blog to discovery

Tips for using wheel of life exercise

2010-08-31T12:18:43Z

A wheel of life aims to highlight the areas of your life that you need to give more attention (or areas where you need to give less) so you can work towards a balanced life. I like the approach because it is a simple graphical representation, so I started using the method on a monthly basis to track progress on my goals.

Photograph by PatCastaldo

I started giving scores based on how I felt about each area, but thought this was too variable, so started counting up the number of times I worked on tasks in each area. Although this was tricky to track it did give unambiguous figures to plot. However, on reviewing after a few months, I realised I was measuring the wrong thing; I was plotting how many times I worked in each area not by what I achieved, for example I could spend a lot of time sorting out my address book, but it isn’t as satisfying that I was developing relationships as much as if I had a long telephone call with a friend .

To be honest, I think I was expecting too much from wheel of life. It is a very useful tool, but a monthly review is too often, because there is not enough time for your thoughts on the analysis to settle, let alone develop. Based on my previous review and my current thinking here are my tips for using wheel of life exercise

Select categories that are relevant to what you want to measure; I started with generic categories but found it much more useful when I used my goals (although it did result in some tasks being classified under strange categories)
Decide if you want to use the wheel to measure your current position or the progress you’ve made since your last wheel (it may sound a little thing, but if you decide this up front it will prevent confusion when you put together your scores at later reviews)
Develop descriptions for each score point on the axis e.g.1 – made a very small step forwards on this, 10 – achieved this
Decide how often you will do the review; I recommend three months as a minimum time between reviews, but feel that six months could be optimum
Consider doing an overall wheel and then separate ones to get more detail in specific areas e.g. you may be interested in how balanced your work life is, but you are unlikely to want to go into this detail in an overall review of your life where you might be considering if you are working on your life goals (including work life balance)

What is your experience of using Wheel of life? Do you have any tips to share?

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39 keyboard key purchases

2010-08-21T11:17:35Z

Every month one of my most popular posts is Ask advice: how to label keyboard keys so in response to this interest I’ve put together a list of different keyboard key related items you can buy.

Clothing

Notebooks

Bags and wallets

Home

Jewellery

Mousemats

Keyboards

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Places where I’m social

2010-07-09T13:35:35Z

One of the benefits of web 2.0 is being social and there is an increasing number of sites enabling you to interact with people local to you or with similar interest. Plus with the increased ownership of smart phones you can interact almost anywhere (I’m looking forward to trying it on a yacht off the south coast of Great Britain later in the summer with my new HTC Desire).

The facility I use the most is Twitter as it is integrated into FireFox using the Echofon add in. It is also the easiest to follow on my Desire. However, as most of my school and university friends use Facebook it is usually an interesting read, when I log in.

The site I’m most grateful for is Bookmooch. It has enabled me to clear out books knowing they are going to a good home and also to get many books off my wishlist. I love getting books in the post

Places where you can find me online

Social

Books

Bookmooch
Bookcrossing
Goodreads
Librarything (Haven’t used this in a while, but haven’t decided which I prefer this or Goodreads – what is your experience?)

Music

Last.fm

Maybe this list will help me integrate the different aspects of my online life. Are there any places I don’t use that you’d recommend? Where do you spend most of your time?

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Why are ‘bad’ habits so easy to form?

2010-06-15T12:28:48Z

In a simplistic view, habits define your life. They are the little things that you do each day without thinking and enable you to focus on other things. Think how much less time you would have if you had to focus on breathing, driving or typing. Therefore it is essential that your habits connect with your goals, otherwise you are going to find it very difficult to meet them and it will frequently feel that you are fighting against yourself.

Recognising the ‘bad’ habits

The difficulty with habits is, by their nature of being a subconscious activity, is you don’t always recognise them as habits; and certainly in my life I’ve recently noticed several ‘bad’ habits have formed without me even realising.

“He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual.”

Thomas Jefferson

My husband and I usually go food shopping together, so when he was ill and I went on my own I bought a Wispa as a treat. The next time I went on my own I did the same and before I knew it I was buying a Wispa every time I did the shopping on my own. The purchasing of the Wispa was no longer a treat but a habit. A few weeks ago I felt tired at work so bought a can of Dr Pepper to give me a caffeine boost (I don’t drink tea or coffee). A few days later I was tired again so I bought another can and it wasn’t long before I was buying one every week day.

Once I recognised these habits I had a choice to make; was I happy with them or did I want to stop them. An additional chocolate bar occasionally and 1 can of drink four days a week is not too bad, but when I look at my goals they are not compatible with “feel good about myself, by being healthy, fit and looking good”. Plus it would be better for my finances if I saved that money each day (looking at my goals with that in mind, I’m surprised I don’t have anything in about financial position, just income).

