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Unscalable Habits

As working professionals, there are points in our careers when things take a turn for the worse in terms of our personal productivity.

The symptoms are sometimes clear to see.  All of a sudden, commitments start falling through the cracks.  We stop remembering all the things we think we should.  Our Inbox fills up with unprocessed time demands that sit around like ticking time-bombs, causing us to lose sleep.

People start complaining to us that we aren’t keeping our promises.  We often find ourselves late, stressed and cluttered.  Sometimes, we put on weight and our relationships start to falter due to lack of attention.

These are all events that indicate that something is awry and often come about because something in our lives has changed.  Some examples include:

  1. Significant life-changes take place, varying from getting married, having a new baby at home or needing to take care of an ailing parent.
  2. New, game-changing technology is introduced in our lives  and we are either unwilling or unable to learn how to use it well.  Facebook are smartphones are two examples of powerful time-savers when used wisely, but there are many who don’t use one or the other because they only see how addictive they can be.
  3. We accept greater responsibility at work, and as a result, the number of time demands we must process each day grows past a certain threshold that our current habits can’t handle.

Whatever the cause, the result is the same.  We feel as if we aren’t coping.

Our tendency is to blame life, and try to return things to the way they were when we were on top of things, even when it’s clear that there IS no turning back.  We want to go back to a time when our habits worked, but what we don’t realize is the fact that life changes, and even the best crafted habits need to evolve in pace with the fact that life never stands still.

We are actually victims of our success, as the habits that we used to succeed stopped working.

Take for example the simple habit of “putting things where you won’t forget them.”  It’s a great practice that we are taught when we’re very young. Visual cues are very powerful, and they can often be used to trigger necessary actions, such as remembering to pick up the house keys before leaving on a long trip.

The reason that so many professionals have overflowing Inboxes and lost time demands is that they use this practice in ways that are simply unsuitable.  When email comes in, they keep it in the Inbox — in order to remember to work on it later.  It’s the reason why Whittaker and Sidner’s research showed that 53% of the average user’s email is sitting in their Inbox, rather than a folder.

They might do the same with important paper.  They keep it on their desktops in order to remember to do something with it later.

The fact is, these tactics work when the number of email and paper-based time demands is low.  Once they increase past a certain threshold however, the result is chaos, as the very opposite happens.  Instead of helping someone to remember time demands, their very volume causes them to forget most of them, masking the commitments that they represent.

Another habit that works when volumes are low is “answering the phone each and every time it rings,” as we were taught as youngsters.  In 2011, answering the phone whenever it rings is a recipe for disaster, now that we have 24-7 access to smartphones.  Instead, we must turn phones off, ignore them and use voicemail in order to keep the peace of mind that comes from being productive.

The idea that no single pattern of habits, practices and rituals is good enough to last forever is at the heart of the 2Time system, which is what I call a “dynamic time management system,” as opposed to the “static” systems that others have invented.

If you are interested in learning how to upgrade your system on an ongoing basis for the rest of your working career, then there’s an opportunity coming up.

I’ll be offering MyTimeDesign 1.0.Free to the public again, and once again it’s free.  To sign up to be on the early notification list, simply visit http://mytimedesign.com and I’ll let you know when my 6-week, e-learning program will be open for registration.

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A Manipulate-able Calendar

In earlier posts, I stepped into the future and imagined what it would be like to have a calendar that sat inside your watch, and projected a calendar in front of you in the form of a virtual touch-screen that you could manipulate at will.

It would require a skill that I define as an Orange Belt skill in scheduling:  changing or re-scheduling the segments in your calendar over and over again.

Well, here’s a calendar tool for the iPad that makes it a much easier task than I have ever seen.  It’s not a projector that sits in a wrist-watch, but moving around the segments in a schedule in this manner seems to be just as easy as I had imagined.

Here is the link to Muji Apps Calendar.  (Thanks to the alert reader who noticed that this was missing…!)

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A Circular Schedule

This is something new.

Most of us think of schedules in linear terms, the way we think of calendars and diaries.  Along comes the Muji Chronotebook to change all that, with the first circular daily schedule I have ever seen.

It’s based on the face of a clock, and the 12 hours that it represents.  Each activity looks like a slice of a pie, and it seems deceptively easy to plan a full day using a layout that looks like the analog clocks that most of us older folk grew up with.

It’s whimsical, traditional and nostalgic, and the fact that there is no software or app that uses this concept, means that it’s all about pen/pencil and paper.

Read all about one person’s experience here: The Daily Rind, a Better Way to Plan the Day.

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A Black Belt? Why I Have No Idea What It Is

In most classes I have lead based on the 2Time principles I have been asked the question:  Why isn’t there a definition for Black Belts, or any belt above Green?

The reason is a personal one.

I didn’t want to make things so easy for me that I’d have no space to grow. You see, I don’t operate at a Green Belt, and even if I did, I want to leave room for new belts above the Green Belt. My hope is that I, or someone else, will be able to define higher belts, and what they look like, and offer fresh new opportunities to grow.

