I love timers. This one (click the image above) is for a “Scientific 7-Minute Workout” described in the New York Times, counting down the intervals while showing you when to rest and when to do a particular exercise. The timer itself was created by Lindsay Silver and posted to Hacker News; its lineage is summarized by LifeHacker. I thought it was pretty cool, and I just like timers; haven’t tried the actual exercise yet :-) Hat tip to Eric Baumgartner for posting it on his Facebook page!

It occurred to me that I’m craving structure, and at the same time I don’t want structure either. How can this be? When in doubt, get a knife and cut the thing open to see what’s there, I say! Musings follow.

Structure I Want

What’s great about structure? In the context of information, it helps you absorb information more quickly. It’s easier to search information that has been well-structured too. Well-structured information is a pleasure to use while it reinforces the principles of the field of expertise that it documents. I love that kind of structure.

Structure is also great when you don’t want to have to make decisions. There’s that idea of decision fatigue, which is the deteriorating quality of our ability to engage in it after a long string of decisions. A great structure, in this sense, is a known methodology that you trust, with clear milestone markers, rules, and signs. It’s like getting on an eight-lane superhighway to ProductivityLand. It’s what helps a team be a team. Powerful stuff, when it’s done right.

Structure I Hate

Structure is not so great when you want to go exploring, or if you feel the crying need to have the choice of exploring. That’s me, most of the time. I hate structure that doesn’t make sense to me, is bound in some kind of dogmatic tradition. When I am forced to adhere to it, I automatically get antsy. I almost always choose freedom, if I have the choice. I am not so much a team player.

There’s a few problems with giving-in to the urge for freedom:

• First, not trying a structure just because it seems binding is pretty short-sighted. When I’m learning something, I tend to want to start from a great pool of structured information instead of doing a drill from rote. Both approaches are a form of structure, and I naturally prefer the first kind. However, I’m learning to appreciate drills because they are like amusement park rides. The actual ride operators who are in charge of administering the ride may not truly understand the underlying principles that make it work (ahem, bad teachers of my youth), but if I focus on my EXPERIENCE and use that as the basis for future exploration, that works. I learned it too late to be great at it in school, blaming bad instructional materials and teachers without “true insight”. I could have fixed that if I’d focused on building the “bridging knowledge” between their structured teaching methodology and my structured understanding, instead of just being irritated all the time. So…trying structure is something I’m trying to be better at. Last night I went to a Chinese Language meetup and we did some drills. I found them immensely more useful with my improved attitude, rather than wishing for a comprehensive guide to learning Chinese.

• Secondly, freedom is fatiguing. If you get off that superhighway to ProductivityLand because you hate its conformist leanings, then you’re going to have to build your own road. It’s way slower, tiring, and it may not even work out. I’d guess it’s at least 10 times slower, if not 100 times. The point is: it’s slow, unless you already have hooked yourself up with an alternate mode of transportation like a helicopter. I think this is the allure of The New Tool as a shortcut to the stars. The New Tool is even more alluring when the superhighway I described is really more like a goat path, or appears only marginally better than making your own road.

Building Structure for Tasks

As I mentioned earlier, I’m doing a “continuity journal” as my first-thing-of-the-day (FTotD). The reason why I’m starting with continuity is because I’m not quite sure exactly what I should be doing. So, my first piece of structure as an anchoring event is the morning (or whenever I wake up) writing. I want to be more certain than I’m balancing the right combination of things that ensure that multiple projects are moving forward. This is structure as load-bearing certainty, which gives me more faith in my subsequent actions. Having that trust is important, otherwise I might not move at all.

It takes about 15 minutes to write it up, because that’s the amount of time I allow. Here’s today’s morning blip if you’re curious:

# UPDATE AND SAVE AS NEW FILE EVERY DAY
# this is a daily planning sheet to update
# don't keep history, but rewrite the top paragraph, move useful stuff down
# write declaratively, not bloggily

QT: Email [PERSON1] about blog setup
MT: Review [ORGANIZATION] Materials and Setup Project Area
HBT: Staples Shopping
DT: Bills

Reviewing yesterday's writing in 5-14-DAILY PLAN:

Goals for the Week are the same: 

* practice 15 minute focus
* go to gym
* work on [PROJECT1]
* improve the home website (needs definition)
* monitor my resistances (ongoing)

I had an idea this morning about a very simple google-like interface for "information at my fingertips", like EverNote in conception but much simpler in UI. (felt resistance in the complexity of ensuring it as a software as service, a little resistance too in how to build it, but not much)

**Structure Mole:** I like some structure, but not others. I like structure so I can remember what I need to remember, or find what I need to find, when I need it. However, I don't like structure that tells me when and what to do. Structure is also useful as a set of principles, methods, and tangible rewards when I am working completely on battery power (self motivation) versus being plugged into a human energy network (external motivation) -- Blog Post!

SPECIFICS FOR TODAY
BLOG POST - About this! 

[PROJECT1] - There's [TASK1] (resistance in the annoyance at having to dig through and modify someone else's code to do something that I find a bit boring that isn't related to my own interests. However, I think I can enjoy the hunt, and just look at it as an opportunity to look at code and learn that way. The desire for structured information is also there, but unlikey because all sources suck

SITE - I want to get last blog listing into the home page. A surge of resistance about how to do that and the possible complications in making it work, but nothing life threatening, so it was put down. 

BILLS - Should do them as a break, also look at finances. Felt surge of resistance about how long this will take, but killed it with a 15M timeblock.

STAPLES - go before GYM

GYM - Sometime around 2PM I'd like to go
    - Also need TRASH BAGS and maybe TOMATOES

[ORGANIZATION] - Organize Materials (less resistance now that I know what I want to do)
[ORGANIZATION] - Leave at 6:50P

While writing this, I was referring to yesterday’s notes to make sure I carried-on what I was thinking about yesterday. Yesterday was an unproductive day, so that was on my mind to fix for today by being specific. Specificity is the great bugaboo of planning, and I guess you could call it part of the structuring exercise. Along with certainty of purpose, specificity of the deliverable is a load-bearing part of the structure. Everything else is just hand-waving…”oh, it should be beautiful” and “wouldn’t it be nice if” talk is just noise that came out of a mouth or butt until it is married with purpose and concrete deliverable. If you can’t ultimately experience it in person, it doesn’t exist. Defining these qualities creates the structure that makes a task doable.

In the above blip, my specifics are to deliver a specific code feature in [PROJECT1] and SITE. The rest of the tasks are not so well-defined, so they probably have less of a chance of getting done. We’ll see.

Structuring Time

When I decided to do my 15M continuity journal as the FTotD, I was trying to establish a mental context for myself to give my day meaning and purpose. You could say it is a restatement of the following:

I’m doing X because I want Y because I believe it will help move toward Z and result in happiness in the long term, despite the amount of short-term pain, which are tasks T1 – T3.

