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.

 

New tools for resolutions

Well, we all know that this is the time of year for New Year's Resolutions, and we also know that a lot of people's resolutions don't get very far. With that in mind, some friends of mine have come up with some tools to help with this. I'd like to share them with you.

Remarkable Resolutions

The first tool is from Kevin Eikenberry, and it's a free guide to creating Remarkable Resolutions. This is a a kind of "workshop in a box" approach, guiding you through 26 thought-provoking questions designed to help you achieve greate clarity and depth in your resolutions.

I say it's like a workshop, because the document is actually a workbook designed so that you can print it out and write our your thoughts and answers in the book. You can then use the workbook throughout the year to remind you what you identified as important, which things you want to achieve, etc. It's generally known that writing things down helps make ideas more "real" in your brain, and I found that writing my answers down also felt good - like I was taking concrete steps to plan for 2008.

Kevin's also sharing his answers and thoughts on these questions at his blog. Incidentally, Kevin is the author of "Remarkable Leadership" which I'm reading right now. It is an excellent book - I'll be reviewing it soon.

Aim for the Goal Post

Keith Ferrazzi (author of "Never Eat Alone") is also adding to the toolbox. He suggests getting some skin in the game by making your commitment public, and choosing three friends to serve as your accountability buddies. Knowing they are watching you will help you to stick to and reach your goals - he calls it "peer-to-peer pressure". Your friends can cheer you on and send you inspirational songs and helpful website links.

To help keep you moving toward your goals, Keith and his team have developed a Facebook application called "Goal Post." It is an easy and visual way to set your goals, choose your accountability buddies and keep track of your progress.

To get started, login to Facebook (or register if you aren't Facing already) and then search for the "Goal Post" application.

Some of you may know that I turned off my Facebook account a while back because I found it to be a little needy in terms of how much attention it expected me to pay to it. This Goal Post application is tempting me to reactivate... If you try out Keith's tool, let me know how it goes.

Both of these approaches will be useful in getting you to go beyond thinking about what you want to do, and into writing things down and developing a plan - and I've heard stats that most people don't have written goals. If you're in that club, maybe these tools will help you take that important step toward success.

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Some things feel more “done” than others

I took some time off around Christmas and the New Year, and decided to get a bunch of things done on my "Someday Maybe" list. Most of the items were of the "clean up" and "fix it" variety, and some of them were things I'd been putting off for a long time. For example, I rented a 3 cubic yard dumpster for a day and did a massive clean up of our garage (filled the dumpster to the rim and brought a van full of stuff to the Salvation Army) and now we can park in the garage again!

I noticed that checking each of these old projects off my list felt really good -- like a real, satisfying accomplishment. In other words, they really felt "Done."

When I compare cleaning my garage to a lot of the things I do at work, the feeling is a bit different. You see, at work, a significant part of my job is managing long-term, ongoing relationships with other companies and, even though there are lots of deliverables on the way, they don't feel as "Done" as cleaning the garage or filling a dumpster.

When I think about why, some of it is just the "nature of the beast," I suppose. But I think another aspect is that I tend to think of my job as an ongoing stream of "stuff" - and I don't regularly break it down into smaller, more deliberately-defined subprojects. The result? At the end of the week, I see a lot of little check marks, but they aren't nearly as satisfying as checking off a whole project as "Done."

That realization came to me while re-reading David Allen's "Getting Things Done" (GTD) the other day. Part of David's GTD philosophy is to break big tasks into smaller, more manageable chunks, then identify small steps (Next Actions) that you can pick off one at a time.

As we move into 2008, I am re-visiting my approach to GTD, trying to re-establish better habits. One of the changes I'm going to make is to be more deliberate about defining my projects more discretely (and doing more thorough Weekly Reviews to keep on top of them).

And if you haven't read Getting Things Done in a while, I highly recommend it. In the realm of personal productivity, it's a great way to spotlight things that aren't working as well as they should.

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Hit the GTD mother lode

I was just checking out a tremendous list of GTD resources at Bootstrapper: "The GTD Resource Motherload: 100+ Links." There are 103 links there - I haven't been through them all yet, but have found a few gems already so I wanted to share this resource with you.


