Protocol 80 Productivity Blog

Over on Get Rich Slowly they have posted up a collection of recommended personal development sites, several of which I haven’t come across before, which is always a good thing.

Personally,  I try to keep the number of blogs I monitor at anyone time fairly small - but keeping a bigger stock to check when I have more time then usual is handy. But my picks right now are probably not all that suprising:

• LifeHacker
  

  One of the most comprehensive blogs for getting the most out of your life with a healthy variety of content to satisfy my craving for some more random entries every now and again.

• 43Folders
  

  Another great blog which I constantly refer people to when they want to get a head start on their GTD systems, as the overview they have over there condenses both a good introduction and good lead points for more discovery.

And a couple that are missing that I read regularly:

• Positive Sharing
  

  A blog for an in development book that focuses on the concept of seeking happiness at work, an often forgotten ideal which takes a refreshing new angle over the usual attention to simply being more productive and efficient.

• D * I * Y Planner
  

  Since I favour paper based planners over digital, then the supply of various templates for printing your own stock for various purposes comes in handy, and the blog keeps up with plenty of articles on general productivity and ideas for new ways to organize your life and planner.

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I’m not going to repeat the ancient incantation of “Don’t use email alerts“. Not a week goes by when someone mentions it within the blogsphere, but I’ve always found that while you can turn off email alerts, it’s more difficult to ignore the follow up phone calls just to check “Have you got my email yet?“.

One way to try and reduce this pressure is to set up your email program to automatically reply with a standard email which informs the sender that you have received the email, and will process it within an allocated period of time. It’s useful to make it clear in the message that it is an automated response, so people don’t assume that you are aware of the mail contents.

It’s not fool proof by any means, but at times where you just want to get down
to some work, but keep getting interrupted it can make it easier on people contacting you who are stuck in reactive models of working who might feel that no reply within 10 minutes is shocking.

Over at http://rickyspears.com/blog/?p=134 Ricky’s gone to a lot of effort to search out the past articles of David Allen from various places on the internet and provide a handy list of them all for quick click access.

I haven’t had much chance to read them yet (There is a lot of them) but they all look to extend around his “Getting Things Done” themes, and while I haven’t seen anything that I’d count as “new” in them, it’s always good to go over old ground from new view points and that’s what this does. And I’m sure some more reading will turn up some lost gems of insight along the way.

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”.
Continue Reading »

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 »

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.

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.

The second habit is a bit harder to skim over, as Stephen Covey said right in the start, there are no quick and easy solutions. So I guess I shouldn’t try and race ahead.

Habit two, “Begin With The End In Mind” is about self image, reflection and comitment to personal ideals. To take it to heart you can’t just read a few pages and move on, you need to actually think about what is been said. Not so easy to do when clunking along on the train, but the message is clear if you do not create your own reality, other people will create it for you. Continue Reading »

I’ve dug about half way into the first of the “Seven Habits” now, I’m not sure how I’m feeling about it right now, for a start I keep getting told there are no “Quick Fix” solutions. Damn.

Oh well, the first habit is “Be Proactive“. I was a little mistaken in what I though this meant at first, I sort of looked at it in lines of the Next Actions and the art of actually getting down to doing the things that need to be done. But it goes a lot deeper then that, suggesting that you should not just do all you need to do, but all you can do. Continue Reading »