The first 15M of the day is also an anchor of time, from which I could derive an entire schedule. This is something I haven’t quite figured out yet. I like the idea of a schedule, because I have this dream-like desire to:

• know exactly what to do at any given moment
• be productive on a schedule
• not have to think so much about what I do
• synchronize with the rest of humanity’s activity schedule

In reality? None of this is possible in my line of work unless I redefine what productivity is. And that might be a useful exercise. Currently, I define productivity as producing finished products or features. I like it when tasks are DONE and when I can SEE what I’ve made. However, I could probably define productivity as just working on a project by putting time into it. I am super-impatient, though, and this doesn’t come naturally to me, but I could see that a change my attitude would make a schedule possible. Perhaps if I hadn’t worked as a manager in a previous life, I could let-go this constant pressure-desire to have things DONE and worrying when they are NOT. Is the schedule doomed? Will the company fail? Is my lack of total omniscience as demanded by the executives screwing up the project in some way I can’t see? I don’t miss those feelings one bit, but they may have over-sensitized me such that I am not using useful processes (like the extended time-blocking mindset) in my day-to-day approach to work.

Anyway, I’m not sure if structured time is for me. As a single guy and a solo practitioner without local peers, the energy I expend in trying to maintain an arbitrary schedule would seem to exceed the benefit. But perhaps I am missing the point.

Here’s a rambling story about my Sunday that culminates in mysterious diagram I’ll call Productivity Time and Space. It sprang from a note I scribbled down early: “as one approaches a task near the do-ability event horizon, resistance-over-time increases exponentially”. Or something…I wouldn’t take it too seriously :)

The Lost Morning

I was trying to get out of bed, and I kept falling asleep. One reason is I haven’t slept in a bed for months, and I think the novelty of plush comfort conspired with low blood sugar to entrap me well past noon. As I walked to the bathroom, a handful of possible projects for the day flitted across my mindscape, distracting me with the beauty of possibility. And before the urge to act on them could ripen fully into action, they fled too far away to catch without effort on my part. I automatically consoled myself with knowing thoughts of what might have been more difficult to act on; many beautiful ideas are ultimately pointless in the long run, right?

Of course, I was lying to myself. But I had to go to the bathroom.

After my shower, I went downstairs. In the span of the next 15 seconds, I noted that the house had already begun to get a little unkempt after Dad and his foster son had left. The floor needed vacuuming. The side table was piled high with clutter. Even the dining room table, which had been miraculously clean for two weeks, had started to develop a rich layer of junk mail and unwashed cups. I was pleased to see the new dining room chairs, though this reminded me I had to get the old chairs out of the basement and delivered to my friend Diane, who would hopefully upcycle them into something cool and offset my carbon footprint. I was now up to seven possible things to do.

This collecting of “things to do” continued unabated for the next 15 minutes until it filled all my mental capacity. Every one of them was doable, but none of them was easily doable. Or were they? Most of them required some effort of planning or physical exertion. Some of them required a bit of thinking on my part, which meant I needed to understand what the actual problem was. I knew from experience that they were all doable, but I felt a lot of “blah” inside. None of the productive choices I had triggered a sense of delight or anticipation the way that a gourmet chocolate cake from Boston or extreme new tool debuting at MakerFaire. And so I turned on my computer and looked at Facebook, then at Wired, then at Polygon, Massively, Cool Tools, Ars Technica, and so on. I read a few interesting articles, jotted down some bookmarks, and then got bored again.

What the hell is wrong with me? Here I was, wasting a perfect sunny day. Why was I not self-motivating? Why did I stop myself from working on something cool?

Fingering the Source of Discontent

First, it was that voice in my head saying that it wasn’t worth it, or it didn’t have the necessary “starting information” (as in, “I don’t know where the broom is”). This voice doesn’t speak words, but it is supremely jaded and doesn’t want to do anything. While this voice, which I’ll name “Stupid Head” for the purposes of this article, doesn’t exactly say that he has no faith in humanity, but I suspect that’s the case. Stupid Head only will get out of bed for rare and interesting things, if there are no other pressing external responsibilities.

Stupid Head is someone I have to live with, unfortunately. I don’t know why I have this voice, because I don’t feel depressed or negative on the macro scale of Human Existence; I have nothing to complain about, and I feel I have control over how I further make positive changes. The main physical challenge is exercise, but I have accepted that it’s necessary and have done the gym routine before and LIKED it. What keeps me from going to the gym is more the feeling that I’m not getting enough done, which is because I’m not starting enough projects. I also increasingly feel that I’m blocked on big creative goals that require a lot of learning. It is here that Stupid Head also makes his presence known, derisively commenting on the poor level of instructional material available. Stupid Head has expectations that the very next step is clearly defined, laid out properly, and has a guaranteed reward. Stupid Head is perfectly content to wait for these conditions, too, before expending any energy.

Stupid Head is probably the same as the Lizard Brain that many others have written about. It’s a kind of fear, I think, that has learned to present itself as strength. It’s fear that has hung around my buddy Mr. Rationality long enough to speak the language. For example, what’s a good way of making fear look reasonable? Ask another question! It’s prudent to know the facts before moving forward, right? My counter argument is whether anyone can know for sure without trying something; if there is no danger of death or permanent injury, isn’t it better to TRY than to sit around speculating, waiting for the answer to present itself?

Ignoring the Stupid Voice

At this point I was in the kitchen, and I decided that I just needed to stop listening to Stupid Head. I shut off my inner monologue and looked at the dish basket. I didn’t want to clear it, as there was no immediate sensual enjoyment from it, but I just quieted my mind and did it. As I cleared it, I encountered other annoyances like a misplaced whisk in the cutlery drawer, the need to repack the food storage containers, a glass that needed rewashing, a utensil that didn’t really have a home in the kitchen…and so on. Rather than give power to the annoyance, I just did it. After it was all done, I’d washed the dishes and cleaned up the kitchen at the same time. And THEN I felt the reward of having accomplished something.

Since planning seems to invoke the services of Stupid Head along with Mr. Rationality, I decided to avoid making a list of things to do. Instead, I just walked around the house and let the tasks swarm around me. I applied fireman-style decision making: quick gut check to see if it could be started in the next 5 seconds, had a likelihood of success with no downsides, and then went for it. I went downstairs to get a shirt, saw a blanket that needed washing in the laundry room, and put it in the laundry. While I was in the basement I smelled the cat box, so I went to change out the litter box. While I was changing the litter, I saw one of the old dining room chairs that I needed to take to Diane, so I dug them all out from the storage room. This required rearranging a lot of boxes to even get them, but I didn’t allow Stupid Head to comment. I got them moved outside the storage room, and at that point decided to leave them there until I found a time to take them out. This only took about 30 minutes total, which I found amazing. If I’d written this down as a to-do list, it would have seen much larger and daunting.

It was at this point that I thought that maybe I was living backwards as far as being a productive human being was concerned. It seemed that tasks just in front of me were unpalatable, but after they were done their status changed to satisfying. I suppose it might be because I tend seek tasks that rewards the senses or my mind immediately; this kind of anticipation I can feel. The feeling of satisfaction at having completed something, though, comes from a different place. Perhaps it’s a failure of my brain to association work with achievement, favoring cleverness over physical labor. Or maybe it’s an inherent distrust I have in anything I can’t verify with my own eyes; projects that are completed in the future are not verifiable, and therefore suspect. My mental model of productivity doesn’t take the emotional drivers into account, at least not systematically.

