Engineer2Entrepreneur

How to Be Creative

Link: How to Save the World.

This is a different take on the subject then others so it is worth posting.

How do you spend your time, really?

Link: Triple Your Personal Productivity by Steve Pavlina.

Steve recommends a time log. He has found that most workers only work for 1.5 hours a day. That's only 7.5 hours per day. His own productivity is only 15 hours per week. I am almost scared at looking at what my efficiency ratio is.

But I am going to try the experiment and see how bad it is.

HBS Working Knowledge: The Leadership Workshop: Tips for Mastering E-mail Overload

Link: HBS Working Knowledge: The Leadership Workshop: Tips for Mastering E-mail Overload.

Some great suggestions, though some will only work within an organization:

Check e-mail at defined times each day.
Use a paper "response list" to triage messages before you do any follow-up.
Charge people for sending you messages.
Train people to be relevant.
Answer briefly.
Send out delayed responses.
Ignore it.

You can only handle 4 variables at a time.

Link: How much can your mind keep track of?.

After the four- and five-way interactions, participants said things like, "I kept losing information," and "I just lost track."

This compares interestingly with this article. The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information

The advantage of GTD is to dump everything but what you are currently working on onto paper/computer and out of your head.

Trying to keep everything in your head is not effective, once you have filled on of those precious slots with boss, spouse, kids, big project, little project, shopping list, and honey-do project. You are at the limits and just one more thing can push you over the edge.

Your humming along and then an accident or health crisis comes along and smashes your fragile system to pieces.

A dishonest management technique that I have seen used is to overload an employee with more things then anyone can possibly handle, and then fire him for "not performing."

Back to the original article, 4 variables are not all that many but like a computer tracking them takes more resources then just storing those 4 variables. sure storing 7 variables is easy enough for most people but tracking variables is much more then that. You are comparing them to each other, searching for patterns. Yes, you reject a bunch that don't work but you store ones that do or at least appear to.

When I have a design in my mind I keep a whole lot of things in my mind all at the same time. One reason I hate interruptions is that it all comes crashing down as the straw that breaks the camels break gently lands on the stack of stuff in my head.

I am going to keep this in mind as I management my projects to keep the number of variables small at any one time.

ATPM 11.03 - ATPO: Outlining Task Managers, Part 3

Link: ATPM 11.03 - ATPO: Outlining Task Managers, Part 3.

Some interesting software I want to look into more.

Multitasking Impairs Memory

Link: TAP: Vol 12, Iss. 14. Mnemonic Plague. Harvey Blume. .

They are prey to a form of stuttering known as thrashing, in which resources are swapped back and forth among tasks so rapidly that no work gets done. The human analogy to thrashing may pertain to memory. When immersion is impossible, focus minimal, and switching rapid, it may be that a crucial step in the binding of memories has been omitted.

It certainly looks as though multitasking impairs your memory. You cannot remember anything because you haven't concentrated on it long enough to penetrate your head.

He also talks about air traffic controllers but they don't work 8 hours straight. They are on a up and down schedule of a hour up and an hour down to rest and recuperate, it is a hard job.

I have noticed in myself that I am more productive when I can concentrate for a couple of hours on a single topic rather then thrashing and not being able to remember what I did all day.

I guess that explains why one of my schoolmates did so poorly, he may have been ADD though it was before ADD was discovered, He would work on all his homework at once: math english, geography all at the same time. He was trying to do his homework faster but all he did was fail.

I have organized my day to be more concentrative.
An hour of reading to warm up the old grey cells.
Two-three hours for flow time on the most important things.
Then all the communications stuff: phone, email, RSS, web, and the rest after I have got something done.

That is far more productive then the old way which started with email and left me feeling scatterbrained and pulled in a thousand directions all day. I was reacting to the day and the interruptions rather then acting on them.

Warboarding A organizing idea

Link: a million monkeys typing » Warboarding.

So which one worked the best, on average? None of the above, unfortunately. It was a decidedly low-tech PM approach, notionally borrowed from a past A/V production department, which seemed to yield the best results. This department had a huge blackboard that it used to track personnel used for its projects. People referred to it each and every day as they walked past it (it was in a “lobby” between the offices), and there was never an excuse to double-book a team member or forget a deadline. I adapted a version of it for a whiteboard, using standard planner-style methodologies. I began to refer to it as a “warboard”, which lent a certain urgency and importance to it.

How to create one? Well, put up a whiteboard in a place that each member of the team visits or passes several times a day, such as a production room, a hallway, or even a lunch room. It should be a fairly short walk from any of the offices, and front-of-mind. It should be a large board (minimum 5 feet wide): if you only have small ones, put up two or even three. Devote half the space to the “hard landscape”, a two-month block calendar with deadlines, employee in/out days, holidays, and major resource allocations (such as a boardroom or a major piece of equipment in use). The other half, devote to the projects and team members. Write down each major project, the team for each one, and the deadline. Then for each team member, write down their next two or three actions. The PM should update these lists whenever tasks are completed or set; he or she should also have a “master list” on file for project tasks –this can come from a Gantt chart– as well as a list of all reference materials and to whom they are loaned.

This looks like a keeper.

From Done It to Yay-me list

Link: Slacker Manager: ¡Yay-me! file.

This is a much better implementation of my Done It list. The Done It list is where accomplished To Do's went, which is still a good idea.

But a Yay-me file is a even better extension of that.

The basic idea is simple: you just keep a file of good stuff you do.  When you figure out some trick new process that saves hours per week, you make a note about (don't forget to datestamp it) and drop it in the yay-me file.  When you finish a project on time and under budget, you make a note that points to supplementary project files and you drop it in the yay-me file.  Since it's only your eyes on the yay-me file, you can feel free to drop in even the most trivial bits good cheer.  Did you cover Eleanor's phone while she went to lunch?  Goes right in the yay-me file.

I'm feeling a little down today and so I am going to make a Yay-me list of all the things I can remember that I have done that have been major to me.

Just thinking about it is making me feel better.

The New York Times > Technology > Circuits > You There, at the Computer: Pay Attention

Link: The New York Times > Technology > Circuits > You There, at the Computer: Pay Attention. [Free Reg. Req.]

I am big on getting into flow and I have alerts turned off and if I am trying to get something done I often turn off all the other applications I usually have open so I can concentrate.

I try to get about 2 hours of flow time in, in the morning. I hardly ever get all that time in flow but it try. Then I use the afternoon for all the short tasks of email and the like.

Distractions are okay, they are good at changing the mindset that may be holding you back, but interruptions while doing something important are frustrating.

Steve Pavlina's Blog » Enjoying the Journey

Link: Steve Pavlina's Blog » Enjoying the Journey.

When you find the area of overlap between purpose, passion, and talent, the need area tends to be fairly easy to fulfill. The first three areas will suggest potential careers. Here’s another way of thinking about it:

Need = what you must do
Talent = what you can do
Passion = what you love to do
Purpose = what you should do

This is a great entry, it sums up some many great things I have been trying to say and he does it really well.