Fridays are open loop days at SimpleProductivity blog.

• This really spoke to me. Viewing tasks as deliverables is what I do during the day. Doing it at home shifts the focus (and makes it seem a whole lot less like slogging through a huge backlog). From Lifehack.org’s “The One Mind Shift To Rule Them All: Everything is a Deliverable”
• This is funny, but too true. An infographic on how to kill your productivity. From Lifehack.org’s “7 Ways to Destroy Productivity”
• Some great thoughts on cleaning up the label clutter that affects our lives from Midway Simplicity’s “Time For a Major Clean-Up!”
• This is a great little info graphic that summarizes productivity boosters. From Lifehack.org’s “10 Ways to Boost Productivity”
• Interesting…having a slower Internet speed could actually make you more productive by limiting distractions. I can see where this would be true. From Lifehacker’s “Slow Internet: Another reason to work at the Coffee Shop”
• Stage fright is horrible. While I don’t freak out as much when speaking or performing as a group, I cannot play or sing solo without a major attack. Lifehacker explains what happens during stage fright and how to deal with it. From “What Happens to Your Brain When You Have Stage Fright”
• This app might make me try coupons again. My main problem is that I don’t remember to use them before expiration. This app might help. From Lifehacker’s “SnipSnap Saves Paper Coupons to Your Phone”
• We love homemade burritos. Unfortunately, they can be very difficult to keep together. lifehacker teaches us how to fold one at “How To Properly Fold a Burrito So it Doesn’t Lose its Filling”
• This is a great tip…adding items to Google Calendar directly from GMail. Check it out…it could save you some time. From Lifehacker’s “Add Google Calendar Events Directly from Gmail”
• If you are interested in gardening but don’t have a yard, you can get around it with containers. Lifehacker shows an inexpensive version at “This Pallet Crate Box Garden Grows Veggies, Fits on Apartment Patios”
• I am definitely not about top 40 music. I was using Baeble through my Roku, but they stopped having new music videos as they used to. This might be a good replacement. From Lifehacker’s “UndergroundMusic.fm Streams New Tunes from Up and Coming Bands”
• Active reading is the best way to retain material. Lifehacker has a guide of how to do it at “The Easiest Way to “Actively Read”"
• I use location boxing to write my book. I physically get away from my home office desk and use my writing nook. Lifehacker explains how this works at “Try “Location Boxing” to Get Your Brain to Switch Gears”
• This is a great little info graphic that summarizes productivity boosters. From Lifehack.org’s “10 Ways to Boost Productivity”

Did you know you can get Twitter and Facebook updates from this blog? For Twitter, look for @SmplProdBlog. On Facebook it’s Facebook.com/SimpleProductivity.

Photo by bob in swamp. Licensed under Creative Commons.

More great content can be found on the site at SimpleProductivityBlog.com., or you can find me on Twitter (@SmplProdBlog) and Facebook (Facebook.com/SimpleProductivity).

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Wednesdays are simplicity days at SimpleProductivity blog.

One of the things that has happened in the past few years is that magazines have crept back into my life. At one point I had cancelled all subscriptions except one. Yet when I looked around last weekend, I found seven different magazines in my to-read pile.

I can’t keep up with this many magazines, which is why I have a to-read pile.

Clearly this has gotten out of hand. I need to trim out the fat here. I need to add print media to my media diet.

Newspapers and News Magazines

This isn’t a problem for me, because we only get the paper on Sunday, and I don’t touch it. Some people, though, end up with daily papers piling up.

If you are one of these people, you need to do two things: throw out the backlog, and ramp down your subscription.

Why throw out the backlog? Let’s face it…news media are time sensitive. If you haven’t read the news during the day, it will be outdated by tomorrow. Get rid of them.

If you find yourself with a consistent backlog, it is time to re-evaluate your subscription. We did this a few years ago. We realized the only time we read the paper was on weekends. Since our local paper doesn’t offer a weekends-only plan, we went with just Sundays. See if you can get the paper in a frequency that fits your schedule.

