That got me to thinking…

My family has learned that some of the most important things I deal with go in my Circa.  Many times, I will be working in my “book”, and one of my two children will sit next to me and ask what I am reading or writing. They know that is an important “book” to me, and that to some degree, I would be lost without it.

Most of the items I enter are work or schedule related. But sometimes I can allow myself to lose touch with my areas of focus…or as Stephen Covey calls them…roles.

Sometimes, we tend to forget that there are a lot of things we need to capture in our systems outside of work and career.

I advocate keeping everything, for all of our areas for focus, in one system as much as possible.  My Circa is the hub of my system. That being said, it is important to properly receive input from all of our areas of focus to 1) keep our system complete, and 2) maintain balance in our approach to all we do. I also believe that it is best to think through our weekly reviews with our areas of focus in mind. We should do at least one thing each week to push forward something important in every area of focus in our lives.

Sometimes, it may even need to be somewhat symbolic to take note of some input from a loved one. Truth is, my family knows that if it is important to me, it goes down in my book. So if it is important to them, and they see me write it in my Circa, it makes them feel important, because they can see that it is important to me as well.

Nothing like walking in on Monday morning with that feeling of dread knowing that your inbox will be full.  You walk in to see that blinking light flashing on your phone. Mondays are not typically good to begin with…for most of us.  This, however, rivals poking yourself in the eye with a pencil.

I call it the “rattlesnake in the inbox” syndrome. That dread that one almost inevitably has when they return from a vacation. Some type A personalities would even say that it is not worth it to take a vacation. In their minds, by the time you wade through “the pile”, all positive affects of a vacation have been nullified.

I would not go that far, but…there needs to be an order to the process of wading through “the pile”. You need to have a plan.

There is not a silver bullet process for this. My approach to dealing with the accumulation during my much needed break is more dictated by 1) my work style and 2) my work environment. Knowing those two things helps me manage “the day after”.

For example, I typically start with email. My voicemail will obviously have fewer messages, but most who have left me a voicemail will have already sent a memo or will subsequently send one. So I will knock out most of these issues in my email inbox before I venture into voicemail land.

In my email, I sort by sender. This allows me to start my initial cut of memos to read. First, I will eliminate almost all emails sent to distribution lists first. You know…corporate propaganda. There may be a handful of memos in this category worth reading. From my experience, however, most corporate propaganda makes zero difference in how you do your day-to-day job. Second, I pick out memos from my first line customers. Not playing favorites here, but I know who I am most likely to receive actions from. I check them first. Then I use the rules of collection to deal with them. Refer to David Allen’s GTD work flow diagram.

Once I have done this, most of what remains is either reading or reference material.

Then I start doing other inboxes…voicemail…physical inbox, etc.

Your needs are most likely different since work environments are as varied as flavors of ice cream…oh…that makes me hungry. :).

But, this is how I handle “the day after”.

I would love to hear your approach to this typically tense scenario.

How does your corporate environment or small business dictate recovery from a vacation?

How do you guys that work from home handle these things?

Please share your ideas in the comments.

This is true on several levels. Sometimes we get so wrapped up in life that we lose a grip on what is important. Or on a specific project, we can get wrapped around it so much that we fail to see that we may be taking the wrong approach completely.

Next week, I will be on vacation. I plan to spend some of that time allowing myself to get back into the stratosphere. It is not that I feel I have completely lost my way. But, we all need to do this from time to time…allow ourselves to get a good overview of where we are, and where we want to be. If we do a weekly review, we do this on some level every week. However, once in a while, it is necessary to get into the thin, rare air, and answer some basic questions…

1. What is true…right now?
2. What do I want to be true?
3. If there is a disconnect between the two, how to I plan to resolve it?
4. Am I focusing my time, attention and effort on what I truly value?

This may involve the use of a mission statement. Sometimes, I find that I need to adjust some of my goals. It is more likely, though, that I need to make adjustments to my approach to those goals.

If you have a spouse and/or family, you may want to do this for yourself, and then do the same thing on a household level. If you can agree together on the direction your family needs to be moving in, it can create some great unity at home. Agreement at home is certainly a desirable by-product.