Breakdown of the Failure Chain

From the above, I can distill the following observations.

• Stupid Head is the voice of fear that has been juiced with rationality.
• Stupid Head has also learned to use my distrust of anything that can not be verified against goals in the future.
• I am motivated by immediate rewards that feed by senses, curiosity, or knowledge base.
• I feel satisfaction at getting things done, but only in hindsight.
• Planning creates resistance, as it triggers Stupid Head’s sensitivity to everything that is not known.
• Resistance builds rapidly at the moment where I could actually be acting.

The post-it note in the photo is a representation of this. You can see these “shockwave lines” that become vertical, which represents myself in the moment. Just ahead of me are a lot of X marks, which represents a negative thought or annoyance. They pile up rapidly. In the far future are the big projects I want to get done, and between them and now are the little projects that make them possible. They are hard to see amongst all the negatives, especially the negatives that are right in front of me building up like a pressure wave. Beyond me are an ordered pool of accomplishments, and the remembered negatives float lazily away. The sketch is based on jet airplanes approaching the sound barrier, and I think the analogy of bursting through resistance fits it well. I want a sonic boom!

Slipping past the resistance barrier today required a few tricks:

• I identified Stupid Head, and then chose to ignore his pointless yammering.
• I disabled planning, and approached my tasks in a Roomba-like wandering way.
• I applied fireman-style decision making, going with the first reasonable action after doing a quick gut-check on doability.
• I didn’t let Stupid Head interrupt me. If I felt any kind of discussion start to form in my head, I shut it down and put my attention into what my hands were doing. The hands became the focus, not the head and its constant desire for excitement.
• After the first task was done, the feeling of accomplishment (a mixture of relief and surprise) helped drive the next task that I stumbled-into.

This might be a good stepping-stone process; it’s not a habit yet, so I’ll want to focus on it. The big challenge is handling larger learning-based projects, those distant goals that require daily concerted effort to bring into reality.

Frank’s article appears after the jump.

GUEST POST BY FRANK MAGNOTTI

I love Dave’s Life Balance Sheet and Emergent Task Planner templates. As an effectiveness coach, I’ve suggested these templates to clients to help them get focused and organized on their work. I made a few tweaks to the template to better suit my needs as well as help perpetuate what I teach. Here are the changes.

1) I changed the top from Tasks to Big Three Primary Projects.

In GTD, Tasks are 15-minute action items, whereas Projects are the big picture behind the tasks (i.e. “search for ‘emergent task planner’ on Google” is a Task, “Create my productivity system” is a Project).

Every week, you choose three of your most important or highest leverage Projects every week and focus on those first and foremost. Then every day, you use the Emergent Task Planner to choose the three most important tasks (MITs) to do that day and write out a rough plan.

For best results, choose a Project that can be done in a week. If you have a bigger project than that, break it up into a smaller Project that can be done in a week.

2) I erased the “Estimated Time” for all Projects.

As humans: we suck at estimating timeframes. The farther down the line we estimate, the worse we are at it (i.e. we may be able to estimate how long that report will take to create today plus or minus 30 minutes, but guesstimate a product development timeline and one ends to have undershot 2-3 months). So I eliminated the Estimated Time part because, frankly, I’m going to be off.

3) I replaced the other tasks for a Quick Plan for how to tackle my Primary Projects.

“Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs.” — Henry Ford

Instead of spreading my focus by adding more projects to the mix, I write out a quick roadmap of how to get from where I am now to accomplishing my Primary Projects.

While this sounds time consuming, it’s a very quick process. Let’s say one of my Primary Projects is to Clean Out The Garage. I’ll imagine myself getting the job done and start listing that I need to:

• Buy a few boxes & shelving units
• Take stuff that’s movable out of the garage
• Shopvac the garage floor
• Assemble shelving units for stuff
• Start moving my stuff back inside, placing everything I deem as clutter in the boxes
• Call the Salvation Army to pick up the boxes

As you can tell, this isn’t a fully comprehensive list of what must be done. However, it gives me a decent enough roadmap to follow so that when it comes time to clean out the garage, I’m there with the above plan of small tasks rather than the huge prospect of “Clean out the garage”. Comparing the two, which plan would you most likely to follow?

4) I added a section called THIS WEEK’S THREE TINY HABITS.

“Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines practiced every day.” — Jim Rohn

If you want sustainable results and/or improvement in your life, you won’t get it by doing a lot of positive tasks one day. Eating an apple a day will keep you healthy. Eating 10 apples one day, then never eating apples after that doesn’t have the same effect.

This section uses the Tiny Habits principle taught by Dr BJ Fogg, the director of the Persuasive Tech Lab in Stanford University. He teaches that in order to create lasting change, we need to make habits EASY to engrain by making the habits themselves easy to do. Tiny Habits have the following format: After I , I will .

An example I’ve used is one Dr Fogg suggests: After I brush my teeth, I will floss one tooth. Flossing one tooth is very easy to do, especially if you take some time to make this habit easier (putting the floss next to your toothbrush instead of in the medicine cabinet, putting the trash bin closer to you so it’s easy to get rid of the floss when you’re done, etc).

This post is about the Life Balance Sheet and not building new habits (this could easily take another post altogether). If you want to learn more, you can take Dr BJ Fogg’s Tiny Habits course for free at http://tinyhabits.com/.

5) I replaced “CONVERSE” for “SUSTAIN”.

I maintained the same concept as David’s in building your client base, following up on work and what’s owed to you, etc. I changed the verbiage to more suit people who don’t regularly deal in sales or marketing and yet need to perform follow-ups, which is basically everyone with a job.

6) I added to both HOME and HEALTH, to HOME/SELF and HEALTH/OTHERS.

I tell my clients to take an hour every day to get better at their soft-skills or what they do (their jobs, their parenting skills, their business skills, etc). I could see Home & Body filling this spot, so I simply added the words. Also, David mentions in his original description of the Life Balance Sheet that Health includes your relationships and family — your relationships’ healths, so to speak. So I’ve included Others to make this clearer.

Breaking it into HOME/SELF and HEALTH/OTHERS also further solidifies David’s idea to have the logical and emotional sides of the asymmetrical grid come together. I feel that writing it out a

You Don’t Need It All

Admittedly, the entire Life Balance sheet has overwhelmed a few of my clients.

“I can barely keep up with my projects, and now you want me to color in boxes as I go?! I don’t have time!”

“This is way too organized/orderly for me. I can barely keep my date book up-to-date, nevermind another weekly organizer…”

“I already use a productivity system to get things done. Is another template really necessary?”

Let me tell you what I think in this regard: The purpose of this sheet is to draw out a quick roadmap of how you want your week to go. You don’t have to use EVERY field or bubble in this template to prosper from it. The main points of this sheet are twofold:

• It helps you focus on just three Primary Projects at a time, so your week isn’t “eaten up” by all the interruptions that are bound to fill your day.

