Archive - Dec 2005

I find the holidays, if not managed carefully, can lead me to feeling farther away from people, rather than closer. This is ironic, because my culture sets up often unrealistic expectations for this time of year - 'tis the season to be jolly, etc. To counter this I'm trying to cultivate an attitude of thankfulness, and let it show through my actions.

Here's an example that left me feeling great: While waiting on the phone with Canon support regarding a printer [1] that's malfunctioning, I found my initial attitude was not a Really Useful one [2] - I was expecting long delays, accusations of misusing the printer, etc. Having recognized this I tried to keep it in check when I was connected (quickly!) to a very helpful man who reassured me that they would take care of me. The interesting point came when he put me on hold to get his supervisor's permission to send me a replacement print head - a costly item.

While talking about GTD with my illustrator friend Rebecca Guay (check out her books on Amazon), we realized that two of our passions (writing children's books, and productivity coaching) have something deep in common. I love the way she put it: "You know you've hit a nerve when your idea expands into infinite possibilities."

Here's a collection of various ideas I've come up with over the last few months that didn't warrant their own posts. However, I wanted to share them before the year's out - just for fun. Other silly/crazy ideas welcome - please comment or email. Cheers!

Contents

• Removable image labels for kids
• Dissolving staples
• Fading paper, darkening ink
• Progressively smelly books/videos

Removable image labels for kids

Here's an idea I had a long time ago. I would love to print photo contact sheets on removable labels, for kids. A few application ideas:

• At a kids party: Take digital pics, run through program, print on labels, give out during or at end as take-away gifts.
• At preschool: Use pictures instead of words. For example: To show where things go at clean-up time

In her post Find yourself a good mentor, Pamela Stewart suggests finding a mentor in your field of interest, someone who has a thriving, successful business. She goes on to say:

See if they are willing to spend some time with you so that you can find out what it really takes to grow a successful business. [...] For the most part, people love to talk about themselves, so don't be shy to ask someone you admire for a bit of their time. Hopefully you can return the favor when you become successful and famous!

Since I'm training myself to be a personal productivity coach, I appreciated her advice.

For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin - real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, or a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life. -- Fr. Alfred D'Souza

In Creating your own "productivity guidelines" for 2005, Sally McGhee et. al. suggest we review accomplishments in the previous year, reflect on lessons learned and successes (hopefully WILD), and apply them to the coming year.

A key aspect of making David Allen's Getting Things Done methodology work is remembering to look at the deferred actions - Calendar entries and Next Actions - as often as necessary. (See the Defer It box at the bottom of Allen's workflow diagram.) Forming this habit is crucial - in order for my mind to trust the system I must keep my deferred actions up-to-date and check them when I'm ready to do something.

I just finished How to Make People Like You in 90 Seconds or Less by Nicholas Boothman, and I loved it. The title is somewhat misleading and provocative, but this delightful little tome provides a nice tutorial for how to help establish rapport with people you want to connect with, in the crucial first minute or so.

Doing this consciously, and developing the requisite skills, is something I've neither thought about nor needed much in the past (as a research software programmer), but is crucial to my new direction (productivity consulting). I'm now meeting all sorts of people - potential and current clients, fellow professionals, etc. - and I really need to make a connection quickly in order to accomplish our joint mission together (e.g., exchanging information, getting message across, being understood).

That was something Jason Womack said to me the other day, and I think it's right on the money. It reminded me of the following quotes, which I absolutely love:

• Real change focuses not on techniques but on the way people think about themselves, their colleagues, and their work.
• Time management is not a technique. It is a way of relating to the world.

(These came from an organization class I recently took at work. I'm sorry I don't have the original references to credit.)

In his book Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity (AKA GTD), David Allen talks about broken agreements (between ourselves as well as with others) being the cause of many of our negative feelings, and provides advice about how to prevent them. He identifies three options:

• Don't make the agreement.
• Complete the agreement.
• Renegotiate the agreement.

All of these can work to get rid of the unpleasant feelings.

Making my agreements explicit, and faithfully tracking them has made a huge improvement in my life. Here's an example: I'm currently having a slow time at work, and my motivation is terrible. For me this is a problem; when I'm motivated I'm a high performer, but take away the challenge or the creative urge and I'm in trouble [1].

Have you experienced sending an email or leaving a phone message, hoping for a quick response, only to go days or weeks without hearing back? Assuming people aren't using a Magic 8-Ball to decide whether to answer or not to respond (Outlook not so good, Very doubtful, Concentrate and ask again), I'm trying to better understand what's going on.

This comes about as a result of applying Getting Things Done to my life (especially the "Waiting For" list), which has made me increasingly aware of response times, including my own, and has made me wonder a) why people take so long (or don't respond at all), b) what kind of response would be most reasonable, and c) whether adopting GTD would help.