ToDoOrElse.com

Clutter or Work. Not both!

Just a quick before/after comparison of my work area as of when I got up this morning.

Which would you find more conducive to being able to effortlessly move from Next Action to Next Action? Me too.

The Lesson: five minutes of cleanup/prep time at the end of the day will prevent 5 hours of flailing pain, doubt and confusion. Spend the 5 minutes.

Productivity and the 48 minute hour

There's a new technique that I'm finding which works extremely well as a general-purpose productivity enhancement.  I picked up this technique from LifeHacker who found it on the Success Begins Today blog. I've added my own GTD-centric spin to it and can report that my productivity is up a good 20% just because of this one trick.

Here's how it works -- at least for me. When I need to get a specific thing done:

1. I first assemble any non-computer things I need such as books and paper on my work desk,
2. I take a blank sheet of paper and write on it the specific Desired Outcome I want to achieve and a starting time a couple minutes ahead in the future.
3. I take those few minutes to quickly review that I have everything I need, I know what I want to achieve, that I've turned off or shut out whatever distractions might get in the way and I know exactly why this piece of work is worth my time and what I'll get from it.
4. When it's start time the kitchen timer that's preset for 48 minutes starts.
5. 
6. For those 48 minutes I focus on just completing the work to achieve the desired outcome. Nothing else. Nothing short of catastrophe or urgent bodily need will let me out of that chair until either the timer goes off or I've done what I set out to do.
7. When the timer goes off either I'm done and I go on to the Next Action I need to deal with or I'll be coming back to this task in 12 minutes.
8. I use that 12 minutes to walk around, attend to various needs, and do a mental GTD quick check on what I'm doing and why.  The mantra I used is Capture, Clarify, Complete and Win. Each word helps me take stock of where I'm going and what I'm doing.

We live in a world of endless information-receiving and communication-making possibilities.  But the only way you're going to put food on the table and a roof over your head is to get things done.  These 48 minutes hours focus all my attention on doing just one thing  well -- that's why they probably work as well as they do.

Give 48 minute hours a try the next time you realize you've spent half the work day doing "something", but you've accomplished nothing.

 

Update on turning e-mail addiction into GTD discipline

Ten days ago I started to try and break my e-mail addiction with a bit of operant conditioning: each day I would plan the times I would actually check my e-mail in advance -- and each time I did not check e-mail before my next "email appointment" I'd reward myself with an iTunes song.

Here's what I've learned so far:

Controlling your inattention is as important as controlling your attention.  As soon as I started to focus on exactly when I would check e-mail, that uncontrollable urge to flip over to Outlook and check it started to subside.

Rewarding yourself from the right thing is a good thing.  At $.99 a pop rewarding myself with a new song is a really cheap way to build a habit that will make me more productive and less stressed.

Stress makes you revert to old habits.  For me Tuesday this week was a travel/meeting day with no access to email. When Wednesday morning I checked e-mail the sheer volume (214 e-mails -- 5 that mattered) so unfocused me that I forgot about sticking to my plan the rest of Wednesday and Thursday.

Never say never, but always persevere.  I suppose I could expend a great deal of mental energy kicking myself in the butt for blowing off Wednesday and Thursday; instead it's more important to get back on the horse, focus on where I want to go, and keep on riding.

I happen to think that e-mail is seriously broken as a means of communication and needs to be taken out some dark night and quietly put out of its misery. But until then -- or the micro-ISV developers I hang out with find a better solution -- I'm going to stick with my iTunes for e-mail discipline routine.  Besides making me more productive, it's fun!

What one man can do

Wally Wallington is a retired carpenter who likes to dream up ways of moving really big things by hand with no technology with such ease that your jaw just drops to the floor.

•     By himself, Wally can lift a 22,000 pound concrete pillar from the ground and set it perfectly on its end in a hole.
•     By himself, Wally can move a entire barn 300 feet.
•     By himself, without using anything more complicated than weights and wood and his own incredible abilities, Wally is rebuilding a modern Stonehenge out of multi-ton concrete blocks.

If I had not seen Wally do these things for himself I would never have believed it, hence the video link to a video on YouTube.com.

What's Wally secret?  Gravity helps, but his real secret his imagination.  Have a watch -- and see if your jaw doesn't drop too.

GTD, wikis and you

Like I said in yesterday's post, I'm finding that TiddlyWiki it is a great tool for creating and storing reference information -- one half of any good GTD system. What about the action part of the GTD system?

I have to admit my bias upfront here, as I develop and sell a GTD product, MasterList Professional for Windows, but GTD is a methodology: the best way to implement that methodology varies from person to person.

