I promise I will...

...not try to sell you

I will look for ways to help you, esp. before we work together (if ever)

...not work with you if I don't think I can help

and I'll be very clear about it, even if we disagree

...not worry about "giving away the farm" to you

I know that sharing genuinely useful information always pays off

...be genuinely curious about your work

and have fun getting to know you

...continually absorb and synthesize the best ideas from my field

and share them freely with you

...respect you, your work, your organization

no exceptions

...treat our relationship as confidential

no exceptions

...be attuned to where we are in the process

and we'll change gears or take a short walk

...notice anything that may hamper our project

and tell you immediately

...give you every reason to trust me

and no reasons not to

...take responsibility for my mistakes

and apologize with humility

...see opportunities to apply my skills, knowledge, and experience to help you

regardless of where that ends up being

...support and encourage you during our project

and long after

...not judge where your self management skills currently are

hey - we've none of us been taught this stuff

...push back when needed

but tactfully and within reason

...sometimes send bulky bumpy delightful packages

:-)

A conversation with Mark Hurst, web usability expert and author of "Bit literacy"

Recently I had a nice conversation with Mark Hurst, a leader of the online "customer experience" movement, and author of Bit Literacy: Productivity in the Age of Information and E-mail Overload (see the book's site and sample chapter). Additionally, he's contributed to the web usability field in many other ways. For more, see his bio, his company, his newsletter, and his blog. (You might also enjoy his 2008 Gift Guide & Almanac, which is fun has a few more good tips.)

Bit literacy is a good, short book that I've mentioned before [1]. It has helpful ideas around managing email, documents, file naming, photos, and more. I particularly like his file naming scheme [2], which I shared with client who found it helpful as a kind of simple version control convention.

Mark stresses that the book is not just about email and getting the inbox to zero (a major change for most of us). It's about managing effectively all the bitstreams coming into our lives. Mark says the world has changed, but most people haven't caught up yet - the always-on lifestyle, urgency, and haste make us neither effective nor sustainable. Here's how he puts it:

Five, ten or twenty years from now, the bits will increase exponentially: email, web, phones and PDAs. Without proper training, users everywhere will face an increasingly urgent problem of overload. Now is the moment to learn bit literacy. It's like getting in shape on a slow-moving treadmill before it speeds up to a sprinting pace.

I hope you enjoy it.

On getting started

From early on, Mark noticed we aren't being served well by current technology, and found that there is a more fundamental and insidious problem with it today: people do not have the skills they need in order to do practically anything. Beyond using the web, we lack the skills to survive in a world dominated by email and other digital communications.

Over the years, these observations about technology (plus an admitted "obsessive interest in being efficient") led to his perspective on the process and cost of creating bits, and his eventual development of what Hurst calls "a simple, fast, and easy to learn system for being bit literate." He says it took him about ten years to develop that system.

Influences

Mark lists Richard Saul Wurman's Information Anxiety as a tremendous influence, a book he says is still pertinent. They met through a mutual friend, after which Mark wrote an essay for the 2000 edition. He then spoke at TED in 2001, which Wurman founded. He says the experience of speaking at TED was a big influence in his later starting Good Experience Live (Gel) conference.

He says the culture of "UNIX Geeks" was extremely influential, especially its design principles, how it is built, and the pervasive use a simple file format.

Definition of productivity

On what productivity means, Mark says people have a certain amount of stuff they need to get done, so the faster they get it done, the more time we get to spend on our personal lives - playing games or spending time with friends and family. He says there's a reason they call it work :-) Because of its contribution to quality of life, Mark says there's a bit of paradox; if you want to focus on things outside of work, then you really need to first focus on work itself - how effectively you're doing it. This leads to important feelings of liberation, his readers claim, from the "shackles of email," endless to-do lists, or whatever was dragging them down. This being able to be free to live life in a more meaningful way is ultimately what Bit Literacy is aiming at.

Mark points out that many current productivity systems are based on previous systems that were built for managing the flow of paper, and to apply systems for paper productivity to our new digital world is not appropriate. He thinks the systems still have value for the paper aspects of our lives, but new tools and perspectives are required. (Note: I disagree with this approach. I think the simplicity of a system that encompasses all aspects of inputs - atoms as well as bits - is important. YMMV.)

