Open Loops

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?

Boosting Productivity With a Timer

"Nothing focuses the mind like imminent death." That unattributed quote has been shared for years. In fact, I counted at least 30 variations of it in a single Google search that are floating around the Internet. It is, unfortunately, very true.

Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) says that there are two types of motivations that make humans do everything that we do. Moving-toward motivation and moving-away-from motivation. Anthony Robbins puts it another way. Humans do things to gain something positive or we do them to avoid something negative. It's simple but not simplistic. Unfortunately, more people are motivated by the avoidance of the unpleasant rather than working toward a reward. If you don't believe this, simply look at what happens the day before vacation. Instead of gradually getting into the flow of the day, we hit the ground running. No one can get us out of our mission to tie up all loose ends to make sure we're ready to go the next day. We begin to put those who interrupt us on notice that we have things to get done and we do not have the time to chit-chat. The deadline of the end of the business day approaches ominously and we do all we can to get everything done. It's not the pleasant aspects of the vacation that spurs us on, it is the dread of not getting things done so we can go. It is the most productive day of the year. In the quest to improve our productivity, we can use this to our advantage.

With the introduction of a $10 countdown timer that one can purchase in any housewares department, we can create our own artificial deadlines that create that sense of urgency for us. By setting the timer for 15 minutes to allow us to complete a task, it seems easy to focus and weed out the unimportant. When I use this technique, I get much more work done and I hear myself telling others, "Call me back in 30 minutes. I'm in the middle of something!" Productivity soars.

At first, it is difficult to estimate the amount of time needed. I found myself overestimating the time needed and I finished well within the required time. As an added bonus, I've been able to use the timer on repetitive tasks and can document my improvement as I accomplish the task faster each time I do it. It's even turned into a game I play to see if I can break my previous time record for accomplishing repetitive tasks, creating a new personal best. Now, since I know how much time certain tasks take, I can also forecast completion times for projects more accurately

Grab your timer and give it a go!

[composed and posted with ecto]

Google Releases New Calendar Component

Google released its new calendar.  This was something that I've been waiting on for a few months after hearing rumors of it.  For years I've used a variety of calendar programs for work and personal uses.  Between Outlook, Yahoo!, and, most recently, EssentialPIM.  I was very interested in Google's offering, due to Google's reputation for innovation.  I have to say, I was very disappointed.

Of the features it offers, most have been available to Yahoo! members for years.  Shared calendars, reminders, and guest invitation to meetings offer nothing new.  The two nice features, however, are the speed of entry and the ease of changing days and times of appointments.  One can write the appointment right on the calendar page, with no details of course, and it is posted immediately without having to use an additional dialogue box.  To add details, make the appointment repeating, or to invite guests, one has to use the dialogue box.  If the appointment needs to be changed, it can be done by clicking and dragging.  Other than these enhancements -- and they are nice -- the calendar is found lacking.

There is no notes section.  There is no To Do list component.  Other than a very small text link at the top that takes one to Gmail, there are no other components that are integrated to make this a truly useful PIM the way that Yahoo! has theirs configured.  If one needs contact information, one has to go to Gmail and use the contacts section there.  As a PIM, it just feels disjointed.

To sum it up, the speed of entry and ease of changing times and days of appointments are a step in the right direction.  Past that, the new Google calendar is no better than any other web-based calendar and falls short of being a useful PIM.

Tags: GTD, Time Management, Productivity

Product Review: EssentialPIM

In a previous post on the increasing role of jump drives on productivity, -- aka memory sticks or flash drives -- several portable programs were listed.  This is the first product review from that list.  The first program to be reviewed, naturally, is EssentialPIM, an information manager that resembles a stripped-down Outlook.

Installation

Installation was extremely simple.  Like all portable applications, it was a matter of unzipping/installing the program into a folder on the jump drive.  Some portable programs make their own folder on the drive, but one must be created for EssentialPIM.  If you purchase the Pro version, a registration key, in the form of a file, is emailed to the customer.  Simply drop the file into the main Essential PIM folder with the rest of the files and the program recognizes it.  The program immediately recognizes if other information managers are present on the computer and offers to import their data into EssentialPIM.  That being done, the installation is complete.

