double-Tongued Dictionary. Other articles: E-Mail Reply to All: 'Leave Me Alone' and Wired 14.08 comment by Lawrence Lessig in How To: Be More Productive (scroll to Declare Email Bankruptcy.
[6] Related: When inputs exceed your workflow system's capacity.

A conversation with Chris Crouch, author and creator of the GO System - Part I

2007-11-05T14:34:00.000-08:00

Update: There was some confusion about the format for Chris's interview, so I had to pull this older version.

The final one is here: An interview with Chris Crouch, creator of the GO System.

Thanks to Chris and you for understanding.

matt

Reading gone wild! How to read five books a week (or why Scott Ginsberg is my hero)

2007-10-29T14:36:00.000-07:00

One of the most popular topics here is reading efficiently, including How to read a lot of books in a short time and A reading workflow based on Leveen's "Little Guide". Using Leveen's terminology, I have a candidates library of at least 50 books (i.e., purchased and in my bookcase), and a pre-candidates list of around 600 (kept on Amazon, but it's not perfect). So I really want to read a lot (actually, to learn a lot), but the problem is my eyes are bigger than my stomach, and I've fallen behind. This is in spite of outsourcing voice note transcription [1].

Thankfully, I came across Scott Ginsberg's post [2] Before we make our move, let’s call... where he writes in passing:

(FYI, I read five books a week.)

This was just the whack to the head [3] I needed! The essential idea I forgot? I don't need to read the whole book. D'oh! He elaborates in How to read a book (part two here):

You don’t need to read every word.
You don’t need to devour every page.
You don’t need to understand every concept.

Just get the key ideas.

(See his post for details.) I have to say, it's great to reminded of the basics, but humbling as well.

So in true Ideamatt fashion I decided to try an experiment: I would read five books, one hour per book, for five days straight to test and cement the idea. (This is really just a straightforward application of Parkinson's law, commonly "Work expands to fill the time available," a principle I've avoided before now.)

Guess what? It works. The one hour limit really focuses the mind, and makes it a challenging kind of race. To be honest I've only tried it for three days, but so far I've read:

Time Management is an Oxymoron (thanks to reader Frank M. for the birthday present!)
Organizing Your Home Office For Success: Expert Strategies That Can Work for You
Hello, My Name is Scott :-)
Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die (a book I've been meaning to read for a while, but which - frankly - seemed too long for the ideas involved. Very useful book [4], though.

I hope to keep this pace up.

Does it apply equally to every book? No; some clearly are worth further study. But can it be applied to every book? Sure! An hour will still give you a good sense of the concepts, and whether the work warrants more time. (Note that this philosophy is an nice application of The 80/20 Principle, which says not all books are of the vital few. Many books - esp. time time management books at this time - are in the trivial many.)

Up for a challenge? Try it for a week and share your results! Here's a summary of the steps:

Choose a nice reading spot.
Block out an hour of uninterrupted time.
Calculate briefly how fast you'll need to go. A simple baseline is average time/page. For example, a 250 page book means you can only spend about 15 seconds/page! Clearly skimming skills are crucial.
Gather your supplies - timer/watch, water, book, note-taking tool.
Start your timer and dig in using your favorite reading method. I had good luck with SQ3R, though a teacher friend of mine was able to rattle off six from the top of his head.
As you read, keep focused! You are a machine, enjoying pushing as fast as necessary.

References

[1] Matt's Idea Blog: The 4-hour workweek applied: How I spent $100, saved hours, and boosted my reading workflow
[2] And yes, he's apparently been blogging since January, 2003!
[3] Check out A WHACK ON THE SIDE OF THE HEAD: How You Can Be More Creative, the Ball of Whacks (I've been having fun with them), and Von Oech's Creative Whack Pack. (Hey - how can I resist someone who uses educational playing cards? I'm actively working on a set of Personal Productivity Playing Cards, starting with a recent LinkedIn question How do I go about producing custom educational playing cards?.)
[4] Here are a few good resources: Adam Richardson's Read this book: Made to Stick, lifehack.org's book discussion, and their multi-part workshop series (start with Part 1).

Got the email blues? Only three things you can do: Get fewer, Get faster, Get control

2007-10-22T09:02:00.000-07:00

Email is a huge problem for most of us, and there are tons of ideas for dealing with it. As I continue to work with clients, I've come to believe there are really only three things you can do to master email:

Get Fewer,
Get Faster, and
Get Control

Let's break them down:

Get Fewer

First, manage your incoming volume. A few suggestions:

Send less - not every message requires a response (yes, this means not sending thank-you-only).
Ask others to send less, including reducing CC, Forward, and "Reply All" messages.
Educate (kindly) frequent senders on best practices.
Get off low-value distribution lists, and move email-based subscriptions to RSS (see Move email-based subscriptions to RSS).
Use other forms of communication when relevant (see When To Use Email & When Not To).

Get Faster

Second, get more efficient at your processing. And I do mean processing, not "checking." I give clients a chainsaw analogy: Your program is a powerful, but somewhat dangerous tool, and - like a chainsaw - you shouldn't fire it up just to "check" the trees. You're doing work here, not testing ones and zeros.

My main recommendation is to learn and apply a methodology like Getting Things Done. I've found these types of approaches are the most effective way to rapidly process your inbox. You learn to be decisive, spend two minutes or less per message (that means getting briefer), manage action and delegation, and get every message out of "IN" once you've dealt with it. It ain't easy, but it's crucial.

In addition take steps like learning your program's keystrokes and shortcuts (esp. Delete and Move to Folder), keeping your SPAM filter up-to-date, and setting up templates for common responses.

Get Control

Finally, you must break the habit of near-continuous checking. Most of us check email far more often than necessary, and this impacts our focus. A study by Microsoft (see Slow Down, Brave Multitasker - paper here) examined the habits of employees over two weeks, and found it took people more than nine minutes, on average, to return to primary tasks after being diverted. And they spent 10-15 minutes before returning!

Some tips to move from reactive to proactive:

Turn off the new mail alarm. Otherwise, it’ll rip your attention away every time.
Reduce the "get new mail" setting to ~once/hour.
Block out specific time for processing. Depending on your job, you might be able to limit it to a few times a day (10 am, 1 pm, and 4 pm?)
Consider not checking it first thing in the morning.

What do you think? Do these three cover it? And do you have any favorite tips that fit into this (or not)?

Resources

What the heck is productivity all about?

2007-10-15T17:41:00.000-07:00

A few things got me thinking about why we try to be more productive. The first was a stimulating (and emotional) discussion of value, fees, and life purpose in my recent post A conversation with Laura Stack, the Productivity Pro. Toward the end a reader brings up the important of "Why?"

The second thing was Laura Stack's post How to Be More Productive: Have you become more productive or just learned how? She's clearly given it some deep thought.

Finally, early on I wrote It's not about productivity..., and I'd like to revisit the idea. So what follows are a few "Is it all about..." thoughts. No answers here, just a some starter possibilities. Your thoughts on this are very welcome.

Time?

I use the term "self management" in my work (instead of the traditional "time management") because there's a limited supply of it and it can't be saved, so how can you manage it? ("Saving time" doesn't make sense either.) However, our time is extremely precious (we've been allocated a fixed amount of it, though we don't know the number) so how we spend it is crucial. (Hmmm - maybe we should talk in terms of a time budget?)

My friend Pascal Venier called me on this a while back. His response to my post Is GTD the "Extreme Programming" of Time Management? is worth a look: Now ... is GTD really about time management?

Action?

OK, so if it's not about time, how about action? A central tenet of Getting Things Done is managing action. "You can't do projects, only actions" is a key concept. This relates to the psychological stress of what Allen calls incompletes or open loops - your mind only relaxes when it trusts they're being tracked and dispatched, so that they feel as if they are complete.

But this leads to asking which actions are important. I believe strongly that getting on top of everything in our lives is a critical first step, but just because we have lots of lists doesn't mean we're living our lives like we want to.

Proactive vs. reactive?

In the article Getting Things Done Guru David Allen and His Cult of Hyperefficiency (which my friend Bob Walsh did not like) the author says:Scientology says that the static in our heads is caused by "engrams." In GTD the problem is stuff.
And stuff is an important piece of Allen's thinking - it's the start of much of what we need to take care of, including problems, ideas, and opportunities.

However, this seems to frame the issue in reactive terms - things coming at us. In The Instant Productivity Toolkit Len Merson talks about "being proactive in a reactive world." To him being proactive means:meeting new challenges head-on, not procrastinating until they become crises. Being proactive means diving into your tasks knowing you are going to accomplish them well and on time. ... thinking "That's what I'm going to do *next*," not obsessing about a stack of folders on your desk and falling into despair over what you haven't done.
(You can find related thoughts here.)

Goals?

That's getting there, but how do we know what to be proactive about? Goals! Yes, you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a blog post on goals. (Believe me - I have over 200 goal-related references). But knowing your goals can be difficult - that's why I wrote Where are you going? Use your actions and projects to reverse engineer your goals. The reason I do this work (coming at it bottom-up) is because it enables listening to ourselves, and getting at what's important. As I commented on Jason Womack's post What would you do if...?It might come down to listening, which is based on the principle of Making Space: The little voice that tells us what we love, what we should do, is often so quiet that we can't hear it for the noise of our modern lives. That, combined with having many more choices these days than (say) 100 years ago, can get in the way of tuning in to what's authentic to ourselves.

Choices?

Aha - choices! I wrote this response to Chris Brogan post:Choice has (at least) two implications:

1) Self-responsibility: Making conscious choices about our lives removes the excuse to be passive and then complain about it. Example: Not having an important but difficult conversation, then complaining about a relationship.

Another example: When I'm teaching clients best practices, it's *empowering*, for some of them - too much so. (Not too many, thankfully; plunking down money tends to clarify commitment.) For example, if I get my act together, I can no longer claim it's out of my hands, or it's somebody else's fault - I explicitly take responsibility. This is not necessarily comfortable initially, and may be a big change for people.

2) Things *not* chosen, i.e., Mark Forster's "closed lists" (see Do It Tomorrow and Other Secrets of Time Management): Deciding to do something means you've decided *not* to do something else. For example, spending time watching TV or surfing the web means not spending time with my daughter and wife.

The vital few?

So yes, we have choices, and they're important. But which of those deserve our time, action, and energy? Another dead cat (and a very important book in the field) is Richard Koch's The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Success by Achieving More with Less. This one blew away my scribble test - lots of ideas, many life-changing. (A big thanks to reader DM for giving me a copy.) He says overall,keep in mind that a few things are always much more important than most things. Keep the vital few in the forefront of your brain. Keep reviewing whether you are spending more time and effort on the vital few rather than on the trivial many.
This has significant implications for productivity. Because inputs and outputs are non-linear, it's possible to spend a small amount of energy on some things that give proportionally much more back. It's the core idea behind The 4-Hour Workweek, it's big, and it applies to everything - work, life, and relationships.

Finishing up

When it's (literally!) all said and done, I wonder if it's all about discovering and leading the life you want. Using our precious minutes, hours, and days doing what's important in our work and lives - for me, contributing, learning, improving myself, and loving.

What do you think?

A conversation with Laura Stack, the Productivity Pro

2007-10-08T17:17:00.000-07:00

As I announced last week [1], I'll be interviewing the top experts in the field of personal productivity, and I'm pleased to start out with a bang - I had the pleasure of talking with Laura Stack, AKA the Productivity Pro, last week.

Laura (site, blog), a very well known expert in productivity, has created a highly recognized brand, is a top rated speaker, and is the author of Leave the Office Earlier, Find More Time, and and her forthcoming The Exhaustion Cure: Up Your Energy from Low to Go in 21 Days (available May, 2008).

We talked about her business, productivity, her love of speaking, and her thoughts on starting a new practice. I hope you enjoy it!

Who to say your biggest influences were or your models, and why?

Probably Covey. I started off years ago studying Franklin Covey, of course back then it was Franklin Quest, started off with a Franklin Quest planner, but had done a lot of reading of Stephen Covey's, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, First Things First, etc, and have had a Franklin Covey Planner for years, now I use Day-Timer, so I've done some shifting over the years. Early influences were the Priority Manager seminars that were popular back in 80s, when I first started the study in this seriously.

Are you using a Paper Planner still?

I use a Paper Planner and a handheld; I am a hybrid organizer. I find the handheld extremely ineffective as a tool to capture notes and ideas, so I do still use a Day-Timer.

Who do you say your peers are?

David Allen, Julie Morgenstern. There are a few people out there who do what I do; I consider myself a professional speaker. There are people who are organizers, people who are productivity consultants, who go in and do more organizational work, people who are, such as yourself doing blogging. I have always been a speaker, started off as a speaker. So, my main emphasis is getting the message out via the spoken word. I speak about a hundred times a year, half of them corporate work and half conferences doing keynotes, breakout sessions, etc. So, I am a speaker first and an author second.

Do you still do the one-on-one coaching and consulting?

I don't do that myself, our company offers it. I offer that through other contract organizers who teach like the Paper Tiger method, who are certified in some of those others. I do it occasionally, unfortunately I am usually too expensive, I don't charge differently to do one-on-one organizing as I would for a group of a thousand in a conference, I charge for my time and my fees don't vary. So, typically an organization cannot afford to bring me in to do one-on-one work. I have still done that on occasion, I just was hired to do that for an exec at Sunoco, for example, it just depends how much is being paid and whether they have the authority to come in and have me sit by them and hold their hand.

How much do you charge?

I charge for 90 minutes $7,500, I charge $10,000 for half-a-day and I charge $12,500 for a day.

How you get clients?

I don't have to go get clients anymore.

How did you get clients when were getting started?

Oh, when I started in '92 (my book didn't come out until 2004), I just like anybody had to build the momentum in my company. I did a lot of free speaking, I spoke pretty much to whomever would listen to me, wherever they had a speech, so I did a lot of looking in the business journal, looking in the calendar section in the back and see who is having meetings, local chapters of the national associations. I would call that person and say I am a speaker and do an hour lunch there, and it was a very slow process, it's took me couple of years really to get some momentum to start getting some spin-off business, some little bit of repeat, giving some referrals, it like was anything. Marketing is the thing that really takes the time for you to get going, but I did a lot of rotary and clubs, Lion club and I just collected coffee mugs, or free lunch, $50 if they gave me that.

I just tell people, if you want to speak, speak. There are so many people are like, "Oh! I can't go and do free speeches." I did free speeches for years and I think you have to, you've got a practice, you've got to hone your craft. You've got to get out there. I also joined Career Track (?) for a few years just to get the platform time, the knowledge, the experience of the meetings, industry, to interact with audiences of various sizes and setups and to really feel comfortable on the platform. So I paid my dues working for them for a few years, and that helped as well. I did some adjunct teaching at the University of Colorado, taught some classes.

You've just got to speak, you've got to look for any opportunity to get out there and the clients will not come until you already have a pretty nice listing of folks that you have worked with before and then they say, "Okay, now I am comfortable hiring this person," people don't want to hire someone new right off then.

Do you work to keep your material fresh?

I'm just like anybody else - keep up with reading and research and blogs, and I interview all my clients. There is a lot of preparation that goes into every speech that I do. Everyone is tailored, its custom, it's their issues and situations and stories. But being perceived as an expert helps in the way that I don't have to be out there constantly looking for what others are doing, I don't really care actually what others are doing. I create my own and have my own plans, perceptions, ideas and so now I can -- when immediate calls and interviews, I can answer any question.

I don't worry about, oh, I don't have an answer for that, I always do have an answer, but I still have to work at staying fresh, and cutting edge and innovative and keep up with friends, just like anybody would. You can't ever think that you've got into the point where you know it all and that you can't learn anything and you don't have to change your material, it does get old, you can get stagnant within a year or so. Everything is always just been changing, moving. But I don't read other people's work, I never even read David Allen's Getting Things Done.

Do you worry about competition?