Stopping the ‘bad’ habits

Recognising a habit that doesn’t help achieve your goals is the first step, but the second is taking action. There is plenty of advice on how to stop or change habits:

For me the best approach is cold turkey. I have to just stop. In the example of Dr Pepper, the habit I want to change is not stopping Dr Pepper, but not drinking it at work. Therefore for the last 6 days I have not bought a can and have got to the point where I can talk my self out of being one as I would have to start again (along the lines of Jerry Seinfelds’ breaking the chain that was popular on the internet a year or so ago). But if I go somewhere Dr Pepper is available, such as my parents’ house, than I can have some. This makes it easier to stop as its not a complete stop, but there are clear boundaries to when I can and can’t have it.

Developing ‘good’ habits

Unfortunately it is harder to develop ‘good’ habits as they rarely seem to form unconsciously. The most common piece of advice to develop new habits is to do the habit every day for 30 days. However, I know this doesn’t work for me.

I used a tick box approach to remind me to floss my teeth. After 30 consecutive days I stopped using the list and instantly stopped flossing as well! I admit my flossing is probably better than it was before tried to instill the habit, but on average it probably works out as once a week rather than every day as I’d hoped.

Again there is plenty of advice about developing habits like these posts from Zen Habits:

So my plan is to

identify habits that will help me move towards my goals and make the link very clear in my mind how the habit contributes, for instance eating the fruit in my lunchbox that tends to go home at the end of day will help me feel good about myself, by being healthy, fit and looking good
develop associations and triggers that remind me of the habit I am wanting to develop, for example I am keen to write more frequently on my blog than in the last year, so now on the days I don’t go to work I am working on posts as soon as I get up
develop mantras to help if I feel myself weakening, I do a lot of talking in my head so hopefully this will have a high impact

“First we make our habits, then our habits make us.” - Charles C. Noble

What habits have you formed without realising it? How do you consciously form new ones?

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14 things that delay me leaving work

2010-06-10T12:09:34Z

I hotdesk. Every morning I start with a desk and monitor, and at the end of the day I pack everything away. This means it’s easy to keep a clear desk as there is no time for items to build up; or does it?

I used to work with someone who kept a perfect clear desk. Although he worked on several projects his desk usually contained his notebook, pen and mug. I loved the space, but by the end of the day mine usually contains significantly more. To help identify my problem, I kept a record, over four weeks, of what was on my desk at the end of the day.

In total, there were 35 different items on my list, with the 14 most frequent offenders being shown in the graph above. Some of the other items were:

keys
web cam
bottle of ink
coins
exhibitor badge.

The first things I notice, is the importance of food. I admit I tend to eat throughout the day and it shows. As I write this I’ve got a dirty mug, empty crisp packet and my lunch box on the desk (although maybe it can be excused as it is my lunch hour). The second thing I notice is the store of paper on my desk; it appears it just builds up during the day; from paper I’m currently using to papers to be filed or shredded. I guess I’m not moving to a paper less working any time soon!

I know it takes me longer than most people in the office to pack up my desk and leave work and this shows exactly why. I think only half of the items (shown in dark blue) have justification to remain on my desk e.g. notebook, and the rest are there because I’m switching between tasks too quickly and not closing them properly, such as filing paperwork.

On that note, I am going to finish this post and tidy up the items from my work this morning and focus on having a clearer desk this afternoon and hope I can reduce my clearing up time by half.

Do you have tips to share? Do you have a clear desk? How do you keep it clear?

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Sitting in one of my favourite places…

2010-06-10T12:11:59Z

It’s the start of a bank holiday weekend and I’m sat in the Chococo cafe drinking a hot chocolate float and testing out my new technology.

Yes, I’ve moved with the times and got myself an internet enabled mobile phone. It’s HTC Desire so I’ve downloaded the Android Wordpress app which means I can write posts and respond to comments away from a computer.

Is it going to change things? I don’t know. I hope it will enable me to keep in touch better as I didn’t send text messages on my old phone and now I can reply to email. If I’m better at writing blog posts that’s an additional benefit.

I’ve still got away to go before I understand what this phone is capable of, but hopefully I’ve got blog on the go sorted.

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Review of income (March 2010)

2010-04-09T12:44:26Z

Recently it has become increasingly clear of the importance of my goal to have multiple sources of income including passive income as my main income stream maybe threatened.

I’ve been tracking the sources and level of my income since the beginning of April 2009 and the results are interesting, and slightly scary.

Sources of income

In the last 12 months I’ve had 5 sources of income:

salary / maternity pay
interest
dividends
selling investments
gifts

This is slightly more than I estimated in April 2009 when I suggested my sources of income were salary (maternity pay), interest and from my blog. You will notice that blog is not on my list as I am waiting to receive my next payment.

