"process" via groundhogdad
This is a great little video from James Marwood about how he implements the Getting Things Done methodology for productivity.
This is a very in-depth 11 minute video where James goes into his full paper and electronic based system.
Great to see OmniFocus and also a MoleSkine. James has implemented pretty much the full GTD system including the tickler file.
Check it out to see what you think..
I personally think it is great that so many people are giving back to the GTD Community with videos like this. James’ system seems very organized, which I am sure helps him achieve his daily productivity goals.
This Post is from: Getting Things Done GTD with Personal Development and Motivation for Success
Getting Things Done System by James Marwood
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Time management is essential to getting things done efficiently, but not necessarily effectively. That distinction might seem academic, but having seen just how deeply people treat time and output as synonymous, I want to take a closer look at the premise that more time spent on a task equals more productivity.
If only I had more time
At a GTD seminar, an inexperienced presenter was trying to illustrate the concept of converting a problem into a specific outcome and next action. He asked someone in the audience to mention some big problem that was on his mind. He mentioned putting his offline small business on the web.
“So the project is, ‘Create website for business,’ the presenter noted,” writing it on a whiteboard. “Now, what’s the very next action you would take to move that project forward?” The audience member shrugged and said, “You know, there’s so much to do, and I have so many people interrupting me all the time — that’s the problem.”
The presenter said, “OK, but what’s the very next thing you would need to do to get this one project started?” The business owner thought about it, and said, “I guess I need to get rid of the interruptions.” The presenter tried reframing the question to get a concrete next action out of him, but it only resulted in the gentleman rewording the same answer.
If I had nothing else to do
The assumption in the above exchange was that it was necessary to have uninterrupted time in order to decide what to do next. And because there are always things to do and plenty of interruptions, no specific action is ever defined, so the task continually remains implicit. In this case, the “solution” is to block out time to “work on” the project, but because the action is abstract, the time needed to complete a project is equally abstract.
In less time than it took for the business owner to determine that he needed more uninterrupted time to think about what to do next, he could have just thought about what to do next:
“Call Dan: get recommendations for web designers.”
What blocked him from considering this option was a bias toward thinking of time as the fundamental resource for moving a project forward.
To keep next actions from becoming abstract “to do” items, use three guidelines:
- Assume that time isn’t a factor
- Ensure that they’re physical, visible actions
- They have no dependencies
When defining a next action, it helps to precede it with, “If I had nothing else to do, I would . . . ” This stops the knee-jerk reaction of focusing on current time commitments. Once you’ve precisely defined what to do, the perceived time it actually takes usually diminishes, because you’ve reduced the task to something physical. Getting rid of interruptions takes forever. Calling Dan takes five minutes. If the only information needed are names and phone numbers, the call might even be a two minute action that can be done immediately.
A next action should have no dependencies, meaning that if Dan’s phone number isn’t available, the next action is to get Dan’s phone number. But that’s not a next action, since “Get Dan’s phone number” isn’t a physical, visible action.
How do you get Dan’s phone number? In this hypothetical case, you happen to know that Laura has Dan’s phone number, and you know that you have Laura’s number. So the next action would be, “Call Laura: get Dan’s phone number,” which, per the Two Minute Rule, should be taken immediately; it would take more time to write down, review and do later than to get it done at once. This one action kick starts the project, “Create website for business.”
Taking immediate action creates momentum. After calling Laura and getting Dan’s number creates an immediate win, so the tendency is to follow it up with the next action without hesitation. You call Dan and ask about the designers he mentioned when he first suggested that you put your business on the web. He gives you their names, numbers and websites.
You could call these designers now, but decide that you’d rather avoid wasting time calling bad designers. So you put, “Assess designers’ sites” on your @Computer list. Once you’ve eliminated the unimpressive candidates, you put each call for the remaining designers on your @Calls list for quotes.
Two things are noteworthy here. At each step, you’ve acted without complete information; you simply removed the most immediate constraint. Furthermore, you’ve scheduled none of this. If these actions had been put on a calendar, they probably would have taken half a day (when you “had time”). But everything mentioned could can be done in less than half an hour.
Unlike to-do items in calendar-based time management, next actions are designed to be done as soon as possible. You don’t draw out a next action to fill the time you’ve allotted to it. You just do it and move on to the next action, repeating the process until either an external commitment, like a meeting, requires your attendance, or you’ve simply called it quits for the day.