(Or you could do without. I rely on people around me to tell me when something important happens. I haven’t missed a single important news event by going this route.)

Magazines

For non-news magazines, the question becomes how much value am I getting out of the publication.

I will admit that I will buy magazines in the grocery checkout line because I am attracted by the headlines on the covers. Invariably, I find that I am disappointed in the story attached to the headlines.

Many magazines recycle the same themes over and over again, particularly women’s magazines: organization, diet, cooking, desserts (I just love it when they tack the dessert article right after the diet article), cleaning, finances, relationships.

So the question for these becomes “Am I getting enough value from these magazines to justify me buying them or continuing the subscription?”

Here are my magazines:

• Reader’s Digest. I find myself uplifted by the stories and laughing at the jokes. It stays.
• Women’s World. I like 5 regular features, but find the other health, diet and cooking articles a distraction. A candidate for cancellation, especially since it is a weekly magazine.
• Women’s Day and Family Circle. Always, always I am disappointed in the quality of the articles and the inability to distinguish ads from content. I have to stop buying them.
• Mother Earth News. I love the articles on gardening and cooking, and actually use the information. This one stays.
• National Geographic. No one reads this. Cancel.
• Architectural Digest. My daughter wanted this one, but it ends up in my piles. I don’t like the magazine because the interiors are too perfect and too expensive. Cancel.
• Birds and Blooms. I use the gardening information and ideas. It stays.

So after my media diet, I will be left with three magazines that I enjoy and read.

I have made the determination how to get rid of information overload that is coming at me in print media by assessing my magazines. Are you overwhelmed with print media? Share below.

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More great content can be found on the site at SimpleProductivityBlog.com., or you can find me on Twitter (@SmplProdBlog) and Facebook (Facebook.com/SimpleProductivity).

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Mondays are productivity days at SimpleProductivity blog.

I was doing the standard morning commute, listening to Stever Robbins talk about being disconnected (transcript here) when something he said brought me to full attention.

Stever said that being connected all the time had made him sloppy.

I began to wonder if it was making me sloppy, too.

Sloppiness, Explained

Stever maintains that before technology, he was better at prioritizing, better and knowing what information he needed and how to use it, and better able to find logic flaws.

By having limited capacity in his backpack, he was forced to think about what he would work on before he left home.

By knowing what he needed to work on, he was able to find and bring the relevant reference material.

By writing on paper, he was able to do a rough draft of both code and prose and find logic errors when he transcribed it.

The Case for Disconnected

Let me just say up front that as a programmer, I would never code on paper.

However…I can see Stever’s point with outlining on paper, be it either coding or writing. When I have limited time to code (i.e. for my own personal use), I always sketch out how I am going to do it so I can see the ebb and flow of the program. I find that I can code faster, and find roadblocks in my process faster. (Unfortunately, I don’t have the ability to do this at work and end up relying on the compiler and testers to find my errors…)

I also find that I write better when working from an outline, so that is always a step in producing blog posts.

Before I had a smart phone, and being unwilling to drag my laptop places unless I absolutely had to use it, I was more organized to get tasks done. I had my notes, I had supporting materials, I had everything I needed to get the task done. Why? Because several times I was caught without necessary materials and ended up not accomplishing what I needed to. This dates all the way back to college, where I remember on more than one occasion not having the textbook or notes to be able to do my homework.

I can also see the case for only bringing limited amounts of material with you. One of my really bad habits is that I carry stuff I don’t need everywhere.  I bring everything I would need to work on all sorts of things, ignoring the fact that I can’t get them all done. With so many choices, it is hard to decide what to work on, and often I don’t get things done. Any of them.

The Case for Connected

On the other hand, I can see that being connected is a good thing. For instance, when I was writing this post, in a local Starbucks, on my iPad, I went out to the podcast transcription to check my memory on the items Stever had mentioned. Without it, I would have had to put off writing the post until I was connected.

