Entries from April 2008 ↓

We share something very unique with elephants. Elephants, though they’re one of the strongest animals on the planets, can be constrained with the smallest sticks and ropes.

In Southeast Asia, elephants are still used as a mode of transportation. Tourist are often amazed at the fact that the elephant handlers use small ropes tied to the ground with tiny sticks to keep an elephant in place.

The reason this works is because the handlers tie the elephants to huge trunks with large ropes when they are young. The young elephants pull and tug and fight until they tire out, and they soon learn that they cannot move when tied up.

The handlers then use increasingly smaller ropes and sticks, but the elephants never tug at them. They’ve learned that they simply cannot move when tied up.

Imagine, one of the strongest animals in the world, constrained by something that the smallest child could break free of.

But, really, how much better are we? Many people live their lives being afraid to try something because they’ve been convinced that it’s too hard, or because they’ve tried a few times and it didn’t work out for them.

Take music, for example. I know a lot of people who would like to learn how to play an instrument but are convinced that only musicians or people who are innately good can play music, with the end result that they never try…despite the fact that everyone learns how to play music (meaning that it’s a teachable skill).

I used to think I wasn’t creative because my older brother is much more natural of an artist than I am. He was gaining a lot of acclaim as a teenager for his drawing skills (and he’s a good musician, to boot), and at the time I couldn’t draw (or play) anything like he could. I “learned” that creativity was something some people (my brother) had and others (me) didn’t.

What happened that changed my outlook? I taught myself how to play guitar. Granted, I started when I was nineteen, so I may never be phenomenal, but I do pretty well. On some of my last visits home, I was able to hold my own with my brother.

Furthermore, although I still haven’t learned how to draw people and landscapes, I can sit down and illustrate designs and ideas by hand. Turns out that I am creative, just not in a way that I counted as creative when I was younger.

In other words, I’ve learned that small ropes and sticks can’t constrain the elephant within me.

Think about the limitations you’ve set for yourself or that’s been set for you by others. Tug at the rope a little.

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Photo Credit: artct45

I’m going to jump on the meme suggested by Chris Brogan and take it one step further. I’m an active commenter, but I haven’t done as many link travologues as I’d like to, so I’ll make up some ground today.

• 8 Ways to Be Ruthless With Your Time - Lifehack

Thursday Bram, who I have no reason to suspect is otherwise ruthless, gives sound tips for getting your time back.

• Mama’s Girls - SHE-POWER

Another installation of the fiction series that Kelly is running. She’s great at giving you enough information for the story to evolve while having that same bit of information prompt more questions. Her non-fictions is just as good.

• Madonna and Freelancing: An “Ah-Ha” Marketing Moment - Quiet Rebel Writer

Amy deftly moves from a mini-rant on the “madonna versus whore dichotomy” to “you’re either valued and attractive, or you’re not (as a freelancer).” It’s not what Amy says, but how she says it, that has me return to her blog everyday.

• Is Alltop.com Jumping The Shark Already? - MonkMojo’s 1000 Cuts

MonkMojo and I go back a long ways, and I’m really proud that he, too, has been added to Alltop. Have I mentioned how much I love Alltop? Great job, MonkMojo - and keep the infotainment going!

• Awaken Your Inner Storyteller, Part 1 - Writing Power

Loren’s series on storytelling was really helpful and timely, as I was then considering how to spruce up my narratives. Pretty soon, I’ll have to start paying her tuition for the lessons she continually gives.

• Why You Should Roll Your Own Time Management System - LifeDev

Francis discusses something near and dear to my heart: Time Management Systems. It’s time to start rolling your own systems, and we’re here to help.

• Important vs. Urgent: 5 Ways to Focus on What Really Matters - PickTheBrain

Jonathan Mead’s at it again on Pick the Brain. Detangling the urgent from the important is hard to do, and Jonathan’s post delivers ways to split the two. Great work, as usual, Jonathan!

• On Eating Contexts for Breakfast and The Price of Radical Growth - The Growing Life

Clay Collins, my more talented alter-ego, really reached down to my core with this post, as I’ve been experiencing a lot of tension from radical growth here recently. The follow-up discussion is amazing, as well.

• The Small Business Happiness Scale: Where Are You? - IttyBiz

Jamie takes the reins (or better yet, is gracefully given them) from Naomi over at IttyBiz and writes a great post about adjusting one’s happiness scale when you’re running a small business.

• Keep a Journal to Solve Tough Problems - Scott H Young

I’m a big fan of journaling and writing to get myself out of complex problems. Scott Young has written a great post on how to do this.

