Coding Finding a place to store and manage some clever tricks and coding implementations has led us to create our Experiments section. Here we will play around with designs and functional prototypes that we are sharing with anyone interested. We will be launching the new section by the end of March 2024, so please be on the lookout for changes that are coming. Below we will host some previews of what is to come.
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Productivity When I think about productivity systems, I fall back to the one that I am most comfortable with, GTD. The methodology has always resonated with my own philosophies on how to accomplish the incremental steps toward my goals.
In recent years, I have focused more on the reflection and the workflow process steps in an effort to understand the requirements of each. Getting clarity on how my system would interact in relation to those steps with a focus on how I can improve the integration into my life in increasingly frictionless ways.
There comes a point in that journey, where you need to refresh yourself on the basics, to come back to your foundations. Re-enforcing your critical processes and behaviors to strengthen the core of your system and improve your productivity flow.
In my article, Applied GTD, I detailed some of the observations that I had over the years, and when dealing with a foundational review, those become part of my overall focus and decision-making process. I highly recommend you check them out, and yes, I am biased.
There are four foundational areas that I am recommending be the focal point of any foundational review:
We will be expanding on these topics as we continue along, and remember that my opinions are just that, mine. What works for me and my process may not be your cup of tea. The goal here is to give inspiration on the tactics that I leverage so that if you find them of benefit you will understand how they can be utilized to improve your own process.
2 Minute Rule
If an action will take less than two minutes, it should be done at the moment it’s defined.
Seems simple enough in theory, get the small things done early and knock them out of the way so that you can focus on the larger items without so many distractions. Making this one of your core behaviors provides the largest benefit out of any other productivity practice regardless of the methodology.
First of all, the key thing is to decide what the very next action on something I need to do about any of this change that’s happening, any of this stuff I’m involved in right now. What would I need to do next? Once you’ve decided very clearly and specifically what that is if you can do it in less than two minutes, do it right then. After all, don’t waste the effort that it would take to track the item when the same effort could be used to take it off your list.
Everything has a progression, steps that could or should be taken to end at the result that you would like to achieve, whether done deliberately, accidentally, or unintentionally. The goal is to get there through deliberate actions on a consistent basis.
Having a process or workflow to help you process all of the stuff that you have to deal with helps to put all of this into context in some way or another. That only gets you to a level of organization, to really become proficient at being productive you need direction. That is where the different horizon levels come into play.
Defining these different perspectives for your practice and generally for your life helps to give it the structure to shape and define how the processing of the stuff falls into a meaningful context. Any particular action could be considered successfully complete if you have no expectation of an end result no matter how far out that result is from the time the action was taken.
What makes that action important is how it falls in line with the context of what you are trying to achieve.
What is the purpose you are fulfilling, what vision do you have to make that a reality, what goals have you set to help keep you on track to that outcome and what areas do you need to focus on to make sure you end up at the place you want to be with complete confidence that you have handled all that needs to be done.
Take your time and shape these concepts well for yourself, they can and will change as you gain experience and expertise in how to manage your productivity systems. Having them well considered at the beginning will streamline your ability to improve your process to the point where it is frictionless to interact with.
Definition: achieved with or involving little difficulty; effortless.
Remember this is a goal, something to strive for, and you may have to adapt and adjust this on a regular basis to achieve any type of success at it. When something becomes truly frictionless, it also becomes autonomic, to a point where you do it so fluidly it is as natural as breathing.
Building Habits takes time and repetition. Focusing on the Cue/Routine/Reward cycle to improve the habit’s ability to stick as a consistent behavior.
Consistency requires Will Power, it can be treated as a skill, a finite resource, and a muscle all in one, You have to have the self-discipline to resist immediate gratification, and identify what is drawing the most out of your willpower reserves so that you can more effectively handle situations where you will need more will power to accomplish.
This needs exercise, training, and visualization so that you already have a plan on how to handle inflection points so that it is less of a drain on your active reserves. (Doing the prework, makes the work easier).
Changing behaviors requires hacking your own habits, which starts with identifying the habit’s cue triggers while keeping the same reward, you change the habit routine and consistently work that until it has effectively replaced the old habits. Small wins are the goal, they help to reinforce keystone habits and cement the new routines in place, and that will bleed over into other parts of your life and productivity habits. They build on each other.
