Genuine Curiosity

Author Dwayne Melancon is always on the lookout for new things to learn. An ecclectic collection of postings on personal productivity, travel, good books, gadgets, leadership & management, and many other things.

 

Learn a 5-Step Weekly Review: You’ll love it.

As I mentioned in "My GTD Odyssey"), I've been using aspects of "Total Workday Control" to augment my personal Getting Things Done playbook.


Short recap


I was challenged by context lists alone so I used TWC's task processing method to assign dates to my tasks so they'd show up on my "dashboard" (example in the graphic at right) every day to remind me what I wanted on my candidate tasks list for the day. This means I run through holdover tasks every morning and either:



  1. change their date to today's if I still want to consider them for today
  2. change their date to a future date if I want to have them pop up in the future
  3. remove the date so they go back to my Master Task list so I can reconsider them at my next weekly review

This system works great for me, and quite a few others who've taken it on.


Speed dating in Outlook


OK, now on to the speed dating aspect. One of the things about using this technique is that you need to enter lots of dates every day. I share an office with a guy named Gene, who uses a similar methodology to mine and he was complaining about how tedious it was to select dates in Outlook using their drop-down calendar.


I've been using a much easier method to assign dates. Gene thought it was useful, so I figured I'd share it here. Rather than typing the full date, or using the dropdown list, let's look at some other options.

In any date field in Outlook (tasks, calendar, reminders, you name it), the following shortcuts will work (all of these are based on Outlook 2003 - Outlook 2007 may have even added a few). Note that you don't have to worry about capitalization, and it understands that "2" and "two" have the same meaning.





































What you can typeWhat Outlook will do with it
Enter a number in a date field (like "12")Outlook will convert this to the next "day 12 of the month" - if the 12th has already passed in the current month, this will change it to the 12th of the following month.
TodayConverts to today's date. You can also type "now" to get the same effect.
TomorrowConverts to tomorrow's date. You can also type "day" to get the same effect.
Relative dates

Outlook understands quite a bit here. You can type things like the following, and Outlook will do the translation:



  • Thursday
  • Next Thursday
  • Day after tomorrow
  • 2 weeks
  • 2 months
  • Next year
  • 2 years

You can also use this to fill in dates in the past like "yesterday" and "last Thursday"


You can get fancy, too - type "One week before valentines day" to set a handy reminder to get a gift for someone.

Day and month name shortcuts

While you can type "Next Thursday" as in the previous example, you can also type the day and month abbreviations:



  • Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat, Sun
  • Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
Holiday names (like "Christmas" or "Valentine's Day")Outlook will fill in the correct day for the holiday. It doesn't know that many, and this is more a novelty in my opinion. Others it knows include Halloween, Independence Day, and New Years Day. There may be more, but I haven't discovered them.
Time unit abbreviations
  • "mo" == month
  • "y" == year
  • "d" == day
  • "w" == week
    • Calendar math expressions

    If you want to do something a certain number of days before or after a date, you can use simple math expressions to tell Outlook when to schedule things. Some examples:



    • "tomorrow + 2 weeks" or "tomorrow 2 weeks" translates to two weeks from tomorrow
    • "Christmas 2d" will schedule something 2 days after Christmas

    Note - Outlook likes the plus sign, but doesn't like the minus sign, because it is too confusing for dates (12/24 and 12-24 are the same to Outlook). You have to use "One week before..." or "3 days before..." kinds of language like that described above in "Relative dates"

    Time unit abbreviations

    • "mo" == month
    • "y" == year
    • "d" == day
    • "w" == week
    Holiday names (like "Christmas" or "Valentine's Day")Outlook will fill in the correct day for the holiday. It doesn't know that many, and this is more a novelty in my opinion. Others it knows include Halloween, Independence Day, and New Years Day. There may be more, but I haven't discovered them.


    Those are the ones I know about - do you know others? As you can see, some of these take longer to type than enter the date ("7/4" is much easier than "Independence Day"), but some of them like "today" or "2w" can save lots of time when scheduling activities, tasks, or other things requiring dates in Outlook.


    Learn a 5-Step Weekly Review: You’ll love it.

    I mentioned time auditing in my last post and in the past I've written about unplanned work's dastardly effects on productivity, and the power of time auditing (see "Related items" at the end of this post for links) . As I do from time to time, I have recently caught myself wondering, "Where does the time go?" The time is upon me again, so I'm starting another "time audit" using a traditional approach to time auditing described in Neil Fiore's classic "The Now Habit," (reviewed here).

    If you're interested in time auditing, here are some thoughts that may help.

    Time Auditing basics

    Time auditing is a very simple thing to do, but it requires some discipline. Here are some tips:

    • Plan to stick with the time audit for at least a week. Two weeks is ideal.
    • Decide whether you want to track your time only at work, or all the time (i.e. work and personal). The "whole life" time audit is very powerful, but is a lot more work.
    • Decide how you will record your time - you can keep a written list, or record your activities electronically.
      • For best results, pick a method that allows you to record your activities all the time. The more complicated your method, the less likely you are to do it - so make it fast and simple.
        • I suggest paper for the "whole life" audit, since you can carry a small notebook around with you all the time and record your whole day's activities. Obviously, the paper approach is also good for "work only" audits.
        • You can record things on your computer, if that enables you to track everything you do.
          • If you spend all your time at your computer, you might try this free, web-based time tracking tool. Or, just keep a Word doc open and create a running list of activities in a document.
        • A PDA can work, if you find an easy way to track your time. I tried this method once and abandoned it - I found it to be difficult due to the time required to note times, write out.
    • Find a way to remind yourself to record your tasks, particularly in the beginning. I sometimes use the countdown timer on my watch by setting it to go off every 20 minutes to I can write down what I've been doing since the last time it beeped. After a couple of days, I don't really need the timer any more.
    • Be fairly detailed in recording your activities, particularly about recording when you change tasks - the amount of time you spend on a particular task will be important when you review the log, as will tracking how often you change from one activity to another. Track things like email, reading blogs and feeds, web surfing, making phone calls, daydreaming, goofing off, eating, going to the bathroom, getting coffee, etc.