I also rely heavily on my iPhone as a capture device. If I am driving and I think of something I need to do, I press the Belkin button and tell Siri to make a reminder. If I need to look up a phone number or address for one of the moms at the bus stop, I have that capability to send the information right then. In other words, being connected has eased the stress of trying to remember to do things.

Does Being Connected Make You Sloppy?

When I examine Stever’s points, and look at my own behavior, I can see that yes, I have gotten sloppy with being connected.

I bring too much with me, both physically and information wise. This leaves me hauling equipment around I don’t use, and gives me an all too easy excuse to get sidetracked.

I have too much information at my disposal, and rather than using the quality information I find, I keep looking for more information, which often muddies the waters.

I am more apt to go down rabbit trails.

And my writing is less coherent when I try to write straight off the cuff.

So yes, I think being connected has made me sloppy.

The Case for Applying Disconnected to Connected

I think the solution here, though, lies not in going completely disconnected, but in applying the disconnected principles to my tasks.

This means:

• I decide what needs to be done and focus on those tasks only.
• I do not multitask.
• I only bring the minimum of physical stuff that I need to complete those tasks with me.
• I stop looking for all the information possible and choose high-quality and reliable sources.
• I take the time to think things through before starting work.

So what do you think? Is Stever right? Or is he completely and totally wrong? Share below.

Photo by Insomnia PHT. Licensed under Creative Commons.

More great content can be found on the site at SimpleProductivityBlog.com., or you can find me on Twitter (@SmplProdBlog) and Facebook (Facebook.com/SimpleProductivity).

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Fridays are open loop days at SimpleProductivity blog.

• This is something I have seen happen to my laptop…it uses the wireless even when connected by wire. Lifehacker explains how to fix this at “Force Windows to Use Your Wired Connection Instead of Wi-Fi”
• This is a great way to keep paint off your hands…and reuses an otherwise garbage product. From Lifehacker’s “Catch Paint Drips with Yogurt Cups”
• Smashed fingers are no fun. You can use a bobby pin or a comb to help. From Lifehacker’s “Hold Nails with a Bobby Pin to Spare Your Fingers”
• I don’t even want to think about this possibility, but it is best to be prepared. From Lifehack.org’s “What to Do When Your iPhone is Stolen or Lost”
• As I have gotten older, my tolerance for drama has decreased. I just wish I could have become less tolerant of drama earlier. From Pick the Brain’s “Stop The Drama Train: 6 Steps To A Drama Free Life”

Did you know you can get Twitter and Facebook updates from this blog? For Twitter, look for @SmplProdBlog. On Facebook it’s Facebook.com/SimpleProductivity.

Photo by weegeebored. Licensed under Creative Commons.

More great content can be found on the site at SimpleProductivityBlog.com., or you can find me on Twitter (@SmplProdBlog) and Facebook (Facebook.com/SimpleProductivity).

The post Open Loops 5/17/2013: Articles I Think Worth Passing Along appeared first on SimpleProductivityBlog.com.

Wednesdays are simplicity days at SimpleProductivity blog.

They’re all over the place on the web: give us your email address, and we’ll send you a great free something and a newsletter. I know this, and I do it myself.

It also happens in paper: give a charitable organization some money, and suddenly you are getting a paper newsletter or magazine.

But what happens when you realize that you are inundated?

Corralling newsletters, commence.

The Old Label Trick

With most email programs, you can filter your messages by sender and put them in a per-determined place. That seems to be the advice of the moment…put them somewhere and read them when you have time.

But what happens when you open that folder to find dozens of emails, and you lose site of the stuff you really care about?

Or the provider breaks their word and instead of sending one email a month, you get one a day? Or your postal box is filled with updates?

It’s time to put the newsletters on a diet.

Purge The Backlog

When there is too much to read, it’s time to purge. Don’t worry – all these newsletters will come around again.

