blog to discovery

Review of my daily log

2010-03-03T14:59:34Z

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 measure 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. 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 home…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. 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. 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 preinstalled 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. 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 or 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 I 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. 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 recently 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. 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 distance in under 42 minutes. I’m also pleased to say that I have already raised my sponsorship target of £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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Creating a goal daily reminder

2009-06-05T13:31:07Z

Writing down your goals is good, but of course it is even better to take action to help realise the goals. When I announced the second draft of my goals, Gary asked how often I considered them. This got me thinking; I intend to review them at the end of each month using a wheel of life, but was this good enough? I decided that as well as a regular review, I also needed a regular reminder of my goals.

I created desktop wallpaper for my laptop depicting each of my goals, so I am reminded of them whenever I use my laptop. This was a task I could have spent a long time on by finding the perfect pictures and learning how to use photoshop to get the perfect layout. Instead I put something together very quickly finding the best pictures I could and over time I intend to update it when I find better pictures. This means the wallpaper isn’t as pretty as it could be and some of the images are a bit of a loose connection to the goal, but as it is acting as a reminder to me it is doing its job.

build strong and supportive relationships – two pictures one of me and my bridesmaids and one of my husband, daughter and me

develop a rewarding and challenging career – two ‘inspirational’ posters that say - don’t wait for success just start without it and the only way to predict the future is to make it

have time to spend on the things I enjoy – picture of writing and reading

have multiple sources of income including passive income – cartoon about money growing on trees

challenge myself by trying new things and through continued learning – quote saying learning everything you can, from anyone you can .. you will be grateful you did

spend my time in pleasant surroundings – background picture of Worbarrow bay in Dorset, plus exterior and interior pictures showing features I’d like in our house

feel good about myself, by being healthy, fit and looking good – two pictures of me, one on the day after our wedding and one a few years before on a cycling trip

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My AutoFocus set up

2009-05-27T17:07:42Z

AutoFocus is such a simple system that I think some people find are finding it difficult to get started. When I wrote my review of the system I thought about including some pictures of my set up, but decided against it because after all it is just a list. However after several requests, here is a description of my AutoFocus set up, which is pretty close to following Mark Forster’s instructions.

The book

My book is an A5 hardback wide ruled notebook. This is a book I already had in the house and from the notes on the inside cover appears to be a book from work that I previously used to track progress as part of my management diploma course. My bookmark was a gift from my sister from Japan and is a cat that clips to the cover of the book and the tail marks the page with my current task.

On the first page I have the date I started the list.

Note:When this book is full, my second book will be a soft backed, spiral bound narrow ruled notebook. I prefer narrow ruled notebooks, but they are difficult to find in the UK so I have already bought this when I saw it a few weeks ago.

Adding items to the list

All new tasks are added to the end of the list with the day’s date on left of the page against the first task added that day. There is no significance about the colour of the pen used, it is just what was close to hand.

Completing tasks

When I have completed a task I cross it through with a green highlighter. One of the interesting features of AutoFocus is that although I have done the same number of passes on each of these pages there is a large difference in how many tasks I have completed; this suggests I’m less interested (or able) to complete the tasks on the second example so a large proportion of that page is likely to be dismissed on a future rotation.

If I come across a task that is no longer relevant or has already been finished I cross it off with a normal pen.

You can see some notes at the top of the page which will enable me to do some data analysis, it says:

O – the date the page was opened, when the first task was completed on it
D – the date the page was dismissed
C – the date the page was completed, when the dismissed tasks have been reviewed and final decisions have been made on all of them
P – the number of passes the page has had, this is marked on each rotation

Dismissing and reviewing tasks

I marked dismissed tasks with yellow highlighter (you may just be able to tell this in the picture). When I review my dismissed tasks I need to consider whether to add them back on to the list or whether to permanently delete them.

So far I have only dismissed two tasks that were concerned with scanning in information. They didn’t get completed because I didn’t have it clear in my head how I was going to store the information in a sensible way if the scanning took several sessions. When I reviewed the tasks I realised I wanted to complete the tasks, but I didn’t have the correct software. I added a new task to look into pdf combining software and left the dismissed tasks as yellow.

When I completed the second review of dismissed tasks I had found the software so I added the tasks back on to the list and marked them in blue. If I had decided not to complete the tasks I would have marked them in pink.

AutoFocus is so simple that even my daughter uses it! This picture wasn’t staged and I’m very grateful to my husband for seeing this, grabbing the camera and capturing the moment.

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Ask Advice: What to look for in a web hosting company?

2009-05-06T17:06:10Z

Over a year ago I asked for some advice on selecting a hosting company for my blog, but despite a couple of suggestions I have still not transferred my site. I have since been advised to use a UK hosting company so that we are both under the same legal criteria and unfortunately the earlier suggestions were both US companies.

