Not Enough Time for Literature?

One of the things I like to make time for is reading the great works of literature. At the moment I am reading Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey and Dostoevski's The Idiot. How do I find the time? Well, I use a service called Daily Lit, which sends me a brief passage from a book every day (max. 3 books) by email. The passages are just the right length to get read, rather than left "for later". If at any stage you get so caught up in the book that you don't want to wait for the next day's passage, you can get it sent to you immediately.

It's very convenient, and is an entirely free service. It's just the way to catch up with all those works of "great literature" you always meant to get round to reading sometime.

A useful tip: It's a good idea when reading a Russian novel to keep a running list of the characters. Otherwise you are likely to get confused by the Russian habit of calling people by their first name and patronymic. In The Idiot for example the character General Epanchin is usually referred to as Ivan Fedorovitch, his wife as Elizabetha Prokofievna, and their youngest daughter as Aglaya Ivanovna.

Microsoft Outlook Tasks

I don't use the Tasks in MS Outlook much myself since I prefer paper, pencil and a page-a-day diary. But I'm always amazed how little people who do use Outlook to manage their tasks know about the many things one can do with it. So I'm going to write an occasional series of postings on the subject.

So here's my first tip.

Go to New/Task in Outlook, which will open a task box. Notice the large space for notes which makes up the major part of the note box. Now select any email you like in your Inbox, and drag it into the note space on the task box. You will see that the email is represented by an icon. Double click on it and the email will open.

This is very useful because you can use the alarm function on the Outlook Task to bring the email forward at a set time or a set day.

You don't have to restrict yourself to one email either. You can drag as many as you like into the task box. So you could use it for bringing forward a batch of emails for action. Or for grouping all the emails to do with a particular subject.

In fact you can drag an entire email folder into the task box. So you could use it to remind yourself to review a whole subject.

An alternative to dragging is to highlight the email and use CTRL-C and CTRL-V to paste into the task box. It produces exactly the same result.

There are many other things you can do with the task box, and I'll be dealing with some of them over the next few weeks.

Further Diet Report

I weighed in exactly on my target weight for the day this morning, so yesterday's addition of one rule (No Seconds) was enough. The rule remains in place though, because rules are only taken off if I am below the target weight. As I selected No Seconds as the first rule on the basis that it is the easiest to keep, it shouldn't be too much hardship.

Diet report

Today for the first time I crept a little above my target weight for the day. It was only half a pound, but nevertheless it triggered the first rule "No Seconds". This is the easiest rule on my list. Will it be enough to bring me back to the target weight, especially as the target reduces by 1/2 lb tomorrow? We will see!

Anyway up to now my diet has consisted of eating exactly what I normally eat, in the quantities I normally eat, and when I normally eat. I can't complain that it's been hard work!

Old Articles

I have added some more articles from back issues of my newsletter:

Pulling cows out of ditches?

Find the key action!

Start small

Want to do something different?

The reason my blog was silent the week before last had nothing to do with Air Monkey as one person unkindly (but plausibly) suggested in the Comments, but was actually because I took a week off to drive up to Scotland and do a two day Japanese drumming course at the Mugen Taiko Dojo. I had seen one of their concerts when they were on tour, and thought "That looks fun!" Then when I learned that they did introductory courses for people of any state of proficiency or none, I decided to have a go.

Anyway I was right - it was fun, a lot of fun. The three instructors Teresa, Miyuki and Neil obviously loved their subject and just seemed to want to communicate their enjoyment of the drumming to us. Each course takes 18 people and all the instruction is as a group. Most of the instruction was done by Teresa, who is a wonderful teacher, knowing just how to pace it so the energy never flagged and keeping our interest going throughout. There is just so much one can learn in two days of course, but we managed to give a concert performance at the end to a (very small) invited audience.

They don't run many introductory courses and the places are very limited, but they are taking bookings now for one on 17/18 March. So if you want a really fun break from your normal activities, I can highly recommend it.

See www.taikodojo.com/education/workshop.php for further information.

"Seize the Day"

An article by me features in the latest issue of Edge, the magazine of the Institute of Leadership and Management, out today.