As far as possibly missing out on information, the time it will take you to sift through everything will outweigh the value of any possible nugget found.

Assess

Next, you need to assess each newsletter as it comes in.

Is this something you are interested in? No? Look for the unsubscribe link on the bottom of the email. (By U.S. law there is supposed to be one…)

Is it something you want to read, but less frequently? Look for options at the bottom of the email to change your frequency.

If it is paper and you don’t want to read it, call the charity and ask to have it canceled. They will surely appreciate saving the money! Or use a service such as Catalog Choice to remove yourself from the list.

Avoid Another Backlog

One of the things that I found is that by shuffling newsletters off into a folder other than my inbox, I wasn’t reading the newsletters. They weren’t in front of me, so I ignored them until there were too many to ignore.

Since I use GMail, I still label them as newsletters, but I leave them in my inbox to be processed with the rest of my mail. Often I find it takes less than 30 seconds to skim the article and decide if there is anything in there worth a closer look. (More soon on my latest email revamp)

I also apply the same rule to newsletters (both electronic and paper) that I do to magazines. If the last issue hasn’t been read when I receive the new one, the old one goes in the trash.

Have you dealt with purging your newsletters? Share below.

Photo by Esparta. Licensed under Creative Commons.

More great content can be found on the site at SimpleProductivityBlog.com., or you can find me on Twitter (@SmplProdBlog) and Facebook (Facebook.com/SimpleProductivity).

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Mondays are productivity days at SimpleProductivity blog.

Between the dings, the buzzing, the whirs and the beeps, reminders are everywhere. Each one of them shouts, “Look at me!” And unless we are very careful (or singleminded in ignoring them), each one of those reminders has the potential to pull us off track…

Even if a reminder pulls us out of our chain of though for only a moment, it will take much longer to get back to where we were, due to the cognitive penalty we pay as our brain switches gears.

So what’s a modern person to do in the face of these distractions? Streamline your reminders.

Sources of Reminders

Before I get into how to streamline, I want to point out all the places that reminders come from. You might not be aware of some of them.

• Phone messages
• Email
• Task software
• Games
• Other people
• Calendar software
• Other phone programs
• Other computer programs
• Alarm clocks
• Outside services (doctors, dentists, etc)

Controlling Reminders

There are two steps to streamlining reminders: assessing what the reminder is and how valuable it is to you, then either eliminating or redirecting those reminders. I am going to walk you through how I streamlined some of mine.

Calendar Reminders

I use Google calendar, which syncs to both my iPhone and my iPad. When a calendar event is set to have a reminder, I will get up to three reminders: one each on my iPhone and iPad, and a pop-up in a browser if I happen to have the calendar open.

Assess: I really only need audio reminders on my phone.
Take action: Since I have never been able to find a setup in Google Calendar to turn off the popups, I only have the calendar open when I am entering many items at once. On my phone, I adjusted the reminder notifications to play a sound. On my iPad, I turned off all notifications.

Task Software

I use Remember The Milk as my task software. It has the option of reminding me on my iPhone, iPad, email and phone (it does differentiate between iPhone and SMS; both are different ways of notifying).

Assess: I really only need to be reminded of tasks that have a due time on my phone, through the RTM software (why get a text message, when I can use the built-in?)
Take action: I adjusted my RTM settings so that it only sends reminders to my iPhone. I also adjusted the iPhone setting so that I get sounds, banners and icon notifications. On my iPad, I turned everything off.

Games

Just about every game I have on my iPhone has default alerts. Do I really want or need to know when there is a new thing to throw at a zombie (Office Zombie)? Do I need to be reminded that I haven’t played Boggle? Do I need a beep in the middle of the day to be prompted to start a Word With Friends game with someone I barely know? Some games are social, though, and the alerts could notify me that it is my turn.

Assess: only from the social games will I accept alerts. These are only installed on my iPhone.
Take action: However, I did turn the sounds off, after a jarring alert happened at 3 in the morning letting me know it was my turn to play Words With Friends. (That happens when you are playing with someone on another continent.)