At any point in time, you can only do one thing. Once you’ve defined a next action, either do it or do another one of higher priority, but unless you have a higher-priority task to work on at the moment, don’t defer the next action you’ve just defined by scheduling it — do it now. Arbitrarily assigning a time to an action with no time dependency is procrastination in the name of time management.
(Photo credit: backpackphotography)
Technorati Tags: Productivity, GTD
Job hunting is only the first step in the process of getting a new job, but how do you prepare for the interview that will land you the new career you desire?
The Web is filled with tools to help you figure out how to prepare for and give that perfect interview that recruiters are looking for. Here are nine tools for successful job interviews that include everything from test quizzes to interview tips, access to others who can answer your questions, and more.
Which sites have you used to prepare for interviews? Were they helpful?
InterviewUp
InterviewUp - Is a mixture of a job board along with a community of people who share their interview experiences from different fields so that you can get a feel for what types of questions you may get when you go in, and what sort of answers work best.
About.com
About.com - With About.com’s ever growing catalog of articles on just about every subject, it’s not surprising they have a section dedicated to job interviews. They have suggested answers for numerous questions, tips on sending thank you letters, tips for your resume and more.
AceTheInterview
AceTheInterview - AceTheInterview is totally dedicated to about every aspect of the job hunt you can think of. Their interview section has important notes on things such as do’s & don’ts, the touchy area of salary negotiations, an interview checklist and more.
CareerBuilder
CareerBuilder - The popular mainstream job hunting site offers numerous tips on all aspects of the application and interview process, tips on marketing yourself, how to promote your hidden job skills and more.
CareerLab
CareerLab - Offers advice on what to do if you don’t get a job offer after multiple interviews, a cheat sheet to keep notes on your interview as well as what you wore so you don’t repeat an outfit, sample cover letters and more.
HotJobs
HotJobs - Yahoo’s job search site offers numerous tips on how to prepare, how to present yourself, follow up on the interview, even how to handle an interview over a meal, and more.
InterviewBest
InterviewBest - Helps you come up with concise interview presentations that present your strong points and how you would benefit a company.
Monster
Monster - The well known job search site also offers quizzes you can use to see how ready you are for various aspects of your job hunt as well as a random job interview question generator.
QuintCareers
QuintCareers - Is a site dedicated to preparing you for your job hunt with over 3,500 pages of free career advice. They have a large section dedicated to what to expect from the interview process and how best to prepare for it.
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Time for some backpedaling. For years I’ve been a proponent of studying in long, uninterrupted blocks — ideally a couple of hours at a time. Since I’ve been experimenting with segmented reading, I’m starting to doubt that longer is better — not the amount of overall time per se, but the length of uninterrupted time.
The television model of reading
For as long as I’ve been an adult, I’ve always viscerally disliked the experience of watching television, but it wasn’t until I read Jerry Mander’s Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television that I understood why. Mander contrasted the difference between absorbing information through reading and through television.
When you read a paragraph, it’s easy to stop and start at will. You can pick up where you left off without missing anything. You can pause to reflect on your agreement or disagreement with the author’s statement. You can take notes or verbally relay what you’ve just read to someone else in the room.
When you watch something on television, you can still do any of the above, but the nature of the medium makes in inherently more difficult, assuming you don’t have the remote control of your DVR in hand. Any time you pause to reflect on what you’re watching, new information is streaming by. You have to choose between watching and thinking. If your attending is directed toward thinking, it’s not directed toward watching. Video is a succession of events that make the brain predisposed to pay attention to what happens next rather than reflect.
Long reading sessions of firewalled attention have a roughly equivalent effect. By continuously reading new material for longer periods that working memory can hold, there isn’t much left at the end of the session for the brain to process. I’ve noticed that when I sit down to write a book review, it’s almost as if I have to read the book all over again to recover the details.
Lean thinking with the low information diet
Just as eating more calories than we burn through work or exercise leads to obesity, consuming more information than we can use creates analysis paralysis. Just-in-time information is more agile that just-in-case information.
It’s easy to assume that anything requiring mental activity is “thinking,” but information and thinking are not synonymous. Information that’s relevant to a current or imminent project is raw material for thinking, but without an action-oriented focus, it has no value. There’s a point of diminishing returns where more input interferes with more output.
But how to we figure out what information is relevant unless we first take it in? There’s no way I know of to avoid this conundrum entirely, but spending a week on the low information diet can help reset your standards for what content is and isn’t relevant. At the end of the week of avoiding news, RSS feeds, nonfiction and websites, you’ll probably find that once you give yourself permission to add those sources back to your daily intake, only a fraction of them will remain compelling. To use a term that was fashionable in the Seventies, the low information diet is a form of “deprogramming.”