I do my own thing, I don't want to be influenced by others' thinking, I have my own way of thinking. I don't feel like I compete. A lot of people think, oh, I am competing with so and so. Everyone just has a little bit of a different way of doing it and fortunately there is so much business out there, I don't feel like I have to compete with anybody. I know they feel the same way. I call it'd an abundance mentality - there is so much out there that I don't worry about what anybody else is doing. I just do my own thing and it's a quite comfortable existence.

How did your book Leave the Office Earlier come about?

That work was kind of the combination of my life's work at that point. I had some self-publishing, but that was the first time that a big house publisher was interested in my work. I had been writing a newsletter every month since 1999, I just finished 100th edition of that.

I got into a discipline of writing early on, making myself write articles, getting into newspapers, business journals, magazines, etc. I would put the articles out there, just to get into the regimen of writing, the discipline of writing, and that was kind of a collection that was prepackaged - just you have to change the writing, the tone and make it all cohesive. But my study of productivity has always been much broader than others'. I was doing productivity before productivity wasn't even a topic.

So, that's where the book came about - over ten years of work and writing by then it all came together. So, I put it in ten chapters, used the word "PRODUCTIVE," with every chapter starting with the letter of that word [2]. I came up with a fun way to say it, and that's really what the publisher was interested in. It was the creativity that I brought to the quiz, and coming up with the word PRODUCTIVE in the ten chapters. But that was the hardest part of the book - I was figuring out how to make the ten chapters fit the word "PRODUCTIVE."

When I finally came up with what I thought the ten competencies of productivity were, that was a real breakthrough in terms of getting the order of the book and getting it finally written. But it was a real kind of rehash of everything I had written for the past 12 years.

Get started (your blogging is great), that's a great discipline, just to force you to think, to write, to comment, to read, to dig. That daily discipline will go far and eventually pull that all together.

What are some of the biggest factors in your success?

Well, obviously I am good. I am good on the platform, I mean that is one of the biggest one. If you want to be a speaker, there are so many ways to do this business. You can be a productivity expert, but have various ways that that manifest itself in business. So, honing and practicing - that for me was my biggest marketing tool.

Content is important - being different, innovative, and more creative, but clients really were hiring me. So it was developing relationships. I take my clients to lunch, I take time to send them gifts, books to think of them, to write them, and I would call. There was a lot of phone time in the early days, a lot of -- and of course being a productive person as I am. I was very regimented and was making 20, 30, 40 calls a day and keep a database and everyday would open it up and I would make the calls that were scheduled and it was just not a negotiable type of thing. So, there was a lot of butts in the seat, I had sat on hard work in those few first years.

So I would say just getting really good on the platform, staying in touch, building those relationships, paying your dues, spending that phone time - connecting with people and writing and staying on top of your craft and really getting out there. You can be the best speaker in the world and I was good, but if you don't do well at marketing, you will fail, that is probably the biggest factor in my success was that I did pay my dues early until it started being able to take care of itself with enough repeat business and I'd go speak somewhere and get five more, and go speak somewhere and get six more.

It was always a lot of a critical mass actually that built. Then I didn't have to do that anymore. I don't ever make phone calls anymore, but it took many years probably when my first book hit, that's when I knew I had really gotten that critical mass was, when someone else finally acknowledged I was an expert.

How long did that take before critical mass hit?

Oh, let's say 10-12 years. It's just been in the last five years that I have enjoyed this kind of freedom, but first ten years in building a business is very hard, it's a lot of work, hard work, but once you get it started and you can make it pass the first five years of business, which is when most people tank, then you're pretty good to go.

I'd say after seven years, I was pretty solid, when you make your first $100,000 and then after that it takes off, but the first $100,000 was hard work. It came by my bootstraps and once I finally started making some money then you can hire some people and then you are not sitting on the floor at midnight, putting together mailings and press kits and making copies. I have four people now, and every time I add someone else it just takes my business to another level, but I've got at a point where I don't want to grow anymore.

What's your short definition of Productive?

Productivity is very easy, it's just output per hour per worker, that's how I look at it, output per hour per worker, meaning you could have one person that works eight hours and another person that works 12 hours and the eight hour-a-day person can be more productive than 12 hour-a-day person. So, I don't look at inputs, how many hours you are on your seat, how many things you've got done, for me it's all about results produced in terms of value and impact in worth and wage. It doesn't matter if you've got 20 things done; I'd rather have you get one thing done, if that had the more importance. So, it's all about -- for me it's the value that's created with all of your work.

How do you do as much as possible to make sure clients "get it?"

I don't worry about it. I don't look at that as my job. I do the best job that I can and some people who I am sure don't get it, but I don't do follow-up types of things, I just don't have the time and most of my clients don't have the budget. I have had people occasionally, we do pre-work and then we'll do a seminar and then we'll do some post-work and I have all of these assessments, they want to do that, but I charge extra for that follow-up.

So, typically, I am not saying that I can't do it, or won't it, typically they just choose not to and I look at it as my job to make my client happy and if they want me to come in and do a one-day seminar and go away and never come back, then, that's what they are paying me to do. And I do the very-best job that I can, but I don't look at it as my responsibility to make sure that the information sticks. I try to do as much as I can, of course as a class, in terms of a behavior and we create action plans and they have an accountability partner and someone they work with after the class. So, there are some limited things you can do, but ultimately it isn't my responsibility that they want to pay me to come in on a one-year retainer and do some consulting and follow-up.

There are many who are more consultants, but I am not a consultant, I am speaker. They want me to come in for one hour, give them three tips, a little entertainment, make them laugh and make them think and I go home, and I did a good job. That's what I am paid to do.

Could you give one suggestion to my readers on improving productivity?

Well, there is so much clutter, I think, first they have to get focused and figure out what are the things that are keeping me from doing what I know I should be doing. If they are distracted all the time and can't concentrate, maybe they need to look at some attention management types of things. If they are busy and always in meetings and never have a free moment, they should look at some availability kind of management. If they can't find things and they're spending 30 minutes a day looking for stuff and they need some accessibility management. So, I mean there is no one answer for every person, that's why I address these in "Leave the Office."

What haven't I asked you that you have a good answer for?

Oh my God! That will take me eight hours to answer that question.

I think that your service is very effective because you are trying to be a cohesive kind of unifying voice out there and you are showing a lot of different perspectives and systems and tools. I think this service is important, it's valuable - "Hey, come to Matt Cornell's site and he'll summarize it out for you." You do the work so that others don't have to go out and find all these separate little independent pieces of productivity.

I think you are doing a nice job and I am happy that you are aware of my work and thank you for your interest.

References

Where are you going? Use your actions and projects to reverse engineer your goals

2007-10-02T08:02:00.000-07:00

OK, a confession: Like almost everything I've done to create and build my productivity practice, I'm doing goals ~~wrong~~ unconventionally :-) Almost every time management book and blog I've read recommends having written goals, reviewed regularly. For example, Zenhabits' Top 20 Motivation Hacks - An Overview lists (among others):

#17: Post a picture of your goal someplace visible -- near your desk or on your refrigerator, for example.
#16: Get a workout partner or goal buddy.
#5: Visualize your goal clearly, on a daily basis, for at least 5-10 minutes.
#4: Keep a daily journal of your goal.

And The Ten Part Mental Fitness Program has extensive goal-setting tips. These are great ideas.

The confession? I have no written goals. They're not on my office wall, they're not on stickies posted around my house (a fine suggestion from Order from Chaos), and I don't reflect on them during my weekly review (see Seven Questions That Will Change Your Life for a useful list [1] of questions). I have a love/hate relationship with them: I'd love to have the list (I'm sure it's helpful), but it just doesn't work for me.

Last week (Small steps to big results) I suggested that completing one tiny high-value task a day can lead to steady progress on what's important, and provides built-in end-of-the-day satisfaction. But what's important? I'm convinced that modern "bottom-up" approaches like GTD are the best way to get our lives together. But they are just the start [2].

So here's an idea to discover your goals, bottom-up: Use your self-management system to let your goals emerge from the things you've decided to spend time on. Some examples of places to look:

Collection: The stuff entering your life says a lot about what you care about. For me, I get: many books (from readers as well as my wish list), book notes, blog ideas, many thoughts and ideas from blogs I read, as well as the personal stuff: bills, insurance, school notes, etc.
Projects and Actions: This is where the rubber meets the road, and tells you most about your priorities.
Delegation/Agendas: Who you spend time with is also telling. There's a saying: "You are who you spend time with," which as absolutely true. It also impacts your health and well-being [3]. (A recent revelation: I've started applying rigorously Koch's radical ideas on relationships. He really makes you think about them.)
Someday/Maybe: Listen to your dreams. In The 4-Hour Workweek Tim Ferriss says "'What are your goals' is a bad question. It's not a useful one. It's hard to answer." Instead it's better to ask "What would excite me?" I love it. A few of mine: chocolate cafe, bat house, backyard habitat.
Calendar & Tickler: Where have you scheduled time? This is big commitment, and worth looking at. (Your time maps [4] will tell you something, if you use them).
Reading/TV: What are you letting into your brain? Reading [5] is crucial for continued mental stimulation and development, and most TV just plain sucks.
Trash: This is your first line of not doing. Nuke the non-essentials.

Here are a few goals I discovered from these:

Establishing myself as a top personal productivity consultant. Subgoals include: establishing repute (writing this blog is an on-going project), a crash course in the field (I love this word: Autodidacticism).
Being a great parent. Subgoals: Staying involved in my daughter's school, reading, discussing issues with my wife, and spending a ton of time with her.
Spending lots of time with my family.
Financial health. Subgoals: Stay on top of bills, multiple streams of income (rentals), build a lucrative practice, save.
The essentials: Food, clothing, shelter, etc.
Environment & Nature. We need to stop dirtying our nest. Period.
Living simply. Subgoals: Reducing unnecessary stuff, working fewer hours, outsourcing [6].

But how do you use these? Simple: Cut down on those that don't align, increase those that do, and keep paying attention to what yours are. Mark Forster says in Do It Tomorrow: if you want to cut down on your workload, [goals are] where you have to focus. As I said last week, Liz Davenport makes this provocative statement: You can predict where you'll be in ten years just by looking at your to-do lists. If it's only taking care of business or survival items, in ten years, you'll be right where you are!

How about you? Do you know your goals? What are they? Do you actively track them? What changes have you made in your life as a result?

References

[1] Some reflective questions to ask during the weekly review:
1. What will I try to improve on next week?
2. What was I most proud of this week?
3. What was my biggest accomplishment this week?
4. What have I done to get closer to my life goals this week?
5. What was hard for me this week, and why?
6. What was my biggest waste of time this week?
7. What did I do this week that made me ashamed?
[2] I like Steve Pavlina's thoughts in The Essential Missing Half of Getting Things Done. He starts at the top with purpose, then details his goals (divided into need-based and purpose-based), and finally on to standard GTD projects and actions. Pavlina asserts that:
The high level element that is missing from standard GTD is, in my personal opinion, absolutely essential. It makes no sense to blindly apply standard GTD unless you've already secured the top level elements of purpose, mission, and goals.
[3] E.g., Spend Time with People Who Appreciate You and Who You Spend Time With Determines How You Feel.
[4] Julie Morgenstern's made these popular. See this newsletter article. From Organizing from the Inside Out: [a time map] allots specific spaces in your schedule for tending to the various core activities of your life. It serves as a foundation from which to work that forces you to keep your life in balance, giving you all the time you need to accomplish your goals.
[5] See The 4-hour workweek applied: How I spent $100, saved hours, and boosted my reading workflow.
[6] See The 4-hour workweek applied: How I spent $100, saved hours, and boosted my reading workflow.

Small steps to big results: Do one High Value Task a day

2007-09-24T11:46:00.000-07:00

We've all been there: Overwhelmed with the day-to-day aspects of life - incoming stuff that's relatively easy to handle - we focus on it, excluding the "big things." After a while it feels like the trivial many have sunk the vital few (from the Pareto principle - see Koch's book The 80/20 Principle for an in-depth discussion).

I've been experiencing this for a while, and it's really unsatisfying. Since making the leap to full-time personal productivity consulting, it's very important for me to maintain steady progress on multiple fronts, e.g., marketing, networking, reading, and writing, but I'd like to do more. I realized I wanted to, as Laura Stack puts it, end each day with a sense of accomplishment, rather than finish being frustrated by my inability to accomplish anything important.

So I've found something that applies Maurer's one small step approach: Do one high value task a day. If you do this, I guarantee you'll feel better about your day.

Breaking it down a bit: First, complete just one per day. Sure, doing more is great, but I've found thinking of nailing one action (even a small one) gets around the mind's resistance, which is the essence of Maurer's book. As he says:Small steps are a kind of trick - a stealth solution. Do small, easily-attainable goals - they won't set off alarm bells.
Second, it has to be of high value - the vital few. What's high value? Something that moves you one tangible step closer to where you want to be. Call it your goal, purpose, current initiative, or concern, but think vector, not just speed. (Next week we'll talk about how to discover the latter based on your action management system - a challenge when using a bottom-up approach.)

This approach is a cousin to Gina's idea of deciding your Most Important Task the night before, and doing it first thing in the morning (covered in Lifehacker: 88 Tech Tricks to Turbocharge Your Day, with an earlier version here), and Leo's variation, with some caveats:

Things not to worry about:

Doing it first thing (a fine idea, but not required),
Planning it the night before (again, if it works for you, great),
Making it big (think impact, not size), or
Doing more than one per day (otherwise you risk procrastinating).

However, there are some Things to worry about:

Make sure you have a list of some, esp. small ones (e.g., respond to a prospect's email, prepare for a conversation),
Never finish the day without doing one (i.e., NO EXCEPTIONS, which Mark Forster claims is crucial for developing a habit, along with identifying current ones, listing new desired ones, and being specific WRT adopting them), and
Don't include routine "care and feeding" tasks such as emptying your inboxes, networking, exercising, blogging, or reading (some exceptions apply).

(An example: Today I spoke with a potential telecoaching client [1] and wrote an email to a top productivity consultants.)

Give it a try - I've found this helps a lot with being able to let go at the end of the day, feeling satisfied I've done something worthwhile. And please let me know if you're currently doing this, what kinds of tasks you do, any variations, and how it's helped.

I'll finish with an surprising idea from Liz Davenport's book Order from Chaos. She claims she can predict where anybody will be in ten years just by looking at their to-do lists. If it's only taking care of business or survival items, in ten years, you'll be right where you are!

References

[1] Interesting observation: The people who call me need my help, but paradoxicaly, often have trouble following through. This includes returning emails (such as "Let's talk and see if I can help") and making appointments! So I've learned to a) give them some slack, and b) be persistent, which for me requires continuing development of my boldness skills (see If not now, when? The importance of being bold).

So a bloke with a broken thumb walks into a bar...

2007-09-17T13:34:00.000-07:00

Or: Ways a broken thumb changes your perspective

OK, my doctor told me Mountain biking is dangerous (told to me while he and I were riding, incidentally) but until this weekend I'd been lucky - cuts and bruises, but nothing very serious. But Friday I had a nasty spill crossing a creek, and (with apologies to Mr. Rogers - who we loved) Can you say Avulsion fracture [1]?

