The Personal Productivity Encyclopedia of Superhero Powers

"A superhero is a hero with superpowers."

(Captin Obvious on the difference between heroes & superheroes - from the Uncyclopedia, the content-free encyclopedia.)

Just for fun I'd like to riff off of the Wikipedia list of comic book superpowers. My goal is to get you thinking about how much we as individuals are able to accomplish, and how we make that happen.

(Side note: For an in-depth analysis of the origins of the superhero idea, check out Classical Heroes in Modern Movies: Mythological Patterns of the Superhero, including the section on Joseph Campbell's The Hero's Journey [1]. Another article I enjoyed was Why Write About Superheroes? And if you're really feeling ambitious, try taking the Superhero Quiz.)

I'd love to hear your interpretations of these - this is just my first pass. Cheers!

Questions for you

• What superpowers to you possess?
  
• What are some negative powers? For example, Power negation (Ability to cancel the superpowers of others.)
  
• Which are the most important?
  
• What powers aren't listed here?
  

The Productivity Super Powers

• Object-based powers: Your power objects? Your self-management system's tools, of course! (You can find a nice list here.) These tools enable your productivity powers, including capture, calendar, lists, and filing. Unlike superheros, they're not enough by themselves. (No, that's a trap set by our arch-nemesis - GadgetBrain!)
  
• Mutation: Here it's the ability to evolve your methods, tools, and perspective as needed. This is important because everything's in flux - your mind, your work, and the business and physical worlds. People from the Lean world talk about continuous improvement, AKA kaizen (ask my buddy Dan about it).
  
• Energy sourcing (Ability to draw power from large or small but abundant sources of energy): First, think about your prime time [2], those parts of your day when your brain is really humming. The power is in using current energy level effectively. If it's high (mine is apparently in the morning these days), do the heavy intellectual work. If it's low, choose a dead simple one.
  
• Magical powers: To me, one of the most magical, the most miraculous things in the world is the mind. It's the source of our thinking and creativity, and if bringing something into reality from nothing isn't magic, well then you can come over here and try to take my wand from me ;-) Beware, though - Feeling out of control sparks magical thinking. Wikipedia defines magical thinking as "nonscientific causal reasoning," something we personal scientists need to manage (including using it intentionally).
  
• Technopathy (Ability to manipulate technology): Like object-based powers, you must be the master of your tech. BlackBerry, Outlook, iPhone - like anything powerful, these things are dangerously distracting, and don't necessarily lead to being more productive [3].
  
• Telekinesis (Ability to manipulate and control objects with the mind, often in ways not visible to the naked eye): Attention.
  
• Power bestowal (Ability to bestow powers or jump-start latent powers): Delegation, discipline, and mastering "Too smart to start."
  
• Power mimicry or absorption (Ability to copy or absorb another's powers or skills): "Learning" (I think of minds as "learning machines" [4] - we're built to learn and explore.)
  
• Accelerated healing (Ability to heal rapidly from any injury; the rate of recovery varies from character to character. Can sometimes result in the slowing of aging) Speaks to keeping a healthy immune system, via enough sleep, enough exercise, good (i.e., not too much) diet, and your friends (and their friends - see Strangers May Cheer You Up, Study Says.
  
• Acid generation (Ability to generate acid, can be manifested through touch or as a spray): "Sensitivity training is this Friday, Bob" Related: BileBreath.
  
• Biological manipulation (Ability to control all aspects of a living creature's biological make-up): Taking breaks (including microbreaks).
  
• Duplication (Ability to create physical duplicates of oneself): Accomplished via noticing and implementing automation (I gave some examples in Custom Workflows For Knowledge Workers), and delegation and personal outsourcing, including virtual/personal assistants Personal assistants get a high-tech makeover. See The 4-Hour Workweek for some good examples.
  
• Temporal duplication (Ability to bring past and future versions of oneself back to the present): From the past, tap your lessons Learned file to inform your present self. For the future, use intuition-based capture ("I don't know how I'm going to use this, but something tells me to stag it"), and apply your experience via planning (see A Daily Planning Experiment and Simple Project Planning For Individuals).
  
• Invisibility (Ability to render the user unseen to the naked eye): Combine Time Blocking ("appointments with yourself") with ensconcing yourself in a local cafe or unused conference room (AKA "getting away"). Hey - nothing beats "seat time" when it comes to being productive!
  
• Matter ingestion (Ability to consume any sort of matter without any ill effects on the user.). Think functional collection buckets, and the habits that go with them (check out What Are The Essential Habits Of GTD?).
  