What concerns me is that over 90% is coming from my job. In the last year I received statutory maternity pay or no pay for several months and the salary I’ve received is lower than normal, therefore in a normal year my reliance on my salary would be even higher.

This is not reassuring if there are possibly threats to my job.

Active and Passive income

Splitting these sources into passive and active you can see that that majority of the income is active, from my salary (my maternity pay was passive, but I’m counting it as active as it was a substitute for my salary), so I need to focus on identifying passive sources.

Value of income

It has been a very varied year for income, due to my reliance on my salary and its variations while I’ve been on maternity leave. In future, I would like to be able to smooth out this variability. However, it is nice to know that my income in March 2010 was about 3 times higher than in April 2009.

Going forward

Obviously, I’ve still got a lot of work to meet my goal to have multiple sources of income including passive income and it is something I’m going to focus on over the next few months.

I am open to inspiration though, so how have you developed your income streams?

P.S. I currently use MS Money to track my transactions and run reports, however it is not going to be developed in future. Do you have any recommendations for alternative software?

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Dealing with short term urgent tasks

2010-04-01T13:10:44Z

There are times when you feel overwhelmed with tasks; everything is urgent. So what do you do? How do you choose what task to work on? You could choose the task with the nearest deadline, the one you like the best or the one you are being nagged to complete the most.

I’ve just finished a busy time at work and I’ve frequently felt overwhelmed with my urgent tasks as we approached the end of the financial year. Most days my AutoFocus system works wonderfully, but at times times my mind is so preoccupied with urgent tasks the thought of using that list just adds to my bewilderment.

Identifying the key tasks

When I start feeling overwhelmed (it could be first thing in the morning or at any time during the day) I put aside my task list and get another piece of paper. I spend sometime capturing the worries in my head and writing them as tasks. This means giving them an action word such as read, write, talk, so when I reach the action I know exactly what I need to do with no need for further analysis. It also helps to identify all the tasks that are concerning me. For instance, instead of adding blog to my list I would have:

write post
review comments
move database tables to new host

You could make this a closed list, so after the initial brainstorm you don’t add any further tasks. However, at times like this I often find I don’t always capture all the tasks in one go, so I tend to leave the list open. But you shouldn’t add all your tasks to it; this is a method to reduce pressure in your head so it is important to keep the list to the absolutely key items. If you think of items that can wait until tomorrow or aren’t causing you worry add them to your usual list.

Working on the tasks

It doesn’t matter where you start on the list. I usually start at the top because its ‘normal’ and because I’ve usually put the tasks I’m most concerned about at the top. But there is no reason not to start in the middle or the bottom.

Pick the first task and work on it until you come to a natural break point, you start worrying about other things, you get bored or interrupted. It doesn’t matter how long you work on the task as long as you make progress. This maybe as small as finding a telephone number or bigger like writing the first draft of a document. However, the key thing is not to keep working on it until its finished. When you’re energy and progress start falling you want to stop as you are getting less return for your time.

Of course, if you finish it that’s great. That’s one thing done and you can cross it off the list. Otherwise put a mark next the task and move to the next one.

I usually work through the list top to bottom, but just as you can start in the middle you can pick any task that doesn’t have a mark next to it.

You work through the list making progress on each item without spending a lot of time on each one. At the end of the first rotation you list could look like this with a few tasks crossed off.

confirm deliverables l
review case studies l
call advsior l
write report l
prepare presentation l
review budget l

The second rotation works in the same way. You pick up each task from where you left it previously and again only work on it until your progress and energy start reducing.

After the 2nd rotation your list could look like this, with a few more completed tasks.

confirm deliverables           ll

review case studies      ll

call advsior     l

write report     ll

prepare presentation     ll

review budget     ll

You continue in this way until all the tasks are finished, or you reach the end of the day.

Why this works

The first reason this is successful is it enables you to focus on the tasks that are worrying you. It also enables you to work pro-actively on tasks, enabling you to progress all the urgent tasks instead of working on one to completion and having to start another one from scratch and having to complete it urgently meaning the stress continues until all the tasks are completed in turn.

This also works by taking into account diminishing returns. Moving to another task, prevents stalling on a progress and ensures you make the most of the time available.

Example of my list

As I mentioned, I’ve been very busy over the last few weeks and have used this method most days and here is an example of my list from Monday 29th March.

I would recommend only using this technique when you have a large number of urgent tasks because it is a very focussed approach. If you like the technique and would like to use it every day I would recommend reading Get everything done and still have time to play which includes an explanation of using a similar method that is flexible enough to cover all incoming work.

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Life lesson from losing my blog for a week

2010-03-19T22:56:41Z

I’ve been wanting to change my hosting company for some time and after a year or so, I eventually signed up with a new hosting company, 5quid host.