The Longest Day

Establishing a new structure for my day has brought back into my consciousness something I had forgotten. Yesterday was the first day of switching my computer on at 9 am and switching it off at 6 pm. At the end of the day I looked back and thought how long the day seemed. I have got so used to days passing like a flash that this came as quite a surprise. It shouldn't have, because I am always teaching other people that you get more done by limiting your working day. Yet, having let it lapse a bit in my own life, I was surprised again by just how much difference it does make.

Fasting and Father Christmas

The discussion about missing meals in the comments for Can I Improve on the No S Diet? reminded me of this - an extract from the old Roman Breviary for yesterday's feast of St Nicholas (the original Santa Claus):

The holiness of his life was marked even from the cradle. When he was at the breast he never would suck more than once on Wednesdays and Fridays, and that always after sunset, though he sucked freely on other days. This custom of fasting he never broke during his whole life.

Is this proof that dieting makes you fat?

Qlockwork

Yesterday I downloaded an interesting program called Qlockwork, which keeps a record of everything that you do on your computer. It's a useful way to see the reality of how you are spending your time.

The picture above shows the last hour of work for me yesterday. First I was doing some work on my blog, followed by a gap while I nipped to the shops for something, then a bit more on the blog, a short session with QA-Coach, and finally backing up my computer. My computer was switched off at exactly 6 o'clock in accordance with my new Structuring the Day rules.

I just ran the program and it did all this by itself. I haven't even glanced at the instructions yet. There's loads more one can do with it, so I will be exploring its capabilities over the next few days.

Diet Day Three

There's nothing like a diet to bring out the comments. My mention of skipping meals brought me some contrasting reactions, divided equally between those who told me that it would make me fat, and those who said that it would be the start of the slippery slope to starving myself to death. Fortunately, as with most disaster scenarios, they can't all happen at once.

The reality of the diet is that, in spite of my best efforts before and after the Velazquez exhibition (well worth seeing by the way) I had lost another pound this morning. That meant I was 1 1/2 pounds under my target for the day. So now I have another day without any rules. Great! The choccy cake has run out, so I am now tucking in to scones with loads of jam.

What will happen if I do nothing?

(This article features in today's issue of my newsletter)

For the first in my series of powerful questions, I am starting with a very interesting one: "What will happen if I do nothing?" There are many ways in which we can use it and many meanings we can give to the question. We can use it when we feel stuck and we can use it when things are going well. The answer to the question may be negative, or it may be positive. It's a question which can be asked by an individual, or by a team or by a whole organisation.

First of all we can ask the question when things are going well. When our new business has finally taken off, it is easy to think that success is our birthright and that it is going to continue that way for ever. Yet the fact is that nothing is static. As the saying goes, “Change is here to stay”. When we reach the point where we are comfortable with what we have achieved, we may well have also reached the point where we have become complacent. The result is that we do nothing which is out of our comfort zone. Eventually we wake up one morning to find that life and the market have moved on and we and our business have been left behind. Businesses that don’t keep up to date with the latest developments are not going to maintain their success. Regularly asking "What will happen if we do nothing apart from what we are already doing?" can wake us up to the danger of stagnation. It may make us aware of the trends that are working against us and which will overwhelm us if we don’t start to do something about them.

This question is even more useful when things are going badly. In these circumstances our greatest enemies are fear and inertia: fear - because any step we could take seems fraught with risk; inertia - because any effective action is likely to lead us way out of our comfort zone. The question “What will happen if I do nothing about this situation?” can alert us to the fact that doing nothing is likely to be just as risky and uncomfortable as any of the other courses of action. When we don’t make our mind up to do something, we are in effect making our mind up to do nothing. Doing nothing is one of the decisions. We are seldom faced with the choice, do I do X or do I do Y? The choice is really Do I do X, Do I do Y, or do I carry on as I am? We need to examine the effects of doing nothing just as closely as we look at the effects of doing X or Y.

Of course, doing nothing is sometimes the correct answer. Governments in particular seem to have great difficulty in believing that every news items doesn't require a reaction from them. Bearing in mind the old adage "There are no circumstances so bad that government interference can't make them worse", most of us would be only too glad if our governments would concentrate on the fundamentals rather than shower us with new initiatives at the drop of a hat.