I have done some research and have found several companies that appear to meet my requirements, but I’ve realised I don’t know how to tell a good hosting company. Of course, I want to spend as little as possible, particularly as my blog doesn’t make any money (yet), but I’m happy to pay more for a reliable and helpful company. I have read that you sometimes need to be careful of the very cheap provider; so how do I tell? I have found several UK review sites, but I’m not sure I can trust any of them as they seem to be mostly about promoting affiliate links.

For the blog I want to be able to run WordPress. Plus if you have ever visited www.darktea.co.uk you will have discovered I run Coppermine to share photographs, I want to continue with that and have the bandwith to share short videos of my daughter. I would also like to be able to host more than one domain name as I’m thinking it maybe time to buy this blog its own domain; and of course some form of backup would be a bonus.

Do you have any advice for what I should be looking for in a hosting company? Or do you have any experience with these (or other UK hosting companies)? There are no affiliate links in the list.

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Review of current income (April 2009)

2009-05-31T10:27:00Z

One of my goals is to have multiple sources of income including passive income. My first action has been to review my current situation so I have a baseline and to aid in decision making.

Definition of my income

I will exclude my husband’s income, however I will half any joint income we have e.g. saving accounts
I will not include ‘theoretical’ money such as share value increases, I will only count money that I can access
I will not include my daughter’s money, so for example, I will ignore the child benefit I receive

Current sources of income

I currently have three sources of income, my salary (or statutory maternity pay at the moment), interest on bank accounts and income from my blog – well it happened once! Each month I get a cash rebate from my credit card company, however I am excluding this because it is a percentage of my bill, so the way to increase the rebate is to spend more and that is not an action I want to encourage.

How I will measure progress

I currently include all my money transactions in MS Money so I have customised a report to show income that meets the above three points. I will put these figures into a spreadsheet I’ve developed to show how my income compares to the baseline and the proportion of income from each source. The spreadsheet runs for 6 months, excluding the baseline and looks like this

Spreadsheet to monitor income streams (showing test data)

The baseline

I set my first baseline at the end of April 2009

Income	Baseline
Salary/Benefit	92.9%
Interest	7.1%
Blog	0%
Income 1	0%
Income 2	0%

Looking forward

The two simplest methods to grow my income are to increase interest payments by saving more money and finding accounts with higher interest rates, and from my blog. In the two years I’ve had this blog I’ve received one payment from Google, but I could make more effort by finishing my theme redesign to make the site more appealing to advertisers, and of course continue writing posts.

It may be difficult for me to find other ways of making money at the moment as the majority of my time is spent looking after my daughter and I need to comply with the requirements of statutory maternity pay. However I plan to review my existing skills and interests and see if they can be adapted to produce an income (or reduce outgoings), and also look into training courses I can do from home which could help with income generation in the future. I want to build reliable streams of income so I’m not looking for get rich quick schemes.

What do you think? Have you analysed your income streams? How have you increased them?

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Progress in the last month? (April 2009)

2009-04-30T18:36:03Z

April has been a better month and I feel I’m starting to make progress in many areas. I’m currently thinking about ways of tracking and reporting on this progress, so until I’ve decided this is another combined blog and personal progress update.

Blog – Using AutoFocus and focusing on one post a week my rate is approaching that of last summer, I assume this is also the reason for the slow increase in the number of subscribers that peaked at 190; obviously my goal now is to get to 200 subscribers. I have finally got Gravatars and nested comments in to my theme; I’ve been trying to do this since I installed wordpress 2.7 and finally completed it this morning. I haven’t looked at the styling yet so that is now on my task list.

Goals – I have reviewed my goals and have produced a second draft and now I want to ensure I keep working towards the goals by developing a suitable review method.

Fitness – My husband and I have started going to the gym in shifts, so he goes on his way home from work and I meet him there with Beth when we swap cars and I stay to do my work out. This has the benefit of encouraging us both to exercise. I’m still planning on doing the Race for Life, however my chiropractor has told me I shouldn’t run so I will need to walk it (or perhaps a slow jog); I’ve already been sponsored £20 so I have to complete the course. I currently weigh 76.8 kg, 0.4kg lighter than last month.

Tasks – I’m continuing to use AutoFocus and have now completed my first pass through my (very long) list. I currently have 68 open pages, 1 dismissed page and 5 pages still to open.

Referals – The highest number of referrals was from my twitter profile and the second from a post I made in February 2008 on Mark Forster’s forum about whether you could combine GTD and Do it tomorrow.

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Wheel of Life exercise review

2009-04-27T16:34:25Z

I started drawing regular wheel of life diagrams in 2007, although it has been several months since my last one. I’ve been thinking about introducing them as a regular exercise again so I thought I should review the method for its usefulness before adding something else to my to do list.

