Share your Daily Planning Tips and Win a $199 WinAutomation copy!

(Note: Extended through Fri, 2009-08-07)

The kind folks at WinAutomation have given me three copies of their $199 tool to give away. It's a Windows automation, macro recorder, and scripting program, and has an impressive feature set. For reference, it's in the same category as the free (but hard to use) AutoHotkey and the similarly-powerful (the best I can tell) ActiveWords. I'm delighted to share them with you.

Rather than an arbitrary give-away, lets try an experiment. We'll have a little contest around the topic of my next product, The Ultimate Daily Planning Guide: Making every day a Good Workday (working title). I think daily planning (more below [1]) is the single most important addition to GTD that makes the system really pop, and my client experience bears that out.

Thus...

The contest

Send me your best tips, variations, and extensions on daily planning, and I'll select three winning entries. The more you write, the better! Send ideas like:

• Tips and tricks,
  
• Challenges that came up in adopting your planning practice, and how you met them, or
  
• Questions you think someone new to daily planning might ask.
  

Email them to winautomation@matthewcornell.org by Fri, 2009-08-07 and I'll pick the winners by that Friday. Good luck, and thanks!

References

• [1] The best starting points:
  
  
  
  • Are Daily To-do Lists And GTD Compatible?,
    
  • One big list too overwhelming, from 10 GTD "holes" (and How To Plug Them), and
    
  • A Daily Planning Experiment: Two Weeks Of Accountable Rigorous Action.
    
  
  

My Four-part Interview at Another Step Forward is up!

The folks at the new Another Step Forward blog interviewed me a few weeks ago for their From There to Here series, and have split the transcription over four days. They are Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 (last two tomorrow and the next day). I'm in good company, including Leo Babauta and Rosa Say.

Thanks, guys!

(P.S. You gotta' love the Rent Matt's Brain ad we put together. Anyone recognize the image? ;-)

These are the inboxes of our lives

After reading a tweet saying that I spend two hours/day emptying my inboxes fairy consistently, I was asked as an aside to list all of the inboxes (i.e., places where attention tokens[1] collect) that I manage in my productivity practice. This was good timing, and I felt a review and analysis were in order. It's been a long time since I wrote My GTD Collection Points - Guided Tour, With Pictures, so I figured, voila!, my next blog post.

Surprises: After doing this inbox review I learned that there are more of them than I thought (13!) While all my collecting points are intentional, there's certainly room to consolidate.

I'm curious

• What inboxes do you manage?
  
• Did you find more than you thought you had?
  
• Any special workflows around any of them?
  
• Anything you'd like to change in your setup?
  

I'd love to hear your comments.

Inboxes

These are the places where things requiring my attention arrive. There should be a minimum number of these, with the "big three" being email, voicemail, and paper. Following is an exhaustive list of mine.

1. Paper Inbox - Desk: This is where I toss all incoming physical artifacts, including mail from my front office mail slot (see here for detail), my portable inbox (see below), paper notebook pages (see below), things I picked up around the house, notes from others, notes to myself while working (so I can stay on task), and my current project notes if I need to take an interruption (it works like a kind of action bookmark). Emptied daily.
   
2. Paper Inbox - Portable: When away from my office I carry a folder in my briefcase that I use for collecting any paper I encounter. Things like receipts, meeting notes, and business cards go here. NB: Nothing in it is more than a day old, and everything gets emptied into the inbox on my desk (see above).
   
3. Wallet: Continuing the on-the-go category, common "stealth" inboxes clients have include wallets, purses, pockets, and briefcases. Regarding wallets, I use mine for receipt collection. I do this consciously, and empty them daily into my desktop inbox. (Actually, that's not true. I empty them into a special "waiting for bank statement" queue, which is part of my routine financial workflow. See Custom Workflows For Knowledge Workers for examples.)
   
4. Voicemail Inboxes: One each for home and work. I "empty" them multiple times per day (usually when taking a break) by writing down each message (who, what, when), noting action required, and putting it into my desktop inbox unless urgent. Note that I'm not doing any of the associated work, I'm just emptying it, two minute rule excepted. I do the same when I'm on the road, capturing cell vmail information in my paper notebook (or returning urgent and two minute calls) for later emptying.
   