However, I didn’t move my blog. The main reasons were the impact of moving the url away from my ISP and thinking it would be better to move this blog when I’d decided on its own domain. But the biggest reason was procrastination; it appeared to be such a big task, so instead I started planning.

Then life gave me a wake up call. My ISP’s server went down. Unfortunately as the engineers looked into it, they discovered bigger problems and ended up upgrading the servers with a different version of php and once they were running again, my blog was no longer accessible. I tried a few tweaks, but still nothing.

I had two options. Get my ISP working, or finally move everything to my new host. I decided it made most sense to spend the time moving. It isn’t something I’ve done before, but I had a vague idea of what to do so off I started. I had some errors, warning messages and moments when I almost gave up and started begging people to help me. However, after two days my site is working again, but its had its impact.

It has stopped me in my flow of writing regularly for my blog again; it has reduced my subscribers from 200 to 150 and obviously had a serious impact on the number of hits. Of course, all this could have been avoided if I’d moved my blog when I first signed up with 5quidhost.

So what was life trying to tell me:

at times it is best to act rather than plan
don’t buy something and not use it
don’t procrastinate on something you want to do

I’m inclined to think it is the latter as there are several things I currently want to do that I don’t seem to find the time for, so perhaps I need to change my focus. Is this event likely to change my behaviour? I suspect not, but I hope I will be more aware of my procrastination in future.

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Review of my daily log

2010-06-16T14:15:23Z

Over a year ago I asked for advice on how to keep a daily log and I used a lot of the suggestions when I started my own log. I kept my log from August to October 2008, a few days before I left work on maternity leave. I also started a log at home while I was on maternity leave (yes, it seems particularly odd to me that I did this with a new baby as well).

Before returning to work in November 2009 I reviewed my previous logs to see what worked and what didn’t and thought I’d share my thoughts.

Overview

I have found keeping a daily log at work worthwhile because so many of my thoughts are captured and can be reviewed later. Obviously after having a year off work my mind hasn’t retained all the details of my job and I’ve been able to refer back to my log to help me out e.g. finding the name of a file I couldn’t locate on the server. However, my system was too complicated and as I wanted it to be ‘perfect’ it was difficult to keep up to date. To help improve my system I did a lot of reading and I’ve included links at the end of this post to the sources I found helpful.

: The first style I used in my daily log – notice the task list on the left hand page and how difficult it is to find anything on the right

Starting each day

In my old log I would write down my location, any appointments, the tasks I wanted to complete that day and the state of my inbox. My theory behind including the tasks was to record how many I completed and how many days the tasks hung around; the tasks were generated from my organisation system at the time and took a fair time to set up.

I am no longer using that organisation system, instead I am using a variation of AutoFocus which enables me to get started quicker in the morning. The record of my emails was for two reasons, to record my progress to 0 emails in my inbox and to track my mailbox size as I was always running close to the 100Mb limit so kept a record as a motivation to reduce the size. However our IT systems have been upgraded and there is now no limit on mailbox size so is no longer relevant to track.

With my new log, the only thing I do at the start of the day is write the date and my location – much quicker.

Recording items through day

: Notice the difference with the left hand margin to record topics and actions, much easier to find information

I used to try and record everything which was difficult when lots of things happened at the same time. Now I aim to record the items that I may want to refer to in the future (as input in to future discussions or to cover my self ). I sometimes make notes that I’ve sent an email and a brief summary of the contents, but only if it is important. I make notes from telephone calls and discussions, and if they are a bit hurried and unclear I include additional notes when I review the pages at the end of the day. I also now staple in any paper used in a meeting instead of recreating the idea of it; yes it makes my book flare out, but it makes my written notes more meaningful. I also do rough workings and thinking in my notebook so I have a record of how I got somewhere.

At end of day

At the end of the day I used to review my mailbox size and number of emails in my inbox again so I could see progress during the day. However, it is now a fairly pointless measureÂ so I’ve stopped.

Now, I review my notes from the day and write topics and actions in the margin. At the end of the notes for that day I draw a double red line and list the actions with another line underneath (this is similar to Cornell method of notetaking, except that my summary is at the end of the day instead of at the bottom of each page). The line show me very quickly that I’ve reviewed the day for actions and they are all listed.

I have to admit though, that sometimes I just want to leave at the end of the day so end up doing this review the following morning.

I have found this Cornell style approach very successful so far, as it is easier to find things at a later date as the headers and actions stand out by being in the margin and therefore encourages me to do a review of my notes every day and helps ensure I don’t miss any tasks. Plus it is very easy to transfer any actions I didn’t add into my task list at the time as they are all visible at the end of the day.

