Open Loops

Practice, Practice, Practice

John Lennon advised new musicians to spend 100 hours in rehearsal for every hour they planned to perform on stage.  When taking Tae Kwon Do, my teacher made the statement that it was a boring sport.  Punches and kicks were practiced over and over until they got very boring.  When I switched to another form of Karate, again, the teacher instructed the class to practice punches, kicks, and blocks until they became boring.  It seemed that every time I attempted to learn a new skill, I was told to practice it over and over.  For me, it was torture to do that.  As long as the skill that I was learning was new, fresh, and exciting, I enjoyed the practice.  However, when the repetitious exercise began to become boring I lost interest.  My mind and interest began to shift from this old boring routine that I was practicing to something that was new and exciting.  Inevitably, I stopped practicing and began to pursue the new interest.  I’ll bet you’re a lot like me.

Staying Productive Despite Overwhelm

Many people, in an effort to be more productive and effective, study different systems to do so.  They purchase book after book on the latest productivity concepts.  This includes “Getting Things Done”, the most recent productivity phenomenon, as well as other structured programs, such as “Control Your Workday Control With Microsoft Outlook” and less structured programs like “The Personal Efficiency Program”.  Millions of dollars are spent by people in the pursuit of being more effective.  Hours are invested in studying and implementing these systems.  However, a simple concept, taught by the Center for Creative Leadership, explains why many fail, despite so much money and time being invested.

A Low-Tech Notes Retrieval System

During our day, many of us, by choice or by employer requirement, document our activities, calls, meetings, and customer visits in some form.  For some, it is an employer generated form.  For others, the Palm’s notes component fills the bill.  Outlook also provides a place for notes but, not being portable, they are useless away from the office.  EssentialPIM has one of the best note components that I’ve seen in PIM software, with text formatting being available, capability to insert graphics files, and an ability to attach supporting documents.  Yet, I choose to go low-tech when I take my notes.  Fast, quick, very portable, my Moleskine fills my needs perfectly.

Reg, over at Elemental Truths, posted about his RAM Text system today, so I know I’m not alone desiring a low-tech answer.  In fact, he added some commentary on how he set up his system, how he uses color pens and highlighters, and how he uses different sections of the notebook to document his day.  I use very similar tools and techniques as Reg, and can vouch for its usefulness and efficacy.

I would add, however, that to really make the low-tech answer truly work, one has to set it up to make information retrieval easy.  The work for this starts when the book almost full.

Find Any Computer File...FAST!

“Let me show you this file.  I think I put it in My Documents.  Wait a minute, maybe I put it on the desktop.  Surely, I haven’t deleted it.  Let me look in another folder.  Nope, not there.  Let me run a search.  First, I’ll check the My Documents folder.  Wait — I looked in there didn’t I?  What did I name that file, anyway?  Okay, I’ll search the whole damned C: drive.  How long will that take?   ARRGGHH!!”

Use Time and Compound Interest to Grow in Personal Effectiveness

We live in a world of instant gratification.  We want everything now.  We don’t have time to wait.  Our world has changed to accommodate our unreasonable desire get what we want immediately.  Our automobile loans are approved within minutes while we are still sitting in the show room.  If you can’t wait for a letter to be delivered, you can use FedEx.  Better yet, use a fax machine and that letter can zip to its recipient in seconds.  My bank can monitor my sons’ bank accounts while they are at college and let me know when they reach a designated trigger point, at which, I simply turn on the computer and transfer money into their accounts to make sure they have it when they need it.  When are the funds available?  It just takes a matter of seconds and they can withdraw the funds for their purchases.  If I want to watch a movie and don’t have the time to run to Blockbuster or I don’t want to wait until the time that HBO has designated to show it, I always have pay-per-view on-demand.  I can watch it now.  Our progress is amazing!

Creating a Baseline Calendar

For many of us, our days are punctuated by many repetitive small tasks that must be completed.  They are neither high priority nor urgent, but must be completed, else our performance becomes degraded or subsequent tasks become difficult because of complications to our schedule.  Some examples of this are returning phone calls, distributing copies of our daily agendas to secretaries and subordinates, clearing our desks at the end of the day, replying to email, etc.  These tasks, if left to their own devices, can divide up a day into time periods that are too small for any substantial work to be done within them.  These same tasks also recur day after day.

The solution is to simply combine these tasks into “chunks” that are scheduled to be done at strategic times throughout the day.  One might, for example, return phone calls at the same time each day, instructing a secretary to take messages, which will be saved until the phone call time.  One might have a chunk of time at the end of the day when all small clean up tasks are to be accomplished, including a final processing of the inbox, a last check of our voicemails, cleaning off our desks, placing our chosen @Office Next Action for the next morning in the center of the desk, packing our briefcase, and synchronizing our PDA one last time.