5. Email Inbox: This is the most challenging inbox to manage. I empty it multiple times per day, though it's an on-going struggle to not "check," i.e., to really process all new messages every time I start the program. ("Monitoring" is conceptually different, where you look for anything urgent. Whether this is required depends on the expectations in your work culture, as well as expectations you've conditioned in others.)
   
6. Mail.app Notes: This is an odd one. I'm experimenting with using my phone's Notes app to capture late-night thoughts and actions (rather than notepad and lighted pen). The notes sync with iTunes, which means I have to treat them as an inbox. I've tried multiple To Do iPhone apps, but none appealed or were stable enough. I need to rethink this; I don't need more inboxes!
   
7. Email "sent-from-iphone" Folder: Another odd one, this is a side-effect of the way my iPhone-to-Gmail sending works, and is not ideal. I use Google Reader to process feeds while between appointments, and email to myself articles worth reading. However, Gmail apparently notices some circularity and doesn't list these in my inbox. So I've created a filter to find them, but it means I have yet another collecting point to check. Needs rethinking.
   
8. Mail Slot - Front Office: As mentioned above, the initial staging area for incoming paper mail is a set of shelves in the front of the office (the front of the house, in my case). This is typical in most workplaces, and simply means that I have to transfer it daily to my desktop inbox. Depending on your position you might have someone do this for you, or even better, do initial processing and filtering before it lands on your desk. Ain't delegation grand?
   
9. RSS Feeds: I use my feed reader to collect a number of feeds, all of which I'm committed to emptying, with varying priority. Examples include:
   
   
   
   • Local events,
     
   • Google alerts (mentions of my name or blog, and of people and companies I want to help, i.e, want to form relationships with),
     
   • News (mostly related to science, technology, and clients),
     
   • Blogs (far fewer than in the past - I'm in a convergent mode [2] and have pruned a lot), and
     
   • Twitter-related feeds (specific people I find to be of high value, including client relationships as mentioned above). I use RSS to track these because I've not found a desktop Twitter app I like. (As an aside: How can you determine value? That's an area our technology lags behind, and I think is a huge opportunity. For more see Information Provenance - The Missing Link Between Attention, RSS Feeds, And Value-based Filtering.)
     
   
   
10. Twitter - Followees: I use Twitter.com to catch up with people I follow. Generally I scan these periodically, a few times a day, say, but I don't read every one. I save most of my Twitter attention for targeted following, mentions, and posting.
    
11. Twitter - Mentions: I also prefer to use Twitter.com to track mentions of my account. These I treat at the same level of priority as my email inbox - direct correspondence with a 24 hour response time. (Related: What's Your Maximum Response Time? and Depressurize Your Email With A 24 Hour Response Time.)
    
12. Capture - Portable Notebook: Carried with me at all times, I use spiral-bound notebook that's small, inexpensive, has perforated pages, and holds a pen. You can buy fancy leather-covered ones with cool retractable pens, but I prefer to keep it inexpensive. (Bonus: My daughter gave it to me, so I feel a connection each time I use it.)
    
13. Capture - MTB Notebook: My final (whew!) inbox is a separate spiral notebook and pen that I keep in my CamelBak while mountain biking [3] to capture ideas that inevitably occur while grunting and sweating. (No, I don't carry a notebook during that activity!) I don't use the ubiquitous one above because I don't want to risk leaving it in one place or the other. After riding I tear out the sheets and toss them into my desktop inbox.
    

References

• [1] I didn't find any useful references for this term (which I'm sure I heard in a Merlin Mann talk) except for Advances in Communications and Media (Google Books). In the context of "multiparty exchanges for complex structural constellations of simultaneous talk" they described an author's use of the "typical attention-soliciting device, attention token + name," and gave a one-word example, "hey." Do you know of any other definitions?
  
• [2] See Sometimes Laser, Sometimes Blind: How Natural Converge/diverge Cycles Explain Progress.
  