I choose to do this while on vacation because a change of scenery sometimes helps me to clear my head, and think with less resistance from the grind. I have more time to dream, and also discuss those thoughts with my lovely and talented wife. A lot of times she gives me great input, and sometimes…she has a great way of helping fine tune my/our goals. As I mentioned above, family support is vital to achieving your goals if you are in a family situation.

Do you take time to check and see if you are climbing the right tree?

If so, how do you approach it?

Unfortunately, there is no magic elixir that we can take that helps us stay motivated to be present and productive. Sometimes a life event motivates us, and can keep us going for some time. But what about when the pressure is not on? What happens when we are simply doing whatever it is we do? There is no one set of rules that will apply to everyone. There are both physical and mental aspects of being motivated. Here are some that are important to me.

Mental - Manage Thoughts

1. Have your tasks clarified. Nothing will kill your motivation quicker than not having your thoughts clear on what it is you are trying to accomplish in a day. I find it necessary to plan my day the night before if at all possible.

2. Stay positive. Depending on your situation, this can be difficult at times. But keeping a good attitude, and proper perspective can really go a long way to keeping us moving.

3. Keep your goals in mind. Let those things that matter most to you keep you going. Think on them, and remember what is what you are working for.

Physical - Manage Energy

1. Get plenty of rest. I find this one difficult, but the truth is that we should not require coffee to make it in the morning. Now I am not discouraging drinking coffee. I drink coffee with the best of them. But getting rest is vital to managing our energy.

2. Exercise. Wanna shot of energy to start the morning? Get your sweat on to get your blood flowing.

3. Eat smart. Not eating smart can kill motivation…especially after lunch. lunch can sometimes turn into a social time. Nothing wrong with that. But do not eat too heavily…or the eyes will start to get heavy as well.

These are important to me.

What do you do to help manage your motivation?

I am not here today to talk about note taking skills. That is a post for another day (let me make a note of that). I want to talk about how we take those notes, and turn them into action, when necessary. Remember, it is not about the system. It is about how we accomplish things and get to done.

Capture is important, I talked about this last week in a note about ubiquitous capture. Those notes that we take do not mean a thing, however, unless there is a subsequent action in which we process those notes in order to turn them into projects, reference material, or next actions. David Allen, in his newest book, Making It All Work, talks about a slight change in terminology regarding this processing phase. Really what we are trying to do when we review our notes is to find meaning from them…not in terms of the meaning of life or anything big and amorphous, but in terms of what it means to us. How does this information affect us? Does it require a new action? Is this something we need to keep for future reference?

If you attend meetings that are being managed by people who are good at conducting meetings and understand their purpose, this is quite easy. Any actions that result from the meeting should be outlined, and assigned (but again…a topic for another day). But this is not always the case. So it becomes necessary to review notes in a little more depth. In any event, those notes need to be reviewed, and actions scheduled. I recommend that we make an action to review those notes. For example, when my meetings ended yesterday afternoon, I placed an action in my list for today to “Review notes from…”. This way it will force me to take some time to process those notes to turn any action items into real actions next week.

Whether we take bullet point notes, attempt to write down everything we hear, or simply use a mind map, it is just as important to draw meaning from those notes, and turn them into reference items, projects, or next actions. Capture…then process.

1 Have a Task List for the Day –

Rather than working from your entire task list every day, adopt Covey’s Most Important Task (MIT) concept. Choose 2-3 items from your list that you want to accomplish that day, and then work on them at the first of each day without taking a break from them.

2 Prioritize Tasks –

I have never been one to use priorities for my individual list items. Everything on your list needs to get done. I have just moved to using MITs for those tasks that I really want to complete each day. There are many names for it. BBP friend, Patrick Rhone, calls it his Today card. Essentially, it is the short list of 2-3 items that are broken out from the main list, usually onto a 3×5 card so that you are reminded what you want to be focused on at the first of the day.

3 Place More Emphasis on Finishing Tasks Rather that Starting New Ones –

This really should always be your goal. Get the tasks on your list done as soon as possible. Just realize that there are times when you cannot control when new tasks are added to your list. I do not know of many folks that actively go out and seek new items to add to their lists.

