Nels Wadycki » Getting Things Done

Things to Keep In Mind for a Manic Monday

Nels — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 12:16:41 +0000

Zen Habits has a very good list of things that will help you simplify your work day.

Most of these I’ve seen before, but here’s a new one (which is sort of similar to other things I’ve seen, but different enough I thought it was worth quoting):

# Practice a focus ritual. Every hour or two, do a refocus ritual. This only takes a minute or two. You might start it by closing down your browser and maybe other open applications, and maybe even take a walk for a couple of minutes to clear your head and get your blood circulating. Then return to your list of Most Important Tasks and figure out what you need to accomplish next. Before you check email again or go back online, work on that important task for as long as you can. Repeat this refocus ritual throughout the day, to bring yourself back. It’s also nice to take some nice deep breaths to focus yourself back on the present.

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Make Productivity A Game with RescueTime

Nels — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 12:09:15 +0000

I’ve been using RescueTime for a while now, and while it hasn’t really improved my productivity, that’s mostly because I’m actually really productive already. And I can prove it thanks to RescueTime.

RescueTime is an software application you install on your computer that tracks the active application and logs that information so you can view it in their web app. You then rate the applications on how productive you are when using them. For example, when I’m using my IDE, I’m clearly being productive. Same when I’m using putty. Not so much when I’m using iTunes.

RescueTime gives you nice little graphs (one of which you can see above) on a daily and weekly basis, and you can also view your productivity by category. They also let you compare to the average of everyone who uses RescueTime and give you a rank based on your percentile.

When I first installed it, I was kind of obsessed with checking and categorizing and scoring everything and trying to get my productivity score as high as possible. When I get busy, I can drop to just checking weekly when it sends me a report via email, and I don’t even really notice it running in the background. When I’m not as overwhelmed, it’s a fun little game to play, and a small little reminder in the system tray to check what application you’re using and how that’s going to affect your productivity score. It’s also a good way to effortlessly track and log your productivity/application usage, which is especially good for people like me who love tracking productivity/output but either spend too much time time tracking stuff in spreadsheets, or go to the other extreme and just give up on tracking completely.

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Hustle

Nels — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 20:55:04 +0000

Two hits from Lifehacker today: Hustle When You Want to Learn New Things and Ira Glass on Getting Creative Work Done.

The first is the key to the door, and it’s easy to insert and unlock: Hustle. Simple as that.

If you want to do something: do something. If want want to make progress towards a goal: do something. If you want to learn something (like Matt Nowack in the post): do something. Just keep doing something (hustling) and you will get things done.

So that pretty much covers that. Except, it also leads into the second post, which is: the reason you have to keep hustling.

That reason is, as Glass says, when you start out, what you’re making isn’t all the great. But you know that, and if you keep at it (keep hustling) you will get better, and the quality of whatever you’re doing will improve, and eventually (if you hustle long enough) it will rise to the level that you’d imagined in the first place. This is a good reason to follow the popular entrepreneur’s slogan Fail Early, Fail Often. You can replace Fail with Hustle and you have essentially the same meaning as long as you recognize that your first (and probably several subsequent) efforts at hustling will not be as good as you intend them to be.

For a more concrete example: I read a few blogs on writing (creative writing) and the idea is the same when writing a novel (or short story). The first draft of a novel is almost never the final draft. Most writers (who give advice) encourage others (“aspiring” writers) to write the first draft as quickly as possible and not to even worry if it’s total garbage that no one would ever actually read. Because, as Mr. Glass says, you know it’s not all that great. (I like how he avoids saying “It’s total crap.”) But if you know it’s not that great, then you can go back through it and revise and polish, and it will get better every time. If you fail on the first draft, at least you have a first draft. You can take that ~~crappy~~ not so great first draft, and you can edit it, fail again, and then edit it again.

At some point you have to release it into the wild, but that is actually another chance to fail (and improve). In this example, you release your book into the wild (say, to a publisher who then edits it further). You observe what they have done, and then you hustle to fix it, and send it back. You may fail again. And again. But eventually, they’ll put it out into the hands of readers where you will get a whole new set of complaints. Once again, observe, hustle, and continue hustling – in this example, on to the next book.

Or in the case of blogging: on to the next post.

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Mindsweeping with Remember The Milk

Nels — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 16:15:21 +0000

During the live Mindsweeping event on Twitter (@GTDSpecialEvent) I was basically writing down all my “mindsweep material” in a plain text document because when I put Next Actions into Remember The Milk, I like to tag them, put them in a context list, and prioritize them right away.*

Of course, after reviewing the items in that text document, I realized that most of them were either Next Actions or Projects that I needed to then copy and paste into RTM.

So, I kind of “redid” the Mindsweep by putting everything into the Inbox list in RTM and didn’t really eliminate a lot of the things that I’d swept out of my mind because, as I said, they had already sprung from my forehead in the form of Next Actions and Projects.