• [3] For fun check out Productivity Lessons From Mountain Biking. Or, What Sports Can Teach Us About Doing.
  

Mini-Review: DYMO LabelWriter 450 Twin Turbo Label Printer

(Note: The productivity community has a deep and frightening labeler fetish, primarily inspired by the tremendous GTD following. The claim - which I've experienced - is that labeling your paper files is magic. I include them for my one-on-one clients because they make filing faster and more pleasant over hand labeling. Try it!)

A quick little something different, I thought I'd share my thoughts on a new labeler DYMO kindly sent me. The LabelWriter 450 Twin Turbo (~$200, Amazon link here) is a computer-connected labeler that holds two rolls at once so you can print a combination of labels like address, file, and postage, without having to switch them out each time. I installed it on my Mac (PC available too, of course), tried it a little bit, and boy is it fast! My trusty old hand-held, while inexpensive, was whimpering a bit in the corner. No worries. This thing is what you'd want for an office that prints a mix of postage, addresses, and file labels all day long, or that prints a lot of labels, such as for large mailing lists. Setup, documentation, and installation were fine. The application program was utilitarian, with basic Mac integration, but I found bugs in accessing Address Book data from within their program. Hopefully they'll iron them out.

I'm curious:

• Do you belong to the cult of the labeler?
  
• Do you prefer a hand-held or computer-based one?
  
• Got a geeky favorite you'd recommend?
  

18 Ways to Enjoy the Ride at Work, or, Why "Don't worry, be happy" Isn't Computable

"We have become conditioned to believe that working is a very serious business and any time we're having fun we are probably not 'producing'. Depressed people generally tend to be less productive. Likewise, people who take themselves too seriously create unnecessary tension in themselves and those around them. While there is a basic level of tension which can be very beneficial to performance, too much is counterproductive." -- Seize the Day!

I admit it - I'm too serious. I have trouble taking it easy when working. It's why I wrote my little 99 Playful experiments guide, and why it's a long term goal. Like anything, there's a ton of advice on this (some good [1], [2]), but I've found that many tips and aphorisms are declarative, rather than procedural [3]. "Don't worry, be happy," "Just get over it," or "Live in the moment," specify the What, not the How - they're not computable. Ironically, a common bit of advice is the polar opposite: "It's the journey, not the destination."

So how do we actually go about this? Let me share a few ideas specific to the work context. Tell me what you think, and please share yours!

1. Cultivate your sense of humor. Actively look for the bizarre, the absurd, The Office-style nuttiness. For example, if you work in a large organization, I guarantee you have some process or result that could be seen as "wildly unreasonable, illogical, or inappropriate." Institute a daily routine: At the start: Prime yourself by asking "What funny things will I notice today." At the day's end ask, "Of today's events, what can I laugh at (if not now, then down the road)?"
   
2. Savor expertise. Notice actions that come easily to you and are totally natural. These may be so internalized as to be invisible. Stop and reflect on just how good you really are.
   
3. Acknowledge reversibly. Giving tasks and events more weight than they deserve feels heavy. Question: Have you noticed that many decisions we make are reversible or can be worked around? Unless you're in a life-or-death world (e.g., emergency work like at hospitals or police), maybe some things ain't such a big deal.
   
4. Be awed by your mind. Were you whacked by an idea or a burst of creativity? Or did you remember something that slipped yor mind [4], then came back? Or how about a recovered Presque vu? Hooray!
   
5. Celebrate surprise. I wrote about this in One Way To Enjoy The Ride - Celebrate Surprise!, and covered planting seeds and being open to it. (In fact, our brains seem to have a built in novelty detector. I didn't realize! ;-)
   
6. Put some mustard on it. Add a little flourish to your work, maybe a little extra pizazz when typing, or a dramatic toss of a paper ball into the recycling bin. For more see What Does It Take To Work With Flourish?
   
7. Gang up. It's too easy to hunker down and work by yourself, even in an office. Getting a fresh perspective, especially from someone funny, helps us lighten up.
   
