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.

When the opening tag line of a post is “Don’t have time to read Steven Covey’s book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People? Take a look at our summary articles written by Michael Gray.” I was pretty much compelled to take a look at it, more so because I actually own the book, it’s here right now on my desk, all but untouched.

You can have a look yourself at http://www.profitadvisors.com/7habitlist.shtml.

The summaries make for good reading, and though they are pretty lightweight they do give a healthy insight as to what is held within the book, and for me at least has reawakened my interest in picking up the book and actually making the time to read it fully.

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.

Over at A Blog Around The Clock, they have posted what looks like one of the better looks at how and why we sleep in their Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sleep (But Were Too Afraid To Ask) and it has some great comments about how to wind down at the end of the day.

None of it’s new advice, I’ve read the majority of it before in one form or another spread around the internet, though its good to see it with fresh eyes and all layed out in a concise form. But for me, while I know I’m not getting enough sleep, and that I should stop watching TV or peering at bright screens at night I just can’t figure out a way to fit that into my life. Not because I have to much to do on paper, but living in a shared house that acts as a social hub, I’m always fitting in “me time” around people on shifts who come and go at reasonable hours.

With that said, I came to the only solution that makes sense; Tell people I have something to do, or need to go to bed, and do it. Obviously, if there is a planned event or something, that would be a bit rude. But when people are just calling around for a cup of tea or glass of wine in an evening, then it needs to be done. And actually, nobody minds now that I make a point of doing it.