Advice

Proof that small moves work

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Well, at least call it proof that small moves add up. As I write this, it’s 18 August 2014, The Blank Screen news site has been running for 265 days and we’re closing in on 1,000 posts. That’s coming soon but we’ve already exceeded 250,000 words posted.

A quarter of a million words since 26 November 2013.

That’s something like three times more words than the book that started all this, The Blank Screen (UK edition, US edition).

If we’d written as much fiction in this time, we’d have a trilogy of novels. If I had a dollar for every word I’d be writing to you from New York and inviting you over for a coffee and a dinner.

I do want to revel in this a bit, I do feel rather good about it, but I also want to think about how you can as equally argue that it happened by accident as that it did from hard work. I won’t dismiss the work it took but right now, today, I don’t see any of that, I just see that consistent, regular effort has built something I didn’t have last year.

Next time you or I reckon we don’t have time for something or perhaps that we don’t have enough time for it, let’s remember that, truly, small moves work. I could be less smug about it, mind.

The bollocks of the ‘can do’ attitude

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It sounds great on the back of motivational books but, seriously, sometimes you can’t do it. It’s impossible. Go do something else, put that smile to work where you can actually do some good.

Writer Noah St John makes this point in an article called 5 Impossible Goals You Should Stop Going After, specifically:

Now I know that you’re not used to hearing something like that on a personal growth blog. You’re used to hearing things like, “If you can conceive it, you can achieve it,” and “There’s nothing you can’t do when you set your mind to it.”

That’s all well and good for the majority of the goals we set. However, the truth is that there are some things that you and I actually can’t do.

I often tell my coaching clients that if you continue to go after these impossible goals, you will not only waste your time, money, and effort, you will invariably end up feeling frustrated—not because you didn’t try hard enough, but because you’re going after something you shouldn’t have been going after in the first place.

5 Impossible Goals You Should Stop Going After – Noah St John, SteveAitchison.com (undated but probably 14 August 2014)

I like the concept more than I like the rest of his article. The full piece has these five goals he says you should ditch but they’re a bit Hallmark Card Business School-like. I agree about not trying to be perfect all the time, but if you seriously believe you “have to sell 100% of my prospects”, i.e. convince every single person you ever meet that they should buy your particular brand of snake oil, you aren’t listening.

Star Wars productivity advice

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Make better films.

I’d start with the scripts, myself.

But if you’re not George Lucas, there is apparently still much advice can you take, mmm, from the films of the Wars of Star. Writer Yael Grauer knows more about Star Wars than I thought existed and has found eight apposite quotes to help us in our work.

Spoiler: one of them is the one you just thought of – “Do or do not, there is no try.” And one of them is just “Ready are you?”. But overall the eight have interesting points, starting with number 1 where she says you could benefit from reframing a job, from looking at it all in a different light:

“Deliver more than you promise. The best way to be always certain of this is to deliver much, even when you promise nothing.” ―Master Tho-Mes Drei, Jedi Master and Jedi Temple instructor

Somewhere on your journey, you’ll hit a point where you have enough work coming in that walking away from a client doesn’t feel like a sacrifice. As a Jedi, you are sworn to protect the peace and justice of the Republic. Therefore, you would follow both the letter and the spirit of the law of any contract you sign, putting effort into each project that you’re obligated to complete. That means you may find yourself in a non-ideal engagement you’re committed to finishing, even though you’re dreading every minute of it.

This is where business coach Pam Slim, award-winning author of Escape From Cubicle Nation and Body of Work, recommends defining specific benefits to your plight. Maybe it’s realizing an assignment will look great in your portfolio, or perhaps the money from a project will pay your healthcare bill the month. “Sometimes making it super concrete can create a positive correlation for you in getting something done,” Slim said. Focusing on the direct reward of completing a project can take your mind away from the challenges.

8 Jedi Mind Tricks for Freelancers (and Star Wars Nerds) – Yael Grauer, Contently (4 August 2014)

Seriously, I could do without the Jedi bits. But I like the points her full article makes.

I don’t use paper notebooks, but if you do…

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Oh, I think you’ll love this. Every time I meet someone who is adamant that their paper notebooks are better than my clutching at Evernote and typing everything, I ask them the same question. It is always a genuine question, I promise you this, and I only keep asking because I just don’t seem to get very convincing answers. Yet notebook users persist and are deeply attached to their paper and pen. This is the question: how do you find anything?

