Thanks for making Matt's Idea Blog a top personal productivity site!

I've recently had the honor of being included in some "top productivity blogs" listings, and I wanted to say thanks to you all for continuing to read, comment, and recommend my blog to others. Some of the listings include:

• The Best Productivity Related Blogs
  
• The Top 50 Blogs That Will Unleash Your Motivation
  
• The Top 50 Productivity Blogs (most of which you haven.t heard about)
  
• Top ten blogs on time management
  
• Personal Productivity Required Reading List: 100 Kick-butt Lifehacking Blogs
  
• Recommended Reading - great resources, Getting Things Done & Productivity/Personal Development
  
• Huge List Of GTD & Productivity Sites/Blogs
  
• The Top 10 GTD & Productivity Sites/Blogs

I want to grow my readership, and I'd be very grateful if you'd spread the word to people you think would be interested in the topics covered here.


As an aside, I'm still on vacation, but I'll leave you with a few recent quasi consulting-related photos from the last few NASA consulting gigs, as well as other fun self-employed successes. (Thanks to Eric Mack - who's also working with NASA - for asking.)

misc pics 2007-08-19

Related links

• NASA - STS-118
  
• Space Station Processing Facility (SSPF)
  
• NASA - Welcome Columbus
  
• KSC Payload Processing Flow
  
• NASA - Kibo Japanese Experiment Module
  
• Specialized Epic Comp Bicycle
  
• Basic Processing Tools for Personal Productivity/Workflow
  
• Chocosphere fine chocolate

Deep Thoughts on personal productivity by Jack Handey

Note: I'll be taking a break from blogging for the next three weeks. Next week I'll be putting on three full-day workshops at the Kennedy Space Center. I'm taking my family, enjoying the toasty weather (hey - it's even hotter at home), and if we're lucky we'll get to see a launch! Then we're off to Canada for two weeks for vacation.

I'm inviting more humor into my life (part of my effort to enjoy the ride), and I re-kindled my love affair with the brilliant humorist Jack Handy (Wikipedia entry here). Not that I'm actually in love with him, but I think he's funny. (I'm thinking of adding these to my famous quote cards workshop activity...)

I just received my shipment of his "Deep thoughts" books (business expense), and I discovered his wisdom around personal productivity, and life in general. Below are some of his observations I thought you'd like. At the bottom you'll find links to his The New Yorker short stories. Enjoy!

Sources

• Deep Thoughts
  
• Deepest Thoughts: So Deep They Squeak
  
• Deeper Thoughts: All New, All Crispy
  
• Lost Deep Thoughts: Don't Fight the Deepness
  
• Fuzzy Memories

On personal productivity

Mental "stuff"

I didn't want to cut down that tree. But I had no choice. It was growing right where I'm going to build my house, if I can ever get enough money together to build it and if I also have enough money to buy the land. That's another thing: I need to find out who owns that land.

Related: Personal productivity, IBMs (not the company), and NUTs: Some surprises about the brain.

Delegation

I think in one of my previous lives I was a mighty king, because I like people to do what I say.

Project management, completion

A lot of times when you first start out on a project you think, This is never going to be finished. But then it is, and you think, Wow, it wasn't even worth it.

Internal commitments (open loops)

It's funny how two simple words, 'I promise,' will stall people for a while.

Prioritization and agility

If you're being chased by an angry bull, and then you notice you're also being chased by a swarm of bees, it doesn't really change things. Just keep on running.

Eliminating time-wasters

When I think of all the hours and hours of my life I have spent watching television, it makes me realize, Man, I am really rich with television.

Reading

There's a world that we know nothing about, that we can only imagine. And that is the world of books.

Related: A reading workflow based on Leveen's "Little Guide", How to read a lot of books in a short time.

Stress management

You can't tell me that cowboys, when they're branding cattle, don't sort of 'accidentally' brand each other every once in a while. It's their way of letting off stress.

Perfectionism

If you drop your keys into a river of molten lava, let 'em go, because, man, they're gone.

New Yorker Articles

• "Ideas for Paintings", 2006 short piece in The New Yorker
  
• "What I'd Say To The Martians", 2005 short piece in The New Yorker
  
• "My First Day In Hell", 2006 short piece in The New Yorker
  
• "This is no Game", 2006 short piece in The New Yorker
  
• "My Nature Documentary", July 2, 2007 short piece in The New Yorker

More wisdom - Broader life issues

Goal setting

It's easy to sit there and say you'd like to have more money. And I guess that's what I like about it. It's easy. Just sitting there, rocking back and forth, wanting that money.

