planning

Screw what most people think is normal

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That’s a quote from an article I want to show you. The piece is about productivity tips from various people I’ve never heard of but are reportedly great. That’s fine, that’s what caught my eye and what I read on to check out for you. Plus, some of the tips in it are genuinely useful, such as this one:

Niki Papadopoulos: My editor always says, “OK, well, try writing it then.” In other words, she means, get started. She usually says this right after I explain a big sweeping idea for a book or a chapter or an article. Planning is great, but productive people get moving.

28 Secrets of Exceptionally Productive People – Jeff Haden, Inc.com (9 September 2014)

Maybe I like this one because it rather fits with what I was saying earlier about not over-planning

But then I saw that line “screw what most people think is normal” and I like that. I want to say that to you every day. And also now use it as a tease to get you to read the full piece and find out what specific productivity tip it relates to.

Don’t spend too much time planning

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Spend some, obviously. But when you have worked out a stunningly precise plan for a project you know that three things will happen, starting with:

1) Some of it will work out exactly as you intended and it’s great

Happy for you. But then:

2) Some of it will be wrong

You will have made mistakes, you will have misunderstood something. And:

3) Something unexpected happens

There is always something unexpected or it would be in your plan and you’d call it expected.

What worries me and occupies me a lot about this is how fragile we really are. You hear about impregnable secure places that get broken into because the plan didn’t consider that baddies could be hiding in the laundry truck. The greatest, biggest, best-defended castle is taken over because who’d be suspicious of those two monks?

There is a saying that you should hope for the best yet plan for the worst. Fine. But don’t plan too much because it’s pointless.

Location challenge: Localscope vs Where To?

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There are many apps that tell you what’s around you or how to find various types of places. The very first and still one of the very few reviews I’ve done on the App Store is for one such app called Vicinity. I still like the title.

You can’t see my gushing review – I’ve just looked for it and it’s gone – and I’ll not give a link to Vicinity because by now you’d be wasting your time. It hasn’t been touched in a couple of years where some of its rivals are even now being iOS 8-ified.

There are two that I like so much I keep swapping between them. At any time, one will be on the front home screen of my iPhone but it’s 50/50 which it will be.

Call it 70/30 now.

Because I’ve just changed back and this time I think it’s going to stick.

But first, let me tell you the contestants so that you can ignore me and just go straight to getting them both yourself. In the green corner we have Where To? for iPhone and in the white corner we have Localscope. Both are very good. Both earn a place on my home screen – just never at the same time because when are you going to ask two different apps where the nearest theatre is?

When you’re testing them out, that’s when.

Both apps work in much the same way. You type in what you want to look for – supermarket, ATM, I don’t know, airport, bank, anything – and these apps show you the nearest ones in order of distance. Then when you’ve got that list, they can hand off directions to your Maps app or they can give you more details about the place.

So that’s four crucial things: 1) searching, 2) finding, 3) directions and 4) details. Let’s throw in 5) other bits too.

Searching

Both apps let you type in a specific keyword or pick from a list. With Where To? the app starts with a big circle containing broad types of categories like food or shopping. With Localscope you don’t get anything. Tap on the search box at the top and then you do, you get a list of categories. I think Localscope loses for being less immediately obvious but it also wins for how that list of categories becomes a history of what you’ve searched for.

You previous searches appear at the top, the categories are below. In my case, since I use it so much, the categories are way, way, way below. But they are there.

I most often search by specific name so this has appealed to me more than categories. Plus, Where To?’s categories are shown in the circle by icons. If you want, say, a hotel, do you tap on the shopping basket icon or the knife and fork one? Is it the Bafta-like drama and comedy mask meaning entertainment? Or the spanner meaning services?

Actually, hotels are under the icon of an aircraft, which stands for travel and transportation.

It makes sense but I regularly, regularly would stare at those icons and just have to go around all of them until I found it or did a general search. I ended up doing a general search a lot yet compared to Localscope, that felt like a bit of a pain. Where Localscope’s search is a box at the top, Where To?’s is a magnifying glass icon so it’s a tap there before you can start writing.