I mean it. I had an editor at the BBC who, whatever the discussion, could flip to the right page in her big notebook and tell you what we’d said about it last year. I was fascinated. I don’t know that I would do it even if I understood it, but I know for certain that if I were a paper notebook user, I would be using this:

…notebooks are hard to organize your ideas. You either split your notebook into several sections for each ‘category’ and end up wasting valuable pages in the quieter sections or you just write your ideas as they come along making them hard to find later on.

If this sounds familiar then you are going to love this little hack I was taught here in Japan by a friendly salariman. It’s a little messy, and not something I’d use all the time but for the right subject could come in handy.

Here’s how it works. The back of your notebook will act like a tag list or index. Every time you create a new entry at the front of the book you’re going to “tag” it.

A Little Known Hack form Japan to Get Your Notebook Organised – Adam Akhatar, Highfive (12 August 2014)

This time you absolutely have to read the whole thing or I don’t think you’ll get it at all. The only alternative is for me to steal the entire article plus photos and I won’t do that because of course I won’t do it. Plus, if you like this article from Highfive, you’re surely going to like others and I need to point you at this and them all. But for the sake of enough clarity so that you can decide whether it’s worth digging into this particular full piece, here’s the end result:

notebookhacktemp

You can’t help but notice the list of words on that back page of the notebook – but look at the pages before them. Those little marks that stand out even on the closed pages are how you find everything. Do take a look at Akhatar’s full piece for more explanatory photographs and exactly how to do this thing.

And then go get Evernote for your Mac, PC, iPhone, iPad and Android devices. Sorry. I had to.

You don’t have to decide right now

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All stop. An email’s just come in, or a text, or a phone call. Maybe even a real person has just come up to you. That’s a scary thought. But it all demands your attention now and it all rather expects you to reply or decide or just plain do something right now.

Don’t.

I’m not saying that you should be rude to the person who walked up to you – though really would it have killed them to bring you a coffee? – but I am saying that you don’t have to react right this moment. In fact, you shouldn’t. Almost always. You know that this is bollocks when the interrupter is your boss and you, as the interruptee, rather depend on them for eating three meals a day and keeping that roof over your head. But most of the time, with most people, with most interruptions, you are better off taking a little while to do anything about it.

Inc.com has a half-excellent article about this that includes many very good points about it all but maybe gets a bit anal in the details. Writer Kevin Daum recommends that you “Create a Response Schedule”:

Setting a routine for communication can help both with your productivity and with managing expectations of the people with whom you interact. It’s frustrating to spend time chasing other, not knowing when you will get a response. I solve this problem with a simple rule of thumb. Generally, when available, I respond to texts within 20 minutes, phone messages within an hour, and e-mails within 24 hours. You can set your own appropriate timeframe, but once you have a schedule you can better manage your time. You can also let people know what to expect. Those who work with you regularly will soon recognize and respect your habits.

8 Ways to Improve Your Communication Right Now – Kevin Daum, Inc.com (16 August 2013)

Myself, I think that’s a bit too organised, it takes a bit too much work. I avoid replying to emails instantaneously – which used to be a big thing I did and it got me into day-long ping-pong conversations because I would not let go and I often had a gag I couldn’t resist – by a more brute force approach. My Mail software no longer checks for emails every picosecond. It just looks every quarter of an hour on a regular day, maybe I push that back to an hour if I’m really busy. Sometimes, especially when I’m out and getting emails on my iPhone I will tell it to not get messages at all until I have a minute and can read them.

That means that I just don’t have the issue of replying instantaneously because I don’t get the emails instantaneously.

And the point of all this is that while I am not replying to you at lightspeed, I am getting some work done. No offence.

Do read Daum’s full piece. Also, a nod of the hat to Contactzilla, a site devoted to its eponymous contact management software that I’ve never heard of before it began including productivity articles.

Merlin Mann: Scared Shitless

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Mann is a particularly interesting speaker that I’ve mentioned before. He’s behind the idea of Inbox Zero and I like his productivity dash. But this might be my favourite thing of his.

Not the most useful: Inbox Zero is really useful. But favourite. Mann talks less about being productive per se, more about what it is like committing to things. I actually think the opening three minutes or so of this are a bit standard-issue-presentation stuff but then I find it honest and open and rather inspiring.

The Seven Deadly Sins of Email

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There are only seven? What about those utter bastards who don’t put subject headings on so you have to open the message RIGHT NOW to see that it is ALWAYS trivial nonsense that seriously could’ve waited?

Asian Efficiency, a site that I like very much, has a piece that I think is more about you than it is about your email. Specifically, number 1 of these sins is definitely your fault:

Opening email first thing in the morning.

