Staying Off Social Media

Nearly five years ago I experimented with staying off social media for a while - especially Twitter.  It was a bit of an impulsive decision.  I just decided that I'd lay off it for a month.  At the end I concluded that I'd only use it in the evenings from then on.

Writing A Mission Statement

I have taken on two members of staff which has tripled the size of my business.  I am no longer a one man band, I am now the leader of a team.  Admittedly this is literally the smallest team it is numerically possible to have, but it is nonetheless a team.  And the first thing I need to do is to establish what our mission as a team is.  I haven’t  articulated it during the interview process.  In both cases there are people I have approached to work for me so it was a case of persuading them that I had a viable offer rather than interrogating them for what they could do for me.  So as things stand, they don’t have much of an idea of what I want from them.

So I need to tell them what we are doing so they know what decisions to make on a day to day basis.  This means I need a lot of clarity about what the goal is.  To achieve clarity one of the things I often do is to write something, often with an imaginary reader in mind.  (This works well for blog posts, which generally only have imaginary readers.)  

In this case the readers are far from imaginary and at least I know that what I am going to write will be read with some degree of interest.  So it really will be a mission statement.  

I am actually more interested in the next stage which will be writing the day to day procedures we will be following.  But I can’t do that without first deciding on the mission that those procedures will be serving.

Time Blocking Draft 2

Time blocking is the practice of putting aside blocks of time for specific projects.  It is a good idea in principle.  If you have some time allocated on your calendar then you can be sure that the time will be used for that priority task.  

So why doesn’t everybody do it?  I can only talk about what goes wrong when I have tried it.

1. The time block appears but for either good or bad reasons you find yourself doing something else instead.  You are now in a worse state than before.  You have devoted energy to creating the time block.  You now need to reschedule the time.  And you have demonstrated at least to yourself and possibly to others that you have no willpower or self discipline.
2. You duly start the job, but find you have to do something else instead in order to achieve it.  So your block of time gets spent, but the result you wanted isn’t delivered.
3. You are in such a state of flow on something else when the alarm for the time block goes off that you either decide it was a net disbenefit, or you simply don’t do it.
4. It turns out that this job I was going to get finished in 2 hours actually needs 6.  I get to the end of the 2 hour period feeling like I have been going backwards even when I haven’t.
5. You have to reschedule for some reason, so you have to move your time block adding to the complexity of your life.

The reality is that time blocking is actually a very advanced skill that only people with superb time management skills can use.  If you have the iron self discipline and the self awareness to use it, then it is a very useful thing to do.

 The interesting thing, is why it is so useful and why it is so hard. The basic resource we are dealing with here is not time, it is attention. You can't get to work on the time you have blocked out because in reality your attention is on something else. So if you break off what you are thinking about to do something else you are sacrificing one recipient of your attention for another.

Switching attention is itself work, and you never get that back again. And if it turns out that the thing you are thinking about before the time block is important, possibly even more important than what you are switching to, then you have lost out.

Making the time you spend count Draft 1

When I was a manager of a large team I noticed that it was much easier to get people in on a Saturday morning than it was to actually get them to do anything much when they got there.  Thinking about that, it occurred to me that it would probably not be necessary to trouble them on a Saturday if they had simply worked a bit smarter during the preceding week.

It is much easier to commit time to a project than it is to commit time to actually working in a systematic way.  Basically most effort is required for a reward at some distant point in time.   Hard work pays off in the end. But fiddling around on Facebook and having a chat with a colleague pays off now.   And there is no time that the mismatch between long term and short term benefits is starker than on a Saturday morning.  You have just spent five days away from entertainment and pleasure. And now you have to break your normal habits and work instead while you are at your most tired and most deprived of fun.   It is no wonder it doesn't work.

The motto is obvious to state but hard to follow through on.   The value of the time you have diminishes as the week goes on.  You simply have to schedule the important stuff early in the week and wind down steadily to some real relaxation and recuperation at the end of it.

Treat Your Day As A Poem - Draft 1

You are weighed down with work.  You can't possibly get everything done.  You are going to miss vital deadlines and have very little to show for a day of stress, activity and intense unhappiness.

That is what you signed up for by taking on too many projects.  However, that doesn't mean that you have to make today a day that has no value or meaning.  If you give some thought to it, you can turn today into a poem.  You are after all engaged in a struggle, a struggle against life's slings and arrows.  The way today turns out is in itself a story. It might be a triumph, or it might be a disaster.  But either way it can be turned into a narrative that is meaningful.

How do you do this?  First off, keep notes of what you are doing.  If possible, do this every fifteen minutes.  When you are stressed you won't remember what you did an hour ago.  But if you keep note you can see where your time is going.   There is a good chance you are wasting a lot of time doing stuff that doesn't take you forward.  But you can't be making progress all the time. You have other priorities.   For example, a phone call from a friend is actually one of life's great pleasures.  If you have one, don't regard it as a problem.  It was a life enhancing experience.

But you will also be doing a lot of stuff that actually does take you forward.

