Archive

I apologize for the delayed posting these last two weeks. This was due to a vacation, and consulting momentum continuing to pick up. So this week an abbreviated post: Recent honors for this blog, plus some tips for my Macintosh readers, including a mini "GTD in iCal" tutorial.

First, a big thanks to Dustin Wax for including me on his 50+ Personal Productivity Blogs You've Never Heard of Before (and about a dozen you probably have). In addition to the usual suspects, there are some previously undiscovered gems. I'm in great company.

An interview with Scott Ginsberg, author of "Hello, My Name is Scott"

Starting week I'm extending my interview series with the top experts in the field by sharing productivity insights and stories from people who are influential and successful, i.e, highly productive. I'll start with highlights from my recent coversation with Scott Ginsberg (site, blog).

I found out about Scott via his book Hello, My Name is Scott, which takes an happy accident (leaving his nametag on after an event) and extends it to a unique perspective of the world, one of my absolute favorite topics. (It's why I got into productivity consulting in the first place.)

In What Are The Laws Of Work? I made a humble stab at defining the first principles that might inform designing a productivity method from scratch. The discussion was stimulating and led to more thinking, in particuarl how might we structure our environments for success, hopefully tying in Fritz's work in Path of Least Resistance.

A continuation of the ever-enlightening IdeaLab series from the patented IdeaMatt My Big-Arse Text File.

Just a heads up: The site is experiencing some issues as part of changing its design. Especially troublesome is a problem entering comments: The text is (using programming nomenclature) "squished." You can still type or use an external editor, but it's unreadable, at least on my machine. Sorry about that!

--matt

In my one of my conversations with Chris Crouch we talked about how hard we should be working for sustainable productivity. As I summarized in my interview with him (scroll to the section Personal workload capacity), Chris questioned the conventional (?) wisdom of working at or near our maximum. I took it as a smart way to be productive but not burn ourselves out. This is controversial: We are expected (by ourselves and others) to work harder - put in more hours, sacrifice time with loved ones, all to accomplish "more, better, faster." As Laura Stack [1] says in Leave the Office Earlier, most professionals have a backlog of 200 or more hours of uncompleted work. Whew!

Sorry for the delayed posting these last few weeks. I've been working on v1.2 of my workshop for an up-coming on-site series, and it's dimmed the lights (a term a favorite client came up with) on other projects.

(Sidebar: Why dimming the lights can be bad: While I recommend against this practice I've been drawn into it, and it stinks. Not only because it's stressful, but because the promise of "simultaneous progress on multiple projects" falls apart. Yes there's a dozen small - 5-15 minute - tasks on my list, and each one would not take much effort, but drat it's hard make them go when overshadowed by a big difficult project with a near term deadline. Makes one think of urgent/important, eh? And of course: Teaching this doesn't mean I'm perfect at practicing it myself. No mistake, I'm good at it, but "practice what you preach" is always good advice for me. How about you - do you dim the lights? What's the impact? And how do you avoid it?)

(Note: Coming soon, a thought-provoking interview of Scott Ginsberg - a variation on my interview series. Stay tuned!)

• Life's more interesting at the boundaries: That's why getting out of the comfort zone can be so rewarding. For example, gifts: The once with the greatest possible impact (read surprise + delight) require being on the "I love it!"/"Hmmm. Interesting" boundary. Giving a good one requires knowing the recipient well, plus taking a chance. But there's a risk! It might spectacularly fall flat.
  

This comment by JP on my post 10 GTD "holes" (and How To Plug Them) got me thinking about whether there's a set of laws (JP more correctly called them postulates) of how we (i.e., "knowledge workers") manage ourselves (i.e., "work") in our CrazyBusy (i.e., "insane") lives.

...ignored people who said "You shouldn't..."?

What if it was new, risky, or uncertain? What if you invited those people out of your life?

...told yourself it's OK you made that embarrassing copy/paste error in an important email?

You might even generate a chuckle or two (at least from yourself). What if you're still ruminating about it on your death bed?

...refused to pay attention to conventional wisdom?

What if you don't want to do it, don't like doing it, or aren't good at it? What if it sounds reasonable. What if it's some "know you should be" advice?

...listened to yourself and did something you believe in?

Even if everyone else warned you off?

...decided not to ever catch up on your RSS backlog?

Would it really matter? Maybe you're probably already reading the important ones?