Self Discipline

Self discipline is one of those things that we all sort of know about but can't really define.  What I mean when I talk and think about self discipline is really quite simple. It is simply the ability to actually do that which I set out to do.  And on the whole I am not very good at it.

But I think I am getting better.

How To Read More Stuff

I have tried to teach myself speed reading a couple of times.  I have never really got the hang of it as a whole.  I can't look at a whole page of text and take it in in the way you are supposed to.  But I think I picked up a few things from it.  It does help to keep your distance from the paper and you can increase your speed by running your finger down the page to draw your eye more quickly than it would go at its own speed.

How To Write More

I have four blogs. I have a couple of training courses I need to write.  On top of that I want to start some newsletters.  I have also got a book idea I am working on that I think might be quite lucrative, and a novel I am working on that hasn’t a prayer of being read by anyone but which I would hate to not write.  And I want to fit all this in with my job as a consultant which is what actually pays the bills.

So I have a lot on, and I need to find ways of getting more writing done.  

Interestingly, the rate limiting step with writing is not simply typing speed.  Getting it into your head in a form that can be turned into a written document is the most time consuming part of the process.  It takes a special form of creative energy which cannot easily be summoned and which can be dissipated with great speed in the face of distractions or difficulties.  So what to do?

Here are the techniques I have applied to crank out more text.

Concentrate on one piece of writing at a time.

I have a list called writing.  I have all the things I want to write on that list.  I re-order the priorities regularly, but once a piece has hit the top of the list it stays there until it is done.  I make the commitment that whatever else I do I am going to finish that piece of writing and nothing is going to stop me. 

Wherever possible I break down large tasks into small bite sized chunks.  There is a natural, indeed a rational resistance, to starting big tasks so the smaller the blocks you set yourself the better.

Think through what I should write while doing other things.

There are plenty of things I have to do that leave plenty of space for thought.  I use these times to think through what I am working on and to mentally compose sentences.  It s quite a good way to make washing the dishes productive.  Unfortunately the actual written piece never quite matches the brilliance and eloquence that it seems to possess in my head - but that is the way of things.

Avoid Social Media.

I am addicted to Twitter.  I thoroughly enjoy the brilliant tweets that some people come up with, and I can get absorbed in the the uneven struggle to come up with stuff that might be considered to be passably insightful or humorous.  

Avoid alcohol

Nothing kills my ability to concentrate like alcohol.  I am maybe a lightweight, but I find that even the day after drinking enough alcohol to become intoxicated I am still incapable of writing anything.

Avoid all distractions

I can’t write while watching the television.  Music is okay, but it is certainly not the case that music speeds up my writing or enables me to concentrate more.  The only thing it is positively useful for is keeping me at my computer for longer periods of time than I might otherwise have stayed.  

Analyse the quickest way to complete particular types of article.

I write in quite a few different styles and formats, and they all have subtle differences in the best way to approach them.  I have looked carefully at how I can squeeze a bit more productivity out of them all.  For example, with blog posts you have to not only write but do some SEO work, tag and categorise and find a suitable illustration and schedule a good time for it to appear.  I have found that doing all these ancillary activities before starting to write is a lot more productive than writing first and tidying up later.  I am not sure why this is, but I think it is because it gives you time to think through what you are writing even if you aren’t consciously trying.  I also write straight into the blog software.  I don’t want to introduce yet another step into the process of creating the post.

Other things I have found is that is best to write a draft of factual articles before you do any research on them.  This means that you can do all the research in one single session once you have highlighted all the stuff you need to find out.  It also cuts down on the kinds of meandering I am prone to when I research.  In fact meanders is an understatement - I am well on the way to creating oxbow lakes.

Increase typing Speed.