8. Insert humor. Watch a short funny video (Fry & Laurie - Haircut), read something humorous (Stephen Colbert's Address to the Graduates), or tell a joke. Bonus: It might even help [from] zoning out (see The Brain: Stop Paying Attention: Zoning Out Is a Crucial Mental State). (Question: Got a favorite funny video? Share it. I know I'll get some good ones from you, dear reader.)
   
9. Make your space fun. Populate your office with playful stuff. Buy a Nerf toy, get some Silly Putty, or a physio ball to bounce on while thinking. (A great source of these is ThinkGeek.)
   
10. Enjoy learning. If you're reading my blog, you're curious and like improving yourself. I like to say that no matter what the outcome, you can guarantee success: You will learn something. Notice when you adopt a tasty mental treat, and give yourself a little high five.
    
11. Take satisfaction when things go well. Give yourself some credit - I bet you can find things today that worked out in your favor. Note that it might take some creative thinking and granularity adjustments. Here's a simple one that might apply these days: Getting a paycheck.
    
12. Think Seinfeld. Become an observational humorist and tune into amusing situations, events, or thoughts. Example: When mountain biking yesterday I came across a medium-sized green spray bottle labeled "Absorbine All Natural Horse Spray." I thought, what if it actually sprayed out horses? (Hey, I got a chuckle out of it, which is what counts ;-) It might help to keep a little journal of these observations to help increase awareness.
    
13. Notice when you lift someone up. Happiness is contagious. Here's an example: When I work one-on-one with clients I have a short ceremony where I give them a nice "official" printed certificate. It's really satisfying to sharing their surprise and delight at this. (One client immediately put it on her bulletin board, a valid use of it from my productivity perspective.) AKA bucket-filling [5].
    
14. Dwell on the swell. Did you get some good news? Even a little? Celebrate! With practice I've become very creative at interpreting good news. For an email twist, try using Gmail's "star" to highlight goodness.
    
15. Laugh at your own odd behavior. What do you do that, if an alien observed you, would make zero sense? Here's a test: Ask "Would this make a great story?" or imagine whether you could say "You're never going to believe this!" Examples, please!
    
16. Celebrate others' joy. We have talented people all around us experiencing successes. Why not share in their feats? Example: While hitting a tennis ball around with my eight year old daughter in the yard, I got bored chasing it and lost interest. Then something shifted and I tuned in to her pleasure. Seeing her laugh and jump helped me get out of my head and have some empathy. Sweet! Any examples from work?
    
17. Enjoy the sense of accomplishment. One way to view our work is as a steady sequence of small achievements. (Maybe that's all there is, in the end?) Did you check something off your list? Then host a micro-celebration like leaning back and taking a contented sigh. I find it helps to have a daily plan [6], especially a conservative one that realistically allows a "touchdown."
    
18. You're already there. Finally, pay attention to hidden things that provide joy right now. For example, when work is flowing and you feel that satisfying sense of progress. A test: Feeling contented.
    

References

• [1] I found some good tips at How can I become a happier person? For example,
  
  
  
  • Try being aware to smile and also being aware when you're not smiling.
    
  • Treat yourself to something nice, no matter how small.
    
  • Think happy thoughts - about about positive events in your life for even eight minutes per day.
    
  • Be grateful for every little thing.
    
  • Appreciate the people in our lives.
    
  • Laugh more often.
    
  • Make peace with your past so it won't screw up the present.
    
  • Be optimistic (how?)
    
  • Socialize with other people
    
  
  
• [2] Patricia Ryan Madson's Improv Wisdom: Don't Prepare, Just Show Up (mentioned here many times) has a maxim on this, including:
  
  
  
  • If something is not to your liking, change your liking.
    
  • Smile and laugh.
    
  • Do something just for the fun of it.
    
  
  
• [3] Taken from my computer programming background. Some languages support saying what you want to accomplish, and letting the compiler figure it out. This is a great goal for coding, but not for self-improvement. More at Declarative programming.
  
• [4] Check out Applying GTD To Aging Gracefully - Improved Memory!
  
• [5] Check out How Full Is Your Bucket?.
  
• [6] Look at A Daily Planning Experiment: Two Weeks Of Accountable Rigorous Action. You can also give me a call if you want me to teach you.