So if you're thinking about using a wiki for the backbone of your GTD system, here are three quick recommendations on what to take a look at:

• GTDTiddlyWiki - GTDTiddlyWiki is a Getting Things Done adaptation by Nathan Bowers of Jeremy Ruston's Open Source TiddlyWiki. If you're looking for a GTD populated version of TiddlyWiki, look no further.  GTD TiddlyWiki already has built into it contexts, a project list, and printing to 3 x 5 cards.
• d³a "kinkless" GTD system -d³ is based on the very popular Kinkless GTD system for Macs (http://www.kinkless.com). This free app features Projects and Actions, which are dynamically populated lists showing active projects and action contexts, respectively. Both menu items use a slider interface to show/hide the lists, and they simply list all tiddlers that are tagged as project or context.
• MonkeyGTD - this one is my favorite GTD implementation of the TiddlyWiki -- but it goes far beyond the original.  MonkeyGTD features a dynamic dashboard that shows next actions, things are waiting for, projects, reminders, a calendar and more. It is very cool.

Now for the really good part

Finally, if you're looking for a no fuss, no muss way of implementing any of these GTD wikis, or the original TiddlyWiki, Clint pointed out to me yesterday TiddlySpot, a free hosting service where you can set up any of the above and make them public or private. TiddlySpot is the creation of two Australians, Daniel and Simon Baird, and while at some point if they're successful they will be adding Google ads to their hosted wikis, TiddlySpot is absolutely the easiest way to get started with any of these wikis. As of today, they host 5,000 Tiddlywikis of one sort or another.

Why you need TiddlyWiki

Whether you're applying the GTD methodology or just trying to survive in our overcomplicated world, there's all sorts of loose bits of information you need to store and track.  The problem with all this information from a GTD perspective is it tends to get mixed up both in your head and all on those little bits of paper with actual actionable tasks.

About three weeks ago I came across a tool that's easy to use, works on Windows, Mac and Linux, works in whatever browser you use, and to boot, is free. it's called TiddlyWiki, written by Jeremy Ruston.

you may have heard of wiki's: online applications that let anybody write and edit entries, like Wikipedia. TiddlyWiki is the same sort of application, except it all lives in a single HTML file you can download to your PC or Mac and open and use like you what it would a Word document. You store information in what are called Tiddlers - and you can tag this information, add them to the menu, use it to go to URLs you're interested in and more.

I'm using TiddlyWiki to store all of the planning documents for my next major micro-ISV application -- decisions about what the software will do, ideas for how to implement different features, narratives of how people will use the software, URLs that I want to take a look at at some point and more.

The beauty of TiddlyWiki is it takes absolutely no effort to start using it. Later, there are online groups, plug-ins, special formatting tricks and more that will reward you for the time you spend.

Since the entire application is one HTML file, you could put it on a server you control and can password protect, stick it in My Documents on your laptop and open it from a bookmark in Firefox, or put it on a USB key and take it with you.  Since I primarily use two PCs here -- 1 for writing and communication, the other for development -- I'm using Microsoft's Windows Live foldershare.com free service to synchronize two copies of my TiddlyWiki.

Separating your reference information -- such as project plans -- from your tasks and next actions is a critical part of making GTD work.  If you're looking for an solution that's easy, robust and free, definitely have a look at TiddlyWiki.

Turning e-mail addiction into GTD discipline

Addiction — ... is an uncontrollable compulsion to repeat a behavior regardless of its consequences. 

I'm an e-mail addict, and odds are so are you. I don't like admitting this ugly fact, but the time is come to deal with this problem because it's crippling my productivity.  If you think addict is too strong a term to use, just how long has it been since you checked e-mail?  Do you remember doing it?  Did you even think about it before you check e-mail? 

Welcome to my world.

Know your disease

Whether it's this post on why e-mail is so addictive, or this study, or all the responses Debbie Weil got when she admitted her addiction to e-mail, there is no two ways about it: email checking can become an addiction.

Variable interval reinforcement is a nasty little psychological quirk well known to advertisers, psychologists, and successful computer game makers. The bottom line: because you are sometimes rewarded checking e-mail become a compulsive habit.

Some could argue that calling frequently checking email even at the cost of productivity isn't a "addiction" and that technophobes are yet again finding some nonexistent issue with using PCs, but let's face it: if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck.

What you can do about it

The question is -- for me and you -- how do you get this monkey off your back? Here are a several methods that I think might work:

• Make the habit conscious. I find that if I have Outlook open continuously I will flip back and forth to it without a single thought.  So don't. Keep Outlook closed until you explicitly and consciously decide to check your e-mail.
• Reward good behavior. I'm writing down when I plan to check e-mail today on a 3 x 5 card. If I can stick to the card today through Thursday, I'm rewarding myself with one new mystery hardcover book on Amazon.  Obviously, this could get out of hand, but it's a start.
• Beat the urge. Every time I get the urge check e-mail, I'm going to try to do a two minute GTD drill I've come up with: "capture, clarify, complete and win". By asking myself what I have not captured into my GTD system, what "task" comes to mind which is actually a remorseless blob instead of headed by a tangible next action, by thinking about what tangible next action I should actually next take I hope to turn this this productivity-sucking compulsion into improving what I get done, with less stress.
  

If you have any suggestions to contribute to dealing with email addiction, post a comment here - and I'll report back in a week on how these three approaches work out.