Future improvement

My method of taking notes is now the best it has been in the 8 years I’ve worked, however I know there are still improvements that can be made. For instance, I would like an index to help find information at a later date. In two of my notebooks I’ve started numbering the pages and started using the topics in the sidebar in an index, but I’m not keeping it up to date. I know this should be part of my daily review of notes, but somehow it hasn’t made it in yet.

I also want to introduce a later review when I may generate different thoughts and to ensure I’ve picked up all the tasks. My thinking is this should be part of my weekly review, but I’m not very good at doing those!

As you can see I’ve come a long way into developing my daily log into a useful tool, but I’ve no doubt that my style will continue to change with time.Â How do you use your daily log? What works for you and what would you like to improve?

Links to other articles on this topic:
On the daily log
Prince2 Daily log
On the job promotion – the daily work log
How to take notes like an alpha geek
Cornell note taking method

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Revelations about my blogging (or lack of)

2010-02-26T18:57:30Z

You may not be able to tell, but I miss writing my blog. Several times a week I have ideas for posts, but they just don’t get written. About a week a go I had two revelations about why I seem to have this block and I wanted to share them.

Caught up in ‘blogging’

I started writing this blog to keep a record of things I don’t write in my journal, such as organisation techniques and working towards goals, while at the same time practising my writing skills. I also hoped that people would share ideas and comments, and I’ve been delighted that people have been so helpful as I’ve learnt a lot from comments, for instance when I was wondering what to buy for our new baby.

However 2 things happened that have slowed me down:

I started reading blogs about blogging and got caught up in all the things I ’should’ be doing
I wanted a new theme as my current one is the one I used when I started my blog 3 years ago. I’m not a coder but have worked on personalising a theme, however because of 1 I’ve been trying to introduce additional features such as slick advertising to ‘make money’. This explains why I’ve been working on this theme for over a year!

Revelation: I didn’t start this blog to make money and I’ve been pulled in a direction that is a BIG distraction. Of course I don’t mind making money if it happens, but it is not my focus.

Actions: Focus on content and finish a simple version of my theme.

Stuck on the process

Although I love processes, I have not developed any for writing posts. For instance I have a follow up post to Ask advice: How to keep a project daily log that I’ve been writing since October that is still in draft. I think the main reason is I’ve taken photographs to use as examples and it has taken months to download, edit and upload them to the site.

Revelation: I am not an efficient blogger

Actions: Pay attention to my blogging processes to identify and deal with my bottle necks and pick up good habits from other bloggers e.g. activity batching

So from now I’m going to concentrate on what is important to me, the writing, while being realistic that I’m not going to get back up to 3 posts a week overnight. As always I would be very interested in any advice you have about how you deal with blogging distractions and publishing good posts efficiently.

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Reviewing the spam on my blog

2010-02-17T11:06:05Z

You may have noticed there has been a lot of spam comments on my blog recently. I’m sorry I haven’t got into action earlier to deal with it.

I have found the spam interesting for two reasons; firstly I seem to get more spam the less active I am (although that could also indicate I’m not upgrading my anti spam plugins). Secondly, reading how the style of spam comments has changed to try and get round these plugins such as Akismet. The comments containing long lists of url now go straight into my spam folder, but the new style of responding to the post topic are still getting through.

However, there are still comments that stand out as they are not related to the post. I’ve been reviewing the comments during my lunch hour and some of these random comments have broken the monotony of the task and made me smile. Here are my favourites:

Using processes to aid efficiency – Gold plating of combustion contacting engine parts, would it increase the efficiency of the engine? ?

Don’t forget maintenance actions – Hi,Friction, moving a lot causes heat (internal energy) to build up in your body. Also small muscle movements can help circulate blood which also heats through friction.

My organiser; the diary section – Dairy is a farm or processing of milk from animals for human consumption. Soy milk is the grinding of the soy beans with water and extracting the liquid and can be done at homeâ€¦unlike a dairy!!

To try and reduce the amount of spam in the future, I’ve closed posts older than 3 months to comments and updated Akismet. Fingers crossed this means I’ll get some real comments in the future rather than from water skiers, banks, blind companies etc.

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Using processes to aid efficiency

2009-09-22T12:02:36Z

I admit I like processes; in fact I’ll go as far as to say I love processes. There are so many wonderful things about processes, here are a few:

help explain what needs to be done
ensures every stage of a task has been considered
helps to identify efficiencies
helps to teach other people
ensures consistencies

I get a great deal of pleasure from breaking tasks into its component actions and arranging them in an efficient manner. Despite this I’ve never used processes at home; maybe I thought it was too much like work or perhaps I thought it was just too anal!

One of the tasks that is constantly on my task list is to sort through photographs and particularly to put them on the internet to share them with friends and family.Â It seems I upload only a small proportion of the events where I take pictures. While I was downloading software to help me sort some pictures from a recent weekend with my parents, I realised one of the reasons I don’t work on the task as often as I’d like is because I have to think too much about what needs to be done.

