Archive - May 2007

I recently came across Tim Ferriss's [1] entry How Scoble Reads 622 RSS Feeds Each Morning, which motivated me to post an "aha" I recently had about processing RSS feeds. (What I took away from the Scoble video was how selective he his in deciding to read a post, how he makes that choice, and that he uses feeds for "relationship work" - networking - so he can be smart when talking with someone. However, I didn't get much on how to handle so many feeds.)

Repeat after me: I will not brain dump onto others, I will not brain dump onto others, ...

I was talking recently with a friend and mountain bike buddy about the ideas I teach, especially the notion of keeping everything out of your head. He loved it, and really understood the negative impact that NUTs (Nagging Unfinished Tasks) have on us (see Personal productivity, IBMs, and NUTs: Some surprises about the brain). The next time we met he was very animated about this because he realized a) his spouse has these NUTs (most of us do, unless we rigorously practice a method like Getting Things Done), and b) he claimed she tries to get him to take them on for her!

I think that one aspect of living gracefully is to appreciate the steady stream of events (large and small, positive and negative) that make up a lifetime. At the meditation center I attended years ago they taught that the present is all we have - the future hasn't happened yet, and the past is over, so enjoying what's happening now is a key to being happy [1]. This is a variation on the "stop and smell the roses" theme, and it makes sense to me.

Trouble is, when I'm under stress, I find appreciating what's happening in the moment to be hard. For example, as I'm building my consulting practice I experience a mixture of frightening an exhilarating experiences, and many of the former get in the way. It's the old "journey vs. destination" idea - focus too much on the latter, you forget to live fully [2].

I've been tagged twice today with the "Ultimate Guide to Productivity" meme; Ian McKenzie (the voice behind Ian’s Messy Desk) and Brett Kelly (host of The Cranking Widgets Blog) came after me. I don't like responding to the "ego" memes (e.g., "five things about myself"), but I'd like to have some fun with this one, in which the Instigator Blog has challenged the initial round of bloggers to "pick your single best productivity tip." My answer:

There is no single best productivity tip

Am I cheating? No.

(Note: I wrote this article for a programming venue a while back, but I didn't end up publishing it. As I've been flat out these last few weeks preparing for summer workshops, I thought I'd share it with you. Regular blogging resumes after I get back from my NASA seminar next week. P.S. I had fun checking out the Constellation Program - what geek can resist new spaceships?)