Tour

• EPIM Today - This component is similar to Outlook Today.  So similar, one could easily become confused that it was Outlook that was being viewed.  The giveaway is the fact that EPIM does not have an email program. 
• Schedule - The calendar component, again, resembles Outlook's calendar.  The main difference is that colors, when applied to appointments, are gradients rather than solid and the appointment dialog is extremely stripped down, leaving only the essentials.  Entering appointments is the same as in Outlook.
• To Do - Entering To Do's -- or Next Actions for those GTDers out there -- is very straightforward.  Call up the dialog box and fill in the fields.  One nice improvement in the paid "Pro" version is that Next Actions can be listed in a tree-hierarchy.  One thing that I've begun doing is listing my major objectives as To Do's and putting projects and their Next Actions inside the objectives.  This way I can see when my daily actions are truly linked to an important goal that I've set and I'm not looking busy but not moving toward my goals.
• Notes - A minimalistic notes system, more similar to Yahoo!'s notes.  One can, however, add photos, links, and format the text.  Again, call up the dialog box and write your note.
• Contacts - The ubiquitous contact list that allows one to save personal and business contact information, notes, and a picture.

The one feature from Outlook that I miss is the ability to simply type a Next Action into a field on the list view.  On EPIM, one must always call up the dialogue box.

The "Pro" -- read paid -- edition allows multiple users to access the database, the linking of actual documents to contacts, appointments, and tasks, assigning tasks to others for tracking, advanced back-up features, sending items using the user's default email program, editing categories of events and tasks, and synchronization with a PocketPC or Smartphone.

Although it lacks an email component and the collaboration components of Outlook, for sheer portability, EPIM fits my needs just fine.  I'm always near my computer at work or at home and they are always on, so I simply got tired of carrying my Palm around.  Since I carry my jump drive everywhere anyway, the addition of EPIM lightened my load in what I carry during the day.

The cost of the Pro version was excessive, in my view.  At $39 for the portable version and $29 for the standard version, I feel they are overpriced.  I needed the features found in the paid version and GTDers will need it to be able to customize their categories for their different contexts.  For most people, however, the free version will suffice nicely.

Jump Drives - Productivity on a Key Chain

New technologies — and I include hacks in this category — are always fertile ground for making one’s life more efficacious and efficient.  One of the hottest technologies is finally coming of age and is ripe for use in making one’s productivity soar.  That technology is the humble jump drive.

Also known as flash drives, these simple plastic devices are the natural replacements of floppy discs.  Affordable units are available from 64 MB units the size of a penny to 2 GB drives that fit neatly on a key chain.  As technology advances, memory capacity is growing at an astounding rate while prices are falling.  When first introduced, the problem for some operating systems was that they required a driver to be installed prior to use.  Even then some computers still refused to recognize them.  That has changed and most computers seem to accept them as an additional drive very easily.

At first glance, one will assume that the best use for these pocket drives is simple storage of files.  Indeed, for the last two years, I’ve done exactly that.  In fact, I have three years worth of documents related to my profession and still have over half of the memory space still available.  This ended the hassle of e-mailing myself documents to work on at home and then e-mailing them back to work.  Now I simply set up a “Briefcase” (a windows folder designed to carry copies of documents from one computer to another while keeping both sets updated) on my jump drive and work from that folder at home.  I open my folder and see the exact same set up that I have at work.  Every morning, I update my files with one click.

Ten Ways I'm Dealing with Perfectionism and Overload

In my position as a school administrator, one task that I have is to ensure that the physical plant is in good shape and is conducive for learning.  From major repairs to routine cleanliness, I have to make sure that the building and grounds are ready.  Just before the Christmas holiday, I hired a new custodian and dutifully assigned him to his area.  Almost immediately, I began to see improvements in one area and began to receive complaints in others.  Seeing that the custodian was always busy and seemed to want to do a good job, I decided to see if his assigned square footage of floor space was excessive.  When finished with the measuring and analysis, I determined that he was, indeed overburdened.  Not wanting to approach his new employer and complain, he tried his best to clean his assigned area within his allotted time.  In doing so, he either worked past the required hours or hurried through all his rooms, leaving them in a state that did not reflect his presence.  I immediately reduced his workload to a reasonable level.

