How To Use Technology to Support Who You Want to Be

I'm tired of using the various technological tools in my life and feeling like I need to exert deliberate willpower to use them productively. Technology itself is amoral -- neither good nor bad. It's just a thing that amplifies whatever course of action or intention you bring to it. Our default mode of scattered attention directed is diffused like a beam of light through a pile of broken glass -- haphazard, chaotic, and incoherent. On the other hand, there's no reason that a more deliberate approach toward using our technology can't amplify those more positive and useful intentions as well.

Inspired by the Distraction Free iPhone idea I recently restructured what I see when I look at my phone. Before this experiment I had the apps I used most regularly be the most accessible ones. If my goal is efficiency then that makes perfect sense. Tweetbot, Instagram, and Facebook were all prominently displayed on the home screen. These apps don't represent the way I aspire to use my time -- just the way I currently use my time. If I found myself with a burst of motivation (like on the upswing of a productivity cycle) I still had to resist "just checking" those apps every time I looked at my phone because they were constantly being thrown in front of me. In a somewhat startling moment of clarity I realized I could rearrange my phone to push me toward the person I want to be instead of the person I was currently being (and I suppose if you're 100% happy with how you're currently behaving as a human being then this idea isn't for you).

The Aspirational Home Screen

Instead of putting the apps I used most often on my home screen I started putting the apps I wish I used more often. My home screen became representational of the person I want to be. The time sucks I mentioned before were deleted or moved to the depths of my phone and only the apps who pushed me to be a better person were left in the position of honor (i.e. the home screen). That means Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram were out and Instapaper, Oyster, Kindle, MapMyRun, Fitocracy, and Insight Timer are in. Now, when I look at my phone I'm presented with options for development instead of options for distraction. Is it a tiny change? Of course. However, this simple tweak is helping my use of technology become more mindful and more of a source of good in my life.

Using Technology for Personal Good

This basic idea can expand to other pieces of technology as well. What apps do you see when you turn on your computer? Does anything automatically open? Why not have the apps that support your growth as a human being be what you see immediately upon sitting in front of your computer instead of potential time sucks? Making Day One, Evernote, and Things open automatically has made me more likely to get to work instead of killing time when I turn on my computer and I've had the additional happy result of writing in my journal more than ever. Twitter used to automatically open when I turned on my computer but I realized that I wasn't gaining anything by having my attention immediately fought over between the forces of "good" (Day One, Evernote, Things, etc.) and the forces of "bad" (Twitter, Facebook, etc.).

Carrying the idea further, what apps are always visible on your desktop or dock? Why keep unopened apps that represent potential distraction somewhere you constantly keep seeing them? What benefit are you deriving from constantly fighting the urge to give into distraction (unless you're some kind of attention-based masochist, I suppose)? What do you see when you open a new tab or window in your browser? Why not have it open onto something that challenges you to be a better person? I currently have mine set to my Rescue Time dashboard instead of the Yahoo homepage that used to suck me into distressingly long sessions of reading asinine "news."

Notifications As An Ally

Turning off notifications is usually step 0 of any anti-distraction/pro-meaningful work treatise, but what about turning on notifications for apps or reminders that prompt you to improve yourself? I agree that email and Twitter notifications should be banished from anyone trying to do meaningful work, but I think we're throwing out the potential good of notifications with overly general advice. I love using the "schedule" feature of Things to remind myself to do things in the future that I would normally never remember (in fact, it's the cornerstone of my reflection habit). I love using reminders to prompt me to do a gratitude exercise, reach out to an old friend, or simply take a moment to get away from the computer and stretch my legs. The reminder to read through my journal to see what ideas are generated for personal/professional growth every 5 months has created more great projects than anything I've done and it's something I would never remember to do on my own.

I think you get the idea.

Simple Changes Can Make a Huge Impact

There are plenty of ways to let our technology scatter our attention in ways that don't support the people we want to be. Luckily, with just a little bit of deliberate thought, your phone, computer, and other technology can amplify your intentions instead of acting as an anchor slowing down your quest to do more meaningful work and live a more satisfying life.

Photo by Symo0

The List #12

No full articles this week and I'm late on publishing The List. Can you tell the semester just started? Even though I've finished my class requirements as a student (woo!) I'm serving as a teaching assistant for two classes and it seems like all my research deadlines all came to a head in the past few days. Those are my excuses and I'm sticking to them.

Anyway, today I'm at a conference about positive psychology/celebration for Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's 80th birthday on the campus of my university. In honor of Csikszentmihalyi's birthday I figured I'd share some of the books/talks of a few of the individuals I'm watching speak today.

1. Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (book)

Mihaly is turning 80 this year and the event I'm at today is in celebration of his career. The book that really put him on the map is Flow but Good Work, The Evolving Self, and Creativity are also all worth your time. He has also given a TED talk and has written a boatload of academic articles. He's a good dude and Flow was a book that changed my life so I'm not really sure how to recommend it more than that.

2. Flourish by Marty Seligman (book)

Marty Seligman is the other co-founder of the positive psychology movement along with Csikszentmihalyi. His work on well-being is powerful and will make you think about what you can do to build more PERMA into your life. He also has a TED talk that's worth checking out. His earlier books on Authentic Happiness and Learned Optimism were some of the first ones I read as I began exploring what this whole positive psychology thing was.

3. Multiple Intelligences by Howard Gardner (book)

Gardner is a Harvard professor who is a behemoth in the world of educational/developmental psychology. His theory of multiple intelligences, the idea that cognitive/verbal ability should not be equated as "intelligence" and instead there are a series of different types of intelligence that people exhibit to varying degrees, is huge. He also worked with Csikszentmihalyi on the Good Work book and now leads the Good project at Harvard University.

What did you read/watch this week?

Photo by Dan Kasak

The List #11

The past two editions of Weekend Reading has featured almost as many videos as articles so I'm not sure that moniker is particularly accurate any longer. Therefore, this Friday feature where I share some of my favorite things from across the internet will simply be known as "The List" from here on out. Criteria for inclusion on The List is simple -- I must think the item in question was interesting/revelatory/awesome/noteworthy or otherwise worth your time. Articles, videos, podcasts, and music are all fair game and I'll shoot for 3-5 items for inclusion each week.

1. On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs - Strike! Magazine

I tried to find a good quote from the article but each time I thought I found one I realized it over simplified a pretty thorny subject and didn't do justice to the entire argument of the article itself. All I can say is that it's worth a read, especially if you have a sneaking suspicion your job might be bullshit.

2. A Path to Discovery - Rands

Rands has elucidated something I've felt and sought for a long, long time:

The daily tools and services we’ve surrounded ourselves with are incentivized to satisfy our urgent need for instant gratification – to make the precious moments we send on them as useful as quickly as possible. I’m on the lookout for something different. I need more tools and services that encourage serendipity as their primary function because I know how to search for what I need, but what is to discover what I do not know.

I think this is partly why I made the switch from Spotify to Beats a few months ago. The curated playlists and recommendation engine in Beats was helping me find things I never thought I'd like -- it was facilitating the search for what I didn't already know. What other services are out there that support this act of discovery?

3. The Biggest Challenge of my Life: The 777 Project - Joel Runyon

Joel is basically an expert at doing impossible things. His new project seems insane and therefore right up his alley. I love when good people do crazily ambitious things. Good luck, Joel!

4. A New World: Intimate Music from Final Fantasy (free stream)

There is no bigger nostalgia bomb for me than music from the Final Fantasy video games (Final Fantasy VII in particular). Composer Nobuo Uematsu has created some of the most video game music -- hell, music, full stop -- I've ever heard. This is a free stream of an orchestral recording of a wide range of tunes from across the Final Fantasy library. Turn this on Saturday morning while you're lounging around the house or bookmark it for the next time you're sitting down to get some work done.

5. Tycho - Spectre (Bibio Remix)

I haven't become utterly obsessed with a song in a long time. This one has broken the dry spell, though. Tycho creates some of the best music I've heard for working and it features prominently in my work playlists. I recently started following Scott Hansen's (aka Tycho) blog, ISO50. I don't know what it is about it -- but I can't stop listening.

What did you enjoy this week? Share it in the comments below or shoot me a link on Twitter (@samspurlin).