The good news is a) xrays are all stored digitally now, so my Flickr account should be updated soon, b) it doesn't appear that surgery will be necessary, and c) I've learned a few things:

Mountain biking is dangerous. I'll remember that next time I ride (sometime in November, sadly).
I'm right handed, and it's surprising how many things you use your hand for. Glad I didn't break my foot!
If I ever have to have my right hand amputated because of a combine accident [2], I'll be one a jump ahead of others who haven't had this kind of experience with the left hand.
I have much more appreciation for the from-scratch learning that children do. I realize I took this somewhat for granted - it's slow to learn this way!
I hope learning to use my left hand for things will help stave off Alzheimer's (my wife is an RN in an Alzheimer's unit). As Dr. Michael Merzenich says in the article Change or Die: ...the brain's ability to change -- its "plasticity" -- is lifelong. the key is keeping up the brain's machinery for learning... Unless you work on it, brain fitness often begins declining at around age 30 for men, a bit later for women. "People mistake being active for continuous learning," Merzenich says. "The machinery is only activated by learning. People think they're leading an interesting life when they haven't learned anything in 20 or 30 years. My suggestion is learn Spanish or the oboe."
Related to lifelong learning:
- George Leonard encourages us in his book to "Dedicate yourself to lifelong learning:"To learn is to change. Education, whether it involves books, body, or behavior, is a process that changes the learner. ... and the best learning of all involves learning how to learn - that is, how to change.
- Brian Tracy writes that "committing yourself to lifelong personal and professional development" is one of the keys to the future.
- Peter Drucker says "We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn."
- lifehack.org shares 15 Steps to Cultivate Lifelong Learning.

On top of that, I'm trying to use this as an opportunity to appreciate being well. I'll leave you with some thoughts on gratitude I've been collecting. Stay healthy!

Tell someone how much you appreciate them. I really connected with the lessons from How Full Is Your Bucket? - I now carry "gratitude artifacts" to share with folks I interact with, including NASA stickers (love the meatball) and "drops" printed on-line. And uber-networker Tatsuya Nakagawa lists ways to express gratitude for someone you connect with in 15 Quick Ways to Give Value and Make a Positive Impression.
Appreciate great customer service. I have bunch of stories, including a nifty one from the folks at the Rokenbok Toy Company. An escalated version of the above is to offer to send a letter of gratitude to the someone's supervisor. I do this regularly, and I find people are genuinely surprised and delighted. It takes about five minutes to write one by hand, and feels great to do!
Ellen Weber has points out some ways gratitude transforms the human brain in Two Words Can Transform a Workplace. She writes: "Interestingly, the art and science of gratitude grows easier the more you practice it."
Finally, don't forget the good old-fashioned thank you note. The Esquire article A Little Gratitude gives some great suggestions.

How about you? Any tips for being grateful (or broken bone stories)?

References

[1] "A pull-off fracture at a musculotendinous or ligamentous insertion site caused by sudden forceful muscle contraction or ligament traction." Yes, I pulled out a chunk of bone from my thumb.

What can you learn from the world's best productivity consultants? Let's ask!

2007-09-12T08:19:00.000-07:00

As you know, I'm working on being a top personal productivity consultant. In addition to absorbing every related book I can lay my hands on [1], I've been developing my networking skills [2], building my LinkedIn network, and asking smart, successful people how they got to where they are (and where I want to be).

To accelerate this, I'll be running a blog series interviewing the world's top productivity consultants, and I'd like your help. My goals? Learn from the experts (productivity methods and business tips), form connections, and get inspired.

From you I'd love to know:

Who would you like to hear about?
What questions would you ask?
How do you suggest I make contact with them?
Have you or a colleague worked with one of them?
How do I convince them to participate?
And anything else you suggest for the project.

Below you'll find details, including my requirements for choosing, a starting set of candidates, some sample questions, and some helpful tips on connecting and interviewing I've pulled together to make this project successful.

Let me know!

(Side note: A Tip of the Hat to Tim Ferriss of The 4-Hour Workweek fame for pushing me over the edge on this. Though I've been collecting names since January, it was his points on becoming an expert [3] that kicked me into action.)

Requirements

The folks whose stories [4]I want to share and learn from should:

Be an acknowledged expert in time management and personal productivity,
Have a highly successful consulting practice,
Work with top people in mid-to-large sized organizations, and
Have a business and/or research focus.

In other words, the person you'd hire if you wanted the best, and were willing to pay top dollar for. (Note: I've not included David Allen (whose story is very well know) or Mark Forster (who I had the pleasure of interviewing earlier).

Candidates

The main question is: Who are the best people you'd like to hear about? While I've not contacted any of them (so I haven't a clue whether they'll consent to an interview), I have a ton of respect for the following experts (by no means complete):

Hey - That's a nice bibliography!

Questions

While the number of questions I asked will be limited by how much time our experts are willing to share, here are some I'd love to hear answers to. Please let me know yours.

How did you get your start?
What were the biggest factors in your success?
How did you build your clientele?
How do you to ensure (as much as possible) that clients "get it," i.e., that it sticks [5].
What's your market focus/niche?
How do you summarize your method, and how did you develop it?
How do you stay on top of the field (reading [6], tools [7], assistants, outsourcing [8])?
For authors, how did your book(s) come about? What's your muse?
What were your biggest influences in developing your method?
Who were your mentors [9]? How did you connect with them? What did you give back?
What products and services do you sell?
How do you apply the 80/20 principle to your practice?
How did you decide pricing? Is it fixed, or more like Value-Based Fees?
What role did networking play, and how do you stay on top?
What strategic partnerships [10]did you form, how did they come about, and what's their value to you?
How do you delight and surprise your clients?
Who are your competitors/peers?

Connecting

How do you suggest connecting with these busy folks? Here's one approach from Scott Allen (author of The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors And Closing Deals Online): Using LinkedIn to Find Celebrity Guests. Scott provides some great wisdom on networking on his Linked Intelligence and The Virtual Handshake blogs.

Interviewing

How do you do a great interview? Here are some tips:

Some interviewing suggestions, by Dan Gillmor (the original link seems broken.):
1. Prepare for your interview.
2. Look around.
3. Don't go in with an attitude.
4. Listen to the answers.
5. Get past canned "talking points."
6. Ask these final two questions: "Who else should I speak to about this topic?" and "What have I not asked you that I should have asked you?"
The Art of Asking Questions
General Guidelines for Conducting Interviews
How to Conduct Podcast Interviews
Conduct A Podcast Interview
Local radio producer Deb Krumholz (board member of the Take Back Your Time movement, shared these tips:
- Be relaxed.
- Be yourself (are those contradictory?)
- Try to be in the moment, i.e. really listen to what the other person is saying and respond instead of going back to your agenda.
- Have many more questions prepared than you'll probably have time to ask.
- Make it as much a conversation as possible.
- Try to put yourself in the shoes of your listeners and ask what they'd want to hear.
- It's okay to be a little bit "challenging" to your interviewee.

References

[1] list of reviewed book posts
[2] You might enjoy A geek "gets" networking: The strange magic of connecting with others.
[3] I like how Tim Ferriss I like how he decided to write a book. First, he picked one book out of dozens based on reader reviews and the fact that the authors had actually done what he wanted to do. Second, using the book to generate intelligent and specific questions, he contacted ten of the top authors and agents in the world via email and phone, with a response rate of 80 percent. Smart!
[4] Check out these references on story-telling:
- Stephen Denning's article "Telling Tales" (Harvard Business Review, May 1, 2004). His summary is here.
- Tip #8: tell a story, from Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel.
- The Nine Best Story Lines for Marketing by Guy Kawasaki.
- Storytelling: The art of the springboard story
- Storytelling from the Daily PlanIt.
- This Is Your Life (and How You Tell It)
[5] See my posts Reader question: Getting personal productivity changes to stick? and A dozen small ways to get productivity improvements to stick in an organization. In addition, the book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die has some great ideas. Why some ideas stick and others don't is a nice introduction, and the authors' blog is worth a look.
[6] See A reading workflow based on Leveen's "Little Guide".
[7] Laura Stack recommended strongly the ACT contact management software.
[8] You might enjoy The 4-hour workweek applied: How I spent $100, saved hours, and boosted my reading workflow.
[9] Fellow blogger Dwayne Melancon, author of Genuine Curiosity and networker extraordinaire, recently shared some great mentoring tips with me, including asking what they want to get out of the relationship. Suggestions: testimonials, being a reference, web techniques/ideas, book promotions, etc. Also, he's a terrific model for networking, which I experienced first hand. Thanks Dwayne! You'll also want to read Pam's great article The secret to great relationships with mentors? Reciprocity.
[10] For example, Microsoft contributions, e.g.,

A dozen small ways to get productivity improvements to stick in an organization

2007-09-02T06:57:00.000-07:00

As I continue to work with organizations at the individual "key talent" level, I've had some opportunities to expand the impact of the work to the next level up - the team. As I've said earlier [1], I'm very committed to getting the work I teach to stick at - a real challenge - and I'm motivated to learn new ways to do this.

In that spirit, here are a dozen or so ideas I shared recently with an executive and her team to continue adopting, sustaining, and deepening their practice. I hope you find them helpful.

Company policy opportunities/possibilities

At the company level, consider these opportunities:

Support members' scheduling daily blocks (1-2 hours) for processing & organizing.
Do the same for weekly reviews (pick a time that's works for most people).
Facilitate improved email habits by considering new policies (formal or informal) around urgency, and setting expectations about responsiveness (such as a 24 hour response time [2]).
Start adopting email "etiquette" changes that reduce volume, such reducing unnecessary "thank you" responses, or clarifying when CC and FWD is necessary [3].
Investigate email client/server configurations that reduce interruptions, including disabling visual and aural notifications of new mail, and increasing the time between when new messages are downloaded (or allowing it to be done manually).

Team suggestions to sustain, deepen

Here are a few possibilities and the team level:

Schedule monthly lunches to review basics, discuss what's working or not working, and share any discoveries, ideas, and "aha"s [4] you've come up with.
Dedicate five minutes at monthly staff meetings for a workflow discussion. Another possibility: During monthly staff meetings, one person talks for five minutes on one of the workflow phases, whichever she feels most accomplished in, or experienced the greatest improvement in. Or reverse it to have one person ask for help/support around one area.
Get playful: Give out small awards [5] for people who empty their inboxes (paper, email, voice) most regularly, or for those with the least amount of "stuff" in their spaces.
Create an information radiator [6] (e.g., a big wall chart) that shows things like: size of each person's email or paper backlog, # of days since last emptied inboxes, # of weeks since last weekly review, # of times checking email/day, etc. NB: Must be done positively, and without shame or guilt.
Host mini "field trips" to each others' offices. Talk about what stuff is still around, look at backlogs, talk about where to (re)start, supplies, filing, etc. Note that this must be done in a supportive and constructive manner. Remember that major self-management changes like this can be quite personal, and usually take a while to master.
Notice ways to help others adopt the new habits, perhaps when someone doesn't write down action and waiting for, is not emptying her inboxes every 24 hours, or not collecting paper in one place. Again, do this in a supportive manner.

Other resources

Finally, here are a few additional posts and discussions on I found helpful.

From the 43 Folders Getting Things Done forum: GTD for Teams - How do you get started? Emory's response reminded me of an article done by Joel Spolsky: Getting Things Done When You're Only A Grunt. It's a great article, and basically says that instead of trying to convert the team to use GTD, or your bugs database, just tell them where their input goes. If you are a hardcore inbox person like myself, instruct others to put anything that they need taken care of in your inbox. Get them to conform to the part of the system that they need to accomplish to keep your system running smoother. Eventually someone else will start to use an inbox as well. The key is to get people to adopt slowly by leading with example.
From Making GTD stick with teams:
- weekly or monthly 'user group' meetings
- group weekly reviews in a conference room with laptops and in-boxes
- share tips and tricks or challenges and wins - in person or via a newsletter (company or dedicated)
- a group purge day of reference filing; e.g., one hour on a quiet day
- (re)read David Allen's book
From the davidco Getting Things Done forum:
1. lead by example - set aside time to do the weekly review and be very vocal/clear that's what you're up to and you expect others to be doing the same during that time
2. weekly mtg. over coffee - a support group type meeting where you discuss certain points of GTD that would really help the team.. even 15-30 minutes a week could inspire shared practices.
3. get the newcomers on board ASAP - make it part of their initial training. give them the book as soon as they're hired
4. create a private email list or google group for this type of discussion that only team members have access to

References

[1] Reader question: Getting personal productivity changes to stick?
[2] See Depressurize your email with a 24 hour response time
[3] You'll find many terrific tips at Hacking Email: 99 Email Security and Productivity Tips
[4] See The thrill of witnessing an "Aha!"
[5] There's a fascinating little story in One Small Step Can Change Your Life on the impact of many small rewards vs. a few large ones. The context was the effectiveness of suggestion boxes. In Japan they work very well - 90% of employee ideas are adopted. But in the US only 38% are adopted. Why? Because Americans use large rewards ($400), whereas the Japanese use smaller ones ($3), which encourages coming up with small solutions. Neat!
[6] Here are two descriptions from Agile Advice and the original wiki.

The 4-hour workweek applied: How I spent $100, saved hours, and boosted my reading workflow

2007-08-26T09:16:00.000-07:00

While reading The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss (site, blog) I found myself playing with the idea of using personal outsourcing to fix a problem I have with my reading workflow. Short answer: It helped a lot.

As you know, I've made reading a central part of my M.S. in Personal Productivity, and anything that slows it down is a problem. My overall strategy is to pour ideas into head, write about them, and try them out with clients, and wait for something great to pop out. I know you care about reading as well - two of my most popular posts are How to read a lot of books in a short time and A reading workflow based on Leveen's "Little Guide" (hey - I love having smart readers).

However, I noticed over the past few months that my reading pipeline - the number of books read, reviewed, and captured in my Big-Arse Text File - had jammed up; I had a backlog of books read, but not processed. And the bottleneck was transcription - I just hate doing it, it takes a lot of time, and it's become a source of procrastination.

I talked When inputs exceed your workflow system's capacity, and this was an example of that. I needed to fix it. So I decided to apply Tim Ferris's ideas by outsourcing transcriptions of my audio book notes.

The experiment

Here's what I did: I submitted audio comments - zipped WMA files from my Olympus WS-300M Digital Recorder (more at Notes on using a digital voice recorder for taking reading notes) - from three different books to three firms. They were:

Do It Tomorrow and Other Secrets of Time Management by Mark Forster [1] submitted to Tech-Synergy Voice transcription services ($0.60/minute),
Order from Chaos: A Six-Step Plan for Organizing Yourself, Your Office, and Your Life by Liz Davenport submitted to Enablr | Transcribr ($1.00/minute), and
The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss submitted to GMR Transcription Services ($1.50/minute). (Hey - as a former geek how can I resist Recursion [2]?)

I selected these by doing an informal Google search, filtering out those without advertised rates, picking the five least expensive to write to, and choosing the three most responsive.

The results? Surprising!

Cost and results

I expected markedly different results regarding turn around time (TAT) and transcription quality, but they were all very comparable:

Tech-Synergy cost me $21 (including a one-time discount) to transcribe 50 minutes of audio, 3 day TAT, resulting in 16 pages of notes.
Enablr was $33.60, 33 minutes of audio, 7 days, and 8 pages.
GMR was $49 (including a one-time sign-up fee), 26 minutes of audio, 1 day, and 10 pages.

(Side note: A peer who's reading Ferris's book suggested I sell these notes. However, they're long, rough, and specific to my interpretation. Plus, the space is already taken by companies like BusinessSummaries.com and Powell's Book Review-a-Day. I'll pass.)

The format of returned notes was either Microsoft Word or HTML files - both acceptable. However, while the submission processes for Tech-Synergy and Enablr were straightforward (vanilla HTML and FTP uploads, respectively), I had major problems with GMR. To make a long story short, my contact there was very helpful, and ultimately took care of submitting and returning the files, but their process needs fixing and simplification, at least for Firefox users. (As usual, I broke things like no one else.)

Ultimately, they all got the work done, and transcription quality was excellent. This is especially impressive considering that much of the time I was dictating while exercising!

Savings

So what was the ultimate savings in productivity? First, let's compare hours spent before and after:

Total time spent doing it myself: It takes me roughly 3 times the audio length to transcribe, convert, and enter notes for a book. E.g., for a 30 minute file I'd spend about 1-1/2 hours.

Total time spent outsourcing: To outsource the work, it took ~10 minutes to submit, pay, and download the results. But processing the resulting notes (reading, typing notes, and adding links) took ~2 minutes/page. E.g., for a 30 minute file (say 9 pages): 10 + (2 * 9), or ~ 1/2 hour.

