Protocol 80 Productivity Blog

I felt I might have been a little harsh on Brian Tracy yesterday, so I gave some more of his material a listen, they are fairly short audio books, an hour each and so I gave his “How to become a millionaire” a listen in full, and his “21 ways to earn more and be promoted faster”.
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I’ve taken a bit of a detour in my reading/listening of the “7 Habits” because my audio book is either abridged, or a different edition to my hard copy (I have the latest revision), plus there are clear cuts in sections. Which makes it near impossible to follow since I can’t tell how much I’ve missed by flicking into my book.

So, not to be put off I picked up one of the other collection of audio books I read, “21 ways to be more productive” by Brian Tracy. Wow, was this a different approach, while reading “Getting Things Done” and “Seven Habits” had given me pause for thought on my opinions of various self help styles, this guy just reconfirmed some of the worst clinches. Continue Reading »

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.

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.