• Reactive adaptation/evolution (Ability to develop a resistance or immunity to whatever they were injured by or exposed to): Protecting yourself from interruptions (e.g., turning off the New Mail alert), and being proactive, rather than continually in crisis mode. However, this is augmented by the important need to stay agile. Being able to switch projects and focus when appropriate is a success factor.
  
• Superhuman reflexes (Ability to react faster than a normal human): Comes from keeping a clear mind (sharper!), being agile (see above), and having solid "bookmarking" skills when you decide to switch tasks. (Put your working papers back into their folder, toss it in your inbox - perhaps with a sticky noting where you were - then ... SWITCH!) Again, must be used with care - beware multitasking (see Multi-Task for Bottlenecked Brain).
  
• Telescopic or microscopic vision (Ability to magnify vision to various levels): Think shifting your perspective up and down in time (review your work daily, weekly, monthly, ...) and for specific projects (planning).
  
• Wallcrawling - "Time for a break"
  
• Innate capability (Ability to naturally have skills and/or knowledge typically earned through learning): Freeing up your natural talents ... well isn't what this is all about?
  
• Omniscience (Ability to know anything and everything.) - the "IdeaMatt" goal ;-)
  
• Superhuman intelligence (Ability to have intelligence far above that of a genius level): My IdeaMatt readers.
  
• Empathy (Ability to read or sense the emotions and/or control the emotions or feelings of others): Just plain good.
  
• Mediumship (Ability to see and communicate with the dead (ghosts)): Reading, including history.
  
• Precognition (Ability to perceive the future. It may also be used as a form of "Danger sense" to show the user that they are being threatened and from what direction it is coming from): Planning your projects (and life) out enough in advance, anticipating problems/challenges/obstacles, and creating contingency plans. Don't overdo it, though. As the Extreme Programming people know, too much "up front" planning tends to be a waste, unless you can exactly predict the future. Things change, so why not do a little (minimum?) planning, jump in, and adjust as you learn. There's a balance between Ready, Aim, Fire (careful, front-loaded) and Ready, Fire, Aim (shooting from the hip).
  
• Psychometry (Ability to relate details about the past or future condition of an object, person or location): This can really feel like a superpower to you and others: being able to quickly put your hands on project notes, meeting notes, a history of conversations and decisions, and files (see Five Secret Filing Hacks From The Masters). Note: It's not a good idea to keep this stuff in your calendar. Some productivity methods have you spread project events and information throughout time, making it hard to pull the story together when needed.
  
• Memory manipulation (Ability to erase or enhance the memories of another): See Psychometry.
  
• Animation (Ability to bring inanimate objects to life or to free a person from petrification): Think bringing stalled projects to life: Break them down into small actions. It's also anti-procrastination: "Too smart to start?" Dive in with something really small. A mind hack from Do It Tomorrow: Can't get started writing (for example)? Tell yourself you're just going to pick up the pencil. Nothing more. And hey, sometimes it works! Another approach is to simply pick any little task, not necessarily the natural first one. Alan Lakein, in How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life, calls this the "Swiss cheese" method: poke some holes in it (see the fourth entry in IdeaLab 0505: Put Pockets, Trash Bags, Swiss Cheese, And Faith).
  
• Elemental transmutation (The ability to alter chemical elements, changing them from one substance to another by rearranging the atomic structure. May be limited to self-transmutation): This is the extremely powerful method of turning incoming work items into executable tasks. As I wrote in What Are The Laws Of Work?, work arrives disorganized.
  
• Immortality: This is about creating useful artifacts that live beyond us. Building a house, writing, painting, research, programming - the things we're uniquely built to do.
  
• Magnetism manipulation (Ability to control and/or generate magnetic fields): Learn how to establish rapport. The classic is How to Win Friends & Influence People (summary here), and I like How to Make People Like You in 90 Seconds or Less too.
  
• Probability manipulation (Ability to alter probability, causing unlikely things to happen or likely things to not happen): Think luck, but not in the common passive sense of the word. There are some good quotes on it, mostly like "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity" (attributed to Seneca a Stoic), but for a profound treatment check out How to Attract Good Luck. It's not as hokey as it sounds.
  
• Reality warping (Ability to change or manipulate reality itself): Isn't this another "That's the whole point" one?
  
• Time manipulation (Ability to affect the flow of time by slowing, accelerating, reversing, or stopping it): You tell me.
  
