Open Loops

Storming the Matrix: Can You Live Online?

In the movie, "The Matrix", the hero spends all his time trying to escape from living in a computer generated world.  It's funny to think that there are those of us who would prefer the opposite, and want to storm the matrix to get inside, living completely in a digital world.  We are coming very close to that with web apps that are improving each day to the point that it is very tempting.

Is it possible that one can do everything one needs to do to accomplish required tasks and achieve goals by using online tools only?  That question popped in my mind years ago when I read a quote from Bill Gates who said that the future would be oriented to an online world and that Microsoft would lead the way.  Since then, with the proliferation of WiFi hot spots, home wireless networks and wireless cards for laptops, as well as the new Google Gears that allow web applications to work offline, that future is close to being here.  However, Microsoft is not leading the way.  Instead, one of Microsoft's top officers stated that they are now years behind other companies in preparing viable web applications that Bill Gates promised.  Other companies, however, have blazed the way with webapps that promise everything that installed software promises -- but are available anywhere, anytime, on any computer.

Two Ways to Use Your New Found Early Morning Hours

Leaving the office at a reasonable time to push more priority out of the last hours of the day into the first hours of the day is a great strategy for getting more things done.  If that’s all we do, we may still find our productivity lacking.  Two additional co-strategies maximize the effect that we may get by becoming early risers.

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!

Carrying High Priority Items Can Turn Downtime into Found Time

Over the past few weeks, I've been traveling a lot. Not between cities or countries, but I've been traveling between work sites, to and from home, to out of town vacation spots, to my son's graduation, and to personal interest activities (e.g., chess tournaments). In addition, there have been late nights due to the fact that I live one hour's commute time away from my place of employment. That's one hour of long interstate driving, traffic jams, stopped traffic due to accidents. That also means that I don't go home before evening events and, instead, the late hours mean I stay at work until it's time to travel to the meeting. Along the way, I have found short moments of time available for doing "something". David Allen, in his CD program entitled, "Getting Things Done...FAST", calls these "weird windows of time." One way of becoming more effective is to exploit these small "weird windows of time" by making sure that we have something with us that is worth doing and is a high priority.

In 1977, I found the same type of advice in Alan Lakien's book, "How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life". The concept was easy: Always have an "A" with you. Although I have gotten away from assigning priorities to my Next Actions, the concept is solid. Lakien was saying that one should get in the practice of carrying something of high value at all times so that one could exploit those empty windows of time wherever we may find them.

In my backpack, I carry

• A Book - Usually a self-development book
• My Reading File - My file of saved articles ripped from magazines and journals that need to be read
• An Action Support File - Filled with items from my @Anywhere List
• My Context Lists - For choosing a Next Action to possibly do
• A Jump Drive - Loaded with all my work and personal files and related portable programs

Unlike the list of items I carry when I travel on vacation, which is much more extensive, the items on this pared-down list are with me at all times. What do you carry with you so that you can be productive at any time?

How to Track Your Delegated Tasks

Kelly Forrister: Tracking Delegation

Management includes the day to day assignment of tasks, creations of procedures, employee follow-up, and the tracking of various aspects of projects.  Kelly Forrister, a trainer with the David Allen Company, offers a simple, yet effective way to track delegated tasks using GTD’s “Waiting For” list.

I find that consistency helps me be more effective because it eliminates excessive thought time during the course of the day when I’m fighting many battles.  Kelly has helped me be more consistent in the way that I enter my “Waiting For” tasks into my context lists by standardizing the notation into person, what she’s waiting for, and the date she began waiting.

Simple?  Yes, but at Olympic levels, athletes say that anything that gives them an advantage that yields a benefit measured in only 1000ths of a second is worthwhile.  The same applies here.  The time savings add up to provide a real benefit.

 

Strategies for Creativity Breakthroughs

Book Review:  Bumped Into The Wall

As someone who publishes his ideas and opinions on a regular basis, I also value the opinion of my peers on the quality of my ideas.  So, it’s not surprising to me that, from time to time, I am approached by authors to review their books, articles, or other written works.  This is something that I’m happy to do.  Some time ago, Amyn Lalji, an author in Lisbon, Portugal, asked me to review his book, Bumped Into The Wall, a book on overcoming creativity blockages. 

Amyn is an educator, management consultant, and leadership coach.  He is also the founder of YouPerform, a Lisbon-based company that conducts seminars and workshops on creativity and leadership development.

GTD Defined

As I scour the internet looking for productivty enhancements (I'm always looking), I keep finding bloggers who are just now stumbling across GTD (Getting Things Done) and are wondering what it is, implying that it's a cult, or are telling others, incorrectly, what it is.

In short, it is a fantastic system developed by David Allen for capturing all the tasks that one has to do, putting them in the form of a next (physical) action that must be done, doing it - or putting it in one's context-based system until one is in a position to accomplish it.   It is a system that helps one accomplish what must be done and does so in a stress-free method.  It is not a cult, but does have a lot of followers because it works!  But, to be official, we need an ultimate definition.

So, from David himself, here is the new official definition of GTD.

Where Are You?

Today, my school district begins its annual End-of-Grade Tests (EOG's).  This is the time to check to see if our students have gained one year of learning for one year of seat time.  This is not the only time this year we've assessed our students.  Each 9-weeks, we also administer our quarterly benchmark assessments.  In addition, students have been assessed with teacher-created tests and quizzes on a weekly basis.  Students in the lower grades (K - 2) are being assessed continuously throughout the year, as we use the Literacy First method of teaching reading, which calls for intensive assessment.  If we do our jobs correctly and make small adjustments throughout the year, based on our assessments, our results on the EOG's should not be a surprise, but a confirmation of what we knew all along.  How, though, does this translate to us, as adults?

Chunking Your Inbox

The act of processing one's inbox can be very tedious at times.  My inbox can get so full, at times, that it can literally take hours to get through it all.  It's not that it's that hard to do, it's that the actions required to do it are sometimes so different that time is actually lost switching gears.  At one time I'm writing a next action in my @context lists and storing the support material in my action files.  The next slip of paper has me heading for my reference files.  The next slip has me getting up to deliver it to another person.  The next paper has me, again, heading for my reference files.  Each of these were done because each took only two minutes.  However, in doing each two-minute task, several more minutes were wasted in transition time, going from files, to desk, to another person's office, and back to my desk.

Taking a cue from the @context lists, and remembering a technique from Stephanie Winston in her book, The Organized Executive, I began chunking my inbox.  Just like one gathers items for the @context lists by location (e.g., @home, @office, @computer), chunking one's inbox by needed action made my inbox processing time go much faster.

Product Review: Agendus Pro v9.0

A few weeks back, I switched from using my Palm Tungsten-C as my GTD tool back to a paper-based methodology.  I’ve been very happy, but then, something happened.  I was checking my email and found an email announcing the newest edition of Iambic’s Agendus Professional v9.0.  The tag line was, “Your Palm Reborn!”  Curious, I opened the email and temptation set in.

I’ve always been a fan of Agendus as a strong GTD tool.  It had everything I wanted, but the other issues with the palm enticed me to lay it down as an organizer (I still used it as a note-taking tool, phone log, etc.).  But now, with all the improvements, I’m tempted to go back.