Thus, for 30 minutes of book notes, I saved about an hour, i.e., three times faster.

But the big story is the psychological barrier removed by outsourcing. As I said, I was avoiding transcribing because I found it very tedious, and this clogged up my reading flow, mainly because I don't like starting too many new books before finishing existing ones. It feels incomplete, and I don't like getting too far behind (basic Getting Things Done-inspired psychology).

So overall it was a real win, and I'll definitely be outsourcing all my transcription in the future.

Future steps

That said, I feel like the results were still too expensive. For the next step I'll try submitting three more as projects to sites like Elance, Guru.com, and smarterwork. Suggestions and stories very welcome.

At a higher level, I also want to implement one of Leveen's important principles, that of periodic review. This will help me recall the book's important ideas, my interpretation, and possibly kick off action. After all, what good is reading if I don't improve myself in some way? (Plus, having books in mind when you're meeting folks is a great networking idea and helps facilitate conversations.)

I might return to the electronic reminder system I tried earlier (see Report on a little experiment: Daily random entries from my personal log), but only send entries tagged as BookNotes. Or maybe I'll start with a simple paper-based checklist.

Overall, a fun experiment. And thanks to Ferris for his stimulating book (definitely passed the Scribble Test).

References

[1] You might enjoy A conversation with Mark Forster (check out his site and blog).
[2] Check out the Droste image the Wikipedia authors used for the article. Why do I care? It reminds me of my very early off-topic post - How to Make The Ultimate Cup of Hot Chocolate. Still drinking it every morning!

Thanks for making Matt's Idea Blog a top personal productivity site!

2007-08-19T05:09:00.000-07:00

I've recently had the honor of being included in some "top productivity blogs" listings, and I wanted to say thanks to you all for continuing to read, comment, and recommend my blog to others. Some of the listings include:

I want to grow my readership, and I'd be very grateful if you'd spread the word to people you think would be interested in the topics covered here.

As an aside, I'm still on vacation, but I'll leave you with a few recent quasi consulting-related photos from the last few NASA consulting gigs, as well as other fun self-employed successes. (Thanks to Eric Mack - who's also working with NASA - for asking.)

misc pics 2007-08-19

Related links

Deep Thoughts on personal productivity by Jack Handey

2007-08-03T14:29:00.000-07:00

Note: I'll be taking a break from blogging for the next three weeks. Next week I'll be putting on three full-day workshops at the Kennedy Space Center. I'm taking my family, enjoying the toasty weather (hey - it's even hotter at home), and if we're lucky we'll get to see a launch! Then we're off to Canada for two weeks for vacation.

I'm inviting more humor into my life (part of my effort to enjoy the ride), and I re-kindled my love affair with the brilliant humorist Jack Handy (Wikipedia entry here). Not that I'm actually in love with him, but I think he's funny. (I'm thinking of adding these to my famous quote cards workshop activity...)

I just received my shipment of his "Deep thoughts" books (business expense), and I discovered his wisdom around personal productivity, and life in general. Below are some of his observations I thought you'd like. At the bottom you'll find links to his The New Yorker short stories. Enjoy!

Sources

On personal productivity

Mental "stuff"

I didn't want to cut down that tree. But I had no choice. It was growing right where I'm going to build my house, if I can ever get enough money together to build it and if I also have enough money to buy the land. That's another thing: I need to find out who owns that land.
Related: Personal productivity, IBMs (not the company), and NUTs: Some surprises about the brain.

Delegation

I think in one of my previous lives I was a mighty king, because I like people to do what I say.

Project management, completion

A lot of times when you first start out on a project you think, This is never going to be finished. But then it is, and you think, Wow, it wasn't even worth it.

Internal commitments (open loops)

It's funny how two simple words, 'I promise,' will stall people for a while.

Prioritization and agility

If you're being chased by an angry bull, and then you notice you're also being chased by a swarm of bees, it doesn't really change things. Just keep on running.

Eliminating time-wasters

When I think of all the hours and hours of my life I have spent watching television, it makes me realize, Man, I am really rich with television.

Reading

There's a world that we know nothing about, that we can only imagine. And that is the world of books.
Related: A reading workflow based on Leveen's "Little Guide", How to read a lot of books in a short time.

Stress management

You can't tell me that cowboys, when they're branding cattle, don't sort of 'accidentally' brand each other every once in a while. It's their way of letting off stress.

Perfectionism

If you drop your keys into a river of molten lava, let 'em go, because, man, they're gone.

New Yorker Articles

"Ideas for Paintings", 2006 short piece in The New Yorker
"What I'd Say To The Martians", 2005 short piece in The New Yorker
"My First Day In Hell", 2006 short piece in The New Yorker
"This is no Game", 2006 short piece in The New Yorker
"My Nature Documentary", July 2, 2007 short piece in The New Yorker

More wisdom - Broader life issues

Goal setting

It's easy to sit there and say you'd like to have more money. And I guess that's what I like about it. It's easy. Just sitting there, rocking back and forth, wanting that money.

Pace of life

As the light changed from red to green to yellow and back to red again, I sat there thinking about life. Was it nothing more than a bunch of honking and yelling? Sometimes it seemed that way.

Gratitude

If I had the time to sit down and write a thank-you note to everyone who sent me a nice, expensive present, what a wonderful world that would be!
Related: The power of a note, On the power of saying "Thank you", Living in the moment, preventing regret, and appreciating life, Use Gmail's "star" to highlight your good news.

Personal development

If you think a weakness can be turned into a strength, I hate to tell you this, but that's another weakness.

Public speaking

If you're ever giving a speech, when you start out, act nervous and get mixed up a little bit. Then, as you go along, get better and better. Then, at the end, give off a white, glowing light and have rays shoot out of you.

Body-mind connection

Life is a constant battle between the heart and the brain. But guess who wins. The skeleton.
One time I don't think you should listen to your body is when it says 'I'm dead.'
Related: Reflections on Alexander Technique and personal productivity, How to use the "I'm not going to ____" mind hack.

Life perspective, higher elevations

Whenever I start thinking that I am not living up to my potential, I remind myself of the old farmer and his fight to the death with the insane pig. It's an exciting story, and it takes my mind off all this 'potential' business.

Training, workshops

If you ever teach a yodeling class, probably the hardest thing is to keep the students from just trying to yodel right off. You see, we build to that.
If you had a school for professional fireworks people, I don't think you could cover fuses in just one class. It's just too rich a subject.

Life purpose

Perhaps, if I am very lucky, the feeble efforts of my lifetime will someday be noticed, and maybe, in some small way, they will be acknowledge as the greatest works of genius ever created by Man.

What's your feed reading speed?

2007-07-29T18:46:00.000-07:00

If you can't measure it, you can't manage it. -- Peter Drucker? [1], [2]
As a follow-up to Afraid to click? How to efficiently process your RSS feeds I decided to time a few of my RSS processing and organizing [3] sessions. I've included the results below, with average time spent/post in bold. (Note: See the above article for the simplified workflow I use.)

Here are the results:

Test 1


#    : 139 posts
avg  : 33 minutes / 139 posts -> 14 seconds/post

Test 2


#    : 81 posts
avg  : 26 minutes / 81 posts -> 19 seconds/post

Test 3


#    : 242 posts
avg  : 43 minutes / 242 posts -> 11 seconds/post

Test 4


#    : 132 posts
avg  : 22 minutes / 132 posts -> 10 seconds/post

hits : 24
7 new to-read articles, 4 posts to reply to

Crucial to rapid processing is having a great follow-up system - especially an Actions list (I have a "To-Print" sub-category) and a Read/Review cache.

On curious thing I noticed: When I'm timing myself I'm much more aware of the two minute rule, which results in a more focused, more efficient session.

So how does this compare with your speed? I'd be very curious to hear some of your stats!

Note: If you try this experiment for yourself, you might also want to track how many "hits" you had, i.e., how many of the total # of posts passed the first phase. In Firefox you can get a quick count of open tabs by closing the window. It will ask you to confirm, and the message contains the count: "You are about to close ____ tabs. Are you sure you want to continue?". WARNING: It's possible to turn this off, so first do a dry-run, or bookmark the group of tabs (control-shift-D in Firefox) just in case!

References

[1] This quote is often attributed to Peter Drucker, but a bit of digging indicates it's not that clear. Searching for the phrase - and the original "If you can measure it, you can mange it" - yields some surprises. For example, A Hacker's Guide to Project Management credits it to Tom DeMarco, who starts with it in his book Controlling Software Projects: Management, Measurement, and Estimates.

However, going back a bit, the book Measuring the Value of Information Technology says it was Lord Kelvin who originated it:It was the scientist Lord Kelvin who said, "When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely in your thoughts advanced to the stage of science." Later, this statement was abbreviated to "if you can measure it, you can manage it," and "if you cannot measure it, you cannot manage it."
BUT, even further back the authors of Geography Matters! state "The Renaissance astronomer Rhaticus suggested that if you can measure something, then you have some control over it." Wikipedia has more at Rheticus.
[2] You might also enjoy To Improve Productivity, Measure It First.
[3] More at How to process stuff - A comparison of TRAF, the "Four Ds", and GTD's workflow diagram.
[4] For bloggers this is why you should use great titles (see 8 Ways of Creating Compelling Blog Post Titles). Sadly, I admit I should use more care in titles. For example, instead of Four small Gmail tweaks Google could make to increase user productivity, it should have been more dramatic, e.g., "Four small Gmail changes that could save the world $500M" :-) Oh well, something for my lessons learned file!
[5] Exceptions: Email-based feeds, which have no corresponding URL to view - must be read in situ. See Move email-based subscriptions to RSS for why you should not be receiving news via email.

How to use the "I'm not going to ____" mind hack

2007-07-22T18:38:00.000-07:00

I've been collecting mind hacks, by which I mean surprising little tricks or abilities of our minds that are based on psychological insights. That I'm fascinated by them isn't surprising - I spent 20 years doing AI programming (no I don't have a Lisp machine at home, but it would be cool...), and modern personal productivity methods like Getting Things Done are found on this one:The mind can't let go of something without a sense of closure, via renegotiation, trusted external capture, or completion.
There's a great book about them called Mind Performance Hacks: Tips & Tools for Overclocking Your Brain [1], but I want to share one that's repeatedly whacked me on the head [2] recently:The mind's fear response can be bypassed with "I'm not going to ____" (fill in the blank).
The best description I've found is in Mark Forster's book Do It Tomorrow and Other Secrets of Time Management [3]:The easiest way for the rational brain to trick the reactive brain is to be subtle: convince it there is no threat by pretending to yourself that you are not going to do the task.

For example, suppose you need to get cracking on writing a complex report, but you've been having trouble with procrastination. Apply the hack by saying to yourself "I'm not really going to write that report now, but I'll just get out the file." This works because, using Forster's terminology, the irrational brain can be lied to by posing scenarios that seem less threatening. The thinking is that once you get moving on the small step (which your brain doesn't resist) momentum is much easier.

However, I think this is actually a combination of two hacks, the second being (from One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way):Very small steps disarm the brain's fear response.
As Maurer puts it, "All changes, even the positive ones, are scary. Attempts to reach goals through radical or revolutionary means often fail because they heighten fear. But the small steps of Kaizen disarm the brain's fear response, stimulating rational thought and creative play." Whew!

The final connection to this hack comes from the world of Alexander Technique [4], which is based on the idea of the mind-body system being a Black box that resists direct control. Suppose you have shoulder pain when you use your right arm. To fix it, the natural inclination would be to force the shoulder or arm to work better. Good thinking but, guess what? Doesn't work. We didn't learn to control our bodies that way, and we can't change them that way either. We don't know what "better" is! It's kinda like Einstein's thought that "Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them." Instead we have to re-learn using our bodies.

It's a big topic, but one mind hack that's taught is - surprise! - The mind/body's habitual response can be bypassed with "I'm not going to ____" (fill in the blank).
This is the inhibition portion of the inhibition-direction principle, and might work like this for the shoulder pain example: Before you lift your arm (in fact before you even think of lifting your arm) say to yourself "I'm not going to lift my arm." This works because it helps to reset your habitual use of the shoulder. Massively simplifying here, but it's pretty neat!

So how about you? Got any favorite productivity mind hacks?

Related

In addition to the classic sites Lifehacker and lifehack.org, which both carry mind hack posts, check out Mind Hacks blog.

References

[1] How can I not love a book with entries like "Remember 10 Things to Bring," "Catch Your Ideas," "Force Your Connections," and "Don't Overthink It"!? Chapter excerpts are at the O'Reilly Bookstore and Google has it on their Book Search.)
[2] See A Whack On The Side of the Head: How You Can Be More Creative, and esp. Von Oech's Creative Whack Pack (you know I love cards - see Personal Productivity Playing Cards!)
[3] You might enjoy my interview with the author at A conversation with Mark Forster. You'll find lots of good productivity tips at his blog Get Everything Done.
See Reflections on Alexander Technique and personal productivity, and esp. the book How You Stand, How You Move, How You Live: Learning the Alexander Technique to Explore Your Mind-Body Connection and Achieve Self-Mastery.

Four small Gmail tweaks Google could make to increase user productivity

2007-07-16T21:01:00.000-07:00

I'm a grateful Gmail user (my main email address forwards to my Gmail account), and I've been a satisfied user for the past few years. While I don't use Gmail to implement my Getting Things Done system [1], I've noticed four things that, if corrected, could increase productivity for all users. See what you think!

Make it easy to edit subjects
Allow search without seeing the inbox
Simplify adding contacts
Allow manual or longer retrieval delay

Make it easy to edit subjects

One of the best practices for email [2] is to edit the subject line of threads whose topic migrates. You know - it started out "let's bike this weekend" and after four times around it should be "here's Bob's phone #"! Doing this is possible in Gmail, but it's easy to miss because a) subjects aren't clearly shown, and b) the editing feature isn't obvious. Luckily, it's easy when you know where to look (see the screen shot to the right).

Related: Hanford Lemoore has a good summary of how confusing this is in Gmail: Arrow of Mystery and Subject Line (scroll down to The Subject line of Mystery).

Google's official instructions are here: How do I change the subject of a message I'm replying to?

Allow search without seeing the inbox

Often I'll need to search messages while completing an action, but Gmail's "home" page when you start it is the Inbox. Why is this a problem? Because it's sooooo tempting to just check the inbox - just for a minute - and then you've wasted tons of time and lost your focus.

Instead, it would be nice to configure Gmail to start somewhere else ("Contacts" or "All Mail"?) to avoid the allure. I've read that Google Desktop lets you index Gmail messages, but I really like to avoid installing Windows programs if I can help it.

Simplify adding contacts

Regarding contact systems, I strongly recommend that clients a) have one system to store names, address, emails, and phone numbers, and b) update them religiously (e.g., check and edit every time new data comes in). I use Gmail's contacts feature for mine (prior to this I had them in three different places), but looking up and editing is quite painful.

For example, to look up a contact:

1. Click the quick contacts input box and type enough letters to pop up the desired contact.
2. Move the mouse down to the contact of interest.
3. Carefully move the most straight to the right.
4. Move right to "__'s profile."
5. Move right to "Contact details" and click.

Step 3. is very error-prone because it's so easy to slide off target at any point during the process (see the screen shot to the right).

Allow manual or longer retrieval delay

Another best practice to avoid the inbox's siren's song is to change how often the program checks for new messages. The default is often quite frequent (I believe Outlook is 10 minutes, and Gmail seems faster than that), so it's smart to change it to be completely manual (i.e., you tell it when to check), or at least setting it to wait longer between, say one hour.

Sadly, I could find no way to change this in Gmail.

Wrap up

If you think these changes aren't worth it, just multiply the number of Gmail users [3] by time saved (say one minute a week per user?) by average $/hour, and you'll see some very large savings are possible.

As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts. In particular, can you recommend good books on email? I've found a few [4], but I've not read any of them.

