overflow » Productivity

an experiment

ames — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 22:18:39 +0000

I love ‘playing’ with things. The way I do things. This week I’m playing with email and phone. Generally I’m phone phobic and prefer to email people, but despite diligently sticking to my MITs and fervently tending my inbox only once or twice a day, it still rules me. I love systems. They free me to focus on quality, to be attentive and present. My mind is not frantic, but in flow when I am systematic, logical.

So this weeks experiment is this: reply to email with phone calls only. Lets see what happens.

Time

ames — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 16:48:47 +0000

“One of the very worst uses of time is to do something very well that need not be done at all.”

- Brian Tracy

Key

ames — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 16:47:32 +0000

“The key to success is action.”

- Brian Tracy

Unsubscribe and other time savers

ames — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 18:21:37 +0000

The best button in the world is unsubscribe. Every time we walk out our doors, watch TV, listen to the radio, or surf the internet we are bomb-barded with advertising. Over the last year I’ve engaged in a mission of unsubscribing. This means every time I get a newsletter or facebook notification I click the unsubscribe button in an attempt to eliminate the bombarding of my inbox. Some websites make this awfully tricky but it is worth it to save your inbox, and allow time to do things you really want to do, instead of constantly clicking delete to stuff you will never read. This also meant sending emails to friends or family who send me jokes I never read.

A common thought that comes to mind when considering to receive them or not is not wanting to miss out. So this is where you can be selective. As an example you can select what notifications you receive from facebook, and not have to put up them all. Websites that send out news up-dates on newsletters always have the same information on their web pages so using google reader you can get the information you need, all in one place. Google reader is a fantastic time saver. It is a website content “collector” where you can add any website, and it will tell you when the page has been up-dated. That means you can log into google reader, have a quick glance at the menu of websites you have listed and see which web

sites have been up-dated, instead of having to click, and load each of your favourite blogs or websites one at a time (pictured).

My unsubscribe mission was a success. If I do not check my emails for a few days I might have 10 emails at the most, instead of 40 or 50 that was common. It serves my less than 20 rul

e as well. Leo Babuata talks about processing your inbox to empty to limit wasted time, because our inbox’s commonly serve as our things to do list, and it is easy to consistently troll through them every time we check out emails, and re-read emails we don’t actually need to. It’s a brilliant rule. I keep emails I need to, filing them in appropriate folders, and always keep my inbox to less than 20 emails both at work and at home.

One of my favourite time savers on my mac is spotlight (pictured). Instead of having to open an application, or troll through folders to find a document, I just search for the title in spotlight and click on it, and that feature is available right from my desktop.

I keep my desktop completely clean, as again, just like a full inbox it is easy to keep opening these documents to see what they are, forget, and repeat the exercise a few weeks later. These are just a few things I do to simplify my daily interactions with my computer to limit the time spent on it, and keep more time free for other hobbies.

The Internet House of G

ames — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 03:16:23 +0000

I am sure that I find something new to use every few months with Google. They have such a massive resource of amazing web applications to use. My latest ones that I’m becoming quite fond of are Google Reader and Google Talk.

Google Reader

This is a handy little application that allows you to add all of your web sites into, such as favourites and then it will tell you when they are up-dated, and how many up-dates there are. So instead of having to troll through of your favourites, you just click on one website, and then you can also read them within Google Reader. It halves the time I spend going through my favourites, making me think “geeze theres nothing on the internet, just like TV.”

Google Talk

Skype may have the strong hold on computer video chatting but it can be pretty messy. Google also have their version Google Talk attached to Gmail, and you can do audio or video calls PC to PC for free. It is much clearer, and more reliable connection than using Skype. I will be thrashing this in the UK!

The Power of Less

ames — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 06:43:02 +0000

One of the blogs I follow is called Zen Habits, written by Leo Babuata. It is one of the top 100 blogs in the world, and he is known as a simplicity and productivity guru. He also writes another blog called Write to Done that has helpful writing tips.

Leo released a book called The Power of Less last year, and after a hearty wait on the library list I finally got my hands on it. It’s a quick read with great little tips to simply life from personal to work.

Innovation

ames — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 18:33:29 +0000

A client put me onto another Malcolm Gladwell talk, but this time he directed his examples towards Innovation. It’s really interesting in respect to a few things. 3 part series here.

He argues that innovation isn’t a sudden light bulb, just like success not being a sudden exponential curve. Instead he argues innovation follows the predictable 10,000 hours.

“… when you look at the lives of truly innovative people or organizations, you discover that the opposite is true. Innovation is what happens after a long period of intensive hard work.”

