They are worse than Sundays and so much more unfair. I don't work in a bank, why must have bank holidays?
And today is Sunday. Just a Sunday. But it's the Sunday before a bank holiday Monday so it feels like another bank holiday.
But I have learnt one thing, one productivity thing. You know all this gardening stuff?
Writing is easier.
I've not used it, not even heard of it before two minutes ago – but on being told of it, I wanted to make sure you knew too. This fairly basic-looking tasks app, Lists To Do, is free for today only.
It's usually 69p so it's not like that will destroy your bank balance, but To Do apps are so important that it's worth checking out a lot of them. And a lot of 69p can add up.
So do take a moment to check this one out here.
No.
So there.
Write your To Dos as if someone else is going to do them. Take the time to put that extra explanatory detail in there – so instead of writing “Phone meeting Anne” on your list, write “Phone Anne to ask her for purchase order number”. The second takes longer to write but you come to the phone tomorrow and you are dialling immediately. The former is shorter but tomorrow you’re going to look at “Phone meeting Anne” and think, what’s that about? Is she phoning me or am I supposed to phone her? And you may well have to stop to think: hang on, which Anne?
I believe this, I do this, it works. Not everyone agrees.
1# Change a relatively boring list to something that can excite you
Since lists in their current state are declarative in nature, I first tackled changing the way I write them.I found out that we’re more likely to read something if it has a question mark attached to it which led me to change the way I write tasks.
Let’s start with one of the most boring tasks that I know off, doing your laundry.
Instead of writing it like the mundane task it is i.e. as a declaration “- Do the laundry at 8 PM”, write it as a question or even a challenge! This will rub some extra flavor into it “Can you finish the laundry before 8:30 PM?” and will make sure you’ll tackle it.
Asking question stimulates our curiosity; curiosity is an engine that motivates us to explore and discover.
Haim Pekel wrote that on the IQ Tell productivity blog which I didn’t see and hadn’t heard of until Lifehacker spotted it yesterday. Lifehacker’s more pro this idea than I am, so do read the full piece on IQ Tell to see what you think.
I’ve noticed that whoever walks in to a supermarket at the same time as me is who will walk out at the same time too. We are driven around stores like machines, guided to what we want and where they want us to buy it, then kicked out as quickly and profitably as possible. I’m fascinated by how these stores work and so this article held me up this morning.
Once Dangler has set up his basic pricing rules, he’s ready to start testing out potential discounts and special offers to try and improve sales. He goes for an aggressive price cut on the own-brand natural yogurt, cutting the profit margin to a few pennies, and the volume of predicted sales balloons as a result. It turns out that people are really price-sensitive when buying cold desserts. Alas, a large proportion of the gains is offset by a drop in branded sales, meaning the idea would probably result in worsening relationships with suppliers in exchange for a modest increase in profits. We keep searching for the optimal solution, with every small change having an immediate trickle-down effect on related products. It’s like a chaos theory testing suite, with each price being a flap of a butterfly’s wings. The only thing missing is a button to make the system automatically optimize everything, you still need humans to input scenarios.
Along the way, I discover phenomena like asymmetric cross-price elasticity — an eight-pack’s price affects sales of four-packs more strongly than vice versa — and the fact that a “buy one, get one free” offer is more cost efficient than a straight 50 percent price cut (that’s because some people will still take just one).
Read the whole piece to find out who this Dangler is and how while this is an article about American supermarkets, it is featuring software owned by Tesco here in the UK.
http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/2/5667606/supermarket-price-optimization
From Groundhog Day by Danny Rubin and Harold Ramis. There is very little relevance here but I read the words “Don’t drive angry” and that’s what starts playing in my head. What may be more relevant is where I read the words.
Time magazine has a feature on this and nine other things you really should not do when you’re angry. I’m afraid I think I’ve done at least 12 of them.
You shouldn’t drive
Operating a motor vehicle when you’re enraged can be dangerous. Research shows that angry drivers take more risks and have more accidents. “When you’re angry, you’re primed for attack, so it’s not a good time to jump in a vehicle,” says David Narang, PhD, a clinical psychologist in Santa Monica, Calif. “In addition, anger gives a person tunnel vision—you stare straight ahead and may not see a pedestrian or another car coming into your peripheral vision crossing the street.” If you must drive when angry, Narang suggests opening your eyes purposefully and looking around you to avoid tunnel vision.
It’s very easy to get angry as a writer, most especially when your latest rejection is just nuts. But don’t drive. And nine other things. I’d like them to have included a few things you should do, but for a strong list of what to avoid and why, do read the full feature.
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/time/topstories/~3/Q-idFqWrq1o/
This came up in The Blank Screen workshop I just did at the Stratford Literary Festival: “Eat that frog”.