Other People, Outside Services

Reminders can often come from other people. Whether it is in passing , or in the form of a phone call or email, these are reminders to do something.

Assess: there are two types of reminders that come from other people: reminders about tasks, and reminders about appointments.
Take action: As I went over in Streamlining Requests the reminders that are for tasks to be done, I ask that people email me or leave me a message on my phone. Once it is in these forms, I am less likely to lose site of it. For appointment reminders, I ask that people leave a message on my home phone, unless they are like my eye doctor or vet (yay!) who email the appointment reminders. Many offices are switching to email reminders; ask if you can convert yours.

Other Phone Programs

I have to regularly go through the notifications on my iPhone, because many programs default to sending notifications.

I was puzzled one day by the sound of an opera singer coming from my iPod. I wasn’t playing music at the time, and I no longer listen to opera. When it happened the second day, I realized it was coming from a female cycle tracking software, letting me know that it was peak time to conceive. Just what I want my co-workers to know…

Needless to say, after that incident, I take time near the beginning of every month and clean out my notification center on both my iPhone and iPad.

Adding in Reminders

It is very easy to decide that you want to turn off all your reminders, and do so with some unexpected consequences. I regularly purge my notifications on my phone, and was startled to discover that one of my timer programs wasn’t ringing because I had turned off the sound notification.

There might be reminders that you want to add in as well. In order to make sure that my elderly cat gets his medicine on time, I have alarms set every twelve hours. Without those reminders I am not regular in his dosing.

I also have a reminder set at work to remind me to wrap up, write up my tasks, submit my time and get out of the office. Without that reminder, I can get caught up in my work and end up rushing out the door as I try to get home to meet the school bus.

Results

I was much happier when I got rid of all the extraneous notifications. No longer was I having my iPhone and iPad ring with appointment reminders within seconds of each other. My audio notifications are now limited to weather events, phone calls and timers. Everything else is either limited to badge icons or nothing.

How many reminders do you have pinging at you every day? Are they helpful or distracting? Can you cut them down? Share below.

Photo by Marc Lagneau. Licensed under Creative Commons.

More great content can be found on the site at SimpleProductivityBlog.com., or you can find me on Twitter (@SmplProdBlog) and Facebook (Facebook.com/SimpleProductivity).

The post Decrease Distractions By Streamlining Reminders appeared first on SimpleProductivityBlog.com.

Fridays are open loop days at SimpleProductivity blog.

• Do you escalate the anger? From Seth Godin’s “Conservation of energy in conversation”
• If you haven’t learned these lessons, no matter what your age, consider them. From Lifehack.org’s “10 Life Lessons People Should Learn Before They Turn 30″
• Until it is your child having the melt-down, don’t judge. My daughter is past the melt-down stage, but this article may give tips to those of you still in that phase. From Lifehacker’s “How To Get Your Kids Through the Grocery Store, Meltdown-Free”
• Here is a list of common procrastinations…but more to the point, what to do about them. From the Positivity Blog’s “Do You Make These 3 Common Mistakes and Get Lost in Procrastination?”
• Toxic people are not rare. Here is a list of 10 signs of toxic “friends” and how to end such a relationship…and also how not to be a toxic friend. From Marc and Angels’s “10 Signs Your Friend is Toxic”
• It is important to recognize the signs of too much stress and do something about the stress level before serious consequences happen. Lifehack.org has a list at “14 WARNING Signs that You’re Way Too Stressed”
• I rarely use the Swiffer sheets anymore; the dry ones I replaced with crocheted covers I made and the wet ones just seem to attract more dirt. But if you use them, here are some ways to save some money. From Lifehack.org’s “Swiffer Hacks to Save You Money”
• Outside accountability can really be a procrastination buster. I have asked a friend to expect three chapters of my novel each week, and it has made me write instead of putting it off. From Wise Bread’s “How to Stick to Personal Deadlines”
• This hit me between the eyes. “Today is the only day you have to make sure you are moving forward on your goals.” This will be printed out and posted everywhere. From The Simple Dollar’s “Today Matters. Nothing Else Does.”
• Since I make my own planners, and often don’t have the type of paper I need at work, I love sites where I can get pre-drawn paper. From Lifehacker’s “Generated Paper Features Over 40 Printable Paper and Notebook Types”
• I find this is true. If my feet are cold, I can’t sleep. So in the cold, I pre-heat the bed with an electric mattress pad; in the summer I sleep with socks on. From Lifehacker’s “Wear Socks to Fall Asleep Easily”
• Gee, I just shake the chips out into a bowl. Apparently most people eat from the can? From Lifehacker’s “Keep Your Hands Clean with a Pop-Up Pringles Can”

