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.

 

Dusting off a classic procrastinator's toolkit

I just re-read a book on how to fight procrastination. It's called "The Now Habit" and it is really cool. I think I started reading it back in the late 20th century, but never got through it (figures).

I was recently re-introduced to it by a friend of mine, and read it on my flight to Atlanta this morning. There are some very interesting variations on some of the other themes I've seen in other works on personal productivity, including some of the ones I commonly mention here.

I obviously can't do it justice in a short post, but here are some tasty morsels, by way of example:

The Unschedule (time logging with a twist)

The Unschedule involves time logging as a first step, often repeated. Just like all the other time logging techniques, this one is geared to help you become more aware of how you spend your time, so you can improve your effective use of time.

With the Unschedule, you start off by scheduling play time first, then you monitor how you work on projects. You only give yourself "credit" for 30 minute (or longer) blocks of uninterrupted work, and you build in rewards at the end of those blocks.

Another twist: If you complete something at the end of one of those blocks of work, don't stop there even if your 30 minute timer as dinged. Instead, start another task and work on it for 10 minutes so you a) make progress on another task, and b) create a sort of psychic "tension" that will bring you back for the next block of work.

Three Dimensional Thinking

This is a concept on using a "reverse calendar" which is similar to the 'break it down into smaller bites' approach, all the way back to next actions you can take today. Nothing new here, but it's very well-presented.

The Work of Worrying

This part was a lot of fun. You're taken through a process to tease out all the "well, ok, but something bad might happen" scenarios. You come up with all the worst-case scenarios on the nastiest projects on your list, then use those to build a plan to mitigate as much of the risk as possible.

And, of course, there is more. This book hits all of the demons of procrastination head-on: fear of failure, fear of success, no life balance, etc.

This one's worth checking out if, like me, you need tools and techniques for dealing with procrastination.

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Cosmic nudging

OK, so stick with me on the following sequence:

  1. A couple of days ago, Bren (Slacker Manager) wrote about a "cosmic nudge" that caused him and me to listen to the same audio book at about the same time. 
  2. Today, I found out that my friend Gene Kim just finished reading the same book, "Leadership and Self Deception."
  3. Today, I re-read Bren's post and noticed that he also mentioned Eli Goldratt, of whom I'm a huge fan (I've read all of his books, along with related works).
  4. Even freakier: as part of some research and "evangelization" of IT best practices we're working on, the aforementioned Gene Kim talked with Goldratt a few months ago
  5. Here's where the nudge comes to fruition: I've had an article on Goldratt fermenting in my drafts folder for about 6 weeks, but haven't gotten around to finishing it up.

Consider me nudged. Here is the article, in all its obtuse glory:

Back in the 80's, I read a book called "The Goal" by Eliyahu Goldratt. It is a "business novel" used to discuss Goldratt's "Theory of Constraints" model for productivity and throughput (keep in mind, this is not about individual throughput - rather, it's about the throughput of systems and processes).

Goldratt's theory (called TOC by us fans) is very complex, and was originally written about in very sterile, technical papers. It was geared toward optimizing manufacturing processes, but Goldratt recognized that it had applicability in many other aspects of business.

Back when Goldratt began writing about this stuff, he held what were considered to be contrarian views about process optimization, inventory, and other aspects of manufacturing resource planning. I found his analysis and premises to be very intriguing and, even though I'm a software guy and not a manufacturing person, in the last 20 years or so I have found that his concepts apply to lots of other contexts if you squint just right.

For example, one of the core assertions of Goldratt is that achieving "local optima" within a system will not optimize the system's throughput. Instead, you have to find the system's constraint (or bottleneck) and elevate it by subordinating all other parts of the system to the constraint.

The premise: throughput of the system can never exceed the capacity of the bottleneck, so what's the point in optimizing the usage of non-bottleneck resources?

Goldratt's principle follows a methodical approach to resolve constraints, at which point you always uncover another bottleneck. So, the cycle repeats as each bottleneck is discovered and resolved.

