Recently, I was sitting around with my Bomber Jacket Levenger Circa, going through some notes I had taken. My wife sat down next to me and started talking about some subject that meant a lot to her. So I stopped what I was doing and listened. Then she finished her point and paused. “Are you going to write this down in your book?”, she asked.
That got me to thinking…
My family has learned that some of the most important things I deal with go in my Circa. Many times, I will be working in my “book”, and one of my two children will sit next to me and ask what I am reading or writing. They know that is an important “book” to me, and that to some degree, I would be lost without it.
Most of the items I enter are work or schedule related. But sometimes I can allow myself to lose touch with my areas of focus…or as Stephen Covey calls them…roles.
Sometimes, we tend to forget that there are a lot of things we need to capture in our systems outside of work and career.
Jason Echols GTD
I recently returned from a week long vacation.
Nothing like walking in on Monday morning with that feeling of dread knowing that your inbox will be full. You walk in to see that blinking light flashing on your phone. Mondays are not typically good to begin with…for most of us. This, however, rivals poking yourself in the eye with a pencil.
I call it the “rattlesnake in the inbox” syndrome. That dread that one almost inevitably has when they return from a vacation. Some type A personalities would even say that it is not worth it to take a vacation. In their minds, by the time you wade through “the pile”, all positive affects of a vacation have been nullified.
I would not go that far, but…there needs to be an order to the process of wading through “the pile”. You need to have a plan.
There is not a silver bullet process for this. My approach to dealing with the accumulation during my much needed break is more dictated by 1) my work style and 2) my work environment. Knowing those two things helps me manage “the day after”.
Jason Echols GTD, Productivity
It is so easy to lose perspective sometimes.
This is true on several levels. Sometimes we get so wrapped up in life that we lose a grip on what is important. Or on a specific project, we can get wrapped around it so much that we fail to see that we may be taking the wrong approach completely.
Next week, I will be on vacation. I plan to spend some of that time allowing myself to get back into the stratosphere. It is not that I feel I have completely lost my way. But, we all need to do this from time to time…allow ourselves to get a good overview of where we are, and where we want to be. If we do a weekly review, we do this on some level every week. However, once in a while, it is necessary to get into the thin, rare air, and answer some basic questions…
- What is true…right now?
- What do I want to be true?
- If there is a disconnect between the two, how to I plan to resolve it?
- Am I focusing my time, attention and effort on what I truly value?
Jason Echols Confessions, Creative, Horizon
One of the most difficult parts of being productive is staying motivated.
Unfortunately, there is no magic elixir that we can take that helps us stay motivated to be present and productive. Sometimes a life event motivates us, and can keep us going for some time. But what about when the pressure is not on? What happens when we are simply doing whatever it is we do? There is no one set of rules that will apply to everyone. There are both physical and mental aspects of being motivated. Here are some that are important to me.
Mental - Manage Thoughts
1. Have your tasks clarified. Nothing will kill your motivation quicker than not having your thoughts clear on what it is you are trying to accomplish in a day. I find it necessary to plan my day the night before if at all possible.
2. Stay positive. Depending on your situation, this can be difficult at times. But keeping a good attitude, and proper perspective can really go a long way to keeping us moving.
3. Keep your goals in mind. Let those things that matter most to you keep you going. Think on them, and remember what is what you are working for.
Jason Echols GTD
For productive people…or at least those to try to be productive…one of the most important parts of our process is taking notes. Most of my notes come from meetings that I attend. I have recurring meetings with customers and teammates in which I need to take good notes. You may have client meetings that require the same type of note taking.
I am not here today to talk about note taking skills. That is a post for another day (let me make a note of that). I want to talk about how we take those notes, and turn them into action, when necessary. Remember, it is not about the system. It is about how we accomplish things and get to done.
Capture is important, I talked about this last week in a note about ubiquitous capture. Those notes that we take do not mean a thing, however, unless there is a subsequent action in which we process those notes in order to turn them into projects, reference material, or next actions. David Allen, in his newest book, Making It All Work, talks about a slight change in terminology regarding this processing phase. Really what we are trying to do when we review our notes is to find meaning from them…not in terms of the meaning of life or anything big and amorphous, but in terms of what it means to us. How does this information affect us? Does it require a new action? Is this something we need to keep for future reference?
