The Tao of How

I put together a quick YouTube video this morning to capture what my work area looks like, and to give a brief glimpse into the tools and systems I use to keep track of everything. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMAnx1mQCrs I think the most important thing to keep in mind when looking for any sort of system for communication and productivity, particularly if it is an add-on to the systems you already have, is to consider what you're going to need to do in order to maintain that system. How much work are you going to need to put into checking it, adjusting the information within it, and monitoring input and output? Email is a good example. I have a work email and a personal email. I used to have two personal email addresses, so that I could use one to manage online newsletter and email blast subscriptions. But why? Why have two email addresses when I'm checking the same net number of emails? Also, I used to have a hard-copy to do list for the day and my lists on Wunder...

I'm trying to work out a system for myself so I can self-impose some restrictions on the time I'm wasting online. We all spend time online in one way or another and how we categorize our time is an important consideration we need to make when trying to figure out if we're spending more time than we should be online. For me, I'm finding that it is coming down to a fairly simple categorization of two different types - recreation, and productivity. I'm using the word productivity because I can't figure out what else to call it at this point. What I'm thinking of is mainly personal email and calendar activities. If I'm simply reviewing my inbox, I don't think that should count as recreational time. However, if I'm clicking through on emails to watch videos or read articles, it moves into the realm of recreation. Emails are mainly used, from a productivity standpoint, for information. Someone is emailing to either give you information or ask f...

I was driving to work this morning and I found myself thinking about the different methods I use for capturing ideas. Sometimes I like to just write things down longhand. Other times it is a voice memo. Or an email that I send myself. The point is, you should never limit your ideas by the ways you have of documenting them. Specifically, a lack of means to document ideas doesn't mean one should simply have no ideas. But... What about if I'm on my motorcycle? Should I pull over and get my phone out so I can get an idea down? Or try to remember it until I get to work? This is one problem I've had so far that is an exception. I'm still working on that one. The point is to be able to do two things. First, use a medium that you're comfortable with and that isn't so complex that it is prohibitive to easy use. Second, have the right medium for the right idea. I talk fast, I type fast, but I write longhand VERY slowly. That's a good thing sometimes....

Something we all struggle with. Something that can destroy families, if we let it. But how do we control it? The difference begins with the classification of work in two buckets - jobs and careers. The fact that this is a binary classification leaves plenty of room for pointing out potential gray areas, but bear with me. Those who have jobs go to work every day, do their job, then come home. They leave work at work, for the most part. Those with careers are constantly working, because the idea is that you need to do what needs to be done in order to get the work done, otherwise you won't advance in your career. So as a result, we have all these people in careers that they may or may not even like, making daily sacrifices for the sake of being able to garnish some level of success from their efforts in said careers. Is it worth it? To the young single guy, maybe. To the middle aged woman who has a family, maybe not. There comes a time when you have to decide what makes y...

I think people often lose sight of the functionality of to do lists. The true purpose of a to do list is to have a list that provides us guidance for the tasks we are trying to accomplish during the day. Ideally, we're going to end the day with fewer things on the list than we started with. The adding of things to this list aside, the balance of 'old' tasks SHOULD go down on a daily basis. If things aren't happening in this manner, then the system is flawed. If the original items that you began the day with are still to be done at the end of the day, the system is self-defeating. You're getting nowhere. So what causes this? Sometimes there are things that are beyond our control. Family emergencies might pop up, which otherwise prevent us from making progress on what we had set out to accomplish during the course of the day. Resources might not be available. But it might also be in the scope of the items that are being added to the list. If 'remodel h...

I love lists. I hate lists. As long as I can remember, I've made lists. Things to pick up the grocery store. Homework. Projects for the house. Music I want to buy. Music I've already bought, so I don't buy it again accidentally. Addresses and birthday. I have a folder in my Google drive, called Lists, in which I've actually gone to the trouble of storing some of these lists because there are so damn many of them. I wish I were kidding. I can't begin to imagine how much of my life has been spent on making lists, editing lists, rewriting lists, trying to remember the things that should be on the lists, and checking things off the lists. I measure productivity in the number of things I can check off of my various lists of action items, but we'll talk more about that later. For now, the art of lists is the focus. We'll begin with the basics. Lists can keep us on track. How granular you decide to get with your lists, and how you decide to manage th...

I often brainstorm in my car. I find that having a space to do so is a very good way of getting ideas down. It is time I can invest in doing something productive. I also like to listen to audio books, and frankly we all need some good music now and again to take our mind off of things (or to psyche ourselves up for things) but it got me thinking about the need to be deliberate about these delineations of time sometimes. For instance, if we're always 'on' and always brainstorming, we're not going to be able to focus on the task(s) at hand. We're going to constantly be thinking about things other than what needs our immediate attention. Here's the kicker though - distraction can also be a good thing. If we're working on something and we get stuck, it is essential sometimes to be able to step away and to do something else. Taking our minds off of the task provides us with a moment in which we're deferring the problem to our internal background proce...