• It reminds you to strive for a balanced life, one week at a time. If you notice you’re working extremely hard at your job, but your health or sleep are suffering for it, just looking at the little robot-shaped pattern within each day will remind you that this balance is important for your long-term growth.

Using this Life Balance Sheet should help you focus every week on what you most wish to accomplish. Over time, you’ll start seeing your Goals and Projects start to come to completion.

Enjoy!

Thanks for sharing your notes with us, Frank!

Rather than emphasize working hard, I made a sign that distilled the essence of working lazy:

The bar on the left is a 24-hour day. It expresses my desire to have mostly unstructured creative time scheduled (my so-called Happy Bubble Time). For must-do tasks, I’ve scheduled a minimum of 15 minutes per task area; the gym gets 30 minutes because that is the minimum time with driving factored-in. I’ve also allowed for 8 hours of sleep.

While the amount of time is very low, I’m figuring that once I get that pre-requisite 15 minutes going, I’m very likely to keep going. The theory is that if I’m engaging projects daily, even for short periods of time, productivity nevertheless ensues.

The trouble with forming new habits, of course, is remembering that you’re trying to form one. Because I want to be reminded that this is my ridiculous, self-centered, and irresponsible goal, I taped it to the side of door so I could see it prominently.

By flying a giant sign in my living room, I am both planting a defiant flag and making it impossible not to see it. Booyah! We’ll see how it goes.

After writing my kickoff post, I wondered what to do next. I started by jumping into email and checking significant mailboxes:

• contacts – This contains emails from people who have written to me via the blog contact form. There are 10 unanswered emails that I haven’t had time or energy to review yet.

• amazon business folder – What sold, and outstanding alerts or complaints. Nothing actionable, though this reminds me that I have a lot to do to make more sales by making better materials, figuring out non-US fulfillment, etc. Blargh.

• client business folder – A combination of automated alerts from an email system I built, and updates to the various project management tools. Nothing actionable, but there are plenty of things for me to do from a Trello list that has a prioritized list of projects to work on when I have time.

• business networking folder – Updates from linkedin and companies that have products that I use. Safe to ignore, but it reminds me of all the things I want to learn and build.

I could answer the emails now and get them out of the way, but I’m looking for something meatier and process-driven to do. In other words, I want my daily big task to be clear and actionable. My gut feeling is that I want a nice optimized list to work from so I know what to do. However, I don’t feel particularly enthusiastic about putting that list together. Partly this is because none of the tasks I’d put on that list will lead to a Big Reward or an Exciting New Opportunity. At least, not yet. Intellectually I know that anything I can produce will, by the very fact that it exists, provide new opportunities if I choose to share it. Sharing sparks ideas and builds bridges for future cooperation. However, this is a promise of an unspecified benefit that is certainly not guaranteed to happen any time soon, plus it requires actual work. Therefore it doesn’t entice the lizard brain into pumping serotonin. “Meh” is my primal reaction.

Creating a nice optimized list, though, is what I need to do. My lizard brain, though, is telling me that all the items on my list are equally unlikely to produce a Big Fat Juicy Reward in the very near future. I’m attempted to trick myself into doing it by engaging my Writing Power: when I write, I tend to solve problems and become engaged by the desire to run an experiment because then I get to see what happens. This blog post is the experiment! I am being productive by procrastinating on the actual work of making that optimized list, a time-honored tradition practices by academics around the world.

Where was I? Oh, that list.

What is Optimum?

The ideal list would come from an easy process that the lizard brain AND the rational brain can agree on. I have plentiful sources of tasks: the trello board is the canonical source of Dave projects, a holy shrine of everything I have done and ever shall do. I am also deluged constantly by my own thoughts that give rise to new ideas, though for the last few weeks I’ve been suppressing them because I have a huge backlog of projects that aren’t getting done. Fortunately, this doesn’t bother me because I no longer allow project backlogs without deadline to bully me into feeling bad.

Which is a good reminder to look at what that ideal optimized list is all about: being more awesome by making things and sharing them with the world. My frustration stems largely from my lack of superpowers to will amazing things into existence, though I know they would (probably) be very cool. I’m very much in the bootstrapping phase of this dream. Step 1 is making enough money through product sales and a handful of related side-projects with paying clients. Step 2 is to use the time save from not working on other people’s projects to forward my own ambitions.

In reality, there are other external commitments that I have that pop up every day, and they must be scheduled in. I need to have my car looked at, book appointments for health, deal with two boards of directors I’m on, do laundry, blah blah blah. You get the idea. Some of these need to be on the list.

I’m not alone in having a giant list of potential projects, lots of chores, and lack of certainty in how to handle it. There’s a natural desire to want to handle it all and handle it efficiently, because the act itself is incredibly uninspiring. And yet, it is on the other side of this fog of un-inspiration and un-certainty that our next opportunities await. What is optimal?

Three practical approaches come to mind:

• Apply discipline, and do everything systematically. This is the way of Getting Things Done. If you were not the type of person who started your homework the moment it was assigned, GTD itself is a kind of mental overhead, and requires external energy and periodic rewards of some kind to maintain. I find it hard to maintain because the tasks I have to do generally are not rewarding or well-defined.

• Timeblock and hope for the best, vigilantly harvesting useful output and converting efficient patterns into principles as they appear. This is what I largely have been doing for my own projects. It’s liberating to assign 15 minutes to a hairy project, and just see what happens. However, it still is an effort. While time blocking frees me from having to do a complicated project breakdown prior to starting the work, it still demands a measure of faith to keep going. It also requires much more flexibility and assessment on the part of the worker, so it is not for everyone.

• Do less by reducing scope to the essentials, and let go of everything else. Or outsource it to trusted partners. If you have a gigantic project list like me, it’s probably because you want to do a lot of things. And you are a control freak who doesn’t trust anyone else to do it well. If you can let go of these impulses, you can get a lot more done because a lot more gets finished. It requires patience and discipline, qualities that I tend to have in short supply unless I am mindful about it. That is what I’m doing now.

Summarizing these approaches, you end up with this:

1. Discipline and systematic engagement of tasks.
2. Dissolving big hairy tasks into manageable slices of time, trusting that the imperfect knowledge you start with will be improved as time goes on.
3. Doing only what really matters at any given time, reducing resource requirements.

As much as it pains me, #1 doesn’t come easily to me. I’m great at analyzing tasks systematically, but I find the execution through systems tedious. This even applies to computer programming, which promises to automate systems so you don’t have to do it yourself anymore. So I’m going to focus on #2 and #3. For that I need a process.

You’ll notice that I haven’t mentioned PLANNING as an approach. That’s because I already tend to overplan (this blog post is a good example of that). I suppose another way of looking at overplanning is to say that I already plan more than adequately. My desire for a new or improved process is to craft a solution that fits my own proclivities: I find routine boring, I have a surplus of interests and ambitions, and I have a tendency to dislike starting tasks that aren’t known or guaranteed to deliver a reward in the near future. So another element of my optimum system is that it has to be one that I can follow with minimum friction. That is shadow directive #4.

