I mentioned in How Heatmapping Your Productivity Can Make You More Productive that I thought most personal planners got time wrong and presented all blocks of times as being equal. Later that day, I was thinking about how to capture the rather inchoate ideas in A Special Theory of Relativity (it really is coming, but I’m having trouble making it coherent and short) and it dawned on me: we learned how to manage our time in preschool.
We learned time management by playing with shape sorters and learning to put the right shape in the right hole. If you all were anything like me, you tried to figure out how to put the square through the circle hole, even though you knew that wasn’t where it belonged. It belonged in the square hole. I’m sure you also figured out, like I did, that you could get the wrong shape through the wrong hole, but it took a lot more work.
The practical application of the Productivity Heatmap is much the same. It’s about using your own rhythms (the sorter) to determine which is the best time to do certain tasks (the blocks). Sure, you can do the wrong tasks at the wrong time, but it’s a lot harder.
(Sidebar: If you didn’t make it through the article about heatmapping or didn’t see the link, you can get your own blank one here: Blank Daily Productivity Heatmap (4290)
I’ve now been toying with whether getting a shape sorter, limiting the number of blocks I get, and labeling the blocks with tasks (writing, networking, etc.) would be a useful metaphor and tool for my work planning. If nothing else, they foster creativity.
It’s strange how many lessons we learn as children, forget as adolescents, and then have to learn again as adults.
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I’ve been a bit bottlenecked recently with some of my posts. I’ve been stewing over A Special Theory of Productivity and trying to figure out the best way to present it. Meanwhile, another post that I’m working on also needs some preluding explanation. This post is related to both of those.
I’m a huge fan of heat maps, and here recently I’ve started to think about productivity in terms of heat maps, as well. The above picture is a heat map of my daily productive capacity.
The question “Why Am I Productive?” very rarely comes up when we’re productive. Usually, it’s when we’re not productive that we ask why we’re not being productive. Asking the question in the negative like that often gets us to quick fixes, but very often does not answer it in a way that’s helpful.
Here recently I’ve been thinking a lot about what makes people productive in general. What follows is a general theory that captures what I think is going on:
A discussion of the individual components is in order:
Productivity: Effectiveness vs. Efficiency
There’s a difference between being effective and being efficient, as highlighted by most productivity systems. Basically, here’s the difference: Effectiveness: completing tasks related to meaningful goals. Efficiency: Completing tasks in a specified amount of time.
The model of Productivity that I’m working with is based off effectiveness, not efficiency. We can complete any number of tasks in a given amount of time, pat ourselves on the back, and not have advanced a single, meaningful goal. While it may seem that we should be proud of the feat we’ve just accomplished, the reality is that we have moved backward rather than forward. Time is finite, and every minute spent on tasks that are not related to meaningful goals puts us further behind.
“Meaningful goals” is intentionally vague at this point, and though it is a critical part of the theory, we’re going to leave that aside for another day. I’ve started making stabs at it with this proposed model and I’m thinking it’ll be something like “goals that promote flourishing.”
Productivity Enhancers
The following components positively affect our productivity, meaning that more of any one of those components have a tendency to make us more productive.
Creative Energy
This one is fairly straightforward. Though we can influence ourselves by setting up the right conditions, the brute fact is that there are times when we are insanely, innately creative.
Focus
Another straightforward one. There are times when our attention is laser focused on one task, project, or idea and time, reality, and physical necessities melt away while we chase the muse.
Motivation
Motivation comes in two distinct breeds: general motivation to get something–anything–done and specific motivation to get specific tasks completed. The higher the motivation, the more likely we are to stay on task and complete the project.
Aptitude
Our proficiency at a given task has a major impact on our ability to complete that task in a given amount of time. For example, people who have difficulty writing have to work so much harder to complete the same given article, essay, or post than someone who is either innately better or better through practice. Experts at a task are quantum leaps ahead of novices in terms of productivity.