4 Know the Strongest Times of Your Work Day –

This one is pretty self-explanatory. I am definitely NOT a morning person (you can ask my wife about that one). I seem to get my best work done after lunch and then late at night (case in point, I am writing this post at 11:00pm at night.) You should figure out when you are most productive and work in those MITs during that time, while filling your ‘unproductive’ time of the day with the more mundane tasks on your list.

5 Give Yourself Some Flexibility –

You do not need to schedule every waking hour of every day will quickly lead to days full of ‘unproductiveness’ (I think that I am coining a new word.) Open up your schedule a little and take some time to get out of your office, away from your computer and walk outside to do some thinking.

6 Have a Specified Ending Time for Work –

This is a little harder for the ever growing crop of knowledge workers that are out there. Especially with the proliferation of smartphones, like the Blackberries and iPhones that seem to be everywhere. Most of us usually close down around the 5 o’clock hour, but we may not stop working. Start by scheduling non-work activities into your day so that you do not get overwhelmed by your 8-to-5 work.

7 Bulk Process –

This is solved by storing your lists with contexts, keeping similar items bundled together so that you can effectively complete items on your lists. That way you are not having to search your entire list for things to work on when you are at your computer, or in a car/train/ferry. When done correctly, you can more effectively scan your list for applicable items to work on.

8 Track Your Time –

This is one component that I have not thought a lot about. It does make sense for the freelancing professional since they are paid by how much time they work on a particular project. It makes sense even for us salaried types. See how much you spend your time to see where you can make improvements. Maybe you only need to spend 15 minutes surfing the Net, instead of the usual 45-60 minutes that you do it now.

9 Recognize Your Distractions –

I would name this one ‘Minimize’ or ‘Eliminate’ your distractions. I am in support so it is unrealistic for me to go completely “off the grid”…EVER! When I do need to focus a little more on my work at my desk then I usually turn off some of the notifications that I have running in IM and twitter.

10 Have Realistic Expectations –

This one is hard for me. My department consists of me, myself and I. It is really hard for me to tell any of my users ‘no’. One of my struggles is trying to find the time to work on the network expansion project while writing some much needed policies and making sure that the 120+ computers are running smoothly.

11 Plan Your Next Day at the End of Each –

This is a really great way to wind down your day, see what was accomplished (hopefully some of your MITs) and look at the next day to see what you might be able to accomplish. This also jumpstarts the next day since you do not have plan out what you are going to work on for the day.

12 Get Enough Sleep the Night Before / 13 Eat Healthy –

Obviously, these work to improve your life overall, so naturally, it will make you more productive. It is a struggle for me to enough sleep. There are many a night (like tonight) that Jason and I are skyping at midnight, and we usually both hit the kitchen for a late night snack (usually ice cream!).

14 Get Fresh Air –

This will always clear out any of the cobwebs that have accumulated in you from all of the work that you are doing. A change of scenery (however brief) always helps me to ‘recharge’ my batteries as well as my brain so that I can fully focus on whatever lies ahead for me during the rest of the day.

15 Work in a Comfortable Environment –

Some of the time, this is totally out off our control. Whether you are in a cubicle farm or in a corner office, explain to your supervisor that if they just make some small changes, they would see immediate results. Always remember to try to get a comfortable chair. That is where you will be spending the better part of 2,000 hours every year.

Thanks to the writers at Vandelay Design Studio for a great list. I think that it can be just as effective for designer types (as the Vandelay folks wrote for) as it can be for non-designers (as I have written.

1. Making It All Work - David Allen: David’s third book promises to be a good one. The selling point of this book is that, in it, Allen answers a lot of questions about the philosophy behind the methods he presents in Getting Things Done.

2. The 4-hour Work Week - Tim Ferriss: Yes, I have been late to get on board with reading this book…mostly because I am somewhat skeptical of it. I am going to catch up on this one and see what the fuss is all about.

3. Why Work Sucks (And How to Fix It) - Cali Ressler & Jody Thompson: This is a book by two Best Buy executives who changed the culture of the workplace in the home office of Best Buy. Working from home, making your own hours…yes…a lot of change took place.