So every day is a bit of a mixture of the good, the bad and the unexpectedly beneficial.  Try and turn this into a story.  It isn't helpful to look at a day as one that is a failure to work as a robot.  You are not a robot, you are a human being on a journey.   The steps you take are important, but so is stopping to pick the daisies.  A good day is not one where you have squashed your humanity out of yourself to clock up points on your to do list.  It is a day where you have stretched yourself a bit, learnt a little, experienced some triumphs and endured some disasters.  Even when you are overwhelmed with work you are stilll a human and you can turn your day into  a very human story.   It might even make sense to write it up at the end of the day.  It doesn't have to rhyme, but it can still be very human and poetic.

The Project To Get Rid Of Projects - Draft 1

So you have too many projects.  I suggest you add another one.  After all, what harm can one more do?  The answer is a lot, but this one is special.  You need to create a project to get rid of your other projects.  If you have a well defined project system then simply add this to that system.  If you don't have a system, well let's add yet another project.  You need to start a project to define all your projects.

But for now let's leave organising projects and look at how you axe projects.  First off, you need to estimate how much time a particular project has committed you to.   This is of course a very difficult thing to do.  But it is essential.  You should not take on anything without some idea of what you are letting yourself in for. There are only 24 hours in a day and if you can work solidly for 8 of those hours then you are well into the top 10% or even the top 1% of human performance.  Realistically most people do well to get to six and I would estimate from my time as a manager of a laboratory, where all the workers were well above average in qualifications and to some extent in intelligence, that 5 hours would be the best you can hope for.

So on this basis, a five hour project robs you of a day of your life.   There are many 5 hour projects around.  For example, giving a talk at a trade fair is not going to take much less than 5 hours to prepare.   So you have lost a day's work even before you have booked the tickets.   Speaking personally, if I am giving a talk at a show I almost always end up chairing a couple of other sessions and talking to some people about the talk before and after I have given it.  So the day out at the trade fair is pretty much lost too, because I don't get to walk the show in the way I would if I wasn't speaking.

Smaller projects are even more of a menace.  Small blocks of time don't seem to count, but a couple of half hour jobs knock a big chunk out of a 5 hour day.

Basically, you need to guard your time jealously and zealously and be extremely aware of what you have committed yourself to.

Five Minute Dash Tactic - 1st Draft

A five minute dash is a technique that should only be used when the situation is really bad.  When you have more work than you can cope with spread over more projects than you can cope with, then there is simply no choice.  You have to get your work organised and you don't have time to stop.

The five minute dash is a tactic that allows you to get somewhere while also getting organised.  Basically you pick a task at random - but preferably the first one on your job list.  Set a timer for 5 minutes and get as much as you can get done.  Then put the project onto the appropriate place for when you need to work on it again.  For example, if it is basically the top priority task then schedule it for after your next five minute dash.

Keep this up as you go down your list.  Five minutes isn't very long, but it is not no time at all.  If nothing else you can get a job into order.  If it is a report you can get a couple of hundred words written.   If you do practical work you can find all the things you need to do something.

The most important thing is to work at switching rapidly from one task to another, and to leave every task on which you are working in a state that makes it easy to pick up again.  As you work through it your to do list becomes more and more realistic and your work becomes more organised.  You can schedule a few five minute sessions to specifcally work on organising your work if you have to.

It's all about lists - 1st draft

So when you are overwhelmed by too much work, there really is ultimately only one cure.  You need to work through your list of things you need to get done and to do them.

It really is that simple.

The problem is the list.  If you have a list of things to do that you trust to be comprehensive and properly prioritised then your problem becomes a much simpler one of simply getting on and doing it all.  If you can take it one stage further and have every item on your list representing a simple manageable task, then so much the better.

But most of us don't have such a list.  And the work needed to create such a list is simply too much to contemplate. It seems much easier to simply grab something that you know needs to be done and to do it.  That's progress at least.

The trouble is that the job you pick is usually a relatively easy one, or one that has a particular deadline.  It probably isn't the one that represents the most valuable use of your time that will pay off for years to come.

So I suggest you add creating, prioritising and polishing your list to your job list.  If you don't have a list, start it with that item.  And treat it as major objective of your life going forward that every day will end with your list in better shape than when you started it.

Coping WIth Panic Paralysis Draft 1

Panic Paralysis

So you have a whole load of jobs to do many of which are urgent and all of which will have to be done at some time.  The temptation is to pick the one that is easiest to deliver, and work on it exclusively until it is done.  As always, it takes longer to finish than you expect.  But at least you have made some progress.  You finish it off.  You then have to confront the same dilema again.  So the job that is now the least difficult to work on hits the top of the list.

Soon enough the day is gone.  Your job list is now fuller of difficult jobs than it was before, and the urgent ones are more urgent than they were before.  You go to be resolving that tomorrow is another day.

This is a state I have found myself in often and which I refer to as panic analysis.  These episodes are never fun and can be really traumatic.  And they tend on the whole to get worse rather than better.   In fact they are one of the biggest arguments I know for not taking on too many projects.  A day of simultaneously working hard and prevaricating is hard to beat for being soul destroying.  Wouldn't it be great if you could just focus on your key projects that are going to deliver great results?