It’s a phrase and a book title and it means whatever the worst, most horrible task you’ve got to do is, do it now. Do it first. If you eat that frog now, it is done and it is over. If you don’t, it’s going to be on your mind all day and just getting harder and worse and harder and worse all the time.
Author Brian Tracy came up with this and I think he’s right and smart. The full title of his book, though, is Eat That Frog! 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time – and I think it’s telling that nobody can remember the other 20. Just the frog-eating one, that’s what we hold in our heads.
Take a look at the book on Amazon where you can read the opening pages and get a feel for whether you’ll like the book or whether just knowing the frog phrase is enough. Click here for Amazon UK and here for Amazon US.
It’s not that I don’t like invoicing. It’s that I don’t do it. I’m far more interested in doing the work. Today, for example, I am infinitely more interested in the fact that I’m working with a group of young writers as we create a play. Infinitely.
But it is an unfortunate fact that if one does’t get paid, one stops being able to eat and that stops one being able to do this work. I really want to survive to the play’s performance, so I have to get paid. And being freelance, that means I have to invoice.
I am full of good intentions to do with everything financial. Fortunately, I don’t have to be. I’ve set a location reminder.
I’m working in a library today. When I leave that library, my iPhone will bleep with a reminder that I need to invoice for this work.
That’s all. I may not do it right there and then, but I have a train ride after it so I probably will. I think I may come across as very mercenary, invoicing within ten minutes of finishing a job, but if I don’t do that, I don’t invoice at all, so.
If you have an iPhone, you have location reminders. They are in – and they were introduced to the world in – Apple’s free Reminders app. Every good To Do app since then has taken that idea and so I use the one in my beloved OmniFocus.
Forget general advice about always buying on Tuesdays or always buying 6-8 weeks before you want to fly. Instead, use Hopper. Punch in the airport you want to go from and the one you want to go to. Then instantly see a really gorgeously detailed report that tells you exactly when to buy and when to go.
Exactly.
Hopper’s data is gathered via crowdsourcing so it is continually updating which means it is continually changing. So strictly speaking what you see is exactly the time to buy and the time to go as it appears now. But that is pretty good.
Go straight to trying it out for yourself at Hopper’s official site for this and also read the New York Times article that examines the service.
What it is this, Nike on a bad day? Go Fucking Do It is a new productivity – well, I don’t know what to call it. There’s definitely a website but it’s more an ethos. More a gorgeous slice of wickedness. Sign up to this and state what you’re going to do: you’ll write that book, you’ll run this marathon – and then you put a price on it. A forfeit.
Here’s a real example:
I will surprise my girlfriend every day or pay $100
That’s live on the site right now, as are these:
I will run a marathon or pay $50
I will organise my life or pay $50
The key thing, is where the money goes if you fail to do what you vow and instead have to pay up. There is a debate going on about this but I am fully in favour of the cash going to the people who run the website. Some argue that it should go to a charity but that’s nice and this is about making you do your task. If you fail knowing Macmillan Cancer Research is going to get your money, you’re far more likely to fail than you are if it goes to some stranger running a website somewhere.
Despite the ongoing debate, currently 153 people have gone ahead and registered. They have pledge-vowed a total of $14,718
And it is a great idea with one massive flaw.
The people who are signing up for it don’t appear to be as smart as the website owners.
Take those three examples above.
I will organise my life
When? How exactly will your life be organised? If it’s by buying The Blank Screen book (UK edition, US edition) today, you go right ahead.
I will run a marathon
When?
I will surprise my girlfriend every day
Really? Every day? How long before the surprise is that there is no surprise? Who adjudicates over whether she is actually surprised or not? If you get married, do you have to find a new girlfriend to surprise?
The principle of having to pay money if you fail is like my own Brutal £1 Pot Trick where I made myself get up at 5am by rewarding myself with a pound coin – and throwing away all the pound coins so far if I failed. I never failed.
Take a look at the Go Fucking Do It website to see what you think and if you want to despair about humanity, go check out that debate about where the money should go.
Also, half a hat tip to Lifehacker as that found this for me, though it loses a bit of a tip for spelling it “Go F***ing Do It”.
sfds
You have lunch most days, right? You go to bed pretty much every night? Write for half an hour before you eat lunch. Write for ten minutes before you go to bed.
That’s it. That’s all. That is actually my productivity tip of the week – I do one of those in each of the weekly The Blank Screen email newsletters – and it’s so new to me that it isn’t in The Blank Screen book. I shouldn’t tell you that. But it’s you, I can’t lie to you.
And I can’t try to make this one sound more than it is. Just find a thing you have to do or a thing you like doing and then do some writing before it. Before it every time. Make the two things go together like a double bill. It means you won’t forget to do it, you will make it a habit.
Just be careful of one thing. Whatever you tie this writing to, make sure you do the writing before it. Not after. Telling yourself you’ll write for an hour after you come back from the gym won’t work. Telling yourself you’ll write for ten minutes before you go to the gym, that works.