4. The Difference - Jean Chatzky: In these hard financial times, many of us are looking for advice on how to better handle our money. This is my first run at a book looking for such advice.

5. Straw (Finding My Way) - Darryl Strawberry: As a youngster, Darryl Strawberry had what I considered to be one of the sweetest swings in all of baseball. Unfortunately, he is now best remembered for the demons he fought off the field. Darryl has put his life back together now, and is submitting this work to teach young people from his mistakes.

6. Fifty Reasons Why Jesus Came To Die - John Piper: I recently had the privilege of hearing John Piper in person. His personal story is incredible. This year in my personal time with God, I plan to use this book as a tool.

What books are you reading this year?

by Alejandro Hernandez via Flickr

Communication, we can all agree, is pretty important when two party have to deal with each other for just about anything. Today at work, I had to take a support call with one of the BIGGEST network hardware companies in the world. My problem is that one of my building is not able to access the Internet. So this is my 3rd such support call and I am hopeful that we can resolve this problem. On the last call, the Support Engineer said that I needed to have a laptop hooked up in said building so that we can see if we can work our way back to on the network. DONE…no problem, took a laptop there this morning and hooked it up to the network.

Call time comes:

Support Engineer asks me if I can “gets some traffic moving across the line from the laptop” (that is fancy talk for start trying to access the Internet and let me see where the bits are going).

Me: Ummm…that laptop is about 5 miles away and sitting in a closet.

Support Engineer: Can you get a member of your team to try to use the machine?

Me: Ummm…my department consists of just me.

Support Engineer: Well, I don’t know how we can diagnose the problem if there is no traffic moving across the line. Can you get someone in the building to go and help you out?

Me: Ummm…that is our Public Works building. There are not that many computer savvy folks there. (And I sure don’t want them anywhere near the phone/network system.)

Support Engineer: Well, you need to come up with a way for us to be able to access the computer remotely while being attached to the network (that doesn’t have Internet access).

Me: Ok, I will email you next week when I have figured all of that out. HANG UP

I was SO frustrated with this company for not giving me all of the information that I needed for our call today. If I had known everything that I need to do to make the call successful today, I would have made arrangements to have someone down there so that we could have brought this problem to a resolution.I am venting to Jason over IM about the situation when he says (essentially) “Sounds like you have your post…The Importance of Timely Communication.”

WOW…that is so true. If I had all of the facts (that apparently the Support Engineer was thinking), I could have taken the necessary steps to better our chances of resolution of this problem. I started thinking about timely communication and how it affects two parties interactions with one another.

The most obvious result of timely communication is the time it take to resolve the situation between the two parties. In my case, it is a pretty major network outage in my enterprise (well, it will be major when I move everyone onto it.) If the Engineer had supplied me with enough information as to the requirements for the next round of testing for our call, our chances of fixing the problem would have increased. Timely communication enhances the chance of successful resolution of your situation. This in turn leads to less wasted time for either party. It took over an hour today with setting up for the call, going to another building to hook up, and then the 20 minutes that the call lasted, and now that time was totally wasted.

Another benefit of timely communications is that it can lessen the frustration when failures occur. I tend not to be as frustrated when something goes south, if me and the other party have thoroughly discussed everything that could happen. Being in Information Technology, this tends to happen a LOT, especially when I am trying to learn a new skill, like I am with my current situation. When there is honest and open discussions prior to the events that you are collaborating on, and then it fails, you tend to feel that you did all that you could and that you must have missed something between the two of you. I had no such feelings like that today. I was mad that I was not told everything that was needed to try to resolve my problems.

Another benefit to good communication is that it leads to more trust between the parties. Each party does not have to think that they are not being kept in the dark with information that might be helpful. If each party is open with information, then that ensures that they are both vested in the success of their joint venture. Each party wants their venture to succeed and they are going to do their best to make sure that it does succeed.

The moral of today’s story is…please don’t hold anything back in your dealings with others. Be open and honest in your communications and take a vested interest in succeeding in whatever collaboration that you are doing with another party. You will feel the joy at the successful outcome, and that will make you a better collaborator for the future.

