Advice

Increase your energy by resting

Posted by

0

Nobody ever said that productivity advice had to be deep or clever. Unfortunately someone may have said it has to go on at length:

Schedule rest time first. I know that it sounds counterintuitive but if you want to increase your energy, you need to have adequate recovery from the stresses and strains of daily life. This requires rest. Identify the amount of rest that you require and block that time out of your calendar. Nothing short of an emergency should interfere with this time.

When you are well rested, you are more energetic and ready to take on the world. You can give your all to every task because you know that you will have sufficient opportunity to recover from your efforts. Prioritise your rest time.

5 Habits which increase your energy and productivity – Carthage Buckley, Coaching Positive Performance (undated, probably 22 June 2015)

Read the full piece for the five habits and to find out that Carthage Buckley is a real name.

Sorry about that

Posted by

0

I’ve said before that because I’m a man, if I tell you that I’m wrong and you’re right, it floors a lot of people. Love it. So does saying sorry. Same reason. Male, ego, testosterone, abs (I may not have all of that but I’m counting on how you won’t check), it all adds up to making apologies rare and therefore effective. But Lifehacker says the way you apologise matters.

It’s true. I’ve had someone say like “I apologise if you felt offended at my suggestion you could be less ugly” and I have wanted to tear a limb off them for saying such bollocks. Lifehacker’s point is that it’s more specific than not just saying something you clearly think will fob me off but you ain’t actually sorry about:

In some ways, we all communicate differently. The way I express sympathy, regret, or love might not exactly match up to yours. Let’s say I spill coffee on your shoes and dryly say, “Sorry. I’ll buy you new shoes.” That may work for some people, but others might expect a little more. Restitution might not matter as much to them as regret in an apology.

For a More Powerful Apology, Match a Person’s “Apology Language” – Kristin Wong, Lifehacker (21 June 2015)

Read the full piece for how to fake – sorry, how to make your apology most effective for the person you’ve just rubbed up the wrong way.

Walk it off, walk it off

Posted by

0

One day, when Marc Andreessen, the money man behind such tech giants as Facebook, Twitter, and Zynga, was out driving around his home in Palo Alto, California, he nearly hit a crazy old man crossing the street.

Looking back at the fool he had nearly run over he noticed the trademark blue jeans and black turtle neck. “Oh my god! I almost hit Steve Jobs!” he thought to himself.

Why Everyone From Beethoven, Goethe, Dickens, Darwin To Steve Jobs Took Long Walks and Why You Should Too – Andrew Tate, Canva (6 March 2015)

In comparison, my Apple Watch just told me it was time I really stood up for a minute and I ignored it. I am evil.

It really was Jobs, by the way, not just any old nutter in a turtleneck, and writer Andrew Tate says: “through history the best minds have found that walking, whether a quick five minute jaunt, or a long four hour trek, has helped them compose, write, paint, and create.”

I’ll think about the quick jaunt, okay? Read the full piece for five persuasive reasons why walking is good for you and your productivity.

Get people to talk

Posted by

0

Clearly, I am a world expert on speaking to groups of people: I just did my 184th event since I started counting in late 2012. No question, I know everything. But I do know what it’s like getting to the end and saying “So, any questions?” before getting silence. And more silence. And a closing “well, um, er” from me.

I don’t get that so much now and I think it’s down to three things I’ve been trying.

1) Sometimes I’ve said very early on that we’ll be having a Q&A at the end but called it Question & Argument

2) When it’s a talk, when I’m specifically there to speak for an hour or whatever instead of working with people, I’ll say early on that there will be questions and answers – but that I’ll be asking them the questions. It does tend to get a laugh but then it also leaves you with a much better ending because instead of “So, any questions?” you can say “Right, my turn” and then you ask something. It has to be relevant to the group, has to be tied to what the talk is about, but you got there early and nattered with everyone you could find, you’ve got this.