Sometimes we just have to allow time for the right solution or the right decision to appear. Meanwhile we can reassure ourselves that the course of action we are taking at the moment is the right one. If we can't make up our mind about a proposed course of action, then that is probably as good a sign as any that we shouldn't be taking that action.

Structuring the Day

I’ve been conscious recently that my days have become rather unstructured. The usual result of this is that work starts taking over my life and I cease to feel grounded. This time is no exception - I’m beginning to get that “all work and no play” feeling and, even worse, a feeling of guilt when I take time off from working.

So it’s time to re-establish some structure in my life. What I want to do is two things:

1. To schedule what I call “depth activities” (see my book “Get Everything Done and Still Have Time to Play”). There are three well tried and proven depth activities which I know have a profound effect on me when I do them regularly for a prolonged period. These are journalling, walking and meditation.
2. To cut back my working hours so they stop taking over more and more of my life.

What is needed is a simple structure - one which can be kept to easily. First, the depth activities. That’s easy. I will write my journal immediately on getting up in the morning. I will take the walk at 12 noon before having lunch. And finally I will meditate for 20 minutes at 6pm.

As for the working hours, I am going to do something which I read about recently. I can’t remember where, though it was probably one of the other time management blogs. It’s a simple idea (as all the best ideas are). I can only have my computer switched on from 9am to 6pm on weekdays. At weekends, this is reversed and my computer has to be switched off from 9am to 6pm. Since there is hardly any work I can do without my computer, this should be an effective way of ensuring that I get a life again!

During working hours I will of course be putting the principles of Do It Tomorrow into play.

Now whenever one tries to put a structure like this into play, there is usually one key point that the whole thing turns on. If it goes right, the rest of the day should go ok. If it is wrong, the day will be a disaster. Focusing on this key point is the way to ensure that everything else works. In this case the key point is the time that I get up in the morning. If I fail to get up on time, the whole day will be thrown out. If I get up on time and immediately launch into my journal, the day is off to a good start and the rest of the day will almost always go fine. So that is what I will be concentrating on.

Another important thing to remember is that one needs to identify in advance the days on which one is not going to be able to keep to the structure and give oneself permission to miss it in whole or in part. Then one doesn’t clock up a failure in one’s mind because the structure has lapsed for that day.

Diet Report - Day 2

In spite of the choccy cake (yes, it really did exist), I found I had lost a pound when I weighed myself this morning. That's half a pound under my target weight for the day. So I still have no rules. This afternoon we will be going up to London to see the Velasquez exhibition at the National Gallery. Trips like that always involve eating out, so it will be interesting to see how well my (so far) ruleless diet survives.

Can I improve on the "No S" diet?

After nearly two months of the “No S” Diet I find myself only a pound under the weight I started at. At the start of the diet, I experienced a rapid weight loss of 7 lbs, followed by a long plateau. This then gave way to a gradual increase in weight again. During all this time I have kept pretty closely to both the letter and the spirit of the diet. So it doesn’t seem to be working for me. Do I give it up, or start adjusting it to see if I can make it work?

Needless to say, as an inveterate “improver” of other people’s ideas, I am going to try and make it work better for me. In many ways I like the diet. It is easy to keep to, and the principles are sensible. I think the problem lies (for me) in the special days and weekends in which the diet doesn’t apply. I have a fairly high level of socialising at weekends, which is only going to get worse (from the diet point of view) as Christmas approaches. So can I manage the seemingly impossible - to have an effective diet while at the same time not depriving myself unnecessarily?

I think I can. Anyway, I’m going to give it a good try.

One of the weight loss methods I had considerable success with about 20 years ago was to keep myself to a steady rate of loss of 1 lb per week (which is the best rate for health purposes). Unfortunately I can’t remember what book I got it from or who the author was - if anyone recognises it I will be happy to credit him (yes, I do remember it was a him). [Afternote: John Wilson has identified the book as Total Fitness in 30 Minutes a Day by Lawrence E.Morehouse and Leonard Gross] The idea was to draw a graph of one’s current target weight and plot one’s actual weight against it. If you were above the target weight, you ate less. If you were below the target weight, you ate more. It was simple but effective, and I got right down to my target weight. Unfortunately that’s where I stopped and I gradually put it back on again. However my idea now is to combine it with the No S diet and add a few of my own ideas. So here’s my plan:-

The aim is to lose 1 lb per week. In order to do that I weighed myself for the first time this morning (Monday). That is the initial weight. I will then be weighing myself every morning. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday the target weight is half a pound less than the initial weight. Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and the following Monday the target weight is one pound less than the initial weight. Then on the following Tuesday the target weight drops by half a pound again, and so on.

