Keep It Complicated, Stupid!

One of the reasons I like the Time Timer (see previous post) is that it is elegantly simple. It does what it does and nothing else. There are no complicated switches and menus. No one however technologically challenged could possibly have any trouble working it.

This contrasts with my digital timer which has a vast array of different settings, which even after studying the instructions at length I’m not really comfortable with.

Guess which is the better for timing intervals?

I suspect that the Time Timer took a lot of thought to make it as simple as it is - a lot more thought in fact than went into the design of the digital timer.

This reminds me of something which has always struck me about discussions on the subject of Do It Tomorrow. People always want to make it more complicated. When they hit a snag, their solution is to complicate it. So they end up with an array of lists, reminders, plans and priorities which sound as if they will take more time to work than the work itself.

This is actually going in the wrong direction. Do It Tomorrow is a very simple system. All you need to work it is a page-a-day diary and a pen. There’s no need to plan your day, because the system produces your next day’s work automatically. And it provides a simple, easy way of checking that your work is in balance with your time.

When any system gets more and more complicated this is almost always a sign that a “work-around” is in progress. What this means is that it’s easier to work around a problem than to look at why that problem is happening in the first place. For instance if someone is being lazy about how they focus their work, then it is easier to introduce a new layer of complexity than to ask the searching questions that need to be asked.

Anyway, how could I improve the Time Timer? Well, I think it would be good to have it count-up as well as count-down, so we could just add a little button here, and it would be good to have a digital display as well - that would be easy if we made the main dial smaller. And if we’re making the main dial smaller, why not have two dials so we can time two things at once…?

The Time Timer

Many people who have read my book Get Everything Done or my articles about the use of timers, have asked me where they can get a silent timer for use in an open-plan office situation. I didn’t have a satisfactory answer to this until a reader, Janine Adams, recommended the Time Timer.

I bought one myself and I must say I am completely sold on it.

Basically it consists of a red disk which shows the time remaining for any time period up to an hour (that’s what it says in the specification but in fact it will time up to two hours). You just move the disk to the interval you want and the red segment gradually gets smaller and smaller. It’s ideal for those working in offices because it doesn’t sound any alarm when it reaches zero - but because the red is so conspicuous you can’t help noticing when it’s no longer there!

The one I’ve bought is large enough to use for seminars or classroom situations. So it’s ideal for timing a session or a speech. When you’ve got an appointment to keep you can set it for the time you need to leave your office. Another use is when you have someone visiting your office and you say “I can give you 10 minutes” you set the timer to 10 minutes - it gives such a strong visual cue that the visitor will get the point!

You can get a very good idea of what it does from the live demonstration at www.timetimer.com/virtual.php

Related article:

My Favourite Time Management Tool

Effortless Action

Something I have often mentioned on this blog is that when I am totally on top of something then I have energy to do that something. This applies even if it’s something I don’t particularly like doing.

A classic case of this is doing the dishes. If I allow the dishes to mount up for a week, then the energy for finally doing them is going to be conspicuously lacking. What’s more, the very thought of them is going to be draining my energy for other work. If on the other hand I tackle them immediately after each meal, then the energy is there and I can put them out of my mind until the next meal.

Like me, you may have many “trouble spots” which you find difficult to keep organised. For some people it’s keeping a tidy desk. For others it may be things like filing or dealing with email. And for a lot of us it’s all of them!

There’s a two-step process which will keep you on top of tasks like these:

1. Increase the frequency at which you deal with the task.

2. Work all out to get on top of the task (it may take several sessions to get there)

3. Once you are on top, aim to stay there by completing all the task each time.

So let’s take as an example the task of keeping a tidy desk (one very dear to my heart!). In theory I tidy my desk once a day, but in practice it often gets missed out because I’m too tired at the end of the day. A vicious circle then develops because the more effort it’s going to take to tidy the desk, the less likely I am to summon up the effort to get the task done.