Forming new productivity habits

On how to create new habits, Hurst says there's a range of adoption levels, but those who seriously apply the method tend to stick with it. This is because experiencing the resulting gains, even for a day, is a "no brainer," leads to continuing the method. He notes that simply getting started (what he calls induction) isn't enough - they need to do a week or two of a steady state [3]. Once they do that, Mark says, they'll will never forget what that felt like.

He points out that some people encounter the book then apply their own misleading litmus tests. Either whether they've seen any of it before (using a quick scan), or a technical buzzword bingo test, where they scan for certain terms (AJAX, tags, or taxonomies). However, he says some very high tech geeks have completely embraced the method, and have written about it on their blogs [4].

What I find really interesting is the idea that people can resist, perhaps at the subconscious level, adopting systems like this. Mark and I agree that with the resulting freedom comes with responsibility for our lives, which is a big shift. He's fine with that and sees his role as to simply to invite them to learn that there's another way to think about work, and give them a new choice.

To-do lists

Mark's view of to-do lists is significantly different from systems like GTD. To managing to-dos, he says the list needs to be outside the email program (and not on paper), and have four components:

1. Each is associated with a particular day,
   
2. users can create new ones via email,
   
3. each has a priority ranking within its day
   
4. each can contain detail and summary information.

His Gootodo program (inexpensive, but not free) does this. (Interestingly, scheduling action in the calendar is one simplification that popped out of my extreme GTD analysis.)

I liked his thought on to-do lifecycles: creation, inactivity, activation, and completion. A second dimension classifies them as active (those we have to work on today), and inactive (those that become relevant in the future). This means on a given today, you have only one list, and there's no metadata to worry about.

"The Matrix" and Bit literacy

On a surprising note, Mark drew a comparison to The Matrix, and the climactic scene in which Neo is fighting the agents, gets cornered, and cannot escape. At that point he has the big revelation in which he sees the world differently and at the bit level. Mark says Neo sees that the danger, fears, and challenges that have been dogging him are really just an illusion that he can control in the bit world. He says no, the bullets stop, float, and fall down. Helping computer users do this is an nice metaphor.

Having too much to do

Like GTD, actually knowing exactly how much we've comitted to is a great first step to limiting it. (I know when I work with clients, this is often the first time they've seen the entirety of their lives in one place, and it's usually a shock. This often leads to hard choices and difficult conversations, but I think it's the only principled way to start improving our lives, that is, focusing on what's meaningful.)

He says the system can only let you know that you have too many; you have to manage them yourself. It's an issue that you have to adjust.

Media diet and information overload

To combat information overload (a $650 BLN drag on the economy [5]), mark has a nice section on the Media Diet - a "constantly pruned set of publications that keep us informed about what matters most to us professionally and personally." The Media Diet portfolio has two main components: the lineup and tryouts. His model: Create a media portfolio with two main components: Lineup and Tryouts. Lineup: Those that've earned their place as your most valuable sources. (The three types: Stars, Scans, and Targets.) Candidate sources get into the lineup by going through a tryout phase. (Guidelines: Be discerning, be intentional, and be biased toward rejecting.)

He encourages us to be discerning, be intentional, and remember we have to limit the total. Also, we have to do maintenance on these by asking the question "Is this source worth my time?"

Wrap-up

For his single best productivity tip, Mark says "Read the book." :-) He also suggests trying the Dvorak keyboard.

I'll let Mark sum finish up:

Today, it's harder and harder to be done. Just as we answer one email, two more come in. Just as we finish one project, we are reminded that another is behind schedule. We only partially listen to the music or watch the video which is downloaded, because we're too busy downloading another to put in the queue. Bit literacy grants the possibility of being done not just occasionally, but on a regular basis in order to work more productively and enjoy a fuller life outside of work.

Thanks again, Mark.

References

• [1] See Extreme GTD: How low can you go (or: Can we 80-20 GTD?), How to help people, and An interview with Chris Crouch, creator of the GO System.
  
