Migrated this blog to another site

I just finished migrating this blog to my own site. There will be no more posts here.
This blog has moved to https://www.gummihaf.com/plog/

- Gummi

"I don't do it"

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I'm not the biggest fan of Martha Stewart, but I ran into this interview with her in Business Week, and one of her answers caught my attention:

So if you have something that you really don't want to do, do you do it early or do you put it off?

I don't do it.

Beautiful. There you have it, the key to her success, just don't do things you don't want to do! Focus - it's magical.

- Gummi

Obsessed about productivity, part two: the Graduate Package

Ok, time for part deux of the productivity obsessiveness series. If you haven't seen the first part, check it out before reading this one.

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This time it's the graduate package, or "level two" of getting productive. I'm assuming you've found the first part helpful, have started adopting most of the practices there and are feeling re-energized and ready to cram more stuff into your life... or just simply have more time for yourself to stare out the window, it's up to you.

Now we're getting a little more GTD'd although I deviate often from the strict rules of Getting Things Done as laid out by the master. A lot of the stuff below builds on part one in more details, but now it's also more important to do "all or nothing" since if you only, for example, create a lot of action items when you process your email inbox, but never go back to that list you could actually be worse off.

The goal of this all is not to spend all your time managing your time (what an oxymoron...) but rather to reach the nirvana of being completely on top of things; getting more meaningful things done and always knowing what's going on in your life, all while working less and enjoying life more, spending more time with your family and friends and truly realizing that time is the most precious thing there is. Really.

Turn inbound stuff into action items

No matter what your profession is or how you spend your time, we all have inbound stuff coming at us all the time. Emails about that presentation you need to finish asap, bank account overviews in the mail, phonecalls from friends about getting together for lunch, voicemails from your mom asking why you haven't called this week, spouses asking to change the light bulb in the living room... wow. It's easy to just dodge most of these things and still somhow just float along. But there's always something nagging when you do that. That's mental cycles you don't want to waste like that. So the key is to process these inbound items and turn them into action items (or toss away, but make that a conscious decision). Avoid using your memory at all cost, so write everything down!

Shard your action item list

Your action list will explode, expect it to easily have hundreds of items, and understand that it's normal. The list will never disappear, you finish one thing and two more get added, and it's normal. So you have to create contexts and projects, and label each action item accordingly. The context is where you expect to do that action item (computer, phone, errands, etc), and the project is a logical clustering of related action items. And like action items, it's ok to have lots of projects; in fact, it's better to have more specific projects that actually finish ("change all light bulbs in the living room") than vague ones that never end ("maintain stuff at home") although you'll probably have some of both.

Plan the week, prune the list

Now that you have your list of things to do figured out (right?) you need to get it into action. Every Monday morning (or Sunday night, or whenever you want, just be consistent) you should go through all things on your list of action items and decide which ones you want to get done this week. This is the key step in going from "lots of stuff", i.e. your hundreds of action items, to "I will do these now", i.e. your next action items for the week. Label these action items as such and feel good that you've decided what to do, and what not to do... this week. Just be careful not to put too much as next action items; just be realistic and rest assured that another week will follow with more next action items to be done.

Live in the list, not your inbox

You have your list, you've picked the ones you want to focus on for the week, and feel confident that those are the ones that matter the most. It's time to actually do those things. So focus on using the list to figure out what you should be doing, not your email inbox or your Facebook homepage. Pick things according to your context (e.g. in front of your computer? pick next actions from the computer list) and just do them. You'll be surprised how effective this is, and how much more productive it is than checking email.

Be specific...

...in your projects, action items and your reviews. It's better to have "figure out what kind of light bulbs", "buy light bulbs", "change the bulbs" as part of the "change light bulbs in living room" project than a single "change light bulbs" action item (which, btw, you'll never actually do, because it's in the "home" context, but you really need to buy the bulbs first but since you don't have an action item to actually buy them, this never gets done...)

Be proactive

Finally, question everything that's thrown at you, everything on your list, be willing to throw things out and make sure everything you do is worth your time according to you. That last part is critical, never forget it.

That's it. Do it and live happily ever after!

- Gummi

New year's resolution

'Tis the season to make new year's resolutions. Mine are simple: Read one book per week and blog once a week. That's it. Oh, and I'm also going to lose weight, stop smoking, drink less, be nicer to people, get more organized and overall be a better person.

- Gummi

Is GTD grown up and boring?

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A good friend of mine, Ron Feldman, who runs Kwiry, a cool service for reminding yourself of stuff, pointed me at a very fun article by Chris Hardwick about GTD, 4 hour work week and some other book that I'll never read. Although I'm not going to repeat the article here (I'm not that kind of a blogger, just follow the link and read it, highly recommended) there is one thing that stood out to me in that writeup: GTD is grown up and boring. Perhaps a bit too much?

Now I've read Getting Things Done (GTD) and the 4-hour work week, and I think there's something to be learned from both books. But I also think 4-hour work week is painting an overly optimistic picture of how you can just start selling stuff online, outsource everything and go on a lifelong vacation. Believe, I strongly believe in a lot of the stuff Tim Ferriss talks about, but I'm also pragmatic.

Which leads us to GTD. Ever since I read GTD I've been a big proponent of the approach described by David Allen, but I've never thought about it possibly being too dull or boring for mass adoption. Does that mean I'm dull and boring too, by association? I don't know.

