Personal Improvement Blog
Archive for July, 2009
Busy vs. Productive
Jul 27th
Shamelle has written a great post on distinguishing between “being productive” and “being busy” all the time.
This is a coincidence, since I was reading Seth Godin’s book (featuring his blog posts) and one thing jumped at me: “Give me nine-to-five executives who can create remarkable things and I will change the world”.
Put these two thoughts together and you will come to the conclusion that you can get a lot of things done without slogging for 15 hours a day. Honestly, I believe a strict nine-to-five job is generally not possible, especially as you move up the ladder.
Teams spread across different time zones, systems that function 24×7 and the sheer volume of decisions that need to be taken, makes it almost impossible not to have a Blackberry. Which, essentially, means, I disagree with Seth (on the nine-to-five part 
)
Back to the real question, how can you be productive and not just busy? To add to Shamelle’s advise, I have a couple of things you can do.
1. Deliverable-based Structure (as opposed to WBS)
Most of us, including myself, think of work in terms of activities and not as deliverables. For example, if I have to send out a report, my task is named as Create Report with sub tasks as organize a meeting, talk to systems group and get information etc. You can see the output of each activity is not clearly identified, with the result that the meeting happens, but there is no concrete outcome.
Instead, reword your tasks as units whose progress is measurable. In our trivial example, the sub-tasks could be Meeting minutes with commitment from the teams, raw data report from the systems group, analysis document prepared from the data etc.
2. Schedule tasks as much as possible on your calendar
This allows you to focus on things you need to get done by meeting with yourself. By allotting time to your tasks, you make sure you have made some progress on all your tasks, rather than look only at the urgent tasks.
An empty calendar can also get you pulled into meetings that don’t have much value 
.
Bonus tip: Use a Task Manager (not the Windows Task Manager). Check out my post on using TaskCoach.
4 neat things to do when you feel unproductive
Jul 16th
Have you had a day at work when you have felt/done more than one out of the following?
Image courtesy HikingArtist
- Did not look at your to-do list
- Postponed tasks without reason
- Spent an unusual time at the water cooler
- Asking strange/weird/odd questions on the internet or surfed endlessly
Then, you are bored, officially. Yes, we have all had those days when work seems uninteresting, but you cannot take a day off. What do you then? You can try one of 3 things
1. Buckle up and try to turn around an unproductive day into a productive one
2. Get back your lost focus
3. You can do these 3 things (I love lists!)
- Reconnect
- Recreate
- Rest
- Review
Reconnect
There are those “long lost” friends or close relatives you were intending to call this week to see how they are doing. Call them now. You can also take this time to network on a personal level and send out a “hi, how are you doing?” email.
Recreate
Download and play an enjoyable computer game [a flash game perhaps, so that you don't have to install it]. Don’t get carried away, though
If computer games are not your cup of tea, you could read an e-book or go to the office library, if you have one. Choose something that is light and fun, otherwise, you will start hating that too.
Rest
Take a nap, if you have a nap room (as they do in some companies, especially Japan). Or simply close your eyes for a few minutes. Taking a mental break and slowly counting to thousand might also help.
Review
This may be a good time to think about the big picture – your family, your goals in life, direction in which your life is going, satisfaction etc. Don’t combine this with point 3 though – your nap may turn into a deep sleep.
For the folks doing GTD or its variants, this may also be a good time to look at that “someday” list.
The idea is not always to “motivate” yourself to work harder – sometimes it is better to acknowledge that there will be days when you are not simply upto it.
What do you on such rainy days at office? Let us know in the comments.
Managing my Tasks
Jul 9th
I received an email today (surprise!) from a blog reader on an aspect I have never written about – managing my tasks. The question was (snipped for clarity),
“Hi
I need some software/tool to manage my tasks. I am not yet ready for frameworks like GTD, but need something that can help me in my daily work.”
I thought the best way to respond to him was to show him how I managed my tasks myself. Out of my response grew this post.
Over the past few years, I have tried many ways of keeping tracks of tasks. The ol’ paper, spreadsheets and even MS Project (that was truly overkill). Within these mediums, I invented new ways of managing my work. It didn’t work. And one day, it happened. I read the book Getting Things Done. I was excited, because the book showed me exactly what I was doing wrong. 
My mistake was a common one – I was not capturing all inputs and transferring into a written form (I don’t mean “written” literally, of course). I dutifully downloaded some GTD software, bought a moleskin and sat back for a smooth ride. Oops.
A couple of months later, I realized I was doing worse than before. Now, I left the mechanics of GTD and delved deeper into the principles and philosophy. What did I find? I had trusted my capture system, but was not really capturing all of them, I couldn’t do contexts right and more importantly for me, I was not breaking up composite tasks.
In my frustration, I threw out everything and started with paper and pen. One thing I learned is that it doesn’t scale up well. After asking around in forums and speaking to a lot of people, I decided to simplify and create my own version of GTD. A bit of planning and introspection told me that there are a few important things to keep in mind
Image courtesy Klaxon
- Break out composite tasks (or what GTD calls Projects) in as much detail as possible with separate end dates for each of the sub-tasks
- Self-appointments don’t always work, as I work with large teams and there are a lot of on-the-fly interactions (I wouldn’t take the more negative word “interruptions”)
- Use your smartphone for the really, really important tasks and personal tasks
- Use Weekly reviews consistently (Read this article from StepCase Lifehack on how to do them well)
- If you can’t note down some idea or task immediately, record it in your phone and then transcribe it. Schedule it on your phone as well with a reminder.