Did you know you can get Twitter and Facebook updates from this blog? For Twitter, look for @SmplProdBlog. On Facebook it’s Facebook.com/SimpleProductivity.

Photo by jenny downing. Licensed under Creative Commons.

More great content can be found on the site at SimpleProductivityBlog.com., or you can find me on Twitter (@SmplProdBlog) and Facebook (Facebook.com/SimpleProductivity).

The post Open Loops 5/10/13: Articles I Think Worth Passing Along appeared first on SimpleProductivityBlog.com.

Wednesdays are simplicity days at SimpleProductivity blog.

As I recently wrote, I have been working to pare down how much information I have coming into my life. I was taking in so much and it was becoming less and less valuable as I struggled to keep up with everything coming at me.

So I have gone on a media diet. I have been paring online information intake. Today’s article will show you how I got my online sources purged and to a reasonable level.

Websites

There is so much information out there on the web these days! If you want to know something, it can be found on the Web.

I was accumulating all sorts of site that I wanted to look at regularly. These sites included information on just about everything, including news, blogs, and general information.

News

The first thing I did was consolidate my news. When Google announced that it was doing away with its iGoogle interface, I had switched to finding my news on the various news sites. I went back to something similar to iGoogle, called IGHome.com. I put all my news feeds onto one page there and now I check one place for news.

But there is more…I noticed that I had too much news coming at me. So I limited my news sources to NPR and the BBC coverage of the U.S. I find that I get the major stuff without the obsessive star-crazed and over-analyzing of tragedies. After all, I really don’t care what happens in Justin Bieber’s or any of the Kardashian’s lives. It simply is noise in my world.

Websites

General websites (not blogs) that I was checking frequently were usually about inspiration. By switching all of these to deliver to my email, I stopped having to go to various places every morning for inspiration.

This also had the wonderful effect of speeding up my initial browser launch, because fewer tabs were loading.

Comics

The only part of our local newspaper that I read regularly is the comics. Because we do not get the paper daily, I had been getting the Comics by going to the online versions every day. Even in RSS, I was still having to click through to websites to see the funnies.

I replaced this with two outlets: the first is the Arcamax application for my iPad, which brings my favorite comics to me daily in an app, and the GoComics website, which allows me to tag my favorites and scroll through only my favorites. I read both of these while I am eating breakfast. While some people might consider it noise, I like starting my day this way.

Blogs

Blogs are websites, but I rarely read the blogs on the web. I use RSS, which I won’t try to define because there are many variations of what the letters supposedly stand for. RSS is simply a way to take all of the blogs your read and get the content in one place.

Even with Google Reader (my reader of choice) going away in July, I am still doing RSS. Mr. Reader, the software I use to read blogs, will do something, and I will follow it along because the software makes the feeds manageable.

Even if you think a blog doesn’t offer an RSS feed, it probably does. If I can’t find the button, I just add “/feed/” to the URL and I will generally be presented with the RSS feed.

RSS

Funny that I should just have talked about adding feeds to my RSS reader…because this was the place I did the most purging.

