Archive - Feb 2007

Over the last year or so I've had the pleasure of receiving email and phone inquiries from people having various challenges implementing David Allen's Getting Things Done methodology [1]. Along the way I've been collecting the frequent questions, tips, and insights that have come up, with the goal of continuing to share them [2] with others adopting the system.

Over the last few years I've been collecting bits of wisdom for people implementing David Allen's Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, with the goal of continuing to share them with others adopting the method.

In my previous post (Productivity for Programmers, #2: Efficient vs. Effective) I gushed about Chad Fowler's book My Job Went to India: And All I Got Was This Lousy Book.

Bob Walsh and I are writing a series on Productivity for Programmers, which started with his article Productivity for Programmers, #1: Trusted Systems. In it he identified five trusted systems every programmer should have: Tasks, Decisions, Version Control, Code Snippets, and Bugs. I like Bob's break down (no, not the psychological one resulting from writing "Clear Blogging" - different story), so I want to talk about a related characteristic - Efficiency vs. Effectiveness.

Efficiency

The trusted systems are important, and they are about doing things right, what Drucker called "efficiency" (see David J. Anderson's article Drucker on Effectiveness for a bit more).

OK, that was bad.

I was out sick for the past week. Not your "I feel a little cold coming on, I'm going to take it easy today," but more like "I know I should drink water, but I'm too weak to crawl." Fever of 104+ degrees Fahrenheit (gotta love US units), body wracked by coughing, etc. In other words, just the flu. Answers.com says it well:

An acute contagious viral infection characterized by inflammation of the respiratory tract and by fever, chills, muscular pain, and prostration.

Prostration - quite right.

Interesting facts about being sick:

• It's just like taking sick leave when you're employed, but without the pay.
• Be prepared to become seriously depressed once you do feel better. This was unexpected, and unwelcome.

I just wanted to give a public congrats to my multi-talented friend, blogger, and author Bob Walsh, who yesterday announced his book was released. I know Clear Blogging: How People Blogging Are Changing the World and How You Can Join Them will be a smash, and I'm really looking forward to my copy to arrive. Well done, Bob!

Last week I had the pleasure of talking with local writer Jaclyn Stevenson (blog), a full-time journalist at Business West, and a freelance writer and photographer. I met her via multiple referrals from my local network, who all suggested I start getting my name in articles to establish brand and make a connection with an influential writer [1].

In her email response, Jaclyn didn't have plans for current career development stories, but offered to keep the idea on file, and kindly asked me to join her "trends" circle of contributors (yea!) I could have let it go at that, but I figured it'd be fun (and smart) to get to know Jaclyn better, and I was curious as a blogger about how a professional writer works. So I offered to interview her, a turning of the tables she appreciated and agreed to.

Last week I wrote about my initial foray into LinkedIn's new Answers feature, and shared some of mine. Below I've included the answers I got to my (so far only) question How did you get clients when you started your consulting practice? Before that, let's briefly consider Answers' strengths and weaknesses.

Strengths?

• Opportunity to share knowledge and help others,
• Exposure to possible peers (increase connections) and clients,
• Increased repute

Weaknesses?

• Many answerers are writing pretty blatantly to self-promote,
• Ditto for questioners,