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.

 

Travel tools for red-eyes and jet lag

Last week, I woke up in every US continental time zone (Portland, OR on Monday; Dallas on Tuesday; Philadelphia on Wednesday; Denver on Thursday; and Portland, OR again on Friday).

I also take quite a few red-eye flights and flights overseas.

This kind of time zone shifting messes with my body clock sometimes, causing me to stay up late (particularly when I travel east), typically followed by an early morning start. There are a ton of things you can do to help with jet lag and recovery from red-eye flights, but I want to share a few of my favorite 'tools' with you.

Read More

What a coincidence...

As you may have noted from a couple of my posts this past week, I've been thinking a lot about laser beams and focus (following my LASIK procedure).

I laughed out loud at the coincidence when I received an email from Amazon yesterday that my advance copy of Lisa Haneberg's latest book, "Focus Like a Laser Beam: 10 Ways to Do What Matters Most" just shipped yesterday. I'm confident I'll be as pleased with Lisa's book as I have been with my LASIK.

I've been a big fan of Lisa's work for quite a while, starting with her book, "High Impact Middle Management" which was one of my favorites from last year. I then participated in the pilot of her "2 Weeks 2 A Breakthrough" pilot program last summer, and was even more impressed with how she works and thinks.

From some early clues from her about this latest book, I'm glad it'll arrive just in time for a flight to Houston this week. Check out Lisa's new book - and check out her blog Management Craft if you haven't already done so.

Congratulations, Lisa!

Read More

Rosas Reinvention Round-up

If you're looking to reinvent yourself, Rosa's got a great round-up that is sure to help. Check out Reinventions at Work and in Business: the Ho'ohana Community Forum for this month.

As you may know, Rosa is a tremendous connector (of lots of things including people, ideas, bloggers, and businesses). She has a knack for bringing up things just when you need them, and this month is no exception -- at least for me.

If Rosa's place isn't one of your regular blogstops, it should be.

Read More

Reinventions at Work and in Business: a Ho‘ohana Community Forum

From time to time, each of us experiences overwhelming, daunting, or frightening tasks. You know the kind - you don't even know where to begin. Last year, I read a book (The War of Art) that talked about a "force" that it called "The Resistance" which describes this phenomenon perfectly.

Sometimes, it's tough to get started because you have no clue what to do, or how to do it.So how do you overcome The Resistance? The first step is always the hardest - because that is where you must overcome the momentum of the easiest choice - doing nothing. As tempting as it is to procrastinate, most of the time these daunting tasks don't just go away.

Get clear on what you really need to do

In his book Getting Things Done, David Allen talks about how we get "stuck" on projects and planning because we aren't clear on the goals and activities required (paraphrasing, "We don't know what done means, and we haven't figured out what doing looks like.") He offers excellent advice: Sit down and establish a crisp definition of the outcome you are trying to achieve - only then, can you begin to divine the steps and resources required to get there.

Another variation on this from Stephen Covey, in his 7 Habits, tells us to "Begin with the end in mind." Again, figure out what you want to achieve to get yourself unstuck and moving in the right direction.

Get some help

Whether it's doing your taxes, estate planning, or getting a project going sometimes we can all use some help. There are a plethora of options available to us, such as:

Outsource

Seek professional help. For financial matters, you might benefit from a professional tax preparer, a fee-only financial advisor, or an estate planning expert. You can often gain access to these people through organizations with which you're affiliated like credit unions, wholesale shopping clubs, or professional organizations.

These resources can also help you clarify your goals, provide expert advice based on the experiences of others, and useful things like that.

Network

Ask people you know for help. Whether you know them via work, community involvement, the blogging community, or other means, you can often find people who've had experience dealing with the same issue you're wrestling with. Why re-invent the wheel? Reach out and ask them for advice or help.

By the way, if you "get clear on what you really need to do" before you reach out, you'll increase your chance of success.

Engage If this is a work-related project, call a meeting and solicit help in getting things rolling. For maximum effectiveness, clarify your desired outcome ahead of time and pre-announce that via your meeting invitation. Also, clarify the purpose of the meeting (brainstorming, making a decision, creating a project plan, etc.), and communicate your expectations of the attendees so they show up ready to contribute in appropriate ways.
Take small bites

If a project seems overwhelming, maybe you're being too aggressive or optimistic. Consider whether you can break it up into smaller projects. One of the things I've learned from my work in the software industry is that there is often a ton of value in using a "go ugly early" strategy to show some project and establish visible momentum. This helps you achieve a sense of accomplishment, enables you to recruit supporters and more resources with less effort, and can help you detect flaws in judgement before you've invested too much time and energy in the project.

Create a forcing event

There is nothing like a deadline to drive activity. Consider making an external commitment to getting your project done. Announce to your team, customers, or other "audiences" when you'll deliver something, and you'll often find that it provides that extra bit of motivation to get you off your butt and get to work.

A variation of this is calling a meeting for which you need to produce something (a plan, update, or presentation). Get it done, or you look bad - ego is a powerful tool, when used in this way.

Study up

Sometimes, it's tough to get started because you have no clue what to do, or how to do it. While you can "Get some help" as described above, you may decide that you'd rather address your own lack of skills instead. Again, there are a lot of resources out there, including:

  • e-learning
  • your public library
  • local community colleges
  • books
  • courses offered through professional organizations

If what you're doing will provide you with reusable skills that advance your career or give you personal satisfaction, this is a great option.

Share what you know

Help yourself by helping others. You can build your network of resources and create more leverage in your life by sharing what you know.

When someone asks you to become part of their network you (by definition) extend your own network.

So how about it? what do you do to overcome The Resistance?


Related posts:

Read More

Out of sight - out of your mind?

I have been working on a wide variety of projects lately, and keeping track of the details and status of them all has been a bit nerve-wracking. Putting them on project lists helped a lot with what to do, but I still found myself searching for status information such as:

  • What have I done on this already?
  • Who am I waiting to hear back from?
  • What's left to do?
  • What's in process but not complete?
  • etc.

Managing this with context lists in the "GTD way" wasn't quite cutting it for me (or maybe I'm doing it wrong). I found myself going to multiple lists very frequently to try to get a holistic picture of where each of my projects stood. To solve this, I turned to my old pal Mind Manager to help me create a "status map."

My "real" status map has too much work-related information that I can't share publicly, so I have mocked up an example of one here. For each project, I map out things such as:

  • Desired outcomes
  • Research
  • Next actions
  • Other
  • Completed actions
  • Waiting for
  • Calls to make
  • To be done

You can (obviously) customize this in any way you'd like. I find that I can keep multiple projects current on my status map (I currently have 4 major "domains" of activity on my map - 3 for work, 1 for home). When I have status meetings, I can print a particular "branch" of the map if the status meeting is about a particular project, or I can print the whole map (I use 11" x 17" paper for better readability). I print the whole map (with the "Home" branch collapsed) when I go into one-on-one meetings with my boss, so I can take him through what I'm working on and where things stand.

As we go through the project review, I write on the printed copy of the map and re-integrate my notes back into my Mind Map later.

This is working pretty well for me, and makes it a bit easier to keep the plates spinning without letting any of them drop.

Here is another mocked-up section of a project to give you an idea the kinds of things that might be in some of the buckets (you can click to zoom in).

If you want to see a blurry, unreadable, zoomed out picture of my real map you can see it here, just for grins.


Read More