Half-a-dozen Monkeys

Improvement Binging

Rich — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 12:28:11 +0000

Momentum for imprvement tends to come in waves. Binges if you will. You’ll have a week where all you want to do is get better at something – it consumes you. And then you go off the boil and lapse back to your old habits.

The things is, often it is not just one thing we get our focus on. Often we try and tackle everything at once. The prime example is January, where we all decide we are not going to focus on one, two, or even three things. Instead, we try and improve everything about us! We try and eat more healthy, exercise more, get up earlier, read more books, phone Mum more, not be distracted at work etc etc etc. Any you know what? Yup, we exhaust ourselves and give up. We get all binary – either we are succeeding or not – if you forget to phone your Mum then your entire ‘improvement plan’ is wasted and you stop going to the gym, focusing at work, and eating healthily.

It can happen is smaller examples too. If for some reason I haven’t done any proper sport for a couple of months and then play a game of soccer – I can guarantee that when I get home I’ll be so pumped up about getting fit again that I shall go straight out and have a run, then come back and do some press-ups. I wanted to get fit again, but the result of ‘improvement binging’ is that I can’t move for two weeks, and ironically can’t manage any more exercise in that time!

The best approach is obvious is the cold light of day. Focus on one thing at a time. Try having salad instead of chips for lunch, and do only that until it has become the norm. Then try going for one short run a week. And keep going, bit by bit.

Don’t try and avoid the Internet, talking to people, snacking, and getting in early at work all at once – all you’ll do is hate work more. Pick one and give it you time and attention, and most important of all, feel proud of yourself for that little step.

Taste Testing Tasks

Rich — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 11:46:54 +0000

Ever been to those expensive cafes where you can try a bit of each cake before deciding which one to go for? No, me neither, but I wish they did the same with beer… That said, it is a very effective technique fore task management.

Very rarely are things that need doing truly one task – they are usually ‘Projects’ in the GTD sense. For example, you may have to review the marketing plan for your product. You can just throw it onto your to do list if you want. You might even split it into ‘print marketing plan off’, ‘read marketing plan’, and ‘feed comments back to marketing’. And that is fine. But sometimes you can be a bit more effective.

Another approach you see, is to spend just 5 minutes starting the task to see what happens. Taste test it. You might see the following:

The plan was only 2 paragraphs and was fine so the task is now done;
The plan isn’t on the server so you’ll have to e-mail marketing to get it;
The plan hasn’t actually been written yet so you need to get that done;
The plan is to spend 10 times the proposed budget and is thus useless; etc etc etc

All these things it is great to know now, rather than find out the day you need to finalise it. But beyond that, I find a lot of things that come across my desk are pretty vague in nature – ‘sort this’ or ‘understand that’, and as such, if I just put them on my to do list they sit there looking intimidating and get put off. But five minutes kicking their tires and I can usually work out exactly what I need to achieve, what I need to do it, and any thing I need to pull in advance of the work I am planning to do. This is a fantastic pre-emptive strike. Give it a go!

Things vs Omnifcous

Rich — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:52:26 +0000

Two to do apps – a battle to the death. Okay, so not really. But I have been a long time Omnifocus user, and have been trying Things out for the last 3 or 4 months, and thought it might be useful to share the experience. The conclusion? I love Omnifocus, but I am moving to Things…

I have a pretty complex job – a lot of moving parts, and a lot of things to keep on top of. As such, a simple paper based, or single list, solution has always groaned a little under the strain. I also use GTD, so use contexts a fair bit. As such, Omnifocus looked to be the idea solution.

And it has server me well. Very well in fact. But it always felt like I was having to work to use it – my to do list felt like something I was having to do. Pro’s and con’s of Omnifocus I would say are as follows:

Good stuff:

Very, very powerful – can manage anything you throw at it;
Pure GTD implementation meaning you don’t have to fudge anything to get it to work;
Great developer support and continued development;
Good community and plenty of ninja tricks out there; and
Excellent synching options across computers and mobile devices.

Bad stuff

It is an very utilitarian design. You might even say ugly. And that matters when it comes to using it hundreds of times a day;
It is not intuitive – pick it up cold and you’ll get frustrated pretty quickly; and
It’s power is also a problem as you can sometimes struggle to just get something in it. I want to clear my inbox, but to do so I need to give it a context, a flag (so I know to do it today), and a folder. I don’t want to make choices, I just want it out the way.

So having heard good things about the ‘other’ Mac to do app, I downloaded Things to give it a test drive. It has learnt a lot from Omnifocus’s dedication to detail, but without trying to cover all bases. That probably warrants more discussion – Things feels much more of an Apple app, where as Omnifocus is more of a PC app. The former doesn’t give you carte blanche, but is beautifully designed and intuitive to use; where as the latter gives you every option under the sun, but is dour looking and you’d better read the manual before you start. My view on Things would be:

Good stuff:

Lovely looking app – pure and without distraction;
Very intuitive use – you can pick it up and get to work;
Simple and quick to get things in and out of it; and
Has more than enough complexity if you want to drill down that far.