So looking at the three-step process, what can I do to solve this? The first step is to increase the frequency at which I tidy the desk. So I could have a rule that I tidy my desk every hour on the hour. Each hour I put away everything on my desk, except the stuff I am currently working on. Since not much is going to have built up in an hour, this tidying will usually only take me a few seconds. Problem solved!

Challenge

Pick some minor annoyance in your life like an untidy desk, and carry out the three-step process. Once you’ve solved that problem, ask yourself what else you can use the method on.

Revisiting "Get Everything Done"

As evidenced by my previous posting, I’ve been re-visiting some of the techniques in my first book Get Everything Done. It was interesting coming back to it eight years after it was published because I could see that the principles in it are basically sound. Almost immediately though I saw how the basic system could be greatly improved by making a few very simple changes.

Over the last week or so I have got through the most immense amount of work. I’ve rediscovered the feeling I got when I first invented the basic GED system that I had no idea that it was possible to get through so much work in a day.

No, I’m not going to tell you what the changes are… yet! I’ve got to test this out more thoroughly and see what other improvements might be necessary.

How to Crack a Difficult Task

I’ve been reminding myself this week of how effective the use of timed bursts can be. In particular, the method which I have been using to crack a number of major highly-resistable tasks is the use of a series of bursts of increasing length. The sequence is a burst of 5 minutes, then 10 minutes, then 15 minutes and so on - each time adding another 5 minutes to the length of the burst.

Although my book “Get Everything Done” recommends alternating these bursts on several tasks, I’ve been using the method on one task at a time. I’ve found a 2 minute gap between the bursts works best for me, though this may depend on the nature of the task and the person doing the task!

Using this method I’ve cleared among other things a backlog of paper that had been refusing to shift, caught up with the adminstrative work for my coming seminars, and sorted out action needed on my financial arrangements. These are all things which had been hanging around for some time, and of course building up resistance.

This method is ideal for use with the Current Initiative in the Do It Tomorrow system. There are two main reasons why it works so well. The first is that by starting with a short burst of only 5 minutes you get through the worst part of any project, which is making a start. The second reason is that having a clearly defined burst of action concentrates your work. By the time you get to a 40-minute burst you will have spent three hours on the task. But you will have accomplished far more than if you had just worked for three hours straight. If you don’t believe me, try it!

Obligation a Cause of Procrastination

There’s an interesting article on the Wonder Women blog about a sense of obligation being one of the main causes of procrastination.

When I was in sixth grade, I took piano lessons. Each week, I would meet with my piano teacher and tried to fake my way through the assigned pieces that I had not practiced. I hated that I had to play certain songs for a certain period of time, even though I enjoyed the piano. Finally, I convinced my mom to let me quit. From that day on, I sat and played piano for about an hour a day.

The One Essential Resource For Surviving the Recession

It’s been amazing over these last few weeks how the world situation seems to have changed and fear taken over. I have no intention here of pontificating about the future. Like the vast majority of people, I have no idea what is going to happen.

In times of uncertainty like these in what can we trust? Can we trust our work? Probably not - a lot of jobs and businesses have already gone and more will follow. Can we trust our clients? No, they’re in the same position as we are. Can we trust the banks? I don’t have to answer that one! Can we trust our savings and pensions? They seem to be the things most at risk. Can we trust our politicians? There’s an old saying “No problem is so bad that government interference can’t make it worse.”

So is there anything we can trust? Yes, one thing. Ourselves. That is to say, our own ability to handle whatever life throws at us.

Well, we can trust it if we’ve got it. But what we have to realise is that the standard of self-management which is sufficient for the easy times is not going to be sufficient for the hard times. We can afford to waste time, be unfocused, drift along, be immersed in trivialities when there are easy pickings to be had. We can’t afford any of those things when the supplies start to dry up. When we deny reality, reality always comes back and hits us sooner or later.

I would suggest that time management and personal organisation - the subjects of this website - have now moved from being an optional extra to being a matter of survival. If you don’t have these skills already, you need them now. You may have got away with not having them in the past. You won’t get away with it over the coming months and years.