Ideal Time
Different tasks require different amounts of time to complete them. Figuring out your own ideal time is a matter of practice, but it’s critical for planning and execution. The importance of being able to plan work is obvious on the planning end, but many people forget that going past the ideal time in execution also hampers productivity.
Two Observations:
All of the productivity enablers are internal
By internal, I mean that they have to do with our own natures, we can individually identify what’s missing, and we can influence the components. The “hack” literature on the blogosphere is mostly about giving you ways to influence these components. While this is not a hacky post, I’ll give some starting reads that works on each of these dimensions.
Each of the dimensions have a tendency to increase the others. Being in an incredibly creative mood tends to motivate us to work the ideas through. Working within an ideal time tends to make us focus on the given task at hand. Being apt at the task tends to open up creative avenues to approach and complete our work.
This interconnected feature of the enablers also can work to our disadvantage, too. Low motivation, for example, tends to make us lose focus, creative energy, and squander our ideal time.
So, there are two tricks here. The first is figure out how to increase each of these dimensions and incorporate these into productive habits. The second is to identify the weakest dimension and work on increasing that one so that it doesn’t drag down the other enablers.
Productivity Detractors
The following components negatively affect our productivity, meaning that more of any of these components have a tendency to make us less productive.
Difficulty (of Task)
This is different than our aptitude at a task. Some tasks are inherently more difficult than others and require more of the enablers to complete. Compare the difference in difficulty between, say, writing a catch-up email to a friend and writing a pillar post for a blog. Though the word counts might be the same, the difficulty of writing a good pillar post is simply far greater than writing the catch-up email.
Distractions
Distractions are different than focus because focus has to do with what’s going on inside our heads, whereas distractions have to do with what’s going on outside our heads. Of course, what’s going on outside our heads has a tendency to creep inside our heads, but usually removing distractions require you to cut yourself off from something else. Increasing our focus requires us to quiet the noise inside of our heads. Understanding the difference between the two is critical, for decreasing distractions requires different methods than increasing focus, although the two dimensions are heavily inter-related.
Observations:
The productivity detractors are external
We can’t control when our children need attention or when our loved ones are having bad days. We also can’t really control the fact that some tasks are more difficult than others. Our ability to influence these dimensions require us to handle things outside of ourselves. Minimizing the detractors consists of (a) minimizing distractions, and (b) simplifying difficult tasks. Some resources for each component:
I’ve covered this above, but observe that the detractors have the same feature. Given that difficult tasks require more productivity enablers, we’re all too prone to look to outside sources to make them easier and wind up distracted. And being distracted makes difficult tasks that much harder.
The Take-Away Value of The Theory:
We can create habits that increase the enablers.
Every one of the enablers are within our control to foster, despite the common myth that we’re born creative, focused, and motivated. That myth is rubbish and doesn’t address the reality that creative people are creative through habit, focused people are focused through habit, motivated people choose to do things that motivate them, and experts train and hone their skills routinely.
We can examine the tasks that we do and plan ideal times to work.
We can plan around or minimize distractions.
We can’t help the fact that kids returning from school require attention. But we can plan our tasks around them (and we can also recognize that time spent with them is itself a valuable goal). We also can’t help that someone has to make food and we have to eat. Yes, we can turn email, IM, IRC, Twitter, Growl, and the myriad other technological time wasters off and do our work.
We can simplify complex tasks.
Some tasks are just hard. But even hard tasks can be simplified by breaking them down into more manageable pieces.
It helps us figure out why we’re productive at “weird” times.
I’ve been trying to figure out why most of my ideas come up in the shower and on Sunday afternoon. Answer: few distractions (in shower and off work) and high creative energy (batteries recharged since I’m not at work and I’ve had time to play). Apparently, Dave Seah has the shower problem, too.
Of course, not a single bit of this is new information, as the links attest. But there comes a point where we need step outside of hacks and look at general trends. In the next few days, I’ll be covering a Special Theory of Productivity that focuses more on time management.