• Energy blasts (Ability to expel various forms of energy from the body): Dashes?
  
• Summoning (Ability to summon objects or beings for assistance): Being able to draw on your creativity. (Anyone have a great book on it to recommend?)
  
• Superhuman speed (Ability to move at speeds much faster than a normal human): Beyond agility (see above) we can think about what speed means, and how to use it rationally. In The Age of Speed: Learning to Thrive in a More-Faster-Now World, Poscente suggests we should not reject speed out of hand. He says fast is accomplishing more in a smaller amount of time, and that fast != irresponsible (for your coders out there).
  
• Teleportation (Ability to move from one place to another without occupying the space in between): Think getting efficiently to meetings (Are your calendar chops up to speed? Do you allocate enough time to get there on time? Do you leave enough healthy between time?). An anti-example: Multitasking. (You might enjoy Crenshaw's The Myth of Multitasking. It's not my preferred style of writing, but he deconstructs it well.)
  
• Time travel (Ability to travel back and forth through time): ?
  

References

• [1] Campbell's explanation of the term Monomyth - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

  "The standard path of the mythological adventure of the hero is a magnification of the formula represented in the rites of passage: separation - initiation - return: which might be named the nuclear unit of the monomyth."

  
  
• [2] In looking for a good reference, I came across this PDF: The Successful Person's Guide to Time Management. Their section Find Your Prime Time provides an exercise to discover yours, along with a simple measurement chart:
  
  
  
  1. Choose a typical day to graph your energy level. Be prepared to spend a few minutes each hour evaluating your energy level and recording it on the chart.
     
  2. Above each hour of your day, place a dot in the box that best represents your level of energy for that hour.
     
  3. At the end of the day, draw a line to connect the dots.
     
  4. Examine your peaks and valleys of energy as represented on the graph. Note your high-energy periods.
     
  
  
• [3] From Technology & Productivity--Why We Get One Without The Other: "Research indicates that productivity in non-white collar jobs has increased with the advent of improved technology. Research has also found that white-collar productivity HAS NOT increased in a similar way."
  
• [4] Interestingly, I couldn't find many hits searching for the phrase. The best was a press release: New $35.5 million Center for Mind, Brain and Learning created at UW: "Human brains are wonderful learning machines. They are wired to learn in interaction with the world and reprogram themselves over time."
  

Use these 5W/1H Questions to Test Your Productivity Chops

Thanks very much for visiting my site. I've temporarily brought this page down as I work on a ebook that tightens up and extends the ideas. Please contact me if you'd like me to help you get started improving your productivity, or if you'd like permission to use these ideas elsewhere. Thanks!

matt

How do you treat life as an experiment?

The true method of knowledge is experiment. -- William Blake [1]

Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. What if they are a little course, and you may get your coat soiled or torn? What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice. Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

In my last post I mentioned our book project Think, Try, Learn: A Scientific Method for Discovering Happiness, and how it is central to my thinking and personal brand. The more I talk with people about this perspective (looking at everything in life as a scientific experiment), the more excited I am about it; there's something really good here. As I wrote in The Real Reasons For The Modern Productivity Movement, I think the timing is right. We need a personal modern method for making our way in the world - for sensemaking [2] - that benefits from 400 years of developing techniques that, as Richard Feynman put it [3], protects us from fooling ourselves. Current global challenges make this even more imperative.

Clearly people have been using this lens for centuries - Thoreau's Walden comes to mind (free ebook here) - and looking back I see this has permeated my thinking [4]. In this post I want to start a discussion by asking how you've treated life as an experiment. I'd love to hear your thoughts and experiences.

Contents:

• What is an experiment?
• Perspective
• Method
• Examples of experiments
• Questions and Wrap-up

What is an experiment?

What do we mean by "experiment?" For the scientists reading, let's defer the discussion of whether this approach is technically an experiment (it's not). Instead I'm speaking to the spirit of science, with a working definition more like this:

Experiment: To try something new, especially in order to gain experience

One way to think of it is as a perspective and method for entering any situation best prepared to make the most of it, i.e., to facilitate its transforming us ideally as possible. (Got a better definition? Share!)

Let's break it down.

