Lucy Hay usually blogs about the techniques of writing and the industry that we writers work in but she did once do this very concise and smart round up of productivity tips for us.
There’s plenty in here that I do and that I recommend endlessly in The Blank Screen but also much that I hadn’t considered. Some of that comes from how Hay covers juggling the kinds of demands you have on you when you’re a parent.
But she also recommends relaxation. That’s where I turn my face against her.
We’re all unavoidably late for many things – but if you find that you are always late for everything, maybe you need to be looking into it. If other people tend to delay events for you or they just start turning up late too, then maybe you need to seriously look into it.
Time magazine says that your problem could be “rooted in something psychological, like a fear of downtime”. It has nine descriptions of how punctual people manage to be punctual and thereby live happy, fulfilling lives as paragons of virtue, spit.
But the descriptions aren’t of good ideas, such as my favourite one that says punctual folk are “immune to ‘just one more’ thing syndrome”:
You’ll rarely hear a time-conscious person say they need to squeeze in “one more thing” before they leave. That impulse can lead you off track, and suddenly it’s not just one more email—it’s an entire 15 minutes worth of emails.
“Train yourself to recognize that impulse when it happens,” Morgenstern says. “Resist the impulse to do one more thing and just leave.”
9 Habits of People Who Are Always on Time – Samantha Zabell, Time (12 January 2015)
Read the full feature for the rest.
Drinking.
Alternatively, do this to get yourself ready to sleep tonight and start fresh tomorrow:
Start by identifying an exact time when you want to be in bed. Be specific. Trying to go to bed “as early as possible” is hard to achieve because it doesn’t give you a clear idea of what success looks like. Instead, think about when you need to get up in the morning and work backwards. Try to give yourself 8 hours, meaning that if you’d like to be up by 6:45am, aim to be under the covers no later than 10:45pm.
Next, do a nighttime audit of how you spend your time after work. For one or two evenings, don’t try to change anything—simply log everything that happens from the moment you arrive home until you go to bed. What you may discover is that instead of eliminating activities that you enjoy and are keeping you up late (say, watching television between 10:30 and 11:00), you can start doing them earlier by cutting back on something unproductive that’s eating up your time earlier on (like mindlessly scanning Facebook between 8:30 and 9:00).
Once you’ve established a specific bedtime goal and found ways of rooting out time-sinks, turn your attention to creating a pre-sleep ritual that helps you relax and look forward to going to bed.
There’s more to it. Have a read of the full piece.
There is an argument – posited by Cadence Turpin on Storyline and picked up by Lifehacker – that you shouldn’t introduce someone by saying “This is Bert, he’s an investment banker”. You should instead say something like “This is Susan, she snores louder than anyone I’ve ever known.”
Okay, maybe not. But as an example of making a memorable introduction, about valuing someone and about revealing a bit too much, that works. I just have trouble coming up with an example introduction that is neither job-related nor frankly annoying. Yet I get and like the point:
Introducing your friends for who they are rather than focusing on what they do will remind them they are loved before and beyond their titles. It’s an easy way to remind them that you see them for their hearts instead of their accomplishments.
Our resumes are just paper.
I want people to know my friend Carolyn is amazing at her job, but more than that, I want people to know the stuff inside her that makes her a great friend. The stuff that makes you want to stand by her at a party, in hopes that her thoughtful observations and quick wit might rub off on you.
Let’s stop introducing the people we love based solely on what they do, who they cash their checks from, or what’s on their twitter profiles. Let’s instead start reminding them of who they are. Let’s start conversations that don’t begin and end with who has the most interesting job in the room.
A Better Way to Introduce Your Friends at Parties – Cadence Turpin, Storyline (12 August 2014)
Read the full piece and see if you can do better than I. That’s a thought, I could introduce you as the one “who does better than I”. Cool.
I read somewhere of a fella who goes flying in order to avoid phone calls. That’s excessive, even for me.
But having found that necessary business trips came with unexpected benefits from being out of contact with email and the web, he now regularly conjures up a cheaper and greener equivalent. He just decides that today is a Airplane Day and switches everything off.
Similarly, there are people who do pretend commutes. They have to be people who are working at home because otherwise their pretend and their real commutes would overlap, creating a paradox that might unfurl the entire space-time continuum. Granted, that’s a worst-case scenario.
But otherwise they do a real pretend commute. They ‘leave’ at the same time – they don’t go out of the house but they dress, they hurry to finish breakfast and down one last gulp of tea. And then they shut themselves away for 15 or 30 minutes. It’s usually the same length of time that they used to have as a genuine, real-life commute and usually I think it shortens a bit as the years go by and they’re under more pressure to work.
