No matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to get my inbox below 150 emails for any length of time, and I’m loathe to do a DMZ and kill ‘em all… Can anyone hear the chirruping?
Archive for the 'GTD' Category
In the words of Yoda…
I confess, I used to be a feedaholic. No, I didn’t sit and read feeds all day, neglecting client work - my feed inbox just grew to gigantic uncomfortable proportions… But that’s all gone.
I’m recovered now, and vow never again to go over that magical 250 feed mark, where all hell breaks loose, sanity flies away, and it feels like the noise from everyone speaking inside your head just won’t go away…
So, I’ve pruned my feeds down to something manageable - most people have very little of importance to say on a daily basis anyways - and I’ve actually cleaned up my feeds folder so it’s at empty, waiting for the sync tomorrow morning.
So now I’m ready to do battle with the noise again, and even keener to pick up some more blogging, now that I’m getting back into my workflow and my zone, and have come to terms with the fact that I’m never going to lead a normal life, at least not for the next 3 to 5 years anyways…
Today was a good day - we sat down and really thrashed out the user case and benefits thereof, for the app we’re building, over a bit of lunch. One of the things that came up continually was the importance of staying focussed on the task at hand, which is “the credit card test“. We’ve all worked for many years in this industry, and all worked in all sorts of environments, but the one thing that is common to all of them is the desire to continually add new features and new functionality, either at our own behest, or at the clients request. The upside in the service model is that since your time is money, you earn more money. There doesn’t seem to be much of a downside as long as you deliver what you promise, apart from stress of course
In the product side of things, however, not having a laser focus is both deadly and foolish. So what we’ve done is create a list of “nice to have’s” which we’ll keep track of and add to as we grow into our app, but for now, they’re just going to slow us down and add more work, more time and more frustration.
So we’ve really cut back on extraneous features, nailing things down to the absolute essentials - we’re not making any assumptions about what users will want or need, and we’re not going to deviate from that. We have a core offering and that simplicity is what will allow me to go to sleep tonight a happy man - safe in the knowledge that we can build up rather than have to build sideways and backwards.
My current other frustration is that things in the US seem to be blowing up, literally every day. I only have to sync my feeds in the morning to get at least 1 to 3 posts about this or that company getting funding, or releasing a new app.
OK, I’m not in the US and I’m not in the business of creating an unsustainable venture, but I am in the business of siezing on opportunities, and it just seems like the eternal adage of “it will always take longer than you think to get it done” won’t go away - balancing client work with web app development (even when you’re essentially directing, there is loads of business and marketing stuff to think about) doesn’t make for lots of time to try out new ideas.
So, the upshot is that the web app is progressing thanks to some very cool people who are working on it, but the downside is that I’m pushing back my social and relaxation time to get things done. It’s a short term fix, but will hopefully have long term benefits [I'd love to talk to you if you are in a similiar situation or have experienced this situation before] thanks to staying true to the absolute laser focus and staying true to our ideals of providing value over gimmickry.
I’ve just deleted everything in my Newsgator “z_Probation” folder, because I’m just getting too much information and not enough focus, and it feels really good My apologies if I unsubscribed from your feed, but I’m sure you’ll understand.
I’m trying to get into a regular blog habit, but am finding it pretty hard - building a business and servicing clients are priority right now, so anything and everything that is reducing focus and taking time (mostly extraneous stuff that just eats time) is being thrown out - so I’m hoping that reducing the amount I read will reduce the feeling of information drowning and give me more time to blog myself. I’ve started asking myself the 80/20 question almost all the time now, combined with treating everything as an effort in Kaizen, so that’s making a big difference too…
Anyways, thought I’d break the radio silence for a spell!
Hope you’re well wherever you are!
I think I’ve reached some sort of geek or nerd Nirvana. I know that when my housemates come back from their various days, they’re going to look at me blankly and wonder what the hell I’m on about… and in their defense, what the hell am I on about? I’ve just cleared my Inbox for the first time since I can remember… now, before we go getting all hot under the collar, I mean my Inbox folder, not the !_DMZ folder that I created on the 27th of March 2006, to draw a line in the sand and help me to deal with the more immediate, pressing need of putting food on the table and making sure that I had a place to sleep…
Taking care of first things first…
A while ago I started reading all sorts of things to help me to become more productive - my reasoning was that if I could be more productive, then I could do more, and in being able to do more, I could extract another few ounces from life and hey, work harder!!!