I can’t remember how Localscope looked before its iOS 7 incarnation so maybe they were more evenly matched before. And the reason for talking to you about all this today is that Where To? has just been updated to the iOS 7/8 look. It hasn’t changed or improved the magnifying glass search button nor has it made the icons any clearer to understand, but it has introduced a one-button Favourites option. Tap on that and you can ignore the icons circle entirely in favour of your own selection of broad terms like hotel.

2) Finding
I don’t know where Where To? gets its information from. I do know that Localscope gets its from Foursquare, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Google, Factual (whatever that is), Yelp, Wikipedia and YouTube. There’s possibly more, these are just the ones I’ve kept on my copy.

I know it uses all of these because that is a key feature. Search for something and it will return the nearest one – I’m guessing via the Google part – but wait a moment and it will also return details from all of these services. So you’ll see a great review of a hotel on Yelp or you’ll see a twitter warning that environmental health officers have just been spotted there and they don’t look happy.

No doubt, Localscope integrates with many services and Where To? doesn’t appear to. But it must get something from somewhere because Where To? does include a photograph of a venue if you tap in far enough from the top level list.

Localscope is very useful for giving you an idea of how popular and/or expensive a local hotel is.

But ultimately it loses for the unbreakable fact that its results aren’t as good as Where To?’s. I was once trying to work out whether I was better off walking to the BIrmingham Rep or waiting for a bus. I knew where the Rep was, it came down to a question of how far that is to walk. So I asked both Localscope and Where To? for theatres.

Both returned a lot of results but Localscope’s didn’t include the Rep where Where To’s did. The End.

Except searching for the words “Birmingham Rep” were poorer on both. Both got it but so far down the list that you’d give up. You’d imagine that an exact match on a search would make that top of the list but in both cases distance wins. On Localscope, trying this right now, that means it thinks I am more likely to be wanting something called DotComSecrets Birmingham.

On Where To? a specific search for “Birmingham Rep” must mean that I want to go to Birmingham first. I can’t fault its logic there. But it’s a big city.

So neither is as fantastic as you would hope but Where To? wins for including places you’re looking for. Mostly.

I found the trick with Localscope was to wait for a bit, let it go through all its sources and then you scroll through them all. If you know what you’re looking for then you may well spot it in there somewhere. You’re stuffed if you don’t know, though.

3) Directions
Localscope threw me at first and for quite a while because its option to get directions is far down the long lost of results. But once you know it’s there, it’s quick enough to get to it and it hands off the address details to your choice of whatever map applications you have.

It’s a similar story in Where To? The directions detail used to be more obvious than in Localscope but in the latest Where To? it’s an easy-to-miss button toward one side of an photograph of the venue.

4) Details

Where To? has a nice display of addresses, phone numbers, and links to websites. Localscope has all of that plus a weblink to a page of more information – which is rarely very useful.

In comparison, Where To? now pulls in a description of the place you’re looking for and shows you that on the page without you having to tap through to anywhere else for it.

Plus, I just searched for my nearest Apple Store and Where To? also displays its opening hours today. I would’ve sworn to you that I’d seen this on Localscope too but I’m looking at both right now and can’t see it.

5) Other bits
I prefer the look of Localscope and until about three hours ago when I bought the new version of Where To? I greatly preferred it. Where To? has been stuck in a wood and leather look for a long time and Localscope’s grasp of the iOS 7 design ethos is part of what convinced me I liked that newer look.

Now Where To? has been iOS 7-erised too. It’s not as overt and obvious as with Localscope but it looks a lot better.

Where To? just loses out a bit on the look and feel plus a lot for how its icon is of a great big Exit sign – and I therefore keep thinking that’s its name. Exit might even be a better name as searching for the words “Where To?” can get you a lot of matches before you find this one.

Conclusion
Both are very good. Localscope looks and feels better; Where To? has recently been radically revised and its appearance is greatly improved.