• [2] The template is initials-date-topic.extension - initials of the person who created the file, the creation date and the topic or keyword. For the creation date, use the MMDD format. Example: mc-0123-hurst-interview.odt
  
• [3] Here's his steady-state method for emails:
  1. Read all personal emails, then delete them,
     
  2. delete all spam, and
     
  3. engage FYIs and action items, then delete them. To do so, delete or file all FYIs (optionally reading them first), finish all quick two minute to-dos and then delete them, then move all big to-dos to a separate to-do list then delete them.
• [4] Reviews: Michael Sampson has a review Michael Sampson, Jeff Hester, and Scott Priestley's on 37signals.
  
• [5] See Is Information Overload a Billion Drag on the Economy?

Extreme GTD: How low can you go (or: Can we 80-20 GTD?)

I had a great question from one of my coaching clients who happens to be familiar with GTD [1]. He wondered whether a simpler version of Allen's work was possible, say one that fits the spirit of the 80/20 Principle, maybe even something like 90-20 [2]. The reasoning is that the system can seem overly complex, with a significant barrier to entry.

So in IdeaMatt fashion I took this as a challenge and spent some time on an exercise of to figure out what's possible, given the various systems I've studied [3]. My goal was to stay true to my understanding of the the essential GTD habits, including workflow phases, processing and organizing (e.g., two minute rule, "sticky" inputs, and front-end decision making), and effective reminder systems. I wanted to look at as radical change as possible within these confines, rather than incremental adoption or simpler tools. (Note: A search for "GTD lite" and the like turned up some nice thinking on the topic, but a good number addressed adoption/tools, and not necessarily a shift in the method itself [4].) See below [5] for others who have looked at this.

My conclusion: An 80-20 version just ain't possible. This is both a testament to Allen's crisp system, as well as to the necessary rigor to back up the goal of a clear and focused mind. Following is a summary - you can read some background detail below. but I wanted to share the resulting simplified approach. I'd really love to hear your thoughts on this...

A simplified GTD-compatible system (~70-80)

This is the best I could figure out without incorporating more (relatively) radical ideas [3]. As in any simplification, there are serious trade-offs, with the biggest risk being keeping things out of your head. Note: I've thrown in some percentages estimating amount of simplification:

• Collection: No change (capture everything, fixed # collecting points). Maybe maintain a single inbox for everything that you carry with you.
  
• Processing: Use the 5Ds: DELETE, DEPOSIT (file), DELEGATE, DO (two minute rule), DEFER. ~20% simpler
  
• Projects list: No change (master list of work requiring two or more steps).
  
• Calendar: No change. BUT:
  
• Actions: Schedule all actions on the calendar. No actions list, no contexts. 40%
  
• Waiting For: None; use the calendar. This means you do hard scheduling of all follow-ups. 20%
  
• Tickler: None; use the calendar. 0-30%
  
• Filing [6]: No labeler (gasp!) No change in reference and project files. 10%
  
• Someday/Maybe: None. 20%
  
• Checklists: None; schedule as recurring reminders in calendar (daily, weekly, etc.) 10%
  
• Agendas: None; keep with project materials (but OK to have "projects" for on-going meetings). 10%
  
• Weekly review: None (!); do incrementally via daily review, say the night before (a common best practice). Review daily: calendar ~one week out (gets actions, waiting for, reminders), mind sweep. Opportunistically: projects. 30%

Importantly, to make this work you'll have to have an electronic calendar. Otherwise there's too much work moving actions around. Also, using it for ticklers and waiting for items probably requires electronic reminding.

What I like about this: 1) Simple. The calendar does most everything, with support by the projects list (which I really wanted to get rid of - thoughts?). 2) Implements what Mark Forster calls closed lists, which help to define limits on our work, a common complaint about GTD.

What I dislike: 1) Potentially too much forwarding of unfinished items. David Allen makes a strong argument for separate action lists. 2) Risk of cluttering up the mind, esp. from removing the weekly review, Someday/Maybe, and checklists.

