Protocol 80 Productivity Blog

Here’s a refreshing new idea, a book about being happy at work. I’ve seen lot’s of things that indirectly lead to been happy at work, as a rule models like the “Seven Habits” result in a generally happier state of being, GTD reduces stress but  happiness is a by-product, not the goal it’s self usually.

What really caught my attention with this book is the fact it looks at a more holistic approach to happy work places, it’s not about building shared visions and mission statements and the normal rar-rar activity that rely more on hype then real genuine contentment with working. Or at least that’s the impression I’ve got from reading that parts available already.

It’ll be interesting to see where the whole project goes.

An interesting article over at lifehack.org points out “Productivity skills alone will not dramatically improve your life.”, and goes on to suggest that maybe it’s not productivity tricks such as “Getting Things Done” that some people need, but better life choices.

Now, I don’t disagree with the overall premise of the article. There is a whole lot of information and advice around in books and online all wanting to help you better sort out your life by getting organized and have more free time or being less stress. But obviously this information only makes up a fraction of the bigger picture, GTD offers for the most part very practical advice, for instance it’s common sense that writing things down in list form means you won’t forget to do them, so long as you look at the list. I don’t think anyone has ever read that and though to themselves “Why didn’t I think of that?!” - But sometimes you need to be reminded of things, or look at them in a new context to actually make the choice to actually do them. Continue Reading »

When faced with explaining “Getting Things Done” to people in a quick, easy to understand sound bite, I use the same phrase myself as I’ve heard plenty other people use, “It’s writing lists”. Somewhere along the line, as the time I spent reading the book drifts further back, I keep allowing myself to slip more closely to this overly simplistic approach.

Most importantly, while I fairly consistently write lists, and place things vaguely into some sort of inbox (Or pile on an available surface). I spend less and less time actually reviewing all my incoming stuff.

The problem of course, is that writing lists is ideal for procrastinators, you get a huge amount of positive feeling from collecting all your todos down on paper, and on a really good day you might go that extra mile and sort in a couple of “next actions”. Now that’s productivity for you.

But, after all that productivity, well, you need a break. And then it’s forgotten about, but without that nagging “I need to do something” feeling, because after all, you have your lists. The trick of course, is to take a little bit of time now and again to actually review your list, and do some of those next actions. David Allen was right to say there is a sense of achievement in crossing things of the list, but doesn’t really take into account the sense of achievement a hardened procrastinator can get by simply writing them down in the first place.

So personally, I’m starting to fix that. I’m in the middle of reducing myself down to only one inbox at home, I have two work based lists; One in my Filofax that consists of post-it notes held within a divider set, and one in my outlook inbox for email based requests. Now, even though this isn’t fully implemented, it’s starting to help, post-it notes work great because I can easily see what I have on at a glance and work better then index cards, because when I’m juggling a couple of tasks I can stick them to the edges of my monitor for quick eyeballing, and the tend not to drift around in the someway.