Perspective

What is the mindset of the personal scientist exploring life? Here are a few central elements:

• Uncertainty: Life is unpredictable; that's part of why it's exciting. But the flip side is it's scary when we don't know where it's headed. The scientist looks at life as a challenge rich with opportunity. It moves us from "Do Not!" to "Why Not?"
• Objectivity: Because we are emotional creatures, it's easy to become wrapped up with events. This clouds our judgement (think fight or flight: "the body's response to perceived threat or danger" [5]) and can send us down paths that waste energy. That's why scientists cultivate what we call a "healthy sense of detachment."
• Curiosity: We are learning machines. We're built to explore the world and learn from it, and it's what made us the most fearsome species. Tapping into our innate curiosity does two things. First, it disconnects the fear that keeps us from being engaged and enjoying life. Second, it invokes the power of questions, which is central to so much personal development. Questions lead to insight ("Why am I doing this?"), are the secret to consulting and sales ("Tell me what's going on"), and turn us into good conversationalists ("What keeps you busy these days?"). Also, for guys it activates what I call the "Shut the Heck Up" gene. Because sometimes people just want to be heard. Inquiry is a scientist's driving force; questions are her tool.
• Equanimity: Because our method gives us a sense of control, we're more at peace with the results. Knowing we don't know the outcome, but that we're guaranteed to learn something regardless, sooths our need for certitude. Bonus: Less stress and better sense of humor!
• Failure: Fire up your feed reader and you won't go three minutes without coming across a post on failure (over 3x10⁶ blog hits on no such thing as failure). Unfortunately it's not clear how we operationalize the idea. Scientists instead understand that success isn't necessarily accomplishing a static goal. There are certainly outcomes we're hoping for (a successful wedding, an influential research paper, a profitable software launch), but focusing on learning means we'll come out ahead. Granted, the results might be disappointing at the time (that's why every scientist needs humor training ;-) but dammit you will know something you didn't know going in. Like "Never combine chilies and beer" or "Twitter has sucked evrey last drop of productivity from my bones."
• Flexibility: If the outcome is uncertain, then we darn well better be ready to adapt. It underlies why software methodologies like Extreme Programming are so effective. The thought is to adjust course frequently based on feedback, rather than set a path up front and stick to it no matter what. Scientists work to stay agile.
• Courage: Saying "I don't know" is hard. Some mistakenly perceive it as weakness, and it requires courage to say. But when you're regularly trying new things (and if you're not, you're not living [6]) you're meeting life's inherent risk in a positive way.
• Zest: Lastly, the scientist hungers for insight and discovery, and so invites experiences into her life. This attitude opens room for serendipity, and leads to surprise and delight. (Sidebar: I took the word "zest" from Carr's fine book How to Attract Good Luck. You'll find a nice little summary here.)

How about you? What perspectives do you employ to treat live as an experiment?

Method

The second aspect of our approach is method. How do you actually go about treating life experimentally? The stuffy summary (from the wikipedia entry): Iterations, recursions, interleavings, and orderings of the following:

• Characterizations (observations, definitions, and measurements of the subject of inquiry)
• Hypotheses (theoretical, hypothetical explanations of observations and measurements of the subject)
• Predictions (reasoning including logical deduction from the hypothesis or theory)
• Experiments (tests of all of the above)
• Analysis & interpretation

Note that the order isn't fixed. I like how Dan Russell (more below) puts it:

The common conception of research is that a scientist first thinks up a hypothesis, then collects data to test it, then writes up a neat analysis confirming or disconfirming the hypothesis. That's beautiful, but it's also almost completely wrong.

When I'm making sense of some complicated area, it's more of a full-contact, sweaty, wrestling-around-with-data kind of thing. Trust me: it's not nearly as antiseptic and passionless as the common conception would have it. This is red-blooded science as played on the field. It's more of a rugby scrum than a still-life chess game.

I'd like a simpler way to say this? How about this: "(In any order) Try things, pay attention, learn from them, and repeat." Do you have a good description?

Examples of experiments

How about some examples? First, if you practice a self-management method like David Allen's Getting Things Done, I'll posit that every project (defined as a multi-step outcome) is an experiment. Why? Because even with the best preparation (see Simple Project Planning For Individuals: A Round-up) things will never go exactly to plan. There's too much variety and too many unanticipated factors to anticipate completely.

In my case, a good example is my switch from ex-NASA engineer and research programmer to productivity consultant (see Commitment Time! (Taking The Big Leap). There's a ton of unknowns and new situations involved, and I'm usually trying something novel daily. It's why I track decisions (see A Key To Continuous Learning: Keep A Decision Log) and what I've learned [7] (see Some Thoughts From Tracking "lessons Learned" For A Year). Actually, this is more like a broad research initiative than a single experiment. It's a direction that involves dozens of on-going projects and experiments like blogging and writing a book. Fun stuff.