Segmented reading
As mentioned in a recent post, the concept behind segmented reading is to split reading sessions up into 10-minute fragments, then take a break to review what you’ve just read if necessary (I chose a break of around two minutes, which may or may not be optimal), then repeat the cycle. The break gives your brain time and space to think before your short-term memory loses the material it just covered.
Even if you do hours of segmented reading, it will feel as though you’ve only been reading a few minutes, in contrast to single spans of long reading, where the brain is trying to hold on to old information while taking in new information. The effect is similar to GTD, where one’s entire inventory of work is offloaded to an external system of lists, files and calendar entries.
It’ll be interesting to test the concept on writing and other forms of work to see if pattern interrupts are as effective with output as input. Time to find out . . .
(Photo credit: christopherblizzard)
Technorati Tags: Thinking Operations, Productivity
An aspect of GTD that some find disappointing is the lack of a hard, fast rule for prioritizing tasks. There’s no “most important task,” no “ABC” code, no 2 x 2 matrix; only the advice to “trust your heart” or “follow your intuition.” It seems ironic, given GTD’s thoroughly systematic approach to collecting, tracking and reviewing actions and projects.
There may not be a rule, but there is a set of criteria you can apply to filter out inefficient options from the decision making process — think of them as “elimination rounds.” The four criteria are context, time, energy and priority.
Context
When thinking about what to do next, the first question to ask is: What can you actually do? Thinking about doing web design when you’re not near a computer isn’t an activity worth spending much time on. Thinking of doing something while lacking the tools to do it is simply idling. What you can do define the very next action at the computer that would make the overly general activity of “web design” actionable: sketch layout, resize photos, or some other concrete task.
Let’s suppose that not being at a computer, in this case, means sitting in a train station. There don’t appear to be many options, but since you’re in the habit of reviewing your @Calls and @Anywhere lists in situations like these, you see that you still need to call Sandy to get the details about the sofa she’s selling on Craigslist. Five minutes later, you’ve talked to her and have arranged to stop by her place to see the sofa in person.
Notice that the context was the trigger, not your mood or memory. You simply let the external situation determine what options were available rather than waiting to be in the mood to get around to the call or hoping that you would remember to make it. That’s being productively lazy (a good thing).
Time
You’re reviewing a list of things you can do in your current context, say @Office, so it’s a given that you can do them. What’s the best thing you can do given the time you have available? If you know you have to go to a meeting in eight minutes, choosing to read a long contact that would really need considerably more time to focus on is not a good use of the next eight minutes. Watering the plants, something that’s never “important” until the plants die, might be a better option.
But suppose the meeting is in 90 minutes, and you have no other external commitments between now and then. Instead of finishing a bunch of minutiae on your list, this might be the time to plow through that contract. It’s generally more strategic to use longer blocks of time for high-focus tasks, and shorter blocks for rote tasks.
Energy
You’re in the right context and you have a good idea which tasks are suited to the time available. Now the question is: Which task among these to I have the energy to execute effectively? This might seem like a question for slackers, but it’s really a productivity assessment.
Just because you have the time to read a contract doesn’t mean you’ll do it effectively when you’ve just been through the ringer with your boss. Your eyes might be on the document, but your mind is elsewhere. 45 minutes spent staring at the contract when distracted might be equivalent to 15 minutes of undistracted reading. That’s 30 minutes of activity that will have to be repeated later. Logging time in order to feel productive is busyness, not productivity. When attention is in short supply, switch to more mechanical tasks.
Priority
Once you’ve determined that you’re in the right place, have the right time and the right energy to accomplish any one of several tasks, the next question to ask is: Which one of these things would have the most impact? You’ve already narrowed down your options with the previous questions, so it’s likely that the priority choice at this point is a no-brainer. The choice may not be easy, but it’s probably simple.
Rules versus principles
It is absolutely not required that you follow this framework when choosing what to do next. Context, time, energy and priority only comprise a hierarchy of efficiency. There’s no rule that states you need to restrict yourself to doing computer-related tasks when you’re at a computer, but there is a general principle that there’s less effort involved when working within your resources. You can always choose to get to a computer if the task is a priority, but having context and other criteria in mind forces you to make that judgment call consciously.