Schedule of Seminars

Related Article:

What It Takes to Be a Successful Coach

4 Hour Workweek Checklist

CEO Bernard Sandoval of Sandia has developed a check-list for his employers based on some of the principles in Tim Ferriss’s book The 4-Hour Work Week. The principles are very similar to those in Do It Tomorrow and can easily be adapted if you wish to use them.

Download it here.

Advanced "Do It Tomorrow" Seminar: Additional Date

I have added a further Advanced “Do It Tomorrow” Seminar on Wednesday, December 10th (all day).

For further details and booking form click here

Getting My Stuff Done

I’ve posted the “Procrastination” episode from Lev Yilmaz’s “Tales of Mere Existence” before. Here it is again for those who need reminding:

In it the cartoon character representing the author spends a busy day getting prepared to “get his stuff done”. By the end of the day of course he has done all sorts of things, but hasn’t even made a start on “his stuff”.

If you’re like me you are only too familiar with this sort of delaying tactic. After a day like this I would berate myself for completely wasting the day.

Then recently I re-read John Perry’s hilarious article Structured Procrastination and started to have second thoughts about Lev Yilmaz’s cartoon day.

Imagine that the character in the clip had started his day with a To Do list that looked like this:

Clean desk
Grocery shopping for the week
Make omelette
Wash dishes
Buy oil
Oil office chair
Watch “Twilight Zone” marathon

How much of it would he have done? An untidy desk and a squeaky chair are the sort of things that we can put up with for months, and all the time they are draining our energy. The week’s grocery shopping is a necessary and usually burdensome chore. Eating an omelette rather than junk food is a plus. Watching the “Twilight Zone” marathon is better than mindlessly channel-surfing.

In other words, if he had started the day with the intention of doing these tasks, he might easily have failed to get very far through the list. But because he had an item “Get My Stuff Done” which he was resisting more than any of these things, he got all of them done with ease.

The moral is to give ourselves credit for what we have done, rather than beat ourselves up for what we haven’t done. And to realise that the things we are avoiding doing may be strong motivators for getting all the other stuff done. Make the most of it!

The Hidden Power of Procrastination

The price we pay for the things we succeed in doing is the things we leave undone.

I came across John Perry’s hilarious article Structured Procrastination the other day. It is in the finest tradition of humour which tells more truth than the serious articles. Another great exemplar in the time management field is J. Northcote Parkinson’s Parkinson’s Law.

Reading John Perry’s article cast light on something which had puzzled me for years. To describe what it is I have to go back to the first time management system I ever invented - something like twelve years ago. This was a form of open-ended To Do list. Unlike the standard advice about To Do lists I made no attempt to order it or prioritise it. Nor was I particularly careful about what I put into the list. Anything which occurred to me or crossed my mind went into the list. So the result would be a long list which contained everything I could think of. And as I thought of new stuff all the time, the list would grow rapidly.

Since the list was not prioritised in any way, my method of working the list was to go through it continually from one end to the other. Whenever an item “stood out” to me I would do it. Any recurrent items like “Email” would be re-entered at the end of the list once completed.

This type of To Do list was extremely efficient for getting a lot done. However the disadvantage was that a lot of items didn’t get done. Some items would stay on the list for weeks.

What I realised after reading John Perry’s article was that the items which don’t get done provide the motive power for what does get done. In other words the price we pay for the things we succeed in doing is the things we leave undone.

How to Phrase Task Items

Steve Wynn has posted a useful tip on the Do It Tomorrow group at Yahoogroups about how to phrase items on a Task List. I quote it with his permission:

I had a report to write, so in typical fashion I plonked the action ‘Write Report xyz’ onto my Task Diary for the following day. Satisfied that the day would yield enough time, as it stood, it gave me no further concern.
 
The following day, I looked at ‘Write Report xyz’ and I noticed a strange thing happen.  In my mind’s eye I played out as sort of mini film, which showed me writing the report, checking the report, formatting the report until eventually it ended with the completed report.  I saw it as a whole and immediately I built up resistance to the act of writing the report - because it looked like a lot of work and I didn’t feel like doing it.  I tried to focus on just getting the file out, persistent starting - but by that point it was too late. Resistance had just set in, the task in itself had just morphed into something more than it was overall. So I decided it was pointless to even attempt the task, I cancelled it for that day.  
 
