Hasta La Ideas

We all have our methods for remembering to-do items — Mark Forster’s lined to-do list system, David Allen’s Getting Things Done, notifications on Google calendar, etc. — and these methods work as long as you use them consistently. Every six to eight months, I try out a new method to see if it works better for me than the last. And, after a couple days of using the new method, I usually make a few additions and subtractions and switch out components from other methods that I like better.

After years of auditioning the most popular to-do management methods (and a few obscure methods, as well), I’ve found that it’s incredibly obvious which methods are likely to be helpful and which ones are duds. For a method to be good at actually getting me to do my work, it has to have the following components:

• Simple way to capture data. New items have to be able to be quickly and smoothly added to the system. The easier it is to add items, the better. If you have to rewrite a list or find a specific type of paper or use a code of some kind, the method creates too many barriers for entries and I’ll stop using it in a matter of days.
• Helpful reminders. The reminders to do something can be a simple visual or audible cue, but they need to be there. Actions written at a specific time on a calendar are even fine, there just needs to be something to help remember deadlines.
• Way to delay or postpone items. If there is no way to reschedule an item, the missed to-do task will be forgotten, guaranteed.
• Separation between do-this-or-suffer-negative-consequences tasks and all other items. A system doesn’t need a detailed prioritization scheme, but there has to be a way to differentiation between “I will get fired if I don’t do this” and “maybe someday” stuff.
• Ability to overview entire system. If you can’t see all of the to-do items at once (or at least a month’s worth or a project’s worth), you can lose sight of the big picture.
• Ability to ignore parts of the system. In addition to seeing the big picture, you also need to be able to keep from being overwhelmed and focus on a limited number of items.
• Portability. Paper or digital doesn’t matter as long as the method easily transports with you wherever you go.

When you are creating or adopting your perfect method for completing to-do items, keep these best practices in mind. Also, know what features are important to you and your work. If you must have a to-do list that can be shared with others, then add “sharing” to your list of best practices. Whatever method you use, be sure it’s the right method for you and that you keep using it.

Like this site? Buy Erin Rooney Doland’s Unclutter Your Life in One Week from Amazon.com today.

On Asha Dornfest’s recommendation (Asha is the brain behind Parent Hacks), I picked up the book Mind in the Making by Ellen Galinsky. The book’s subtitle is “The seven essential life skills every child needs” and the purpose of the book is to teach parents how to teach these seven life skills to their children.

Galinsky names focus and self control, perspective taking, communicating, making connections, critical thinking, taking on challenges, and self-directed learning as the seven essential life skills a child needs to develop into a highly functional adult. As I was reading the book, I realized that although the text is targeted toward parents, its message is particularly relevant to people struggling with organizing, uncluttering, time management, and productivity.

The first skill Galinsky discusses — focus and self control — is the cornerstone of all we write about on Unclutterer. If you can’t identify where you are going (the reasons you want to unclutter and improve your productivity) and stay focused on that goal, you will struggle greatly with your uncluttering efforts. Thankfully, Galinsky reports that these skills can be learned and improved:

Focus and self control involve many executive functions of the brain, such as paying attention, remembering the rules, and inhibiting one’s initial response to achieve a larger goal. And they can be taught, as shown by the studies of Michael Posner and his colleagues at the University of Oregon … For older children and adults, focus includes [being alert and being able to position attention in the right direction], plus being able to concentrate — that is, to remain alert and oriented for a period of time, bringing our other skills to bear on a project or task despite internal and external distractions.

Learning how to improve one’s focus doesn’t have to be a tedious endeavor. Based on Galinsky’s recommendations for children, many of her ideas can help adults, too. Try playing games that require concentration and paying attention (guessing games, “I Spy,” and puzzles), and games that involve rules that change (many strategy games do this). Listening to audio books and following along with the plot, setting up reward systems for finishing difficult tasks (delayed satisfaction), and getting plenty of rest are additional ways to improve focus.

… it’s not just a matter of being well rested. None of us can work flat-out, without breaks. Recess, though it appears to be going the way of other old-fashioned practices, was created for sound reasons. We need time off in order to do our best work. Anthony Pellegrini, an educational psychology professor at the University of Minnesota, has spent twenty-five years on school playgrounds studying how recess affects children’s adjustment to school and has found that having a time-out at recess maximizes students’ ability to pay attention in class … Being well rested and taking breaks are just as important for adults as they are for children. I know this from my research on adults in the workplace. We have an image of work as running a marathon without stopping, but we work better in sprints.

Galinsky is the top in her field, without a doubt knows her topic, and her book is full of educational strategies based on scientifically proven methods. I actually recommend it for business managers, anyone hoping to improve their focus and self control, and, obviously, parents. In addition to the book, Galinsky posts regularly to her blog.