(Photo credit: Redvers)
Technorati Tags: GTD, Productivity
This is part two in a five part series on the best & worst practices of GTD: Mastering Workflow. This week we're covering stage two: Process. Also known as the decision-making, defining or clarifying stage, this is where you are making decisions about the "stuff" you've collected in your Inboxes. There are a few key questions that get asked when you are processing something:
Best Practice: make decisions about your stuff when it shows up
Worst Practice: make decisions after it blows up
Here's the big, obvious best practice of Process: You're going to have to make a decision eventually, why not make it with the least amount of effort and attention when you first handle it? I'm not talking about intuitively holding on something before making a final decision (should I do this or not?)--there are times when holding off on making a decision is the best thing to do--I'm talking about those decisions that don't go away just because you close the email and go on to the next one.
Tips & tricks for Process:
- The biggest improvement opportunity I see with people around Process is giving it enough time. It takes about 30 seconds, on average, to process each piece of stuff/input you get. If you get 60 emails a day, you're gonna need 30 minutes just to Process it. It won't get to zero on it's own. Most execs I coach need about an hour to an hour and a half per day just for processing.
- Get super clear on your next action. The clearer the better to reflect your very next physical, visible step. If you capture you're next action as "Talk to Bill" but you know you need to update the proposal before you can talk to him, "Update the proposal" is what goes on the next actions list, not Talk to Bill. If you really need to capture Talk to Bill as the next sequential next action, store it with project plans, just not the next actions list.
- Don't give more time to things than they deserve. If you can complete something in less than two minutes, handle it when it first shows up.
- Decide before you organize is a good rule of thumb. If you haven't decided your next action on something, organizing it into a neat pile won't free your mind of it. Your brain will just have a neater pile to stress about.
Next up...best & worst practices of Organize.
Greetings, my QRW friends. There’s a curious phenomena overtaking the writing community this month. Over the course of 30 days many masochists, including myself, will attempt to write 50,000 words of a novel. “Insanity,” you say! “Preposterous! Impossible! Uncomfortable!” Indeed. But yet we persist.
Why discuss this topic that everyone is already buzzing about? Two reasons. One: I wish to provide myself a handy excuse for when I inevitably miss a QRW post or two this month. And Two: While new to NaNoWriMo, I have written a novel. Through that experience I learned some painful lessons, lessons that can make writing a novel during NaNoWriMo much easier. Lessons that I now bequeath to you, dear readers.
First, my novel-writing backstory. My first novel took over four years of mind-numbing drudgery alternating with ecstatic discovery. I made hundreds of stupid mistakes, many of which I am still attempting to rectify. But it is done. No matter what happens with that first novel, if the publishing gods smile upon me and I receive a contract, or I simply stow this one away in a drawer, I learned some incalculably important lessons through my own stupidity and tenacity.
So now - NaNoWriMo. I am using this opportunity to start a new novel, one that I have plotted and planned for months. I am using NaNoWriMo as a way to push past my slackass inertia, and to get scenes and thoughts on screen, to revise and gussy up later. NaNoWriMo, in theory, makes me positively gleeful at the idea of getting a massive head start on my new novel within a month’s time. Until, that is, I sit down and actually attempt to write. And then my glee is replaced with anger and spite. Good fucking gravy, why are we writers??? This shit is hard.
I imagine that many of you fellow participants, especially you first-time novel writers, are feeling similarly right about now. You are facing down 26 more days of pain and pleasure, agony and ecstasy, of emotions running high and energy running low.
Fear not, my friends! Let my novice novel mistakes provide sustenance and comedy. Let my lessons learned help you through this highly compressed experiment in novel writing. The mistakes I made writing my first novel are already making this go round much simpler and enjoyable for me. Let them do the same for you.
Herewith, my biggest lessons learned, with links to full, entertaining, enlightening posts.
1. Baby, Don’t Fear the Crappy First Draft:
Write knowing that your first draft will be putrid rubbish, but also knowing that having that voluminous text on the page and out of your head will be the foundation for the next steps: Rewrite, revise, repeat. And repeat. And repeat. It goes against all of our good writer techniques, right? The thought that we would deliberately write something that might suck balls goes against the writer’s simmering stew of hubris and deep-seated insecurity and career aspirations. But man, it worked…
2. Outlines? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’…Ok, Actually We Do:
This post is about the power of an outline for the book writing process. It’s nothing new. It’s nothing revolutionary. But for many writers, it’s an alien and terrifying process. Aren’t we supposed to just let the words flow? Let the muse move through us, let the creativity work its will, let characters do their own bidding and plots develop on their own? … That theory is, in a word, shite (“shit” pronounced with the full brogue – a delicious twist on an otherwise boring cuss word).