This is all about releasing and controlling and channelling pressure, though.
During a genuine, real-life commute, there isn’t much you can do. True, these days you can work on your phone or iPad, but you could also see those being nicked away from you.
So you read.
The news, a book, anything.
The fact that you cannot do anything else means you do it and for that 15 or 30 minutes, you’re calm.
It’s easy to do when you’re really commuting, it is much harder to make yourself have a pretend commute – but the benefits are the same. You start the working day ready and composed. You take in information, you learn things, you just enjoy thinking about different things. And for everyone, that’s fuel.
For us as writers, it’s the sand that becomes the pearl.
And I say this sitting on a train doing exactly the work I’d be doing at my home office. Well. I did read a book, though. Come on. I read all of it.
This isn’t an award show. There isn’t a single winner nor even a short list, really. Actually, as lists go it’s rubbish from the sense that to get on the list you just had to be named. But it’s also therefore comprehensive and you know that every app on Reddit’s selection is there through passion.
Maybe sometimes the passion of the manufacturers but usually the passion of a genuine Reddit user.
Take a look at the whole list – and yes, OmniFocus is right there.
…is to have enough cash that money isn’t a constant worry, and to have done things so that they are not a constant pressure on you.
You will want other things and maybe strictly speaking you do need them, but get those two right and you’re flying. Everything is suddenly possible. Everything is pretty good.
Yes. I’ve just finished my taxes. Not sure about the bit of having enough cash but tax preparation has been weighing on me for six months and I’m lighter now it’s done.
And naturally, inevitably, it took far less time than I spent putting it off.
There’s a lesson there, though I can’t imagine what it is.
Someone at Harvard Business Review has had enough and decided to write a Very Heavily Pointed article that even now they are innocently forwarding to the one of the bosses who will for god’s sake not shut up.
The article points out that there may be some things you can do about a boring boss, starting with:
Diagnose the problem. Many senior leaders are long-winded in some situations and not others. Does your boss tend to deliver an Oscar acceptance speech only when big clients come to the office and meet you in the conference room? Will your biggest client complain for hours about his divorce case over lunch, but not if he stops by the office? Are management monologues more likely to occur when there’s no formal agenda, if you’re on a phone call with no time constraints, or when no one asks any questions?
Take note of when your culprit tends to dominate the conversation so you can change the setting or circumstances. All of these clues can indicate what the core problem is — and help you devise a plan of attack.
Advice for Dealing with a Long-Winded Leader – Joe McCormack, HBR (9 January 2015)
Read the full piece.
Even I read that and think it says “shoulderless”, as in strap, but it’s a day in which you do not do things that you should. That’s not to say you need to spend it robbing a bank or having a tryst but all that stuff on your plate, all those bloody tasks you should be doing, don’t do them. Just for a day. Just for a single should-less day.
This isn’t my idea, though I love it. Instead, it’s actor Ellen Burstyn who originally said it on the WNYC’s Death, Sex and Money show. It was picked up by Science of Us in New York Magazine like this:
I have what I call should-less days. Today is a day where there’s nothing I should do. So I only do what I want to do. And if it’s nap in the afternoon or watch TV and eat ice cream, I get to do it. I had that kind of day yesterday.
Should-less days, I recommend them. Because what I figured out, is we have wiring, I have wiring in my brain that calls me lazy if I’m not doing something. God, you’re so lazy. … And that wiring is there. I haven’t been able to get rid of it.
But what I can do is I can put in another wiring. I can put in should-less days. So when that voice goes off and says, You’re being lazy, I turn to the other wiring in my brain that says, No, this is a should-less day, and I’m doing what I want.
Read the full piece. Also, hat tip as ever to Lifehacker for finding it.
I kid you not. Next Monday is the National Clean Off Your Desk Day. I might as well be kidding as it’s definitely solely an American idea and certainly not officially adopted by whoever adopts these things, plus you’re not going to do it anyway.
But the second Monday in January is, seriously, National Clean Off Your Desk Day and what the hell? Why not? I usually only clean off my desk when I’ve been fired but I’m going to fight those bad memories and do it. Wait. I’ve a meeting next Monday. Okay, next Tuesday. National Clean Off Your Desk Day +1.
Actually, I’m sitting here now in a pit of 2014’s work and papers and electronics. I suddenly really get why this is a good idea and I know that it will help me get on more with work as soon as it’s done.
Though I am obliged, I feel, to tell you that Monday 12 January 2015 is also National Pharmacist Day. And National Marzipan Day. And National Curried Chicken Day.
And Tuesday 13 January is National Rubber Duckie Day.