    For businesses, auditing is easy if they have merchant accounts set up to accept credit cards as a form of payment from their customers. Our credit card services keep a log of all your transactions and make auditing easier than ever!

    Analyze your logs

    • At the end of a week, go through and tally up how much time you spent on specific categories of activities. When you review your logs, the categories will "suggest" themselves, but try to lump activities into as few buckets as possible. For example, you might have categories like:
      • AccountingbookProcrastinating / goofing off
      • Phone calls
      • Eating
      • Project work
      • Meetings
      • Commuting
      • etc.
    • Figure out which categories take up the largest percentage of your time, then do more detailed analysis of those categories. This is particularly useful for categories that are "time wasters" or unproductive for you.

    Learn stuff

    • How does what you actually did compare to what you intended to do (or what you thought you did)?
    • What bad habits are wasting your time?
    • What interruptions are making you unproductive?
    • What habits are working well?
    • What changes can you make to get rid of your unproductive aspects, while increasing or nurturing your productive activities?
    • What negative-energy activities can you eliminate?
    • Are you spending enough time on important activities like:
      • important tasks & projects
      • managing up
      • managing down
      • time with your family
      • time with your boss
      • time learning and developing your skills
      • exercising

    You may learn some very useful things during a personal time audit - I highly recommend it. By the way - if you have personal time audit tips of your own, please share them!

    Related links:

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    Productivity and Efficiency Mojo

    A couple of productivity-related items have come my way recently that I think are well worth sharing.

    Time Management Manifesto

    The first item is a manifesto that Francis Wade has written at ChangeThis, called "On Time Management: Toss Away the Tips, Find the Fundamentals." Great stuff - click through, vote and encourage him to write it.  [NOTE: The manifest has expired - click through the link below to see how this guy thinks]

    Francis lives in Jamaica where he can truly enjoy all the free time he creates with his time management kung-fu. If you want to see more about how Francis's head is wired, you can see some of the concepts he's developing on his blog.

    Enjoy!

    Automate your grocery list-making

    If you're tired of writing and re-writing your shopping lists (and you've got some cash to spend to solve this problem), you should check out "SmartShopper." This is a device you can hang on your fridge to capture your needed items as they make themselves apparent.

    You press the Record button, it listens to what you say, it shows you what it thinks you said and asks you to confirm, then stores a running list of items you need. Then, when you're ready to go shopping, you press the print button and it prints out a categorized list (click here for a sample).

    It has a glossary of about 2500 common grocery items, along with a bunch of common errands ("Go to the dry cleaners" for example) so you can use it to manage your list of errands. And, you can add your own items to the database if your item isn't found.

    It's pretty cool (you can see an online demo on the SmartShopper site) but it's spendy - $150 at this writing (though I found SmartShopper on Amazon for $131.15, with free shipping for Amazon Prime members like me). If list creation is a real pain for you, it may be worth it. If you get one, let me know how it works.

    Read More

    Back in the box

    Last night, I had a discussion about time boxing with my wife, who's trying to keep all of her volunteer activities from consuming too much time. It's easy to perpetually do "just one more thing" and spend way more time than you intended on an activity, and I thought she could use time boxing to help her contain her time investment.

    I pointed her at Dave Cheong's article on the subject, but she was looking for something shorter and more prescriptive so I thought I'd take a stab at a "Cliff's notes" overview of the basics of time boxing.

    What is time boxing?

    At its simplest, time boxing is the technique of declaring a finite time period to work on a task or project, then getting as much focused work done toward the task or project during that finite period of time. In essence, "I'm going to do as much work as I can on project x during the next 30 minutes," then stopping work when that 30 minutes is up.

    Essentially, time boxing is about "I'll work until the appointed time is up," and not "I'll work til I get this done."

    Why time boxing?

    Time boxing creates artificial "sprints" of focus and intensity, and helps limit the amount of time you spend on any single activity. It can help with any activity - the ones you love (to keep you from going overboard), as well as the ones you dread (to help you see the light at the end of the tunnel).

    How do you time box?

    1. Start with your goals and big projects
    2. Create a list of sub-goals or sub projects
    3. Identify "next actions" you need or want to complete
    4. Pick out a significant next action
      Note: I find it helpful to start with a critical path item (a "constraint") or an item I would rather avoid.
    5. Estimate and schedule an appropriate block of time that you will block out everything and do nothing but work on that task or segment of the project. (make a note of your estimate and progress you expect to make - you'll need it in step 8).
    6. When that block of time comes, set a timer and work diligently on that task for the entire block of time - don't dawdle and don't stop until a) the time is up, or b) the task is complete.
    7. When the time is up, record your progress and make a note of what's left to do.
    8. Compare what you got done to what you expected to get done - how well did you estimate?

    That's it in a nutshell. By doing this, you'll be amazed at how much you can get done through these "sprints" of focus. And the lightweight analysis (steps 5 and 8) will help you get better at estimating over time.

    Does time boxing work for you? Any tips to share? I'd love to hear them.

    Related items

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