Interestingly, once this emerged I recognized similarity to other calendar-centric systems like Bit Literacy (with its scheduling of all actions) and Do It Tomorrow (with its closed lists).

What do you think? Are you using anything similar? Should we create a name for this? ;-)

References

• [1] As usual, I want to be very clear that I have no association with David Allen or his company. His work has been a huge influence, but I continue to combine the best practices from many sources (which I share here) into my work.
  
• [2] I've found it's not uncommon for people to be confused about the numbers. For example, they don't need to add to 100. This means you should watch out for misleading graphics. For example, do a Google image search for 80-20 and look for pie charts. Regarding the concept itself, here's a nice summary from Richard Koch's book:

  Overall, keep in mind that a few things are always much more important than most things. Keep the vital few in the forefront of your brain. Keep reviewing whether you are spending more time and effort on the vital few rather than on the trivial many.

• [3] You can read about some of those quite different from GTD here: Some thoughts from the book "Getting Organized" by Chris Crouch, A GTD-er's perspective on Mission Control's "Productivity and Accomplishment" workshop, How to process stuff - A comparison of TRAF, the "Four Ds", and GTD's workflow diagram, and Some thoughts on the book "The Instant Productivity Toolkit".
  
• [4] That's not to say that simplifying tools doesn't provide an opportunity. There's a nice discussion of this angle in Leo's post Simplifying David Allen’s Complicated GTD Setup.
  
• [5] Additional thinking on simplified GTD:
  • Zen To Done (ZTD): The Ultimate Simple Productivity System - Covers incremental adoption, changes in doing (including High Value Tasks), reducing inputs, and integrating goals - all great ideas.
    
  • apply the 80/20 rule to GTD - Uses a weekly scheduling of actions with a one-month time horizon. others go on a pending list.
    
  • Feature: Practicing Simplified GTD - Reduces tracking and reminding to three lists (To-do, Projects, Someday/Maybe).
    
  • "GTD Lite" | 43 Folders - Two lists (Actions, Projects), daily review only. (Lots on implementation and tools.)
    
  • GTD Lite on the davico forums - Mostly about simplifying planning. Also this thread - includes a variation for kids (three lists: Projects, Actions, Someday/Maybe).
• [6] Note: Many systems use an action-folder or Kanban approach, but that's a big change from action lists. Examples: The Anxiety of Getting Things Done and Ask E.T.: Thinking and Paper (scroll to "This is a follow-up").

A sketch of my analysis

This is a bit rough, but I hope it's useful to your comments or critiques. Broken down by workflow phase.

• collect
  • skip: no. o/w don't know incoming work, clutter (paper, mental), leads to missing work
    
  • just one bucket? (impossible)
    
  • don't do mind sweep (head full)
    
  • reduce (just manages, but still need collection)
    
  • process
    
  • skip: no. o/w work unidentified, falls through cracks, etc. maybe combine conceptually with organize?
    
  • FAT (sure, but less rigorous). the problem: what to do with Act? must go to: do (now), delegate (other), defer (later)
  
  
• organize
  • skip: no. need places; o/w clutter
    
  • filing: radical: one file (Gmail model), organized say by date. prob: hard to find? time not always best way to index -> very difficult to find paper related to projects
    
  • filing: no labeler (10%)
    
  • all actions on calendar? prob: usual GTD, plus project actions hard to track?
    
  • no projects list, say use project folders themselves for list. prob: not all projects need folders. have to carry folders instead of single list. hard to remind/review next steps
    
  • no waiting for, say use tickler. prob: none?
    
  • no tickler, say use calender. prob: none?
    
  • no someday/maybe: yes, if don't mind not tracking (mind fills)
    
  • no checklists: yes, but on mind. maybe put in calendar (daily, weekly, monthly, ...)
    