When placing it on the next days page, I took some time to think about it a little and what had just happened. I obviously didn’t want the same scenario the next day. So I thought about the ‘just get the file out’ concept, and I thought to myself I will add the item but write it slightly differently. I put it on my list as ‘Start to write report xyz’.
 
Now this had a completely different effect when it came around.  ‘Start to write report xyz’ wasn’t a threat at all, I was only going to start. By definition that didn’t mean anything, it just meant perhaps at a minimum I could create the document, name it and save it. Do something the following day.  It didn’t any longer feel like a lot of work, that mental movie didn’t play as before. This time it just showed me opening a document. No threat - no sense of of volume of work.  As it turns out I actually wrote the entire report from the basis of that action.
 
This got me thinking that perhaps I should be a little more careful about the way I phrase things on my Task Diary. Here is a very subtle difference but it made a considerable difference to the outcome.  Just by telling myself to start, to get the file out, reduced the threat associated to the action. I could accomplish that action easily.
 
So if you find yourself resisting an item on your Task Diary, action list etc, then perhaps it might be worth just looking at how you have phrased that action.  Perhaps by altering the phrasing you can alter the meaning and make it easier to complete.

The Invisible Clock

I am often asked to recommend a timer which can be used silently in a busy office. A reader has drawn my attention to the Invisible Clock which has multiple alarms and a timer. It can be set to audible or vibrate and can be worn hooked on a belt.

I haven’t tried it out myself, so if anyone buys it and tries it out do please let us know how you get on with it.

Related article:

My Favourite Time Management Tool

Interview by Luciano Passuello

Luciano Passuello has a interview with me on his blog Litemind today.

I'm 90 per cent sure that . . .

There’s an old saying: “It isn’t what you don’t know that hurts you — it’s what you think you know but that’s wrong!”

This article is a revised version of one that appeared in my newsletter in November 1999. It consists of a rather unusual quiz that measures exactly what you mean when you say “I am 90% sure that … ”

It may also give you some idea of what your doctor, lawyer, accountant or other professional adviser means when they tell you that they are 90% sure of something directly effecting your health and wellbeing.

The quiz questions are exactly the same as the ones I gave in 1999, so if you took the test then try it again to see how well you do now. You may find you have improved enormously — there again you may not!

Here’s the instructions. It’s important you read them carefully.

All the questions are about dates. What’s unusual is that I don’t expect you to give exact answers. In fact I have deliberately tried to pick questions to which you are extremely unlikely to know the exact answers.

What I want you to do for each question is to give a range in which you are 90% certain the answer falls. It’s entirely up to you how big that range is.

So for example if the question was “What year did John F. Kennedy enter the US Senate?” you are extremely unlikely to know the exact answer unless you are a student of political history. But from such knowledge you have of Kennedy’s life you might decide that it must have been between 1945 and 1963, so you would put down 1945-1963 as your answer. You’d be right because the correct answer is 1952!

So remember, I want you to answer each question so you are 90 per cent sure that the correct answer falls within your range. I will say that again: so you are 90 PER CENT SURE the correct answer falls within your range.

Here goes!

There are ten questions. All the answers are dates. Where not specified the date is of the first public launch/presentation. Remember you are being asked to give a range, not an exact date.

1) Chanel No. 5 perfume.

2) US Supreme Court orders the dissolution of Standard Oil Co.

3) Alexander Fleming invents penicillin.

4) Bruce Springsteen’s “Born In The USA”.

5) Mother Teresa wins the Nobel Peace Prize

6) Mississippi admitted as a state of the Union

7) Isaac Singer’s first sewing machine

8) International Society for Krishna Consciousness (the Hare Krishnas) founded

9) Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture

10) Louisa M. Alcott’s “Little Women”

********PAGE DOWN FOR ANSWERS**********

1) 1922 2) 1911 3) 1928 4) 1984 5) 1979
6) 1817 7) 1851 8) 1965 9) 1880 10) 1868

Remember you were asked to give a range that you were 90 PER CENT SURE the answer fell into. If you got that spot on, the date should have fallen within the range you gave for 9 out of the 10 questions. How well did you do?

