Protocol 80 Productivity Blog

I got to reading the first section of the seven habits book this morning, and while I’m not into the meat of it yet, the overview has kept my interest and the basic underlying theme is layed out plainly enough for me to get a feel for the direction I’m been taken in which keeps with my initial assesment. The book is about changing yourself and thinking about why you do things rather then how you do things (As a system like “Getting Things Done” is).

It’s a subtle but important shift in the focus of the material I have been reading lately, and yet better reflects my world view as a whole. After all, organization can only take you so far, and I guess recently I’ve started to put a lot of energy into reshaping my life even before I started reading the book.

Not that I’ve been waiting for something like this book to come along or anything, I can see how some people could pick it up and see it as a huge eye opener, if you haven’t put much thought into how you as a person fit into your enviroment as a whole, then it might offer a new way of thinking. For me it sits nicely with a path I was already on, and so gives me insight into someone elses thoughts on a similar path that I can draw on as I wish.

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 »

Yesterday I had the pleasure of looking around the end of year showcases of Huddersfield Universities Degree students, where they put on display ready for marking all their final year work. Obviously, the work is of varying quality, but even the ones that didn’t grab my eye were better then I could have done, so I can’t fault them on ability, and some of them were stunning.

However, every single student had put out a pile of business cards for you to take, a practice I wasn’t aware of, but it seems to be the done thing. Not one of them however struck me as been fully professional.

The single biggest problem jumped out at me time and time again, to the point it got me really angry: The all used free email accounts as they primary email address. At best, it was the just about acceptable firstname.lastname@isp.com - but far too many of them were nickname123@hotmail.com and the like. Even the students who had gone to the effort of getting their own domain name and website didn’t have their email address at that domain - which in my eyes was criminal.

I’m sure most of the students didn’t care, to them their degree was just something to do for 3 years and keep them busy before going to work in a call centre. But for the better ones, the ones who were going to be looking for jobs as professional designers, then just a little bit more attention to how they market themselves would go a long way.

My only lasting impression of the displays was the collection of cards I have, and should I have need of a designer, I would give the websites listed a look over - but as a graduating student, they should be acting like professionals in every way, if their card looks good to me, I’ll look at their site, if their site is professional, then I might use them. When you get down to heart of the matter, if someone presents themselves as a professional, they are a professional, and if you act like a student and don’t go that extra mile, you wont stand out from the crowd.