planning

National Clean off Your Desk Day

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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.

The lazy route to doing more

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This isn’t my idea, but it’s similar to ones you’ll find all over The Blank Screen and – to be fair – pretty much everywhere you look that covers creative productivity. But there’s a reason for this: it’s a good idea.

The short version is that you should concentrate on doing small steps but doing them often. Let Steven Farquharson of 2HelpfulGuys explain his take:

I’m not going to lie…

I’m lazy by nature. Left unchecked, I would never get anything done. I always had trouble handing in assignments at school, and I always look for corners to cut.

In recent years I have become very ambitious, which mixes with my lazy attitude like oil and water. I’ve learned that most people are lazy to some extent. It is human nature to want to experience the most amount of pleasure with the least amount of pain.

I have often created vast plans for achieving my goals, but they would only work in a fantasy reality. I imagine myself turning into some sort of robot overnight that can work twenty-four hours a day without eating, sleeping, or needing to relax.
But these plans never stand the test of time.

Eventually I give up, and feel ashamed.

Does the progression towards your goals have to be this hard all the time?
No, and I think I’ve figured it out.

Daily Automatic Progress – Steven Farquharson, 2HelpfulGuys (3 January 2015)

Read the full feature for exactly what he’s figured out though, prepare yourself, it means doing a few things every single day.

Day 2 of decluttering OmniFocus

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Previously… 2014 ended with my OmniFocus To Do database so overstuffed that I wasn’t using the app enough. Now I’m decluttering and yesterday this began with a mindmap of all I have to do, all the plates I care about spinning, and all the stuff that I can ditch. Now read on.

It turns out that it’s rather hard to start over again on OmniFocus unless you really, really start over from scratch: back up your database and then delete it. Go from my current 2,513 things to do and 88 projects to do them in down to 0.

That is what I should do. But it isn’t what I’m going to do.

Instead, I’m going to greate one massive new folder, probably called 2015, then I’ll create subfolders for everything that I want to survive into the new plan. It just occurs to me that I did that mind map in MindNode which is capable of saving the image as text – nice for a text-thinking kinda guy like me but also handy because that text can go into OmniOutliner. Let me piddle about with it in that for a bit and then through the Mac version of it take that outline directly into OmniFocus. Have that create the subfolders for me.

Then I’ll move all the tasks over that I want to move over. In case I miss something important, I’ll bung everything else into a bucket folder and leave them there until I do that thing where you suddenly realise how stupid you’ve been deleting things.

But.

This is a lot of work, isn’t it?

Good.

Because I spent this evening going through my current 2014-style OmniFocus database and looking only at two places. One is the general catch-all inbox: when you’re in a hurry and adding tasks through the apps themselves, via Siri, through email and other ways, they land in the inbox and later on you sort them out a bit. Say that this task about getting a venue is to do with this event while that one about chasing payment is to do with your invoicing. You don’t need to do any of that, but it helps because you can then sit down and think, right, cracks-knuckles, this morning I’m doing everything to do with that event.

I had just under 30 things in my inbox to sort out. I’d done about 17 of them – as in actually done the tasks, not sorted or assigned to something, I’d gone out and done them. I deleted a few others, then assigned the rest to the various projects like particular events, particular jobs. One or two I put a definite deadline date on.

When you do that, those tasks turn up on what’s called the Forecast. Tap on that and you see everything task you have stated must happen today. Or in my case, a lot of yesterday’s. I clicked on the Forecast view and it was telling me I was behind on 60 tasks.

I can’t remember now how many it turned out I’d already done but enough. The rest I took the dates off entirely or I pushed to certain days this week when I know I can do them. I ended up with about 7 that I just went and did.

Again, this is a lot of work, isn’t it? But good – because tonight, just doing this, I feel much more in control of everything. This is the boon of OmniFocus: you can tell me about its features but it’s how it leaves you feeling good that matters.

That’s what I want all the time. Not to spend hours in OmniFocus but to spend a few moments there regularly and thereby be in charge of everything, feel in charge of everything.

It’s enough for tonight, though. Tomorrow, I press on – and I’m going to use a few tips from David Sparks’ OmniFocus Video Field Guide. I wonder if he’s done one about Evernote?

OmniOutliner 2 for iPad revisited

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I wrote here about how good this app was when it first came out a few months ago but today MacNN.com ran a new piece of mine about how great it is after you’ve been using it for those few months. It’s an outlining application and I am not naturally a guy who likes outlines but what I wrote includes this:

This is one of those apps where the feature list doesn’t tell you what you need to know. All outlining software lets you slap down some headings as you think of them and then fill in details or shove thoughts around until everything looks sensible. The difference between these apps is in how little they get in the way of your starting, how much they help you as you go along, and then how much you can do with your outline at the end of it.