3. Beat Your Evil, Insecure Twin Into Submission:
I do have one mantra that I use. It’s something that comforts me, that may not provide a clear path of insecurity-free writing, but gives me perspective. I remind myself of all the work and time it took my favorite authors to get to where they are. I remind myself that most authors who have found any kind of success or realization of their dream had a shitload of rejection along the way…
4. Embrace the Solitude and Beat Back That Cowardly Lion:
With fiction writing? I got nuthin. The idea is all mine. The execution is all mine. The revision is all mine. Sure, I might involve some readers (if and when I can find some good ones). But ultimately it is all from my head and heart. And when a novel finally emerges from the toil of years of intermittent dedication, the reality of the publishing world makes all that effort seem pretty silly. And in this realization is a very lonely, isolating, desperately alone moment…
With that, it is now your turn, my dearies. Who here is participating in NaNoWriMo? Any interesting stories? Lessons learned from past experiences to pass on? Diatribes or caffeinated excitement? Share in the comments!
Like this post? Gee mister, I sure hope you did! Why don’t you tell us about in the comments, and give us a nice Stumble or Digg while you’re at it? And don’t forget to subscribe by RSS or email. Gosh, thanks!
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Writing Christmas cards should be fun, not daunting. Yet, we put off sending cards, we sit for hours try to decide what to say and wish we could just send a quick text message. Writing the perfect thought or holiday letter will make your Christmas greetings memorable. What you write should reflect you, your family and the spirit of the season.
You have your cards at the table with pens and stickers in hand. Now what? Here are some etiquette tips from Hallmark to help you address and sign your cards:
For family and friends:
- Personalize your cards with a little note, and always sign the card – even if your name is printed.
- Keep your signature informal – no courtesy titles, and to close friends and relatives, no last names either. Traditionally, family signatures begin with the father’s name, then the mother’s and finally the children, or simply “John, Mary and family.”
- If a card is from more than one person, the person who signs it should write his or her name last as a gesture of courtesy.
- When sending a card to a couple with two different last names, address the card to “Mary Smith and John Jones.” If there are children, write “Mary Smith, John Jones and Family.”
- When addressing cards to family and social friends, include the children’s names.
For business and professional relationships:
- Mail cards for business associates to the office. If you are social friends, however, or have met the person’s spouse or significant other, send cards to the home.
- Business greeting cards should be more tailored and formal than cards for family and social friends. Messages are brief and usually secular.
- When sending to a co-worker in your own office, send the card to the home and address it to “Mr. and Mrs.” if the recipient is married.
- When sending to a married woman who uses her maiden name at work, address the cards to “Mr. and Mrs. John Smith.” If she prefers to use her maiden name for all occasions, work and social, address the card to “Mr. John Smith and Ms. Susan Jones.”
- Sign only your name to a card for a business associate, unless your spouse has met the recipient.
- If your family creates a holiday newsletter, do not send it to co-workers unless you have a very close personal relationship with them.
Special situations:
- When sending a card to someone of a different tradition or ethnic background, choose a card with a secular design and sentiment, such as “Happy Holidays” or “Season’s Greetings,” or those with general good wishes or wishes for peace. As an alternative, send a Thanksgiving or New Year’s card instead. Hallmark offers many options for these holidays as well.
- Take special care following a death in a family. Cards are available with messages of sympathy at Christmas. If the card is to a widow, address her as “Mrs. John Jones.”
How to properly place a card in the envelope:
- Insert the folded side into the envelope with the design face up toward the flap.
Mailing notes:
- Save yourself holiday hassles by mailing early – any time after Thanksgiving and before New Year’s Day is appropriate.
- Mail cards first class so they will be forwarded or returned to you if the address cannot be located.
- Include your return address to comply with postal service requirements and to help your friends keep their mailing lists up to date.
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By not permitting results with appended prefixes like Re: and Fwd:, you can quickly find the beginnings of an email thread in Gmail. Simply type -subject:Re: -subject:Fwd: to only reveal conversation starters, and optionally add from:[email address] (where [email address] is an actual email address) to find an email from a particular sender. Too lazy to type all that out? Go to Settings > Labs, enable Quick Links, and scroll down to click the Save Changes button. Now search on -subject:Re: -subject:Fwd: and click Add Quick Link in the Quick Link pane on the left. Give your search link a better name (I went with the highly technical-sounding "Thread Intro Search") and click OK. Now with one click, search results with only initial messages will appear, and you can further refine results by adding terms and qualifiers to the string already in the search box.