Bad stuff:

Synching between computer and mobile devices is wifi only. An iCloud solution is in the works, but has been ‘in the works’ for a while. This is a bit of biggy;
Not a perfect GTD solution – they have (rightly) made some compromises to keep the usability up. As such I tend to fudge my way with tags for contexts; and
Not enough keyboard shortcuts (but solvable using Keyboard Maestro).

Conclusion
Omnifocus could do anything I ever wanted it to do. But that meant I threw stuff in that shouldn’t be there (eg. books I want to read, present ideas for friends and family). Things can do 50% of what Omnifocus can do, but it is the 50% that I use 99% of the time. I would love to give everything a context and a folder, but most of my to do items just want throwing quickly into the ‘today’ pile, and then get done and hour later – not worth classifying. This, Things copes with wonderfully.

Yes Things won’t give me a ‘phone calls’ context, and most importantly it won’t give me a ‘waiting for’ context – but using tags is a pretty good work around.

If Things can get their synching sorted then it wins for my use hands-down. That said, I am moving now. In reality, Omnifocus’s complexity and ugliness meant it had become an ‘object of mass’ in my productivity system – Things is able to much better just sit in the background out the way and let me get on with my work.

Top 10 Productivity Tips of All Time

Rich — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 10:50:20 +0000

Read, consider, contemplate then do:

Just get on with it;
Just get on with it;
Just get on with it;
Just get on with it;
Just get on with it;
Just get on with it;
Just get on with it;
Just get on with it;
Just get on with it; and
Just get on with it.

Seriously. What are you waiting for?

How to Get Things Done Very Quickly

Rich — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 10:59:43 +0000

At the end of the day, this is what we are trying to do. Get whatever we want done, to the right standard, as quickly as possible. So here is a quick and dirty way of doing it:

1. Spell out to yourself clearly what you want to do;

2. Define precisely what ‘complete’ looks like;

3. Establish how much time you have to do it;

4. Spend two-thirds of the time just having a go;

5. Spend the remaining time making sure you meet the criteria in point 2; and

6. Enjoy the spoils of ninja productivity.

Does this work with every task you have to do? No. Will this make you faster with 70% of the things you do in a day? Probably. And if I could ‘probably’ get faster at 70% of what I do, I’d call that a win.

Productivity vs Creativity

Rich — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 09:59:43 +0000

Last night was not a good one sleep-wise. Something to do with a 2 year-old singing about The Guffalo from 3am until 5am. Incredibly, my productivity has been at full throttle all morning. Yes tired. But very focused on the individual tasks.

I find this interesting. If I was going to sit there and plan when I was going to do things that best fitted in with what I’d be feeling, I’d have been filing this morning. Instead, I have got through a fair bit of quality stuff.

Why is this? Well, I think it is because we forget what actually drives productivity. Productivity is not a creative process – it is routine. No matter how interesting the work is you are doing, if your aim is to get as much of it done as efficiently as possible, then it is routine.

And routine is best done without inspiration. Instinctively I would say that the day I woke up brimming with hope and motivation is the day I would be at my productive prime. But it rarely is. You see, when you feel as if all guns are blazing, then you are usually inspired by something. What happens to me is that I then spend most of time planning and thinking about things that I would like to do in the future, creative things, rather than get my head down and work.

When I am fully motivated, I am usually not fully motivated to work through my to do list. Why concern myself with the day-to-day business issues when I am up for planning the future of the company. I end the day with little tangible done other than some nicely coloured diagrams.

But today, I haven’t the energy to think. My mind is not up for resisting and instead just goes with the flow. Task to task to task. Maybe I should set an alarm in the toddlers room again tonight…

E-mail Detonation

Rich — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 10:33:10 +0000

Picture a generic Hollywood action movie. Or 24 part HBO series. Evil bloke with a goatee and a European accent is hell-bent on destroying the world as we know it. The good guys are running around trying to get to the MacGuffin before the little red LED display gets to 00:00:00 and the world explodes…

Now, what would it be good to tie to a chair strapped to 15 pounds of Semtex and a Best Buy timer? E-mail, thats what. Plenty of duct tape and e-mail.

You see, sometimes it is pretty healthy to have a known point in time when ‘mass destruction’ takes place. It gives us some momentum to get things done – the steroid-pumped hero is unlikely to save the pretty blonde if there isn’t a ticking clock – he’d just leave her in his inbox and grab another protein shake.

So how’s about setting yourself one of these timer things? Go into whichever torturous e-mail clients you have the misfortune of using, head to preferences, then mail rules and set one up that sends any e-mail that has been in your inbox for more than 3 days to a folder called ‘collateral’. Or even deletes it after that time if you are feeling all Bruce Willis.