  • no agendas (keep with projects)
  
  
• review
  
  • skip daily tickler: yes, if using calendar
    
  • skip daily calendar: no. prob: would have to look 2 weeks ahead every day, say night before
    
  • skip daily actions: no, but simpler if all scheduled on calendar
    
  • skip daily waiting for: yes, say if on calendar
    
    
  • skip weekly mind sweep: yes, if done daily
    
  • skip weekly someday/maybe: yes, if not tracking
    
  • skip weekly projects & plans: maybe. prob: projects not up to date, actions not happening, blind-sided by problems
    
  • skip weekly calendar: yes, if done daily
    
  • skip weekly actions: yes, if done daily
    
  • skip action support: yes, but might slip through cracks
  
  
• do
  • put on calendar: see above
  
  

How to help people

As I continue building my personal productivity practice, one of the biggest shifts in my thinking is around networking [1]. I've moved from the common "palm down" perspective [2] to the "palm up" variety, in which I work to learn what people care about, and think about afterwards how I can be of service, i.e., how I can help them. I'm reminded of this idea, from my self help formulary:

Life = The people you meet + What you create together

What's hit me recently is that I needed to make changes in the way I interact with people in order to better help them. The question is, how do we create an environment that fosters this kind of giving?

Here's a straightforward process that's helped me:

1. When meeting someone, come with an attitude of genuine curiosity.

Think of yourself as a detective. Your job is to listen and ask good questions about what she cares about, loves, is challenged by, and is excited about. Learning to do this may take some work (it did for me) because many of us want to talk about ourselves, show how smart we are, and feel like we're contributing to the conversation. Another risk is, giving unsolicited advice [3].

It helps to have rapport-establishing skills, and I've found Nicholas Boothman's How to Make People Like You in 90 Seconds or Less very helpful - see my review here. You might also enjoy Questions that Work.

This leads to a test:

After meeting someone, do you now know enough to spot ways to help him?

(Note: I recommend against the "Is there any way I can help you?" finish to a conversation. It sounds contrived to me, and might really be sending the message "Look how willing I am to help you." Often the answer is "hmmm." Much better to use my approach. Arguments to the contrary are welcome.)

Remember, when meeting with someone the only things you should be asking about are ones dedicated to providing value. Avoid the instinct to focus on the short-term and your benefit; it's about relationship-building and long term connections.

2. Maintain a steady, reliable, and valuable atom/bitstream

Now that you know what's potentially valuable to people in your network, you have to find corresponding artifacts. You'll want to select sources that provide this potential. These will be in the form of articles (HBR has some great ones), books (reading-related posts here), blogs (learn how to read them quickly here), and your experiences working, learning, and living.

Because these sources are often digital, you'll need an effective way of managing them. I like Mark Hurst's [4] concise little book Bit Literacy. Mark has a lot to say about the topic - highly recommended. For example, one idea is to create a media diet portfolio with two main components: The Lineup and Tryouts. The lineup contains the sources you are most likely to stick with. He breaks them down further into three types: stars (consistently valuable), scans (give some relevant information via a quick read), and targets (special-purpose sources). Tryouts are sources you're thinking of adding to your diet. Mark says to be discerning, intentional, and remember you have to limit the total.

This step's corresponding test:

Is my media diet consistently valuable to me and my network?

Ask this regularly, and prune/adjust as needed.

3. When you come across something of potential value, share it

This is self explanatory, but will depend on your having a free enough mind [5] to put together mentally the two parts.

That said, here are a few tips:

• Instead of emailing, print and send information with a note. It's personal, fun, and after all - who gets excited about receiving an email? "Oh boy - I got an email from Matt! What a unique and memorable way to communicate." :-)
• Point out why you thought she'd be interested.
• Provide contact information. After all, starting a conversation around the topics is golden.
• Send thick packages - it's more memorable. Plus, what fun to surprise and delight people. My favorites items Super Spy Night Pens and NASA stickers (it helps to have cool clients).
• Consider giving books. I am surprised and humbled when I receive a book from my network, and I now don't think twice about shipping one when I see the opportunity. (Side note: Joining Amazon Prime has helped with this.) You might want to check out Tim Sanders' post Prescribe a book to a bizmate.

Unsurprisingly (at least to you, maybe) I've found doing this whole process to very satisfying. I've never been good at giving, and these ideas have helped me a lot. (This also explains why I've had trouble buying gifts in the past - the most meaningful ones are based on knowing the giftee.) Interestingly, I now find myself feeling rather disappointed when I can't help someone.