But he brings in two concepts which I like, around learning achievement strategies. One is called capitalization strategy and the other is a compensation strategy. Capitalization is where you build on your strengths and try to be innovative from there. The compensation strategy is around making up for your weaknesses, and Gladwell gives examples of people like Richard Branson who is dyslexic. How when we have difficulties we have to learn our way around them, and thus learn skills we would not have otherwise learnt, and consequently be innovative. I like that theory – especially because I didn’t do well at school… actually I barely passed bursary!

“At the end of the day, being hungry is more important to being successful and innovative in a given field than entering the field with all of those advantages [of the capitalization strategy].”

I think it is good he points this out, because it barely touches on it in Outliers, and I think it is a major facet of what we end up doing, or being or evoling into.

“… when people are aware of what their weaknesses are and they try to overcome them, that makes them better, more innovative, more creative than people who capitalize on their strengths.”

“When you are facing difficult times, we have an ability to be creative and innovative that was denied to us when everything came easily.”

He also breaks down innovators into two types: conceptual innovators are people who have big grand ideas, all of sudden and execute them quickly, and experimental innovators who start out slowly and carefully, and go through that slow gradual process of trial and error. Gladwell, of course points out that developing slowly through experimental innovation has advantages, all conducive to the end product being bigger through the 10,000hr rule.

“There are things that cannot be solved overnight; they can’t be solved easily, and can only be solved through a process of trial and error. We must be willing to let ourselves fail if we are ever to solve problems.”

In many ways I despise the show me what you’ve got philosophy that is prevalent in many industries or systems – especially what I’ve seen in NZ sport. And I’ve seen the “we’ll support you, believe in you” model work, yet they are somewhat contradictory to the compensation strategy, and experimental innovation.

Gladwell ends by saying it is essential for a support organization that fosters creativity and innovation, that allows you to fail and experiment. But if you have too much support doesn’t that go against it, and verge on the capitalization strategy? There must be a magic balance of both – support to give space and time, yet not enough to squash growth, learning and innovation?

A new style of riding

ames — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 03:49:44 +0000

Since I increased my running I have adopted easy cycling in between. Nothing hard at all. But easy is boring! I want to head home in 30-minutes! A few weeks ago I decided to load up my podcasts and cruise along listening to various things from Harvard Business Review (HBR), to Gil Fronsdal’s Audio Dharma. It was superb. My easy ride suddenly doubled in length – just one more podcast!

My favourites (just to highlight how much of a geek I am) are Audio Dharma, HBR, Brain Science, Zencast,

Today HBR had “why smart people make bad decisions.” It was a quick summary of a few key points in a book out soon by Sidney Finkelstein. He surmised that smart people make bad decisions because of:

1. Prior experience – repeating the same process in a similar, yet different situation. So there is bias for a decision similar to the previous one that is in fact not best for this one.

2. Pre-judgments – and not adapting. Making a quick decision and almost accidentally ignoring other feedback.

3. Self-interest – even if it is subconscious.

4. Attachment – emotional instead of common sense.

Puzzles

ames — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 03:24:01 +0000

In relation to the Chronic Switcher I’ve discovered something more about myself lately. I love puzzles, as described. There is another level to this puzzle thing though. The puzzle I am doing makes no difference at all. There is no difference in my perception of say for example conquering a new software programme, to writing a book, or starting a business – or in fact doing a real jigsaw puzzle. They are all just a process – and I like the challenge of putting the pieces together. It makes no difference if those pieces are risky, or perceived as hard. Because I don’t see “hard” – I see pieces to put together, as that is what I enjoy doing. I’m thinking that this is a strength as that thing called confidence doesn’t get in the way, or any of those other emotional things or filters that tend to limit taking action in tasks that are puzzle related.

That’s the part I really enjoy about my job. Putting performance together. Figuring out the pieces for each person, and putting them together to create improvement.

Google docs

ames — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 21:46:04 +0000

Recently I discovered google docs. If you have a google account you can use google docs which is basically like Microsoft word. It has excel, word, and you can even PDF files and export them. Google docs also has a feature/application that you can download called Google gears. This enables you to access and work on your documents offline, so when not logged on this is handy. The benefits are broad:

1. Online access to your documents, anywhere.
2. Eliminates the need for microsoft word, and having to email yourself documents to/from work for example.
3. Can PDF any document – usually only with an expensive Abode software programme can that be done.
4. Google gears allows you work on your documents offline, and as soon as you log on, it syncs all up-dates seamlessly.
5. It saves your memory on your computer.

6. File sharing. You can share documents with people.

Lovely.