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.

 

What box are you in?

I recently heard someone say, "You have to see the box to get out of it." Interesting concept - without knowing what's limiting you, how do you know how to overcome it? There are several different approaches I've seen to "naming" and overcoming things that may be limiting you. Here are some that come to mind:

Seek outside help

Often, we can't see our own limitations objectively. This is where coaching comes into play. As I've described here previously, a coach can help you with a totally different perspective, and the advantage of experience that you don't have. A coach can also help you question self-imposed limitations that are inhibiting your success. Need a good coach? lots of them have blogs - start Googling, or ask around.

Use your imagination

One often-underutilized resource is your own imagination. Ask yourself questions like:

  • If I could wave a magic wand, what would help me break through to the next level?
  • If I could have any helpful resource, what would it be?
  • If I had access to the perfect expert to help me solve my problem, who would that be?
  • If I could make one limitation go away, which one would it be?
  • And so on...

Often, these kinds of questions will help you gain better clarity on what's really holding you up, or help you identify where you should go to get past your current limitations. The "magic wand" question, in particular, has helped me get past quite a few stuck spots.

By the way - once you answer one of these, go ask for what you came up with ,or figure out who you can ask to get it!

Find a good "how to" resource

If you have an issue, chances are someone's written about how to solve it (or something similar). Again, Google is a good place to start. Often, I find that blogs, books, and discussion groups have extremely helpful resources to tackle new challenges. And don't forget to ask questions - if the problem stays in your head, you aren't likely to get much helpful advice.

Get clear on what you want

Ambiguity is not your best friend, when it comes to feeling like you're making progress. Often, when I'm dissatisfied with the state of things, I find that it's because I'm not really clear on the outcomes I want. Some resources that can help here include:

Take it day by day

There are lots of resources that provide great tools and techniques to break your goals into bite-sized pieces. My favorite is Lisa Haneberg's "Two Weeks to a Breakthrough: How to Zoom Toward Your Goal in 14 Days or Less" since it gives you daily assignments to help you move toward any specific goal. This is kind of like having a coach in a book. I gave my wife a copy, and she said, "This is great - at some level, I already new a lot of the things in here, but having a daily assignment keeps me from feeling overwhelmed - and there are some new tricks in here, too."

Share

Share your goals with others. Share your frustrations with others. Share your success with others. Share your experience with others. All of these things can help you get out of the box your in, or help others get out of their boxes. Feeling stuck? Don't go it alone - use the resources at your disposal.

Remember: You are responsible for your own well-being.

Got any stories, resources, or breakthroughs? Please share them!

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[Updated] A great GTD “aggregator” site

I stumbled across a great Getting Things Done (GTD) aggregator site the other day - in fact, it calls itself "The Ultimate Getting Things Done Index" and it pulls GTD-related feeds together from a wide variety of sources.

This is a time-saving, focusing list - what could be more appropriate for the topic?

In addition to quotes, links to blogs and articles, you'll find links to software that may help you on your quest for personal productivity the GTD way. Enjoy!

Update: Thanks to Stephen for sharing some other resources:

Fresh Gear: Faster filing - email style

I've been running the new version of Claritude Software's SpeedFiler, which is an Outlook add-in designed to streamline the way you file messages in Outlook.

If you ever use Outlook's [Ctrl]+[Shift]+[V] keystroke combo to move messages to filing folders, you know that it is a good habit to develop, but it requires a lot of steps if you use subfolders (the Outlook UI is a little clunky). I've been using this since I got hooked on David Allen's "Getting Things Done".

Outlook's clunky old filing

If, for example, I want to use the traditional Outlook UI to file a message in a folder called Inbox/Customers/Fictional, I have to:

  • type [Ctrl]+[Shift]+[V] to get the move dialog,
  • type "IN" to get to the Inbox folder,
  • hit the [Right] arrow to expand the subfolders under the Inbox,
  • type "Cust" to get to the Customers Folder,
  • hit the [Right] arrow to expand the subfolders under Customers,
  • type "Fict" to get the the Fictional folder,
  • hit [Enter] to save the message to that folder.

SpeedFiler's better way

SpeedFiler replaces Outlook's dialog for filing. To do the same thing with Speedfiler, I would:

  • type [Ctrl]+[Shift]+[V] to get the move dialog,
  • type "Fict" to get the the Fictional folder,
  • hit [Enter] to save the message to that folder.

Much easier, and a lot less hand movement.

Another cool thing - if you have multiple folders with similar names, SpeedFiler narrows down the list as you type - you can see an example in the screenshot I snagged and posted here, in which I begin to narrow down my various "...reference..." folders.

Other tips and observations:

  • SpeedFiler helps with retrieval
    • One of the drawbacks of filing is that it gives you more folders to navigate through when you want to retrieve things. SpeedFiler helps there - their CEO, Itzy Sabo, turned me on to a very cool shortcut:
      • When you want to navigate to one of your folders, hit <Ctrl>+Y, and the SpeedFiler dialog pops up and you can start typing to narrow down the folder you want to go to. When you've typed enough, hit <Enter> and you're looking at your folder. Beats the heck out of mouse-based navigation.
    • By the way, Itzy's blog has some great productivity articles, as well.
  • SpeedFiler plays well with other children

OK, gadgetboy - what's the big deal?

As David Allen says in his book, filing needs to be easy or it won't get done consistently. SpeedFiler makes it easier to do mundane filing, therefore it is more likely you'll file things consistently.

If you're an Outlook user (using Getting Things Done or not), I recommend you give it a whirl and download the 30-day trial of SpeedFiler

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Interesting take on GTD, MindManager and GyroQ

I love mind mapping (I use MindManager Pro all the time), and am into GTD, so I'm always interested in hearing how people put them together.

Eric Mack (or Eric Mac, as I call him) has a great article on how he is using GTD and MindManager, and he has also added Gyronix's GyroQ into the mix. Ironically, I just watched the online demo of GyroQ yesterday (I own a copy of Gyronix's ResultsManager but have never quite gotten it to "click" for me).

One of the things I really like about the GyroQ demo is that it seems like it allows you to simultaneously add a task to your queue, assign an "owner" and file it according to whether it's a commitment you owe to someone else, or one that someone else owes you. That's pretty slick.

If I spent more time at my desk instead of traveling, I think this might be a viable option for me, but I just don't see it fitting with my work style because I don't always have my computer open to capture commitments. What about you?

If I had a magic wand:

In my dream scenario, I would be able to send an email or voice mail to a "GTD parser" service that would decipher my tasks and email an Outlook task back to me that would automatically show up in my list in the proper category/context. That would be cool.

I could also let other people send emails to that address, and they could be added as "candidate" actions. The service would, of course be able to tell me by my originating email address or caller ID from my phone. Any request originating from anyone else would be subject to my reviewing the task before accepting it, assigning it, etc.

[Updated] Occasionally, I wish I had a Mac

Update: There are some good experiential observations on Kinkless GTD in the comments from the original post. Check out the comments here to see what others are recommending instead...

I am pretty happy with my Windows PC's, but occasionally I see something that makes me Jones for a Mac. Here is one such thing - it's about a tool called "Kinkless GTD" and it looks cool. The guy talks a bit fast, but this is worth a look, even if you don't have a Mac.

You can find out more about Kinkless GTD here.

There is no Windows version, but L.S. Russell claims to have found "an almost Kinkless GTD for Windows." However, I'm not in the mood to experiment with a non-Outlook GTD solution right now - it almost seems like it'd be easier to go to the Mac.

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