Photo by Buble-Gum

Abraham Lincoln and Growth Mindset

I've been listening to Team of Rivals, a book about Abraham Lincoln and his rivals turned advisors, by Doris Kearns Goodwin and it has been absolutely excellent. Today I heard something that made me stop what I was doing and start taking notes. Goodwin shares a story about Abraham Lincoln that I had never heard but made me admire him more.

Lincoln and the McCormick-Manny Case

In 1855 Lincoln had a relatively failed political career and was practicing law in Springfield, Illinois. A major patent law case related to two types of reapers was going to be tried in Springfield. The outcome of the trial was going to have major national implications so the very best lawyers were hired to represent each side. The big shot lawyers working for one of the sides decided to hire a local Springfield lawyer who might have some measure of influence over the judge presiding over the trial. That lawyer was Abraham Lincoln.

Lincoln realized this trial might be a make or break opportunity for him to move his career forward. He absolutely threw himself into preparation for the trial -- working intensely for months and traveling to Rockford to learn more about the technology central to the case. At some point, however, the case was moved to Cincinatti. Since it was no longer happening in Illinois the lawyers who were running the case had no need for Lincoln. Except nobody actually told Lincoln his services were no longer needed. So, he travelled to Cincinatti under the assumption that he was still going to be part of the team taking part in the trial. When he arrived, however, he was essentially patted on the head and sent on his way. They had no need for all the work he did and never even opened the brief that he had worked on so arduously.

How did Lincoln react to this colossal slap in the face?

Did he turn around and go home to Illinois? No.

Did he make a scene and call attention to the injustice he was facing? No.

Lincoln stayed in Cincinnati and watched the trial from the audience. He listened closely to each speaker and took note of how these highly trained lawyers crafted their cases and built their arguments with ironclad logic. He didn't stick around to enjoy the potential schadenfreude of watching the men who miffed him fail; he stuck around to learn about what it takes to be a high caliber lawyer. Lincoln never attended law school and was frankly astonished at what he watched in the trial. These highly trained men were far better lawyers than Lincoln considered himself.

At the end of the trial Lincoln told one of his new friends that he was going back home to Springfield to study law. He said that these college-trained lawyers from the east were heading west and although he was a good enough lawyer to handle the relatively simple and minor cases of the backcountry, he was no match for the lawyers trained in the east. He resolved himself to be prepared for when they arrived. He studied. He pushed himself to prepare his speeches more carefully. He basically used this extremely negative experience as a catalyst to improve himself.

Growth Mindset in Historical Action

Hearing this story left me incredibly impressed with the mindset and work ethic of Lincoln. I don't know that I could've responded so positively and productively to such a setback. Stories like this certainly help me better understand how he was able to be so effective as president despite his paucity of traditional schooling.

Where have you experienced something like this in your life? Did you respond like Lincoln? Do you wish you could have responded differently?

A story like this is a perfect example of what it looks like to have a growth mindset. Having a growth mindset means that you think of your intelligence and abilities as things you can develop and grow with practice. Lincoln re-framed this situation as an opportunity for him to learn and made the most out of a pretty crummy situation. Instead of leaving Cincinnati utterly demoralized and upset, he left with a renewed sense of purpose and vigor to improve himself.

We all face versions of this situation on an almost daily basis. How we respond to negative situations says a lot about who we are as people and a lot about how we view ourselves. Almost anything can be a learning opportunity if you approach it with the mindset. Thinking about it another way, not treating everything like a learning opportunity seems like a colossal waste of time. Positive or negative, important or unimportant, every situation has something which can be extracted and applied to our work and lives. Like Lincoln, we just have to get better at recognizing and taking advantage of those opportunities.

Have you checked out The Workologist on Facebook or on Twitter?

Photo by Gage Skidmore

The Psychology of GTD, Part 3: Flow

This is a very special article for me because it unites two of my favorite ideas -- flow and GTD. I originally came to graduate school to study positive psychology because of Csikszentmihalyi's book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. At that time I had already been practicing GTD for a couple years but I hadn't yet realized how the two are united. Over the past year I've come to realize just how closely they are intertwined.

Intro to Flow

I've written about flow many times before so if you're a regular reader of this site you probably already have a good sense of what flow is. For the newcomers, though, I'll give a one paragraph summary of the idea.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi noticed that sometimes people become incredibly engrossed in an activity even when there is no external reward. An amateur mountain climber is not being paid to climb a mountain yet she can become so immersed in the task it seems like time flies by and every last bit of her ability is being challenged by the task at hand. Csikszentmihalyi calls this state "flow" and has elucidated numerous characteristics and components of it. In a nutshell, you need to have clear goals, clear feedback, and a balance of high skill and high challenge in the task at hand to find flow in what you're doing. When you do find flow, whether in work or leisure, you will lose track of everything else because what you're doing requires the absolute limit of your attention.

Being in flow is generally a very positive experience and has been linked to all sorts of great outcomes in terms of work such as job satisfaction and productivity.

Implications for GTD

I think adopting a GTD system makes it easier to find flow in your work. By creating a GTD system for yourself you have to create clear goals, you receive clear feedback, and you facilitate concentration -- all of these are preconditions to experiencing more flow.

Goals

As I wrote about last week regarding implementation intentions and goal setting, Project and Next Action Lists are essentially lists of goals. Each project and each next action has a desired end state, that when reached, represent completion of a goal. GTD forces you to get very clear about what "done looks like." With this clear vision of "done" you can immerse yourself in the task at hand instead of constantly asking yourself what you need to do. You know what you need to do and it's just up to you to get it done.

Feedback

A good GTD system, whether digital, analog or some combination of the two, is purely external. You can see the entirety of your commitments and responsibilities at one time. Like standing on top of a skyscraper you can look down and see how your life is arranged. With your clear sense of organization and goals you receive feedback as you cross items off your lists. You create a sense of progress as you move through your lists finishing tasks and projects.

Concentration

Finding flow requires the ability to concentrate on one thing at a time. It's impossible to find flow if you're constantly being distracted by external or internal interruptions. Adopting GTD requires you to think about what you are and aren't doing at all times. By batching your next actions into similar contexts and seeing the entirety of your commitments at one time you can ensure you're working on the "right" thing. Even if you're feeling some discord about whether or not what you're working on is truly the right thing, you at least know that you aren't forgetting anything because everything exists outside your brain and in your external system. This frees you up to use your concentration on the task at hand, not trying to remember what you need to do or worrying about the decision you've made.

Conclusion

At its core flow and GTD are about the same thing; using your attention deliberately and wisely. When you're in flow you're focusing your attention on one activity or task and immersing yourself in it. Using GTD allows you to make good decisions about where you're directing your attention and frees you up to make conscious decisions instead of purely reacting to what happens to you. It only makes sense that these two concepts are intertwined. If you're looking to find flow in your work more often -- and really, who isn't -- you could do much worse than trying out GTD.

Much of my coaching and consulting deals with helping individuals with productivity and finding more flow in their daily activities. Have you ever thought about working with a coach? You can learn more about what I do here and you're more than welcome to set up a free consultation call with me.

Photo by David Stanley

Weekend Reading #10

If you're an astute reader of The Workologist you may have noticed that I missed publishing a Weekend Reading article last week. I was deep in the midst of moving so I ended up having to skip it in favor of spending the day hauling all my stuff over to a new house.

Now that I'm more or less moved in I want to make up for my negligence by making today's edition, the 10th, extra good.

Before we launch into the best stuff I've come across in the past week, I figured I'd mention the guest article I wrote for the VIA Institute on Character about how to use self-experimentation and self-data collection to apply your strengths in new ways. My colleague Jeff Fajans makes an appearance as well.

Alrighty -- without further ado let's get into this week's top picks.

Humans Need Not Apply (15:00) - YouTube via CGP Grey

CGP Grey makes the bestinformationalvideos and his latest is on a whole different level. He makes an excellent case that sometime in the relatively near future we are going to face a seismic shift in the labor market as automation/robots become better at a myriad of jobs than humans. It's scary and thought provoking and worth a watch. On a side note, CGP Grey is also a co-host of a podcast that has cracked my lineup and is now a show I look forward to every week (which is pretty hard to do). It's called Hello, Internet and it is also worth your time.