The Process of Creating A List

The elements of an optimum process are, so far:

• time blocking
• scope reduction
• built-in rewards

I also know that the following skills are cheap and essential for me to function well:

• writing to think things through
• daily writing
• experimenting to see what happens
• sharing what I do

Aspects I need to avoid:

• feeling trapped – negated by keeping number of tasks and size time commitment low.
• being bored by routine – helped by scheduling more happy bubble time than work time.
• over-committing to other people’s projects – helped by not committing to projects that take more than they give back to me.
• going too long without reward – this is handled through the sharing act, since a blog post is produced and I like sharing what I’ve learned.

The process itself would look something like this:

1. Identify current scope and desired deliverables, and narrow it down to just a few projects.
2. Do some writing about the scope with a 15-minute morning burst, every day.
3. Create experiments to drive the initial exploration stage, writing about critical or interesting developments and sharing them online.
4. Time block in small amounts, 15 minutes at a time, until flow is achieved. Get this done first thing after waking up, before checking email, for at least one of the projects.
5. Find something to deliver and test (another experiment)
6. Assess and deploy what was created.
7. Write about what happened
8. Reassess, and go back to 1 to start the process again.

This is a familiar process, but I haven’t formalized it before. The most challenging item is the first one, identifying my current scope. I know that all of the tasks available to me are useful and will deliver some kind of tangible future benefit. The near-term benefit is getting to write about what I’m learning and sharing it on the blog.

The process for identifying scope is simply choosing three things to work on every day, and not worrying about everything else. That’s incredibly important.

A supporting process is managing idea capture. I’ve had five or six ideas while writing this article, and I have chosen to ignore them. I trust they will come back if they’re really important. Alternatively, I could capture them intro Trello. Whatever I decided, I have to be sure the decision does not create anxiety. This is a mental stance I am developing; a big part of focus is putting everything else that doesn’t matter in the moment out of mind. Only a few tasks are allowed to be critical at one time, and I decide this arbitrarily if life-or-death is not involved.

At this point, there are some administrative things I can do:

• Print out the process and put it somewhere I will see it. Since I’m using my laptop again to work in multiple locations, I need to revisit my traveling office.

• Make a summary sheet for my current scope of tasks. I could put this in my daily planning text file, which is accessible everywhere through DropBox. It’s the easiest thing to do, since that planning file will be reviewed every day since it’s my brain.

• Create accountability for my daily tasks and achievements. Trello is the primary way that I keep track of tasks, and I’ll continue to use it. It’s viewable from desktops and mobile devices. I’ll also post progress notes on the blog. If I’m doing things, I’ll certainly have something to write about.

OK! I have the semblance of an approach. Here are the tools I’ll be using:

• Text Editor for the daily continuity notes I maintain as “first in the morning” activity. The text editor I’m using is Sublime Text. I’m saving the files, which use Markdown syntax.

• DropBox (referral link) is used to synchronize both my daily continuity notes and my working project folders, with the exception of websites and other projects that have source code. For those projects, I’m using Mercurial for source control, as it is a little friendlier than Git while having the advantage of distributed source control. That’s a topic for another day.

• WordPress for my Stream of Consciousness blog, where I will maintain some daily continuity notes to myself. I have WordPress configured as a network, which gives me plenty of space to write without cluttering up the main blog. Writing about what I do is my interim reward…sharing is caring! :-)

• Trello (link) is where I’m keeping all my projects and tasks. It’s essentially a jumble of everything I want to do (and shall do) spread across a couple of boards. The main board is where I keep a priority queue of tasks that need doin’, and the supporting board has a week-by-week archive of what got done.

I feel the need for some kind of tool or form that captures my thinking in some useful structure. Perhaps this is a modification of the Emergent Task Planner merged with the Concrete Goals Tracker, but it’s too early to say. I’ll try getting along with my text editor first.

…

I’ve been writing non-stop about this topic for the past six hours, so I’m going to call it a day and enter Happy Bubble Time. Tomorrow I will formally kick-off the new process.

For the past 5 months, I had been using a combination of online collaboration and big external commitments to prioritize the use of my time. They’re all gone now: Taxes are filed, Dad has come and gone, and the private chatspaces I’ve maintained have closed as mutual interests have lost their alignment with each other.

I took yesterday off to decompress after the 17-day visit from family, though this hadn’t been the plan. At first I struggled to be productive, but eventually I gave into it and used the time to sit in silence and let thoughts come unchallenged. I eventually started writing again in the stream of consciousness blog and came up with a small set of operating principles for myself:

• I write, therefore I am – Writing is the way I unstick myself, but it may also be the foundation of my existence. It seems whenever I don’t write, I feel lost. So I’m going to write more. I had been holding back from writing in the various blogs out of a desire not to flood RSS feeds with miles and miles of text that people didn’t find interesting, but I think I have the blogs separated enough that it shouldn’t be a problem. Plus, this is a good incentive to write a little more sharply.

• Small doses of daily practice + reflection builds momentum – If I’m getting something done, it’s because I’m at least looking at it everyday. Picking one small thing to do is like buying a ticket from a really generous lottery, where every play gives you at least enough reward to pay for your time.

• A little bit of epic effort goes a long way, so don’t overdo it – The 715A ritual, which required from me extreme effort to maintain, lasted for a good 4 months. I would say that the first month was really good, and after that it became more of a shared workspace. I liked the daily contact, as it served as a good substitute for a social workplace, but the early time created imbalance in my natural rhythms. I think from now on, I will engage in epic efforts more mindfully by limiting their time and duration.

• My preferred productivity style has changed – I used to have more of a production planning mindset due to my prior work experience. There is another way, I believe; the “explore learn build share” mantra I adopted last year was, in hindsight, an early manifestation of my mindset changeover.

That last item, the “change in productivity style”, is really important. A little background here: my educational roots are deep into writing and computer engineering. Feeling I could already write whenever I wanted, I went to college for engineering and then onto the path of software, graphic design and then video game development. After that, I went freelance as a designer, where my expectations of myself where shaped by the production mindset that developed from working at game companies and web agencies. What I missed along the way was learning how to play with design.

My first pass at productivity tools, the “Printable CEO”, grew from my understanding of video game interaction principles. They also incorporated feelings and uncertainty, which I handled as I might have if I were an enlightened manager. For the record, I wasn’t a particularly good manager at the time I was managing people, but hindsight has been a strong teacher. However, this production mindset bias doesn’t help me be productive in the creative sense. That requires a different set of expectations and productivity tools. It’s perhaps related to the tension between art and business that has always existed. Without art (or the means to produce), business becomes impossible because there is nothing to sell. Without business, art has no means to support itself. Business is a fairly arbitrary set of expectations where entitlements are negotiated between self-interested parties. The trick of personal success, as far as I’m concerned, is to avoid being part of someone else’s sense of entitlement.

