Creativity in Productivity in Creativity
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Try this.
Blend the following:
The world has been a happier, clearer, more manageable place since I’ve been drinking these.
I just bought some bee pollen, and plan to chuck some of that action in too.
Tags: avocado, blueberries, cooking
If you can get something done in two minutes or less, don’t write it down on some list, don’t let it rattle around in your brain…just do it. Right now.
I’ve written a TON on David Allen’s Getting Things Done book. (Here’s a Ten Minute Crash Course on GTD I put together.)
Having used the system for a long time, I’m convinced that, while the whole system is valuable, there are two things that are the most essential.
Happily, both of these things are easily applied, and will provide great results (higher productivity/less stress) with minimal effort.
The first is the two-minute rule.
Simply put, it states that if you have an “open loop” (i.e. something that you’ve thought about more than once, but have taken no action towards completing) that you can close in two minutes or less, you should just do those things, as opposed to writing them down on some sort of list.
It sounds simple, but it’s surprisingly powerful.
We all have these little “open loops” that occupy the same amount of space in our minds as the big things. In this manner, these small things keep you from accomplishing big things.
Some examples of things that fall under the 2-minute rule category for me:
1. Short email replies (I’m trying to adhere to the “Twitter approach” for emails; i.e. whenever possible, keep them under 140 characters)
2. Clearing the desk: filing/scanning the crap that collects on my desk
3. Paying a bill online
4. Scheduling/accepting meetings on Google Calendar
5. Synching/backing up iPhone/iPad (the actual backup may take longer, but I can do what I need to do in way less time)
Again, the point is to get these things that will often nag you at the worst possible time (i.e. middle of the night) out of your head, and done (and, again, don’t put it on some kind of list; it’ll often take longer to put these things on a to-do list than to just do them (by the way, to do lists don’t work).
As for the second easily-implemented-but-powerful GTD tip, watch this space.
I gave a lecture on entrepreneurship last night to a group of incredibly creative students. One of them made the statement that he was conflicted about the idea of merch. In particular, he felt that selling t-shirts at gigs didn’t align with his values (my words, not his – his words were more along the lines of: “selling out.”)
I told him I understood, and referenced the fact that I had recently had a conversation with Zoe Keating, and she told me she doesn’t sell t-shirts; she doesn’t feel that they fit with her values (again, my words/paraphrase).
This student was clearly swirling around on this issue, and as Mr. Hitchcock has taught us, “Swirling takes up all [your] time.”
The student followed me to my office after the lecture, where an overly-tired version of myself listened as patiently as I could, before saying, “Look, man, sell t-shirts, don’t sell t-shirts…who the hell knows? Try it. If you try to sell some, and people buy some, and it feels OK, keep doing it. If you try to sell them, and no one buys them, stop and figure out why. If you try to sell them, and people buy them, but you feel like you’re “selling out” – whatever that means – then stop, and come up with something else. In the amount of time we’ve been discussing this – let alone the amount of time you’ve been debating it with yourself, your bandmates, etc. – you could have tried it out, and gotten some data/feedback/learning, and either embraced or moved on. Instead, here you sit, not doing anything, not moving forward…just cogitating.” (This is the version of myself that Lauren Markow calls my “evil twin.” So it goes).
I don’t know if selling t-shirts is or isn’t right for this artist. The reality is, he doesn’t really know. How could he?
A wise man taught me that the thing to avoid is the “big mistake;” making small mistakes is the transaction cost (the toll) on the road to success.
When we get bogged down and worry about making any mistake, we are stuck in cogitation mode. There’s a reason why Deming put “do” in second position in his Circle (before “check” and “act,” and just after “plan”).
“Mistakes” are part of the iteration process, and iteration is good; it leads to feedback, refinement, and eventually success.
I hope this student makes some t-shirts and sees how it feels (both internally (to himself) and externally (to his customers)), and then moves on.
The alternative isn’t good.
I had a meeting recently with a brilliant business woman/Broadway Producer. What was supposed to be (and, in part was) a meeting about strategy and marketing., became a conversation about productivity, time management, etc.
Somewhere along the way, I mentioned something about stress/worry. She asked, “what are you worried about?” I rattled off the various and sundry worries of a very blessed man (knock, knock, knock on wood), and said that they sort of train you to be a professional worrier in law school; but it was also my disposition.
Rather than just telling me to stop worrying, which most people do, she said, “Well, clearly, you need to worry, so why not schedule a time each week to worry. Put it on your calendar.”