Oops - there's the doorbell, so I need to go. It's our piano tuner. For the past two weeks my wife's been grousing about how out of tune her instrument is, and how frustrating a few sticky keys. Can't wait to see her face next time she plays!

References

• [1] You can find my networking-related posts here.
• [2] See Networking Tips from the White House, which is an interview with Christine Comaford-Lynch, author of Rules for Renegades: How to Make More Money, Rock Your Career, and Revel in Your Individuality. (NB: I haven't read it yet.)
• [3] I've heard (but found no sources) that people giving advice feel better afterwards, but those receiving it feel worse. Any citations?
• [4] Interview forthcoming.
• [5] If this is hard, considering hiring someone to help ;-)

A conversation with Marilyn Paul, author of "It's hard to make a difference when you can't find your keys"

Another treat in my interview series (kickoff post, all posts), I'm very pleased to share highlights from an hour with Dr. Marilyn Paul, author of the best-selling It's Hard to Make a Difference When You Can't Find Your Keys (The Seven-Step Path to Becoming Truly Organized) (personal and consulting sites). Not only is her book one of the top 10 in Amazon's self-help/time management category, it's also the first time management book recommended to me when starting my practice (the world repository of all knowledge says I read it read on 2005-10-01).

Like her book, our conversation covered a lot of topics, and I came away highly impressed. I hope you enjoy it! (If you'd like to hear more from Marilyn, check out this NPR interview from a while back: Overcoming E-Mail Overload at Work. I've pulled out her tips below [1].)

Getting started, and the book's origins

Like many of the leaders I've met in my field, Marilyn's story is rather non-traditional [2]. She has a Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from the School of Management at Yale University, and got started in the work of time management, organizing, and productivity because she struggled with these issues and realized she needed help. Having read a ton of organizing books and finding they didn't work, she decided to apply the principles of organizational Change Management - her speciality [3] - to herself. This came about after she sought out existing information and advice, but didn't get the help she needed.

As she evolved a new process and started sharing it via local workshops around the Boston area. In a lovely example of wild success, those workshops were overflowing (requiring her to turn people away), and she was inundated with requests for more events, and for the material. She kept doing the work, teaching and applying it to herself (in areas like clearing up the clutter and learning more about running on time), and over time collected lots of material. Then a friend looked at her workbook (fifty pages at the time) workbook and workshop, and said "This is a book." In a great example of Synchronicity, the next week after she bumped into three people were literary agents, one of them said she would work with her, and one thing went to another. Neat!

I asked Marilyn the total time from start to finish for this process, which she figured ("good question") to be about ten years.

Definition of productivity

Paul said she had worked with people on issues of productivity, but had not been considering it to be her issue. However, she pointed out that productivity is not really her focus either. She elaborated that she thinks of productivity as part of the "equation of living a good life," along with other important factors such as creating sanity in your home, having good relationships and connections, etc.

Paul said she's not sure the word "productivity" applies to life as a whole - it's part of the question how do we make work meaningful and valuable, and how do we do what we care about - Ready, Aim, Fire, rather than Ready, Fire, Aim [4]. As she puts it, it is not productivity so much that drives her as how do we live the best life that we can, given how different we each are. For GTD practitioners, this will seem a bit controversial - Allen's work is intentionally bottom-up (first get your life together, which makes room for uncovering what your life should be about). More on this below.

(An aside: I asked Marilyn the differences between "Organizing," "Productivity," and "Time management." I like her answer: Basically we don't need to make them distinct because there's lots of overlap. This makes my marketing a bit more challenging though!)

Influences

When asked about her influences, Paul said that, in terms of how she thinks of her work - organizational change - one great influence was Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization (see this FastCompany article for more on his work). This launched a field called Systems Thinking, based on what he called five disciplines for change. They include Team Learning, Shared Visioning, Personal Mastery, and Mental Models. And it's Mental Models that has to deal with how we use our minds (my favorite topic).

Other influences include Finding Time: How Corporations, Individuals, and Families Can Benefit from New Work Practices (Collection on Technology and Work) and The Secret Pulse of Time: Making Sense of Life's Scarcest Commodity.

