Category Archives: Productivity

My Top Goals

I was planning to introduce goals over time, along with some theory and tips about goal setting; but Leo over on Zen Habits has forced my hand by asking the question, “What are your [my] top goals?“.

As ever Leo’s posting is provocative and not to be denied an answer so here goes:

  1. What are my top goals?
    1. To be my ideal weight (12st 6lbs)
    2. To live in a cottage by the sea
    3. To earn more than €100K a year
    4. To run a successful life coach business
  2. What productivity system do I use?

    3. My productivity system is based strongly on GTD with a few principles adopted from Mark Forsters book “Do It Tomorrow”. The main idea I use from Do It Tomorrow is the Closed List that tightly defines what I’m going to do off my prodigious to-do list each day.

  3. What habits have I learned to support this?

    4. The main habit I’ve developed is to dump every idea about anything that needs doing straight into one of my in boxes as soon as it occurs to me. Now that I trust my productivity system I know that once an idea or task is in an in-box, doesn’t matter which one, that it will get done. This has freed my mind from the constant jumble of; “Must do this”, “Must do that”, Musn’t forget about x, y, z” so I have much less stress and much more freedom to come up with creative stuff.

Book Review: Mind Maps At Work by Tony Buzan

I’ve been using mind maps for some time after seeing a colleague use them for organizing a brain storm session. They seemed to fit:

  • my desire to see things visually
  • to have the data organized and not in some visual chaos
  • the opportunity to use a really cool piece of software (MindManager from Mindjet.com)

So I had been doing mind maps for nearly two years when I saw Tony Buzans book ‘Mind Maps At Work’ and decided I’d better read up on the subject to make sure I was doing it properly.

The book begins with an introduction to mind maps and how to lay them down on paper before giving a brief introduction to the areas that mind maps can enhance. This was fine, I learned the importance of using images on my mind maps to help reinforce the visual associations with the topics.

The rest of the book attempts to show the reader how mind maps can be used in a number of situations in the work environment. I feel that this was where the book began to get under my skin. I found the tone of the book to be condescending; it was almost as if the prose was directed more at a child’s intellectual level that an adults. I’m finding it very difficult to put my finger on exactly what I didn’t like about this book; but I came away at then end of it with a feeling that I’d been talked down to by the author.

So I shall continue to use mind maps in both my work and personal areas of my life for planning, note taking, brain storming, collating data and all the other things they’re good for; but I don’t think my experience of mind mapping has been enhanced any by reading this book.

I award this book only 2 stars: * *

Walking Goal Week 1

The week went well. Target 3 days, accomplished 3 days.

The dog (Chester) has started to come along, which is OK so long as he doesn’t want to keep diving into the ditch; but most of the time he’s kept up.

How has this contributed to the (so far unstated) weight loss goal? Well so far it hasn’t; but at least I haven’t put on any weight this week, which is a good thing. Mrs. H., on the other hand, has lost 2lbs over the week, so many congratulations are due to her.

Next week will present some further challenges. On Monday I have an interview in Cork at the time I’m supposed to be walking, and on Wednesday I shall be in the office at midday. Both will attempt to derail me from my target so I must try to work around these obstacles.

Will let you know how I get on next week.

Tools vs Systems

I’ve seen some debate recently on the question of the tools we use to get things done and the systems we use to get things done.

Leo, in his ZTD Habit 1:Collect expounds the virtues of simple tools (paper and pen) over complex tools (PDA, organizers).

Over on lifedev.net Glen rounds off a posting on ZTD with the comment:

…the tool isn’t going to make you any more organized.

It’s all about the system, baby.

I actually believe it’s about both and that you need both to be productive.

Suppose I have two pieces of wood and a screw I want to use to join them together.

Firstly I need a tool to do this task (someone hands me a screw driver at this point); but the tool is no good without a system.

The system is that I put the pointy end of the screw driver into the recessed head of the screw and turn it in a clockwise direction.

So the job gets done because I had a system (turning my had in a clockwise direction) and a tool to implement it through.

I agree 100% with the idea that the simpler the tool the more likely it’s going to be used and that’s why I have a small notebook for dumping my tasks into as they spring into my head. That tool supports my system.

Big Rocks!

Over on Zen Habits Leo has proposed some interesting variations on the GTD methodology, calling it Zen To Done (ZTD). I’m not going to reproduce Leo’s material here; but I would like to expand on the areas I’ve found the most use.

One of these is in the area of choosing which tasks I’m going to work on. I’ve felt that one of the shortcomings of most of the productivity stuff I’ve read has been that they’re very hot on getting the stuff into your trusted system; but not so hot on getting it out again.

By that I mean they don’t offer a lot of advice on how to decide what to do next.

Leo’s suggestion is to look every week for the Big Rocks. These are the projects or tasks that I have to get completed over the next week. These are the things that I choose to focus on and these become my weekly goals. So at each weekly review I look for 2 or 3 Big Rocks and then at the tasks that are contributing to these. It’s those tasks I have to get done next week.

Next comes an interesting part. As part of my weekly review I used to block in time for the tasks I wanted to get done so I knew from my calendar each day what I should be doing morning and afternoon. GTD recommends the calendar is only for the “hard landscape” that is things that are immovable like meetings, appointments etc.

As I’ve been adopting GTD over the last 12 months I’ve also followed this suggestion and worked off my Closed List instead of my calendar. ZTD, on the other hand, is suggesting I should go back to blocking in time for my Big Rocks.