Today’s guest post is by Scott Belsky, founder of Behance, oversees The 99% think tank, and is the author of the new book Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming The Obstacles Between Vision & Reality. Thank you, Scott, for joining us today. — Erin

Perhaps you have an idea for a new business, a restaurant you want to open, or a novel you want to write? Or perhaps you have an idea for how to solve a problem at work? Regardless, the sobering reality is that most ideas never happen. While some ideas are killed for good reason, most ideas are abandoned half-baked as a result of obstacles during execution.

I’ve spent the better part of five years studying the struggle to push ideas to fruition. Along the way, I learned that some people and teams are consistently able to defy the odds and make their ideas happen, time and time again. Authors like James Patterson and Chris Anderson; Companies like Google, IDEO, and Disney; and other serial entrepreneurs, restauranteurs, and the list goes on…

While there are a myriad of methods and tips I observed, the force of ORGANIZATION emerged as the most important. I came to believe that organization is, in fact, the greatest competitive advantage in the creative world.

The practicalities of how you organize projects and manage your energy are critical to making ideas happen. Here are a few my observations – and some of the methods I observed:

Reactionary Workflow

We live in a connected world of endless e-mails, texts, tweets, messages on social networks, phone calls, instant messages … the list goes on. Rather than be proactive with our energy, we have become reactive — living at the mercy of the last incoming thing. As a result, we spend all of our energy trying to keep up rather than propelling our ideas forward. Eventually, all of the small inconsequential activity wears us down and we’re liable to jump ship. To avoid reactionary workflow, some people schedule “windows of non-stimulation” in their day. For a 2-3 hour period of time, they minimize their email and all other sources of incoming communication. With this time, they focus on a list of goals – not their regular tasks, but long-term items that require research and deep thought. There are other tricks for how you aggregate messages and reduce “hop time” (the time spent transitioning between sources of communication). But the bottom line is that reactionary workflow is a threat to ingenuity. To combat it, we must focus less on ideas themselves and more on how we manage our energy and ultimately push ideas to completion.

Reduce Bulky Projects To Just Three Primary Elements

Every project in life can ultimately be reduced to just three primary elements: Action Steps, Backburner Items, and References. Action Steps are succinct tasks that start with verbs. They should be kept separate from your notes and sketches. Backburner Items are ideas that come up during a brainstorm or on the run that are not actionable but may someday be. Backburner Items should be collected in a central location and should be revisit periodically through some sort of ritual. One leader I met prints out his list of Backburner Items (kept on a running Word document) on the first Sunday of every month. He grabs the list (and a beer) and then sits down and reviews the entire list. Some items get crossed out as irrelevant, some remain on the list, and some are transformed into Action Steps. The third element of every project is References – the articles, notes, and other stuff that collects around you. It turns out that References are overrated. Rather than spend tons of time organizing your notes, consider keeping a chronological file where all your notes are simply filed chronologically (not by project name or other means). In the age of digital calendars, you can search for any meeting and quickly find the notes taken on that date.

Use Design-Centric Systems To Stay Organized

The color, texture, size, and style of the materials used to capture your tasks (and your notes) are important. People who have successfully developed personal systems for productivity over the years claim that their designs make their projects more appealing (and thus more likely to be managed well). When it comes to productivity, attraction breeds loyalty.

Measure Meetings With Action Steps

Meetings are extremely expensive if you consider the cost of time and interruption. Beware of “Posting Meetings” or meeting just because it’s Monday. Such meetings are often planned for the morning — when you’re most productive — and often end without any Action Steps captured. A meeting that ends without any Action Steps should have been a voice-mail or an e-mail. When you do meet with clients or colleagues, end each meeting with a quick review of captured Action Steps. The exercise takes less than 30 seconds per person. Each person should share what they captured. Doing so will almost always reveal a few Action Steps that were either missed, duplicated, or misunderstood. Stating your Action Steps aloud also breeds a sense of accountability.

Insecurity Work

In the era of Google Analytics and Twitter, we spend too much time obsessing over real-time data. Just a decade ago, we had to wait for weekly and monthly reports for information that is now always available at our finger tips. Whether it is checking your site’s traffic, customer sentiment, or your bank account, these small repetitive actions don’t help you make ideas happen. They just help you feel safe. “Insecurity Work” is stuff that you do that (1) has no intended outcome, (2) does not move the ball forward in any way, and (3) is quick enough that you can do it multiple times a day without realizing — but, nonetheless, puts us at ease. The first step for reducing Insecurity Work is self-awareness. During the research for my new book, I was astonished by the spectrum of self-imposed guidelines and very effective rituals that people use to reduce insecurity work. Insecurity work is yet another workplace phenomenon that can reduce productivity and obstruct great execution.

My book, out this month, Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming The Obstacles Between Vision and Reality chronicles the methods of the creative leaders that have pushed their ideas to fruition (and make our lives interesting as a result). My hope is that the book will prompt more discussion on the mechanics for pushing ideas to fruition.