You Can Learn Anything (1:30) - YouTube via Khan Academy

This is a cutesy and super short video that encapsulates the nature of having a growth mindset pretty well. Sure, there are genetic differences in IQ and we all have different strengths/weaknesses but the research shows that believing you have the ability to improve and learn is the first step to actually making it happen.

Why Self Awareness is the Secret Weapon for Habit Change - 99U

The examples should sound familiar: We get necessary and helpful feedback from a boss or colleague, only to snarl under our breath, but failing to realize the foolishness on our end. We become aware of our declining efficiency, so instead of treating the disease we treat the symptoms and we chug coffee only to crash an hour later face-first into our keyboard (and then we go searching for productivity hacks because our workload is too high).

Great article from Paul Jun about why self-awareness is so important yet difficult to cultivate. It's similar to the idea I wrote about regarding the importance of self-reflection (I even called it the most important habit).

The Makers - Vimeo

This is a Vimeo channel with tons of relatively short videos about people who make things. It's one of my most reliable motivation/inspiration boosters that I like to turn to when I'm feeling kind of blah. From a guy who takes bread and butter to a whole new level to a guy who makes blowpipes in the Amazon rainforest, there is an awesome array of people doing awesome things on this channel.

Out of the Doldrums - JD Roth

JD Roth wrote one of the first blogs I ever started reading regularly, Get Rich Slowly (I was super into personal finance for awhile). On his personal website he's been covering a lot of interesting topics including the idea of flow and finding meaning. What JD calls the doldrums I recently called a ["productivity valley."](http://www.theworkologist.com/blog/productivity-valley ) It's nice to see that I'm not the only one who experiences cycles like this.

As always, thank you very much for continuing to read this site. Traffic numbers have been steadily increasing and for that I'm very grateful. Please don't hesitate to share this site with your friends/colleagues/acquaintances/pets -- it means a lot to me! Also, please follow me on Twitter or drop me an email to say hi.

Photo by NH53

Two Tweaks That Massively Improved My Weekly Planning

Georgetown professor and author Cal Newport recently gave an interesting look at his weekly planning habit. He shared two different formats that he uses depending on what the upcoming week is like. One is a narrative view on a day-by-day basis and the other is done by breaking his work into broad categories and slotting each into his day based on how much time he wants to spend on it (his article makes a lot more sense than that so I understand if you want to take a few minutes to read it in his own words before continuing here -- I can wait).

This got me thinking about my own weekly planning habit and how it has evolved over time. I've been doing my Weekly Review on Sunday afternoon for the better part of three years but only in the past 6 months or so have I truly gotten good at planning my upcoming week. In the past, weekly planning was nothing more than making sure all my projects had at least one clear next action. I would then make decisions about what I wanted to work on each day either that morning or in the moment of deciding what to work on next.

This left me with one prominent feeling that seemed to live with me the majority of the time: overwhelm. I was scrolling through my entire Project (roughly 30 items) and Next Action (roughly 75 items) lists multiple times every day. Blergh. It was a constant reminder of how much I had to do (and how much I wasn't doing).

Lately, I've elevated my planning game to the point where I feel like I'm being much more productive on a weekly basis and I'm not getting overwhelmed by everything I'm not doing. Now, when I sit down during my Weekly Review on Sunday afternoon I do two things that help set me up for much greater success.

Hard Landscape Drives Everything Else

First, I figure out my hard landscape (appointments, meetings, etc.) and get a sense of how much of my week it's going to take up. In the past, I never explicitly figured that out on Sunday and the reality of the situation is that some weeks are heavily scheduled and others are almost completely wide open. Despite this variation in my weekly schedule I had a relatively static idea of what my productivity "should" be over the course of a week. This meant weeks that were highly scheduled in terms of my hard landscape felt super unproductive because I had an unrealistic expectation of what I could do. Once I get a sense of my hard landscape for the week I can set some reasonable weekly goals in terms of my more flexible work.

Make Stuff Disappear

The second thing I did was be much more liberal with scheduling projects I knew I wasn't going to work on over the next five days to reappear in my task management software the following Sunday (i.e. my next Weekly Review). If I have a project that isn't due for a couple weeks and I know I won't have time to work on it soon I have no compunction with making it disappear for the time being (with the expectation it will show back up in my system when designated). Things is pretty awesome in this regard as it lets you give Projects and Next Actions a "scheduled" date which hides it until the designated date. This helps lighten the cognitive load every time I look at my Project and Next Action list and leaves me feeling much less overwhelmed. It also forces me to be realistic about what I can actually accomplish in a given week -- which is definitely a good thing when my eyes start getting too big for my belly (or whatever the productivity version of that metaphor is).

Looking at Cal's weekly planning habit makes me want to try a more narrative way of planning out my week, too. I like how he basically writes a little story about what each day should look like without completely over scheduling himself or getting buried in the details.

What can you take from me and Cal in your own weekly planning? What do you do differently? I'd love to hear about what works (or doesn't work) for you.

Follow me on Twitter for the occasional video of baby goats and links to articles about positive psychology and good work.

Photo by Nomadic Lass

The Psychology of GTD, Part 2: Implementation Intentions

Last week I released the first part of my series on the Psychology of GTD. This week, we move on to the idea of "implementation intentions" and the science of goal setting.

At a very basic level, success with using a GTD system is all about setting and achieving goals. Both Projects and Next Actions could be considered goals. Projects are obviously larger and more long term (usually, but not always) than Next Actions but they are united by the fact that they are goals in the sense of describing an end state that you're trying to achieve. Given the reliance on goals and goal setting it makes sense that some of the research done in the field of psychology on this topic is relevant to GTD.

Implementation Intentions

The research on implementation intentions is all about how to best set and then take action toward meaningful goals. It's one thing to set a goal and a completely different thing to take regular action toward that goal. I only have to look as far as all the failed goals and habit changes I've ever experienced to see the difference between the two. Implementation intentions are all about how to get yourself to take "goal directed behavior" even when you may not feel like it or even realize you should.

How Implementation Intentions Work

You have some sort of goal that you wish to achieve, say, losing 15 pounds. You decide that an action you can take toward that stated goal is no longer eating a bowl of ice cream as a bedtime snack. You've basically set the intention to stop eating ice cream after dinner in the hope that it will support your ultimate goal of losing weight. The missing piece, according to the implementation intention researchers, is the details around how you're going to take that goal-directed action.

Instead of just setting an intention you have to also set the details around that implementation. This takes the form of an "if-then" statement that includes the positive behavior change. For example, the person in our ice cream example could set the implementation intention of, "IF I feel hungry after dinner THEN I will eat a piece of my favorite fruit." This statement helps create a cause-effect link in our ice cream eater's mind about when he is going to take certain goal relevant action. Now, instead of using his willpower to fight the urge to eat ice cream every night he simply has to enact his implementation intention ("eat a piece of my favorite fruit") when the proper environmental conditions are met ("it's after dinner and I'm hungry"). Over time this cause-effect relationship becomes even stronger and is enacted almost automatically.

Implications for GTD

When you're first starting GTD you have to use a lot of willpower to keep it going. There's all these lists and checklists and frameworks and it all seems so tedious and overwhelming! I think that's why a lot of people never really see enough success with GTD to keep it going. GTD doesn't really start "clicking" until you get the behaviors that promote it to happen automatically. Using your inbox to capture all information in your life, using some sort of ubiquitous capture tool, doing mental RAM dumps, doing Weekly Reviews, reviewing checklists... there are a lot of behaviors that need to be taken to make GTD successful for you.

Using the implementation intention idea can help these behaviors become automatic. For example, you could set an implementation intention like, "IF I have an idea when I'm not in front of my computer THEN I will pull out my smart phone and write myself a note," or "IF it's Sunday afternoon THEN I'm going to sit down and do my Weekly Review." Using the physical artifacts of a GTD system can also serve as the IF statement, "IF I'm looking at my Project list and I see a lack of Next Actions THEN I will take a moment to figure out what the Next Action is," for example. Forming implementation intentions is similar to creating a productivity system like GTD in that it's an external system. In the same way that GTD is an external system to hold tasks/projects/goals, implementation intentions are an external system for taking the actions to make those tasks/projects/goals actually happen.

Next week we will discuss the idea of how Csikszentmihalyi's idea of flow is connected to GTD.

If you're enjoying this series, I recommend signing up for the monthly Workologist newsletter.