References

[1] I track action in my paper planner (see Fare thee well Hipster PDA - I barely knew ye), and use the "Action Support" style of email integration.
[2] When I talk about email in workshops, I say it's more "boot camp" than "charm school." By that I mean it's more important they learn a solid system for managing email (which is consistent with how they handle all the other stuff in their lives) before worrying about tips and tricks for making email communication more effective. The latter are important too, but need to come after the basics. That said, here are some great resources for once you've taken control of your inbox:
[3] I couldn't find an official number from Google, but I've seen ~50 million in a few places (though that number is disputed to be too high).
[4] An Amazon search turned up:

Related Gmail productivity tips

Following are just a few tips for practicing GTD within Gmail. Please share your favorites!

Some recent GTD how-tos, tips, and tricks

2007-07-09T18:52:00.000-07:00

I often see questions about details in implementing Getting Things Done from a number of sources, including calls and emails from clients and readers, and participants of on-line forums. Here's a collection of some recent answers, which I hope you find useful. (You might also enjoy this list of my GTD-related posts, especially Some common GTD questions, with answers.)

Indexing filing systems
When to remove something from Someday/Maybe
Keeping file folder tabs aligned
Move email-based subscriptions to RSS
How to know you're a GTD master

Indexing filing systems

When teaching clients about filing, I sometimes get asked about more complex approaches, including indexing file drawer contents. This is done by creating a master list (on paper, kept at the front of the drawer, or as a file on your PC) that groups files by topic or keyword, and specifies where to find them. Some people find this kind of system helpful (there are some home-grown solutions at Database to my alpha system - is it needed? and commercial programs like Paper Tiger), but generally I've found a simple A-Z system with no index works great for most people. It's simple, inexpensive, and filing and retrieving is fast.

This is a bit controversial, but I believe that indexing slows down both sides: filing something requires entering it into the system, and retrieving requires a separate look-up step. And anything that slows down filing leads to stacking folders, or creating a "to file" pile, which is more work. Also, if the indexing is a pain, it's easy to get out of sync with the actual files.

Adherents claim it's faster (e.g., Index Your Reference System), but I'd suggest starting simply with the A-Z, then trying something more complex if needed. I've not had a problem finding files, and I have about 100 at hand, and another 200 in a second drawer.

Related: Five secret filing hacks from the masters.

When to remove something from Someday/Maybe

Recall that we use the Someday/Maybe folder [1] as a holding place for things that are on our minds, but which we're not currently ready to act on. However, when do you move them out of there? I suggest breaking it down like this:

Do I still think I'll want to act on it someday? If not, toss it.
If I remove it from my life, will it still be on my mind? If so, keep it.
Am I ready to act on it now (have resources/time/energy become available)? If so, create an action and a related Projects entry (if more than one step to complete).
Otherwise, keep it for the next review.

Remember, this folder needs to be reviewed regularly. Otherwise it might become a Black hole, and will stop helping to offload tracking from your mind.

Keeping file folder tabs aligned

Another filing question, this one is about whether to try aligning file tabs. Some people prefer keeping them aligned - all on the left, for example - so that they aren't randomly mixed within the drawer. (See File Folder Tabs - Which Side? for a typical query.)

My advice is not to worry about it. The tabs will naturally be a mixture, and it's usually not a problem. Once in a while I'll have a few on the same side, making it a bit difficult to see the one that's behind, but generally it doesn't bother most people. I recommend using 1/3 cut standard Manila folders [2], and not getting hung up on the tab locations. They'll vary depending on random factors, but they're alpha so you'll find them OK.

Move email-based subscriptions to RSS

When I'm working one-on-one with a client, we spend a good chunk of our two days together processing and organizing email [3]. As you'd expect, people tend to have a large backlog of messages in their inbox (thousands, in some cases), and once we're done they're pretty motivated to regularly empty it in the future. In addition to becoming efficient at dispatching each message, it's helpful to also reduce your email volume.

I have a number of suggestions I share with clients, but here's a favorite: Move email-based subscriptions (e.g., newsletters) from your inbox to an RSS feed reader that supports creating anonymous emails, such as Bloglines [4]. Briefly, here's how it works: For each email-based subscription you'll create a custom email address (it's one click in Bloglines), then change your subscription (or unsubscribe and re-subscribe) to the new address. This leaves your inbox for the more urgent incoming "stuff," and allows you to catch up on your news and such as feeds via your feed reader. Each subscription shows up as its own feed - very handy!

Here's Bloglines' entry on this feature: From Why does Bloglines Offer Email Accounts?:Bloglines free email accounts allow people to receive email newsletter subscriptions within their MyBloglines page. This helps to reduce traffic through your primary email inbox and helps to contain the spam menace. A Bloglines email account gives you a trump card when a newsletter breaks the rules of opt-in marketing. When you unsubscribe from a Bloglines email subscription, the email address disappears. You never have to worry about trying to find the unsubscribe instructions for an unwanted mailing list.
Read more about RSS at HOW TO: Getting Started with RSS. Related: Afraid to click? How to efficiently process your RSS feeds.

How to know you're a GTD master

For those of us who've been practicing GTD for a while, a useful question is "How do I know when I've mastered it?" (see for example the discussion I have mastered GTD when...). I usually say two things. First I suggest checking out my guide: GTD Workflow Assessment/Tips Checklist. If you can check off all items, you are definitely a master!

Second, I emphasize that, like any significant change (in this case, the art of self-management), becoming a master takes time. As George Leonard writes in his great little book Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment:The master of any game is generally a master of practice.
Leonard writes about the universal process of mastering any subject, including the inevitable plateaus, backslides, and frustration. But I've found a practice like GTD can be a tremendous enabler for being living better - being happier, more fulfilled, and ultimately making changes that are congruent with your purpose (whatever it might be - even if you don't know it!)

References

[1] I recommend clients use a paper folder instead of a list, because many potential items show up as paper - classes to attend, purchases to make, etc. So instead of a plain list, I recommend using a folder - this allows you to easily drop those items directly into it without much work. For "one-liners" you can also keep list(s) within the folders.
[2] For a complete listing of useful supplies, see my Listmania list: Basic Processing Tools for Personal Productivity/Workflow
[3] I tell people I help move them from email checkers to email workers.
[4] Although Google Reader is very cool, it does not yet support email-based feeds. This is a deal-breaker for me, so I usually recommend Bloglines.

Does having fewer projects make us more productive?

2007-07-01T20:10:00.000-07:00

I was reading the classic article "Beware the Busy Manager" by Bruch and Ghoshal (Harvard Business Review, Feb 1, 2002 [1]), which shares some surprising results from research into what makes effective managers. I strongly recommend reading the entire article, but for this post I'll focus on an interesting tidbit I found about the number of projects successful managers had. In talking about the two key dimensions (focus and energy - there's a nice summary here) they found that:

Because they have a clear understanding of what they want to accomplish, they carefully weigh their options before selecting a course of action. Moreover, because they commit to only one or two key projects, they can devote their full attention to the projects they believe in.

It was this last point that surprised me. In the modern personal productivity work I teach, a project can run the gamut from a small two-step one ("install office shelving") to very large ones ("apply for the NSF grant"), with most clients having between 20 and 100 of them. Clearly not all of them are "key." But what's the "right" number to manage?

Here's another bit of information: In the article Slow Down, Brave Multitasker, and Don't Read This in Traffic, a recent study found that:

For the [executives studied], the optimum workload was four to six projects, taking two to five months each.

The point being that a relatively small number of key projects - with less multitasking [2] - was better.

Finally, in the Time/Design training I took (see Some thoughts from attending Time/Design's trainer certification), the focus for action is at a maximum of 60 days out, a horizon that seems natural to me. The thinking is that anything farther than that should go on your Someday/Maybe list.

Here's how I put it on a recent forum:

I'm coming to believe that having too many projects is itself overwhelming. [...] Implications for GTD? Well, first we have many more projects, due to the fine-granularity definition of "project." Also, we track all projects from work and life. Combined with the 60 day idea, this leads me to wonder if it would be reasonable to "cap" the list around 20 or 30? Just playing here!

Of course the number varies, depending on the person. For example, I tend to be on the lower end, as otherwise I become overwhelmed, but I know others whose tolerances for more activity are much higher. However, I suspect we might be more productive having fewer projects, with only a few key ("big") ones.

How about you? How many projects are you comfortable with, and how many are "key" ones? Do you adjust according to your energy or mood? How?

References

[1] Available via subscription or pay-per-article at Amazon. The original is here.
[2] In his book CrazyBusy: Overstretched, Overbooked, and About to Snap! Strategies for Handling Your Fast-Paced Life, ADD expert Dr. Edward Hallowell calls ineffective multitasking frazzing. He says most of us fraz, and it's a trap. However some people (esp. those with ADD) can do better work when provided with some extraneous sensory input (e.g., music).

Reflections on Alexander Technique and personal productivity

2007-06-25T06:42:00.000-07:00

When I talk about the surprising life improvements that resulted from clearing my head of the mundane (see GTD), I mention reduced lower back pain. Some of you have asked about that, so I wanted to respond today and talk specifically about the Alexander Technique (AKA AT - Wikipedia article here), which has helped so much.

I bring this up because 1) the technique is itself helpful, 2) there are some interesting parallels with the personal productivity work I teach, and 3) my AT teacher (Missy Vineyard) has just published a terrific book on the subject that I recommend highly: How You Stand, How You Move, How You Live: Learning the Alexander Technique to Explore Your Mind-Body Connection and Achieve Self-Mastery. (The other back pain book that helped a lot was Back Sense; web site here.)

Very briefly, AT is a method to identify and replace old (and often hidden) habitual ways we use our bodies with more efficient (and less painful) ones. It's based on some insights and self-experiments performed by F. M. Alexander around the turn of the century. Especially interesting is the story of Alexander's attempts to solve a singing limitation. He first tried an approach that engineers would recognize: He noticed he moved his head a certain way every time he started to sing, a way that held back his voice. Importantly, he couldn't directly stop himself from doing it! It was a habit at the black box level of mind-body functioning that he had no insight into nor control over.

Fast-forward years ahead, and the result is a method taught one-on-one by an AT instructor that helps inhibit old patters of thinking and movement, and direct the body to more efficient ones. It's really neat.

So what's the productivity connection? Tons of things - I'll mention a few. First, both AT and personal productivity techniques like GTD or Chris Crouch's "Getting Organized" system (see my review here) involve learning significantly improved ways of self-management that aren't taught by default, but I believe are required for us to work and live more smoothly. The result is we're forced to learn ad hoc or outdated methods that don't serve us well (tightening unnecessary back muscles, or using fixed A/B/C priorities, say). Interestingly, what initially helped me was a shift in perspective that enabled the big improvement: looking at back pain as stemming from improper usage (standing, sitting, walking), not structure.

Additionally, neither are silver bullets - they involve changing old habits and adopting new behaviors, which is hard. (You might enjoy last week's post Reader question: Getting personal productivity changes to stick?, esp. the reader comments.) It's analogous to making big self-management changes via new habits, rather than gadgets or tools. The latter are tempting, and seem easy - "Just buy this cool tool and you'll work better!" - or "Just get this surgery and your pain will go away!" However, I've found the deeper, more principled changes - like any form of mastery - require thinking, practice, and time (sometimes a hard sell in today's cultural climate).

Let me finish with a few more observations.

Backsliding: As George Leonard writes in Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment, "backsliding is a universal experience. Every one of us resists significant change, whether for the better or the worse. Our body, brain and behaviour have a built-in tendency to stay the same, within rather narrow limits, and to snap back when changed." So we have to have enough discipline and motivation to get back on the wagon. For personal productivity we get back to the basics: Collect everything back into a few fixed points, do a mind sweep, review our projects, and get our system current.
Static vs. dynamic: In his book A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future, Daniel Pink writes a static view only tells you some things; a dynamic one gives you a bigger picture of interrelated parts working together. For productivity, you can't just look at someone's desk and figure out where the problems are. Instead, you've got to look at a person using her desk.
Experiential AT and personal productivity systems both let you experience a more organized state, which helps by:
- showing it's possible to work better
- motivating you to get back into it (backsliding)
- getting external help (seeing the need)
In AT, we get experiences like standing up and feeling lighter, an insight of how things can be different. With my productivity work, clients experience a clear mind, and a sense of knowing everything they've committed to.
Brain as a tool Both approaches look at the brain as a tool, and ask: How to use it properly? There are two common methods of operation: 1) Adding tension, which tries to force relaxing and working better (the only approach people typically know), and 2) a whole new approach: inhibition + direction (doing less via new thinking). For productivity, the analogs are trying to work harder/longer/faster/etc vs. re-thinking how we work.
Reset button: I wonder: Does every system need a reset button? Sometimes we have to reboot our computers when they get wrapped around the axle. In AT, there are some exercises to take us out of the typical gravity orientation - e.g., laying prone. In productivity, doing a weekly review comes to mind.

Resources

Alexander Technique Center of New England - My teacher's school.
Some overviews: ATI - About the Alexander Technique and Alexander Technique: The Insider's Guide.
A nice post on productivity and Martial Arts: The connection between GTD and Tai Chi.

Reader question: Getting personal productivity changes to stick?

2007-06-17T18:08:00.000-07:00

(Note: I came down with a cold a few days ago, so please forgive this post's rambling nature.)

As I grow my personal productivity consultancy (via workshops and one-on-one services) I've had to get my head around an issue I'm sure all teachers face - answering the question "When have I done enough?" In my work it manifests because I'm teaching a coherent and integrated approach to workflow, not simply a bag of tips and tricks [1]. Trouble is, it's not a silver bullet, and significant changes around how we self-manage are hard to make (many of our habits go back very far).

Currently I use the model for change that worked for me, the revolutionary approach espoused by many books, including Getting Things Done. In this "one big push" process you collect everything in your workspaces (mental as well as physical) that's not "stuff," process it into your action management system, and end up with no backlogs. It's both exhausting and invigorating, very satisfying, and (here's the problem) doesn't work for everyone.

For this (admittedly simple) analysis, I'll group people trying to adopt such a method into two groups: Those who fail due to lack of commitment or other systemic problems outside my control, and those who fail because making a big change is hard. As a teacher, I mourn the former group but have to draw the line at teaching them the best I can, ensuring they understand the system, and supporting them until it sticks. But at some point, I have to say my job is done, independent of whether they've adopted it or not. This is difficult, because I want everyone to succeed. But I've come to realize it's healthy to acknowledge externally-imposed limits.

For the second group, I'd like to develop a way to get them into a new set of more productive behaviors and maintain them over the long term. Do you have any suggestions? The only clue I currently have is from One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way, which advises using very small steps to (ultimately) make big progress. The author argues that, due to how our brains work, big steps don't usually work. (Note: Does this mean most people writing about GTD are in the minority?)

Using these ideas, I can envision a more gradual approach in which users systematically adopt pieces of the method over time, habitualizing each one before moving forward. A good starting point might be my GTD Workflow Assessment/Tips Checklist. I see two problems, though. First, everyone has different needs, so would a fixed program ("this week we'll work on the filing system") work well? (I address this in my two day "intensives" by customizing on the fly as the client and I work together.)

Second, I think systems like Allen's [2] take time for people to get their heads around, even if the individual elements aren't complex. This leads me to wonder whether a spiral approach is best (see Creating Passionate Users: Spiral learning for example). I guess the latter would still apply to a more gradual evolutionary approach, though.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

"Small Steps" References

References

[1] See my article The ultimate productivity tip for an example of why I think isolated tips don't lead to big changes.
[2] For example, Getting Organized: Learning How to Focus, Organize and Prioritize (review here), The Instant Productivity Toolkit (review here), and Take Back Your Life! Using Microsoft Outlook to Get Organized and Stay Organized.