Although typing is not the rate limiting step to producing text, it is nonetheless the thing that will slow down the actual drafting process.  It is best to get your typing speed as fast as you possibly can.  I spent many years under the impression that the speed I typed was some kind of predestined personal quality like my eye colour.  Recently I have learned that it is possible to overcome years of bad habits on the keyboard and to increase your typing speed.  The trick is a surprisingly easy one.  All it requires is that you take the time to study carefully how you are using your fingers and to find ways to use them better.  One thing I noticed was a big time sink for me was that whenever I used quotes I would pause and decide which ones I would use - single or double.  Now I just use single.  ‘Sorted’.  

Use a timer

Setting a timer and choosing to write for a set period of time can be a very useful technique.  I often use it to squeeze out a few hundred words between other tasks. I used to use 15 minute bursts.  The pomorodo technique advocates 25 minutes, and I think I find these to be better.  I am not sure whether this is because there is anything inherently good about 25 minutes, but it suits my current concentration span.  I have a feeling this varies over time and with how much you practice it.

Lower standards.

It is easy to get carried away with the search for perfection in writing.  A single paragraph can take hours to get just right.  While this aiming for literary perfection is in some ways admirable not everything that you write needs to be worthy of the Nobel prize for literature.  Settle for good enough and get on with finishing the job.

Raise standards.

This is not a contradiction of the previous one.  Keeping an eye on grammar, spelling and word order as you go along saves a lot of time in later editing.

Blitz.

I try and get as much as possible written to fit around my everyday life, but sometimes you just need to blitz it.  If I have a piece that just has to be written, stop everything and just write for hours on end if need be.  I call this a blitz and the object is much like the historical blitz.  Use speed to break down the barriers and reach the final draft before reality has time to realise what you are doing and put a stop to it.

I once got a request to write a piece for a trade journal.  I didn’t have any spare time and I realised that if I put it on my todo list it would simply sit there until the deadline had passed.  Instead I decided to just write it there and then.  I actually wrote it as a reply to the e-mail requesting it rather than switch to a word processor.  It wasn’t the best bit of writing I have ever done.  In fact I wince when I read it.  But it did the job.  It was published and led to a number of opportunities arising as a direct result, not least of which is an expenses paid trip to Sweden later this year to give a talk on the subject matter of the article.

Get Finished.

Nothing is a bigger waste of time than an unfinished article.  If I start one, I aim to finish it.  And finishing it for me doesn’t mean just getting to the full stop at the end of the sentence.  Everything I write has some kind of end use, and it isn’t finished until it is scheduled to appear on a blog, on its way to a paying customer or ready to be marketed.  

Photo credit: Lívia Cristina via photopin cc

How To Be A Straight A Student - Steve Pavlina

Steve Pavlina is a human like the rest of us and only has a limited number of good ideas.  One of those is the simple, obvious but often overlooked one that life is easier if you are disciplined and organised about how you go about it.  This is something we all know at some level.  Paying off your credit card on time is cheaper than forgetting it.  Doing a shopping list before you go to the shop minimises the time you spend in it and maximises the usefulness of what you end up leaving with.  Steve is particularly creative at coming up with great examples of this general principle and producing highly readable blog posts from them.   A good one is his description of how he became a straight A student.

What To Do When Your Company Makes People Redundant

I can't really complain about how my career as an employee worked out, but I did manage to work for several companies who went through cycles of redundancies.  In every case the redundancies were done in a piecemeal fashion, at least at first.  In no case did they turn the company around and save the remaining jobs.  I was never senior enough to be privy to the whole story, but in every case it seemed to me at the time that they contributed to rather than ameliorated any problems.  In one case I am reasonably sure that they were a major factor in destabilising the company and making recovery impossible.

Get In The Mood For Maximum Productivity

One of the most popular works that the composer Handel came up with in his own lifetime was Alexander's Feast.  In those days getting a piece of music into print was a rare feat, and only two of Handel's masterpieces were published in that format while he was still alive: Messiah naturally enough and Alexander's Feast.

Don't Trust A Company's Better Nature

One of the first customers I got was a start up, but a very well funded one.  They had sold out their previous very successful business some years before and were now starting again.  I assume they have a reasonable pile of cash behind them.  I was contacted to do some work by a young employee and helpfully steered her in the right direction and gave her a quote.  Once she had to get approval she had to come back to me and ask for a discount.   I was just starting and keen to sign up solvent customers so happily conceded one to be sure of getting the business.