But it also opened my eyes a little. Perhaps there's room for an approach that somehow tries to combine the best of both worlds. Relax a little and enjoy life like Tim, but do it in such a structured way that you can actually make it happen. What would the book be called, "Getting things done in 4 hours per week?" Maybe I'll write that book someday :)

- Gummi

I'm OmniFocused!

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The holidays are here and it's time to review the year that's gone by (too fast as usual) and plan for the upcoming big '09. As part of that, I took a good look at my productivity tools, and decided to finally migrate all my stuff to OmniFocus, including all my projects, tasks, references, etc. It's not perfect, but it's probably the best application I've tried so far for my GTD obsession. And it has a very nice iPhone app too, so it's easy to grab your tasks-to-go.

One thing I noticed when I was migrating is how hard it is to move completely from one system to another. On one hand, it takes a lot of time to move stuff over (maybe there's a market for GTD data migration tools?) so it's tempting to do it in multiple sessions. However, on the other hand, if you don't migrate everything right away, you are using two systems which is probably worse than having any system at all! So I limped along for a few days with almost no control of my life, it was like driving without a steering wheel, felt horrible. But I survived - made me wonder if this whole task-management thing mattered at all. Maybe I was just on a straight highway and didn't need the steering wheel?

Anyway, I'm back on track, and trying to map my behavior to this new tool (for example, my daily list of tasks is now the tasks that I flag in OmniFocus - doesn't quite accomplish the same results, but also has some integrity benefits since I have to choose from tasks that are on my list of things to do) but net-net I'm pretty pleased with it.

We also got a new puppy for the girls. Turns out that having a puppy does not increase your productivity, but does make everyone happier. How does that fit into my productivity equation? :)

- Gummi

About... to... fall... asleep

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Today was one of those days. I just kept almost falling asleep in front of my computer. Very unproductive. So what do you do when you're just so tired and not in the mood to do any work? I've never used this before, but a long time ago I bought the Observation Deck just for fun. It's a tool for writers who have a block and need some nudging. And I needed some serious nudging.

I was working on some ideas for products that we should look into developing for 2009, and I really wanted to get the draft out before the end of the day. So I pulled out the deck and got "Be Specific." So that's what I did. And it worked! I did not expect this to help me, but I started to write out very detailed, specific descriptions of how our users might use some of our products and the text just started flowing. I finished the draft and could go home happy that my most important tasks of the day got completed.

Of course the real underlying issue here is that I was just tired. I got home, cooked dinner for my younger daughter and mother-in-law (my wife was at my older daughter's ballet performance, second out of five), got my younger daughter into bed (she's been sick at home the whole week) and then just crashed. Almost fell asleep standing.

And now it's 11:26 PM and I'm wide awake...

- Gummi

Obsessed about productivity, part one: the Basic Package

Quite a few people have recently asked me about my email checking habits, or have been surprised about my observation that not drinking coffee could make you less tired and more alert. That's all good, but mostly I've realized that I'm obsessed about this stuff. So I'm going to be a little more structured in my writing about it, starting with this post.
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There are a few "levels" of productivity obsession that you can get to, but you have to be comfortable with each level before proceeding to the next one. So here are a few things which I consider "level one" productivity obsessiveness, let's call it the "Basic Package". This is not GTD or anything like that, and for a lot of people, this is more than enough to maintain a sane life and stay above the water level of life in general.

Check email twice a day

I've talked about this before in a previous post, and it's quite simple: don't spend your day checking email. Email is a wonderful, often necessary tool to stay in touch with people you work with, your loved ones and other friends, but if you let it take over your life, you won't ever get anything done. No work gets ever done via email. Actual work gets done by writing code, preparing briefing documents, analyzing data, digging ditches, preparing building sites and so on.

Stay on top of things

Quite simple to say but hard to do: know what's coming at you and never let inbound stuff pile up. This may sound obvious, and at the same time somewhat counter to the email advice above, but it's quite important that you clean your email inbox, open your mail, listen to those voicemails and just know what's being thrown at you. This does not mean you should act on everything right away, but rather just make sure there are no time bombs waiting to blow up in your face. My usual schedule is to empty my email inbox at least once a day, listen to voicemails as soon as I see them, and open my mail as soon as I get home from work.

Figure out your priorities

It's very easy to get sucked into just doing "stuff." That's not productivity, that's busy work. You need to be proactive about what matters to you, and stick to those priorities. And it really helps to be explicit about those priorities, at least to yourself. You can keep it in your head, or write it on a list, or just scribble on random post-its and stick it, doesn't matter, but you really need to have that conversation with yourself.

Block time for things you want to do

Now that you've stopped wasting time on email all day, and know what you want to do, it's time to actually do it! Ask any productivity guru, and the one thing they will all agree on is that the mind is not designed to multi-task. If you have the habit of checking email while you're calling the airline to change that ticket and trying to finish that presentation for that important meeting this afternoon, stop. Block off time for the stuff you want to do, and you know what? It will actually get done.

Take time off

Finally, just like you need to rest between gym exercises, you need to rest your body and soul between work. Plan your time so that you get time to hang out with friends, spend time with your spouse and kids, and just plain be yourself without the constant nagging feeling that you're not doing something you should be doing. My rule here is simple: I don't work on weekends (unless there's a real, real, real emergency; which almost never happens by the way) - make your own rule and stick to it. You'll have more energy when you actually get back to work, and you'll enjoy life more :)

That's the Basic Package. No complicated systems to master, just simple rules that will make you feel more in control of your life - and hopefully just a little more obsessed about productivity.

- Gummi