My biggest problem, thankfully, was finding a simple software that could handle my projects and tasks effectively. After a lot of installations and un-installations, I found TaskCoach, developed by Frank Niessink and Jerome Laheurte. It is a wonderful piece of software that, unlike many other task managers, can handle composite tasks very well [It is also free and comes with a GNU license].
TaskCoach can track effort through its built-in clock, has pop-up reminders, color coding based on completion dates, filters and other great features. You can add attachments and notes to your tasks and the most helpful point for me – I can drag Outlook items to create new tasks quickly with the email as an attachment
With this software, I have not missed any dates, although I still have to improve in the “ubiquitous capture” aspect. After the stabilization period (I have set 6 months and in month 4 now), I am planning to move on to the next level of GTD.
Resources:
- If you want to know more about GTD, get the book here or the audio series here
- If you are more of a visual person or need an image to get the big picture, here is a good one
- A simplified version of GTD that has become very popular is Zen-To-Done (ZTD) by Leo Babauta
How do you manage your work, with all the complexities of modern life? Do you use an electronic system or paper or a hybrid? Let us know in the comments.
Manage those Irregular bills – how I do it
Jul 8th
Irregular Payments. I use this term for those bills that don’t occur with any definite period OR happen once in a year. Think Car insurance (and house taxes, annual maintenance etc). you get the idea.
Our initial family budgets used to have expense items for the month and we did those at the start of the month. We got wiser and then started having a standard set of items and approximate amounts for each month. We could then compare every month how we were doing against the “standard.” After a few iterations, we realized that our balances did not match what we spent (against the budget!).
The culprits were these irregular payments. What was causing even more pain was that to pay for each of these special items, we were scrambling at the last minute to make the payment (which was usually large). A few brainstorming sessions later, we came upon a few tricks to avoid such situations.
1. Create a timeline 
We made a list of all the possible payments for the year. These included
- Insurance payments
- House and maintenance taxes
- Car insurance
- Term fees at school for the kids
Then we put up the dates on which these payments were due. We observed that, by pure luck, there were not more than one payment on any month.
2. Reschedule Payments
If, by any chance, more than 2 such payments fall in the same month, you might want to consider moving them to another month. This may not always be possible, but there may be some payments which can be moved. For example, you can switch your annual premiums to a monthly schedule for a couple of months and then switch back to an annual schedule.
The key is to schedule them such that those months don’t bunch up together. There will be a bit of inconvenience when you set this up, but it may be good in the long run.
3. Schedule micro-payments
Once you have the calendar schedule of payments ready, you can move on to the really important step. Schedule micro-payments every month for such irregular payments. Some banks in the US, such as ING Direct, allow you to create sub-accounts within your main account. If, like me, you live in a country where these are not available yet, you can put these micro-payments in a single account and track them in a simple Excel spreadsheet. It is important (and obvious) that this “special” account must be different from the account that you normally use.
These micro-payments go into your budget like any other item, so that you don’t end up messing up your budget in those months. This is especially true for those people who don’t have a set income every month (like businessmen, independent consultants etc).
Bonus tip: Start these micro-payments in such a way that you have a sizeable amount for each payment. Also, for one or two payments, this may not be possible in the first year, but for the subsequent years.
Share your tricks and tips for managing home budgets in the comments.
3 Less-known attributes of truly Successful people
Jul 1st
There is a billion dollar industry of books, seminars and workshops on making people become more successful. There are also hugely successful people in our own spheres of life, people whom we meet regularly – senior members of large/great organizations, self-made enterprenuers and so on.
What are the things that distinguish successful people from the run-of-the-mill folks like me? This was what got me interested, when I found people in senior leadership roles, but had not yet crossed 40. Of course, education, luck and the simple aspect of being the one available may have taken them there, but without “stuff”, you cannot stay there for long.
I started observing such people and so far, I have found 3 attributes – passion, genuine interest in people and the ability to understand subtle communications. You will notice hard work is not in here – surprisingly, not all of them work 16 hour days!
Passion
This is a no-brainer, but many people unconsciously set limits on their passion for work, either by limits on time or simply by the distance they are willing to go to get things done. Passion is ownership, passion is about finding ways to get things done, even if it means not going by the book sometimes (I am not referring to the non-negotiable rules like ethics, just the systems that organizations or societies setup). Passion is standing up and being counted when things are in a crisis. Passion means going beyond your defined role and responsibilities and ensuring that the overall team goals are achieved.
To have real passion, you have accept that sometimes, other things in life have to play a secondary role to your work life [This means you never talk about work-life balance - even if you go home on time usually]
Genuine interest in people
Passion can only take you so far. If you don’t have or develop a genuine interest in people and how you can harness their immense potential, you cannot become a successful person. Great relationships means word-of-mouth praise, which I find is the most effective way of marketing yourself. A word of caution: Do not try to manipulate people – you may be unpleasantly surprised about how many people can easily read this. Understand genuine concerns, show empathy and try to truly help people.
A successful track record is of no use if people under you refuse to give their best, due to some unconscious anger at you. You will have uncooperative people, who will balk at every work that you assign, delay their tasks and as a result, you end up doing all their work.
One other benefit of being able to interact with people well is that you become naturally good at networking. You will not need to fake things when asking for help – on the other hand, people will feel it an honor to work with you.
Ability to understand subtlety
You can call it reading between the lines or know the flow or oh whatever, but I have found this to be one of the most underrated secrets of successful people. This could be a situation or a person talking to them or a set of numbers being thrown at them. They can analyze what the situation is and come up with an answer that is simply awesome.
I really can’t explain this, but I am sure you can connect with the idea.
The obvious question at this stage is, can we develop these attributes? I haven’t found my answers completely. Have you? Let us know in the comments. If you have noticed other things which you feel are common among successful people, those are also welcome in the comments.