Photo by Angie Torres

More Ideas About Work That Can't be Taken for Granted

Introduction

A while ago I wrote about four ideas about work that are usually taken for granted. As an indie worker, you have the opportunity to ask questions about generally accepted knowledge and to figure out whether it truly applies to you. In this follow up article I'd like to share three more ideas that can help you improve your work.

You can't choose your colleagues

Traditionally, you don't have much of a choice as to who your colleagues are. Luckily, if you're an indie worker you aren't doing much that is traditional. While it is definitely an awesome opportunity to decide who you want to associate with when it comes to work, it can also be tough because by default you probably don't have any colleagues at all. Without concerted effort you can spend your days working in complete isolation.

I've utilized a couple of different strategies to deliberately connect with top-notch people. A couple of my favorites include creating or joining a mastermind group, using Twitter and other social media mindfully, and joining a coworking space. There are undoubtedly countless other things you can do. The common denominator is that you must be deliberate about seeking these people out as they are not simply provided for you.

Career advancement simply requires time

In the past, getting promoted meant putting in enough time and showing enough loyalty to your organization. Obviously, as an indie worker this isn't even an option. You can keep doing the same thing year after year as an indie worker and you won't grow at all. You'll keep getting the same kind of projects, the same kinds of clients, and the same rates. While I'm not a proponent of growing your organization just for the hell of it or in making ever-increasing rates your ultimate goal, I am a proponent of continuing to craft our careers in ways that keep challenging us. Advancing "up the ladder" as an indie worker means having more control over the clients you work with, the type of work you take on, and the freedom to make decisions that use criteria other than money.

The only way you get to do that, though, is by deliberately working to develop yourself. That can take a myriad of different forms but there is certainly not a lack of resources on the internet and elsewhere that can help you move in that direction. Whether it's working with a coach, developing your skills using Lynda, en*theos, iTunes U, or other services like that, or even just setting aside an hour or two every week to practice a skill that will help you do better work in the future -- you have plenty of options. The key point, however, is that nobody else is going to be looking out for you to make sure you're gaining the skills and abilities you need to keep moving forward. It's completely up to you.

The only relevant outcome is money

This is my personal pet peeve. In lots of the organizational research I look at, particularly entrepreneurship research, some of the most common outcomes that scientists look at have to do with economic indicators like income, growth, profit, etc. In many cases they conflate these outcomes with something like "satisfaction." Work can be so much more than an opportunity to make some money. I will never downplay how important it is for us to make a living from the work we do whether as an employee or as an indie worker. Making enough money to support ourselves and our families is vital. However, let's not lose sight of the other outcomes that are equally worth considering. Ideas like job satisfaction, life satisfaction, work-life balance, meaning, passion, and engagement are all worth our attention just as much, if not more, than money.

Conclusion

Over the course of these two articles I've shared six ideas that I think are often taken for granted by most people:

1. The five day work week

2. The office

3. Productivity as best measured by time

4. Distractions are inevitable

5. Not being able to choose your colleagues

6. Career advancement simply requires time

7. The only relevant outcome is money

As indie workers, we have the awesome opportunity to question accepted logic and figure out for ourselves the best way to conduct our professional lives. What other ideas have you questioned in the way you conduct your life and work? Leave your ideas in the comments below or write your own article and send me the link -- I'd love to see it.

You can stay up to date with The Workologist on Facebook. You can also interact with me on Twitter.

Photo by FLEE

The Psychology of GTD, Part 1: PsyCap

Introduction to the Psychology of GTD Series

Several months ago I had the honor of working closely with David Allen) and his company. In a nutshell, I helped analyze the Getting Things Done methodology and aligned it with some theories and principles of psychology. Given GTD's huge popularity we wanted to see if there were some scientific reasons behind its effectiveness and ubiquity. After we finished the project, I continued on with David Allen and produced an in-depth report of my findings. Over the next few weeks I want to share the major connections I uncovered between GTD and psychology here at The Workologist.

If you haven't read Getting Things Done or aren't familiar with it at all then these articles may not make a ton of sense. Obviously, the best course of action would be to read the book first. However, you can also get a pretty good gist of the system by checking out the variousresourcesavailable online. The better you understand GTD the more meaningful these connections will be to you.

As a starting point, I should be clear that no empirical research has been conducted specifically on GTD (at least that I could find). There has been an interesting theoretical article written by Heylighen and Vidal about the cognitive science behind the system. The rest of the theories and ideas I'm going to present throughout this series have never been specifically investigated in a GTD complex but there are theoretical reasons to believe they are connected -- and I'll do my best to explain why as simply as possible.

Introduction to PsyCap

The first psychological concept I want to connect to GTD is the idea of positive psychological capital, or PsyCap. PsyCap is a "higher order construct" comprised of four other concepts; self-efficacy, optimism, resilience, and hope. Individually, each of these can predict various positive outcomes to a certain extent. However, when they're combined together into what psychologists call PsyCap you get much more explanatory power than treating them each separately. Basically, when you look at these four constructs together you are able to tap into the synergistic relationships between them, thus justifying the creation of a new variable, PsyCap.

In a little more detail, the four subcomponents of PsyCap are:

1. Self-efficacy - Having confidence to take on and put in the necessary effort to succeed at challenging tasks.

2. Optimism - Making positive attributions about succeeding now and in the future.

3. Hope - Persevering toward goals and, when necessary, redirecting paths to goals.

4. Resilience - When facing adversity and problems, bouncing back to the original -- or even better -- state of being.

PsyCap is what's known as a "state-like" construct as opposed to a "trait-like" construct. Traits (like most components of personality) don't really change over time. They are largely set by genetics and then remain at that relatively same level for the rest of our lives. On the other end of the continuum, state constructs vary from moment to moment (like mood). PsyCap isn't as variable as mood but it is open to development. The fact that it isn't a trait is quite heartening because that means it can be developed and improved with focused effort and training.

In its relatively short history as a construct, PsyCap has been connected to many positive individual and organizational outcomes such as job performance, job satisfaction, and psychological well being. A meta-analysis (a study of studies) connected PsyCap to desirable employee attitudes (job satisfaction, organizational commitment, psychological well-being), multiple measures of performance (self, supervisor evaluations, and objective), and negatively associated it with undesirable employee attitudes (cynicism, turnover intentions, job stress, and anxiety).

So what does this all have to do with GTD?

I think a case can be made that utilizing GTD can enhance an individual's level of PsyCap because aspects of the system line up with the very subcomponents of PsyCap. Let's dig into each of the four subcomponents of PsyCap as they relate to GTD.

Self-Efficacy

GTD directly relates to the development of self-efficacy by enabling an individual to create and maintain a complete picture of their commitments, to themselves and others, in order to make good decisions about what to do (or not do) in any given moment. The process of identifying all "open loops" and moving them from memory to an external system while systematically identifying concrete and doable "next actions" can be seen as an exercise in developing self-efficacy. An individual utilizing GTD knows exactly what needs to be done and knows exactly what action they can take, given the restrictions of their available time, energy, and contextual restraints.

Hope

If you're doing GTD correctly you're doing a lot of front-end decision making. This "work before the work" is what you do when you figure out what the next actions are for all your various projects. There's strong case to be made that the process of front-end decision making is also an exercise in developing hope. Remember, the psychological definition of hope involves setting goals and figuring out multiple ways to attain them. The front-end decision making process involves setting goals ("What does done look like for this project?") and identifies the tasks needed to achieve those goals ("What's the next action?"). At the end of the front-end decision making process you're left with a clear sense of what needs to be done and how to best do it.

Optimism

One of the biggest benefits of adopting GTD in my own life has been a more optimistic outlook on what I'm capable of. GTD has allowed me to complete more projects, take on more audacious assignments, and just generally do more than I ever thought possible. The end result of that is a growing sense of optimism regarding what I can do and what I'll be capable of in the future. The process of identifying meaningful projects, articulating the next steps needed to complete it, and sticking to the process long enough to complete it is a powerful experience.

Resilience

When the crap hits the fan, the focus needs to be on action and not "figuring out what to do." A robust GTD system allows you to focus on actually doing the work at hand because you've already taken care of all the front-end decision making ahead of time (see above). While no empirical support exists for the idea that those individuals who utilize GTD would be more successful in bouncing back from failure, it's feasible to think this may be the case. Utilizing GTD gives an you a sense of calm and control over the situation that allows you to use your mental faculties on the task at hand -- and not having to remember what to do. In a time of stress or other adversity, those individuals who are able to think most clearly will be more likely to emerge from the stress in better shape than those who do not.