After filling up my RTM Inbox in this way, I was able to essentially conduct the Mindsweep using RTM and eliminated the step of putting the contents of the sweep somewhere else in the mean time. In the future, this will save me the step of transferring items from the “Mindsweep Dustbin” to RTM, and allow me to Organize those items at my leisure. I think that’s an important part of the Mindsweep because it means that I can sweep away everything so that my mind can detach from those items and focus on things I should be doing, while at the same time, I don’t have to spend the time organizing them unless I want to do it at that time (and if I have the time to do it). As Kelly Forrister tweeted during the Mindsweep:

I don’t think I’ve ever looked back after a GTD mindsweep and said, “Damn, I wish I didn’t do that.” It’s always valuable to me.

When I did the first Mindsweep into the text file, I almost did say “Damn, I wish I didn’t do that” because I realized I’d have to copy and paste a whole bunch of stuff that should really have already been in RTM. Now that I have gone back through and realized how easy it is to let RTM be unstructured, I can do sweep my mind more frequently without worrying that it’s going to hurt my productivity (I don’t ever consider Organizing to be unproductive because it always makes me feel good to clarify things).

To finish things off, here is a post from Kelly Forrister about clearing your mind with a Mindsweep.

* This may sound like I’m trying to capture, process, and organize all in one step. Not the case, I say. If it’s going to one of my RTM lists, then it’s already essentially been captured and processed because it has to have passed through one of my inboxen, and I’ve already decided on a Next Action or I wouldn’t be putting it on the list. So, arriving at the point where it’s been captured and I’ve got a Next Action ready means that it is time for organization. Of course, the whole point of this post is that I want to start using RTM as a capture tool in addition to an organization and review tool.

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You are the Boss / Manager of your Future Self

Nels — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 14:01:34 +0000

Near the end of this podcast on Organizing, Robert (David Allen’s tech guy) makes the point, basically, that you are the boss of your future self. By “boss” he means, in the traditional 9-5 working for the man way.

Why is that important (as a concept)?

Well, would you rather have your boss just dump a whole bunch of papers on your desk, and say “do these”, or would you prefer a boss who only hands you papers when you need them, or when you don’t have anything else that you’re working (or at least, not anything that’s a higher priority)?

Would you rather have a boss who says “Here’s an entire project, get it done” or a boss who says “Here’s the first task of a project that I need you to get done. Come back to me when you are finished with this small, completable task, and I’ll tell you what to do next”?

In both cases, I’m hoping you opted for the latter. Making that decision one of the essential parts of GTD. By defining specific Next Actions and creating appropriate calendar reminders, you are essentially “managing” your future self in a way that is a Best Practices way of managing someone who works for you.

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How To: Save Time On Haircuts

Nels — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 01:32:57 +0000

I call it the Jack Shephard method, i.e., you either keep it really short, or don’t cut it at all.

Either method will save you both time and money. I usually go with short in the summer and let it grow more in the winter. I had a friend in high school who would shave his head for the city swimming finals in the winter and then let it grow until the next year’s finals. Yeah, he was in high school so he could get away with looking like a ragamuffin for 4-5 months, and he had a good skull for the totally bald look. But, if you can pull it off, think of how much extra time you’ll have if you only cut your hair once a year!

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Buzzed Multitasking is Drunk Multitasking

Nels — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 23:30:31 +0000

I’ve said it before (and by said, I mean written), and I’ll say it again: Multitasking Doesn’t Work.

In Brain Rules, John Medina points out that the brain cannot multitask:

We are biologically incapable of processing attention-rich inputs simultaneously.

I like the specificity of that sentence and how it gets the point across in so few words.

Yes, we can do more than one thing at once (i.e., breathe and type), but breathing is not an attention-rich task. Our society would orders of magnitude less advanced if that were the case.

No, we cannot do things like lead a phone conference while checking email and responding to IMs (though I’m sure many of my and your co-workers have gotten good at making you think they can do this).

I love the picture they used in the Lateral Action post:

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How To: Make Your Own Don’tBreakTheChain

Nels — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 23:34:00 +0000

Musical Accompaniment:

Chain Gang – Sam Cooke

There is a site called Don’t Break The Chain based on the Seinfeldian wisdom that if you a) have daily task, and b) mark days on a calendar in which you completed that task, you c) build up a chain on the calendar that you don’t want to break.

I signed up for the site, but you have to add a separate calendar for each goal that you want to track. (That, and it’s yet another tool you have to add to your web app arsenal) Since I only have a few things that I want to do every single day, it wouldn’t be that big a deal, but I have a few other things (such as posting to this blog) that I want to make sure I do a few times a week, but not necessarily every day.

So, I went to a tool that I already use for things like my finances, car maintenance, book notes, etc.: Google Docs. Since GD is already part of my workflow, I find it easier to integrate new spreadsheets and docs even though it does basically just involve opening another web site.

Since I was creating my own spreadsheet though, I could add some customizations not available in Don’t Break The Chain. I not only addressed my ability to track more than a one goal on a page (eliminating the few seconds it takes to flip between calendars to update your chain), but also made it so that I could track my weekly goals in addition to my daily goals.