Pace of life

As the light changed from red to green to yellow and back to red again, I sat there thinking about life. Was it nothing more than a bunch of honking and yelling? Sometimes it seemed that way.

Gratitude

If I had the time to sit down and write a thank-you note to everyone who sent me a nice, expensive present, what a wonderful world that would be!

Related: The power of a note, On the power of saying "Thank you", Living in the moment, preventing regret, and appreciating life, Use Gmail's "star" to highlight your good news.

Personal development

If you think a weakness can be turned into a strength, I hate to tell you this, but that's another weakness.

Public speaking

If you're ever giving a speech, when you start out, act nervous and get mixed up a little bit. Then, as you go along, get better and better. Then, at the end, give off a white, glowing light and have rays shoot out of you.

Body-mind connection

Life is a constant battle between the heart and the brain. But guess who wins. The skeleton.

One time I don't think you should listen to your body is when it says 'I'm dead.'

Related: Reflections on Alexander Technique and personal productivity, How to use the "I'm not going to ____" mind hack.

Life perspective, higher elevations

Whenever I start thinking that I am not living up to my potential, I remind myself of the old farmer and his fight to the death with the insane pig. It's an exciting story, and it takes my mind off all this 'potential' business.

Training, workshops

If you ever teach a yodeling class, probably the hardest thing is to keep the students from just trying to yodel right off. You see, we build to that.

If you had a school for professional fireworks people, I don't think you could cover fuses in just one class. It's just too rich a subject.

Life purpose

Perhaps, if I am very lucky, the feeble efforts of my lifetime will someday be noticed, and maybe, in some small way, they will be acknowledge as the greatest works of genius ever created by Man.

What's your feed reading speed?

If you can't measure it, you can't manage it. -- Peter Drucker? [1], [2]

As a follow-up to Afraid to click? How to efficiently process your RSS feeds I decided to time a few of my RSS processing and organizing [3] sessions. I've included the results below, with average time spent/post in bold. (Note: See the above article for the simplified workflow I use.)

Here are the results:

Test 1

#    : 139 posts
avg  : 33 minutes / 139 posts -> 14 seconds/post

Test 2

#    : 81 posts
avg  : 26 minutes / 81 posts -> 19 seconds/post

Test 3

#    : 242 posts
avg  : 43 minutes / 242 posts -> 11 seconds/post

Test 4

#    : 132 posts
avg  : 22 minutes / 132 posts -> 10 seconds/post

hits : 24
7 new to-read articles, 4 posts to reply to

Crucial to rapid processing is having a great follow-up system - especially an Actions list (I have a "To-Print" sub-category) and a Read/Review cache.

On curious thing I noticed: When I'm timing myself I'm much more aware of the two minute rule, which results in a more focused, more efficient session.


So how does this compare with your speed? I'd be very curious to hear some of your stats!

Note: If you try this experiment for yourself, you might also want to track how many "hits" you had, i.e., how many of the total # of posts passed the first phase. In Firefox you can get a quick count of open tabs by closing the window. It will ask you to confirm, and the message contains the count: "You are about to close ____ tabs. Are you sure you want to continue?". WARNING: It's possible to turn this off, so first do a dry-run, or bookmark the group of tabs (control-shift-D in Firefox) just in case!


References

• [1] This quote is often attributed to Peter Drucker, but a bit of digging indicates it's not that clear. Searching for the phrase - and the original "If you can measure it, you can mange it" - yields some surprises. For example, A Hacker's Guide to Project Management credits it to Tom DeMarco, who starts with it in his book Controlling Software Projects: Management, Measurement, and Estimates.
  
  However, going back a bit, the book Measuring the Value of Information Technology says it was Lord Kelvin who originated it:

  It was the scientist Lord Kelvin who said, "When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely in your thoughts advanced to the stage of science." Later, this statement was abbreviated to "if you can measure it, you can manage it," and "if you cannot measure it, you cannot manage it."

  BUT, even further back the authors of Geography Matters! state "The Renaissance astronomer Rhaticus suggested that if you can measure something, then you have some control over it." Wikipedia has more at Rheticus.
  