• The Art of Not Finishing - David Seah

David Seah writes some of the best posts on productivity that can be found on the blogosphere, all mostly by accident and through honest introspection. His recent goodness starts with

The road to productivity is paved with clear steps leading to an act of completion; essentialy, it’s finish what you start. However, as I sit here contemplating the rather large list of difficult-to-break-down tasks I’ve given myself, I’m thinking that there might be another approach. That is to relax and not worry about finishing. Or, perhaps, restart constantly.

It’s a longish post, but it’s one of those that I will no doubt read a few times, peruse some of his other posts, and come back and read it again. Yes…I’m still his young Padawan.

On other notes, the Weekly Productivity Planner is taking shape! It will be out by Friday - unless I get bogged down in student papers for longer than I think I will. Stay tuned!

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In A Special Theory of Productivity I mentioned that I that I didn’t think RescueTime worked as a time management solution. That’s too broad and unhelpful of a statement, so I’ll spend some time reviewing RescueTime so you can see how I came to that conclusion.

What is RescueTime supposed to do?

I’ll give two explanations, one from the company site, and one from Tony Wright, co-founder of RescueTime. The company site says:

RescueTime is a web-based time-management tool that allows you to easily understand how you spend your time. One of the coolest things about RescueTime is that there is NO DATA ENTRY. You install a doohicky on your computer and we magically track all of your time usage.

Tony Wright says:

Right now, we’re (RescueTime) the time management equivalent of a cholesterol test– we can tell you you’re not quite healthy and we can let you know when you’re making progress… But we don’t have a ton to offer to get you fixed up!

(Tony: thanks for visiting and leaving the comment - I intend this to be an extended reply to you. Sorry for the delay.)

The program that is installed on your computer monitors the programs you use and updates those with an online server. You go in on your user Dashboard and tag the programs with the type of activity that you do with the reported programs. After you tag them, you’re done - from that point forward, RescueTime associates that program with that activity.

The webpages you visit are handled much the same way. For instance, if you visit this blog, you may tag it as “blog reading” and “personal development.” For the rest of the time that you run RescueTime, it’ll log time spent on this site as blog reading and personal development. I have to say…that’s pretty nifty.

So, what happens to all that information? It is compiled and beautiful graphs are outputted that shows where you’ve been spending your time (much like the one the used above-update: I tried to embed a chart from my dashboard but I kept getting 404’s from RescueTime. Will try to get that fixed, as the chart is informative). Other nifty reporting features include the ability to assign point values to activities - i.e. writing, as an academic and as a blogger, is probably the most valuable thing I do, and internet surfing one of the least valuable - so that you have beautiful charts that show you how productive you are based on the value of the activities you’ve been doing. RescueTime will also alert you when you have met goals that you have set - so, if you want to spend two hours writing a day, it will let you know via email, SMS, or RSS.

All of these features are easy to set up and work as stated. The last and probably most compelling feature of RescueTime is that it’s free! Yes, all of this time tracking and reporting goodness for free.

In conclusion, RescueTime is a free, easy to use time management system that displays beautiful reports of your activities that allow you to quickly evaluate your productivity. It simply provides the best looking graphs and charts that I have seen from any product in this niche.

So, what’s not to like about RescueTime?

You may be thinking that something’s gone awry, since I’ve both praised RescueTime and said that I don’t think it works as a time management solution. My main critique about RescueTime is regarding its usefulness and cohesiveness.

Before I begin to evaluate it, remember the framework that I’m using to do so. The functions of Time Management Systems are to help you Plan, Execute, and Evaluate your work, and the principles that make these systems better are Simplicity, Usefulness, Aesthetics, Connectedness, and Cohesiveness. (If none of this makes sense to you, read A Special Theory of Productivity for more information.)

I’ve already commented that RescueTime is simple and aesthetically very pleasing. Good work on that front, guys. But I do have some major concerns about the program…

One Tag to Rule Them All

My major concern is how useful RescueTime is. It’s often the case that there is some tension between simplicity and usefulness, and RescueTime is a brilliant case in point. A real world example is in order.

I write almost everything in Textmate. When I visit another blog and start writing a longish comment, I pop open Textmate, do the writing, and then copy back to the site. When I’m drafting blog posts, I do it in Textmate. I’m even drafting my academic papers in Textmate. That amounts to a lot of writing, and RescueTime has perfectly tracked that.