You can open OmniOutliner on your iPad and just get going: we’ve been testing it for months on assorted jobs and keep coming back to the very basic options for their sheer speed and ease of use. But one project was going to be for several different audiences who would need different amounts of detail. We just outlined as normal but added extra columns for these audiences, adding notes where we needed to and knowing that as we adjusted the outline, those notes would follow.

Hands On: OmniOutliner 2 (OS X, iOS) – William Gallagher, MacNN (3 January 2015)

Do read my full piece. Though I say full, I’d like to be fuller: there are options and features I didn’t get you. The one that’s on my mind to tell you is that I have a base outline now for a particular workshop I do and while I rewrite the presentation every single time, I can now start with this one outline and start shuffling. Once or twice while I’ve been presenting I’ve also tapped a button and had OmniOutliner record audio right into the outline too. That’s been invaluable when I’m revising the presentation and can simply hear how people reacted to sections where we were all talking and discussing.

I do like software and I do love software that transforms my working life. But there is a special place in my heart for software that changes my mind about something. I’m still not a natural outliner, I still like diving ahead and seeing where I end up, but more and more I’m using OmniOutliner to help me get jobs done well and faster.

Coincidence: more on using OmniFocus

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It’s the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon: when you hear about something, you then seem to hear about it a lot. (I know. It’s weird that a psychology idea is named after a terrorist organisation but it is, so.) With my own need to restart how I use OmniFocus pressing on my head, I just found this via the excellent SimplicityIsBliss.com. As with so many things to do with software, I don’t think every detail of it is right for me but there’s a lot of good ideas in here.

And that’s especially true if you have or are considering OmniFocus but don’t know or don’t want to know the Getting Things Done (GTD) system that it follows:

do not use OmniFocus the GTD way (at least I do not think I do given that I have not read the book). I do use OmniFocus the way that works best for me.

OmniFocus and this my way workflow ensures that I never forget a task, a commitment or an action, mine and others. It keeps me focussed on what I need to be doing now. It reminds me what to do next. It helps build an agenda for what to discuss with people, and what was talked about before. It helps me know what was done and why.

Without it, I could not manage the myriad of projects, tasks, actions, commitments and reminders I deal with every day. And to make things even better, OmniFocus 2 evolved towards my way and added ease of use and features where my way needed it the most. I am sure that for many of you of you, the GTD way works well. For others, you have your own ways to use OmniFocus. This was mine.

Omnifocus My Way – Hilton Lipschitz, The Hiltmon (26 May 2014)

Read the full piece.

Starting over with OmniFocus and Evernote

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I think this is digital decluttering. And like all decluttering, I already know which of it I’m going to put off. My Evernote is a steaming mess of about 4,000 notes with 800 of them in the inbox and if it weren’t for the software’s very good search feature, I’d be regularly sunk. But it does have good search, I am not sunk, it can wait another day.

Whereas I’m starting over with OmniFocus.

This is my rather beloved to do app and I put my ability to cope with lots of projects entirely down to this software. But one big new project came in December and is hopefully continuing for a long time. I have two meetings this month that should lead to one enormous project and one gigantically enormous series of projects. Can’t wait.

Plus one big change at the end of 2014 meant a thing I do that has been albatross-shaped is pretty much entirely gone. I’ve walked away from a thing and am feeling so good about it that I think might even start to enjoy saying no.

But.

One bad project gone, one new one in, two new ones looming and most things churning over, it is time to apply that ability to say no. Time to review everything and chuck out what I don’t want to do, what I am not going to get to.

And the reason to do it is not that I’m some kind of OCD-based guy who needs everything in its place. I refer you to the steaming mess of Evernote above. The reason is that lately there has been so much in OmniFocus – I have added so much – that I’ve stopped checking it. You shouldn’t have your head in OmniFocus all day but you really should look at it from time to time. A very sensible thing to do is look at it first thing in the morning, for instance, and that’s where I go wrong.

When you have a lot on and some of it is pressing at you terribly, you go straight to the keys and you start working on that. If checking OmniFocus were a quick thing, as it is built to be, as it is intended to be, then two minutes checking that while I boil the kettle will help my day astonishingly.

I’ve been looking through my OmniFocus now and can tell you that I have 2,513 things to do and they’re arranged in 88 projects. It could be worse: while I was looking, I ticked off something like 30 tasks that I’ve actually done and just not got around to noting.