Goals

On the importance of goals (think top-down), Marilyn said having clarity about them is crucial. While some people are very aware of their goals, many of us aren't (I wasn't), which means we're probably working from outdated ones (e.g., those from high school or college). This is especially relevant in the face of big changes like setting up life with a partner or having children. For example, these can kick off the need for work in emotional or spiritual areas.

She said it has to do with inspiration and aspiration, which inform everything else and which her work helps connect up. The goal is for us to live an inspired life, rather than the more typical "dragging ourselves through the day." Otherwise, we are too tired and don't have time to rest, relax, and connect.

Marilyn describes this goal discovery process as on-going. She says that in today's world many people have a lot of choice [5], and we don't really know how to work with them to even identify what our skills and abilities are. To illustrate she gives this quote from Nietzsche: "The greatest folly of mankind is that we forget what we are trying to do."

On the lack of self-management training

We talked a good bit about one of my favorite realizations in starting this work: that very few of us have been taught the essential skills and tools to manage ourselves. In workshops I point out that this is true regardless of background or education. The irony is that my clients (and readers) are very smart, and decide (often at a subconscious level) that self-management shouldn't be that hard. I continue to discover there are many reasons why that's not the case - information overload, the difficulty of changing habits (more next), procrastination, and perfectionism to name a few.

Marilyn took this further to say it's a curriculum that should be standard in high schools and colleges. By the end of high school, students should know how to use their talent via to do lists and other basics. Beyond that, she says we should also know personal traits like when our "prime time" is (e.g., being a morning person), how we are going to work with our biological givens, and then, if we procrastinate, why? What are my issues, what am dealing with, etc. See her book for much more on this.

Habits

An important topic I continue to explore is why is this work so difficult to adopt, which percolates down to changing habits. Paul acknowledges it's very hard to change habits, and is a major motivator in writing her book. She says you have to start with an strong desire to change (which, she pointed out, is what happened with me and kicked off my whole process), and that is probably what happens with people who really are able to make a change.

She frames this as the first stage of the work, and involves assessing what is at stake. Examples include not finding the stuff in your office, piles on your desk, or being a nice guy but having apologize a lot. Each of these has costs, and once people are aware of them (say in checking email vs. working on goals) they're more motivated to change. (My Alexander Technique [6] teacher calls this "making meaning," a phrase I like.)

This goes to addressing the top-down vs. bottom-up issue. Paul argues that people who make a change (e.g., adopting new self-management tools - a bottom-up process) have already realized they can't go on with the old behaviors because something important's at stake. However, the process is iterative: Feel some pain, get some initial help (e.g., read a book or get a tool), try it out, experience some improvement, and repeat. (In fact, this is why I cheated when asked the my ultimate productivity tip. There is no single tip - it's a process, and starting people on the road is what I do.)

For more on building a new habit, I have an excerpt from her book below [7].

Getting clients

I asked Marilyn how she built her practice. Interestingly, she is not out on the circuit, and is only teaching on the East Coast. The people who come to her are capable and competent people in many, many ways, who have tried other work, but the ways they organize themselves and manage their time are getting in their way. They are also dealing with health issues (e.g., issues around weight, chronic fatigue, and family issues, marital issues), which Paul deals with as part of addressing their whole life, not just isolated aspects.

Much of her work is word of mouth - personal referral - with some clients learning about her through through her website, workshops, and her book, which is becoming a huge contributor to her practice.

Work awareness, courage

Marilyn is developing a concept she calls Phantom Workload. I'll let her explain it:

By Phantom workload we mean the extra, redundant, unnecessary work that is created through procrastination (e.g., now I have to run to the PO to FedEx my mortgage payment instead of putting it in the mail or paying on line), through avoidance (e.g., now I have to have a long two hour conversation with my failing employee because I avoided giving good helpful feedback in a timely way because I didn't know what to say), or using quick fixes (e.g., we'll promise the customer what he or she wants - a common quick fix - only now we have a product that they want, but it is full of bugs and they are really disappointed in us, we are losing our credibility with them - very time consuming and expensive).

