Those of you who have been following DevYou know that I’m a huge fan of the Zen Habits blog. Leo consistently comes through with terrific, useful posts. Today he posted what he describes as: “the list to surpass all lists. The productivity guide you’ve been waiting for your entire life. The only resource you’ll ever need.” He’s kidding of course, but, seriously, this is a tremendously useful list.
Lately, I’ve been gathering new GTD “next actions” faster than I can complete them. This is a problem. As my next actions list grows, I’m experiencing that annoying feeling that not enough is getting done.
In the past, I’ve tried to alleviate this problem by being aggressive about moving non-critical stuff to my “someday/maybe” list. This helps because it keeps my list of stuff that really, truly needs to be done down to a minimum. However, for a variety of reasons, being aggressive about moving stuff to someday/maybe isn’t alleviating the problem well enough lately.
For the next week or so, I’m going to try attacking the problem from the other end. Specifically, I’m going to be more aggressive about limiting my inputs. Toward this end, I’m following the GTD flowchart with the “Is It a Want?” decision box (as opposed to the simpler version without the “Is It a Want?” decision box.
Wish me luck!
As a fan of naps, I’m always delighted to see positive stories about napping! Here’s one from Psychology Today titled “Nap Your Way to the Top”:
The evidence is overwhelming: Napping on the job is great for you and great for your boss. A power nap of about 20 minutes has been proven to increase alertness and overall productivity in workers. Siestas also boost mood. “Remember when your mother told you to take a nap because you were cranky? She was right,” says William Anthony, who co-authored The Art of Napping at Work with his wife Camille.
And happy napping!
I have this habit of cramming so much stuff into each and every day that I can’t possibly do it all. The good part about that is I get alot done, but the bad side is that I tend to feel mildly bad about the things I wanted to get done but didn’t. It’s not an overwhelming feeling, but it’s unpleasant and can add up over time and nag at the back of my mind.
A little trick I’ve learned is to plan my day by “looking back” at it.
Here’s what to do:
In the morning, write a paragraph or two about your upcoming day. Use a conversational tone and describe all the things you did and how it went. In other words, pretend you have a time machine and have transported yourself to the end of the day and are looking back at it and describing what happened.
For example:
“Today was great. In the morning, I worked on the Defobrinicator project and made a ton of progress. Then I returned those phone calls and replied to a few emails. I had lunch at Bruno’s Luncheteria. Afterward, I went jogging. In the afternoon, I worked on my taxes, wrote that article about Patagonian tree lichen, and cleaned the rain gutters. Finally, before taking a break for dinner, I followed up on some new client leads and cleared my GTD inboxes.”
The benefit of writing about your upcoming day in the past tense is that you’ll tend to get a much better idea if all the things you’re planning realistically fit into your day — much more so than if you scribble down a list of things you want to accomplish. If you describe a day that’s totally unrealistic, you’ll feel it as you describe it.
Give it a whirl, and see what you think!
I’m the first to admit I have too many feeds in Google Reader. As of this moment, I have 137 subscriptions. Since many of those feeds have rather frequent updates, that’s just too many feeds to read every day.
The trouble is, though I do go through the list and prune away the less entertaining or useful feeds now and then, I tend to always have around this many subscriptions. Sure, I could prune all the way down to, say, a dozen feeds and be more productive, but what about those rare cases when I have some free time to waste on the less important feeds?
My preferred way to handle this problem would be to use nested folders. I’d have a high priority folder with all the folders containing feeds that are actually important in my day-to-day work and personal life, a low priority folder for the folders with important but not critical feeds, and finally a folder for folders with purely entertaining, time wasting feeds for when I have a little time to waste and want to be entertained.
The lack of nested folders thwarts this plan, but I’ve come up with a workaround that seems to be doing the trick just fine for me.
I started with the 25 folders I was already using. For example, I have a folder called “clients” that contains all the feeds published by my consulting clients; a folder called “nerd, dev” for feeds about programming; a folder called “firehose” for the high traffic, pure entertainment feeds like BoingBoing, and so on.
Since I couldn’t put those folders into folders, I simulated parent folders by prepending a three-letter code to the beginning of each folder name. For example, “clients” became “aaa.clients” because those feeds are in my “A-list”, the high priority feeds. Google Reader naturally sorts aaa.* to the top of the list of folders. For B-list folders, I prepended “bbb.” to the beginning of the name (eg. “bbb.nerd, dev”). And finally, I prepended “ccc.” to the beginning of all the fluff feeds.
Now, when I bring up Google Reader, I have three, sorted, clearly-labeled categories of feed folders. When I’m busy, which is almost all the time, I whip through the A-list folders. If I have a bit of extra time, I do the B-list too. Once in a blue moon, I do all three categories — or even just the C-list.
This technique has dramatically decreased my feed reading time, and yet I’ve been able to keep the goofy, entertaining subscriptions I enjoy from time to time.
Give it a whirl, and see what you think. And if you have other, cool Google Reader tips, feel free to share them in the comments.