I think, for now, I’m going to avoid using my calendar for scheduling Big Rock time and continue to work off my Closed List. I’ll let you know if this changes and why.

Now, where did I leave those rocks?

Stepping Out

Well we did it.

My wife and I did our first days walk, something that’s to become part of the rest of our lives.

It felt good, the weather is sunny and warm, legs got a good stretch and lunch (a light ham salad and some fruit) tasted all the better for it.

Here’s to a life time of walking.

Setting Myself a Goal

This is a time of upheaval in my life with my permanent job coming to an end at the end of May and I’m in the process of reviewing all areas of my life. In GTD terms I’m doing a full review at 50,000 feet.

One of the areas I’ve really let slip over the years, if I ever had a grip on it at all, is my overall fitness level and in particular my weight. Some time ago quality pair of scales, the sort that tell you your fat and water percentages; but when I got on them yesterday I realized it was about 12 months since I last weighed myself. No need to tell you that I had put on weight!

So my current weight is 197lbs and my ideal (target) weight for a man my height is 173lbs. That’s 24lbs I’ve got to loose. Ouch! In fact I’m only 0.8 Body Mass Index (BMI) points away from being obese (double ouch).

OK, this is getting depressing. Let’s move on.

This goal is intended to contribute to the overall goal of improving my fitness and loosing those 24lbs. Note that I’m not defining the weight loss goal here as I have to do some more work defining that one. This goal is to start me back to gaining some sort of fitness as well as making a small contribution to losing weight.

The goal is to walk for 20 minutes, unencumbered, 3 days a week for a month.

This may not seem like a very arduous goal to achieve; but in the past I’ve set goals like this that were doomed to failure from the off because they were over ambitious. For example; walk for an hour 3 times a week. An hour for me is a long time to fit in around all my work and personal commitments and it was very rare for me to actually get away from my desk for an hour.

On the other hand 20 minutes is just 10 minutes outbound and then home again. This I’m sure I can do and part of the idea of doing this for a month is to establish the walking goal as a habit. The “unencumbered” bit is to stop me from hanging my camera and / or binoculars round my neck which are guaranteed to slow me down. This is walking for exercise sake and nothing else.

The intention is that if I can achieve this for a month then I increase the time to 30 minutes for a month, then 40 minutes and so on; but let’s get this month over with first.

So I have tomorrow marked as the first day and the end date is 7th May.

Here goes….

Things I've Learnt Today

That I have a choice.

Judi Sohn on the Web Worker Daily blog posted a great article about how to be Productively Unproductive Online. Without Guilt.. I’m not sure I agree with all of the points about being unproductive being ‘OK’; but it was the guilt thing that was an apt reminder for me.

We all have a choice in how we spend our time, be it productively or unproductively. If we recognize that the choice is ours and take responsibility for having made that choice then there is no guilt. It simply cannot exist in an environment where we take responsibility for our choices.

Doing Less to Be More Productive?

Can you get away with doing less??

Leo Babauta of Zen Habits has written a guest posting for Scott H Young about the benefits of doing less to be more productive.

At first this looks like a vain promise of ‘More For Less’; but the article reads well and seems to make sense. Until, that is, I came upon this statement:

Cut back on the number of goals and tasks you have on your plate, so that you can focus on the most important ones.

I think that the vast majority of us are not in the position where we can arbitrarily decide we’re not going to do a whole rake of stuff. The company I work for mandates what needs to be done though the year and I don’t think I’d get a very good merit review if I decided I wasn’t going to do some of it.

If, on the other hand, you work for yourself or in a position where you make the rules then I would agree that if you can cut out some stuff and focus more then the quality of the finished product will probably be higher and the satisfaction and rewards greater.

Book Review: Do It Tomorrow by Mark Forster

I must admit that I first got hold of Mark Forster‘s book last September (2006) and only finished reading it just before Easter this year. This has less to do with the content of the book and more to do with the turmoil that was going on in my own life at the time. “Maybe if I’d read the book straight off there’d have been less turmoil?”, well that’s a possibility. The reason I mention this is because I can recall little about the first 50% of the book that I read piecemeal; but the rest is very fresh in my mind. Anyway, here goes the review.

The main thrust of Mark’s book seems to be concerned with handling the constant flow of incoming tasks that bombard us daily from email, telephone calls, colleagues, family and friends. How do we manage all these new pressures on our time? Mark’s premise is that anything that arrives today is to be done tomorrow (unless you’re working in an industry that requires an immediate response). This recognizes and respects that a day is a finite resource and that you can’t do more in a day than you have the time and resources to do. So anything new is for tomorrow.

So far I don’t think this is particularly radical as it appears to be what anyone doing GTD would be doing; anything new goes into an In-box unless it can be done in under 2 minutes. However where I feel Mark’s book adds value to GTD is with the suggestion of using a Closed List. Whereas GTD maintains a number of open ended action lists Mark suggests that these are counter productive because they are continually being added to; there’s never a chance of finishing a list and this can be demotivating. As you can only do a set amount in a day Mark suggests making a daily Closed List of the things that you are going to do that day. A heavy line is drawn under that list and (within reason) nothing is added above the line.

For me this is a very useful exercise. It means that every evening I have to review all the things I want to get done in the near future and make a conscious decision about which ones I’m going to do tomorrow. Then I start tomorrow knowing that I’ve a fixed amount to get through and not an open ended list of stuff. It gives me a great sense of achievement to complete my daily Closed List.

Finally I promise I will go back to Mark’s book and re-read it straight through to make sure I haven’t missed anything from the first half.

I award this book three stars: * * *