How about you? What experiments do you have going on right now?

Questions and Wrap-up

That's my first pass at introducing the ideas around treating life as an experiment. I would love to hear your thoughts, and to get a discussion going in whatever ways come up. Post a comment, send me an email, give me a call, or help me start a discussion group.

Cheers!

References

• [1] Paraphrased. The full passage:
  

  As the true method of knowledge is experiment, the true faculty of knowing must be the faculty which experiences. This faculty I treat of.

  This from All Religions Are One, "The Argument" (1788). See also: All Religions Are One: William Blake (original passage), Blake on Knowledge Through Experience (image), Democracy's Mysticism: Thoughts on "All Religions are One," by Blake (analysis), and William Blake Quotes.
• [2] I've recently become enamored of this term, with Dan Russell's take on it being a good resource to get you thinking: Creating Passionate Users: Sensemaking 1. See also his CHI 2008 Workshop description. Are there any resources you've found helpful?
• [3] See his "Cargo Cult Science" address (pdf and html versions), included in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character).
• [4] A search for experiment yields about 40 posts with the word, and some of my most popular posts are those around self-experimentation, including:
  • Productivity: Actually Getting Things Done With Getting Things Done! Surprises And Learnings From My Implementation.
  • Sales: Induced Personality Disorder, Or: I Tried It, But I'm Not Proud Of It
  • Health: What GTD And Weight Watchers Have In Common, Reflections On Alexander Technique And Personal Productivity (lots of references, actually)
  • Networking: On The Goal Of Meeting Three New People A Week - A Ten Week Retrospective, Networking Surprises - Some Recent Unexpected (but Successful) Outcomes, and A Review Of "How To Make People Like You In 90 Seconds Or Less".
  • Online tools: A Late Adopter's Productivity Experiment With Twitter, Plus Some 140 Word Humor
• [5] From What is Fight-Or-Flight Response?. See also Fight or Flight Response - Psychologist World's Stress: The Fight or Flight Response. Note that this theory's relevance may have changed (see Does "Fight or Flight" Need Updating?).
• [6] I love Wheeler's thought, "If you haven't found something strange during the day, it hasn't been much of a day."
• [7] One lesson that I'm still hit on the head with is: EMPTY YOUR INBOX DAILY. Yes, I know this. Yes, I teach this. And yes, I still get lazy. But there's a cost. A lost investment opportunity, an embarrassing request for something already received, a missed a client follow-up, etc. But don't go too hard on yourself. This stuff requires discipline.

A Matt Update

Much going on here in Matt land, so a little update for you. These all focus on how I can help more people, more broadly. Suggestions and feedback welcome!

• Matt brand: I'm finally getting some clarity on my bigger vision, and how it encompasses productivity. It's still emerging, but it's around providing guidance, tools, and methods for enhancing intellectual performance and happiness. (Related: Genius, Purpose, And Cool Job Descriptions - What Are *you* Built To Do?)
  
• Life as an experiment: Absolutely central to my work is the idea of treating everything in life as an experiment. This is what's emerged since my big leap into consulting (see Commitment Time!). My plan is to own this idea :-) In addition to our book, our plans include discussion groups, podcasts, and more. (Related: Just for fun I've included the essential words [1] my colleague and I came up with that make up the approach.)
  
• Blog: I'll continue to write weekly essays, while expanding the them to match my original "IdeaMatt" direction: Tools and ideas for the terminally curious [2]. I'll be migrating some of this to my new newsletter and others to products (see below), but still giving away lots of content I hope you'll find valuable. I'll also be examining how to tastefully monetize this work. I hope you'll help set the direction via an upcoming survey.
  
• Consulting: I'm continuing to grow my practice, which is the current economic engine [3] that fuels this all. Stay tuned for new products and services (see next).
  