When I looked at all the blogs I was following, it was nearly 300. Some of those feeds published once a week. Most publish daily. And some put out dozens of articles per day.

And the quality of the information was not worth having to wade through all the articles.

Organize

I first grouped my blogs into categories. Things like productivity, organization, parenting are the main categories. I made myself stick to the rule of one category per blog, because otherwise it felt like I never escaped some of the larger blogs’ reaches.

Evaluate

Some of the blogs brought limited value. These blogs are rehashes of other people’s blogs, topics warmed over. If there was a blog that consolidated these type of blogs, I kept the consolidation and let the others go (Lifehacker stayed, and 12 blogs left).

Some of the blogs were interesting from a novelty standpoint, but the news really doesn’t impact me. So they went. Fast Company was one of these.

Some of the blogs I found highly entertaining, but yet they didn’t bring me any practical value. These were the hardest to let go of, but Tanis Miller and The Bloggess went with much regret.

The rest of the blogs I looked at for three weeks. If I didn’t open an article from these blogs in that three week period, the blogs were sidelined. Whether this is the fault of poor headlines or just a mismatch between me and the material, I needed to clean these out.

End result: 56 feeds.

It took some struggle, but I finally got the web information down to a reasonable level. By changing the way I got my news, changing some websites for apps and email, converting others to RSS and then drastically reducing my RSS feed numbers, I feel like I have changed this from crashing ocean waves to gentle lakefront waves.

Photo by epSos.de. Licensed under Creative Commons.

More great content can be found on the site at SimpleProductivityBlog.com., or you can find me on Twitter (@SmplProdBlog) and Facebook (Facebook.com/SimpleProductivity).

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Mondays are productivity days at SimpleProductivity blog.

I am always on the lookout for new time management pieces to slot into my current system. When Francis Wade emailed me and asked me to read and review Bill’s Im-Perfect Time Management Adventure: A Business Fable, I thought why not?

The thing that really piqued my curiosity is that this time management book was written as a novel. No dry bundle of lists, no obvious instruction. Who doesn’t love to learn while reading a story? I certainly do love a good book.

Bill’s Story

The premise of the book centers around Bill, a project manager who is not very good at time management. The problem is that his company is looking to do layoffs, and they are looking at the poor performers as the first to go. Bill’s name is on that list.

Bill’s first reaction is to get himself a smart phone. Except that this leads to working all the time, plus things are still getting missed. Perhaps the smart phone isn’t the solution after all?

Bill has a family to support, along with supporting his ailing parents. In a tough economy, he cannot afford to lose his job. His company decides give him a mentor, and even though Bill doesn’t care for the man, he tries very hard to do as he is asked.

Bill’s mentor has a way of doing things that was set forth in a book and several classes. Bill’s mentor insists that this is the best way to do things and will not listen to Bill’s adjustment to the system, insisting that Bill go back to the original system.

After a chance re-assignment to another company whose philosophy differs radically from his employer, he also meets some time management gurus and starts to develop his own system.

The Takeaways

There are a few lessons to be taken away from the book:

1. Not all systems work for everyone
2. Throwing technology at bad habits doesn’t solve the underlying problem
3. People need to start from where they are, rather than starting from scratch
4. There are key areas to productivity in which you can improve your skills
5. Your skills in these key areas will differ

I did like the story. I will also tell you that the few moments of thinking that advocating someone go completely by the book was a deal breaker for me…I was SO relieved when this turned out to be the wrong way of doing things! I was rooting for Bill, and I rejoice in his success.

By the end of the book I wanted to know what the key areas consisted of and concrete strategies to improve my score. And the book just ended. Unfortunately, you apparently have to buy the training courses available on the author’s website in order to get this information. See the end of the article for links on the author’s website to get more information.

I felt at the end like I had just spent hours reading an infomercial. To invest that much time into a book and have no takeaways other than the reassurance that not all systems work out of the box for everyone was disappointing. However, with the links provided below, it becomes much more well rounded.