My aim each day is to be exactly on the target weight, neither above nor below it. Each day I am above the target weight I add one rule; each day I am on the target weight I keep the same set of rules; each day I am below the target weight I can take one rule off.

The rules are (in order of application):

No seconds [Afternote: defined as no second helpings]
No snacks (three meals a day only)
No sweets
Small helpings
Single course only [new rule]
Skip one meal
Skip two meals
Skip all meals (aaagh!)

What I hope is that I will find a combination of rules which will allow me to lose weight steadily with a minimum of suffering.

I am also hoping that skipping meals will be a deterrent rather than something that actually has to be done!

I want to emphasize that this is something I am trying out, not something that I am recommending. You are welcome to try it out with me, but if it doesn’t work don’t blame me! However I think it has a nice balance of carrot and stick.

Day One
I weighed myself this morning to establish my baseline (B). Tomorrow my target is (B - 1/2) lb. For today I have no rules to keep to. Great! Where’s that choccy cake?

Update on Thursday, March 29, 2007 at 10:57 by Mark Forster

Having bought a new set of bathroom scales, I am now decreasing my target weight in increments of a quarter pound instead of half a pound. That means that the target weight decreases four times a week instead of twice. Otherwise the method remains exactly the same.

More from the Archives

I have added some more articles from past editions of my newsletter:

Clear Goals or Goals That Bring Clarity?

An Easy Challenge - or is it?

More About Systems

File for Success

You have been warned...

Just in case reading my books and articles is making you too efficient for your own good, here are a couple of little programs to completely disrupt your day:

Line Rider

Air Monkey

Concertina Files

A correspondent today has reminded me of the advantages of concertina files. I use one all the time - it’s numbered from 1-31 for the days of the month. It’s the ideal place to file all those pieces of paper which you are going to need on a specific date but don’t fit easily into your filing system. Things like tickets, invitations, seminar programs, directions and so on. No need to work out whether you filed your theatre tickets under “Entertainment”, “Arts” or “Personal Expenses”; just go to the date and there they are.

You can buy concertina files which are tabbed with the months of the year. Personally I don’t bother with this. Whether a piece of paper relates to November 22nd, January 22nd or even November 22nd 2007, it all goes under 22. I don’t find that I have sufficient pieces of paper in each date to make it confusing.

Note Taking Software Progress Report

Here’s an update on the note-taking programs I have been trying out.

Evernote is definitely the clear winner so far. For ease of use it is far the best, and therefore it’s the one I go to naturally. I’ve been exploring what I can do with it and it’s impressing me more and more.

Of the other programs, Tiddlywiki is very interesting, but just that little bit too difficult to use. It’s one great advantage over Evernote is that you can easily arrange the information you retrieve into the order you want. Evernote’s hyperlink function is a bit less flexible than Tiddlywiki’s, but not so much that the ease of use of the rest of the program doesn’t give it the advantage.

Online programs may be great for sharing information, but are just too slow and cumbersome for individual use even with a high speed connection. So that rules out Backpack and Stikkit. I was able to produce a very pretty page with Backpack, but it took me a long time and I feel no incentive to go back and keep it up to date. As for Stikkit, I usually reckon myself pretty good at getting into a new program but so far I have no idea how this is supposed to work. I’ve visited the site three times and still haven’t been able to fathom out even the basic step of how to enter information. For a program which claims to be extremely intuitive and easy to use that can’t be a good sign!

Update on Friday, December 12, 2008 at 11:05 by Mark Forster

It’s just been announced that Stikkit is being discontinued on December 19th.

Interview on Matt's Idea Blog

There's a long write up of an interview with me by Matthew Cornell in Matt's Idea Blog: A Conversation with Mark Forster

Matt's a great interviewer and writer, and he has given me a chance to be a bit more wide ranging than I'm usually able to be in interviews. So if you want my ideas on a whole host of business and life subjects summed up very neatly, this is a good place to start.