My Productivity501 contribution is up, FYI

2007-06-12T14:20:00.001-07:00

I had the privilege of being invited to participate in Mark Shead's group email interview on Biggest Time Wasters. It's up over at Productivity501, and there are some great answers from such luminaries as Brendon Connelly, Alvin Soon, Laura Stack, Brett Kelly, Rosa Say, and Frank Meeuwsen. Thanks Mark!

Consider removing "maybe" from your productivity vocabulary

2007-06-10T16:01:00.000-07:00

The more I learn about personal productivity, the more I appreciate decisiveness. I wrote If not now, when? The importance of being bold around this, and I want to expand the discussion to the word maybe, and talk about removing it (or at least limiting its use) from your productivity vocabulary could help you and those you work with.

What's wrong with maybe? It has some good uses (more in a moment), but generally people use it to put off decisions, or to avoid saying "no." It (and its close cousin let me think about it) will often make things worse, not better. This is because, without discipline, the offer/issue/problem won't go away with some focused thinking. Not only will the decision be hanging over you, you'll be blocking the person who made the request.

I'd argue that most of the time, we know inside whether to say "no" or "yes," but we put it off. If that's the case, take a deep breath, accept or decline with respect and compassion, and be done with it. You'll usually feel much better as a result. However, there are times when you need to carefully employ "maybe." A few examples:

You don't have enough information.
You're waiting on something or someone else's input.
You have an intuition about it, but not yet enough clarity.

In those cases, you may choose to defer the decision, but I recommend doing so in a principled way:

Set boundaries for when you'll have made the decision. For example, give yourself two weeks (use your tickler file or equivalent), and commit to deciding by then. Do not re-incubate!
Inform anyone waiting on you that you're giving it active thought, and let them know when they can expect an answer (see above). (This is a specific case of the two key communication questions the Time/Design folks talk about: Who is impacted? and Who needs to know?. Once answered, use your frequent communication tools - e.g., the Getting Things Done agenda - to keep key players in the loop.)
Take concrete action to help make the decision. Collect information, discuss it with someone you trust, or make a Franklin matrix - from Structuring Analytical Problems:To get over this, my way is to divide half a sheet of paper by a line into two columns; writing over the one Pro, and over the other Con. Then, during three or four days of consideration, I put down under the different heads short hints of the different motives, that at different times occur to me, for or against the measure.
Sleep on it by giving your mind time to get clarity. However, rather than not thinking about it at all, I suggest you actively program your cortex to work on it. One very helpful approach comes from Robert Maurer's terrific little book One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way. In his chapter Ask Small Questions, Maurer recommends putting a small question to yourself repeatedly - say every day for a week or two. He says ... the mere act of posing the same question on a regular basis and waiting patiently for an answer mobilizes the cortex. Importantly, you'll have to break the problem down into a small, non-threatening question. Otherwise, he says, you'll lock up your brain in a fear pattern. (Related: 'Sleeping on it' best for complex decisions - being-human and Experiment Shows You Really Should 'Sleep On It'.)

One important aspect of reducing your maybes will be an enabling of others in your life. Firm, timely decisions (yes or no) allow colleagues to move on with their plans. Maybe, in comparison, keeps them from moving ahead.

How about you? Any best practices you've discovered around "maybe?"

Related

Some thoughts from the book "Getting Organized" by Chris Crouch

2007-06-03T17:49:00.000-07:00

As I grow into the reality of working for myself, I've noticed there's a rhythm to how much activity I can handle, and it ebbs and flows, often in unpredictable ways. A while ago I wrote about When inputs exceed your workflow system's capacity, a situation I'm currently in - I'm focusing more on managing existing commitments (I'm presenting a fair number of workshops this summer) than creating new work. This is especially evident in my reading - I have a candidates shelf of about forty books (see A reading workflow based on Leveen's "Little Guide"), but I'm just not making much progress on them.

That's why I keep a list of blog ideas (1396, according to my Big-Arse Text File), including books I've read but not yet reported on. Today I want to pass along some notes from Getting Organized: Learning How to Focus, Organize and Prioritize by Chris Crouch. This is known as the GO System, which has its own network of certified practitioners. (Note: Many of the book's chapters can be found on EzineArticles.com.)

Looking at my notes, the book surpasses my scribble test (see "Interesting, but not useful," or Does it pass the scribble test?) with a bunch of stimulating concepts. Generally it's very good, mainly because it is a comprehensive solution - like Getting Things Done - rather than a reference of tips and tricks.

Here are some of my favorites - apologies fore the long list, but there's a lot to like!

Crouch says "most people need a major overhaul, not a quick fix," which explains why most attempts to get organized don't work - the smorgasbord approach doesn't do it.
The author says six things typically hold us back, and claims we must address all six to make progress:
1. efficiently handling incoming items
2. prioritizing your workload
3. time management
4. project management
5. personality issues
6. psychological issues
The mental side of getting organized is significantly more important than anything else you do. His analogy: It's like buying a piano and thinking you can play it the next day. I like his quote about:
If you want to stay highly organized, think in terms of habit-based solutions as opposed to gadget-based ones.
He recommends a "not going to do" list, the equivalent of GTD's Someday/Maybe list. (Note: I love having clients fill these out during workshops - clients come up with some great ones.)
He recommends we decide our most important task in the morning and do it before anything else - interruptions, email, or phone. Gina calls it your MIT (see Geek to Live: Control your workday). However, you must have a system in order to know what your MIT might be.
His summary of how to work most effectively: stay in the moment - totally focus on what you are doing and get closure on it ... then move on to the next thing.
He divides incoming work in to four phases: 1) gathering, 2) filtering, 3) prioritizing, 4) doing. He stresses it's important to keep them separate and do them in the proper order. (Compare to GTD's five worfklow phases: Collect, Process, Organize, Review, and Do.)
Similarly, his equivalent to GTD's Processing & Organizing diagram is "the five decisions:" discard, delegate, take immediate action, file for follow-up, put in reference file. (For reference see How to process stuff - A comparison of TRAF, the "Four Ds", and GTD's workflow diagram.)
I like his anti-example (what people typically do, but shouldn't): stack, stuff, spread, or any combination. I think of these as the three "Bad Ss" :-)
He covers two GTD FAQs I see regularly: OHIO (only handle it once) and OOSOOM (out of sight, out of mind).
Regarding reducing inputs and clutter, he has a great quote:The things that come into your life with little or no effort will rarely go out of your life without some effort on your part. This creates a natural imbalance in your workspace and your life. Understand this imbalance and will understand that you must have a system for moving things out of your life if you want to avoid being buried in clutter.
He recommends a "control point" drawer: A hanging file within swivel distance that acts like an airport control point (reminds me of The Instant Productivity Toolkit). Things that go into it:
- Tickler file
- follow-up forms
- agenda (boss, spouse, each on-going meeting)
- casual reading (read/review)
- waiting for
- purchases/errands
Two nice quotes on gadgets: The true test of a gadget: Is it easier than a pencil? also: Is it easier than something that is already working quite well?
Regarding follow-up, he says there are three types of reputations of an organization: sometimes, always, or never.
Some nice applications for the tickler file:
- For big delegated projects put a reminder 1/2 way between now and due date.
- To manage others' follow-up skills: put a tickler 1/2 way between now and the deadline, then ask how they're doing. Move sooner or later depending on how together they are.
He says this sets expectations, which can lead to behavior changes.
I like his thoughts on meetings: He encourages us to have an agenda, but to try to learn others' perspectives - the more you know about their point of view (and they're important to your success), the more effective you will be when interacting with them.
Listen carefully to their point of view, and try to understand the beliefs that drive their behavior. It's actually a lot of fun to ask questions and try to figure out what makes them tick.
He recommends two categories for reading: have to read (use your system, or schedule time), and would like to read (use read/review and rip-and-read). This is identical to what I advise clients, but with the optional addition of a Someday/Maybe category.
He says we shouldn't over schedule our day - More than 50% should be kept clear. Also, leave time after meetings to process &, plus leave time between meetings.
He talks about the overloaded and confused cycle, which "stuff" worsens. Be on the lookout for anxiety and confusion; these indicate overload.
On perfection and "too smart to start" (AKA "analysis paralysis"): Consider getting off to a chaotic start. He says many people try to get perfect at the beginning. Instead, start with an initial brainstorming session using 3x5 cards, then order by best way to start.
For planning large projects, use a simple table with columns for: category (people, products, sources), what is to be done, who will do it, when will they do it, general comments, status (in process, completed, ...). Then: sort the table by date!
His reasons we feel overwhelmed:
- You are setting unrealistic time frames for what you are trying to do.
- You are procrastinating too long.
- You are spending too much time working on things that do not matter.
- You are over-promising what you can do for someone.
- You do not have the profound knowledge needed to do the task.
- You do not know when and how to say No.
He lists these causes of procrastination:
- Perfectionism - the paralyzing need to get it right the first time
- Impulsiveness - taking on too many things to do and overloading yourself
- Fear of failure - rather be seen as lacking in effort than ability
- Perception of task - seems too hard or too boring
- Uncertainty - not sure what to do
Three things to do to master your work: Read, hang around masters, and make sure you are passionate about your job. I love his quote:Stop making excuses and start learning more about your job than anyone else within a 100-mile radius of your workspace. When you accomplish this, move your radius out another 100 miles. Keep this up until you don.t have anymore room to expand your radius.
He makes a great point regarding "To Do" lists - most people make it too easy for things to get on the list, which means our "inputs" (work to do) exceed our "outputs" (work done). Mark Forster nails this pretty well (he calls them closed lists) - see Do It Tomorrow and Other Secrets of Time Management.
On changing behaviors, he says anytime we encounter a new idea there are three possible outcomes: 1) nothing will happen, 2) you will alter your behavior in some minor ways, 3) the idea will significantly change your behavior and your life forever. He claims we must examine and disrupt the belief system that is driving that outcome...
Finally, he talks about the ideas behind the work, including:
- under pressure, you act without thinking
- you can turn on the rational mind by relaxing
- if feeling part of brain is on, you default to habits (good or bad)
- if you insist on operating under pressure, you must learn good habits
- something that feels right may be bad for you (it's a habit that feels normal)
- something that feels wrong may be good for you (it's not a habit yet)

Again, a great book, lots of sound ideas, and some delightful wisdom about work and life. I'll leave you with a few more great quotes (I collect them for my infamous quote card exercises in my workshops):
Good productivity techniques are about feeling engaged, working at a satisfying pace, and getting the best out of people.
A peaceful state of mind is the ultimate reason for getting more focused, organized, and productive.

Afraid to click? How to efficiently process your RSS feeds

2007-05-29T08:56:00.000-07:00

I recently came across Tim Ferriss's [1] entry How Scoble Reads 622 RSS Feeds Each Morning, which motivated me to post an "aha" I recently had about processing RSS feeds. (What I took away from the Scoble video was how selective he his in deciding to read a post, how he makes that choice, and that he uses feeds for "relationship work" - networking - so he can be smart when talking with someone. However, I didn't get much on how to handle so many feeds.)

I read about 200 feeds [2] right now, and when I'm feeling overloaded I noticed I avoided keeping up with them. I had an "afraid to click" dynamic because I knew there would be consequences (having to decide the meaning of each post - and there are lots of them) with that click. After some thought, I realized there are only two kinds of posts: Those I want to read, and those I don't (deep, I know). Since all of the feeds I subscribe to are potentially valuable (otherwise I unsubscribe), the work (and it is work) is to go through them as quickly as possible to "harvest" the action involved.

In other words, it's simply the processing and organizing [3] phases of Getting Things Done.

Here's how I do it: I click the feed (or folder, if they're grouped), take the hit (lots will load up), and zip through them one at a time. I've set my reader to show only headlines (best for most feeds except newsletters), so I scan each title and decide mercilessly whether it deserves a deeper look. If so, I use Firefox's middle-click to open in new tab feature [4] to temporarily bookmark it, then move on. Once I've gone through all the new feeds I use keyboard shortcuts to go through each tab to decide "Is it actionable?," closing each tab when I've handled it. With feed reading this usually boils down to:

Does it still look valuable?
If so, is it short enough to read in two minutes? If yes, read it.
If not, I put it into my to read stream. For blogs, the stream is to buffer up articles-to-read in a text file, print them once a week, and carry them in my Read/Review folder.

Note that this gets me rapidly through lots of posts, essentially moving them from "IN" to my actions list. However, it does require you to have a good "to read" system in place. Otherwise you'll feel compelled to read them all, which takes you from processing and organizing to doing, and that, my friend, will drag you down.

When I finally end up reading the post (either in two minutes or later) I typically have a limited set of resulting actions:

Try a new behavior/install a new habit (example: keeping a decision log),
Save it for reference [5] - either for me or clients (examples: saying no and FileHamster),
Send it to someone who will hopefully find it valuable (a great little networking gift, along with this one),
Save it as a Someday/Maybe item (I choose to print and file them in a paper folder),
Respond (either via a blog post, an email to the author, or a forum comment), or
Save it as a writing topic (I love stimulating reading that gets me thinking - fun!)

Clearly there are others, but the key point is to have an efficient system to turn the reading into action, and to whiz through them. I like my tagged text file (see Pickle jars, text files, and creative idea capture), but use whatever works.

How about you - Have any good tips for handling RSS feeds? I'd love to hear them.

References

[1] Ferriss has received a ton of recognition for his book The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich (it's in my candidates library - see A reading workflow based on Leveen's "Little Guide"). You might enjoy his blog and site.
[2] My current feed list is here. I use Bloglines for my reading, especially for its killer email-as-feed feature - which gets lists that are email-based out of my inbox. Highly recommended.
[3] You might be interested in How to process stuff - A comparison of TRAF, the "Four Ds", and GTD's workflow diagram.
[4] More great Firefox tips at 15 Coolest Firefox Tricks Ever, including my all-time favorite Reopen the last closed tab with Ctrl+Shift+T.
[5] I had a colleague who tagged these "MUS" - Might be USeful - which I use regularly.
[6] You might enjoy my article Information provenance - the missing link between attention, RSS feeds, and value-based filtering.

Why my NUTs should not be your NUTs!

2007-05-26T07:48:00.000-07:00

Repeat after me: I will not brain dump onto others, I will not brain dump onto others, ...

I was talking recently with a friend and mountain bike buddy about the ideas I teach, especially the notion of keeping everything out of your head. He loved it, and really understood the negative impact that NUTs (Nagging Unfinished Tasks) have on us (see Personal productivity, IBMs, and NUTs: Some surprises about the brain). The next time we met he was very animated about this because he realized a) his spouse has these NUTs (most of us do, unless we rigorously practice a method like Getting Things Done), and b) he claimed she tries to get him to take them on for her!

Does this happen with someone in your life? It's essentially delegation, but in an unclear and indirect manner - more like a brain dump onto someone else. And as Roizen and Oz point out in YOU: The Owner's Manual, there's a real cost to not handling these effectively (they say these age you by eight years - excerpts on-line at Google Books).

The question is, how do you deal with someone trying to do this to you? It turns out I had a chance to practice - I ran into my friend's spouse (a very sweet person) when leaving their place for a ride, and she asked me to pass along a message to my spouse. Because I didn't have my capture tool with me (a calculated oversight - see A few thoughts on capture and What's the best tool for ubiquitous capture?), I told her I couldn't take it on. My reason was that I might forget or garble it, and then I'd have two women angry with me (much worse than 12 Angry Men!) Plus, I have enough of my own tasks I have to manage. To myself I thought, I'm not paid to take on stuff like this for others - that's a tough job (see Best practices for GTD and administrative assistants).

Is this bad? Should we take on little things like this for others? And are they little? My advice: Be careful what you take on. In general, saying "no" is important to managing your own stress levels, and it becomes much easier once you've identified every commitment in your life. However, people might see this as being selfish or unhelpful, so treat them with respect and compassion, possibly explaining your reasons. A few resources for saying no:

By the way, would you remind me to...

One way to enjoy the ride - celebrate surprise!

