MUS - Trusting and Tracking What Catches Your Fancy

I learned a text tag from a technical writer (I forget the context) that's stuck with me: "MUS," which stands for Might Be Useful. I love it for two reasons. First, it represents an active experimenter because she is aware and observing. You have to pay attention to grab things that MUS. Second, There's the underlying assumption or spark that spoke to you - "Pay attention to this (but I don't know why)." That's an act of faith, actually - what my divinity school graduate and Think, Try, Learn collaborator defines as hope without evidence.

Trusting that an items is important means, of course, you better capture it just in case it pans out. In my Big Arse repository (see My Big-Arse Text File - A Poor Man's Wiki+Blog+PIM) I have thousands of these, of which 90% won't pay off. But that's OK. It's like my talking a lot of photos - Just through random shots some of them will probably work out somehow. A key is efficient capture at the time - use whatever tools and hotkeys you like. It shouldn't be paper, though - too slow to encode and retrieve.

Key, also, is review. Similar to the practice of regularly looking back over your projects, you should see if any MUSes have become IDUes (Is Definitely Useful). I've struggled with how to bake the MUS review habit into my workflow, and now use opportunistic idea review: When I have to create something - an article or a presentation, say - I hit the file and search. Fortunately, I've consistently tagged things so that this works pretty well. Tracking Lessons Learned is an example, as is blogging.

As far as what makes this happen, I'd say it's the magic of being human. The unique combination of your mind, history, and how you've opened yourself to the world dictates what you see, and what you predict might be valuable. I guess it's our MUSe. What catches your fancy will change over time - my anti-library is littered with books I'll probably never crack. But when a gem shows up from my past self - boy is that gratifying.

I'm curious: (How) Do you pay attention to MUSes? What's your MUS repository like? How do you review it?

Two Second Poll: How do you like my new blogging style?

For three weeks I've been experimenting with shorter, looser, and more frequent posts, that have - gasp! - images. Do me a quick favor? Vote on how you like this style. Comment below if you want to share more detail. Thanks!

Time, Space, Objects, and Interrelationships. Plus: FastCompany.TV Goodies

I stumbled across the FastCompany.TV interview IBM's "brain" guy: Dharmendra Modha with Robert Scoble. While I didn't finish it (mainly due to the terrible interviewer) an idea jumped out: An Ontology for perceiving the world: Time, Space, Objects, and Interrelationships. Since I love categories, what's the translation to time management? Let's play with it.

• Time: Well that seems clear; it's the fixed currency to which we are budgeted. I and my commenters explored this in What Are The Laws Of Work?, especially time's special qualities (expensive, precious, perishable, etc.) What else can we say about time? Clocks count it, calendars represent it linearly, task lists capture intentions to use it (as does the calendar), and "someday" lists represent the opposite (things I'm not doing).



• Space: For workplaces, physical space is what we occupy, including desks, files, shelves, etc. It's where we put ourselves and our things (next). And according to The Power of Place, it has a big influence on our thoughts, emotions, and actions. Mental space is required to do creative thinking (and by creative, I mean all jobs), and it's where we hear the voices of intuition and direction. It's also where genuine listening takes place, and where we begin to break habits, such as multitasking and procrastination.
  



• Objects: The things we manipulate to get our work done. Inboxes capture and files organize them. Also, this is the category of tool.



• Interrelationships: I loved it when Modha included this one. Of course! The people we work with, the connections between projects and tasks, the flow of work between us, they all follow channels, mostly communicative ones, I'd argue.

Just for fun, below is a table in which I mapped the GTD organizing categories to these four "universal" ones. Also, here are a few FastCompany.TV videos you might like:

• David Allen On "Getting Things Done"



• The 10 Secrets of Highly Productive People



• Timothy Ferriss and The 4-Hour Workweek



• WorkFast TV interviews Mark Bernstein of PARC



• Jeff Bezos - "What's dangerous is not to evolve"



• As a bonus, check out the GoogleTechTalk YouTube Channel

I'm curious: What are your ideas of this perspective? How do you interpret time management from this high level? Any "big impact" videos you'd like to share?

Share Your Inbox Delights!

On my birthday last week I received a wonderful surprise in the mail: A lovely assortment from of TCHO chocolate from a client and entrepeneur. Yum! (Side note: I was turned onto great chocolate when my wife dragged me into one of Larry Burdick's cafes and got me to try a few bon bons and a cup of drinking chocolate. No kidding, It changed my life; see How To Make The Ultimate Cup Of Hot Chocolate from four years ago.)

This got me thinking about the emotional impact of incoming items (attention tokens as I called them in These Are The Inboxes Of Our Lives). As an anxious person, I especially appreciate these. It's why I still Use Gmail's "star" To Highlight Good News.

What about you? I invite you to share some inspiring things that show up in your inbox, that is, things that made you take a relaxing deep breath. Paper or "physical" things - either way! To the side are a few recent ones that motivated this post: The chocolate and a children's harp that needs a new string (the note was priceless).

I'm curious: How often do you get something uplifting in your inboxes (email, paper, or voicemail)? What sources (i.e., people) have the highest signal-to-noise (uplift-to-??) ratio? Do you create delight through the things you give out?

Check Out the Productivity501 "Where Did My Day Go" Daily Planning Contest!

Check Out the Productivity501 "Where Did My Day Go" Daily Planning Contest!

Over at Mark Shead's Productivity501 we're running a Where Did My Day Go Contest in which a luck reader will win a copy of my daily planning guide, "Where the !@#% did my day go? The ultimate guide to making every day a great workday". I won't tell anyone if you slide over there and enter by making a comment ;-)

You might also check out the many ways people manage have come up with to plan their days. I cover the majority of them in my guide, and at the same time I enjoyed reading their ideas and stories. I was gratified to see mentions good of treating getting more productive as experiments taking place :-)

Finally, a little badly delayed catch-up on Mark's and other sites:

• You might enjoy Interview: Technology Investments : Productivity501, which has answers from me and other bloggers to the question, "How do you decide if a new technology is worth investing in or whether it is a waste of time?"



• Mark's Biggest Productivity Challenge question (I listed "discipline"), and



• CIO Magazine's brief interview of me in How to Handle Negative Online Comments, Hold a Concise Meeting and Decline an After-work Invite.



• I had a delightful conversation with Sam Carpenter, author of Work the System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less. If you like my "no-nonsense ex-NASA engineer" approach to productivity, you'll want to check it out. His perspective of "Each thing we do is a component of a system." jibes with my "Everything in life is an experiment" approach. I love this passage: You must stand outside of it if you are to see how you are a part of it.



• Blog honors: I was pleased to see that I'm in the top 25 in Blog Rank's Getting Things Done category, along with sites like 43 Folders and Lifehacker. I'm also one of the "World's Top GTD Blogs" according to The Daily Reviewer. Thanks so much for reading!