• [2] You might also enjoy To Improve Productivity, Measure It First.
  
• [3] More at How to process stuff - A comparison of TRAF, the "Four Ds", and GTD's workflow diagram.
  
• [4] For bloggers this is why you should use great titles (see 8 Ways of Creating Compelling Blog Post Titles). Sadly, I admit I should use more care in titles. For example, instead of Four small Gmail tweaks Google could make to increase user productivity, it should have been more dramatic, e.g., "Four small Gmail changes that could save the world $500M" :-) Oh well, something for my lessons learned file!
  
• [5] Exceptions: Email-based feeds, which have no corresponding URL to view - must be read in situ. See Move email-based subscriptions to RSS for why you should not be receiving news via email.
  

How to use the "I'm not going to ____" mind hack

I've been collecting mind hacks, by which I mean surprising little tricks or abilities of our minds that are based on psychological insights. That I'm fascinated by them isn't surprising - I spent 20 years doing AI programming (no I don't have a Lisp machine at home, but it would be cool...), and modern personal productivity methods like Getting Things Done are found on this one:

The mind can't let go of something without a sense of closure, via renegotiation, trusted external capture, or completion.

There's a great book about them called Mind Performance Hacks: Tips & Tools for Overclocking Your Brain [1], but I want to share one that's repeatedly whacked me on the head [2] recently:

The mind's fear response can be bypassed with "I'm not going to ____" (fill in the blank).

The best description I've found is in Mark Forster's book Do It Tomorrow and Other Secrets of Time Management [3]:

The easiest way for the rational brain to trick the reactive brain is to be subtle: convince it there is no threat by pretending to yourself that you are not going to do the task.

For example, suppose you need to get cracking on writing a complex report, but you've been having trouble with procrastination. Apply the hack by saying to yourself "I'm not really going to write that report now, but I'll just get out the file." This works because, using Forster's terminology, the irrational brain can be lied to by posing scenarios that seem less threatening. The thinking is that once you get moving on the small step (which your brain doesn't resist) momentum is much easier.

However, I think this is actually a combination of two hacks, the second being (from One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way):

Very small steps disarm the brain's fear response.

As Maurer puts it, "All changes, even the positive ones, are scary. Attempts to reach goals through radical or revolutionary means often fail because they heighten fear. But the small steps of Kaizen disarm the brain's fear response, stimulating rational thought and creative play." Whew!


The final connection to this hack comes from the world of Alexander Technique [4], which is based on the idea of the mind-body system being a Black box that resists direct control. Suppose you have shoulder pain when you use your right arm. To fix it, the natural inclination would be to force the shoulder or arm to work better. Good thinking but, guess what? Doesn't work. We didn't learn to control our bodies that way, and we can't change them that way either. We don't know what "better" is! It's kinda like Einstein's thought that "Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them." Instead we have to re-learn using our bodies.

It's a big topic, but one mind hack that's taught is - surprise! -

The mind/body's habitual response can be bypassed with "I'm not going to ____" (fill in the blank).

This is the inhibition portion of the inhibition-direction principle, and might work like this for the shoulder pain example: Before you lift your arm (in fact before you even think of lifting your arm) say to yourself "I'm not going to lift my arm." This works because it helps to reset your habitual use of the shoulder. Massively simplifying here, but it's pretty neat!


So how about you? Got any favorite productivity mind hacks?


Related

In addition to the classic sites Lifehacker and lifehack.org, which both carry mind hack posts, check out Mind Hacks blog.


References

• [1] How can I not love a book with entries like "Remember 10 Things to Bring," "Catch Your Ideas," "Force Your Connections," and "Don't Overthink It"!? Chapter excerpts are at the O'Reilly Bookstore and Google has it on their Book Search.)
  
• [2] See A Whack On The Side of the Head: How You Can Be More Creative, and esp. Von Oech's Creative Whack Pack (you know I love cards - see Personal Productivity Playing Cards!)
  
• [3] You might enjoy my interview with the author at A conversation with Mark Forster. You'll find lots of good productivity tips at his blog Get Everything Done.
  
• See Reflections on Alexander Technique and personal productivity, and esp. the book How You Stand, How You Move, How You Live: Learning the Alexander Technique to Explore Your Mind-Body Connection and Achieve Self-Mastery.
  