Background to wheel of life

The idea behind the wheel of life exercise is to ensure there is balance in your life. By plotting how you perceive you are doing in each area of your life you easily see how balanced or unbalanced your life is, and how this changes over time. Even if you don’t want all parts of your life to have the same value you can use it by plotting the values for how you would like your life as well as your current position.

The exercise is used by a lot of life coaches because it ensures you analyse each aspect of your life in turn and provides a good visual record of where you are. I’ve read about it in two books, How to be brilliant and The Pocket Life Coach, there is also a good post at MindTools.

My experience

The chart shows a comparison between my first plot in June 2007 and my last one in July 2008; fortunately it shows progress in most areas!

I like the visual representation of where I am and how easy it is to compare different months. However I have found the vagueness of the scale difficult, particularly as it is based on my perception and this can change on how positive or negative I am feeling, so the plots are probably not comparable each month. I have also not felt motivated by completing a wheel each month, instead it has become more of a record of where I feel I am each month, similar to my end of month review.

Taking it forward

As I like the visual aspect I am keen to continue using the Wheel of Life exercise. I am currently thinking of changing the axis so they reflect my goals and combining it with my end of month review to show progress in the previous month (instead of current position). If there are areas with a low score I can review that area and ensure there are relevant tasks on my to do list. However, I need to find a more meaningful way of plotting my current position, I’ve had three ideas, although I recognise they all have their limitations:

create a description for each point on the scale e.g. 1 have made a small step towards achieving this, 10 have achieved this
number of tasks completed in each area
amount of time spent on each area

Do you have any experience using Wheel of Life? How do you track your goal progress? Do you have any advice?

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Using AutoFocus (as a new mum)

2009-05-27T17:09:12Z

I’m a big fan of Mark Forster and have all three of his books (pre-ordering two of them). Mark has lots of tips for increasing productivity that do not involve a complex system like Getting Things Done. I have found many of his ideas beneficial particularly rotating through tasks implementing little and often, the concept of a closed list and minimising distractions by not working on incoming tasks until tomorrow.

Before giving birth I developed a new organisation system that incorporated many of Mark Forster’s ideas, as well as some from Getting Things Done. However, I soon realised it was not going to work because of the time it took to set up each day. Fortunately Mark issued a request for Beta testers for his new system AutoFocus in January 2009 just as I was looking to spend time on things other than baby.

AutoFocus

The best way to understand AutoFocus is to read the instructions on Mark’s site and to watch the video of Mark demonstrating how it works.

AutoFocus is designed to be a simple productivity system; you can’t get much more simple than a notebook and pen. In fact when you read the instructions your first reaction is likely to be that will never work and so think of ways to ‘make it better’. However after trying it for while you’ll wonder how you never came up with the method on your own.

The method has one list that all ideas are added to (without the initial filtering of GTD). Working through the list encourages you to start tasks that may have been around for a long time, examines why you maybe resisting a task and identifies items you don’t actually want to do. Sound too good to be true? It isn’t.

What I like about AutoFocus

the simplicity, it requires a notebook, a pen and a highlighter (although I use two highlighters as I like to highlight completed tasks)
the ease of keeping the tasks up to date, if you forget to add tasks for a day or find them scribbled on a piece of paper, it doesn’t matter just add them in
you don’t feel silly adding all type of tasks on the list; I’ve got tasks to do with organising my return to work as well as books and magazines I want to read
it helps you find the quickest way of completing a task. Mark talks about a task ’standing out’, sometimes I’ve found this is a task ‘nagging’ me such as vacuuming the house. Once I’ve decided to do it my brain starts working how I can complete the task (or part of the task) as quickly as possible so I can move on to more enjoyable items (whereas in the past I would have ignore the task or procrastinated)
you get the ‘reward’ of crossing off a task for doing just part of it
if you lose your list you can easily start again (fortunately I haven’t needed to test this)

What I did wrong when I implemented AutoFocus

Maybe I was in too much of a rush when I first implemented AutoFocus but I made two mistakes; one which has certainly made things more difficult. As they are both mistakes that other people may make I thought I’d mention them.

I added in tasks off my previous list, but I was so excited I have to admit that it wasn’t just my previous list it was the one before that as well. Mark recommends that you build up your list organically with items that occur to you from now, and one of those items should be to work on the backlog list. Having added all my backlog items means I have a long list to work through, but looking at the positives I have already completed some tasks that have been around for a long time
Each day I started the list from the first page rather than the last page I’d worked on. In some ways this wasn’t a big problem because I was still working on tasks and dismissing them, but I didn’t get the feeling of making progress through the list and instead just felt the list growing while I was still on page 1.