To have true independence, I need to practice my art so it is free of those external expectations that trap me in other people’s expectations. There are alternative ways to do business other than meeting expectations: instead, you can meet a need. There’s a subtle emotional difference. The former is patriarchal and judging, while the latter is about shared desires.

Anyway, I’m embarking on some significant process changes, and this week is the one where I’ll be testing some new approaches to my daily work. Less production-minded, more creative and free. Still ambitious.

Still, one must stick to the Groundhog Day Resolutions Review schedule! And, even more importantly, one must be kind to one’s self. My report follows.

Significant Achievements of the Last Month

I’ve done very little for my website or projects. The key visible achievement was seeing the new bound half-size ETP Notebooks appear on Amazon.com. The work, though, was handled by my commercial printing partner Papergraphics.

So far, the initial run of 480 notebooks has sold-through about 40% in the first full two weeks. That is very promising, and it’s made me rethink the reason why I’m selling products in the first place. I had originally started selling products on Amazon is because I don’t have to do anything to handle orders or ship; I thought it would be cool to have them available and make a bit of money on the side. I’m slowly starting to realize that this original thinking was very limited; I now know that these are products that people buy because they work for them. That may seem like a big DUH statement, but originally I was thinking more of it being something cool to do, a kind of personal experiment. Now, with three distinct form factors of products available, I understand what it means to be an product designer: product designers make products that sell! Before, I was just playing around with commerce like it was some kind of amusing toy, not a real job. That has changed!

On a different note, this last month I also seriously took-on Javascript and jQuery, with a greatly-improved attitude. Instead of regarding Javascript as a toy language with unbecoming qualities, I have started to accept its hip-hoppy baggy-pants ways into my unfunky structured approach to programming. It’s a little painful, but improved abilities in this area will yield positive results in new website features and (hopefully) future web and mobile applications.

Significant Observations of the Last Month

My friend Brad and I stopped doing the “715AM Morning Ritual” after I missed three sessions at the end of April. No blame was flung around, but we agreed that we could use a break.

It’s been over three weeks since we stopped, and we will revisit it in the future. In the meantime, it’s been interesting to compare the successful run from December to March with recent weeks. I have some tentative takeaways:

• 715A is really early for me. I think it’s the dramatic difference between waking early and waking late that helped kickstart the ritual, but I think 815A or even 915A might be better for long-term maintenance of the schedule. In the future, I would probably limit the 715A waking time to at most two-three weeks just to make it seem more of a commitment.

• There’s a limit to how long I can maintain any heightened sense of urgency in a task before I need a break. 3-4 weeks appears to be the limit before I start risking a total crash. It appears to be related to how much energy I am getting back from the task. If I’m in isolation trying to make something, then 2-3 weeks is the max before I go nuts from lack of meaningful feedback. When there IS feedback, then the time I’m in elevated mode can stretch to about 3-4 weeks. If there is great feedback, then the duration can stretch maybe 3-4 months, as it did when we first started the 715A Ritual.

• I suspect that it’s not the length of time or the ritual itself that matters as much as its daily execution. Looking for what can be continued from yesterday’s efforts, with the intent to deliver something tangible, creates a sense of progress and accomplishment. In other words: daily continuity! I also think it’s also important to put myself first, first thing in the morning, because I am prone to let other people’s needs override mine.

Another long-time ritual, the “Wave with Colleen”, has also quietly wound-down after three years. It has lasted two years longer than we thought, but these past few months our personal missions have diverged. When we started, we were both bloggers figuring out what that meant to us. Now, I’m thinking commerce commerce commerce, which isn’t where Colleen is. Plus we’ve both been very busy. The Wave is now running in a kind of maintenance mode, so we can still leave notes in it, but we’re not checking it as frequently.

The Month Ahead

I’m itching to get back to my projects now that the three big commitments of April are almost over with. Foremost on my mind:

• Past Content Audit and Content Collation: Finding chunks of yummy articles on the website that I think are worth reading.

• The World of Forms: With the apparent success of the new notebooks, I’m ready to start defining just what ALL of my forms are supposed to accomplish. The 7-year beta testing period is over. Let there be a grand relaunching!

• Products Products Products: I’d like to get back to the Product-A-Day commitment as well. That was totally fun, and I liked having the clarity of doing something every day. The scope of the products may be much smaller; I reserve the right to make small and crappy products, and include PROMOTION as a product as well. This meshes well with my two-factor criterion for being productive: make something, then show it to someone.

• Index Card Blocks – Now that everything is cleaned up downstairs, I’m ready to restart the production process. It’s also warm outside so I can open the windows and let the finish fumes out instead of getting nauseous.

On top of this, I’d like to embark on some serious brain upgrades in the following areas.

• Game Programming – Putting together some big systems to play with. I’m thinking of using HeroEngine, a cloud-based MMORPG platform, to shortcut the engineering process.

• 3D Modelling – It would be nice to get back into modern programs. There are several free ones (Blender) and commercial licenses (Modo) that I have access to.

• Music Composition / Piano – This is something I feel very strongly in my head, but it is unstructured and untested.

• Learning Chinese – It’s time. I was able to mime my way through Dad’s visit, but it would be nice to be able to converse more naturally. Some of it has come back, but I never had a strong vocabulary. Josh Kaufman’s upcoming book The First 20 Hours and of course Tim Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Chef have me thinking about learning again, and I wonder if I can be more efficient in this pass.

These are all complicated challanges, and in that respect they’re pretty daunting. However, what I learned from my Index Card Block project is that using a simple-but-immediately useful project to refine to perfection is a good way to start. The index card blocks, which are simply wood blocks with slits cut in them, were probably the simplest interesting project I could have started in the area of “fine woodworking”. Sure, they’re almost too dumb to consider a real project, but after figuring out how to make the block I’ve been progressing well. First I learned how to sand it to tolerable levels of perfection through trial and error. Now, I’m taking baby steps into the surprisingly broad world of wood finishes. Because it’s relatively easy to make blocks, I can iterate through the finishing process quickly and learn. If I’d chosen something to start with like bookshelves or even a step stool, the iteration speed from start to finish would have been much slower. I’d like to come up with satisfying mini projects for each of the three challenges I’ve listed. Since I hate arbitrary learning exercises, the mini-projects have to have an adult Dave-approved used.

Meeting Last Month’s Challenge

Last month I basically said I wanted to increased opportunity, and I think the notebooks count as that. My goal of making $100/day through sales of all types is getting closer! The last two-week period of payment from Amazon is about double the prior two-week period. Digital sales are very slow, but they could be easily perked up with the addition of more products and better visibility. I know how to do that; I just need to apply the effort daily and keep refining the web experience. I also could stand to reach out to other websites and let them know what’s going on, though I’ve never been very good at it.

Concluding Thoughts

After May 15th, I’ll have completed the chain of commitments and will be ready to embark on the list of projects I’ve listed about. We’ll see how it goes! My overall feeling is that I’m on track to having a productive year, though I have to also remember that doing this work is lonely and time consuming. Maintaining optimism and a good attitude through the work is essential!

That’s it for now! Thanks for reading!