Conclusion

The changing nature of work requires that employees and independent workers be able to handle more information than ever. They need to be able to manage many projects, whether working from or at an office, to be optimally productive and satisfied. By deliberately striving to develop PsyCap in addition to economic, social, and human capital, people may be likely to be more productive and satisfied with their work. Adopting GTD may stimulate each of the four subcomponents of PsyCap, making it an ideal "mini-intervention" that has lasting effects. Given the impressive research already conducted in this area, the relationship between GTD and PsyCap seems feasible and is worth exploring further.

For the next installment of this series, I'm going to share how the research of Peter Gollwitzer (and others) on "implementation intentions" is connected to GTD (edit: You can read that article here). You can read Part 3 here.

If you enjoyed the first part of this series, I recommend following me on Twitter and/or signing up to receive all new articles in your email inbox.

Photo by Adam Kuban

Weekend Reading #9

The latest monthly newsletter was sent to subscribers on Monday morning. If you missed it, you can sign up for future issues and see an archive of issues you missed here. I also recently created a Facebook group for readers of The Workologist which you can join here. Join us over there if you're so inclined. Finally, I recently hired my brother to help me populate the Archive with all the old articles that didn't make the initial trip over from SamSpurlin.com. If you check it out now you'll notice it's much more robust than it used to be!

Without further delay, here are some of the best things I've stumbled across in the past week. Enjoy!

A Guide for the Perplexed: Mapping the Meaning of Life and the Four Levels of Being - Brain Pickings

One of the biggest revelations I've had in the past several months is how under appreciated E.F. Schumacher is. I read his books Small is Beautiful and Good Work and they seem like a forerunner to lots of ideas that we see thrown around nowadays -- minimalism, sustainability, flow, etc. I haven't read A Guide for the Perplexed, yet, but this article and my experience with his other books has rocketed it to the top of my list.

Warren Bennis, Leadership Pioneer - Harvard Business Review

Warren Bennis was a leadership thinker, writer, and consultant. He authored many books and acted as an advisor for many powerful people. Unfortunately, he passed away last week. Although I never met him, I did spend a summer working for his son, Will at Locus Workspace. Will is a first rate psychologist and thinker in his own regard and my thoughts go out to him and his family in this tough time.

What Would Your Life Be Like If... - A Daring Adventure

When I first started my coaching practice Tim was the first person I looked to for guidance. He helped get me oriented in the right direction when I was first starting out. We have super different styles but believe in much of the same stuff. His latest article is full of his barely-on-the-rails energy and stream-of-consciousness writing style. If you're tired of my overly academic writing style then Tim is a breath of fresh air. Plus, he knows a thing or two about personal development.

As I've mentioned before, I have a brand new entheos class up called "How to Take Control of Your Indie Work Career." If you're an independent worker and want to improve your day-to-day work experience, I recommend checking it out. I'll be recording another class in the coming weeks so be sure to keep an eye on my Professor page if you're an entheos subscriber (and if you're not, you can try it out for free for 14 days).

Photo by Richard Lee

Apps, Tools, and "Jobs to be Done"

If you're an employee you were likely hired to do a specific job. If you're a freelancer you're hired all the time to do various types of jobs. The concept of hiring a person or a company to provide some kind of service is about as simple as it gets when thinking about economics. However, have you ever thought about the "job" of everything else around you?

Horace Dediu, host of the excellent podcast, The Critical Path, and website, Asymco, oftentalksabout "the job" something (not someone) is "hired to do" (and I think this idea originally came from his advisor, Clay Christensen).

I like this question and I think most of us could benefit from aiming it toward the tools and software we use on a daily basis. What are the "jobs to be done" in your business or life and are you "hiring" the right tools to do those jobs efficiently and enjoyably?

Asking this question can help in two different dimensions. First, it ensures that you're not trying to use a tool for more than what it's actually good for. Second, it helps you determine if the tools you're currently using are actually the ideal tools for the jobs that be done. Let's look at both scenarios.

Overloading

In the first scenario you're trying to hire a tool to do more than it's really capable of. I most commonly see this when it comes to task management, tools for storing reference information, calendars, and email clients. Each of these tools have very distinct uses and when they start to collapse together the result is often frustration and inefficiency. For example, I'm a huge proponent of never putting anything on my calendar that isn't a "hard landscape" activity (anything that involves me being somewhere or doing something at a specific time). That means to-do items and reference information never lives on my calendar. If you find yourself trying to schedule time to work on specific tasks or projects and never actually keeping that commitment you're experiencing what it's like to have your task management system bleed into your calendar.

Another example of hiring a tool to do more than one task unsuccessfully is treating your email inbox like a to-do list. This almost never ends up in a happy place. An email inbox is great for holding onto discrete and varied pieces of information in one place until you get a chance to decide what to do with them, but it's pretty terrible at storing tasks.

Right Tool, Right Situation

Asking what job you've hired your tools to do also helps in a different situation -- determining whether or not you're even using the right tool at all. How do you know if you're using the right email client? How do you know if the calendar software you're using is actually the best tool out there for your purposes? It's easy to obsess over questions like these and end up spending more time trying out and fiddling with new tools than actually working. It's important to be very cautious about how you proceed with investigating and brinign new tools into your life. I think there are a couple of sane ways to proceed from here:

1. Conduct a "job" audit: Try brainstorming all the various "jobs" you have to hire tools for to keep your business and life running. Pretty much everyone will have to hire for jobs like "keeping track of appointments," "keeping a list of ongoing tasks," and "sending and receiving emails," at the very least. What other jobs do you have that are more unique to your work or life situation? For me, I have to hire a tool to help me collect money from coaching and consulting clients as well as a tool to keep all my notes from clients in one place and easily retrievable. I'm sure you're work situation has some unique "jobs" as well.

2. Conduct a "tool" audit: Make a list of your 10-15 most used tools/apps. Go through the list and write a "job description" for each one. What do you use each of these apps for? If you get to the end of the list and you've written two almost identical job descriptions then you might be able to combine those two tools into one. On the other hand, if you've written some epic job descriptions because you use some apps for far more than they're designed to do then you might want to consider spreading some of the responsibility around to some other single-purpose tools (this is arguably a matter of personal preference, though, so if you're happy with how you use an app that should be the most important criteria -- I just happen to prefer single-purpose tools over multi-purpose).

3. Identify areas for development: Between the job audit and the tool audit you've probably identified some areas for improvement. Now's the time to do some research. I would start with websites like The Wirecutter or The Sweet Setup to get a sense of what people who review this stuff for a living think about what's best before just diving into the never ending sea of potential tools. I also recommend setting some kind of limit to how much time you'll spend identifying and playing with new tools. I like to take a little bit of time every month to focus expressly on making sure the tools I'm using are still the best tools for my needs.

Once you've determined you've hired the best tool for each of the jobs you need to complete then you can focus on learning how to use those tools as well as possible. For apps, that means learning the ins and outs of their settings, keyboard shortcuts, and integrations with other apps. For example, I'm very comfortable that Things is the best task management software for me. Therefore, I've invested the time to learn all the keyboard shortcuts that make it even more useful for me as well as doing things like connecting it to Reminders on my iPhone so I can use Siri to add items to the inbox and connecting it to Dispatch (email app for my phone) so I can easily connect to-do items in Things to the emails they reference. Deciding that a certain tool is the best one for you allows you to use the energy you might've used to constantly be looking for something else on actually learning the tool at hand as completely as possible. It's a good feeling.

What jobs in your life still need you to do some hiring? Which old hires are sleeping on the job? Which tools have you given too much responsibility and which tools have you given too little?

I've created a Facebook page for The Workologist where I share little snippets of information and inspiration that never make it to the actual website. Check it out if you've hired Facebook as a useful tool for a job you need done!

Also, in case you missed it from last week, my en*theos class on How to Take Control of Your Indie Work Career is live!

Photo by Daniel Go

The Hard Work Before the Creative Work

This article originally appeared on SamSpurlin.com in July 2011. As I continue transitioning to my new home here at TheWorkologist.com, I'm resurfacing some older articles that you may have missed from before. Enjoy!