 

During my workday, I find myself in similar circumstances.  Many tasks land on my next actions lists.  Some of them are superior-designed while others arise out of my Key Areas of Responsibility and simply appear.  Still others are self-imposed and are born due to my always looking for things that I can improve.  Since I also deal with issues that arise with others during the day, tasks, many times, come flooding into my office and onto my desk faster than I can dispatch them.  Unfortunately, the number of tasks mushrooms to astronomical proportions.  I find myself having to make a choice of either trying to accomplish all of them and not doing any of them well or spending an inordinate amount of time getting everything done but getting them done to the level that pleases me.  It got to the point that I had to switch back to my Palm due to the fact that my paper-based system expanded to the point of bulging at the seams.

Post-It Possibilities

I’m presently preparing a presentation for a conference that will be held in May.  I’ve placed a large piece of chart paper on my wall and have begun attaching Post-It Notes, on which I’ve written points that I intend to make during my presentation.  Later, I’ll move and re-group these small points into larger groups that represent larger concepts.  As I wrote and re-grouped, I became more aware of how easy the Post-It Notes made this process.  I also began to think how indispensable these little colored pieces of paper have become to my productivity.  Here is a few ways that I’ve been using them:

• Planning points and sub-points in presentations
• Bookmarks
• Posting goals on my bathroom mirror so I’ll see them everyday
• Creating seating charts on clipboards
• Scheduling teachers and classes
• Masking off completed areas of paper forms before copying to create a new “master”
• Labeling desk areas for sorting stacks of paper (File, Action, Refer, Trash, etc.)
• Writing Hall Passes that stick to clothing
• Leaving notes on doors of parents whom I’ve missed during home visits
• Writing next actions on the paperwork that constitutes my current project so I don’t have to start all over or try to remember where I was.

These ubiquitous small yellow, blue, and pink papers have become essential in my daily professional life.  What “tool” has become essential in your professional life?

A Quick and Dirty Reading Strategy When Time is Short

A week ago, I was out of town, spending time with my mother, who was very ill.  After her passing, I returned to work after about five days away.  I was greeted by a stuffed mailbox, an overflowing in-box, 700+ emails, and numerous voicemail messages.  If you’re like me, you’ve got some strategies to help hack through the backlog and get your desktop back under control — or almost under control.  One task, however, seems to stifle some executives:  Catching up on reading submitted letters, reports, professional journals, manuscripts, etc.  “To Read” piles can become mountainous if one does not bulldoze periodically. 

I tend to shy away from advice that says to start a “To Read” folder for use on airplanes, trains, and other locations when one has enough down time to read a few items.  I find that I never have enough free time to plow through the darned things.  So the file grows to outrageous proportions, where it becomes a visible reminder that I’m not “getting things done” when it comes to my required business reading.  Instead, I use a simple, yet effective way to get through some of the professional reading that we all have to do.  It’s not elegant; It’s quick and dirty, but it gets the job done for me.

How to Create a Better Checklist

This, as well as other blogs, have promoted the use of checklists to ensure that things get done in an organized and consistent way.  They have been seen to be the key to overcoming "task saturation", where the flow of incoming data and tasks is so overwhelming that one becomes paralyzed and unable to take action.  But what constitutes a good checklist?  NASA research has led to standardized checklist characteristics in the field of general aviation.  We, also, can benefit from this research.

Make an Appointment with Yourself

How I learned to stop worrying and love my schedule

One of the cardinal rules of GTD is the 2–minute rule.  Once picking up an item from our inboxes, we are to decide if it is actionable.  If it is, the next decision is to determine if it will take two minutes or less to do it.  If it can be completed in two minutes, one is to do it.  If it takes more than two minutes, we put it on our context lists, deferred until later.  The problem is when a task will take a substantial amount of time.  Due to the excessive time requirement, it is easy to defer it (yes, I mean procrastinate on it) until it becomes an emergency.  The answer, however, is as close as your calendar.