• New services: In addition to my on-site 1:1, group, and workshops, I'll be rolling out new telecoaching offerings, including:
  
  
  
  • Workflow jumpstart (both individuals and group)
    
  • Project planning for individuals (pulling ideas and tools from my research, as referred to in Simple Project Planning For Individuals: A Round-up)
    
  • Daily planning & accountability series (inspired by A Daily Planning Experiment: Two Weeks Of Accountable Rigorous Action)
    
  • Productivity "Checkride" [4] (making sure your existing system is running true, including checking your I/O balance)
    
  • Idea System Assessment & Improvement (processes for capture, organization, re-finding and use of the information we deal with in our daily lives)
    
  • Facilitated book groups (a learning experience around great books and wide domains, with me as your guide - an excuse to keep your mind sharp! [5])
    
  
  
• Products:
  
  
  
  • Workflow self-study program (a self-paced series based on the 100+ page booklet my workshop participants receive, with the option of group telecoaching)
    
  • Productivity assessment and diagnosis tool (a much-expanded version of my GTD Workflow Assessment/Tips Checklist, with targeted content to address trouble areas)
    
  • The Productivity Missing Manual (for anyone familiar with GTD, you'll be very comfortable with this collection of best ideas to solve the issues that come up implementing a system on your own)
    
  
  
• Newsletter: Finally, I'm very excited to be rolling out my newsletter. I've avoided doing Yet Another Time Management Newsletter until I had something unique and valuable to say, but now it's clicked. Look for it soon.
  

Cheers!

References

• [1] The words we came up with included:
  
  
  
  • alternatives
    
  • ambiguity/uncertainty
    
  • assumption
    
  • capture
    
  • collaboration
    
  • compassion
    
  • creativity
    
  • curiosity
    
  • data
    
  • detachment/objectivity
    
  • discovery
    
  • empiricism
    
  • equanimity
    
  • eureka
    
  • experiment
    
  • failure/mistakes
    
  • faith
    
  • flexibility
    
  • gratitude
    
  • happiness
    
  • insight
    
  • method
    
  • mindfulness
    
  • mindset
    
  • observation
    
  • perspective
    
  • playfulness/play
    
  • questions
    
  • risk/courage
    
  • serendipity/synchronicity
    
  • simplicity
    
  • transformation
    
  • zest
    
  
  
• [2] I'm still working on a nice tagline. This particular one is inspired by Dorothy Parker's brilliant

  The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.

  
  
• [3] From Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap.. and Others Don't, there are three intersecting circles required for greatness, including 1) what you are deeply passionate about, 2) what you can be the best in the world at, and 3) what best drives your economic engine.
  
• [4] From the Wikipedia Checkride entry:

  Throughout the check ride, the examinee should be evaluated on the use of the appropriate checklist. After informing the examinee that his/her use of checklist will be evaluated, watch the examinee's use of said checklist. It should be very obvious if the examinee is comfortable using the checklist. Obviously the check list can be used in several different ways. Whether the checklist is used during each step or reviewed to ensure all items are covered after an activity is complete is immaterial. Bottom line, the checklist should be consulted when appropriate. In soaring the use of common take off and landing check lists is common and certainly acceptable.

  
  
• [5] I've been enjoying Jonah Lehrer's work, including the idea that our brains need rigorous workouts to stay in shape. See Aging Gracefully -- It's a Real Workout. He says several studies suggest that it's largely an ancillary benefit of "sustained cognitive engagement," or thinking intensely on a regular basis. Admit it - that's you ;-)
  

Custom workflows for knowledge workers

Knowledge work tends to be unstructured. Specifying a detailed flow of work is sometimes possible, but is probably not the best way to improve a knowledge work process.

This passage comes from Thinking for a Living: How to Get Better Performances And Results from Knowledge Workers, a stimulating [1] read about my "peeps" (i.e., you) and what the highly overused term means. When I read it I thought: That can't be right! Heck, teaching structure (for self-management) is what I do for a living. But after a few seconds of thought I recalled exceptions from my consulting that I'd like to share.

Introduction

When I work with clients I look for opportunities to integrate the general methods I teach with their specific work. When I identify them, we jointly come up with customized systems that work for them. I love this kind of work because it requires creativity, and really streamlines their work. This allows them to think less about mechanics and more about the important stuff - getting insights into the customer's needs, hiring the best person, solving a tough engineering problem, or dreaming up the Next Big Thing for the business.

As Davenport points out, not all jobs are amenable to this kind of analysis, but there are usually parts that can be cleaned up, standardized, or simplified. I'll share three such systems with you in hopes that they'll provide ideas for streamlining your work. The first three are specific ones from clients, and the last is a collection of smaller, generally applicable ones.

(Side note: In The Myth of the Paperless Office, via "In praise of clutter" Economist, 00130613, 12/21/2002, Vol. 365, Issue 8304, there's a fascinating summary of why removing paper from flight controller workflow is so hard. I've excerpted the section below [2].)