It got me to thinking about the use of a journal, and how therapeutic it can be.

There are a couple of ways to use journals that I find to be very beneficial for keeping my mind clear, and help me maintain perspective.

First, I believe that is a great idea to keep a journal for work. The means you keep track of things that happen during the day. This type of journal serves two purposes. It, first, helps us keep track of things that happened in a way that allows us to capture all the details at that moment and not lose any of the emotion that resulted from the event. This becomes useful in our review process as we get to look back at the events that shaped our week at work. We can then intentionally plan to learn from those events and make adjustments to our approach and perspective as we enter the next week. If you work in an office environment, this type of journal may also serve as a tool to…cover one’s backside when necessary. There…I said it.

This type of journaling can also be of use for specific personal activities that we see as a challenge and want to track progress on.

Most people who do this type of journaling use an electronic tool on their computer. It could be a simple word processor or text editor. A note program like Evernote works just as well.

Second, I think it is vital that we to make time to be reflective. This is something we want to do to maintain perspective regarding the “big picture”. Reflective journaling can be especially therapeutic in difficult times. However, I find that doing it consistently is the key to the maximum effect in terms of maintaining mental and spiritual peace.

Personally, I prefer to do this type of writing just before retiring for the evening. At my house, it is late, and all of my other family members are in bed. But I recommend the television being off, and the lights being low, and if you must have music, make it something soothing without vocals…though I prefer silence in those kinds of moments. If done with proper environment and reflection, journaling can also help you rest better afterward.

As you may imagine, I am very partial to pen and paper. I use a fountain pen (always blue ink for me), and a reporter styled lined Moleskine. As I see it, if you are going to do this, you may as well savor it.

So what do you do with the fruits of this reflective time? Personally, I often look back at it in a review in order to relive some moments, or learn from them. The purpose as I see it, is to record not only for posterity, but for ourselves…to reflect…to learn…to improve our approach to life.

Someone at the table mentions something that brings to your memory an action that had slipped your mind.

Quick…what are you going to do?

Your planner is not at hand. You don’t need your planner at lunch with friends…do you?

Oh but you will be home in a little while…or back at the office. You can remember that thought that long…can’t you?

But things never really work out that way do they? If you are like me, you will get back the office, and next thing you know, an email or voice mail has derailed your afternoon and…and…What was it I was trying to remember?

One of the most important aspects of productivity is not letting thoughts slip away. Thoughts and ideas are much like opportunities. They come with no notice, and no respect for when you are ready for them. That is because our minds are good at coming up with ideas, but they are generally terrible at storing them. Typically when a thought comes to mind, we can remember it well until some other unrelated thought comes in and takes over. Later, when the time arrives when you planned to write it down…you might just have no idea what you supposed to write down. Frustrating, eh?

The important thing is that we seize thoughts as they come to mind. This means that we should almost always have some means of recording those things we need to remember as they manifest themselves.

We can do this in many ways. For the more technologically advanced among us, this may take the form of a note in a BlackBerry, or the Notes app on an iPhone. You can send yourself a voice mail. Some like to use a tool like Jott.

I have now fully transitioned to a Lo-fi system. So I am more into using pen and paper. I personally keep a little notetaker wallet in my back pocket, armed with removable 3 X 5 cards. I keep a Pilot G2 Mini in my front pocket. It is only 4″ long and writes as smooth as silk.

Tools of the trade aside, it is very important to capture thoughts as they take place. The very action of trying to remember something for any period of time over a few minutes creates stress. And those who know me will tell you…I am all about reducing unnecessary stress. Get those thoughts out of your head and into something you can always look back at later for processing.

David Allen has always said that we should never have the same thought twice. The point he is making is that we need to be prepared to treat thoughts as if they were an opportunities. Capturing those thoughts as they occur is essential to reducing stress, and making sure that we do not allow important things to fall through the cracks. Clearing your head can be the most important part of ensuring that whatever you need to focus on, you are always fully present, and not distracted by some thought that is holding your mind hostage.

Get it out of your head.