But as I’ve grown a little older, a little wiser, and a little crankier, I’ve realised that I don’t actually want to work harder, I want to work smarter…
Hey, when you die, do you think that you’ll wish you worked harder during your life, or that you’d spent more time with your loved ones, or simply done the things that you always wanted to… like go to Nepal, or take photos at the Running of the Bulls (which won’t happen this year ‘cos Walter and I made a pact to go together, and this year he just can’t make it so we’ll have to go next year) or go watch killer whales frolick in Puget sound before they go killing, ‘um, seals…
The Pickle Jar Theory
See, the thing I’ve realised at my advanced age of almost 29, is that there are certain fundamentals that need doing - like eating and sleeping, which have knock-on needs, like working and living somewhere where you can sleep… - which are more important than anything else…
But this is the problem - since SxSWi earlier this year, pretty much everything has been about keeping my head above water, catching up with sleep, doing client work, getting the laptop fixed, spending more time with my Mom than I have in about 10 years, writing code…. all the big pickles in my Jar of Life, which conversely means that I haven’t been able to deal with the little Pickles, many of which were sitting in my Inbox just waiting to be done…
Hence the absolute delight I’m feeling right now…
In the last two days I’ve managed to go from 152 accumulated unanswered emails in my Inbox folder (those are just the ones that I’ve let be since the 27th March 2006), to 0… and this makes me really happy. The really worrying thing however, is that if I get replies to just a small percentage of them, I’m already going to be hitting an email “answer deficit”!
But the fat lady hasn’t sung yet…
I’ve still got 398 emails in my !_DMZ folder, many of which will be obsolete by now, but nonetheless; and 33 open tabs in Firefox, which are all waiting blog posts of some sort (the sessionsaver and tab mix plus firefox extensions are really handy folks); so there is still work to be done….
But at least when I get to work on Tuesday morning (we’ve got a long weekend here in the UK) there will only be current emails waiting for me, and I won’t have that sinking feeling of unanswered emails nagging at me whenever I open my Inbox…
So, without further ado, I bid you adieu, to crack on with that !_DMZ folder of mine
A few of us have been chatting about the long train trips / cab fares home from events that always seem to be in Central or East London, so we’ve decided that we’re going to try do something a little closer to home, for all the obvious reasons…
So, if you’re into the mixed bag that is becoming Web 2.0 in the UK, then you’re welcome to join us whether you’re from the South West or not… just remember that there are still Wombles in Wimbledon Common so bring your brollies…
Would be really cool if we could get some bloggers, writers, designers, coders, accessible type people, business people, wordpress people, Ubuntu people, GTD people, backend system beasties and maybe even one or two lovely ladies along…. you never can tell
The details:
Friday the 19th May, 7pm onwards
Location is: My house for a BBQ (address forthcoming).
View the Upcoming.org post as well (http://upcoming.org/event/73637/).
My place is one minute from the station, and about 40 seconds from a butcher and a Threshers.
I’m thinking that I’ll go get good steaks from the butcher near us if you ask me to, and prepare them properly myself. All you’ll have to do it bring drinks and a snack or two.
If you’re thinking of coming, please post a comment here so that we have a rough idea of numbers - it may help us to get a special deal or something.
Thanks in advance
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, and it seems that the more I put on my plate, the more important it is to stay focussed on the 20% that actually makes the difference in life. There are however several realities that get in the way of things:
- Projects always take longer than you intend them to
- Clients in general are always less prepared than you want/need them to be
- There is always more work, more optimising, more emailing, more calling, more prospecting, more networking, more spending, more reading, more browsing, more sleeping; to be done - so if you’re like me you will always feel like there is this insurmountable mountain waiting to be climbed, Now! and Today!
So what I’ve found works for me is that I’ve tried to come to terms with the above, and just try and stay focussed on what is most important, today and now. And nothing else.
There will always be things that I want to do, but what I’m slowly learning to do is to come to terms with them, realise that they will still be there when there is time and energy and motivation, and to just get on with the 20% stuff. If I do lose focus, I run the risk of doing things that are not good, like:
- Not keeping clients happy
- Not doing billable work
- Not getting enough sleep to function properly
So it ends up being this constant arms race between what I would like to do, my attention span (NADD candidate here) and what I should do - all are different but are all somehow equally important to me.
To help me stay focussed I’ve written down this little list of my priorities which I keep referring to to keep me on track:
- Invoicing for billable work (cashflow is king). I hate doing it, but it must be done or I don’t get paid for my time and work.
- Doing billable work. A man must eat and man must have a castle.
- Finding more billable work. Obvious. I need to eat next month, and I need a place to live next month.