But it has tracked it as “writing.” The problem: not everything I write has the same productivity value. My academic writing has far more weight than my blog writing, though my actual habits may prove otherwise. Furthermore, RescueTime doesn’t track what I was writing, so to figure that out, I’d have to refer to some other Time Management System, which hurts it on the cohesiveness front.

I may be anal, but it’s useful to know what days and times I was working on certain projects. Knowing that helps me see trends and helps me plan future tasks. As it stands, RescueTime outputs beautiful graphs and charts that, while interesting, aren’t useful. Using RescueTime, then, is adding another layer to all of the other Time Management Systems that I currently employ…all for beautiful charts and graphs.

The Textmate example is just one of many that have the same feature. I read the same sites often times for different reasons. For example, sometimes I read Lifehack just to see what Dustin Wax is baiting me with. (Okay, he doesn’t even know I exist, but he baits me anyways.) Other times, I’m reading the site to see whether they’ve written about something I’m writing about. One of the activities involves just blog reading, whereas the other is research. Other site activities include networking and marketing.

Unfortunately, RescueTime sticks with the original way I’ve tagged it. You can go back and change your tags, but then it will stick with those tags. It can’t see the difference between reading, research, networking, and marketing. But there are very important differences between those activities that are directly related to productivity.

Of course, one option would be to use different programs for different functions. I don’t have the tagging problem with Mellel, for I only use it to polish academic papers. So, I could conceivable split tasks, but why trade using one tool (Textmate) that helps with my productivity just so I can track what I’m doing?

The Care and Feeding Of RescueTime

Directly related to the tagging problem is the fact that I’m a linkhopper. When I read blog posts, I jump to people’s blogs when they leave good comments (I’ve found some of my best blog buddies that way.) That means that when I go to my RescueTime dashboard, I have to tag all of those new sites. If you do it often enough, it’s pretty easy to do and only takes five or ten minutes. Forget to update your Dashboard, though, and you end up with a few scores of sites to tag, which takes considerably longer and is not really that accurate, since I often can’t remember what I was doing there.

I also test out a lot of different software for both personal and blogging interests. So that gives me yet another bunch of applications to tag, which leads to more productivity seepage as I’m trying to figure out what I was doing.

What I’ve found is that my options using RescueTime is either to spend 10-15 minute a day of productivity overhead tagging what I’m doing or to have a high amount of untagged activities. But, for the program to be remotely useful, you have to tag what you’re doing.

What about Off-Computer Tasks and Projects?

Another major concern I have is that RescueTime can’t (without third party solutions that marginally help) track off-computer work. Phone calls, meetings, book research, yard work, errands, etc. all are things that are productive and could bear some tracking. Unfortunately, there’s no way to get them into RescueTime’s system, so to track your real productivity, you’d have to use RescueTime plus some other solution. To be fair, the creators of RescueTime don’t claim that it can do this, so it’s not as if they’re being misleading - it is, nonetheless, a critical component of our productivity that RescueTime does not help with.

Summary Evaluation

1. Does RescueTime help you plan how to use your time?

To a very small degree, yes. I say that because if you find that how you think you’re using your time and how you’re actually using your time is quite different, you can use RescueTime to help you adjust your time. Presuming you can discern different activities by tagging them properly, which I’ve yet to really manage to do.

2. Does RescueTime help you execute your tasks?

Only to the degree that your planning subverts unproductive habits. Also note that the care and feeding of RescueTime may not be a good return on investment of time.

3. Does RescueTime help you evaluate what you’ve been doing and provide useful information for future planning and execution?

Not by itself. The system would require you to have some other system that’s tracking the tasks and projects that you’re doing in order for its information to be really useful. If you have that other system, and you’re able to sync the information that it and RescueTime are producing, RescueTime may prove to be useful as a reporting tool.

4. What is RescueTime intended to replace?

This is not really part of the framework I listed in A Special Theory of Productivity, but I take it that RescueTime is intended to replace the manual input of time a la Freshbooks. It’s a pain in the ass filling in time sheets and keeping track of where you spend your time as you’re doing it, and having a system that does this without data entry would be incredibly helpful. However, as I’ve stated above, you’re going have to track your projects and tasks some way or the other, so the only point I see of RescueTime on this front is as a reality check. But that reality check would have to extrapolate what you’re doing (i.e. tasks and projects) from how you’re doing it (i.e. the sites and applications you use).