But of course you can't.  You aren't at that stage yet.  So what is the best strategy to adopt?

The best thing is to do the exact opposite of what you would like to be doing and what you probably are doing.   Get a timer out, and stick to working out whatever you are doing now for a set period of time.  I'd suggest 15 minutes, but 10 minutes and even 5 minutes would work.   25 minutes is fine.  An hour is too long.  You only have a few hour long sessions available, and you need to cover everything on your list.

Use the first session to make sure you have a list of all the things you need to be working on.  If you have a good system this won't be too much of a problem.  In fact I'd say that the proof of a good system is that you have a good list of your priority activities.  If you don't, then you don't have a good system.  Start your good system by creating a list.

Now work down the list working for your set time period on each of them.  If there is one that is clearly the priority, then alternate that task with ones on the list.  Each time you start a new job off the list try and look at the job and break it down into small chunks that you can easily cope with.  As you come to the end of your timed session aim to finish it in such a way that you can easily pick it up again.  Remember your goal is to get clarity .

How To Get Too Much Done - Introduction Draft 1

The best tip about self development, and the one that I am most convinced is true is the simplest. Don't try to do too much.

Breaking My Twitter Habit

I really love Twitter, but I love it too much.  I spend way too much time on it and when I am not on it I spend way too much time thinking about clever things to say on it.  The only trouble is, the other things in my life which take more effort to achieve pay bigger dividends when I achieve them.   So I need to cut it down, right down.  I am thinking Sunday only.

How Much Time Have You Committed To Your Current Projects?

So you have a dozen or so big projects on the go and as many smaller ones.  How much actual work have you got to do to get them done?

Tea Break

What are tea breaks all about?  Well obviously they are breaks when you can have some tea. As a true born Brit I need regular tea.  But are they a necessary break to recuperate, or could they be a key plank in a good time management system?

Bringing It All Together - Focused Productivity

I don't recommend getting into this position, but I have a shed load of work to do.  I have a very viable business idea that needs some cash and some effort to get it going.   And to fund it and to live while I am at it I have a reasonable consulting business operating.  So my problem is clocking up the billable hours while also keeping up pressure on the more lucrative in the long run project.

Working against the clock.

I have found that the Most Dangerous Writing App has led to me creating a lot more writing than I used to before I used it. I have also found that it has improved both my writing skills and my typing speed in the process.

The trouble with people is they have needs.  If you are going to have people in your life you are going to have to take that into account.  I might have regarded a bank holiday in early spring while the days are getting longer and things are getting warmer as the perfect time to get some work done at organising my priorities and doing a bit of much needed spring cleaning.  However other members of my family had other ideas.  They contrived to have me driving around the country and sitting in living rooms watching television.

The question is what can be done about this kind of thing?  It is very hard to say no to people who want to see you, and even harder to say no when they are dependent on you to make sure that the elderly, infirm and indigent members of your extended family can make it at all.   So there is no choice but to sacrifice one’s own goals and to do so with as much grace as it is possible to muster.

The key thing is that you shouldn’t allow resentment to fester.  They have a perfect right to your time - it is all part of the package of being a human.

My strategy has been to be slightly detached and to do what I can to do some of the stuff I want to do in my head.  It turns out that the conversation can proceed quite well even if I make only a minor contribution to it, and that nobody is too put out if they don’t hear what I am up to.

There is also a lot to be said for being forced to leave what you are doing aside for a period and to come back to it with fresh eyes.  So I made a point of completely closing down my office and even moving the furniture for a really thorough bit of hoovering.  So although I haven’t had the holiday I wanted to have, I have had a holiday and hopefully it will do me some good.

Oh, and if you are interested everyone is doing fine.


photo credit: Family Group/Wedding via photopin (license)

Why Do I Always Leave Things To The Last Moment?

I have 5 minutes to kill right now because I have scheduled my time exceptionally well for this afternoon.  I had some work to get done, and have got it done.  This enabled me to study form for the Grand National and make my investments.  I fancied watching it with my son, and have got him to pick a horse too. And I got some tins of beer in, so I have something to drink while I am watching it.

Productivity Porn Procrastination

If there is one bad habit I just can't seem to overcome it is what I call productivity porn procrastination.  I love to spend time on sites like Lifehacker looking for ways to improve my productivity.  Now, this is not a total time waster.  I do from time to time come up with tips that save me a lot of time.  For example I am writing this blog post using the Most Dangerous Writing App.  This is something I found on Lifehacker which is greatly increasing the amount of writing I get done and also improving the quality of my writing and speeding up my typing.

Only An Hour A Week On Twitter

I might as well be honest and confess that I joined Twitter to promote my blog that reviews books about history.  This was back when social media was still a fairly new thing and the prospect of creating an audience via a new platform like Twitter seemed at least plausible, even if not likely.  Well that was 2009, and now Twitter isn’t the bright new transformative agent of the future.  It is a time sink.

Five Features Of Terrible Clients

It is a pretty good rule in life to take total responsibility for your own achievements and failures.  What other people do affects you, but you  are the one in charge.  Life is a project and you are the manager.  So you can't blame others- it is all down to you.