- Working on my web app. If I don’t, no-one else will, and then I’ll never be able to retire to my island in the Bahamas with my harem of retired supermodels and garden of organically grown food managed by my full time cook
- Selling the web app. Also obvious. If you don’t tell people about it and sell it to them, then you’ve built something no-one will use and that’s bad.
And to be honest, anything and everything else is secondary, unless it falls somewhere in the list above, or it has some immediate benefit.
Of course, this is about tech and clients and business and starting up (the 8am to 8pm part of life), not necessarily about life in general (although the above does seem like all of life right now). I still need to have room for the rest of life, which includes friends, family, romance, food and fun…
And so my evolution continues.
At the moment, I seem to be combining Getting Things Done (process), with Kaisen (philosophy) and the 80/20 principle (decision making), and it’s having a better effect than when I was trying each of them exclusively or perhaps ignoring the others more than I should have. You might even call it some kind of harmony.
I am doing more work and being more productive now, but on the things that are yielding results. I am eliminating the waste in my life, as I’m doing the most important things and am happy that I will get to the nagging things as and when I can. And because I’m semi-proficient (can anyone be totally?) at the GTD process of things, my brain and I are far more efficient together and as a result I’m more creative. Which is good.
Moral of the story? I’m not sure, I just had to get that out…
_ 21 Resources on The best GTD resources - Listible!
Worth taking a look at if you’ve not already seen ‘em all..
_ David Seah : The Printable CEOâ„¢ Series
If you value your time, and like most people you’re not perfect, then take a look - you’ll probably like it
Updater:
There’s an interesting thread over at the GTD headquarters / David Allen site forum:
http://www.davidco.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1933
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the web application I’m working on (well, getting to prototype / private Alpha) and two concepts which have become incredibly useful for me are “80/20 - or Pareto’s Principle” and “Kaizen“.
The 80/20 principle has taught me to ask “what features (the 20%) are most important to the majority (80%) of users?“; whilst the concept of Kaizen has taught me to look at what I’m doing, and eliminate waste whilst continually refining things, almost to the point of having nothing except for the most important.
They’re both difficult to come to terms with as they’re not things we learn naturally from parents or at school. Certainly while doing a science degree at university we erred on the side of to much rather than too little, for fear of not covering enough / everything.
However, something that has become a theme for me in busines to date is the importance of focus, and so in a sense, these ideas or concepts are giving names to stuff that has seemed inherently sensible to me, yet seldom practiced by many or most of the people I’ve come accross.
And so we come back to Pareto and Kaizen, both of which underscore the importance of continually asking the hard questions and re-iterating the machine until everything is well oiled and working smoothly. Yesterday I did my version of a GTD monthly review, and at the end I had completely thrown out everything not important to me over the next two months (I have some pretty tough goals for end March) and refined down my focus to three core outcomes.
In the past I would have ended up with too many tasks in Outlook, complex flow diagrams and Gantt charts telling me that I had waaaaay to much on my plate and not enough time to do them in, resulting in a weighed down mind not much use to anyone and simply a continual frustrating feeling of taking two steps forward and three steps back.
Yesterday evening I felt different - I had asked myself what was completely and utterly necessary for me to feel like I had made a success of the first three months of this year, and had answered after much wrangling and mental team picking with three core things; and so after I felt bouyant, light and completely different to similiar days in the past. So much so, that I couldn’t sleep for my mind racing (and that’s another story for another time) with positivity.
I’m at my best when I know what I have to achieve and it’s easy to define and remember - much more so than when I have 250 tasks floating around in my head. I’ve made peace with those 250 tasks, telling myself that in early April I’ll re-assess all of them to see where they fit in. For now, they don’t matter and I’m ok with that.
Take home message: Continually ask yourself what the most important 20% is, and always seek to eliminate waste. Regular reviews make all the difference.
I’m going to leave you with something my friend Steve said to me last night in a Skype conversation:
“… if you want to eat an elephant, then you need to bite it off in small chunks…”
Here’s to chewing on elephants!
I follow Jason’s blog and GTD stuff, so I’m looking forward to this podcast…
My Inbox flows with
email unanswered and weighs
heavier every day.
Has anyone had any experience / done any experimenting aggregatng mutiple feeds and ordering them by date, using php and without using a database?
I’m playing with MagpieRSS atm, and it’s an awesome tool that does a really good job, and was wondering whether anyone else has done anything similiar with it?
I’ve also started playing with Feeds on Feeds, which is also pretty cool, but it uses a DB so not ideal…
Any thoughts, directions or help would be much apprecited
My Inbox is overflowing
with too much to reply
so it must wait