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Jurgen at Time to Write has written a brief review of Paul Lemberg’s Be Unreasonable that can be found here. Something he wrote really stood out to me:
While people believe that systems are the death knell for creativity, the opposite is true. Systemized companies standardize the routine, relieving people’s minds of trying to figure it out each and every day. Instead of focusing on the commonplace, people’s minds are free to consider the extraordinary. Creativity soars.
I think I’ve said it elsewhere, but the fact is that creativity needs structure. Think about how your mind works when you are brainstorming: it jumps from idea to idea, but the best brainstorming happens when you have a mechanism (white boards, outlining programs, notepad) for capturing an idea before you jump to the next.
The word “brainstorm” actually conjures up the wrong metaphor. The process is more like a tornado than a storm. The central idea serves as the vortex that all the other conjured ideas are brought to, and as the tornado picks up steam, more ideas are brought into it. Lastly, the results from a really good braintornado can be quite dramatic…novels can be written from the process, months worth of blog posts scheduled, or entire ways of thinking and organized can be developed (or destroyed for a better system).
But it’s a lot harder to say braintornado than brain storm, so I doubt we’ll see any change in the term any time soon.
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This is part two of a three part series on the Identification and Removal of Leeches. This part covers productivity leeches: those people who constant drain your productive time.
How to Identify and Remove A Productivity Leech
Description: Productivity leeches are people drain your productive time. They commonly poke their head in your office while they are “on break” or are otherwise unproductive and interrupt you while you are not on break or are otherwise productive.
Recognize that you have a leech on you
It’s sometimes hard to recognize that you have a productivity leech because your coworkers are often sounding boards for your ideas or issues. The way to determine whether you have a productivity leech is to ask whether you ever get anything of value from them or to ask whether your meetings are productive. If you never get anything from the exchange with the person or your meetings are never productive, then odds are you have a productivity leech.
Find out where it’s located
Productivity leeches attach themselves either physically or virtually. They attach themselves physically by squatting in your otherwise productive space and draining your attention from whatever you are working on. They attach themselves virtually by monopolizing mediums of productive exchange (email, IM, or phone) and distracting you from whatever you actually should be working on.
Calmly and methodically remove the leech from your work areas or work times.
If the productivity leech is attached physically, set up roadblocks that make it harder for them to “pop-in.” Here are some possible techniques to do this:
Wear headphones, even if you aren’t listening to music. Face your work area away from the door, and ignore them if they just “poke in.” Generally, people who have an agenda will make their presence known, but people looking to leech will find an easier host to leech from.
Set open door hours for people to talk pop in and talk to you, but otherwise keep your office door shut. Let the colleagues that aren’t leeches know that they can just pop in, but have a pretty high barrier to entry to keep the leeches at bay.
Arrange the furniture in your office such that it’s awkward to sit in unless you remove some obstacles. Leave papers, coats, or boxes that are easy to move in the prime locations in your office. Remove the boxes for everyone but the leeches, so that they have to sit facing the sun, sit awkwardly, or in general have difficulty comfortably nesting in your space.
If the productivity leech is attached virtually, your task is much easier. Turn your cellphone off or put it on silent and screen your calls (but make sure you program important numbers so that the people you need to answer can get through). Have your profiles show “offline” for IM, if you must keep it on, and only talk to those who you know aren’t leeches. Only check email a few times a day, and don’t spend much time dealing with those who you know are leeches.
If you approach the productivity leech the wrong way, it may regurgitate on you and make you look like a general ass. It may also go out of the way to mess up your productivity by sending people your way, playing loud music, talking outside of your office intentionally, or spamming you with email and calls. The key thing to remember is that these people are looking to waste their time, so they have nothing to lose by harassing you, but you have a lot to lose by being harassed.
Once the leech is detached from you, get rid of it immediately, as it will try to reattach itself.
The leech will continue to attempt to attach itself to you, since it may think that your deal about being productive is only because of some unique pressing deadline. Build systemic strategies that reinforce your work area or times as leech-free zones.