Regarding terminology, I consider this kind of personal workflow streamlining (anyone have a better term?) different from automation. I'll give the definition a shot: Workflow streamlining is capturing the steps and states that you regularly encounter to do some aspect of your work. It's about thinking less about the process and making fewer mistakes. In contrast, automation is removing steps you have to take, i.e., compiling many steps into one. It's about thinking not at all about the process.

Finally, a little request: I'd like to reach more readers, so to make this easier I added a "ShareThis" widget at the bottom of my posts. If you think a post is useful, please share it. Thanks!

Questions I'd love to hear your answers to:

• How globally do you think this kind of streamlining applies to professional work?
  
• What are some examples of ways you've been able to streamline parts of your job?
  
• As you go higher up the organization, do the opportunities for this necessarily decrease?
  

Education Coordinator

This client was responsible for handling training requests for a product company. Work would come in as requests that include the type of training and the event's desired date and location. Each request involved a regular sequence of steps, and active requests had corresponding states - New, Waiting for Venue, Waiting for Travel Arrangements, Waiting for Finish, Waiting for Evaluation, etc. After capturing the states and the overall sequence as a checklist [3], we decided each request would be handled as a project with a corresponding paper folder (the client's preference). A printed blank checklist affixed to the cover acted as a kind of "job card" [4], and kicked off a new request. For overall tracking and review we listed each request in the client's master list of projects, which she reviewed frequently during the day. When an event related to a particular project happened, my client would go to the corresponding folder, update her notes, and activate the next step, e.g., making a phone call, sending an email, or arranging travel. Neat!

Human Resources Director

In this case I worked with the HR Director at a mid-sized company that was growing rapidly. She was overloaded by a spate of new hires, so we put into place a simple workflow to streamline that part of her job. Like the previous case, we took advantage of states inherent to the process. In this case for each position to be filled we created six folders [5]:

• Advertising
  
• Completed Interviews
  
• In Process - including Waiting For and Action Support
  
• Interview Packets - grouped by applicant
  
• Not Interviewing - including "maybes"
  
• References - grouped by applicant
  

Controlling these was a checklist that used these folders: First, create and place ad, putting the associated materials into the first folder. Enter Waiting For and calendar reminders. As responses came in they'd go into Interview Packets folder, grouped by applicant. And so on. Again, the point is to identify what's common to the job (or that part of the job) and make a routine of the steps and structure involved. This lets you give the appropriate amount of attention to each aspect without having to reinvent the pieces each time. The plus is this requires less thinking about the process itself, which frees you up to focus on the creative side of the job, e.g., writing the ad and evaluating applicants.

Doctor at a small medical clinic

For variety, the final case is a doctor running a small clinic. She has a staff of four people (e.g., receptionist, office manager, nurse, bookkeeper), and eight treatment rooms. Much of our work was setting up communication flow and boundaries. An important one was the physician's Outbox (on her desk, right under her Inbox - always on top!), which had two uses. First, as she was emptying her inbox the doctor would rapidly decide each item's action [6] and if it could be delegated she would write a quick note directly on it (or on a sticky) and put it in the Outbox. The staff were instructed to empty this box regularly, which made for timely action. (Before, there were delays and lost work.) This enabled a crisper back-and-forth life cycle for a particular item. For example, it might arrive in the mail for the front desk and, while processing it, if the receptionist had questions she'd write a note on it and put it in the doctor's inbox (no need to interrupt her). When the doctor got to it she'd write her answer on it then put it into her Outbox, which a staff member would pick up that day and dispatch appropriately. Some of the items were of the "we'll talk about this during staff meeting" variety, which went with an entry in the doctor's agenda for that person.

This was very different from her previous approach, which was to either not handle the paper at all (activating a "nag" mode from the front desk), to fill it out then return it opportunistically (that is, when she thought of it), or to interrupt her staff when one of them walked by. As you can imagine, each of these had consequences that created waste. Even more satisfying was how my client was able to focus on the kinds of staff interactions that meant most to her (education and support, for example), rather than these mundane ones. Everything went smoother afterwards.

(Note: She and I talked a good deal about who should be receiving what information. Typically my clients are getting a lot of incoming that should be going to staff, or not coming in at all. This quickly becomes apparent when clearing paper and email backlogs. "Why am I getting this at all?" is a good question to ask.)

Smaller Workflows

Beyond these larger, more specific "checklist/state" flows, there are often opportunities to streamline frequent small jobs. They mostly come down to having a task-specific work station and a corresponding checklist. Liz Davenport puts it well in Order from Chaos: "When you sit down on your desk to work, you need to have all the tools you use at appropriate places." Following are a few to get you thinking.