The Way Ahead For RescueTime

I hate when people just critique a product without making suggestions. Complaining is easy…providing solutions is far harder and much more useful. RescueTime is a work in progress, and they are adding new features to it monthly. Here are some things I think would make the program better - there will be some redundancy here since my critique has already listed what I don’t like about RescueTime. (I’m shooting myself in the foot here, as some of these are what I’d do if I were currently building software, and if Tony takes the suggestions to heart and implements them, I will then be fighting him for patent uses once I generate enough revenue to get those projects going. Ah well - maybe he’ll be nice if that becomes an issue.)

1. Implement a Tagging Filter

I couldn’t think of a really catchy way to say this one. Right now, RescueTime uses the applications and sites that the user visits or uses as the filter to determine what that user was doing. Rather than doing it that way, you could allow the user to specify times that the user was doing a certain tasks.

So, for example, I could allocate the block from 0600-0900 as “Working on RescueTime Evaluation.” All of the different sites and applications that were used during that time block then provide the information of how I accomplished that task. As a project manager, I could then see that, while my employee claimed they were working on Project X, they were actually on MySpace.

I could then tag that task with different metatags that indicate what area of work it fell under. The above task would fall under Blogging, and all of the subtasks indicate the different actions required to sustain that metaproject.

2. Implement an Alert for Untagged Activities

It may be helpful to alert the user that they have a certain number (say, 10) of untagged activities that need to be tagged. That way the user can work natively without the thought of “man, I need to remember what this is and go tag it.” Perhaps a report could be emailed saying “between X and Y times you were using these untagged applications and visiting these untagged sites. What were you doing?”

3. Implement an Off-Computer Applet

This one should be fairly easy given that there are already some third party applications that allow you to have up to three offline activities. Using the ideas from the solution above would make this pretty seamless.

Different and More Positive Perspectives on RescueTime

James from Men with Pens writes:

The beauty of Rescue Time is that with least effort on my part, I have a beautiful graph of my work habits – and within minutes of installation, if I feel like it. I’ll be able to see exactly where my time goes (and not where I think it goes) and I’ll see precisely how much of my time I spend on individual tasks.

If you’re into productivity, then you can’t go wrong with Rescue Time. It’s a damned nifty lifesaver… or should I say timesaver?

T.W. Garrett from TheTechBrief says:

RescueTime is set to offer a time management goal tool and the option for comparison against others in your industry for those who are serious about increasing their efficiency and finally getting a handle on their technology-driven life. I give RescueTime and A+ and I look forward to the full product release.

Scott from WebWorkerDaily says:

RescueTime is great for examining my overall productivity and helping me make sure that I am putting the proper amount of time into those areas that require my attention. I use it for big picture analysis but the tools for more detailed examinations are certainly present.

I thought it would be good to add their perspectives, since they’re a bit more positive in their reviews than I am.

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The situation: you find yourself in a funk. I’m not talking about the Pepe’ Le Pew kind of funk - that just requires the generous application of soap and water. The kind of funk I’m talking about is where you’re almost inexplicably sad, slightly depressed, or down about something.

This happens to almost everyone every once in awhile. The goal here is not to figure out how to prevent getting in a funk, but rather to short-circuit the funk when it happens. This is why getting enough sleep is not on the list, because that’s not helpful when you’ve already deprived yourself of sleep.

Note also that I’m not talking about chronic depression. Though the suggestions below will help, coping with and recovering from chronic depression takes far more work and may require some radical changes to your lifestyle.

I have a checklist that I start going down when I recognize that I’m in a funk. It starts with the recognition that the easiest way to short-circuit a funk is to work on the physiological level first and then work to the emotional, social, and mental levels later- yes, this is the same Aristotelian schema that I discussed here. It takes its cues from cognitive therapy, which trains patients to become aware of negative thoughts and immediately take action to subvert those thoughts. Continue reading →

The other day I mentioned that Clay Collins made it on Alltop’s Lifehack page. I didn’t do a great job of explaining what Alltop was then, but I wanted to take a second and do so now.

Alltop has provided such a great explanation of what they do that I’ll just give a sample from them:

You can think of an Alltop site as a “dashboard,” “table of contents,” or even a “digital magazine rack” of the Internet. To be clear, Alltop sites are starting points — they are not destinations per se. The bottom line is that we are trying to enhance your online reading by both displaying stories from the sites that you’re already visiting and helping you discover sites that you didn’t know existed. In this way, our goal is the “cessation of Internet stagnation.”

The way I’ve related to Alltop is that they’re much like the New York Times Bestseller List. They do the work to find good reads from different niches and help readers find those sites by displaying them on a single, aggregated page that lists the latest five stories on those sites. It’s a great way to check out your interests without managing a ton of blogs and sites.