Notes:
A productivity leech will feed on you for as long as it can or until it absolutely has to get back to work. At that point, it will return to its work or go home, as it has wasted as much time as it can until the next day.
The relatively small amount of time drained by a productivity leech will not cause you to far too far behind. You will adjust and accomplish what you need to after you rearrange some of your other tasks. The aggregate effect of many productivity leeches may drain you of all of your productive time and may cause career frustration. Note that this type of leech carries with it a strain of vampirism, such that entire departments or management teams become productivity leeches.
Productivity leeches require a relatively productive, efficient person on their team to support them, as they generally do not produce enough to justify their paycheck. They are generally found lurking by the water cooler, the break room, or the smoking spot.
Productivity leeches are incredibly perceptive at finding out who the workers and slackers are and may gravitate toward the slackers. Stay productive and avoid them until the management figures out they hurt the bottom line and replaces them with goal-driven temp workers or until you get promoted and can either get rid of them or find out what they bring to the table and harness that.
The concluding part of this series covers The Identification and Removal of Financial Leeches. Stay tuned!
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I won’t make it a habit of hoisting what I find funny on you all too much, but if you’ve never seen or heard of Flight of the Conchords, you have to watch this clip.
There are four segments that make me crack up everytime:
“Junkies with monkey disease
who’s touching this monkeys, please.”
“What…what is wrong with the world today”
(Jemaine mumbles)
“But what’s the real cost ’cause these sneakers don’t seem much cheaper
why are we paying so much when you got them made by little slave kids
What’s your overheads”
“Can someone please remove these cutleries from my knees
Despite the fact that the topics are really serious ones (especially the little slave kids), I can’t help but give a side-splitting laugh. These guys are an awesome example of unbound musical creativity. I’m so envious.
photo credit: redjar
Yesterday, The Wife and I went ice skating. Now, being poor and from the South, I never learned to ice skate as a kid, and this was something like the third time I’ve been. Needless to say, I looked like a very large, uncoordinated oaf sliding on marbles. After we had been skating for about an hour, my wife noticed that I had worked up a nice sweat, like I had been running for an hour. Because I had been running for an hour.
She said “You’re making it way hard than it needs to be; stop fighting it.” And it dawned on me–that’s what we do in life, generally: We fight things we shouldn’t and it makes our life harder.
7 Things We Fight That Makes Life Harder
Love
Some of us are lucky enough to meet people that we’re really compatible with and who make us happy. Unfortunately, some of us aren’t able to let ourselves love those people, and we instead push them away. We’re afraid to commit ourselves to that one person, afraid that they’ll reject us, worried that there may be somebody better out there, afraid that the timings’ not right…in short, we come up with a long list of reasons to fight the natural inclination to love and be loved. And life is harder without someone to snuggle up to at the end of the day.
Making new friends
Similar to the first. Again, we come up with a long list of reasons: they’re co-workers, he’s too hot, they’re artsy, she eats at Taco Bell, he wears Birkenstocks with socks…all belying the fact that we enjoy their company and we feel better around them.
Waking Up
The alarm clock goes off. We slap the snooze button. It goes off again. We slap snooze the snooze button. Rinse and repeat, until we’re just on time to be running really behind. Most of us know as we’re assaulting our electronic timepieces that we’ll be happier if we get up, but we still use the alarm clock as a dummy to perfect our pimp technique. And we spend the rest of the day running behind. (Need help with this one?: consider reading this.)
Working
Ever dread going to work only to figure out that once you’re there, it’s not as bad as you made it? That’s almost every day for me. Honestly, I have all different types of work that I do, but I sometimes dread doing the work that I actually enjoy. Life would be a whole lot easier if we just sat down and did our daily tasks. It’s really as simple as this:
If you’re a writer, write. (Ever heard of bricklayers’ block?)
If you’re a musician, play.
If you’re a songwriter, write songs.
If you’re a coder, code.
If you’re a blogger, blog.
If you’re a philosopher, flip burgers.