2007-05-20T10:14:00.000-07:00

I think that one aspect of living gracefully is to appreciate the steady stream of events (large and small, positive and negative) that make up a lifetime. At the meditation center I attended years ago they taught that the present is all we have - the future hasn't happened yet, and the past is over, so enjoying what's happening now is a key to being happy [1]. This is a variation on the "stop and smell the roses" theme, and it makes sense to me.

Trouble is, when I'm under stress, I find appreciating what's happening in the moment to be hard. For example, as I'm building my consulting practice I experience a mixture of frightening an exhilarating experiences, and many of the former get in the way. It's the old "journey vs. destination" idea - focus too much on the latter, you forget to live fully [2].

So part of my personal process is figuring out ways to (as Patricia Ryan Madson calls it in Improv Wisdom) "enjoy the ride" [3]. Unfortunately, for some of us it's just not straightforward. How do we go about appreciating the moment? It's a huge question, but one thing that helps me is savoring surprise. After all, what good is staring something new if it doesn't result in at least a few surprises?

This hit me on the head Friday when I got an unexpected envelope from a reader in Minnesota, USA. Inside were a handful of the Pentel Forte mechanical pencils I love (he read about them in this post), along with a lovely note thanking me for this blog. Man did that lift my spirits! It also got me thinking about the value of surprise - both receiving and creating it.

Let me finish with a few tips around surprise. I'd also very much like to hear your comments on this, e.g.,

What tricks do you have for enjoying the ride?
Have you had any recent surprises you've celebrated?

Be open to surprise

To enjoy surprises we have to be aware of them. Otherwise, we won't notice them. I think this is one way that a system like Getting Things Done contributes - getting the daily noise under control lets us tune in better to what we're experiencing. Hmmm. I wonder - How about a course on Surprise Training?

I also think appreciating surprise depends on a second element: interpretation. Like any experience, our perspective determines what it means to us. Naturally some surprises aren't positive, but I've sometimes been able to "spin" an event mentally into a positive thing. Absurdity loves being acknowledged.

Celebrate surprise

I like stopping for a moment to celebrate welcome surprises. It's a chance to slow down and appreciate these important events. I've tried three ways of doing this. First, I have a "surprise wall" where I put notes and cards from readers, and art and messages from my daughter [4]. Second, I highlight surprise emails (see Use Gmail's "star" to highlight your good news). Finally, I sometimes record them using in my journal (I use a "DelightfulSurprise" tag in My Big-Arse Text File - a Poor Man's Wiki+Blog+PIM).

Plant seeds

Fostering surprise is like writing letters - you have to plant seeds to get something to grow. For example, I reached out about six months ago to friends and family to announce my new job direction. As a result, I got two surprise calls last week from two regional colleges looking for faculty productivity consulting. Neat!

Another thing is to look for ways to pleasantly surprise others. My current favorite: When I was consulting last week in Florida, I picked up a bunch of NASA swag - stickers, pens, etc. - which I've been gleefully passing out. The look on someone's face when they get a cool gift is a real heart-warmer.

Other applications of surprise

Creating surprise goes beyond this, though. For example, I work to include surprises in my workshops, including physical ones like door prizes (everyone loves getting a Super Spy Night Pen for bed-side capture) and mental ones (like the idea that multitasking decreases IQ more than smoking pot [5]). (See more great presentation tips from Kathy Sierra's article A few more Presentation How To's.)

Unexpected results of tuning in

Finally, being open to experiences like surprises can add unexpected value and perspective to our lives. In fact, many of my favorite books are stories by someone who got surprised, then followed it up and shared the results. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking and Freakonomics are two nice examples. I also love the canonical surprise story Twenty-Five Years of Post-it Notes

References

[1] You might enjoy reading recent books stemming from research on happiness, including Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert, Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment by Martin Seligman, or Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill by Matthieu Ricard.
[2] Interestingly, one thing I liked about MissionControl's workshop was their idea of life being an endless sequence of "Nows" (see A GTD-er's perspective on Mission Control's "Productivity and Accomplishment" workshop). They extrapolated this to me we should schedule every action in our work and lives for a specific "Now" - sometime in your calendar. I don't care for this approach, but I know it works well for some people.
[3] See Great time management ideas from the world of improv wisdom and Whose job is it? Mine!
[4] Being around children is a great way to expose yourself to surprise. Kids are great because they don't know when something they do is "bad" - sometimes just a chuckle can change a negative interpretation (dropping something, say) into a funny one.
[5] Widely reported a few years ago, e.g., CNN.com - E-mails 'hurt IQ more than pot' - Apr 22, 2005.

The ultimate productivity tip

2007-05-14T16:53:00.000-07:00

I've been tagged twice today with the "Ultimate Guide to Productivity" meme; Ian McKenzie (the voice behind Ian’s Messy Desk) and Brett Kelly (host of The Cranking Widgets Blog) came after me. I don't like responding to the "ego" memes (e.g., "five things about myself"), but I'd like to have some fun with this one, in which the Instigator Blog has challenged the initial round of bloggers to "pick your single best productivity tip." My answer:There is no single best productivity tip
Am I cheating? No.

I've found that everyone needs something different, and - like clichés - a tip that you find less-than-compelling will knock the socks off someone else. For example, I had one client who loved the A-Z filing system. Absolutely the best thing she'd ever heard. The next client? Convinced that the tickler was the thing.

And naturally I'm pleased when a piece (either an organizing tool or a concept, i.e., how to break stuff into actions) helps someone - value is value. But I'm happiest when the entire system clicks for a client. I guess that's the piece that hit me the hardest, and is what separates a buffet approach ("bag of tips/tricks") from a comprehensive and integrated framework.

So maybe the ultimate tip is to figure out what you currently need to make a jump (or leap) in your self management, and adopt it. Then repeat, until you're six feet under. Hey, you might even find a new profession!

Programmers: Get out of your shell and exercise your people muscles - for fun and profit

2007-05-05T18:02:00.000-07:00

(Note: I wrote this article for a programming venue a while back, but I didn't end up publishing it. As I've been flat out these last few weeks preparing for summer workshops, I thought I'd share it with you. Regular blogging resumes after I get back from my NASA seminar next week. P.S. I had fun checking out the Constellation Program - what geek can resist new spaceships?)

As programmers, we often have the luxury of focusing on interesting and challenging technical problems, without having to worry too much (depending on your work arrangement) about the external factors that make this kind of sheltered life possible. However, it turns out there are some big pluses to developing our people networking skills and getting out and meeting folks. This is especially true when we move out on our own (or become part of a very small team). These advantages include:

More business,
Unexpected opportunities,
Great product ideas and directions, and
Improved health and life satisfaction.

(There's a longer list here.) Most of these advantages stem from the basic ideas that 1) we humans thrive in a more deeply connected world, and 2) opportunities for new ideas, new projects, and additional work can come from surprising places, once you start putting energy into expanding your network. The down side? You may have to develop some new skills, you have to put in time and energy to meet folks, and you have to stay open to possibly unexpected opportunities (i.e., to be ready to say yes).

So how does one go about growing her network? I began with three books, which jump-started my efforts:

Love Is the Killer App: How to Win Business and Influence Friends by Tim Sanders,
Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time by Keith Ferrazzi and Tahl Raz, and
How to Make People Like You in 90 Seconds or Less by Nicholas Boothman

Why these three? First, Sanders' book is inspirational, and encourages us to freely share our knowledge, our network, and our compassion. This can be hard for us, especially the knowledge bit, because as Susan Jeffers puts it (from Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway):

So much of what we learn in life comes to us with great difficultly. And, for some reason, we have a tendency to want to see others struggle as much as we did. Turn this around and begin giving others as much help as you can possibly give them.

As a programmer, I think of this book as how to look at others as partners in work and life, and how helping them ultimately helps me and my business.

In the second book, Ferrazzi and Raz teach us about the good kind of networking, i.e., the kind involving unselfish giving, not the kind in which I stand at the exhibit hall and pass out 300 business cards. Again, as geeks, this book shows us that networking is very powerful, and demonstrates how to get started.

Finally, Boothman's work gives us some crucial skills on establishing rapport with people in the early seconds of a relationship, which apparently matter quite a bit. It covers mysteries like eye contact, body mirroring, and asking open-ended questions when first meeting someone. As a technical type I found myself thinking "Where the hell was this book when I was in high school!?" Think of it as a social skills user manual.

Great. So given all that, how do we put this into practice? As with anything new, there will be trial and error, and - as with anything social - "error" can feel uncomfortable at first. One strategy I found useful was to start by being conscious of each personal interaction, and looking at these as little opportunities to get to know the other person.

For example, I used to interact with people only when necessary, and only for the minimal time needed to deal with the task at hand. Very much Just the Facts. Say I needed to talk with a user. I'd spent a few seconds in obligatory "How you doing?" mode, then jump right into the fray - "Which version of the JDK are you using?," "Is the server running?," etc. However, I now spend a little time asking about the person either before or after the technical stuff - things like how they like their jobs, where they live, what their passions or issues are, etc. While some folks are all business (can't help that!), most welcome the chance to talk about themselves. And guess what? That connection persists, both in my mind and theirs. (Early on I forgot to do this, so I called the person back, apologized for being so hasty, and asked to hear a bit about her life. She was fine with it.)

The bottom line? Brush up those social muscles, dust off your English (non-programming) language skills, and reboot yourself a bit. You never know what a connection with someone might bring, either to you or (better yet) to them.

Some thoughts from attending Time/Design's trainer certification

2007-04-25T20:24:00.000-07:00

I had the privilege of attending Time/Design's certification last month, and I wanted to share some good "take aways."

First, their program is very well organized, and I really enjoyed the training by veteran trainer and entrepreneur Valerie Young (lots of good self-employed and job-change tips from her newsletter - see www.changingcourse.com). As I continue to learn how much work it is to be a good teacher (see The crucible of teaching: Want to learn in a hurry? Teach!), I really appreciate when someone does it well. It goes against my personality to admit it takes time and experience to get good at it...

There was a lot to like, and some things I didn't care for (not surprising given I eat productivity systems for lunch), but a few you might find useful:

Time/Design content

They have a bunch of good ideas, as you can tell from their tips section. The common heritage with Getting Things Done shows (David Allen worked with them for quite a while). Familiar to readers will be the two minute rule, the mind scan, projects vs. actions, etc. What may be new: Time Blocking (though I like Julie Morgenstern's explanation better), "Do On" or "Due By?" (for explaining the calendar), and Pareto Principle.

(Interesting tidbit: The Urgent vs. Important matrix (of Covey fame - see The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People) dates back to - at least - Eisenhower!)

The best "chunking" time block - 96 Minutes?

Peter Drucker talks about 90 minutes being the minimum chunk of time to do meaningful "knowledge work," and the training brought out a nice tie-in: The 80/20 rule applied to an eight hour day suggests blocking out 96 minutes for the "heavy lifting." Creating time to work daily on important projects is a common theme:

Eat That Frog! by Brian Tracy:
19. Create large chunks of time: Organize your days around large blocks of time where you can concentrate for extended periods on your most important tasks.
(More at Some thoughts on "Eat that frog!" by Brian Tracy.)
96 Minutes a Day That Will CHANGE YOUR LIFE
More on Chunking as an Alternative to Multitasking
Revolving workflow strategies
Organized at Last

Time/Design's forms

Time/Design has some great paper planner forms. Their binders are wonderful, but if you already have one, many GTD-ers recommend buying their refill forms directly. I've been trying a number of them for the past month, including the nifty folding "action sheet." However, I think because I use only weekly pages (not daily), the flipping won't work for me. I do love their approach to managing repeating tasks with a paper system. There's detail in their Quick Start Guide, but basically you carry two fold-out annual planning pages (very, very cool) in which you mark all repeating events (use a single letter or color). You also have a "perpetual" calendar for annual events (e.g., birthdays, maintenance). To use them, every new month you insert another month's worth of weekly or daily pages, then copy over events from the current year and perpetual pages. Doh!

I also like their matrix diagram (they have a tip on using it here), which I like esp. because it has 31 rows and 12 columns - a cell for each day! You can get creative with this for tracking exercise, goals, habits, etc. I'm still playing with it...

Highlight completed actions

One of my first clients turned me onto the idea of highlighting completed actions (rather than crossing them out). I wrote about it Four Planner Hacks for Paper-Based Productivity, but Time/Design have apparently been recommending it for years (they call it the "Personal Motivation Device").

I now carry one in my planner, along with...

Use a mechanical pencil for your calendar

Another in the "Doh!" category, using pencil for calendar entries instead of pen makes tremendous sense: I regularly need to erase appointments that get canceled or rescheduled, and I'm now pretty much weaned from my White Out habit. (I guess it's the geek in me, but I used to love mechanical pencils, and I've rediscovered the joy and precision of using one. While there are some gorgeous ones out there, it's very hard to beat the Pentel Forte.)

60 day horizon for actions

Finally, I really like their focus on a maximum of 60 days for actions. If you're not ready to act in two months, put it on the Someday/Maybe, or capture start/end dates in the annual planning pages. This can lead to having a smaller list of next actions, something I appreciate.

I'd love to hear from anyone using the Time/Design planner (or method).

US national priorities are really screwed up

2007-04-22T14:05:00.000-07:00

(I apologize for the rant, but I'm disgusted with my country. The problems continue to mount, with no leadership in sight. These issues have come to a head locally and personally, and I want to say something about it. I understand you may disagree. I'll return to the usual productivity writing next week. Note: I care about this country; that's why I'm pissed.)

Mark Forster, in his book Do It Tomorrow and Other Secrets of Time Management, talks about the reactive vs. the rational mind. The reactive is the lower-level animal one with shorter-term priorities. The rational is the thinking part that plans and makes us do what's best, even when it means sacrificing immediate gratification. The trouble is, when we're stressed or afraid, guess which gets priority? This arrangement makes sense in the wild, but it doesn't build civilizations. With apologies to Mark, I think we can use this analogy for countries as well. Sadly, the United States - apparently with the blessing of many of my countrymen - is solidly in the reactive camp, as evidenced by our national priorities. A few examples.

1) Culture of violence. We're a gun-worshipping, violence-glorifying country. Just look at the TV, cable, and films that we produce and watch [1]. Then notice how much more violence we have than civilized countries with gun control laws. The recent shootings should convince anybody operating with a full deck that we have a problem. And no, arming everyone to the teeth ("Welcome to third grade. Here's your class schedule, books, and .38. Enjoy.") is not a solution. And if we limited guns, would these nuts just kill anyway? Sure - I can see the news now: "Maniac kills 38 people using salt shaker." Right. We've prioritized the right to own a gun over the right to be safe.

2) Military vs. schools. Around the country you'll see local school systems in real trouble. Crumbling buildings, teachers being laid off, programs being cut, etc. This results in increasing class sizes and more poorly educated kids. Even where I live - a relatively wealthy community - the schools have been hit hard. Why? Mostly it's because the federal contribution to educating our children has dried up. This while we're spending $10B a month just in Iraq [2]. We've prioritized occupation and military adventures over our future citizens.

3) Health insurance. I recently quit a job that provided great benefits at a really good price. Now that I'm self employed, I've really come to understand how screwed up this country's priorities are. We've got tens of millions of people without insurance (including lots of kids), and the choices for people who work on their own are pathetic. Group insurance is invasive, expensive, and the coverage is fair to poor, in some cases non-existent. On top of that, if you've got any medical concerns whatsoever (and isn't addressing them the whole point?) you're really in trouble. We've prioritized commercialized health insurance over being having access to health care.

4) Energy policy. Guess what - Peak oil is real, and the planet's supply is on the decline. Oil is very special stuff, and we've a) pretty much squandered our terrestrial allotment, and b) we refuse to believe it or work on solving it. Picture James Kunstler's image of a fully-loaded SUV, with one driver, accelerating into the bricked-up dead end road of suburbia. That's us. No trains worth mentioning, and third-world bus options. We've prioritized a car-based, high-consumption culture over a pragmatic preparation for the decline.