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How a Green Belt Delegates

Delegating is a critical practice for all working professionals, and I’m sometimes asked how a Green Belt should undertake this critical task.

It’s a tricky topic, because Green Belts delegate differently depending on the person to whom the task is being delegated, and the nature of the task.

To illustrate, imagine for a moment that you have two employees, and two tasks.  Task A is a critical item while Task B is not.  Wally White and Greta Green are your two employees, and as their names imply, they are White and Green Belts respectively.

Delegating Task B to Greta Green might not require any action other than the initial conversation, due to the nature of the task and Gret’s reliability.

However, delegating Task A to Wally is a risky business. Like most White Belts, he may decide to commit the item to memory in the hope that he’ll remember to undertake the action at a later time.   The chances are high that he’ll simply forget and the item will fall through the cracks of Wally’s system.

A Green Belt manager who is delegating the item won’t sweat it.  He’ll simply place a segment in his schedule to follow-up with Wally.  It might be the day after the item it delegated, or perhaps a week.  Also, the manager who notices that Wally has not written the item down may also send him an email summarizing the action to be taken.  He’s simply upping the odds that Wally will get the task completed.

The manager understands who he’s dealing with in these two cases, and spends no time lamenting the fact that Wally isn’t more like Greta.  Instead, he works with each person at their current level of skill, and changes his actions accordingly.

This tactic clearly involves a judgment call, as life almost never delivers clear-cut examples like the ones I described above.

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Does Email Volume Hit a Natural Limit?

While there are lots of people who complain about receiving too many emails per day, the complaint that “I get too much email” is a bit of a red herring.

While there is a certain amount of email that is written with poor quality (sometimes as high as 65% according to research by Burgess, Jackson and Ewards;  Email Overload: Tolerance Levels of Employees within the Workplace,) and a further amount is simply SPAM, there is a critical percentage of email that involves communication required to perform one’s job, career and profession.

In other words, it’s not an extra chore, it’s the very essence of the job of a knowledge worker: to craft skillful communication, manage time demands and make critical decisions that move projects to completion.  If there were no email, the communication would still have to be realized, albeit at a slower pace.

What does a professional have to complain about when it comes to email volumes?  If they are part and parcel of the job, then each valid message is to be expected and should be welcomed as it shows that necessary communication is taking place, as it should.  Email is an excellent medium for most kinds of communication, and cannot be effectively replaced by paper memos or face to face meetings.

It should be expected that with a promotion, a new project or an expansion in one’s accountabilities that email volume will increase.   Each step up in one’s career requires further communication, not less, and also greater skill.

The question is whether or not there is a “natural” amount of email communication that is inherent in a particular role.  Does it increase to a certain level, and then level off?  Or, should we expect one’s email to increase, and to keep growing without any logical limit.

I can’t claim to have answers to these questions, but my intuition tells me that there’s a natural increase in daily messages that takes place from one job to the next.  While we don’t know how to measure the difference, or predict it, it seems reasonable to assume that it does exist.

If it does, then there’s some comfort in knowing that email doesn’t come out of nowhere.  Instead, each and every valid message appears in your Inbox because you are doing your job well.  It needs to be embraced, and managed — even if it requires a user to performance an upgrade to his/her skills.

Certainly, blaming the new job or one’s colleagues is not an empowering stance to take.

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Practice vs. Progress – Which should you focus on?

One of the critical ideas here at 2Time is the notion that practicing the 11 fundamentals of time management is the key to upgrading one’s time management system.

With that in mind, here’s an article that goes a step further and argues that it’s better to focus on the process of practicing, than it is to become fixated on the specific goal being accomplished.

On one level, this makes perfect sense, given the recent research that indicates that ten years of practice is required to master a particular discipline.  One must find a way to give oneself to continuous practice over and over again in order to keep practicing for that long, and it’s better to focus on the moment and what’s happening in it in some detail, than it is to achieve a certain milestone.  Zara Lawler, the author, uses the example of practicing a piece of music as her example, and here in 2Time it’s not too hard to see an important parallel.

Some 2Time basics:  upgrading one’s time management system is best accomplished by determining which habits need to be changed in order to effect an improvement.  These changes usually don’t come quickly, as they are the result of putting in place new practices that only become habits after much mindful repetition.

Unfortunately, it’s easy to get distracted by the belts that are set by those use the 2Time method  (they range from White to Green, denoting different skill levels.)  The point she’s making is that goals like these are good to have in the background, but it’s dangerous to have them at the forefront of one’s attention where they get in the way.  It’s better to commit to a certain amount of practice time, rather than specific results.

It’s a subtle distinction, and I invite you to check out her post:  Process Not Progress.

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My Blackberry Update #1

Background: As you may know, I spent months describing all the ways in which I observed a relatively new phenomena – smartphone abuse.  I then embarked on a process to choose one for myself in a way that I hoped would enhance my productivity, rather than turn me into an habitual drive-and-text offender.  I have used one for the past few months, and am ready to give some updates on what’s happened to my “precious” productivity!

As I noted in a prior post: “Productive Notifications on Your Blackberry,” it’s amazing to me that Blackberry (BB’s)s are shipped with so many notifications turned on.  I noticed a rumor somewhere that RIM is now shipping them with the notifications turned “off.”  This is progress!