Why do so many of us “smart people” ride the short bus on this one?
Creativity
Somewhere between puberty and adulthood we “forget” how to be creative (I blame junior high). We become pragmatic and start to think that all ideas have to produce something. We fear that our ideas will be stupid. We worry what others will think about our ideas. Again, we come up with a whole list of ways to stifle ourselves and deny part of our nature. For a more extended discussion of this, check this out. The irony here is that we fight being creative only to complain about not being creative.
Anger
My wife is really prone to this one. I’ll do something stupid or inconsiderate (usually repeatedly and without me being aware of it) and said stupidity will get her angry with me. But, after she’s already angry with me, she’ll make herself stay mad at me, despite the fact that we’ve already talked about it and I’ve already both apologized profusely and massaged her feet. Part of her really wants to not be mad, and the other part wants to stay mad so that I don’t get off so easy. After a while, she realizes that she’s fighting much harder to stay mad at me rather than just letting it go.
Usually, the energy that we spend staying angry with people is wasted. Sometimes we have legitimate reasons to stay angry with people, but most of the time we fight letting it go, even though we’d be happier by doing so.
Family
In my experience, fighting with family gets you nowhere and generally makes life harder. I’m not talking about kids fighting over the TV; rather, I’m talking about adults that continually spat with their sibs and parents. The bottomline on this one is this: you’re either going to spend time with them or you’re not. If you decide you’re going to spend time with them, then, at a certain point, it’s best just to let it go, since it’s not likely that you’ll get anywhere and you’ll still be sitting there at Thanksgiving passing rolls to them. If you’re not going to spend time with them, then it’s best not to argue with them about it, since there’s really no point.
There’s a weird paradox here: we don’t really fight with and try to change our friends because we recognize that they’re their own persons and you can’t change people after a certain age. Yet we somehow think that we can change family members, even though they’re their own persons and you can’t change people after a certain age.
If you’re fighting with family, ask yourself whether, at the end of the day, you’re going to be sitting at the dinner table with them during the holidays. If you are, then best to stop fighting about it and move on. If you’re not, then best to stop fighting about it and move on. Yes, I recognize that I repeated myself at least twice on that one, but people get stuck on this one and make their life way harder than it needs to be.
If you’ve got the type of family that never fights about stuff, then (a) are you all being honest with each other?, and (b) can I come over during the holidays?
My ice skating experience would have been far less exhausting, and probably more enjoyable, had I stopped fighting the ice and actually skated, rather than ice running. And life is much easier, and more enjoyable, if we stop fighting the things we shouldn’t. photo credit: redjar
[Abstract: This post continues the "Learning to Play a Song Series." It discusses three different things to consider when picking your first song to play.]
So, you’ve picked what instrument you want to play. You may not realize it but you’ve made a major step towards learning to play your first song, since, by choosing the instrument, you’ve narrowed your choices down to what you can play. If you’ve chosen the bass guitar, there’s no sense in trying to learn to play a song that’s driven solely by rhythm guitar. One word of wisdom when it comes to learning a song: creativity needs boundaries. By you choosing your instruments, you have created a boundary in which creative energies can be channeled.
Where do you go from here? Here are some things to consider when choosing what song you’ll learn to play:
Consideration #1: What type of song do you want to learn to play?
This one choice has the most impact on how well you’ll learn and how well you’ll stick to playing and practicing. If you choose a song that doesn’t really motivate you, odds are you won’t stick with it and hence won’t learn to play the song. Additionally, if you pick a song whose style you are completely unfamiliar with, you will have a hard time learning to play it, whether or not it’s intrinsically difficult or not.
Here’s something else to be very mindful of: music has a very powerful impact on one’s moods. If you’ve chosen a song and find yourself in a mood that’s wildly different than your natural mood after playing it for a while, odds are its the music and not you. This can work to your advantage: playing peaceful music when you’re having a bad day can work wonders for one’s psyche; sometimes playing music that lets loose the darker side of you can be therapeutic, as well. If you are religiously inclined, worship music can be a powerful way to center yourself and you get the two-for of learning an instrument and worshiping at the same time.