What I like is that they really do help people discover new sites. Rather than just focusing on the old and known sites and blogs, they give new quality blogs a chance, since they have the expressed goals to “shake things up and urge people out of their comfort zones”, promote “sites that provide such high-quality information that we feel it’s our moral duty to tell the world about them,” and “help out underdogs and undiscovered gems.”

As a case in point, they’ve added Productive Flourishing to their Lifehacks page. They have really stuck out their collective neck for me, and I really, really appreciate it.

If you have a minute, run over and check Alltop out.

Will, Kathryn, and Guy - thanks for adding me to the Alltop family!

Failure is an opportunity.
If you blame someone else
there is no end to the blame.

Therefore the Master
fulfills her own obligations
and corrects her own mistakes.
She does what she needs to do
and demands nothing of others.
–Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

Commentary:

I’ve had a few setbacks this week - good things I was expecting did not come my way.  I was originally frustrated until I really thought long and hard about it and realized that the things did not come my way because I hadn’t done the things I needed to do to make them happen.  Expecting rewards where none were due, I blamed others and was frustrated.

Blaming others when failure is a result of your action (or in my case, inaction) is a waste of time, energy, and spirit.  Focus instead on what you can do to correct your own mistakes, and in those failures, there is an opportunity for growth.

Take the lemons you’ve reaped and make lemonade.

(This selection came from Stephen Mitchell’s translation of the Tao Te Ching (Amazon, $7.96).)

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I just found out today that your friend and mine, Clay Collins, made it on Alltop’s Lifehack page.

I wanted to take a second to cheer him on and give him some gratz love.  For those of you who haven’t been following this blogging phenom, his first blog post on TheGrowingLife was on January 24, 2008.  That’s not a typo - 14 weeks (if I’m counting right) and the man is on Alltop.

I’ve been following him personally and professionally and can tell you that he’s been working his butt off and doing all of the right things to get visibility of his brand and his blog.

Am I envious (in the good way)?  You bet.  Am I proud? Absolutely.

I’d encourage you to cheer him on, but recognize that he may not be able to reply.  He’s currently fighting through the hellstorm of the Digg Effect.

Attaboy, Clay.  Attaboy.

I mentioned after I completed the Daily Productivity Planner that I figured out how to write this post. Life intervened and I lost the muse. I’m currently in the process of reconstructing the train of thought, but it’s going to be rather rough.

The hardest part I’m having in articulating the ideas in this post is whether I’m talking merely about software time and task management systems, or time and task management systems at large. I think that the same functions and principles are features of both software time and task management systems and of larger time and task management systems like the Seven Habits and Getting Things Done. I’ll not worry too much about it right now, but let me know whether you think I need to separate the discussion between the two.

I’m also going to conflate time management systems and task management systems and just call them Time Management Systems. Feel free to poke holes in these gaping wounds, but think more about the functions and principles, as those are the meat of this post.

Continue reading →

I wanted to take a second and let everyone know that Revolution Money Exchange extended their signup bonus of $25 to May 15, 2008! As I mentioned earlier, Revolution Money Exchange is a new competitor to Paypal that allows you to send or receive money without being charged. I’ve been really happy with it when I’ve used it.

Also remember that for everyone of you that sign up by using the link below, I get $10. It’s a great way to give a donation because you get paid to do it!

Here’s the link in case you want to run over and grab your easy $25.

A Special Theory of Productivity will be out either later tonight or tomorrow morning. It would have been done today but I can’t get it out quite right and finishing my taxes took longer than anticipated.

Thank you for your time and support.

Clay (author of TheGrowingLife) wrote a brilliant comment on my last post dissenting (somewhat) about the importance of words, roots, and their meaning. I started to write a comment in response but it became clear that that response is its own post.

First, I really appreciate Clay voicing his comment, for multiple reasons. I love dialogue and not getting a free lunch with what I say. I also enjoy having true beliefs and ideas, even if that means I have to get rid of some things I’d like to believe. That said, if anyone reading this blog ever disagrees with me, please comment to that effect.

His main question:

Words are symbols, and when it comes to our internal (and even external) personal development dialog, don’t we get to chose the referent?

Okay, what’s our (me and Loren’s) deal with words? To say that it’s typical for a philosopher and an English professor to worry about words isn’t helpful, though it’s true. The reason we (maybe I shouldn’t indict her on this one) worry about words is that a good word, or phrase, can be worth a thousand pictures.

Continue reading →