All my adult life, I’ve kept a messy desk. There were always piles of papers spilling over one another, books, pens, and other random clutter. Ever since getting serious about GTD though, I’ve become a “neat desk” person without even meaning to. That is, I didn’t have to try to develop this new habit of keeping a neat, uncluttered desk; it just happened naturally. Take a look at the picture above. That’s a picture of my desk last night. I was walking by it, and ultra-tidiness of it struck me, so I snapped a picture of it. And, actually, the double laptop thing is unusual for me. Ordinarily, I only have three objects on the desk: one laptop, one lamp, and the little Buddha statue at the base of the lamp.
How did GTD lead to this bizarre but welcome neatness, you ask? Well, one of the great things about GTD is you only work on one thing at a time. And when you’re working on that one thing, you’re fully focused on it. That’s a great way to work, and it dovetails nicely with other philosophies about life and productivity I hold, so it works out nicely on several different planes. As Shunryu Suzuki said: “When you do something, you should burn yourself completely, like a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself.” Multi-tasking is incompatible with such a goal.
So, while I’m working, instead of having dozens and dozens of things cluttering my desk, I have only the things that concern that one task on my desk. For example, if I’m paying my bills, I extract one bill from my inbox, and place that bill and only that bill on my desk. If I’m working on a programming project and need a reference book, that one book is on my desk. If what I’m working on requires no physical objects other than my laptop, then there’s nothing else on my desk. The side effect? One very neat desk!
Now, I’m not an absolutist about it. Sometimes there’s an extra thing or two on the desk. Right now there’s a pad of paper and an orange I’ll snack on soon. A stray item or two that doesn’t stay long doesn’t bother me. But generally speaking, the desk is in a permanent state of neatness. My desk was just the way you see it in the picture last night. I didn’t hide things to make the picture more dramatic.
The neatness of my desk has had a nice effect on my mind and stress level that I wouldn’t have guessed would happen back in my messy desk days. Since I don’t see a bunch of “to-be-done” things — “open loops” in GTD-speak — right in front of me all the time, my mind isn’t always glomming on to them at the wrong time and creating low-level stress: “Oh, man. There are those unpaid bills. I should pay those, but I can’t right now. I’ll do them later. I wonder if any are past due. Ack.” Nope. I trust my system, so I know that when I sweep my inboxes today, any unpaid bills will get paid immediately (since they’re: a) actionable and b) take less than 2 minutes to do), so they’re safely “out of sight and out of mind.”
As a long-time messy desk person, I’m not saying that a neat desk is the only way to go. I was certainly productive with a messy desk; but I strongly suspect I’m more productive with a neat one. Either way, I thought I’d share the picture and the thoughts it inspired.
It’s the holiday season again, and that means it’s time to shop for gifts for friends and family. If you’re already done with your holiday shopping, good for you! If not (like me) then you have some more work to do. If you’re having trouble thinking of gift ideas for certain people, then perhaps the Lootist will help.
To quote from their About page:
… people looking for great products can get recommendations from real-world specialists. This guidance comes in handy when you know who you’re shopping for, but not necessarily what you’re shopping for. For instance, if you’re looking for a gift for a friend who enjoys cooking, wouldn’t it be helpful to get shopping advice from a professional chef?
Sounds very useful to me! If you try Lootist and like it, let us know in the comments.
Over the last few months I’ve been weaning myself off coffee, and I’ve been enjoying the benefits — especially having more consistent energy levels throughout the day. Today’s article, How I Quit Drinking Coffee and the Benefits I’ve Experienced on The Positivity Blog is great. In it, the author describes how and why he stopped drinking coffee. Includes an amusing visual aid too!
Getting of coffee has been a positive experience for me. It’s actually had more of a positive effect than I would have expected. I thought I would feel a little less stressed overall but it has made a significant dent in my ability to focus and concentrate. I also used to feel tired after a meal and used coffee immediately after the meal to boost my energy levels. Now I have a much more even energy-curve throughout the day.
I’ve just stumbled upon an intriguing website called Sandy. Sandy is an email-based “virtual assistant.” It (er, she) sends you reminders based on commands you email to it (um, her). Says Sandy:
Working with me is as simple as sending me email. There’s nothing to download, install, or configure. I live in your address book alongside everyone else you know and email.
Examples of commands you might send Sandy’s way are:
You can receive your email reminders via SMS and Sandy can add items to your calendar too (if you so choose).
Though I think this is a clever and appealing idea, I’m not sure it will work with my productivity flow since I maintain an empty inbox and very intentionally avoid managing tasks with email. (Tasks originating from emails go to my GTD list.)
However, though it may not be a perfect fit for me, I can see where it would work great for other folks. It would be especially handy, I think, paired with an iPhone. You could shoot Sandy a command anytime, anywhere, and receive her reminders via SMS, all in one handy, highly mobile place.
Link: Sandy
I have a fever and a sore throat so I’ll keep this post short. However, that (mildly) bad new aside, I have excellent news: Leo Babauta’s E-Book, Zen to Done: The Ultimate Simple Productivity System is now available! Woo!
Zen To Done takes some of the best aspects of a few popular productivity systems (GTD, Stephen Covey and others) and combines them with the mandate of simplicity. It makes things as simple as possible, and no more.