My experience of AutoFocus

I’m very impressed with AutoFocus and it is perfect for me at the moment because it is very low maintenance. I’m not making quick progress through the list, in fact I haven’t finished my first pass through the list (hopefully today or tomorrow). However, this doesn’t bother me because while I’m on maternity leave my main role is to look after the baby and it is not appropriate to include nappy changes and feeds so the list is only for the times I have outside of those things, which isn’t always a lot. The important thing to me is that I am being productive in my available time.

My list includes a lot of duplicates which makes it longer, but whenever I think of a task I simply add it to the list without checking whether it is already on. This means tasks which are praying on my mind or need doing more often such as tidying the house appear more often than other tasks such as review my blog stats.

What I’m anticipating is that once I’ve started my second pass I will either dismiss a lot of tasks or discover I’ve already completed a lot of them, this will enable me to reduce the list size and hopefully enable me to rotate through the list at least once in a week instead of once in four months! For information, my position on 12th April 2009 was

1 page dismissed
41 active pages
21 unopened pages

Taking AutoFocus forward

So far I’ve only used AutoFocus for my tasks at home, however I’m planning on introducing it at work when I return later in the year. From what I’ve read about other people’s experiences on Mark Forster’s forums I’m planning on introducing two changes. Firstly I intend to use an A4 notebook rather than A5 because this will enable me to rotate through the tasks quicker and secondly to add a column to highlight any deadlines (although I will still work through them the same).

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My favourite books of 2008

2009-05-19T16:09:10Z

My notes suggest I read 50 books in 2008 (13 fewer than 200) although like a lot of things towards the end of the year I let my notes slip so it is possible I’ve missed a few books. Comparing the list to my favourites books of 2007 there are a couple of things I notice; the books fall into a wider range of genres (not just fantasy), and there are several books that are the same as 2007. Looking through the full list unfortunately there were several books I’d looked forward to reading, sometimes for over a year, that did not live up to my expectations.

My favourite books of 2008 (in reading order)

I already know that some of these books will appear on my favourite books of 2009 list as I’ve already reread them this year. Does this mean I’ve got stuck into a reading rut? Do you have recommendations?

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Reviewing goals after a major life change

2009-04-09T13:54:24Z

Having developed your goals its important to review them at a later date, particularly after any major changes in your life, to ensure they are still relevant; you don’t want to be working towards something you no longer want. Plus it is a useful reminder to ensure you are making progress.

I only developed a first draft of my goals in August 2008, but since then I’ve given birth to my first child so my life has changed significantly. Although I wrote my draft knowing I was pregnant, I had no idea what it was going to be like being a mother, so after four months I now feel ready to review my goals. Plus I’ve now had almost half of my maternity leave and would like to spend some of the remaining time to progress my goals.

My first draft vision

My purpose – to be happy and help those close to me to be happy

My values

build strong and supportive relationships
exist in pleasant and personal surroundings
be healthy and attractive for my own benefit and to benefit those around me
be financially independent
develop a rewarding and challenging career
be able to enjoy the things I enjoy when I choose to
challenge myself by trying new things and through continued learning

My review

Fortunately my first impression is that I still agree with the majority of these points; although they could be written better.

One of the two areas I was unsure about previously was develop a rewarding and challenging career because I thought this implied working for someone else or working for money, however I have since read a definition of career that says it is your chosen pursuit so I’m happy to retain the word. The second troublesome area was be financially independent as my husband thought I wanted to be independent of him while I wanted to say that I did not need to work. Therefore I’m changing this point to have multiple sources of income including passive income, I think this is clearer and the current economic situation has highlighted the benefits of having income from more than one place.

I wondered whether I should be aiming for nurturing relationships, but have decided that although nurturing and supportive are similar, I’m happier with supportive relationships. I want to be healthy and look good for my own benefit, but also for my husband and daughter so I’m around for a long time and don’t embarrass them! However, I think the wording of that point sounded odd so I’ve changed it to feeling good about myself and hopefully if I feel good my family will benefit as well. Again, the point about how I choose to spend my time sounded odd so I have written it slightly differently.

Taking all of these points I have produced a second draft of my vision. If I’m happy with this in a few weeks, I can then write the second part of my goal, the envisioned future which will describe where I want to be in 20 to 30 years.

The second draft of my vision

My purpose – to be happy and help those close to me to be happy

My values

build strong and supportive relationships
spend my time in pleasant surroundings
feel good about myself, by being healthy, fit and looking good
have multiple sources of income including passive income
develop a rewarding and challenging career
have time to spend on the things I enjoy
challenge myself by trying new things and through continued learning

How often do you review your goals? Do you attach it to a signficant day such as your birthday?

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