But for accuracy and usefulness of its lists of what’s around you, Where To? wins. That’s what I have today swapped back to.

For now.

Localscope costs £1.99 UK or $2.99 US and Where To? is £1.49 UK or £1.99 US.

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?

Essential morning preparation

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I’m back on the getting up to work at 5am lark after about a month away doing various jobs and then one of those there holidays. This morning I woke up, looked at the clock, saw it was 04:53 and said aloud: “Well, this is fun, isn’t it?”

Getting up at 5am for day 256 was as hard as some of the first few days but it was helped by one thing, gigantically hindered by one thing and conned by a third.

The Helpful Thing
I had a plan. I knew exactly what I was going to be working on the moment I had showered, made a mug of tea and sat down at the keys. No hesitation, no choosing, just straight to it: I was going to work on a particular book project. There’s a lot to do today but for the first hour, I’d do this and then it would be done plus I’d be on my way.

Until today I would’ve said that this is easily the biggest thing in working at stupid o’clock: if you go straight to the keys with a purpose and work for an hour, then at stupid o’clock plus one you feel you’ve really achieved something. Half of you now wants to go back to bed but half of you is bursting to continue and that To Do list looks pretty doable.

The Con
It’s 06:46 as I write this to you and I haven’t done a word of that book. Because right after I said “Well, this is run, isn’t it?” I rolled back away from the clock, looked at the ceiling and while waiting for the alarm thought: “Act 1: Lights up on Mabel. Very plainly dressed: specifically, no jewellery, no bag.”

Without planning to, I’d got the start of a script I’d been working up. Most of it was done, I was just struggling with certain elements like the start and there it was.

So that’s what I did instead of the book project. And now I should really go do the book project, except that I am still suffering from The Gigantic Hindrance.

The Gigantic Hindrance
The milk has gone off. Did you hear me at 05:10? Tilting back my freshly-showered head, my hair still damp, and my face raised to the heavens as I howled?

There are worse things in this world but a mug of tea with bits in is up there.

Work in 90-minute bursts for best effect*

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*One caveat: I found I work better in hour-long chunks. Many folk do 20 minutes on, 20 off, and so forth. But the thing is to do it in concentrated blocks of time and maybe 90 minutes is a good one.

The theory boils down to the fact that we can’t increase the hours in the day, but we can increase the energy with which we make the most of those hours. Taking short, scheduled breaks throughout the day rejuvenates and restores us physically and mentally, helping us plow through those assignments and to-do lists in a third of the time.

The coolest take away from the article concerns what I now call “work blocks.” In short, after that 90 minutes of work, our bodies and minds need a break. But our 9-5 (or 7-7) work culture demands focus for much, much longer blocks of time, so many of us fight that urge to break by filling up the mug with more coffee, rubbing our eyes and refocusing on the screen.

No more.

Inspired by [New York Times writer Tony] Schwarz and the studies he cited, I created a Daily Schedule that broke up my day into 90-minute Work Blocks, separated by 30 minute Breaks and, in the middle of my day, a 2-hour lunch. I know some of you just spit your coffee out. But you read that right. I take a 2 hour lunch to get a long run or workout in, eat and read from a book or write a few lines in my journal.

During the 30 minute breaks I read, clean, walk to the post office and complete those little, once distracting tasks that now actually kill two birds with one stone. Sometimes, if I didn’t get enough sleep the night before, I’ll even knock off for a cat nap.

Do Less = Do More: The Art of Being Creative and Productive – Chase Jarvis, own blog (27 March 2013)

As always, the full piece is worth a read: particularly so this time, I think, as I just got rather absorbed reading it. Hat tip to 99U.

Interrupt a meeting with a two-minute silence

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Everybody shut up. Just think:

Seems counterintuitive to plan silence into a meeting, doesn’t it? Alexander Kjerulf, author of Happy Hour Is 9 to 5, has found silence to be an ideal way to encourage deep thinking and ideas, right in the midst of a meeting.