Take a look at these 88 projects, though:

That is a mind map I did over Christmas: it’s a visual representation of everything I was working on at the end of 2014 and my only hope is that the image is too small for you to see the details. What I want you to see is how steamingly messy it all is. And I want you to see it so that you are hopefully nodding when you see this next shot, which is how I’m doing the projects for 2015:

Is that better? It’s certainly duller with all those colours reduced to just a couple. But I did this in an app called MindNode, which I do recommend a lot, and it chooses the colours. Add a new thing, it gives you a new colour. So that overall purpleness is not a choice, it is a consequence of my collapsing things into fewer categories, fewer projects.

Next job: translate that mindmap into OmniFocus folders and projects. Back in a bit.

Make a tickler file be more than a nice name

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I like tickler files but really just because I like the name. They’re a system for making sure you don’t miss events that happen some months off or tasks that should be done at certain times of the year. They’re also meant to be paper files, specifically the kind of cortina-expanding file folder I can just about distantly remember. And that’s why ticklers are just names to me: I need a software equivalent.

Here’s someone with a solution. But first, their definition of what a tickler file is good for:

Put simply, a tickler is a method of ensuring that information that you need gets to you at the right time. For example, if you receive tickets to a concert that takes place on 21 Feb 2015, then you don’t need those tickets until that day. With a tickler, you can make sure that your tickets resurface on the correct day but you can forget about them until then. The concept works with meeting agendas, invoices, subscription renewals and any other task that needs to happen at a specific time.

The reminders function of many software programs can be seen as a tickler function but the most effective ticklers won’t just remind you of something at a specific time, they’ll provide all of the relevant information at the same time. Lots of apps can do this but my preferred solution is Evernote.

Four Steps to Create a Digital Tickler File – unnamed author, Productivity SOS (29 December 2014)

Possibly the only thing you need to know in order to work out this whole process is the last word in that quote: Evernote. I’m an Evernote user and even today was glad that I was: a telephone support line said something like “Well, when did you phone us before?” and because of Evernote I was able to say “17 November, next question?” like a right smartarse. I actually think that this particular use of it takes more effort than I’d stick with but take a look: it’s smart and it clearly works if it works for you. Read the full piece.

Turn your To Do tasks into an art project

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There are principles here that I like very much but it’s also heavily paper- and sticker-based and I just can’t handle Post-It Notes and colouring in. So I won’t be following Kelly Maguire’s exact advice but it’s terribly interesting how she turned her life around with a felt-tip pen:

For the past few months I’ve been waking up in a cold sweat freaking out about things I forgot to take care of. A lot of it is little — like forgetting to schedule a hair appointment until after they’ve closed for the day. Some of it is bigger — like the Kickstarter I did a few years ago that fizzled out. And a few things are huge — like the fact that I completely bungled my corporate tax filings for the last three years.

With some nudging from my therapist and support from my husband, I finally managed to get on top of things. My to-do list has gone from “deal with three years of back taxes” to more mundane stuff like “clean up the dried paint in the bathroom.” I used a handful of different strategies to gain control, which I’ll detail in a sec, but the biggest key to staying motivated has been to turn it into something like an art project.

Time management as an art project – Kelly Maguire, Offbeat Home (1 January 2015)

One thing she uses is called a Chronodex and you’ll see why she likes it plus she tells you where to get them for yourself, but that’s not a Chronodex…

…that’s Moonbase Alpha.


Read the full piece.

That was 2014… all of it

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And it’s already weird typing ‘2014’, it feels so long ago. Not that it feels like 2015 to me yet. Not sure when it is, then. Not sure when I am. But as part of an annual tradition that I’ve just revived, this week’s Self Distract personal blog is an expanded version of my That Was… entries that I do here.

Each month I write out for you what I’ve done. As I keep saying, you don’t need to read it but I clearly and visibly need to write it because it is one huge element of making me do things. If I don’t do anything, I’ve got nothing to tell you and how dare I tell you to be more productive.

The full year’s review is over on Self Distract in quite arse-tinglingly long detail but because I do the monthly version here, let me summarise my 2014 for you:

Writing: approximately 620,000 words
Books: 2 written, 1 editing
Speaking engagements: 88
Produced Events: 9
Scripts: 1 Doctor Who radio drama, 1 stage short, 1 education script
Fiction: 7 short stories, 2 poems, 2 revised novels and 10,000 words of 1 new novel
Blogs: 1, 294
Attended: 79 shows, launches, workshops or other events
Journalism: 45 written pieces and 3 magazine issues edited

2015
Zip.