Bottom-line: take a minute or two and think about what type of song you want to play. Choose one that motivates you, is close to the type of music you most often listen to, and that puts you in the mood you want to be in.
Consideration #2: How difficult is the song to play?
It can be difficult for someone just learning to play to assess how difficult a song will be to play. There are some quick ways to figure it out, though it may require a somewhat trained ear.
First, listen to the tempo of the song.
Faster songs are generally harder to learn to play, as you’ll generally have to have quicker fingerwork to keep up. Additionally, it’s also harder to discern notes and chords when they’re speeding by you. If possible, choose a slower song so that you can play along with it once you’ve practiced it a bit. Trust me, in the long run you’ll be happier, unless, of course, you listen to a lot of fast music and the slower music puts you to sleep.
Listen to how quickly the main notes change
This comment is mostly focused on the guitar. Every song has a basic structure of chords that it fits in called a key. This key is the range and types of notes that can naturally be played within the song. (I’m keeping this really basic, as explaining keys and chords can be quite complex and the explanation is probably counterproductive for the beginner.) What you’re listening for is how often it seems that there’s a chord change within the song; more chord changes equate to more finger work and, at the beginning stages, more frustration.
Also, if a song has a really screaming solo, there’s a good chance that it’s difficult to play, as musicians, just like anyone else, love to show their ability to do the difficult. While I’m not saying you should shy away from really intricate solos, be aware that they’re not going to come easy. You’re far better off learning to play easier songs at the beginning, which is why most music teachers start with the easy stuff first and then build upon it.
Listen for key changes
Here I am back to key changes, I know. If you’re listening to your song and you notice that, all of a sudden, all of the musical instruments and the vocalist take a step up or down, what you’ve probably just heard is a key change (normally songs key up rather than down). I advise you to avoid learning such a song for your first song.
Here’s why: songs without key changes normally have somewhere between three to five chords in them (four being really common). To learn how to play those songs, all you have to do is learn those three to five chords and how they’re put together. (Yes, I made it sound much easier than it is for a beginner) Songs that have key changes, however, may double the amount of chords you have to learn, as the different keys require different chords. Sometimes you get lucky and only a few chords change, but that style puts a large burden on you to remember which chords go in which position when they’re played.
If it doesn’t violate consideration #1, choose a song that’s slower, has less chord/key note changes, and does not have a key change.
Consideration #3: How common is the song?
Many people overlook this consideration when choosing their first song only to figure out it kind of sucks to only know a song that few other people know. Part of learning to play for most people is the idea of sharing the song, and, perhaps, play along with someone else. Having someone listen to a song that their unfamiliar with puts both the new musician and the listener in a weird position: unless it’s an immediately catchy song, the listener takes a while to catch on to it and the musician feels a bit awkward playing it, and if the person listening to the song isn’t responding with the enthusiasm that the new musician hoped for, the musician’s motivation for learning to play the song can be sapped.
If your goal is to play music with other people, learning to play a less well-known song undermines your goal; what you’re in essence doing is making twopeople learn a song they’re unfamiliar with. It’s especially problematic to learn difficult, uncommon songs, as it’s really hard for people to wing it on a song that they can’t play back in their head.
Whenever possible, pick a song that’s really common, presuming, of course, that it doesn’t violate Consideration #1.
If you can stomach it, the easiest way to learn a song is to pick one off a Top 40 list. Yes, they’re pop songs, but generally pop songs are not very difficult and are nearly universally appealing. You’ll no doubt find many people who are familiar with the song, so you’ll have plenty of potential prospects to play for and many more prospects to play with. Additionally, pop songs feature the core types of chord variations, structures, and arrangements that the Western ear has been trained to hear and find pleasing; training yourself to learn to play these songs and hear how they work will serve you well as you learn to play more songs.
The next post in this series will discuss how to analyze your song and begin learning the parts of it.