Therefore, I created my first home process to describe how to deal with photographs. It covers the file structure for storing photographs, sorting the pictures, cropping, resizing and watermarking them and adding them to my website.Â It was a very worthwhile exercise as I had to really think about several areas meaning I did not have the complete process worked out in my head.

Having completed the process for how I deal with photographs on my laptop, I was inspired to discuss with my husband how we will store photographs when we have established our server. We have agreed how this is going to work as well as a file naming format. So although it could be months before our server is up and running we can both ensure our folders are in the same structure and files use the same naming format.

Of course this means, I now need to update my process with a second version to incorporate what we discussed.

Plus I need to decide what I’m going to do with these processes. Do I establish a household wiki and upload them or create a hard copy manual!

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Don’t forget maintenance actions

2009-09-11T12:28:57Z

It’s easy to identify an action or goal; sometimes it’s easy to complete them and cross them off your list. However, it is the maintenance actions that really make a difference. For instance, in terms of losing my pregnancy weight I could just think about reaching my pre-pregnancy weight, but the real desired outcome is to maintain that weight. This means when I reach that weight I don’t stop exercising, instead I move to the maintenance level of exercise and diet.

This is currently on my mind because I am in the process of reinstalling software on to my laptop after I reformatted at the weekend. Yes, less than two months since I bought it. After buying the laptop, my first tasks were to remove Vista and install XP, remove the preinstalledÂ software I didn’t want and to install AVG antivirus. Then I moved on to the business of installing other software and moving across my files.

Unfortunately it seems something went wrong either with the installation of AVG or with my settings so in the last two months a full scan had not taken place and I did not check.Â Even though I spent a lot of time in AVG to work out why the email scanner was not working I didn’t notice the main antivirus hadn’t run until I had been infected by at least one virus (the one I noticed redirected my google searches).

This is certainly an example of crossing an action off my task list without really thinking about my desired outcome. In this case my desired outcome was to have a virus free laptop.

I hope, the time taken to reformat and reinstall software will re enforce the lesson that I need to think about a task before I cross it off my list; has this task achieved the desired outcome orÂ are there follow up / maintenance tasks?

On the positive side, I am very grateful for my external hard drive as it makes backing up files easy and for my software registry so I know what software I want to reinstall and where to get it from.

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Losing technology and losing my way

2009-08-31T22:31:55Z

I’ve had a few problems recently. The most noticeable being the loss of my computer. The battery stopped charging and only occasionally registered the power supply. One theory is this may have been due to my daughter’s fascination with laptops; she had a tendency to pull out of the charging cable and chew on it. I now have a new 17″ latoptop, but have had to reinstall programmes and transfer files which has taken a long time (in fact I’m not quite there). This was soon after followed by a holiday where the internet connection wasn’t working. All this loss of technology, along with some illness, has meant I’ve lost my way in terms of productivity, and unfortunately my blog is one of the things to suffer

During the last few months, my approach to getting things done has been very much based on what is urgent or what is on my mind, so not as productive as using my AutoFocus list. It has also involved using paper so I now have several lists and blog posts I’ve started at different times that I need to locate.

I’m very keen to get back on track with both my productivity and writing blog posts, therefore I plan to start making the most of my available time. I’m starting today, by writing this as IÂ sit on Studland beach in Dorset between going for a sail and for a swim.

I have some interesting times ahead because I return to work in a few months and after a year away it will be a shock to the system! I want to develop good productivity habits now so I can implement these in the office and ensure I continue to get things done at home.

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What you want to read

2009-07-03T17:53:24Z

Almost three weeks ago, I put out a poll asking what you wanted to read on this blog, I’m delighted that some of you spent the time to complete it. As you can see from the chart below, the results were fairly even.

Its great that you want to read more about goal identification and achievement because I am keen to write about this topic as I think it keeps me focussed on what I’m trying to achieve. I’m usually happy to talk about productivity especially as it’s what I originally started this blog for, plus I believe if I’m more productive I will achieve my goals more quickly. These are the two topics I was hoping you would want to read about

Dealing with work is a tricky topic for me to write about at the moment as I’m on maternity leave, however I will be returning to work before the end of the year. Its going to be interesting returning to work after 12 months away and I hope to have some good observations to write about.

I’m particularly pleased to see journal writing in the list because this is a topic I’m interested in at the moment as I encourage myself to write my own journal more frequently. However, I decided a few months ago this blog wasn’t the best place for these posts so one of the online projects I mentioned in my May monthly review is about journalling. I’ll let you know when it goes live.

The result I was surprised about was the desire for more personal posts; I was expecting you to say you wanted less personal posts with perhaps more instructional type post. I will work on providing more posts about my experiences, but maybe you can help; let me know if you would like to share your experiences on any of these topics, by writing a guest post.