Groundhog Day Resolution Posts for 2013

Here are other posts about Groundhog Day Resolutions for the 2013 season.

• 02/02 Kickoff - Setting 30 Products in 30 days.
• 03/03 Review - The Aftermath of 30 Products in 30 Days; What's Next?
• 04/04 Review - New Website, Increasing Opportunity
• 05/05 Review - Winding down a long chain of external commitments, getting ready for a hopefully-productive month.

It’s hard to believe that the new notebooks went on sale last Sunday, just 7 days ago. In the first 7 days, about 100 notebooks sold on top of the regular ETP sales. Very exciting! I believe the next step to take will describe what each of my various tool designs are supposed to do, so people have an easier time knowing how to use them.

That’s all I really have for now. My schedule should return to normal on May 15th.

They’re here! Head over to amazon.com and grab them. I’m working on getting international shipping working next; if you want to be alerted when this (along with other product-y announcements) is available, sign up here on the Dave Seah New Stuff Newsletter.

I got an email from my printer Papergraphics, letting me know that the notebooks have come back from the bindery. I popped over to take a picture of the pile of boxes and examine some samples. I have the Amazon listing set up, and I might even have a solution for non-USA fulfillment later this month.

What’s left? Shrinkwrapping, SKU labeling, and then shipping to Amazon’s warehouses. It’s probably going to be two weeks before the inventory is ready to go. I’ve set up a New Stuff Newsletter on MailChimp, if you want to receive email notification for when this (and other products) are available. Add your email address to the list at the Dave Seah New Products and Downloads List.

The Marketing Challenge

I declared March to be a month of marketing work, specifically to make the following benefits visible to site visitors:

• What you can find to solve a particular problem
• What fun things Dave is doing that you might like too
• How to buy, download, or participate
• What longer-term engagement is available on davidseah.com if you discover I’m in your tribe of interests and values.

I’ve always found it difficult to describe what it is I do in easy-to-understand terms that I liked. Partly it’s because I don’t like feeling pinned-down, but it’s also because I still haven’t figured out what the most accurate labels are. I consider these issues of “branding” and “identity”.

I also have not been sure what the best way to reorganize my website would be, as I haven’t had a clear picture of audience usage. After 7 years of running the site, though, I think I certainly have enough information to draw some conclusions. There’s been an increase in comments too, both here and on the Facebook page, which have been very helpful in identifying what people are excited by. Combined with web analytics, I have a better idea of what the “market” is, and what might best serve a specific set of interests.

The Process

I kept my running notes public in this daily note document, and it’s a log of what I’ve done. I’ve also distilled higher-level observations into a series of articles collected on the March 2013 Challenge page.

In general, I started with a 15M burst on this project, which would usually extend through the entire day. A few times I spent only 15 minutes due to other commitments, but otherwise this was my full-time focus. However, I decided to take weekends off, which is a change from my previous monthly challenge. I was curious to see how that would affect my focus, and I think there was no harm done.

On a side note, the 15M burst is part of the Momentum Maintenance ritual I’ve been practicing for the past four months. It’s worked out pretty well, though we have taken a break from the 715A waking time for this month. Knowing the power of this ritual helped give me the confidence to take on the great big hairy problem of fixing my website.

What Got Done

While I was expecting a challenge, the reality of the project was that it was at times intensely frustrating due to my impatience. There were many moments where I was unclear about what to do next, or disappointed with the progress I was making. It also occurred to me that I wasn’t as good at this as I remembered or thought, which raised the possibility that perhaps I was just not good at website design, marketing, programming, and so forth. There were some fairly dark days, though not so dark as to crush my spirit. I did take a lot of power naps, though! I also cooked a lot more comfort food than I usually do, and spent practically all my time indoors; I spent only 50 bucks in gas for the entire month.

Here’s a quick review of how the month unfolded. For more detailed notes, see the March 2013 Challenge page for links to review posts.

Week 1: Content Strategy

This went well and felt very productive. I reviewed what I knew about my website and which content had been most popular. I had some new insight on download popularity as well, which spoke for the silent users. From these insights, I derived a list of audience groups and their interests.

I next looked at myself, seeking areas of overlapping interest between myself and the audience groups. Because I want my ongoing efforts to be sustainable, they have to involve activities that engage my curiosity and generate energy. The crowning achievement was this diagram, which mapped everything that I thought would work.

The next step: convert the diagram into an actual website. With the mapping diagram, it should be easy!

Week 2: Tackling Visual Look and Feel

The first stage of making the website, I figured, was to address the front page. A great front page would establish, in a matter of seconds, what I was all about (as described in the diagram) and provide portals for exploration of key content that lead to a desirable interaction: a bookmark, a referral, a purchase, a download, or communication with me.

I had forgotten, though, how long it takes me to do visual design. I started with a review of my available photography, looking for suitable images of my interests and work that could go onto the front page. Perhaps predictably, I didn’t find anything that really seemed strong enough to anchor a page. Doh.

I next tackled some information architecture (IA), using the mapping diagram as the guide to determine what went where. This is where I started to become frustrated: there’s a huge difference between content strategy and actual design. The kind of design I do depends on intent behind a specific message. I’m great at seeing relationships between defined concepts and organizing them as such. However, if the message isn’t yet defined, then the visual design process is very frustrating. I didn’t realize it at the time, though, and therefore was intensely irritated at just how SLOW and CRAPPY the process was going. I did eventually get something designed, but I wasn’t quite happy with it. However, the voice of experience assured me that in time, this would be resolved. Or so I hoped. My major victory for the week was having forced myself to do it despite the discomfort.

It’s been maybe 12 years since I’ve had to do day-to-day interactive design work, and I’d forgotten that it ALWAYS takes me a long time to make something I’m pleased with. The minimum amount of time to get from concept to polished screen seems to be about 40 hours. That seems like a long time, and maybe it is compared to more practiced graphics veterans. I have no idea, but beating myself up over it isn’t going to make the work go any faster.

Week 3: Dealing with Frustrating, Switching to Content Development

After resting over the weekend, I started the week by addressing my feelings of frustration. I realized that I was overwhelmed by the number of decisions I was allowing myself to make on-the-fly, without regard to which role was most appropriate.

I took a couple of days to reassess my approach. To make the project seem more doable from a technical perspective, I decided to reduce the scope from “new website” to “improving the current website”. I looked for solutions I could wedge into the existing site foundation, so I could deploy sooner than later.

The real issue, however, was the content, specifically the message: what actual copy was I going to write about specific topics/products, and what specific images would I use? Once I had those bundles of content, I could then lay it out in the blocked-out areas of my website mockup. I spent most of the week writing lists during my 15M push, and refining them over the days.

It later occurred to me that I was wearing multiple hats as boss, manager, creative director, art director, artist, copywriter, marketing manager, web designer, web developer, usability expert, and design integrator. Each role has with it a set of concerns and demands, and I was not being methodical about wearing just one (or two) hats at a time. It’s not very fun to try to make something cool if someone is constantly telling you that there’s a deadline to meet, or that such-and-such an idea might create problems with a certain demographic before it’s even tried. Once I realized that this was going on, I was able to put on the right hats at the right time and “protect” my creative time from my management time.