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I recently read an excellent book by one of my professors at CGU, and arguably the most famous faculty member, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Most people know him as the "flow guy." His work on flow, that state of optimal experience we feel when completely engaged in an activity, is some of the most important work that has been done in the field of positive psychology. While he's most well-known for Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, he has written several other books as well that explore topics and issues beyond optimal experience. I'd like to take a few minutes to explore an idea in his book Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention.

Domain Mastery as a Prerequisite for Creativity?

The idea that I want to explore and emphasize is that creativity requires mastery of a domain first. Csikszentmihalyi argues that truly creative work requires the internalization and mastery of the "rules" of a domain. This is an interesting point because most of the time when we think about someone being creative, we think about breaking the restrictions of tradition and doing something completely new. Csikszentmihalyi argues that most notable creative figures, regardless of field, were first experts in that field. Einstein didn't bust out his theory of relativity out of nowhere. Mozart didn't pop out of his mother's womb with a conductor's baton in his hand. These men, as well as any other famous creative you can likely think of, first mastered the precepts of their field before irrevocably changing their field with their discoveries and innovations.

First, Follow the Rules

What does that mean for you and me? It means we need to bear down and get to work. Most of us want to leave a legacy that will persist beyond our deaths. To do that, we have to do something memorable, something creative. It can be incredibly tempting to think that it's possible to skip the stage where you become an expert in your field and move right into the earth shattering creativity. It's not that easy, unfortunately.

I agree that it's important to be "well-versed" in our fields of expertise before being truly creative, but I wonder if Csikszentmihalyi has overstated the importance of this aspect? I'm worried that mastering a domain, something that arguably takes years of work (10,000 hours if you believe Malcolm Gladwell) is too prohibitive. If you can't do anything truly creative until you're a master at your craft, and mastering a craft takes 10,000 hours, then why even try? It's a potentially debilitating mindset that could do more harm than good. On the other hand, in order to break the rules in a truly creative and groundbreaking way, you need to know those rules inside and out.

Limit the Scope of Your Focus

Personally, I find Csikszentmihalyi's point of view liberating. I don't have to concentrate on coming up with a truly creative idea right now. Instead, I can focus on becoming as much of an expert as possible in my chosen field. The more I practice and develop my skills, the more likely I'll be able to create a piece of truly lasting and creative work in the future. True creativity is combining seemingly unrelated ideas and domains into something brand new. Mastery of your field allows you to see those connections much more easily and readily than if you didn't have a firm grasp on the subject.

How are you going to treat this information? Do you think you can create truly creative work without mastering a field first? Or is mastery a necessary prerequisite to being creative? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Photo by Annarita Eva

Weekend Reading #8

It's Friday so you know that means it's time for some Weekend Reading (and in this case Listening and Watching) goodness. Every week I like to share a couple of my favorite pieces of media from the last few days. Let's get to it!

How to Take Control of Your Indie Work Career - Sam Spurlin on en*theos

I hope you can forgive the self-promotion inherent in my first link. en*theos is a company that is all about optimal living. They asked me to write an article and record a class for them awhile ago and it's now live! In it I share my top 10 ideas around improving work when you work for yourself. I then riff on these ideas via video for a little over thirty minutes. I start a little nervous but I think I hit my stride a few minutes in. Anyway, you can get a 10-day free trial to check out the enirety of the site and after that it's $9.95 per month. It's kind of like Netflix for personal development. Pretty neat, right?

The History of Rome - A podcast by Mike Duncan

This is an old podcast I was just introduced to thanks to a starter pack in the new podcast app, Overcast. Mike does an awesome job breaking up the history into bite-sized chunks that are easy to take in during little breaks throughout my day. I've always been a huge history fan but I never really learned as much about ancient Rome as I should have. This podcast is helping fix that. And considering there are well over 100 episodes I think I'll be occupied for awhile.

Oyster - "Netflix for books"

I recently did a one month free trial of Oyster (thanks for the nudge Robyn!) and decided to actually pay for the service once the trial ended. A true rarity for me when it comes to entertainment outlets. Anyway, I've been pretty impressed by the available library and very impressed by the iPad app. I'm currently reading Michel de Montaigne's "Essays" as well as the essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson (I'm in some kind of weird essay mood, I guess). Anyway, I highly recommend the service as well as both of those books.

A Band Called Death

This is an excellent documentary about an all-black punk band from Detroit in the early 70's. It's a story about a band well ahead of its time, falling into obscurity, and then suddenly rocketing to critical acclaim nearly 40 years after recording a single album. Perhaps I'm biased because of my Michigan/Detroit connection, but I thought it was definitely worth my time. It's available in lots of different places online (I caught it on Netflix).

What have you been up to this week? Read/watch/listen to anything good?

Photo by Melanie

The Art of Deliberate Practice

This article originally appeared on SamSpurlin.com in August 2011. As I continue transitioning to my new home here at TheWorkologist.com, I'm resurfacing some older articles that you may have missed from before. Enjoy!

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 After reading this article all of your problems will be solved.

I'm guessing you're reading this blog because there's something you'd like to be better at. You're looking for that inspiration that'll help you conquer whatever issues you might be having. I'm sure some of you are looking for information about how to break bad habits and form better ones. Others of you are looking for help with building and maintaining your motivation. And, even though I'm sure you don't want to admit it, there's a good chance that many of you are looking for that one "hack" that will unlock the holy grail of productivity and happiness. All you have to do is keep searching and keep digging, right?

Unfortunately, you're on a quixotic quest.

You're searching for the Northwest Passage, a Fountain of Youth or a land of milk and honey. None of these things exist (although I suppose you can make an argument for hacking and picking your way through the most northern of Canada's wasteland for a Northwest Passage).

The only path to gaining the skills you want is through deliberate practice.

What's Deliberate Practice?

Deliberate practice is not flashy or exciting to watch. Yet, anybody who has a world-class talent knows that it's the only way to get better. Deliberate practice can be broken down into several different steps:

1. Pick a target.

2. Reach for it.

3. Evaluate the gap between the target and the reach.

4. Return to step one over and over and over and over and over.

Seems simple enough, right? The difference between deliberate practice and what most people do is step number three. Deliberately practicing requires that you constantly monitor the gap between what you're producing and your target. Most people just practice their techniques or skills without constantly evaluating and adjusting their performance accordingly. That's why watching someone who is practicing deliberately doesn't look particulalry awe inspiring.

Daniel Coyle in his book The Talent Code talks about watching a student practice her clarinet. She stumbles through a couple notes, stops, and plays them again. She slightly changes the way she plays one note and moves forward a couple more notes. It doesn't sound like music yet but this girl is deliberately learning the skills to play this song. She knows what it should sound like and each time she makes a mistake she stops, backs up, makes adjustments, and tries again. It may sound less impressive than someone who just sits down and plays the piece with mistakes but still manages to make it sound like a song, but it's far more effective.

Adopting Deliberate Practice in Your Own Life

What skills are you trying to develop in your life and are you practicing them deliberately? Obviously, each career or set of skills that you need to learn will be approached differently, but there are some general ideas you can keep in mind as you deliberately practice.

1. Slow down: Deliberate practice is not something that can be rushed through. It’s something you have to approach slowly and mindfully. It’s not about the number of hours you put in to the practice but what you put into those hours. Deliberate practice requires that you not go through the motions of practice.

2. Focus: Daniel Coyle compiled a list of words people used to describe the sensations of their most productive practice. Here is a partial list: attention, connect, alert, focus, mistake, tiring, and awake. All of these words point to the importance of being able to focus solely on your practicing for a period of time. Deep practice is distraction free, so turn off the cell phone, get away from the internet, and focus on practicing.

3. Make mistakes: If somebody were to watch you while you were practicing, they would probably wonder why you are making so many mistakes. That's perfectly fine. Practice is supposed to be like that. You should be right on the edge of your abilities, which means you'll be making plenty of mistakes, because that's how you push the edge a little bit further. When I coached hockey, I always told my players that if they aren’t occasionally falling down during basic skating drills, they aren’t skating hard enough or pushing themselves hard enough during turns and transitions. Any hockey player at that level can mindlessly go through a skating drill and not fall down. But the whole point of practice is to be delicately balanced on the edge between comfort and the unknown. Practice beyond your ability and your ability will catch up.