3) Look foolish. So far this has only come up in workshops where I’ve been talking about quite specific technical things but each time it’s begun because an attendee has mentioned having a developer or someone else doing their technical stuff for them. I tell them that if their developer says something different to me, they should listen to him or her – but also do please tell me. I say this because I mean it – a developer will know more than I do – but also it tells the entire audience that you’re fine with being corrected, that you’re up for being told new things.

I said you look foolish but really it’s key that you look fine with being foolish – and that you actually are fine with it. Lecturing at someone about a point and then letting them change your mind about something isn’t just the right thing to do, it oddly demonstrates a command of your subject. You’re not defensive, you’re accepting and questioning, you’re deep into this topic and seeking new ideas that you are able to examine and build on.

I’ve also fallen over chairs a few times and that was deliberate, it was, it was.

Anxiety can help

Posted by

0

Oh, thank god. You can’t believe how anxious I get about events: the sole thing I’ve found can stop me worrying about a forthcoming gig is to have another gig to worry about it first. But 99U claims that anxiety can be good for you. Obviously within limits, neither they nor I want to encourage you to do anything that could get us sued, but.

Calming yourself down is often the wrong thing to do. Research by Alison Wood Brooks at Harvard Business School found that when participants interpreted their nerves as excitement (for example, by saying to themselves “I’m excited!”), they gave better public presentations than those who tried to relax.

If you’re not anxious at all about an upcoming test, it probably means you don’t care. It’s only when anxiety becomes excessive and out of control that it starts to harm your performance. Psychologists have known about this anxiety “sweet spot” for decades…

The Unexpected Benefits of Anxiety – Christian Jarrett, 99U (undated, probably 22 June 2015)

Read the full piece for links to the research and a graph of that anxiety sweet spot thing.

Expand your comfort zone

Posted by

0

I’m a big fan of doing the unusual thing. Sometimes in big ways. Often in small and daily ways to mix things up. Why? Because this habit is a simple and relatively easy way to… expand your comfort zone. And if you change your perspective on yourself from someone who sticks to the old and comfortable all the time to someone who likes to mix things up then it will feel more natural and easier to break out of your comfort zone when comes to bigger things too. Because this habit makes the inner resistance and the fear that may hold you back smaller.

20 Small Ways to Break Out of Your Comfort Zone and Create a Positive Change Starting Today – Henrik Edberg, Positivity Blog (undated, probably 18 June 2015)

Read the full piece though myself, I can only take a certain amount of positivity per day so I’m reading this 20-strong list over the next couple of weeks.

Four steps to a CV, three steps to a bio

Posted by

0

I suppose I can tell you this now, since it is regrettably a hell of a long time since I did it, but when I was in college I wrote CVs for people. Anybody. Everybody. I did it as a favour, I did it for free – though nice people bought me meals for it – and after a while I wrote them very well.

That’s the thing. I practiced writing CVs by writing them for, I don’t know, a couple of dozen other people. Then I wrote mine and I’d learnt how to do it.

That may be mumble mumble years ago but the things I found out have stayed with me since. Here’s how to knock up a CV, especially if you’re a writer.

1) Bollocks to modesty. There’s a difference between boasting and lying by omission. You got on the New York Times Bestseller List? Say so. It’s a fact. Don’t qualify it (all US book writers were on strike that week), just state it.

2) Nuts to academic good practice: you are not applying for a university post, everything they tell you to do on CVs is wrong. Nobody gives a damn about how you’re interested in ballroom fish photography, they want to know you can do the job. Tell them that by leading with your latest work and then follow with the next most relevant thing. Divide it up into sections if that means you can group two long-apart events without looking strange.

3) Remember that the job of the CV is to get you an interview. Don’t put so much in there that they can effectively interview you on the page. The CV gets you in the door, nothing more than that.

4) Be plain, be simple, don’t go over a page.

That third point is key: remember the job this document is there to do and make it do just that. CVs get you interviews, The End. Getting the job is down to you in the interview.