The last thing to do is to schedule the chunks for accomplishment.  Looking at optimum times during the day and keeping available energy and context in mind, one would then schedule the chunks.  If you know your energy dwindles during the late afternoon, this would be a great time to schedule some of these chunks as they rarely take a lot of mental horsepower.  Remember David’s adage that at times when you have the mental energy of an insect (and we all have times when we do), you should do insect-like things.

This plethora of small tasks has to be done anyway.  It all goes back to the fact that either we control our day or others (or other things) will.

Coaching Yields Improvement

In her blog, Kelly Forrister, a trainer for David Allen, talked about her preparation for an upcoming triathlon.  One of her decisions was to hire a coach.

"I hired a Coach to help me get ready for my sprint triathlon on June 4th. He's got me on a 32-day program of tracking my workouts, integrating personal affirmations and setting goals. "

Debbie Weil, over at BlogWrite for CEOs, has used the same approach:

“I'm currently working with a tremendous speaking coach, Clarice Scriber, to take my speaking skills to the next level. It's humbling, a little painful... and fascinating (in a weird way) to watch yourself on video and realize how many ways you can improve your delivery.”

Coaches seem to be required, advised, and appreciated in various careers that involve competition.  In other professions, such as sales, management, and education, the involvement of a “coach” seems to signal an impending career derailment.  The coach is sought out by the individual themselves, or is mandated by a superior to reverse a perceived negative trend in performance.  Sometimes the coach is a peer, who is an outstanding performer, or the coach may be the supervisor themselves.

Taming Your Outlook Inbox

Richard Kuo's Personal Blog : Optimize your life #3 - how to manage e-mail effectively (1/2)

Those of you who read my email rant last year, know that I stand among those who say that misuse of email is the biggest waste of productivity that I know.  Richard Kuo adds a little more information on how to make Outlook heel, sit-up, roll-over, and play dead instead of dragging you out of your office for a walk when it wants to.  Check out his two articles to see how to silence new mail notifications and to configure your personal folders to be GTD-friendly.

Drill #1: Bouncing Back From a Setback with X-Ray Vision

Drills, by their nature, are simple. The improvements that one sees, however, can be huge. I chose the first drill simply because it is short and fast. It holds within it, if practiced enough, a powerful skill that allows one to persevere through any adverse situation.

To be effective in what we do during the day, I think we can agree that a positive mental state gives us an edge. To allow ourselves to descend into a funk due to a setback, primes us for less than excellent results on our next project. The first drill that I use is one that is short, simple, and designed to keep me looking to the positive aspects of anything. It is designed to help me bounce back from a setback.

Drill Criteria

• The drill should be simple and easy to do
• The drill should focus on one skill
• The drill should be as realistic as possible
• The drill should be repeatable and be repeated often

X-ray Vision

Watching my son practice his chess game, I noticed that he would set up a position that would be considered bad. He would then try to find moves that improved his position. He tried to find good moves within his bad position.

This drill from this is easy and short. The name comes from the objective of looking through adversity to see the opportunities and potential benefits that may lie within. Find a negative situation that might be experienced in the future. Take a few minutes to close your eyes and imagine yourself in that situation. Feel the way it feels. Try to hear the sounds and see the sights that you might hear. Experience the emotion. Then, grab a pen and paper and list all the positives and opportunities which are embedded within it. Try to list at least five to ten advantages or opportunities in that lie within the negative experience. You will find that the truly important opportunities -- the ones that most people never see -- come after the first five.

Practice this daily until it becomes easy and second nature. When one actually finds themselves in a bad situation, spotting positives in a bad position should be an automatic response that keeps one from sinking into counterproductive mental states.

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Drills and Productivity

Olympic athletes do them. Professional athletes do them. When my son wrestled, he did them. Even my son who plays chess does them. "They" are drills, simple actions that force us to practice some part of a skill set to improve them. In football, it may entail practicing a set of plays that will be used at the two-minute warning. In chess, it may be practicing a set of moves to win with only a bishop and a rook. In baseball, it might be simply batting practice, where the pitcher throws nothing but curve balls so the batter can better deal with them. Athletes know that drills are one key to success and they don't mind practicing them.

Coaches, to create drills, break down complex actions, situations, and behavior combinations into their separate components. then design exercises where one component is developed. In martial arts, for instance, the act of fighting, is broken down into its individual parts: punches, blocks, and kicks. Then, the instructor has students practice kicks for a period of time. Even kicks will be broken down into different types of kicks (e.g., front, back, roundhouse, side) and then practiced individually.

Drills can benefit our personal and professional lives as well. One example is from the previous post on using a timer to develop focus, where one concentrates on simply maintaining momentum for a specific duration of time. Over the next couple of days, I'll show a few more drills that I, along with many others, use to hone our performance in our work and improve our productivity.

Until then, what drills do you use in your life and profession?