The biggest change I have noticed in my own productivity is the way that I manage the flow of emailed time demands.

Before:  I used to manage all incoming email from my Outlook Inbox.

After:  I now manage all messages from the BB Inbox, which is continuously synched with with my Outlook Inbox.  I use the BB to do a form of triage in which I delete stuff I don’t want immediately (i.e. Tossing) and allow some items to flow into my Outlook Inbox for immediate processing when I return to my desktop environment.

By the time the message gets to Outlook, I have already decided what to do with it — dealing with it there is a matter of convenience as the small screen of the BB makes it hard to do things like read downloads, process pics, etc.

I was able to find a powerful BB app called “AddThis” that allows you to immediately convert an email message into an item in a calendar.  Using Google Calendar to synch my calendars in Outlook and BB has meant that I can change my calendar on the road and have it also change on my desktop.

Sweet!  (Even though it’d not quite working perfectly yet.)

These changes represent major shifts in my time management process, and I have tried to be careful in making them because the benefits are now more obvious.

Being able to check email without having to fire up my laptop, and assure an Internet connection has been a tremendous benefit.  Lately, my DSL line has been spotty (ever since a painter came in to do some decorating work.)  Having consistent access to email has been useful, and being able to fill the odd spot here and there when I’m on the road or far from an Internet connection has allowed me greater choices.

Have I been tempted to do indulge in the dangerous, rude, unhygienic and unproductive behaviors that I have written so much about?  Absolutely.

However, the benefit of knowing about them in advance has certainly helped in stopping myself from doing them.  I find that I have to be very awake and aware at those moments when I feel the “Blackberry Itch” and take a short breath to ask myself whether or not this is a good moment to check for new messages.

For example, in the last paragraph, I wondered if an interesting prospect who contacted me yesterday has replied to my pithy response.  I felt the Itch coming on… I could have stopped myself from writing in mid-sentence to check… breaking my flow state.

But, I noticed it and let it pass, as I have at other times when someone is talking to me, I’m in a meeting, I’m driving someplace or I’m in the shower!  (BTW, there’s a special water-proof bag they are selling for those who can’t wait…)

All in all I can make the following judgment: as a “time demand management device” my BB upgrade has been a successful one, and I’m yet to play my first game. This might be due to the fact that I have used up all the memory on other essential apps, so there might not be any games on my BB until I effect an upgrade.  There is something to be said for keeping it lean and mean!

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1999 Email Research is Still Timely and Relevant

As I dug through academic papers on the topic of time management over the past few days, I came across a journal article that was simply amazing in its prescience.  It was written by Steve Whittaker and Candace Sidner of Lotus Development Corp (now part of IBM.) It was published in 1996, and they also happen to be the authors who coined the term “email overload.”

In their paper entitled “Email overload: exploring personal information management of email” they quite rightly take note of the fact that professionals around the world are using email Inboxes to manage what their tasks: what we at 2Time call “time demands.”  They start off the article with a major assertion in their Abstract:

ABSTRACT
Email is one of the most successful computer applications yet
devised. Our empirical data show however, that although email was originally designed as a communications application, it is now being used for additional functions, that it was not designed for, such as task management and  personal archiving . We call this  email overload. We demonstrate that email overload creates problems for personal information management: users often have cluttered inboxes containing hundreds of messages, including outstanding tasks, partially read documents and conversational threads.  Furthermore, user attempts to rationalise their inboxes by filing are often unsuccessful, with the consequence that important messages get overlooked, or “lost” in archives. We explain how  email overloading arises and propose technical solutions to the problem.

What is amazing to me is not the point they are making, as it’s one that’s been echoed here at 2Time many times, especially in my posts suggesting ways to improve Outlook.  Instead, what’s startling is that no-one seems to have paid any attention.

Not only have Outlook and other email management programmes failed to offer anything new, Gmail didn’t even exist at the time this article was written, and it committed the same design mistake by not recognizing that existing email management software isn’t fashioned around its most common use — task and time management.

As I have mentioned before, there is lots of room for someone to create a breakthrough software product that changes a users relationship to to the tasks that come at them each day — many of which come at them via email.

This article certainly points solidly in that direction, as does my own research and intuition.  let’s see who gets there first!

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The Best Source of Time Management Research in the World

In a prior post I shared a goal of mine, formed after hours of searching the Internet for relevant research on time management.

It took way too long, and too much effort to accumulate.  I want to make things easier for anyone who wants to repeat the research I have performed thus far, and in so doing, make this site the best source of time management research in the world.

To become that useful, I’d have to provide an easy way to find the best academic research that I can, so I have decided to share the list of files that I have found.  Each of these can be Googled and downloaded as pdf’s.  There are some reals gems, partly because of the foresight they demonstrated back in the 1990’s when email was just becoming popular.


It’s not an exhaustive list by any means, but I have tried to find the articles that apply directly to time management that are useful, and have something important to say.  Please let me know of other academic articles that you are away of, and that the public can access.