Knowing that e-mail will disappear should you fail to deal with it, will force you to deal with it. And if you don’t deal with it, you may be surprised how little some of it matters. Spend your limited time on the important things, and not reading the latest viral picture of cats.

Good Days and Bad Days

Rich — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 11:00:57 +0000

One of the biggest effects on our ability to do things, is our mood. We tend to ignore it because we can’t control it. But if you really look at the days you got a lot done, I bet they’ll all have been days when you where is a particular mood.

Now whilst you can exactly change the mood you are in, you can certainly learn to recognise how you are feeling and then tailor the work you start as such.

Feeling grumpy? Well, may things with a social element are best skipped. You’ll either spend all day faffing to avoid doing them, or you do them badly. Pick things that mean you can hide at your desk and just churn through.

Today I’m feeling tired and fed-up. So I’m going to get the ‘need to do’ done very first thing so that they don’t pray on my mind for the rest of the day, and then take the gas of a little to try and brighten my outlook for the rest of the week.

Not rocket surgery, but a useful tool.

Everything is a Priority

Rich — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 11:00:58 +0000

Do you ever have days/weeks/years like that? Where EVERYTHING anyone wants done is a priority. Needs doing yesterday. Using angel dust. And dodo feathers.

What I especially like is when each person stresses to you the importance of their own steaming pile over that of the others who have lined up to fill you desk. It is so cute. The way the slow their voice down and take a solemn tone – to make sure you fully grasp the magnitude of their ego.

How do you handle this? How do you do a good job on more work that you can do in less time than it needs? Where no one will except “no”, “I’m sorry” or ‘expletive-deleted’.

For me is a combination of approaches:

Firstly, I drink heavily. Secondly, I try to wallow in self pity for at least 15% of the time available. Thirdly, I write a list of priority, based on some careful criteria:

How big the provider of work’s corporate cojones are;
How psychotic they are likely to get if their work not done;
Who wouldn’t notice if something was done half-cooked;
Who will be fooled by me sending them something I have sent them previously and bares a passing resemblance to what they have asked for today;
Who I might have a grudging respect for, and who I am more than happy to ruin the day of; and
What I might actually enjoy doing.

And then I crack on. I stick my head in the sand, yank out my ethernet cable, and wander around making tea and telling everyone how busy and grumpy I am in the hope it will deter any others from burying me further.

Does it work? Well, in an impossible situation you can only lose – what matters is how much of a battering you take in the process. The above approach is not textbook – you’ll not find Peter Drucker pimping it around his sell-out shows – but for punters like you and me, its all we can hope for.

Being Productive When Traveling

Rich — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 15:27:14 +0000

The key to being productive when traveling is planning and selection. Yes, it is that simple. You see, the biggest mistake we all make is that we take a pile of stuff with us that we would like to get through, and in the end can’t face crawling past the big sweaty bloke in the aisle seat to lug a pile of paper out of your bulging cabin luggage. Or fighting with a laptop in the one cubic foot of space you have between your chest sand the reclined seat in front.

The first step is to plan your movements carefully, for example on my current trip to the US:

3 hour drive to airport Saturday night;
2 hours at airport Sunday morning;
8 hour flight;
2 hour drive to US site on Sunday afternoon.

Now normally I get phone calls done with my hands-free on long drives but it is a weekend travel so I’m not even going to bother – so that makes the two car journeys non-work time. Great, I’ll take some podcasts to listen to on them – need a 6 hour playlist.

2 hours at the airport are not going to be all in one place so handling a pile of files is daft – I have some reports to read through which shouldn’t need any note taking – I’ll print those off so I can read them in bits as a make my way through.

The flight is during the day so no need to sleep (or at least try to). I’ll have no power, but a bit of room so I can probably aim for 4 hours of laptop use – so than is enough to get that report done, and update the sales spreadsheet. The report is just from my head, but I need the schedule from Janet to do the sales sheet. I’ll factor in 2 hours of rest, which leaves me with two more – ideal to be taking notes on those documents I was send.

So I’m planned. All I need work wise is:

The reports to read
My laptop but not the charger
The report from Janet
The documents to make notes on

Everything else can go in the hold. And I don’t need to spend anytime faffing about deciding on what to do next, or starting something to find I haven’t go what I red with me.

Right, now off to plan the journey home…

Half-a-dozen Monkeys

Improvement Binging

Other posts to enjoy:

Taste Testing Tasks

Other posts to enjoy:

Things vs Omnifcous

Other posts to enjoy:

Top 10 Productivity Tips of All Time

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How to Get Things Done Very Quickly

Other posts to enjoy:

Productivity vs Creativity

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E-mail Detonation

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Good Days and Bad Days

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Everything is a Priority

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Being Productive When Traveling

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