So, now Fridays from 11 to 12, I get to worry until my little baboon heart is content. When my head tilts toward worry at other times, I remind myself that I darn well better hold off until Friday from 11 to 12, lest I not have enough to worry about during this designated worry time.
You see where I’m going here? We’re all told that worry is unproductive (it is), and yet, like telling an artist to be an “entrepreneur” or any of the myriad directions we give people without providing any real guidance on how to get there, telling someone who is predisposed to worry to just stop worrying is unrealistic.
Putting it into a system, however, really does shine a light on it; makes it appear as just what it is: a shadow of a monster.
Tags: Productivity, seth godin, stress, worry
update:
The below from one of my favorite 9gs readers/positive forces on the Internet, Sunnie1SoTrue.
It was sent to me via email, but I asked Sunnie if I could add it as an update to the blog, because, frankly, it’s better than the blog post, and shines the correct light on what I wanted to say/should have said, but am not yet evolved enough to do so.
Oh, but dear @gah650 you are yet to see the “code” you encoded into your lovely wife and fun-der-ful children. That perhaps being – though you much prefer to do other things and are in reality much more suited for other tasks and above all like the other tasks better – you did it for them. Maybe the very time you took to build bunk beds was a greater investment in them than you realize. Just think of the stories that will live in their minds plus the “new words” – the day dad built our bunk beds. Anyway, even if it didn’t register in their minds, it did in their hearts and spirits.
And if anyone ever wonders why any of us who blog do so, it’s because of moments of connection like these.
Thank you, Sunnie.
__
At the risk at coming across like some sort of second-rate Gladwell/Godin (both of whom I admire greatly), I want to relate a quick anecdote (see how “Gladwell-ian” I’m getting already) brought to the fore after a typically awesome conversation with Lauren Markow (that would be @sambarouge to many of you).
On Father’s day I was tasked with putting together the kids’ new bunk beds. I suppose this falls under my domain because I have testicles. I can promise, there is no other reasonable explanation for why my wife would consider me the appropriate person (or more appropriate than she) for this job. My “tool box” consists of one of those $3 screwdrivers that you can reverse from Phillips head to flat head and some of those left over Allen wrenches that come with things that must be assembled.
In any case, after much grumbling and the recruitment of my neighbor Charlie, who has such exotic (and required for this job) tools as a ratchet, off we went.
It took quite some time, during most of which I re-enacted precisely the “job” I had when my Dad would fix the car when I was a kid: handing him the wrong tool, trying to get out of the way, and dropping things. (My Dad, whenever I asked if I could help with these types of projects, used to tell my 9-year old self that I could “supervise.”)
We eventually finished, I offered to buy Charlie dinner, and we drank a beer.
I then headed to my laptop to try desperately to catch up on all of the things that I didn’t do while I was instead doing a miserable job at something I should never do.
You see where I’m going.
Building bunk beds is for me a terrible waste of time. It has what economists call high “opportunity cost” for me: while putting together bunk beds I couldn’t do any of the things that I am actually fairly capable of; things where I can add value.
In an era where we’re conditioned to think we can do anything, it’s important to remember what I tell people outside of Burgundy who are thinking about getting into the Vineyard business, “Just because you can make wine, doesn’t mean you should make wine.”
I usually can get out of the bunk bed building tasks around the house, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t build the metaphorical bunk bed too often.
For instance, two or three times a year I get so fed up with some technical issue that I decide — right then and there — I’m going to learn how to code.
The rub here is that while I’ll never be a great or even good coder, those weekends weren’t a loss. I’m now far more able to communicate with those who are great coders, and thus add value to projects by simply being a good point-person when coding is involved (I still wish I could just do it myself).
Another example: I had a real pivotal moment about five years ago when working on a project. We had hit sort of a wall, and – as per usual – the default answer to get us over this hump was to hire a publicist to help us generate more awareness. I disagreed vehemently with this approach, and it was not-gently suggested that I might want to consider offering an alternative rather than vitriol.
My alternative was to let me get an intern and explore the then-nascent social marketing techniques for three months. It changed the companies fortune…and my life.
Diving into social channels or coding isn’t exactly the same as building bunk beds; though it could appear that way at the time.
Learning to code a little (or at lease communicate more efficiently with coders) and understanding new ways to connect with constituents with technology relates directly to my core competency.
The key is trying to find those things that can expand our core competencies but aren’t adverse to them. Not easy. Building a bunk bed, literally, is never going to relate to any of my core competencies (unless something really radical, and, frankly, horrible, happens in my life).
Growing capability without falling into a trap of random acts of improvement is a tricky balance.
Tags: advise, Productivity
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