Virtually everyone this test is given to gets a much lower score than 9. I’ve known some people get only one or two right. If that was your score, then when you say “I’m 90% sure” what you actually mean is “I’m 20% sure”!

The really worrying thing is that even when this type of test is given to people in subjects in which they have expert knowledge, they still tend to greatly overestimate their knowledge of the right answer.

How often do you make decisions on the basis of what you think you “know”? Realise that there is a natural human tendency to overestimate the accuracy of one’s knowledge. We think our business is doing ok, but when we check the figures they are very different from what we thought. We think we know what the trends are, but we get caught by surprise because we didn’t get the facts to back up our “knowledge”. Don’t get caught out like this — always make sure that your decisions are made on the basis of hard facts.

Once you have the facts you can then introduce other important factors such as your feelings and values, but without the facts you are building on sand.

(You won’t be surprised to hear that when I re-tested myself I got 10 out of 10. BUT, even though I’d researched all the answers myself and moreover knew exactly what to expect, I still managed to avoid getting two questions wrong by only one year — and I’d given them a 40 year and a 50 year spread respectively!)

Interview with Taragh B

Some of you may be familiar with Taragh B’s lively videos on Youtube. I just happened to run into her at a party the other day and she took the opportunity to interview me:

The Closed List: Regaining Control Over Your Day

There’s a good article about closed lists on the Whakate site, which largely references my book Do It Tomorrow and an interview with myself.

Additional Introductory "Do It Tomorrow" Seminar

I will be giving an additional Introductory “Do It Tomorrow” seminar on the afternoon of Friday, October 17th in Worcester, England. The price will be £125 and is not liable to VAT.

For details contact Francis Christie francis@francischristie.co.uk

Please note this seminar must be booked through Francis and not through me.

DIT Seminar Booking Now Open

Booking is now open for the Introductory “Do It Tomorrow” seminar on October 23rd and the Advanced (full day) seminar on November 7th.

Please note that the Advanced seminar is intended for those who have had some experience putting the principles of “Do It Tomorrow” into practice. So you should not book on it unless you have read the book or attended the Introductory seminar.

Thinking Up New Ideas

One of the most important actions for anyone in an executive or managerial position is thinking. If you don’t leave yourself time to think then you are going to be working at far less than maximum effectiveness.

Ok, so you acknowledge the rightness of what I’ve just said, and you decide “I’m going to do some thinking”.

But what exactly do you do then?

Here’s some suggestions!

1. Set aside a specific time, perhaps half an hour, in which you sit down somewhere you can’t be interrupted. Use a blank pad of paper and write down every thought that comes to you. Don’t try to force it, and don’t worry if your thoughts dry up for a while.

2. Do the same, but this time with a mind mapping programme on your computer. The advantage of putting your thoughts into a mindmapper is that when you have finished you can arrange and group your thoughts logically.

3. With both the above methods, when you have finished the set time, go through the thoughts and evaluate them. Identify the ones that are “goers” and mark them up for action or further consideration.

4. Same again, but this time sit down with a mind mapping programme and construct and arrange the map as you go along. This is particularly useful when you have a specific problem or issue to think about.

5. If you have a specific issue to think about, try jotting down a few thoughts about it every day for a week. Don’t refer to your previous notes when you do this. By the end of the week you may find that your mind has come up with a lot of new insights.

6. You can use a similar method for making decisions. After doing all the necessary research, try arranging the possible solutions in order of preference (and don’t forget that “Do nothing” is usually one of the options). Do this every day for a week, without referring to your previous order of preference, and you will have a much better idea of what you really want.

7. When carrying out thinking as a group, it’s important to remember that groups don’t like people who rock the boat. So members who are unhappy about a proposal may say nothing because they don’t want to be seen to be opposing the majority. To get a good group solution it is essential that the thoughts of each individual are taken into consideration.