So save yourself the reading time and know that if a system doesn’t work for you, that is fine. It’s not that you are faulty. Know that there are ways that you adjust to make things work for you, and those are OK. And know that your skills can be improved by learning new methodologies to take you from where you are.

If, on the other hand, you absolutely cannot stomach the dryness of most time management books, read this book as starting place.

Book Information

Book: Bill’s Im-Perfect Time Management Adventure: A Business Fable
Author: Francis Wade
ISBN-13: 978-1482386349

Disclosure: Francis Wade provided me with a free copy of the book enable me to write this review.

Updated 05/06/2013: In response to my review, Francis Wade, the author of Bill’s Imperfect Time Management Adventure, provided the following links for those people wanting more information:

• http://www.2time-sys.com/2008/04/11/manifesto-released/ – this manifesto describes the 7 fundamentals.
• http://www.2time-sys.com/free-tutorial-2-0/ – this is a 27 video tutorial that covers a number of the ideas that form the foundation of time management 2.0.
• http://www.2time-sys.com/11-fundamentals/ – this provides links to each of the 11 original worksheets that make up the fundamentals.
• http://2time-sys.com – the research blog has over 500 entries going back to 2006 where anyone can trace the genesis of each idea in The Bill Book.
• http://www.2time-sys.com/library-of-academic-papers/ - the biggest library of time management papers on the Internet , and this is an index to the front covers of each paper – over 80.
• http://mytimedesign.com/capturing – a free quiz on Capturing
• http://plus.mytimedesign.com/indexlearningsolo.html – an interactive video training/intro to a new possible, 12th fundamental – “Flowing”

More great content can be found on the site at SimpleProductivityBlog.com., or you can find me on Twitter (@SmplProdBlog) and Facebook (Facebook.com/SimpleProductivity).

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Fridays are open loop days at SimpleProductivity blog.

• Love this weather site and have made it the home page for all my browsers. Link came to me via Smashing Magazine. From “Forecast”
• Slow and steady wins the race, even with learning. From Write To Done’s “Why Daily Learning Beats Gobble-Gobble Learning”
• Soil pH is one of the things that can make or break a garden. To get a general feel for what your soil is, check out this method from Lifehacker. “Quickly Test If Your Soil Is Acidic or Alkaline with Vinegar and Baking Soda”
• An awesome site to help you concentrate. The link came from Smashing Magazine, but the site is “Coffitivity – Increase Your Creativity!”
• I am in the process of a media diet. This site would help amazingly. From Lifehacker’s “Unroll.me Cleans Up Your Email Newsletters On the Go, Gets New Desktop Layout”
• This is so true…information is not knowledge. From Stepcase Lifehack’s “30sec Tip: Do You Consume Too Much Information?”
• I like these reminders about things that you can do to make simplicity simple. From the Positivity Blog’s “Daily Simplicity: 10 Habits That Will Make Your Life Lighter”
• Good time management doesn’t mean waiting until the last minute. Time Management Ninja talks about this at “Don’t Fool Yourself With “Just-in-Time” Time Management”
• Spring is a time that I love to start cleaning things out. But I never considered spring cleaning my life. Bloom has a great article for areas to look at over at “8 Ways to Spring Clean Your Life”
• If you have ever been annoyed by a website that starts playing music or video when the tab isn’t in focus, this site tells you how to stop it. The link came via the Smashing Magazine newsletter. From “How to Disable Annoying Autoplay Media in Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer”

Did you know you can get Twitter and Facebook updates from this blog? For Twitter, look for @SmplProdBlog. On Facebook it’s Facebook.com/SimpleProductivity.

Photo by woodleywonderworks. Licensed under Creative Commons.

More great content can be found on the site at SimpleProductivityBlog.com., or you can find me on Twitter (@SmplProdBlog) and Facebook (Facebook.com/SimpleProductivity).

The post Open Loops 5/3/13: Articles I Think Worth Passing Along appeared first on SimpleProductivityBlog.com.