What Reality TV Shows Tell Us About Reality

There is one myth that I, and I suspect a lot of people, have found hard to shake off.  It is the idea that leaders are somehow special and have unique insight and skills.  I suppose it goes back to childhood when your parents were your expert guides to life and whose opinions you weren't in a position to question.  This mindset gets transferred onto teachers and then managers as you grow up.  You are hardly aware of it.

Seek Richness Not Riches

When the Titanic sunk it took about 15 minutes to hit the bottom after sinking beneath the waves.  We can make this estimate even though nobody was there to observe it thanks to the Navier-Stokes equation.

How To Make More Money By Talking

So I had an enquiry from a client.  They were working with another consultant who wasn't really doing what they wanted and had lost a lot of time on a project.  They outlined what they were looking for and I made a few guesses about their requirements and sent them a quote.  They were modestly interested but wanted to both lower the price and speed things up.  Sometimes it is best to just pull the plug on an unpromising opportunity and spend the time looking for a better one.  I tried to do this by turning down their request for a meeting at their premises.  That I thought would be the end of it.

Nudge Yourself for Better Results

I was up with the lark this morning.  Did some exercise.  Ate fruit for breakfast.  Sat at my computer ready to start working before seven.  Then spent over an hour goofing around on the internet failing to achieve anything very much.   What went wrong?  I knew what I was going to work on, but I wasn't all set up ready to go.  Consequently I somehow sunk into torpor rather than activity.

Why There Is No God

Scientists have done an amazing job of working out how the world works.  This knowledge has enabled us to do both good things and bad things.  Eliminating smallpox has to be a high point.  Nuclear weapons would be about the lowest.  These achievements are all the more remarkable when you consider that there is still so much we don't know.  Most of the universe is unobservable in principle and we still don't know where most of the dark matter is.

Don't Be Right, Be Interesting

Karl Marx was influential - but was he right or just interesting?

"Dear Lord, please make all the bad people good, and all the good people interesting." - Dave Bartram, lead singer of Showaddywaddy

In a recent article in the Guardian Oliver Burkeman points out that it is more important to be interesting than to be right.  It is an intriguing thought.  It is one that certainly makes sense to me.  In fact I am a perfect example in that I find a lot of what Steve Pavlina writes to be not just wrong, but completely contradictory to my world view.  But because he writes in an interesting way I still read him rather than people who are more accurate.

Sacking Customers

So I have been getting enquiries almost daily.  I get repeat business and referrals from existing customers.  I have a full schedule and enough money in the bank to pay myself a salary I am happy with.  But I am working way too many hours and too much of what I am doing is selling time rather than generating a steady income.  I am also finding I can't turn jobs round as quickly as I would like or that my customers would like.  So all in all, 12 months in I could be in a lot worse place, but I have to do some really serious thinking and take some significant actions to get where I want to be.

Increasing My Typing Speed - Up to 37 wpm

The act of simply observing what I am doing and spotting where time is getting wasted is proving to be a very productive one.  Quite apart from anything else I am getting a lot more writing done.  I now have about a dozen and a half blog posts scheduled over my three blogs, which is a nice feeling.  But the most significant benefit I have found is that the activity I am working on is in fact improving.  My typing speed has gone up by about 20% on 14 days.

Learning To Become An Expert Typist Update 1

I am trying to remember to consciously work on my typing speed.  A great tool to do this is a programme called Write Or Die.  (That link is worth following just for the hilarious tagline.) This enables you to set a goal for a piece of writing in terms of both time and number of words.

Learning To Become An Expert Typist

I was listening to a podcast in the car this morning about memory. In it the speaker made a bit of a digression on the subject of learning skills.  We all know the saying that practice makes perfect.  Well as sayings go, it doesn't really hit the mark as perfect itself.