As part of this, Paul points out it takes courage to change these kinds of behaviors, and we want to be in a workplace where people are rewarded and respected for this. We want to be working with people who are addressing that quality in themselves, so that when you speak up and say something unpopular, someone else will support you rather than shoot you down. This means that when her team works with organizations, they target those issues because, as she puts it, courage is a big part of time management.

Here's a scenario: You are in your office, someone walks in the door, knock, knock, knock, can I come in? You stand up, walk over to the door, and say," How can I help you?" In that little moment of standing up, walking to the door right next to them, and saying that, you are signaling some important points about the conversation - how long you can talk, that your time is important, etc. This can be personally challenging to do, but is very different from saying, "Sure, I can help. Come in and sit down." Good stuff!

The meta question

In answer to my "meta" question ("What haven't I asked you that you have a good answer to?") Paul said one of the big questions that people have around productivity is creating a frame of mind. How do we create a productive frame of mind, decide what that is, and how do we shift from an action-oriented productive frame of mind to a different kind of focus, e.g., where we can say "It is a beautiful day." She thinks those require some changes in our brain so that we can move back and forth and selectively choose different states of mind. I think this is huge.

Thanks, Marilyn!

References

• [1] Her tips for managing your email:
  1. Meet as a team to review e-mail use. Identify what works, what doesn't, and why. Create a trial period for improvement: Meet to discuss after a week.
     
  2. Use subject-line protocols to speed communication: a.) No reply needed - NRN; b.) Thank you - TY; c.) Need response by date and time - NRB 10/30 3:00 pm; d.) Use subject line for whole message: Meet 10:00 10/30 Okay? END
     
  3. Determine who needs to be copied on what, what needs to be read, and what needs to be filed.
     
  4. Keep e-mails short. Most should be no more than 1-10 sentences. Communicate your main point in the first sentence or two. Don't make readers work because you don't have time to focus.
     
  5. Don't deliver bad news in an e-mail message. If it's urgent, pick up the phone. Use tone of voice to indicate concern, but not anger.
     
  6. After two rounds of problem-solving on e-mail, pick up the phone.
     
  7. Don't hide behind e-mail. Any sensitive communications should be done in person.
     
  8. If you can't answer a request immediately, let the other party know when you can respond, or if you can't.
     
  9. NO EMOTIONAL E-MAILS: To resolve a conflict, schedule a meeting or use the phone. E-mail arguments tend to be huge time-wasters. Never send a hasty, irritated response to an annoying e-mail -- jobs have been lost that way.
• [2] I don't mean to slight other professions. By traditional I mean a more structured path to work, such as through college, training, or apprenticiships. Believe me, I make no judments about how someone comes to do wokrk they love. And because there are as many routes as there are people, there are lots of good stories to share!
  
• [3] Change Manager is definitely a cool job title - see Genius, purpose, and cool job descriptions - What are *you* built to do?
  
• [4] This is a really interesting point, and you can make arguments both ways. RAF has value in being more principled - moving from goals/purpose to action. However, smart people (my consulting market, essentially) often suffer from "analysis paralysis" (AKA "too smart to start"), so some action before direction can help get unstuck. Also, we often over-plan (esp. small-to-medium sized projects), and RFA helps move us along the action-discovery-reflect cycle (which I just made up). Steve Pavlina calls thisfailing your way forward.
  
• [5] For example see The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less.
  
• [6] See Reflections on Alexander Technique and personal productivity.
  
• [7] On building a new habit:
  1. Pick one small habit that you'd really like to change.
     
  2. Estimate what it costs you to keep this habit.
     
  3. Become aware of your thoughts that accompany this habit.
     
  4. Check your deeply held beliefs for validity.
     
  5. Create a picture of a new, better habit. Actually act it out.
     
  6. Remind yourself of how your new habit will nurture your vision and purpose.
     
  7. Interrupt the old habit with a shout, music, or a "No!"
     
  8. Reinforce your new behavior with new thoughts.
     
  9. Reward yourself for the new behavior.
     
  10. Get lots of support; ask for help from all your support sources.