“The purpose of meetings is not to talk–the purpose of meetings is to arrive at ideas, solutions, plans and decisions.”

Since few of us can think deeply while we’re talking, the two-minute silence break gives a chance to mull over a decision, issue, or stalemate.

9 Science Backed Methods for More Productive Meetings – Kevan Lee, Buffer (undated but approximately 17 July 2014)

As ever, I choke on the word ‘science’ but at least they mean this idea and the other eight have some solid research and statistics behind them. Most of the ideas in the full piece are pretty familiar – limit meetings to who really needs to be there, make them quick and so on – but they’re all good and well worth your time reading.

Don’t do things too early

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The website Fast Company calls someone who does things too soon to be a ‘precrastinator’ –

A precrastinator – one who completes tasks in advance – may think they’re beating procrastinators at their own game but that’s not true

‘Precrastinating’ and Why It’s Just as Bad as Procrastinating – Lisa Evans, Fast Company (14 July 2014)

Go on.

Professor David Rosenbaum and graduate student Cory Adam Potts conducted an experiment in which participants were given the choice of carrying one of two heavy buckets full of pennies down an alleyway. One bucket was placed near participants at the start line, while the other bucket was placed closer to the finish line.

Surprising the researchers, the majority of participants picked up the bucket that was closest to them, even though it meant they had to carry it farther and expend more physical effort. When the participants were asked why they’d chosen that bucket, the majority replied they wanted to get the task done as quickly as possible. The desire to lighten their mental load was stronger than their determination to reduce their physical effort.

I’m not convinced that’s precrastination, I think there’s got to be an element of spatial awareness there, but there is one persuasive point in the full article. There’s the suggestion that procrastinators can do better because they simply have longer to think about things.

Dayflow productivity app (briefly) free

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This isn’t for me, but it may well be for you: Dayflow is for alloting time to specific tasks or goals. The example given is that you want to read for an hour every day. So you set that up and this app reminds you to do it, then tells you when you have.

I’ve been thinking about allotting time to particular projects so that I did keep them going, tootling along, so I’ve grabbed the app while it’s free. Usually Dayflow costs either 69p/£1.99 UK and 99c/$2.99 US so if it’s right for you, it’s bargain even if the brief sale is over by the time you click just about here.

So you haven’t done what I told you, so what?

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This has come up a couple of times recently. I have a natter with someone – because they asked, come on, I don’t accost people in the street with productivity advice – and it seems to go well.

I think they get a good idea of what’s really on their plate and which of it matters to them. There’s usually a new project that they want to do and after a hour or so with me, they tend to have a plan. And most importantly, I think, that new project has turned from a nebulous, unwieldy thing that’s overwhelming them into something they can do. And will do. Talking it through invariably leaves you physically no further forward yet in every other way extremely far down the line. The intangible is at least well on its way to tanging.

But.

What’s happened these couple of times is that armed with their own new plan and, I believe, fully enthused at what they’re going to do, they haven’t done it.

They tell me this with something approaching guilt and I feel terrible. I like people thinking of me as someone to account to if that is what helps them, I loathe it when they think I’m judging them, damning them.

So here’s the thing.

Bollocks to me and what you think I think of you. What I actually think has not changed at all: I think you had this great idea and it wasn’t working out but now you have a plan, now you know you can do it. Whether you do or not almost doesn’t matter.

I want you to do this thing: it is exciting and it’s you, only you can do this and I want to see how it turns out. But what I needed, if we’re to get all personal about this, was to help you go from this stage of it being a mountain ahead of you to your seeing the path you need to take.

I promise you that I will never think badly of you for not having started on your path yet. I’m struggling to think of a situation where I would think badly of you. Come on, it’s you. How could I think badly of you?

And here’s another thing.

That plan you came up with, that simple set of steps to get this project of yours started, it’s still there. You may have changed: your interest in it may vary, your ability to fit it in with everything else you’re doing may very well have varied, but the plan is true and you can start it any time.

And let’s have a mug of tea sometime.