You can follow my activities by subscribing to my posts or on Twitter.

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Little and often (getting big things done)

2009-06-22T12:11:43Z

There are some tasks that you really want to do, but are so big that you don’t know how you’ll find the time to complete it, or even where to start. There are two solutions:

put aside a day (or longer) and work on it until the task is finished
work on the task a little bit regularly over a longer period of time

I’m a big fan of the little and often approach and have used it for yeasr within different organisation systems and it is one of the features of AutoFocus, in fact it is positively encouraged.

Advantages of little and often

less resistance to starting the task if you know you only need to work on it for a short time
less procrastination as you can stop working on the task when you get tired of it and lose focus
means you can progress several tasks in a day, this can reduce stress particularly if you are working towards deadlines (especially if there is a chance the deadline maybe moved forward) or you need to provide regular progress updates
your brain has time to think about the task in between sessions and may come up with new ideas

Disadvantages of little and often

can take a longer duration to complete the task
can forget where you were with the task
can have lots of ongoing tasks which can get annoying or frustrating
can trick yourself into thinking you are making progress by working on a task frequently, but if do too little each time e.g. reorganise pages in a file, you don’t move towards completing the task

Example

Writing a will has been on my to do list for years, but has really been nagging since giving birth.Â This is a good example of where I implemented the little and often technique to complete a big task in a few short tasks.

brainstormed what I wanted to happen to my belongings and money
discussed with husband who should look after our daughter if we both died
drafted text
wrote final text
signed will in front of witnesses
filed will and informed executors

For me the two key parts of working little and often are working on the task frequently and keeping a record of what needs doing next. Here are some ideas to get you thinking of how you could incorporate them into your productivity system.

Regular working

introduce a rotating system, such as AutoFocus, where you work on tasks as they appear, or by working on different project areas on a rotating basis through the day as discussed in Get Everything Done: And Still Have Time to Play
work on the task on a set day and time by adding it to your calendar
work on the task after a set number of days after completing it by adding it to your calendar

What needs to be done next

keep notes with the task of any ideas you’ve had as you work on it; when you next pick up the task you can review your thoughts and decide which ones to do next
write on your task list the next task; make sure the task is descriptive and uses an action word e.g. measure breakfast bar to ensure stools will fit before purchasing
develop a checklist to keep track of progress. The picture shows an extract of a checklist I have to keep track of where I’ve got to with sorting out my photographs

Do you use a little and often approach? How do you implement it?

Don’t forget to let me know what you’d like to read about on this blog, poll closes soon.

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What do you want to read on this blog?

2009-06-15T08:36:45Z

I’ve been writing this blog for over two years and I noticed recentlyÂ that the topics I’m writing about have changed slightly and I’m interested in your thoughts about the future direction. Please feel free to let me know your thoughts in the comments, but I’ve also created a poll below and in the sidebar to make it easy; you can select up to 5 responses.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

I started this blog after using Live Journal for a year and realising I wanted to practice my writing in a way I didn’t think I could on LiveJournal. The current strap line Revelations along the way to a simpler, happier and more successful life shows my intentions when I started this blog and the majority of posts were related to productivity.

The most obvious change in the last year has been the unfortunate reduction in the number of posts each month. However, the general topic has changed from productivity to identifying and achieving goals, although I haven’t been completely ignoring productivity, particularly with the introduction of AutoFocus. I don’t know if this is due to the widening of my thoughts or if it is an impact of being off work and the focus will naturally shift back when I return to work in a few months.

Of course, a blog is about its readers as well as its author. And although the number of subscribers has continued to increase the number of comments has decreased (apart from some that I suspect are really spam). Plus the number of pageviews on the site have decreased; in fact it appears I peaked in February 2008!

I didn’t want to limit the options in the survey to just my thoughts, so I’ve identified the options by looking through my most popular posts:

Most read

Most comments

I would really appreciate any feedback you provide to help me improve my blog, although I have to admit I’m a little nervous that with the recent interaction on the site that when the poll closes there won’t be any votes!

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Introducing wheel of life progress review (May 2009)

2009-09-17T08:51:37Z

I have undertaken monthly reviews as well as wheel of life reviews for some time, however I felt I should be getting more out of these reviews to ensure I was working towards my goals. Although I think the wheel of life is a great tool to help develop your desired life balance, my concern was that it was subjective and therefore probably not a good monitoring tool.

New wheel of life method

To try and resolve this, during May 2009 I kept a note of the tasks and activities I completed, and plotted the number against each of my goal areas. Of course, it is not perfect as I have not been able to make a note of every single task, plus the number of tasks does not necessarily equal time spent on tasks or importance of tasks, but it is fairly quick and easy to keep track.