When you open your email first thing in the morning, you are opening up Pandora’s Box. There is both good and evil that could be waiting for you in there. However, the sin comes from the false urgency you get from all of the good, the bad and the ugly emails.

Why is starting your day with email so deadly?

Willpower tends to be higher earlier in the day. That means you’ll be able to provide your best energy and effort to your most important task (MIT).

When you open and respond to email first thing, you are basically telling the world, “What I had in mind for today is not nearly as important as what you had in mind.”

Responding to urgent requests early will also train the requestor to send you more urgent requests. You will then find yourself spending more time working on “other people’s agendas” rather than your own.

Tackling email early in the day is one of the most sinister of sins because responding to emergencies can make you feel productive, responsible and even important. However, more times than not this habit prevents you from creating long term, lasting value.

Starting your morning with a number of little emergencies found in your inbox has the tendency to creep into the rest of your day. If you’ve ever found yourself exhausted from work at the end of the day despite the fact you did not accomplish anything you intended to… early am email could be the reason why.

The 7 Deadly Email Sins – Zachary Sexton, Asian Efficiency (undated but probably 28 July 2014)

Read the full article for more about what exactly you can do instead of that and six more things that I hope you’re doing now because I know I am. We can stop it together, right?

Fight! Fight! Fight! – The Make-Up Sequel

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Just yesterday I found a Fast Company article recommending that we stop being peacemakers and sometimes just land a good punch in first. Naturally, as a civilised man, this didn’t appeal at all. Naturally, as a writer, the dramatic implication appealed a lot. And very naturally as someone who writes for a living, the notion recalled Very Many Incidents where it would’ve been a Very Bad But Oh So Right idea.

Now Fast Company is saying well, hang on a minute there, let’s think about this.

You’ve had an interaction with a coworker during which you felt hurt, angry, misunderstood, and wronged–clearly it was an upsetting and difficult situation.

You’ve Just Had a Fight with a Coworker – Now What? – Robert V Keteyian, Fast Company (13 August 2014)

Translation: you lost.

Keteyian’s full article accepts that sometimes the only way to deal with it is to say you should see the other fella: there are people you will never convince or be convinced by, there are people who fight for fighting sake and there are times their fight is not with you. They say it’s about some particular project you’re both working on but actually they’re seriously narked that they are on this job instead of having got the promotion they so rightly deserve. In all these cases and more, let it be and maybe practice a bit more in a boxing ring.

But when both sides are actually reasonable and both sides want the right thing, talk about it. This means asking them for a chat – good luck with that – but it also means digging in deep about yourself:

Now, here’s the really hard part. Change the story you developed–in which you got hurt–to include what you learned from the other person.

The reason this is so hard is that the emotional impact is embedded in your experience. What happened to you is what happened to you. However, the beliefs you connect to that experience need to include your new understanding, what you just learned from your coworker.

Getting to that understanding with someone can be tricky. When difficult interactions are revisited, one person may say, “I may have said that, but it’s not truly what I meant,” and the other may respond, “Yes, but if you said it, then you must have meant it.” This, of course, leads nowhere.

When talking, be sure to give each other enough time to fully express thoughts and feelings; talk about what’s really important to you; explain how you were affected by what the other person said and did; and apologize for anything you said or did that hurt the other person.

Be sincere about it, though, would you? None of this “I apologise if I caused you any offence you namby-pamby weakling” stuff.

Read the full piece for more about how to start this dialogue and handle it too.

Fight! Fight! Fight!

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When we write we know to put characters in conflict but in real life, we avoid that all we can. And quite reasonably so. But sometimes, it might be worth a bit of a scrap:

While some people plow through conflict to get their way, a 2010 study by Provo, Utah-based leadership training firm VitalSmarts found that 95% of employees have trouble voicing differences of opinion, which results in a loss of roughly $1,500 per eight-hour workday in lost productivity, doing unnecessary work, and engaging in active avoidance of co-workers for every crucial conversation they avoid.

“We’re constantly faced with choices and conflicts. We work through the vast majority. The conflicts that get the most attention are the ones that go bad or go wrong,” says Peter T. Coleman, psychology and education professor at New York City’s Columbia University and author of the forthcoming Making Conflict Work: Harnessing the Power of Disagreement.

Somewhere between browbeating and caving in every time you’re faced with someone else’s preferences, there’s a middle ground out of which can spring innovation and ideas.

How to Use Conflict to Your Advantage at Work – Gwen Moran, Fast Company (31 July 2014)

Moran’s full piece goes on to give five pointers on how and when to do it, starting with choosing your battles wisely.