Implementation

It was very easy to just throw in two dates that were a week apart, and then drag that little blue square in the bottom right of the cell down so that GD copied weekly dates for me for several months at once. From the picture over there you can also clearly see that I have color-coded the cells so that the colors change depending on a) the number of times I want to do something each week, and b) the number of times I have done that thing this week.

So, you can see I’m doing well with Exercise, need to do some serious Meditation, and am falling behind on my Jammin’ and Groovin’. I’ve posted once to this blog – and since I’m only aiming for 2 per week, that gets me to Yellow already; I’m good on Friending Natalie Portman; and need to get in a little more Humping of Mannequins.

Here’s what it looks like in GD when you select Format -> “Change colors with rules…” You can change the text color in addition to the background color, but I find that just makes it hard to read.

Gravity Time Breakdance

Originally uploaded by homardpayette.

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Nels’ Top 1 Lifehacker Tip

Nels — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 11:54:01 +0000

No, that’s not a typo. This tip has seriously saved me hours since I started using it.

Choose (and Remember) Great Passwords.

You don’t need to remember 100 passwords if you have 1 rule set for generating them. One way to generate unique passwords is to choose a base password and then apply a rule that mashes in some form of the service name with it. For example, … [choose] your initials and a favorite number plus the first 3 letters of a service name. In that case, my password for Amazon would be GMLT10AMA and for Lifehacker.com GMLT10LIF. (Include obscure middle initials – like your mother’s maiden name or a childhood nickname – that not many people know about for extra security.)

I feel I can safely tell you that I have successfully implemented this system because I doubt that anyone will be able to come up with my base password. Not even my wife, who knows all my “traditional” passwords. And even then, I’m not using the first three letters of the service name, but something that is not as obvious but equally easy to remember if you’re me and need to type in my passwords.

Yes, if someone does figure out your base password, and your follow up “hash”, then they can break into all your accounts. This is why, for important stuff like some banks, mortgage, and email, I still use different passwords. But it’s pretty easy to remember a few passwords for the most important sites when you don’t have to clutter your brain with passwords for the sites that won’t affect your credit or reputation if someone gets access to them.

I am about 99.9% certain that the risk/reward benefit is in my favor here. I used to store passwords with user names and site names in a password-protected Excel spreadsheet. Super Secure! .. {wait for it} … NOT! Not only do I gain security of not having that sitting on my hard drive, but I also save time by not having to open it up and type in the password for the spreadsheet just to get access to a one of the millions of passwords for sites that I only visit infrequently.

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Post To And Read Your TO READ List From Anywhere With Email

Nels — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 12:00:30 +0000

I don’t know how this is going to work once we start Waving everybody, but for now, this is how I populate my To Read List without using Delicious or Instapaper or {Your App Here}, but rather with a tool that requires no additional sign-ups: Email.

Okay, I lied a little. You’ll need an RSS Reader too. Because, if you didn’t have one of those, really, what would you be reading? Hardcopy newspapers? Get outta here! Anyway, I use Google Reader, but any RSS Reader with an “Email This” function will do (I know that Bloglines has one).

Here we go:

Set up filtering mechanisms for articles to add to your To Read List

For this, I added a contact in Gmail called Filtered Reader and added a “+asdfasdf” to my email address for that contact
Then, I added a filter for that particular version of my email address that will skip my Inbox and apply the To Read label

Then, you go to Google Reader and as you go through items, if you don’t feel like opening it in a new tab to read (I know this is a common practice), you can instead just email it to yourself
Do the same thing in your Twitter client by emailing yourself Tweets that you want to follow up on (ones where people post links to things you want to read)

Okay, now, I guess the “Anywhere” part of the subject will take some additional work. I.e., it will probably require a smart phone if you really want to read your To Read List anywhere. Of course, you can get an iPhone 3G for only $99 (at the time of this writing), and the normal 3G is plenty fast enough, because all you’re going to want to do now is make sure that the emails sitting in your To Read label or folder are downloaded onto your phone. *POOF* You now have your To Read List with you anywhere you bring your phone!

And! You can post to it using your phone as well because Google Reader has a very nice web interface. That will, of course, only work in places where you have 3G access, but I’ve heard talk that they’re going to develop off-line capable versions of the web apps, so if/when that becomes a reality, it will solve that problem.

Why Use This Jacked Up System Instead of The Glorious {Your App Here}?

Well, basically, because when I use {Your App Here}, I only use one end of it. That is, I post to it. But I never actually read it. My Delicious bookmarks To Read tag has 58 links going back as far as 2006.

But {Your App Here} Has an Awesome iPhone App!

So does Email. In fact, Gmail has two awesome iPhone apps: Mail.app and the Gmail Mobile Website. This allows me to download email to my phone for off-line access or apply multiple colored labels to emails. And as we (should) all know, everyone sits their with their email app open all day, but I would imagine that most people don’t sit with Delicious or Instapaper open all day. A To Read List in your email is ready to go without doing anything but switching folders.

Added Bonus: Instead of deleting a read item as you would have to do with Delicious or some other bookmarking services (not sure how Instapaper works for that), you can just remove the To Read label and you’ll still have the full article accessible if you want to refer to it later.