What I hadn’t expected was how difficult it was to categorise the tasks into my goal areas and they are not necessarily sitting where you would expect;

sorting files on my computer and reducing emails are under Surroundings
writing posts for my blog are under Free time
working on my new blog theme are under Learning
reviewing transactions and balance of bank accounts is under Other

Progress

Build strong and supportive relationships

I’m very pleased that relationships is one of the highest scores because I’ve often felt I don’t keep in touch with friends and family very well. Of course it has helped having a baby as I am in more frequent contact with family members, particularly using Skype so they can see regularly see her. I’ve also uploaded photographs and videos so people.

Spend my time in pleasant surroundings

Looking around the lounge at the moment it doesn’t appear that I’ve made a lot of effort in terms of my surroundings, however my records say different. I’ve tidied and vacuumed my car, I’ve tidied and cleaned the house several times including reviewing items on the kitchen noticeboard and under the coffee table. I’ve also worked to improve my digital surroundings by deleting emails and old software and clearing the desktop.

Feel good about myself, by being healthy, fit and looking good

This is one of my least active areas with the majority of tasks being exercising as I prepared for my run. However, this has had an impact as my weight as reduced by 2.4kg to 74.4kg and means I can fit in some of my pre pregnancy clothes more comfortably.

Have multiple sources of income including passive income

I haven’t made any additional money yet, but I’m investigating a few ideas including two online projects.Â I’m also wondering if investing in property is a good idea at the moment particularly as I like the idea of having a source of income that is not related to my pension when I retire so I’ve picked up some free books through bookmooch.

Develop a rewarding and challenging career

It is perhaps not surprising that this area is not very active while I’m on maternity leave. However it is good to know that work are missing me as I’ve been asked to analyse data and review the annual report for one project and review an entry form for one of my old projects they wish to enter for an award.

Have time to spend on the things I enjoy

I found it difficult to decide where to list my productivity tasks and in the end I decided on free time because the more productive I am the more time I will have to do the things I want to do. My AutoFocus stats are 68 open pages, 0 dismissed pages, 2 closed pages and 19 pages still to open (compared to last month 68, 1, 0, 5), maybe I want to do too much!

I also worked on a crocheted shawl for a friend, worked on my new blog design, decided on blog hosting (I chose 5 quid hosting) and wrote. At the moment I’m wondering whether to give writing a novel ago. I’ve completed NaNoWriMo twice, but the idea I’ve currently got in my head feels different; it wants time to grow and develop instead of being capture as quickly as possible, but I’m not sure where to start the story at the moment.

I read 3 books in May (although it feels like a lot more so I must have started several)

Master and Commander – Patrick O’Brien (Amazon)
Cast in Shadow – Michelle Sagara (Amazon)
Cast in Courtlight – Michelle Sagara (Amazon)

I’m disappointed I only wrote 3 posts in May, however I have finally decided on a new host company for my blog (5 quid hosting). The number of subscribers reached 195, creaping ever closer to the 200 goal. The highest number of referals was from AutoFocus forum at Ning.

The most read posts were:

Challenge myself by trying new things and through continued learning

Again another low area. Most of the learning has been self development such as learning about php and css as I work on my blog theme or working out how to use Adobe Premier Elements as I edit family videos, but there are also some classes as my daughter and I are attending baby signing classes.

Other

I tried hard not to have an other category, but there are just some activities that don’t fit into my goal areas such as review our money accounts and backing up my websites. This is an area I want to be low and if it increases to the level of the other areas I will know I’ve lost focus.

Looking forward:

The areas where I need to increase my number of tasks I’m completing are the learning, career and self area. However, with the lengh of my autofocus list the impact of adding additional tasks in these areas my take a month or two to come through!

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I completed my 5km Race for life

2009-06-08T15:58:33Z

Every year Cancer Rearch UK organise a series of women only 5km (3 mile) sponsored runs across the UK. Although they are called Race for Life everyone gets a medal as the aim is to finish anyway you can, whether it is running, walking, pushing a pram or wheelchair or doing a three legged race.

I’ve always been a sprinter and thought I’d done my only long distance run when I completed a Race for Life 7 years ago, but signed up for this year after it was suggested it would be a good target to lose some of my pregnancy weight. I was keen to run the race despite having only completed the distance once before, but found it difficult to find time to train and two weeks before the run the furthest I’d gone was 1.6km and that only involved 6 minutes of running.

However, I’m pleased to say that on Sunday I completed my Race for Life along with another 2500 women. I ran about half of the course and completed the distanceÂ in under 42 minutes. I’m also pleased to say that I have already raised my sponsorship target of Â£100 with more money still to come in.

I’m currently pondering whether I leave the running here or if I sign up for another race straight away to give me my next target.

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