asian efficiency

How do you even pronounce ‘productivity’?

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There’s a new podcast from the productivity site Asian Efficiency which I had a listen to on my morning walk. (This is a new thing. A morning walk at 5am. This is a new stupid thing.) And the podcast is fine, I’ll listen to more before I know whether I want to urge you to try it, but the very first sentence made me stop in my tracks.

Frankly, anything can stop me in my tracks when I’m walking at that time of day.

But it was how they introduced the topic of productivity and pronounced the word as if it were pro-ductivity. And I realised then that I always say it as prod-uctivity.

Maybe that means they’re more professional about it and I’m the type who needs a good shove to get going. I’m okay with that.

Using OmniFocus for meeting agendas

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This is entirely stolen from Asian Efficiency: I just read this on there and it’s like they knew what I needed. I now run a particular regular meeting for the Writers’ Guild. More than other meetings, this one seems to have tasks that keep coming up: generally things I have to tell the committee, things they’ve asked me to discuss, that kind of thing. And I’ve struggled a bit because I have an OmniFocus project devoted to the Guild and it’s already pretty long and big and messy. I was thinking of turning that into  folder with some kind of General Writers’ Guild Bits project and a Things for the Meetings kind of project.

But that idea is about as ugly as the names I was giving them. And as I pondered ugliness versus efficiency, I read this:

The easiest way is to set up a single action list called “Agenda” and you dump all discussion items in there. So whenever you have an idea, you can either dump it into your inbox or immediately move it to your “Agenda” single action list.

If you want to elaborate a little, use the notes section of the task where you can freeflow and type all your thoughts about a particular agenda point (on desktop, click on the paperclip icon on the right or press CMD+’ (apostrophe)).

The next time you have a meeting, pull up the “Agenda” list and simply go through each point you have in there and check things off. It’s that simple!

How to Setup and Use OmniFocus as an Agenda for Meetings – Thanh Pham, Asian Efficiency (26 March 2014)

Do read the whole thing, would you? It’s written in a way that’s hard to usefully quote but easy to read: it’s an article based on a discussion that took place in Asian Efficiency’s paid-for premium service. What’s convinced me is the Socratic way it builds up into a picture.

How to use OmniFocus when you have to use Windows

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I was saying this just last Thursday: if OmniFocus ran on Windows and Android as well as Macs and iOS, I’d just wear an OmniFocus teeshirt and point at my chest when asked how to be more productive. But it doesn’t and, besides, I like talking. So instead I ask you what computer and phone you’re on and if it’s the right answer, I tell you about this gorgeous and transformative software. And if it isn’t, I go um.

Here’s a group that didn’t stop at um. This is Asian Efficiency:

A lot of OmniFocus Premium Posts customers and OmniFocus users have been emailing us with one of their biggest challenges: they love OmniFocus but are forced to use Windows at work. What to do?

Well…you actually have a lot of options. Some workarounds are limited while others can make your workflow seamless. It really depends on the IT restrictions at work (firewall, forbidden web services, policies, etc) and how flexible you are.

None of these solutions are close to ideal (the best solution is to use a Mac at work) but some come pretty close. Some fixes only allow you to send stuff to OmniFocus (which is good enough for some people) whereas others want to use OmniFocus as their preferred task manager.

Just pick and choose the option that works for you. With that said, here are seven options available to you.

How to Integrate OmniFocus When You Have to Use Windows at Work – Thanh Pham, Asian Efficiency (25 October 2014)

Read the full piece. I like very much that they’re upfront with how there is no magic option, I like how this isn’t written as if they’ve found the solution. It’s written baldly and starkly: there is no great answer, there is just this way of coping when you have to.

Do read that full piece and check out Asian Efficiency. The site has various options for OmniFocus users where you can buy some of their help.

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?