4. Break it down: Deliberate practice must be conducted on very small subsets of skills at a time. Instead of practicing an entire piece of music on the piano, you must practice on a very small piece of it. A master chefs doesn’t crank out a 5 course gourmet meal the first day of cooking school. Sidney Crosby did not rip a shot into the top corner the first time he ever took a slap shot. Anything you’re trying to improve can be broken down into the most basic of skills.

I've always been fascinated by the top performers in every field. What do they have in common and how did they get to that point? I suspect that the top surgeons, teachers, engineers, race car drivers, and CEOs all have a similar history and relationship to deliberate practice. If you're interested in this idea of deliberate practice, you'll probably enjoy The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle.

Lastly, what does deliberate practice look like in your field? I'd love to hear about it in the comments.

Photo by Sean Dreilinger

The Surprising Benefits of Increased Structure for Indie Workers

This article originally appeared on SamSpurlin.com in August 2013. As I continue transitioning to my new home here at TheWorkologist.com, I'm resurfacing some older articles that you may have missed from before. Enjoy!

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Last summer I was involved in a project where we interviewed fourteen individuals working at a coworking space. These people were self-employed, telecommuters, or otherwise working independently and the coworking space was where they came to complete their work. As part of the interview, we asked them if they had worked at a more traditional job before becoming an independent worker and if so, why they had decided to change to what they were doing now. Most of them had experience working in a traditional job and nearly all of them cited some kind of complaint about the structure they had to deal with as part of that job as the reason for their switch. Arrival times, strict rules about how they completed their work, hierarchy and expectations about how long they work were all commonly mentioned. 

Next, we asked them what they found the most difficult component of working on their own and why they decided to work at a coworking space. Almost all of them then mentioned the complete lack of structure that working independently entails as being the hardest thing they had to deal with and working at a coworking space as a way to introduce more structure into their work! 

In trying different work styles over the past couple of weeks I've had my own interesting experience with structure or the lack thereof. The weeks where I introduced the most structure to my work style, namely, the weeks where I used the Pomodoro Technique, I got the most work done and felt most engaged with what I was doing. The Pomodoro Technique strictly regulates how long you work and take breaks for throughout the day. One might think that would be very tiresome for somebody who has completely free reign over how he does his work but it's actually the other way around. A lack of structure is exhausting because you're constantly facing multiple decisions beyond just the execution of the work throughout the day. 

The people in our study and my own experience corroborates what Roy Baumeister and his colleagues have discovered in their research about willpower. In a nutshell, willpower is an exhaustible resource that gets depleted throughout the day every time you have to do something that taps into it. Making decisions, whether important or inane, tap into your store of willpower. When structure is completely removed from the equation, like when somebody switches from a typical white collar job to working for themselves, suddenly many decisions that used to be on autopilot (when should I start working? what should I do first? when do I stop working?) require attention. The result is a willpower reserve that becomes depleted much more readily than it used to. A potential answer? Embrace structure of your own creation.

If you work for yourself, try sitting down and making some rules and some structure to guide how you work. Some worthwhile questions to think through include:

• When do you start working every day?

• When do you stop working every day?

• How do you know when a project is finished?

• Do you work on the weekends?

• Do you do personal tasks during the work day? If so, all personal tasks or only specific kinds?

• When do you check email? All day long or at set times?

• When do you check other social media? As a break from work, all day long, or at set times?

Additionally, like the individuals we interviewed in our research, it might make sense to buy a membership to a local coworking space for at least a day or two each week to help introduce even more structure into your day.

As independent workers, or even as intelligent white-collar workers at traditional jobs, we may often bristle at the idea of structure. While structure can certainly get out of hand and become bureaucratic, try refining the way you think about it. You may benefit from more of it than you think.

Photo by *Mars

Boring (But Effective) Advice for Better Work

This article originally appeared on SamSpurlin.com in October 2013. As I continue transitioning to my new home here at TheWorkologist.com, I'm resurfacing some older articles that you may have missed from before. Enjoy!

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Self-development, career advancement, or just trying to make a positive difference in the world are hard things to do. Much of the difficulty comes from articulating what it even looks like to make progress in these areas. They're nebulous and ill-defined.

Advancing your career can seem like a hodgepodge of luck, connections, and hard work. I won't argue that all three of those variables can play a role in whether you find yourself moving toward your sense of an ideal work situation. I will argue, however, that there are two major mistakes most people make when it comes to advancing their career, developing themselves as individuals, or trying to make a positive impact on the world. They aren't fancy or flashy. In fact, this advice is pretty boring (which is why most people don't do it).

Patience

Looking around at the influential leaders and historical figures that populate our textbooks, magazines, and water cooler conversations can be a profoundly demotivating experience. They can all seem larger than life and have achievements that back up that description. However, even the household names we all know and admire for their ability to be creative, ship remarkable products, and make an impact on the world didn't just spring up over night.

For example, Charles Darwin was fifty years old when On the Origin of Species was published. He started making the detailed observations that became that book in 1838. The voyage on the HMS Beagle, the trip where he first started collecting the data and ideas that ended up in On the Origin of Species, in 1831. Whichever way you look at it, Darwin spent over twenty years working on the book that became the largest part of his legacy.

A more contemporary example is author Steven Pressfield who published his first novel in 1995 at the age of 52. He didn't just spring to existence with the publishing of Bagger Vance. He struggled and worked on publishing his first novel for a long time.

For both of these examples, we lose the sense of time that it required for them to create what we all know them for today. We remember their novels and scientific break throughs because that's what's fun to talk about. We don't remember or talk about the years and years of slogging it can take to create something like On the Origin of Species or Bagger Vance or The War of Art or the Mona Lisa.

In fact, psychologist Dean Keith Simonton has systematically researched contemporary and historical geniuses to better understand why and how they became famous. The main take away from much of his research is that these geniuses don't necessarily create remarkable ideas at a greater frequency than other people. Instead, they create more ideas in general. It's not the objective quality of the ideas that seem to predict whether or not someone becomes famous because of their creative output but the number of ideas they produce.

You need patience to keep creating new ideas even if previous ones fail. You need patience to keep slogging away on a meaningful project. And, unfortunately, patience isn't sexy. When it comes to your career development, patience with steady progress may not be flashy but it worked for Darwin, Pressfield, and nearly every other historical creative figure you can name.

Persistence

Patience without persistence looks a lot like a bump on a log. Without persistence you may be tranquil but you certainly aren't doing much to improve your situation.

Persistence isn't the steady habit of slamming your head against the metaphorical wall. Persistance comes from having a bias toward action while being tied to a willingness to step back and make adjustments. I'm a huge believer in having a mindset like a scientist in that using data from your environment, and past "experiments," can drive you in the right direction. However, doing the same thing over and over is likely to produce the same data over and over. Making adjustments to how you act and then relentlessly applying those adjustments in your daily life let's you hone in on the best way to improve.

Tweak your daily routine. Tweak the way you approach certain types of tasks or projects. Modify your diet, modify your sleep schedule, modify your hobbies or habits.Take careful note of how these modifications affect your productivity, mood, energy, or other outcomes of personal interest. There's nearly an infinite number of alterations and modifications you can make to your life and work that will eventually move you closer to your goals.

It can be easy to lose track of the fact that the people we look up to struggled just as much, if not more, than we do. However, they more than likely took the best approach to making any kind of long term impact on the world. They were patient with themselves and they were persistent. 

Not the flashiest two words in the world, but accessible to all of us if we care to listen.

Photo by Peter Gordebeke

The Future of...

Last week the Wall Street Journal ran a feature where they asked a bunch of different people in various professions and industries about their take on the future. A couple of them seem particularly relevant to what I'm trying to do here about making the future of work a little bit better for everyone.

The Future of Managers

"It should not matter what hours you work or where you're [working] from. What matters is how you communicate and what you get done. It's a waste of the natural resources of time and energy to commute; when we break the shackles of what looks like work versus what actually drives value, 90% of the cost and space of an office and management will disappear. We will manage by trust and measuring output, rather than the easier task of tallying input."

The Future of Entrepreneurship

"With the increase in the number of startups over the past five years, we've entered the age of democratized entrepreneurship. Just about anyone can afford to launch a business these days, as well as being able to get access to the information they need to see some success at it."