You can adapt this philosophical approach to many things, such as personal workflow - at any given time, there is probably one key bottleneck preventing you from optimizing your effectiveness. Focus on it and subordinate all other activities until it's resolved, then rinse and repeat.

If you are a GTD follower, your constraint is probably one of your next actions that you've either neglected or have failed to articulate. OK, so maybe I'm stretching it a bit, but I'm one of those people who looks for patterns all over the place (which, of course, means I find them).

If you're interested in more about the Theory of Constraints, check out this link to my top 8 list of TOC books, listed in the order I recommend.

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Oh what a tangled web we weave...

I just came back from a trip to Orlando for an Internal Auditor conference, and got a chance to listen to some audiobooks on my fancy new iPod Shuffle. I just finished the audiobook version of "Leadership and Self-Deception", which could very well be one of those life-changing sorts of books.

The book is one of those that takes a business teaching and wraps it up in a story designed to guide you through a series of "a-ha" moments. In this case, it's about a new manager at "Zagrum Corporation" who is invited to a meeting with a senior exec at the company, and is told he has a "big problem" that he needs to solve if he's ever going to make it at the company. Things proceed from there, and some very powerful concepts are revealed.

From the title, it should be apparent that self-deception plays a major role in the book. The book not only deals with this, it deals with how your self-deception negatively impacts your dealings with others because it puts you "in the box" where you have tainted dealings with others, causing them to initiate tainted dealings with you, causing a vicious circle.

This is basically a primer on how to change the results you get in life by adjusting how you choose to approach, deal with, and think about other people. At times, I felt like I'd already gotten to the a-ha quite a bit before the author chose to spring it, but that doesn't change the value of the lesson they are trying to teach.

The book covers a set of concepts that look deceptively simple, but which could be very difficult to apply. My gut says this will definitely be worth continual effort - they will make you a better person at work and at home if you get better at the techniques.

Worth a read or listen, for sure. The link above is to the book version on Amazon - you can get the audiobook from Audible. Oh- by the way, as audiobooks go, it's pretty well done with good voice characterizations by the reader.

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Want to go home early?

As promised (OK, so I decided to spend the weekend with the family without my computer, so this is later than expected) here is my take on Laura Stack's book "Leave The Office Earlier." The premise of this book is very similar to lots of others you may have read: organize and prioritize your life, and you'll get more done and have more time for fun.

What set this one apart for me was that it reads like a "best practice" collection from a bunch of other sources. I recognized tips and tricks that were similar to those found in David Allen's Getting Things Done, Steven Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Successful People, and various other books I've read. It also has some of the self-assessment and energy level awareness aspects found in online tools like ThinkTQ.

If you are like me, you like to have various perspectives on things like productivity, and end up "rolling your own" by mixing and matching the parts that work for you.

Whether Laura Stack meant to or not, her book happens to bring together a lot of the aspects I really liked from the various sources I've read. And she's added a lot of practical exercises and different, insightful twists on those things. That's why I classify this work as a best practice collection.

Why don't you give it a try? Let me know how it goes.

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In praise of Powell's

I was just reading a post over on Slacker Manager talking about how great Powell's book store is. I couldn't agree more.

Apparently Bren, the author of Slacker Manager, lives somewhere near me here in the Portland, Oregon area - I work about 2 blocks from Powell's Burnside location, and live about 4 miles from the Beaverton location he mentions.

As a voracious reader (as opposed to a friend of mine who's a ferocious reader), living near a Powell's has its advantages - when I want a book, I can look it up online at Powell's site, see which locations have it in stock, see which section it's located in, and run over and pick it up right now.

Even if you don't live near Powell's, you can take advantage of their mind-boggling selection and great prices. They'll ship stuff to you, of course.

Oh - and they buy and sell used books, too.

And, as Bren mentions, Powell's is now offering RSS feeds!

They don't call it the "City of Books" for nothing. Take the City Tour and check it out.

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