Equally, a bio has a specific job, it’s just harder to define. You’ll get asked for bios for your books, you’ll need one for your website, it’ll just keep coming up a lot so having one ready is handy. As I write this to you, I need to write a new bio. I’ve got one ready to send when it’s needed quickly but because I’m tailoring this one specifically to the company that wants it, I’m going to rewrite it. The thing is that rewriting won’t take me much longer than copying and pasting the regular one because I do bios in the same way every time:

Look at who the bio is for or what the event is. Find two things you’ve done that are directly relevant and a third that is as far away from it as possible. Then write as little about each as you can.

You end up with something like this:

William Gallagher writes Doctor Who audio dramas and books on television media. He once had afternoon tea on a Russian nuclear submarine and regrets calling the place a dive.

Stop waiting

Posted by

0

There are limits here: if you want to quit your job then you should indeed wait until you can do it but what you shouldn’t is wait to begin. Start doing the thing that will get you out. Start now. Stop waiting.

Productive people sometimes confuse the difference between reasonable delay and true procrastination. The former can be useful (“I’ll respond to this email when I have more time to write it”). The latter is, by definition, self-defeating (“I should respond to this email right now, and I have time, and my fingers are on the keys, and the Internet connection is perfectly strong, and nobody is asking me to do anything else, but I just … don’t … feel like it.”).

When scientists have studied procrastination, they’ve typically focused on how people are miserable at weighing costs and benefits across time. For example, everybody recognizes, in the abstract, that it’s important to go to the dentist every few months. The pain is upfront and obvious—dental work is torture—and the rewards of cleaner teeth are often remote, so we allow the appointment to slip through our minds and off our calendars. Across several categories including dieting, saving money, and sending important emails, we constantly choose short and small rewards (whose benefits are dubious, but immediate) over longer and larger payouts (whose benefits are obvious, but distant).

In the last few years, however, scientists have begun to think that procrastination might have less to do with time than emotion. Procrastination “really has nothing to do with time-management,” Joseph Ferrari, a professor of psychology at DePaul University, told Psychological Science. “To tell the chronic procrastinator to just do it would be like saying to a clinically depressed person, cheer up.”

The Procrastination Doom Loop—and How to Break It – Derek Thompson, The Atlantic (26 August 2015)

Read the full piece. Via Inc.com and Lifehacker.

You possibly are or aren’t more productive when you have time off

Posted by

0

There’s a snippy article in the Harvard Business Review that begins:

We were recently working with a company in Amsterdam, and having difficulty getting a summer meeting scheduled because of the number of executives who were on vacation. Experiencing some frustration, we began to wonder how this company actually got its work done.

Ewwww, catty.

But their VP of HR assured us, “I am confident that because of the rest and break from work that our European executives get more accomplished in their working days than those in the U.S. who burn themselves out.”

Harvard Business Review then says “this seemed worthy of some research” but you have to read it as Challenge Accepted.

After that, it gets a bit muddy. Are you more productive if you have time off? The best way to summarise the findings is in that wonderful Simpsons quote: “Short answer yes with an if; long answer no with a but”.

Read the full piece by Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman (HBR 17 June 2015) to see them throw statistics in your face and then try to play it both ways.

How to be productive in the evenings

Posted by

0

Who says you should be? You’ve worked all day, put your feet up. Except, when you’re writing there is a need to keep going and there is a satisfaction in having done so. Or at least there’s a hell of a dissatisfaction or plain misery in having gone another week or month or year without writing.

Lifehacker has the answer. It has several answers and here’s a taster of the first one, which also happens to be the one I most agree with and do my most to follow too:

Get Started As Soon As You Get Home

A number of you [in a discussion thread] said that if you wait until you’ve had dinner or spent some time with your family, it’s too late and your energy is gone—you’re too far out of “the zone” to really get back into it. The solution? Walk through the door, say hello to everyone, and head right for your workspace at home to do a little work. Whether it’s a few minutes or an hour, getting started as soon as you get home and you’re still in work mode goes a long way.

How To Stay Productive After Work – Alan Henry, Lifehacker (26 June 2015)

Read the full piece.