• Balancing your checking account: Although some think balancing accounts is a thing of the past, I've found the state of the art in financial software hasn't yet automated the process. So I was still stuck with a rather unpleasant 45 minutes [7] each month of processing receipts, verifying transactions and amounts, and entering categories for tax purposes. The first step in improving this was to breaking the process down into its atomic kinds of tasks: entering recepts and reconciling. My thought was to do the former each week, which would simplify the latter and make it purely making sure the statement matched. It worked great. My work station in this case was simply an "Unprocessed Receipts" folder in a dedicated shelf of my stacking trays. Every day I toss into it receipts from my wallet or online orders, and once a week my calendar reminds me to enter the current batch into the program and file or recycle them (I have a little checklist for this). When my account's monthly statement arrives it goes onto my actions list (it takes longer than a few minutes to do), with the statement itself going into my Action Support folder to get it off my desk until I need it. This eliminated my resistance to doing this, and made it easier and more pleasant overall. A win.
  
• Sending snail mail: Whether you like paper correspondence or not, it's hard to do away with it. And in the case of writing personal notes, I like using paper. It's my way of staying in touch with clients (past, present, and future) and expressing gratitude. The work station in this case is an at-hand drawer of all needed supplies including pens, envelopes (including padded ones for my Super Spy Night Pens :-), note cards, business cards, stamps, postal scale, and pre-printed return labels. Make sure you have close by a copy of your postal rates.
  

An unexpected side effect of these I noticed is that I enjoyed each task more. I think it has to do with the comfort of the routine [8]. Each felt like a little ritual, and made the task a bit more sacred, if that makes sense. For example, when writing notes I'm not scrabbling around looking for stamps and a card. Instead I take a breath, relax for a minute, and jump in.

References

• [1] A funny bit of synchronicity: While searching for Davenport's book I came across She Comes First: The Thinking Man's Guide to Pleasuring a Woman. It's now on order from my library :-) Not sure about the cover, though.
  
• [2]

  Air-traffic control, for example, does not, at first glance, seem a likely candidate. The business of monitoring incoming aircraft and predicting their future course, which depends on measurement and mathematics, sounds as though it should be entirely electronic. Yet paper remains an essential part of the air-traffic control system in Britain.
  
  Each air-traffic controller works in a team of about five staff. Information about each incoming plane in that controller's sector is printed out on a piece of paper - a flight progress strip, about eight inches long and an inch deep. As the plane moves across the controller's sector, the strip is annotated - with, for instance, speed or altitude changes. On the basis of those annotations, different team members can do their job - working out, for instance, the implications of those changes for the next sector. In a busy sector, one team may have 50 strips on display.
  
  Many attempts have been made to get rid of the flight progress strips. The only way of doing away with them, it turns out, is to give air-traffic controllers smaller areas to cover. For larger areas - which means a more complex job - the paper strips are essential. "They are a jolly efficient means of annotating information," says Richard Wright of Britain's National Air Traffic Services. "The controllers can read them at a glance. If we replace them it will have to be with something better. They will be with us for some time yet."

  
  
• [3] Checklists are useful, and one of the most-blogged about productivity topics. I break them down into two types: "Do" and "Bring." The former is a list of actions you repeat every time you do a task. See my checking account balancing example above. The latter type is useful for prepping for events of a type, e.g., leaving on a trip or packing equipment for a gig. For complex activities you'll often use a combination, such as in my 1:1 consults and workshops. Each step often initiates a back-and-forth sequence of actions and waiting tasks. For fun check out The Checklist: Reporting & Essays for a history of their use in medicine.
  
• [4] Do you have a good name for these? I think the idea comes from manufacturing, esp. the lean world, but I couldn't find a solid reference. The closest I've read about is the turtle sheets Len Merson uses for each task in The Instant Productivity Toolkit. Also: I'm not sure why, but this reminds me of the Noguchi filing system. Probably due to its having a folder with the title and date on the front... The original page is gone, so more is found here, here, and here.
  
• [5] As is typical with the state of the art, we had to suffer with the typical triad of paper, email, and disk folders. They key, though, is uniforming naming.
  
• [6] An executive behavior common to all highly productive people: Decide, let it go, don't think about it, and recover/adapt as needed.
  
• [7] Yea, I timed it :-)
  
• [8] I'm interested in trying Ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arrangement. To reduce stress and be more present, a daily ritual like this will be welcome.