Four small Gmail tweaks Google could make to increase user productivity

I'm a grateful Gmail user (my main email address forwards to my Gmail account), and I've been a satisfied user for the past few years. While I don't use Gmail to implement my Getting Things Done system [1], I've noticed four things that, if corrected, could increase productivity for all users. See what you think!

• Make it easy to edit subjects
  
• Allow search without seeing the inbox
  
• Simplify adding contacts
  
• Allow manual or longer retrieval delay

Make it easy to edit subjects

One of the best practices for email [2] is to edit the subject line of threads whose topic migrates. You know - it started out "let's bike this weekend" and after four times around it should be "here's Bob's phone #"! Doing this is possible in Gmail, but it's easy to miss because a) subjects aren't clearly shown, and b) the editing feature isn't obvious. Luckily, it's easy when you know where to look (see the screen shot to the right).

Related: Hanford Lemoore has a good summary of how confusing this is in Gmail: Arrow of Mystery and Subject Line (scroll down to The Subject line of Mystery).

Google's official instructions are here: How do I change the subject of a message I'm replying to?


Allow search without seeing the inbox

Often I'll need to search messages while completing an action, but Gmail's "home" page when you start it is the Inbox. Why is this a problem? Because it's sooooo tempting to just check the inbox - just for a minute - and then you've wasted tons of time and lost your focus.

Instead, it would be nice to configure Gmail to start somewhere else ("Contacts" or "All Mail"?) to avoid the allure. I've read that Google Desktop lets you index Gmail messages, but I really like to avoid installing Windows programs if I can help it.


Simplify adding contacts

Regarding contact systems, I strongly recommend that clients a) have one system to store names, address, emails, and phone numbers, and b) update them religiously (e.g., check and edit every time new data comes in). I use Gmail's contacts feature for mine (prior to this I had them in three different places), but looking up and editing is quite painful.

For example, to look up a contact:

1. Click the quick contacts input box and type enough letters to pop up the desired contact.
2. Move the mouse down to the contact of interest.
3. Carefully move the most straight to the right.
4. Move right to "__'s profile."
5. Move right to "Contact details" and click.

Step 3. is very error-prone because it's so easy to slide off target at any point during the process (see the screen shot to the right).


Allow manual or longer retrieval delay

Another best practice to avoid the inbox's siren's song is to change how often the program checks for new messages. The default is often quite frequent (I believe Outlook is 10 minutes, and Gmail seems faster than that), so it's smart to change it to be completely manual (i.e., you tell it when to check), or at least setting it to wait longer between, say one hour.

Sadly, I could find no way to change this in Gmail.


Wrap up

If you think these changes aren't worth it, just multiply the number of Gmail users [3] by time saved (say one minute a week per user?) by average $/hour, and you'll see some very large savings are possible.

As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts. In particular, can you recommend good books on email? I've found a few [4], but I've not read any of them.


References

• [1] I track action in my paper planner (see Fare thee well Hipster PDA - I barely knew ye), and use the "Action Support" style of email integration.
  
• [2] When I talk about email in workshops, I say it's more "boot camp" than "charm school." By that I mean it's more important they learn a solid system for managing email (which is consistent with how they handle all the other stuff in their lives) before worrying about tips and tricks for making email communication more effective. The latter are important too, but need to come after the basics. That said, here are some great resources for once you've taken control of your inbox:
  
  
  • Hacking Email: 99 Email Security and Productivity Tips
    
  • 7 Ways to Ensure Your E-mail Gets Read
    
  • 12 tips for better e-mail etiquette
    
  • Write e-mail messages that get attention
    
  • Respond effectively to e-mail messages
    
  • E-mail checklist
  
  
• [3] I couldn't find an official number from Google, but I've seen ~50 million in a few places (though that number is disputed to be too high).
  
• [4] An Amazon search turned up:
  
  
  • Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home
    
  • E-Mail: A Write It Well Guide--How to Write and Manage E-Mail in the Workplace
    
  • The Hamster Revolution: How to Manage Your Email Before It Manages You
  
  

Related Gmail productivity tips

Following are just a few tips for practicing GTD within Gmail. Please share your favorites!

• Taking Gmail beyond email
  
• Handling Waiting For items in Gmail
  
• GTDInbox :: Firefox Add-ons
  
• Getting Things Done with Gmail