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.

 

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!

Funny how time flies...

A friend of mine pointed out a very cool Firefox add-in called MeeTimer that I really think is a good idea. If you've ever spent waaay too much time on YouTube after someone sent you a link to a video, you should check this out. Same goes for getting sucked into web "research" that causes hours to go by without you noticing.

What's MeeTime do? Well, I think they describe it pretty well on their site:

"MeeTimer has a simple role: it records where you spend your time online. It does it in a rather useful way, by allowing you to group websites into activities (e.g. Facebook = procrastination; Gmail = communication) so you can make sense of where your time is going. Finally, it accumulates time spent on a site over the course of a day, so when you think "just another 2 mins won't hurt" you realise that actually, yes, it will ;)"

Meetimer provides some easy-to-understand reporting to make it easy to tell what's sucking your time online, and they provide some good tips for reducing procrastination online.

And, if reporting isn't enough for you, you can configure MeeTimer to popup a warning dialog when you spend too much time on a particular site.

Like most Firefox add-ins it's free, though the author does accept donations if you find that this tool is useful (and you probably will). If you're a Firefox user and want to reduce the time you waste online, install MeeTimer right now.

Read More

Manage your energy - not your time

Am I getting a cosmic nudge? I am in the midst of reading a great book called "Finding Your Focus Zone" which is about managing your energy levels to achieve maximum productivity. I'll probably review it here at some point, as I really like it.

Then yesterday on the plane, I was reading my latest issue of the Harvard Business Review, and there is an article called, "Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time," which has a different take on a similar concept. Both are well written, well researched, and seem to have some tips I can really use to maintain my energy levels, focus, and productivity at work. They also both deal with ways to combat procrastination.

The HBR article is available right now as free content (you will be asked to "Agree" to their terms and conditions but you don't have to pay), so there is no reason for you to procrastinate - click on over and read it.

You can also see how doomed you are with the HBR's online questionnaire, "Are You Headed for an Energy Crisis?"

These resources provide some good information and advice for even the most productive among us. Enjoy!

Read More

Personal quarterly objectives

Many of us work in places that use quarterly objectives (aka MBO's, or Management By Objectives). These are typically a list of 3-5 "targets" to be achieved within a given quarter. They are a great tool for guiding focus and prioritization, and provide a means to review how well you did at the end of the quarter.

Why not move to an MBO-like model for your personal development? It's easy - at the beginning of a quarter, get into the habit of stepping back and contemplating what you want to get done during the next quarter.

Here are some tips and tricks to increase the effectiveness of this approach:

  1. Keep the list short - 3 to 5 objectives are about right.
  2. Write down your personal MBO's using the "SMART" formula:
    • Specific - make sure you are very clear and explicit about what you want to achieve (practice your outcome-centric visualization.
    • Measurable - make sure there is a way (preferrably objective, and not subjective) to measure your progress and success.
    • Achievable - Are the objectives ones that you can actually attain?
    • Realistic - Dreaming is great, but do you have the ability and resources to succeed?
    • Time-bound -have you set a target date by when you will achieve the outcome?
  3. Review your objectives regularly (some people like to hang the list near their desk. I've also heard of people who keep a copy of their list on the mirror in their bathroom so they see it every morning when they get ready.
  4. At the end of the quarter, review and rate your outcomes. Also reflect on what you've learned along the way.

I'd love to hear whether you've every utilized a similar approach, and would like to hear any additional ideas you have to share.

Read More

Me on GTD Update: -Capturing

Update: I've received some great suggestions and links to other resources in the comments to this post - check them out and feel free to add your own tips and experiences.

You should also check out a great riff on this topic by John at Success Begins Today [link]

-- Dwayne

As a long-time Getting Things Done (GTD) follower, I love it and I hate it. I love it because it's simple, powerful, and flexible. I hate it because it's too flexible. I've had a hard time getting a specific workflow down and sticking to it. GTD doesn't have rigid "props" for me to use as mental queues like many other systems (with the Franklin-Covey systems, you can "ground yourself" to the daily task list - with GTD, there are a number of lists).

Reminder Part of my new year reset is to try to streamline my use of GTD and establish better rituals to help me keep up a consistent approach to evaluating my choices, scheduling, etc. (if you've visited here in the past, you'll know that this sort of thing is a recurring theme for me - I'm a bit of a GTD binge user).

If you have experiences or resources that have helped you create a set of daily habits for GTD, please let me know.

Please note that I'm not after yet another copy of David Allen's GTD Workflow chart - I know that one very well. What I am looking for is something that provides periodic nudges to condition me to automatically look to the lists, etc. as I find myself in between scheduled tasks. Something about the way I'm wired causes me to drift away from my lists, and I think I need some cues to bring me back to them.

This might be easier if I had the same routine every day, but I travel a lot and end up doing a lot of opportunistic things based on the work that I do. Rituals that will work regardless of location, time, etc. would be best. Other considerations are that I work with Outlook as my calendaring program (synced to my Treo 650 via Goodlink), and am using KeyNotes and KeyTasks to sync my notes and tasks with Outlook (Goodlink doesn't handle categories - that's a fatal flaw).

As I dusted off the old search engine, I've found some great articles from other practitioners that I think are worth sharing.

The interesting thing I've noticed is how many of my blogging pals have already commented on the articles I've found - I don't feel so alone in this after all

Got others? Please share.

Technorati:
Del.icio.us:

Read More