5) Environmental policy. Finally, hand-in-hand with our transportation choices, we've really messed up our climate. Even if all the leading scientists are wrong, is it worth taking a chance? We've prioritized sticking our heads in the sand over addressing a real - and difficult - problem.

These priorities are not sane, and are not mine, and they're just a few of the choices we've made as a country. Sadly, in making them we've squandered an amount of wealth that has been unheard of in the ~10,000 years of human civilization. But that's not the worst news. The worst thing is that we're doing nothing to correct these priorities; in fact, we're doing the opposite. If it was just me, I'd be upset. But as a parent whose child's health, education, and overall welfare are all threatened, it really stinks.

References

[1] Don't believe our culture worships guns? Try this simple check, what I call the "Gun Test" - Go to your neighborhood video store (if you still have one - I'll leave corporate take-overs of small towns for another time) and look at the video covers. Try to find any that have no guns on the front or back. It turns out it's really hard to find any. I use this test when I rent, because I don't want to pollute my head with filmmakers who glamorize violence. There's no question it's unhealthy for adults, and especially children. (We limit our 6 YO to 30 minutes of controlled viewing per day, and no cable.)
[2] See for example Estimated Costs of an Iraq War According to CBO or Iraq War, Inflation and War Finance.

Deep thoughts on personal growth from designer Bruce Mau

2007-04-16T06:14:00.000-07:00

Ever since reading Daniel Pink's book A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future I've been working to appreciate the relevance and impact design has on my life. The book talks about six essential abilities that Pink claims we all need to succeed in the coming world - design, story, symphony, empathy, play and meaning. All of these are important, and I love that Pink has tied them together. It's a stimulating read; recommended.

I'll write more about the book another time (including tips like keeping a design journal, and increasing your "MQ" - metaphor quotient), but I today I just wanted to point you an article by designer Bruce Mau that I came across a while ago: An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth. I think it's a terrific list.

Allow events to change you.
Forget about good.
Process is more important than outcome.
Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child).
Go deep.
Capture accidents.
Study.
Drift.
Begin anywhere.
Everyone is a leader.
Harvest ideas. Edit applications.
Keep moving.
Slow down.
Don't be cool.
Ask stupid questions.
Collaborate.
____________________.
Stay up late.
Work the metaphor.
Be careful to take risks.
Repeat yourself.
Make your own tools.
Stand on someone's shoulders.
Avoid software.
Don't clean your desk.
Don't enter awards competitions.
Read only left-hand pages.
Make new words. Expand the lexicon.
Think with your mind. Forget technology.
Organization = Liberty.
Don't borrow money.
Listen carefully.
Take field trips.
Make mistakes faster.
Imitate.
Scat.
Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.
Explore the other edge.
Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms.
Avoid fields. Jump fences.
Laugh.
Remember.
Power to the people.

A key to continuous learning: Keep a decision log

2007-04-08T08:11:00.000-07:00

A while back I shared my experience recording observations on events I'd like to have done differently (Some thoughts from tracking "lessons learned" for a year). Here I want to tell you about a corresponding idea, tracking the decisions you make. The connection? Writing what you decide, including the reasons and expected outcome, strengthens the process of learning, and should ultimately teach you something about yourself.

This idea is expressed elegantly in a terrific 1997 Inc.com article by Peter Drucker: My Life as a Knowledge Worker. In it he shares seven major experiences he'd learned from his teachers:

Strive for perfection throughout life (even though it would surely elude)...
... and do it "even if only the gods notice."
Study deeply one new subject every three or four years.
Set aside two weeks every summer to review the preceding year's work (things done well, poorly, or not at all).
With new work ask "What do I need to do, now that I have a new assignment, to be effective?"
Keep a decision log and after nine months trace the results back.
Ask yourself what you want to be remembered for, allow that to change, and value making a difference in the lives of people.

From #6 (THE SIXTH EXPERIENCE - Taught by the Jesuits and the Calvinists):

Whenever a Jesuit priest or a Calvinist pastor does anything of significance--making a key decision, for instance--he is expected to write down what results he anticipates. Nine months later he traces back from the actual results to those anticipations. That very soon shows him what he did well and what his strengths are. It also shows him what he has to learn and what habits he has to change. Finally, it shows him what he has no gift for and cannot do well.

Drucker used this method for most of his life, and said it 1) exposed his strengths, 2) indicated areas for improvement, 3) suggested which improvements to make, and 4) highlighted what is not possible to do.

He summarizes:

To know one's strengths, to know how to improve them, and to know what one cannot do--they are the keys to continuous learning.

Wow.

I've been tracking them for the last month or so, and I think it'll be valuable. Like the lessons learned, it helps to defuse difficult or emotional decisions, and changes my attitude about them from fear to curiosity. In other words, makes living more of a lab for experimentation and growth, rather than a dangerous jungle.

I also love the continuous improvement angle. I'm reading a great little book on Kaizen: One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way. I'm especially excited about the implications for my clients adopting the work I do - for some, the "big push" approach either isn't feasible, or doesn't sustain.

I'd like to hear from anyone who's tried this. What did you learn about yourself?

What a difference a framework can make

2007-04-01T09:19:00.000-07:00

I admit it: I love a good mental framework. While partly due to genetic anomalies that drove me toward engineering, computers, and personal productivity, having a good framework is also fundamental to being human. By "framework" I mean what Answers.com calls "A set of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality." To that I'd add the framework needs to be applied by providing processes, practices, and/or tools to adopt it.

This comes up because I'm creating version 2.0 of my full-day workshop in preparation for summer seminars (including one for NASA employees at the Kennedy Space Center - woo hoo!) and as usual I was having a terrible time facing the task. I've committed to moving to PowerPoint for many good reasons (especially better connection with the audience and more effective adoption of the ideas), but I think putting together a good one is hard. This leads to my procrastinating on the preparation, avoiding it until the last few weeks and making the process extremely unpleasant. This is not an example of "enjoying the ride" [1].

Thankfully, Ricky Spears recommended Cliff Atkinson's book Beyond Bullet Points: Using Microsoft PowerPoint to Create Presentations That Inform, Motivate, and Inspire. Wow. I've heard mixed opinions about the book from people I greatly admire, but I found that so far Atkinson's framework (based on presentation = story) really resonates. It's also given me a whack on the head by realizing that my prior lack of a framework (including a process) has been a major problem.

And that's one huge benefit of a framework: Without one, I felt lost. Yes, structure brings constraint, but it can also provide freedom to give your creativity an outlet. In the case of my workshop, it's also making me face the hard questions around goals, clarifying the essential ideas, and coming up with a compelling story and theme. (All the while developing my own brand and identity.) As a result, the process is feeling more fun, and is giving me some solid anti-procrastination direction.

Some of the other frameworks I've found helpful:

Programming: Extreme Programming. See chromatic's Extreme Programming Pocket Guide and Productivity for Programmers, #2: Efficient vs. Effective
Self-management: Getting Things Done
Establishing rapport: See How to Make People Like You in 90 Seconds or Less and A review of "How to make people like you in 90 seconds or less"
Reading: See Steve Leveen's book The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life and A reading workflow based on Leveen's "Little Guide"

We'll see how it works out for my presentation, but what about you? What frameworks gave you an "aha!" and how did they help? How'd you find out about them? And did they turn you into a saint, prophet, or evangelist?

References

[1] A maxim from Improv Wisdom: Don't Prepare, Just Show Up (see Great time management ideas from the world of improv wisdom for more).

A reading workflow based on Leveen's "Little Guide"

2007-03-25T10:09:00.000-07:00

The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests. -- Oliver Wendell Holmes

Many of my subscribers are active readers and book lovers. My post How to read a lot of books in a short time is my most popular, and I've even had the pleasure of receiving surprise copies in the mail! Along those lines, Steve Leveen's book The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life is a great meta book, and one of those "I have to give copies to friends" works that leaves a lasting impact.

There's a lot to the diminutive tome, but here I'd like to share his suggested workfow, an example of a specialized system [1] (unlike Getting Things Done, which is a general one).

Overall Flow

Here's the staging Leveen recommends (a "shelf flow," if you will [2]). The basic idea is repeated reviews over time (including during reading and after) help strengthen recall. (Note: "*" indicates my additions.)

Pre-candidates list* (desired books, i.e., your wish list)
Candidates library (acquired books - a Someday/Maybe list)
Currently reading stack
- Castaways*
Après reading 1 shelf
Après reading 2 shelf
Après reading 3 shelf
Living library

Briefly, you have three concurrent phases happening: Collecting (managing your pre-candidates list, and buying from it - steps 1 & 2 above), Reading ("activating" one or more of your candidates - step 3), and Reviewing (steps 4-6). Finally, you continue to return to your living library over time, re-reading favorites, or using it for reference or inspiration (step 7). Of course if the book doesn't pass the 50 page test (see ), it gets rejected as a castaway [3].

In addition to these phases, Leveen suggests keeping a reader's journal or annotated bookography [4], which I've generalized to include tracking your candidates (including who recommended each one (and why), the books you've read (just the ones you're really glad you read), and your notes from them. (He recommends writing in the book itself, but I prefer a voice-dictation-to-electronic-storage model. I use a simple text file, but a wiki or something like stikkit would work as well.)

I think most stages are straightforward, but let's look a bit more carefully at reading (step 3) and the Après reading shelves.

Reading

Leveen has us approach reading with two things in mind. First, read actively: Ask questions of yourself and the author. Engage in a dialog by asking:

Why am I going to read now?
What do I want to get out of it?

(For more see the SQ3R method - Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review. I like the Mind Tools summary.)

Second, he has us read the book at a high level (skimming), and gradually come in closer, i.e., starting with superficial reading then zooming into analytical reading.

The stages:

First tour: In this cursory inventory you preview the book by asking questions about the author, her background, the index, table of contents, and bibliography. Spend a few minutes looking at the overall book and thinking about what that means - what you know about the subject, what you expect to learn. This stage should only take a few minutes.
Second tour: Read the front and back matter, think about intended audience, scan the major index headings, and look at reprint/revise info.
Third tour: Read a few introductory and concluding paragraphs from each chapter, where Leveen says most writers sum up their major points. This allows you to create a customized outline in your head, and to better target where the book's meaning lies for you (often the real meat of the book is somewhere in the center).
Finally: Fully read the book. This may be the entire work, or just the parts that looked useful to you from previous scans. Importantly, don't be afraid to give up on the book. Leveen reminds us there are so many other great books awaiting, so why spend time on ones that don't speak to us?

Note: You should pause between each stage to reflect on what you learned, and to sharpen your focus/questions. Note-taking is highly recommended.

Après Reading Shelves

I'd not seen the term après before (my education's been very technical up to this point), but basically it means stages of review after you've read a book. Leveen says this is important - it's where we cement our understanding and make the ideas relevant (and applied) to our lives. He recommends three shelves:

This shelf holds books that you've just finished reading and awaiting your first review. Note: They should only sit there a few days before you review them.
The second shelf is for second-round reviews (they should sit maybe a week or so).
The third shelf is for six-month or later reviews.

After these stages, your books go into your living library.

My Status and Comments

Right now I have:

Pre-candidates: about 500 (they're here, FYI).
Candidates: about 80.
Après: haven't set it up yet!
Living library: about 50.

Applying Leveen's workflow takes discipline, as does keeping up with reading. In my case, I read while exercising in the morning, which gives me a guaranteed 1/2 hour a day on either books or articles. However, my flow is slowed down when it comes time to notes processing. And I've not tried the review at all, except when (like here) I blog about a book, or include ideas from it in related posts.

I'll wrap up with this wonderful notion from Leveen: "Instead set out to always being able to answer yes to the following simple question: Are you reading something great right now?)"

So how do you manage your reading workflow? Do you use Leveen's ideas? Any tips or tricks you'd like to share?

References

[1] Another typical one is financial flow - many clients already have a working system, which I do not mess with.
[2] Adapted from the idea of a "folder flow," which I found in Practice your personal Kaizen over at http:Lifehacker.
[3] The castaways term is from Orange Crate Art: Tools for serious readers?

Resources

The Forum | Steve Leveen in Readerville | June 13-17, 2005
In the same thread Leveen shares some permissions he gives out on a sheet to workshop participants, including permission to...:
- ...make my own reading plan to the extent that feels right to me. (Just as you are free to have no plans, you are also free to develop lists of candidate books and better yet, a growing library of candidates.)
- ...acquire books without the requirement of reading them.
- ...define being well-read as a journey rather than a destination.
- ...love, or not love, any book whatsoever.
- ...read more than one book at a time.
- ...give up on a book and abandon the "clean-your-plate" mentality.
- ...debate, argue with, agree with, and write to an author.
- ...write in my books.
- ...listen to books, knowing that listening is just as good, and sometimes better, than silent reading with my eyes.
- ...share my reading experiences with others.
- ...read a classic, for the first time, much later in life.
- ...improve at reading my whole life long.
- ...linger in a library even if I prefer to buy books.
- ...spend as much on books as I do on other great passions of my life.
- ...make my own reading rules. (Seize your own well-read life as only you can and you will likely be an inspiration to others.)
Leveen's detail on après reading is found here.
Here's someone who has a short bookography on-line.

Report on a little experiment: Daily random entries from my personal log

2007-03-18T07:05:00.000-07:00

I want to share the results of a little experiment I did over the last few months using my My Big-Arse Text File. I've been using this semi-structured text file to track my consulting activities for the past two years, and it contains a mixture of things like:

consulting activities,
networking connections [1],
lessons learned (see Some thoughts from tracking "lessons learned" for a year),
contact information,
idea capture (see Pickle jars, text files, and creative idea capture),
book notes (see How to read a lot of books in a short time),
blog topics,
GTD tips and holes,
interesting news articles and reports,
tips on blogging and writing,
marketing and workshop ideas,
tool tips and how-tos for clients,
...

Having all this information is very useful when I search for something specific, but I wondered whether it'd be helpful to get a random entry emailed to me daily. So I wrote short BASH script that sends me a random entry every night, kind of a mental "blast from the past" in my inbox. The results? After a few months of these, I have to say the results have been mixed, mostly negative.

What I liked about it: I'd occasionally get something cool I'd forgotten about, like the idea of embedding due date in names of time-sensitive projects (e.g., ending them with "DUE XX-YY"), or an equation from my self-help formuarly (e.g., Brian Tracy's success attitude formula: SA = D + D * PA + P [desire, direction, proper action, persistence]).

However, it's clear that selecting random entries isn't principled enough. What would be more useful is something that fits into a structure that's congruent with my goals/systems. Three important ones come to mind:

book notes (so I can review the big idea, go deeper, and apply it to my life),
lessons (so I can actually learn from them by changing behavior), and
client/prospect contacts (so I can reconnect and be thinking of how I can help them).

(For the latter I strongly suspect I should be using a specialized tool - any recommendations?)

Final conclusion: Good idea, didn't work out, but gave me ideas for the next step.

I still pine for an integrated program that easily supports reminding like this, with structured fields (e.g., "this is a book review", "this was a client contact", etc.) yet has the flexibility to capture unstructured text, combined with the ability to link anything together, regardless of type (see Where's the IDE (Integrated Development Environment) for personal information?). I've looked at a number of them [2], but amazingly my text file plus simple macros remains a sweet spot for simplicity, portability, and power.

As always, your suggestions and comments are always welcome.

References

[1] Two great books related to networking are Never Eat Alone and Love Is the Killer App. Additionally you might enjoy these posts on the topic:
- A geek "gets" networking: The strange magic of connecting with others
- A simple and useful networking gift that anyone can give for free
- My Business Networking Advice article is up, FYI
- Networking surprises - Some recent unexpected (but successful) outcomes
- The most important networking question (although I'm changing my mind on that - the most important one might be "Who are you?" or "How can I help you?")
- On the goal of meeting three new people a week - A ten week retrospective
[2] E.g., Omea, Jot, and Dabble DB.