Protocol 80 Productivity Blog

I’m on a new upsurge of blogging right now, doing lots of posts, and more comments in other places. It’s easy to see I’ve had surges of posting in the past, but they fizzle out, so I am making a marked effort this time to keep the flow of output.

There are a few things I’ve done this time I haven’t done in the past to keep me going. Continue Reading »

InspireMe.org’s Two Tips To Make Your Productivity Soar deals with one critical time consumer, staring at a screen wondering what to work on next. They recommend that if you find yourself with an empty to-do list (You do use a to-do list right?) you get up right away, and go and think about what you need to do next.

I’m not sure you even need to go that far, this last week rather then poke around waiting for RSS feeds to update or a new email to drop in searching for some inspiration, when I’ve been at home I’ve stopped, and gone to read a book for a bit, and come back later. And while the actual amount of things I’ve managed to contribute to my various projects on-line has remained pretty much the same, I’ve managed to fit in finishing a book along side. Essentially, rather then worry about not doing anything, I’ve embraced the quiet moments and do something fun. In turn when I get back to working on something more “productive” I  generally feel all the better for the break, and am able to think about things more clearly.

I’ve taken a pause in reading “7 Habits” to switch to the Audio Book, which means I wont get to the 3rd Habit till tomorrow. But a cycle of listening during the day on my commute, and then reviewing the text and writing/blogging my impression will continue from then and gives me a chance to go over the first two habits again.

In the meantime I got to thinking more about how I can actively improve my quality of life, right now. The most obvious next action is getting back down to base principles: Actually do something about it. (Be Proactive!)

So, from today on in I’ll make a point of doing one meaningful and practical thing each day that will improve my environment or situation in some way, I know there are a ton of little jobs I have to do around the house that I avoid doing because combined they are a huge effort, but on their own each can be done in moments and by looking at it that way, it becomes a manageable objective.

This is as always mostly common sense, but as a chronic procrastinator it’s a big step to start shuffling over all my outstanding jobs, most of which don’t even make my task lists, things like “Take TV to the repair shop and get it made safe, so I can make a fish tank” never feature in the forefront of my mind, until I once again trip over the TV getting into my bedroom, but rather then do anything with it, I just shuffle around it. Just doing that one simple thing would change the flow of a normal day quiet profoundly, and leads into a whole new opportunity at the same time. (That been: Getting some fish)

If I keep going with the one job per day routine then after a week things start to look positivity organized.

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.