What was preventing me from moving forward, I then realized, was that I was anxious about talking about myself in a promotional manner, and this was a major contributor to stress. Putting on my project manager hat, I talked myself off the ledge and re-iterated what I believed in: that just talking about what I did and what I thought about it was all that I’m doing, and that this approach would work just fine. Just share. Just show. I didn’t need to worry about crafting fancy statements to build up my importance in the eyes of the unknown audience. Instead, I could just say what I’m interested in and why, backed with a sense of quiet humor.

Week 4: Pushing Through Design

With the competing voices in my head quieted to some degree, I shifted toward development of the specific technical features and supporting content. Since I still didn’t have clarity on exactly what that was, the first step was just to make something and see what it looked like; this is the working through the uncertainty part of the creative process that I’ve only recently become confident in.

I started by implementing a skeleton HTML/CSS front page within my existing WordPress theme, SEAH_UNIFIED. It took several hours to resolve the basic structural problems of the CSS, and I learned a few new nuances regarding “CSS floats”. I happen to dislike CSS as a markup technology because, well, I think it’s a stupid design in many respects, so it was a challenge to even force myself to learn more about it. But having done that, I’m more capable and self-sufficient creatively: +1 for creative independence!

After that, it was just a matter of styling each individual content area. Creating the new header, with its collection of overlapping DIVs, went smoothly with my newly-solidified understanding of CSS floating and clearing, and I was able to resolve some long-standing layout gotchyas that had confused me before. Once the header was in place, I made a set of Pinterest-style boxes where my products could be shown in a row. This created a working web page with content at the top and the bottom. I also took the time to take a new header image, showing of a whole bunch of things that I thought would say something about me as an eclectic and somewhat technical creative person. This helped make the design seem real.

With a header and a product footer in place, I again faced the bugaboo of content: What was I going to put in the middle sections? I needed a list of posts, some rotating picture banners, and a few words about myself. How to design these areas without having actual content? I decided not to worry about specific content and just work with placeholder content to get a feel for it, trying one or two different approaches and hating them. It became apparent to me that the amount of text that was appearing on the screen was a turn-off, so I looked for alternative ways to get the message across. I added in two kinds of graphic sliders, and ended up with a design that I was fairly happy with.

While all this was going on, I also wrote, rewrote, and rewrote again the copy that describes “creative independence”, and realized that it fit better when moved up to the top of the page just under my banner. It had to be short, engaging, and set the tone of the website. It’s my voice, my words of welcome, my invitation to stick around and get to know me. I’m still rewriting it every time I look at it; it must have changed at least 50 times in the last two days as I add/remove words.

In hindsight, this is the kind of work that I feel is the best personal balance, as it involves both practical implementation skills and design insight. As I had ideas about better ways to present the design, I could then turn around and put on the technical hat and make it happen. Though I am really impatient and don’t really enjoy doing the technical work, I can get it done when I’m able to put aside my displeasure and focus on taking the time I need to both learn and implement a solution cleanly; this is the consolation prize. It’s real work and consumes a lot of time, but it’s also rewarding.

Week 5: Final Deployment

The entire previous week just covered the HOME PAGE; this is the first page you see now when visiting davidseah.com. To recap its purpose, it is intended to quickly tell people who I am, what I’m about, and showcase a few choice pieces of content to read or purchase. The rest of the website, which includes the main blog index, all the subjournals (which are implemented as individual blogs), and the navigation that links them all together. There’s also the Productivity Tools page, which is implemented as a custom post type.

I spent the past several days converting my prototype home page into something that would co-exist with the rest of my template. I modified quite a bit of code, added some new functions, and got my feet wet with integrating jQuery into the template structure in a less-insane fashion than I had before. I also had to make actual content pages for products and selected content, which I kept to the absolute minimum using what photography I already had. Once everything seemed ready to make live, I merged the changes from my test area into the main theme, screwing it up once before getting everything in place last night.

Suddenly, the burden is gone. Opportunity beckons!

Postmortem

Although I didn’t track time rigorously, I estimate that I spent about 100 hours on this over the past month. There were 25 days of production according to my log, and I would say I averaged 4 hours a day.

There are elements of the design I am pleased by, and others that need work. What I have now, simply put, is a new piece of real estate in the form of my home page. It’s the new sign post, telling people what I do. And most importantly, it has new areas that can SHOW what I’m doing without having to scroll through miles of text. It seems like such a small thing, when i describe it like that, but it is the beginning of a more engaging website that is unafraid to declare what I stand for.

I’m not done by any means. There is MUCH content to generate, collect, and promote in the new home page areas. Content design and presentation is a new area to explore too; I haven’t done marketing graphic design before, so this should be interesting.

Technically, there is also work I need to do to improve the interaction experience on the bottom-most product slider; this means learning more Javascript and jQuery to implement some custom rollover behaviors. There are a few bugs and some additional copywriting chores too, the complexity and outcome of which are completely unknown to me at this time. I know that if I start them, I can finish them if I accept it takes time and mindful management of which roles I’m assuming at a given time.

Expressed in another way: I have a new toy, and it’s time to play.

The Month Ahead

The month of April will be busy with other commitments. There are a few client projects that I need to get back to, and I have a a dozen emails in my contact mailbox to answer in depth. Dad’s also coming to visit for two weeks from Taiwan, so I have to clean the house and plan some activities with my sister.

That said, I must remember why I reengineered the website in the first place:

• Increase Engagement – I can measure this in page views, unique visitors, and referrals with Google Analytics and Mint. Also, I can see if there is an increase in email inquiries.
• Increase Opportunity – With a more organized website showcasing more of my work, perhaps there’s an as-yet unimagined connection to be made! That’s what I really love about having a blog.
• Increase Sales – I can measure this by sales on Amazon and Gumroad…if they go up, that is a good thing. That’s the whole point.

Sales is the most important for me, financially speaking. I’m trying to get this to the point where I’m making about $100/day, which would allow me to start paying off debt. I’ll also be able to put my time into projects that would pay off: the iPad applications, other kinds of design work, and who knows what else.

So, let’s say that this month’s challenge is to increase engagement, opportunity, and sales. I have a baseline now; let’s see what I can do to move the needle by using the new website design. I find the idea kind of frightening; I’m not sure of the new website is actually better or will be capable of doing what I ask of it. I’m too close to it. I do know, though, that making good content available to people is the root of success; my content strategy can be summed up as be a bright spot on the Internet and offer simple transactions. So let’s see if that holds true.

That’s it for now! Thanks for reading!

Groundhog Day Resolution Posts for 2013

Here are other posts about Groundhog Day Resolutions for the 2013 season.

• 02/02 Kickoff - Setting 30 Products in 30 days.
• 03/03 Review - The Aftermath of 30 Products in 30 Days; What's Next?
• 04/04 Review - New Website, Increasing Opportunity
• 05/05 Review - Winding down a long chain of external commitments, getting ready for a hopefully-productive month.