Jason Echols GTD
The good folks over at the Vandelay Design Blog recently posted a great article on 15 Steps to a More Productive Workday. They have come up with an outstanding list, but it is (understandably) slanted towards the freelancer/design professional. I want to take their list and transform it a little more towards us non-design professional types.
1 Have a Task List for the Day –
Rather than working from your entire task list every day, adopt Covey’s Most Important Task (MIT) concept. Choose 2-3 items from your list that you want to accomplish that day, and then work on them at the first of each day without taking a break from them.
2 Prioritize Tasks –
I have never been one to use priorities for my individual list items. Everything on your list needs to get done. I have just moved to using MITs for those tasks that I really want to complete each day. There are many names for it. BBP friend, Patrick Rhone, calls it his Today card. Essentially, it is the short list of 2-3 items that are broken out from the main list, usually onto a 3×5 card so that you are reminded what you want to be focused on at the first of the day.
Michael Ramm Productivity
On many blogs these days, you will see a small column with “Recommended Reading” or “What I Am Reading Now”. Michael and I have not had this type of column on BBP. Today, I want to show you a short list of books that I intend to read this year. I have already started working this list and am looking forward to each book.
1. Making It All Work - David Allen: David’s third book promises to be a good one. The selling point of this book is that, in it, Allen answers a lot of questions about the philosophy behind the methods he presents in Getting Things Done.
2. The 4-hour Work Week - Tim Ferriss: Yes, I have been late to get on board with reading this book…mostly because I am somewhat skeptical of it. I am going to catch up on this one and see what the fuss is all about.
3. Why Work Sucks (And How to Fix It) - Cali Ressler & Jody Thompson: This is a book by two Best Buy executives who changed the culture of the workplace in the home office of Best Buy. Working from home, making your own hours…yes…a lot of change took place.
Jason Echols GTD
by Alejandro Hernandez via Flickr
Communication, we can all agree, is pretty important when two party have to deal with each other for just about anything. Today at work, I had to take a support call with one of the BIGGEST network hardware companies in the world. My problem is that one of my building is not able to access the Internet. So this is my 3rd such support call and I am hopeful that we can resolve this problem. On the last call, the Support Engineer said that I needed to have a laptop hooked up in said building so that we can see if we can work our way back to on the network. DONE…no problem, took a laptop there this morning and hooked it up to the network.
Call time comes:
Support Engineer asks me if I can “gets some traffic moving across the line from the laptop” (that is fancy talk for start trying to access the Internet and let me see where the bits are going).
Me: Ummm…that laptop is about 5 miles away and sitting in a closet.
Support Engineer: Can you get a member of your team to try to use the machine?
Michael Ramm GTD, Productivity, Professional, Rants communication, timely
Recently, Lifehacker did a “Hive Five” on journaling tools.
It got me to thinking about the use of a journal, and how therapeutic it can be.
There are a couple of ways to use journals that I find to be very beneficial for keeping my mind clear, and help me maintain perspective.
First, I believe that is a great idea to keep a journal for work. The means you keep track of things that happen during the day. This type of journal serves two purposes. It, first, helps us keep track of things that happened in a way that allows us to capture all the details at that moment and not lose any of the emotion that resulted from the event. This becomes useful in our review process as we get to look back at the events that shaped our week at work. We can then intentionally plan to learn from those events and make adjustments to our approach and perspective as we enter the next week. If you work in an office environment, this type of journal may also serve as a tool to…cover one’s backside when necessary. There…I said it.
Jason Echols GTD
You are at lunch with friends.
Someone at the table mentions something that brings to your memory an action that had slipped your mind.
Quick…what are you going to do?
Your planner is not at hand. You don’t need your planner at lunch with friends…do you?
Oh but you will be home in a little while…or back at the office. You can remember that thought that long…can’t you?
But things never really work out that way do they? If you are like me, you will get back the office, and next thing you know, an email or voice mail has derailed your afternoon and…and…What was it I was trying to remember?
One of the most important aspects of productivity is not letting thoughts slip away. Thoughts and ideas are much like opportunities. They come with no notice, and no respect for when you are ready for them. That is because our minds are good at coming up with ideas, but they are generally terrible at storing them. Typically when a thought comes to mind, we can remember it well until some other unrelated thought comes in and takes over. Later, when the time arrives when you planned to write it down…you might just have no idea what you supposed to write down. Frustrating, eh?
Jason Echols GTD