Sharing release dates within weeks of each other, premises that promise success in business, and even covers with red-white-and-black color schemes, our colleague Scott Belsky’s book “
Making Ideas Happen” and “
Rework” have more than a little in common. The two—Belsky as the founder and CEO of Behance, a company devoted to enabling creative professionals, and Rework as the product of 37signals, also a creator of productivity-enhancing tools—both represent a new generation steeped in Internet culture and the fresh vision of capitalism that comes with it, but their approaches come across as markedly different.

While “Making Ideas Happen” represents Belsky’s tireless years of researching the techniques that make companies successful, Rework’s appeal comes from authors and 37signals founders Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson’ direct, mincing-no-words style, outlining the directives they’ve found to work. In lieu of reviews on each, we put together this side-by-side comparison of some of their core principles to see what we could glean. “Rework” sells from Amazon or Powell’s and you can pre-order “Making Ideas Happen” from Amazon or Powell’s.

1. Working

Much of Belsky’s mission is about getting people organized and finding ways to do it. His tips for staying focused involve stripping out work that isn’t goal-focused, creating rituals to “out-work” the competition to quote ad exec Roy Spence, and tailoring workspaces. Rework, on the other hand, flat out discourages workaholism, criticizing the atmosphere of guilt and burnouts that it creates.

2. Entrepreneurs

Fried and Hansson dismiss “entrepreneur” as a stale-sounding word that doesn’t really define what’s important. Instead, they encourage thinking of yourself as a “starter” as a way to get beyond the usual formulas and focus on the confidence necessary to go ahead. MIH positions entrepreneurship as both a way to make a business think longterm and to make them bravely take the plunge and embark on new ventures (i.e. be starters).

3. Love

What Rework defines as “scratching your own itch”—pursuing a curiosity, or taking something you already do further—Belsky looks at as a potential way to set yourself up for disappointment. He warns of the problems inherent to having a passion for something, advising to stay focused on the process in the face of outcomes that don’t reflect the original inspiration for it.

4. Culture

Citing Zappos as one of a few examples of how to keep work environments positive, MIH explains how the company actively fosters happiness as a way to authentically create the rah-rah attitude that’s core to the success of their service-based business. Fried and Hansson also recognize the importance of “truly standing for something,” cautioning against coming across as insincere when you’re not backing up the mission with “believing it and living it.”

5. Negativity

Both books recognize the value of saying no and embracing constraints. Belsky explains how embracing limits helps cut down on wasted efforts, while Rework describes cutting “ambition in half” as a way to more successfully execute. Rework goes so far as to suggest that saying no should be a default.

6. Action

Where MIH focuses on organizing work flow into actionable steps, Rework pushes the bolder moves, encouraging an attitude of “launch now” as a way to prioritize what needs to happen. Similarly, Belsky cites Seth Godin’s talk at The 99% Conference (an event we co-sponsor with Behance), which encouraged people to center their work around the proactive approach of “shipping.”

7. Meetings

Another point both books agree on is the problems inherent to meetings. Where Belsky advises dispensing with regularly-scheduled meetings, ending by going over “Action Steps,” and conducting them on the fly, Rework suggests setting timers, limiting the number of people who attend, setting agendas, and working from a problem.

8. Priorities

In MIH, Belsky offers tips that include keeping one list for more important items and others for less critical to-dos, picking five top projects, making daily “focus areas,” not spending too much time worrying, making sure to delegate critical tasks too, and creating a system to divvy up responsibilities appropriately. Fried and Hansson’s less structured approach advises tempering excitement with what actually needs to get done.

9. Inspiration

While Belsky’s focus is all about “overcoming the obstacles between vision and reality,” Rework ultimately encourages readers to act when the idea strikes to capitalize on the potential of getting “two week’s work dones in twenty-four hours” when under the spell of ideas.

I don’t watch the television show Celebrity Apprentice, but I recently saw an advertisement for it that stunned me. In the commercial, show contestant and former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich is sitting at a computer attempting to type. I use the word “attempting” because it is obvious in the clip that Blagojevich has no idea where the keys are on the computer’s keyboard. A man who has held the highest elected office in his state cannot type (or at least couldn’t type at the time the video crews captured the scene). Forget his scandal, I cannot fathom how inefficient this one man made his state’s government simply because he can’t type. The hours he must have wasted just responding to e-mail!

After watching this advertisement, and then again after reading the article “80 Ways to Steal Valuable Minutes for Your Work Day,” I have been thinking about basic skills that increase productivity — skills that are so obvious and fundamental to my behavior that I don’t typically think about doing them. In fact, they’re so obvious that I really had a difficult time composing a list.

Eleven extremely obvious skills to save you time:

1. Improve your typing speed.
2. Improve the legibility of your handwriting.
3. Write stuff down.
4. Read the manuals on the software programs you use regularly.
5. Read the instructions.
6. Work while at work.
7. Group like tasks together.
8. Store items that are used most often in the most convenient places.
9. When you’re finished using something, put it away.
10. Learn and use people’s names.
11. Use a shopping list.

I know that I’m missing even more obvious productivity skills, so please add to this list in the comments. What are the most basic of basic things each of us can do to save time?