Office of the Future

"As offices improve their ability to follow us everywhere—out of the building envelope and into cafes, homes, bathrooms, via smartphones and computers—cities will reshape themselves to become more like offices, with entire districts centered around co-working and other forms of sharing workspace."

Future of Email

"In the good old days, the secretary did all the hard work and the boss did two things: dictating and editing. But email has made secretaries of us all; we spend up to 38% of our day managing email."

My Take on the Future

Predictions are usually a recipe for putting your foot in your mouth so I'm going to keep it pretty general. Independent work is a real thing. For many types of work across numerous industries it's no longer necessary to work for an established organization. On the entrepreneurship side of things, it's also not necessary to try to create as large an organization as quickly as possible (think Silicon Valley). Creating a small business or working as an independent professional creates space for you to care about something other than money when thinking about ideal outcomes. Work that aligns with our values, is meaningful, and intrinsically rewarding is becoming more and more possible for people who are willing to take some risks and make deliberate decisions across all aspects of their lives.

That's where I think we're headed as a society and I'm doing everything I can to line myself up in such a way as to be a part of that change. Are you?

Photo by Scott Smithson

Weekend Reading #7

It's Friday afternoon and you're shutting it down for the weekend, right? Good. Throw these links into your read later app of choice (or bookmark them if you like to roll old school) and enjoy them over the weekend.

1. The End of the Day Philosophy - Zen Habits

"What are you going to do next, after reading this? Will you be happy with that, at the end of this day?"

Simple metric for deciding whether to do something. It's simple but not easy to actually successfully implement.

2. Swami Vivekananda on the Secret of Work: Intelligent Consolation for the Pressures of Productivity from 1896 - Brain Pickings

"Good and bad are both bondages of the soul… If we do not attach ourselves to the work we do, it will not have any binding effect on our soul… This is the one central idea in the Gita: work incessantly, but be not attached to it."

This article is crazy good. I haven't been in the habit of reading Brain Pickings so I don't know if this is an aberration or if I've just been missing out on tons of good stuff.

3. The Absolute Fastest Way to Remind Yourself to Follow Up on Something You Find On Your Phone - Less Doing

I used to think IFTTT was stupid. Then I started seeing examples of how people actually use it and I realized it could be super helpful. This is the first recipe I've seen in a long time that I've needed to steal for myself (although I modified it to send the screenshot to Evernote instead of my email). My specific recipe is embedded below.

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I hope you had a good week and if you enjoy what you're reading here I recommend you sign up for The Workologist monthly newsletter. It goes out on the first of every month and it always has an article with my best idea of the previous thirty days. You can also get every article I write here (three of them each week!) sent directly to your inbox if you check the box when signing up. I may be biased, but I think that's a pretty good idea.

Photo by Steve Corey

How to Trudge Through a Productivity Valley

Apparently my productivity likes to operate in cycles. Almost like clockwork it seems like my productivity shifts between one or two weeks of being fully functional and operating at the peak of my abilities and is then followed by about a week of being mired in a valley of "bleh." During this 5-7 days of living in the "productivity valley" I find myself questioning why I'm doing everything I'm doing and if I'm even on the right path. It's like I go on two week benders of productivity before being slammed with a weeklong hangover.

Needless to say, it's unpleasant.

Last week I was in the middle of one of my productivity valleys so I thought I'd share a little bit about what it was like and how I eventually broke out of it.

What To Do When You're Stuck in a Productivity Valley

During my latest productivity valley I could barely look at the meaningful projects on my list. They filled me with dread or left me completely empty. Either way, the thought of actually working on any of them and making substantive process seemed crazy. Instead of completely throwing in the towel, though, I was able to fall back on a couple of habits that helped me continue to make forward progress and not just crawl back into bed every morning.

Maintenance Work

One of the "areas of responsibility" that encapsulates to-do items and projects is simply called Administrative. It ends up holding lots of odds and ends that aren't directly related to business or school projects but still have some bearing on my life. For instance, I currently have an active project related to finding a new place to live, a task to contact my teammate about getting a discount on a new hockey stick, and a task to update some of my passwords with 1Password. Since these tend to be pretty unimportant and non-urgent tasks they tend to accumulate over time. Last week I was able to knock out a ton of these. In a similar vein, sometimes I will tag tasks that are really easy to do so I can do a simple search for everything I have to do that I have designated as "easy" and I can spend my day feeling "productive" without having to do anything very taxing. Obviously, this only works if you don't abuse the system by only doing easy stuff every day. Try to save these maintenance tasks for when you're mired in a productivity valley.

Eliminate Cruft

I hate cruft. Cruft is what inevitably accumulates in any system that isn't cleaned out very often. In the realm of knowledge work, cruft accumulates everywhere information flows. Email inboxes, project files, to-do lists, Someday/Maybe lists, files and folders -- all of these places will get crufty if you let them. Last week I spent a lot of time going through my digital file cabinet (Evernote) and making sure the only notes in my active notebooks were actually connected to active projects. I also went through Things and eliminated projects that weren't going to get started any time soon or I knew would never get done. I also decided to get on the anti-Someday/Maybe bandwagon and either scheduled Someday/Maybe projects to appear in the future for reconsideration or removed them completely. I even went through my wardrobe and got rid of some clothes I don't wear very often, got rid of extra office supplies I didn't need, physical files I no longer needed direct access to, blogs I didn't want to follow in my RSS reader, newsletters that weren't bringing me value in my inbox, and unfollowed people on Twitter and Facebook who weren't enhancing my life in some way. By the end of it all I felt much lighter and ready to take on new ideas.

Just Relax

Perhaps part of the reason this productive/unproductive cycle exists is as a subconscious reminder of the need to just relax. When I'm being very productive I tend to work very hard and push myself pretty far. In a way, it's only natural that my body responds by forcing me to take it easy every couple of weeks. To a certain extent I need to just learn to go with it a little bit better and use the time to rejuvenate and refocus for what's to come.

How Do You Get Out of the Valley?

There are a couple of tricks that work occasionally, but the only surefire way I've found to snap out of it is to just let enough time pass. It almost never lasts longer than a week and I often wake up Monday morning after a week of being stuck in the valley to a ton of energy and excitement to get back to work. If you can't just let nature run it's course because you have an imminent due date or some other reason, I've had some success with the follow strategies:

1. Shock yourself out of it: If I'm stuck in the valley and I need to get out of it I can often shock myself out of it by breaking completely from my typical daily habits. In the past I've had success with pulling an all-nighter to work on something important. Sure, I'm tired as hell the next day but if I'm able to power through it I often come out feeling more motivated on the other side. Your mileage may vary and I actually haven't done this in years -- I have a feeling I might be getting too old to have this work. On the flip side, you could also try getting up much earlier than usual and working on something meaningful while the rest of the world is asleep and you can feel like you're getting a head start.

2. Lower the barrier to getting started: I think much of the problem of being stuck in the productivity valley is centered on the idea of getting started on something. When you're feeling unproductive the thought of starting on a major project is usually overwhelming. To combat that, try lowering the barrier to entry by setting a timer for five minutes and only forcing yourself to work for that long. More often than not five minutes of work is enough to get you past the dread of getting started and much closer to finding flow in the task at hand.

3. Break your projects: Similar to the idea above, sometimes getting started seems impossible because our projects are too intimidating. "Work on thesis... are you kidding me?" was the gist of what I thought to myself early last week. Luckily, I was able to make a little bit of progress by biting off one tiny piece of that project (I think it was, "draft one paragraph about indie work growth") and only focusing on that. Take one of your important projects and break off an almost ridiculously tiny piece of it. Just like working on something for five minutes seems borderline silly, get equally silly with what you commit to do on a big project. You may find that just getting started on something is enough to get you moving out of that productivity valley.

Because I'm stubborn I still think I can figure out a way where I never have to experience the productivity valley. I have some ideas about how I can change the way I approach my work and how I can notice I'm heading into the valley before I find myself in the bottom of it and I'll be sharing them as I experiment with them on myself. In the mean time, I hope these ideas help the next time you find yourself stuck.

Perhaps The Workologist Newsletter can help get you unstuck on a monthly basis? I send it out at the beginning of each month and I save my best article idea of the month for the article I write in each issue. You can sign up here and as a thank-you you'll receive a download with my e-book, Work Better.

Photo by Akuppa John Wigham