In the next article, we will focus on how to become better at getting your mind clear and keeping on task to ensure your productivity system is one you can maintain your trust in. Be sure to stay tuned in for more helpful insights on productivity and feel free to reach out and let us know if this helped your own productivity practice!
Productivity How do you measure your growth? What metrics do you trust? What tools do you use to help record and display those metrics? Do you apply it only to things like personal fitness, budget, or some other specific area of your life?
In most areas of business and critical life areas, we use data to track how we are doing, whether it is a general sense of position or progress towards a goal. Why should we, therefore, treat the rest of our life any differently? Now, I am not talking about making your life all about work.
Read more “Tracking Personal Progress Better”
Productivity Visual learning and storytelling have existed longer than spoken languages have been in existence, from when cavemen painted stick figures on cave walls, people have used the visual versions of storytelling to transcend barriers and work to bring people into the same context for the understanding of what is being presented.
During the early 2010s, I was introduced to the concept of knowledge mapping, an effort to organize various clusters of knowledge or capabilities within groups or organizations to help streamline efforts to spread that knowledge. Out of those that were working on such problems came Open Knowledge Maps, primarily focused on organizing the world’s scientific expertise into a visual matrix of who had the best perspective on a given topic.
Read more “Story Mapping: An Introduction”
Productivity As part of my evolving productivity practices, I turned to physically keeping notes as I kept hearing that cognitive studies proved that they assisted in the retention of the information that was written down. This was important for me since I wanted to make sure I was adding a component to my workflow that was beneficial and something that I would stick with as well. The solution ended with me keeping a regular series of Bullet Journals to track the critical needs of my GTD Journey.
Read more “Bullet Journaling for Productivity”
Productivity Productivity seems to be top of mind for me almost constantly these days, whether it is focused on myself, my team, or even my family. It has an impact on all of our activities, whether we are doing the chores around the house, working on projects for the office, or even getting a gathering organized. I know that for those that are reading this, those statements are fairly obvious since mostly like-minded people are the most likely to be reading this, however, on the off chance someone new is exploring and stumbles across this, well… Welcome and hope you find some of this helpful.
The details I am sharing are based completely on my personal observations while striving to integrate the GTD practice throughout my life and career. I am a take-it-or-leave-it kind of person when it comes to what should be done versus what is practical and most efficient. Keep that in mind as we get into some of the more interesting observations that I have made over the last decade-plus while using the Getting Things Done (GTD) Methodologies as the anchors for my personal productivity practices.
Read more “Applied GTD: Observations through Experience”
Productivity After recently returning to work from an extended leave, I found myself getting a little overwhelmed with the number of things that I needed to complete. In the past, I would work my GTD process steps to try to beat back the volume and handle all of the important and necessary things as they come. Now after developing a healthier mindset while being out, I am seeking to change how I interact with my day. I have spent some time reading about habits and changing behaviors that have been established over time and feel that some of those techniques may assist in the direction I would like to go to improve my productivity.
Read more “Locking in your Productivity Focus”
Developer Skills Technical documentation in software engineering is the umbrella term that encompasses all written documents and materials dealing with software product development. All software development products, whether created by a small team or a large corporation, require some related documentation. It is inescapable for any process or product that will need any length of operation time and support to survive.
Read more “Agile Documentation for Large Scale Activity” Productivity In today’s world where we can have almost any answer we seek at our fingertips where ever we go, it only makes sense for people to leverage the technological benefits to streamline their productivity systems. While it makes complete sense to compile lists of action items and projects and the someday/maybe buckets for the things we want to do, using a pencil and paper may not be the best option anymore.
Read more “Leveraging tech for personal productivity”
Productivity Whenever I start to share how my system has evolved under the tenents of the GTD Methodology, most people get a slightly panicky look in their eyes and start to slowly back away. This has led to some hesitance in sharing with colleagues that are still early in the evolutions of their personal system or are just realizing the need to create one at all. I fully recognize that many will not understand the mix of technology and processes that I leverage in my personal system without following a similar journey to mine. I also realized that I need to remember what those early days were like for me and some of the pitfalls that I experienced along the way, to become more of a mentor than just showcasing where I am at within my own path. To that effect, I am writing my version of an intro to GTD for developers and those following the Agile methodology.
Read more “GTD: How to be present in the moment”