A few of my favorites:


99. A Roadmap to Spectacular GTD Failure: This article tells readers what NOT to do if you want to implement a successful GTD system.
This includes such gems as the following (which would be funnier if it didn't hit so close to home:


"Do your weekly review when you're damn good and ready - Make sure to never even attempt to schedule a regular time for your weekly review. Friday afternoon, Saturday night, Wednesday during lunch. You're a busy person with a dynamic life - you clearly can't be expected to block out 1-2 hours per week!"

67. GTD-Tools.com: GTD-Tools.com publishes articles and reviews of the "best GTD tools and productivity software tips." Readers can also catch up on the latest GTD-related news.
Visually, this is a bit busy but it contains some awesome info!


52. Time Management, Simplified: This post teaches readers "how to be productive with no worries" by simplifying the GTD system so that it works for your life.
I really like this "in a nutshell" summary of the essence of GTD.


These three samples are just barely scratching the surface - go check out the other 100 GTD resources!



Will you still need me, will you still feed me...

I just finished John Izzo's book, "The Five Secrets You Must Discover Before You Die" and I think it's a good choice to provide some perspective for New Year's resolutions.

This book contains a very interesting collections of anecdotes and insights from hundreds of interviews Izzo has conducted with "elders" in various cultures around the world (ages ranged from 59 to 105). He distilled what he learned from these interviews into the "Five Secrets" that these elders deemed essential to a happy life. For those of you who crave the list, the five secrets are:

  1. Be true to yourself
  2. Leave no regrets
  3. Become love
  4. Live the moment
  5. Give more than you take

A simple list of the Five Secrets is useful, but the "why" really comes out in the stories Izzo shares in this book. I learned a lot of subtleties about the five secrets through the stories in each section.

Powerful perspective from others - and some questions of my own

Izzo went down the path toward this book because he wanted to learn how to have the most fulfiling life possible. His father died at age 36, and Izzo's sense of urgency about his own life increased as a result. This study process got him to spend a lot of time with old people and he found that different cultures place different amounts of value on the old in their societies. Izzo found many cultures where the elders are held in very high regard, and regularly consulted about weighty matters - for example, he cites a Romanian saying, "The house that does not have an old person in it must buy one."

He also observes that the US culture, for one, tends to focus more on the ideas of the young, and relegates elders to nursing homes and retirement communities. I think his observation is an interesting one and, while his statements about this may be exaggerated a bit, it's worth considering whether we are systematically dismissing the value of the old people in our society - and figuring out how each of us, individually, can embrace the value of our elders more often.

As cool as Izzo's ideas are, one thing bothered me after reading this book: Most of the "elder honoring" cultures Izzo mentions (Romania, Tanzania, etc.) are not exactly dominating the world's stage for political, economic, or social contributions. Why not? What else is needed? And is there a way to accelerate world contributions by better engaging elders in our activities and decisions?

Start the New Year with some new ideas

There is a lot to think about in this book, and I think it provides an excellent backdrop for reviewing your life's priorities and purpose. If you're thinking about New Year's resolutions this would be a good book to read before you put pen to paper - it's an easy read for such a deep message, and the stories will be good for you no matter what..

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Countdowns and time boxing

My buddy Gene told me about a cool tool that is very helpful with time boxing. The tool is called "TimeLeft" and it is a very versatile tool for creating countdown timers, activity timers, and things like that. When you install it, it creates a "Happy New Year" countdown timer by default, and you can create your own timers. You can also customize the appearance of the timers, so you can tell them apart on sight - they just hover over your Windows desktop so you can glance at them to see the status (it's not as distracting as it sounds.

Useful countdowns

Countdown timers can be quite useful. For example, I created a countdown timer to help me keep track of how many shopping days remained for me to get my Christmas gifts delivered on time. I am currently tracking the time left until I have to turn in PowerPoint slides for a project at work. Yes, I often just set reminders in Outlook, but for some high-priority projects the countdown is just what I need to remind me to focus on the project.

Time boxing

You can create one or more general purpose timers with TimeLeft, and each timer has a pause and a reset icon on it so you can restart the countdown. This is useful for time boxing and GTD (create a 2-minute timer like the one David Allen recommends), so you can keep projects or sub-projects from taking more time than you intend.

Timeleft is very cool -- way better than I thought it would be from Gene's simple description -- but its amazingly simple, yet customizable, interface is powerful. On the site, you can see the plethora of features included in TimeLeft.

Try it, and I think you'll like it (Windows only - sorry Mac folks). There is a free version and a pay version, with the main difference being that the free version limits the number of timers you can use at any given time.

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