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

Be The Hare, Not the Tortoise

Should work be like a marathon or a sprint? Prior to reading The Power of Full Engagement and Be Excellent at Anything by Tony Schwartz I would've probably said we should treat work like a marathon. Don't burn yourself out too quickly and settle in for the long haul, right? We all know the story of the tortoise and the hare -- slow and steady wins the race. Now, thanks to these two books and the research that supports them, I'd put myself firmly in the camp of the hare and his sprinty friends.

Schwartz argues we should treat our work day like a series of sprints. He cites research that gives credence to the idea that not only do we have a circadian rhythm that effects our sleep, but that it extends to our waking hours and results in us feeling more alert at certain times than during others. He also argues that the longest we can really focus on one thing at a time is ninety minutes before we need a break. Therefore, he argues we should work for 90 minute blocks of truly high intensity focus and concentration followed by periods of deliberate rejuvenation.

I was reintroduced to this idea in relation to work shortly after doing a decent amount of research about high intensity interval training (HIIT) for fitness. The ideas are remarkably similar. Basically, by pushing ourselves to the very edges of our ability for short periods of time we can have a greater effect on our ability to get stronger/faster -- both physically and in our ability to do intellectual work. This is in direct competition with the idea that the better way to develop fitness and get a lot of work done is to work at a lower intensity for a much longer time.

Like everything else, I'm putting this to the test by experimenting with it in my own life. I've been playing around with using a ninety minute timer to organize my workday as much as possible. One reason I really like the idea of this type of working is that it gives me more time to find flow in the work I'm doing and then doesn't interrupt me right away like a Pomodoro-style of work does. It also challenges me to develop my abilities of concentration and focus -- two skills that I sorely need to develop to a greater extent.

The biggest potential win from adopting this style of work is simply the ability to get more work done in less time. My intention is not to cram more work in the time I save by working more intensely, but to use that newly liberated time to have more leisure time, more time to explore meaningful hobbies, and more time to develop my physical health. There's more to life to getting more work done in less time, obviously, but if you're mindful of how you're going to spend that time I don't see that approach as having much of a downside.

If you're interested in this idea of sprinting as a way to work, I highly recommend you check out The Power of Full Engagement and Be Excellent at Anything.

I share more ideas from books like these in my monthly Workologist newsletter. Sign up here to receive it direct to your inbox at the beginning of every month.

Photo by Andrew Pescod

Weekend Reading #6

Please excuse the slight lateness on this edition of Weekend Reading. Fridays are either super chill or super insane for me when it comes to work. I try to get as much work "out the door" and into other people's hands before I wrap up the work week so in the last two hours I've sent out two projects that have represented several hundred hours of work over the past few months.

ANYWAY, you're not here to listen to me ramble about my work. You want links to the best things I read/watched this week. Here ya go!

Thirty years of projects - Seth's Blog

Somehow, I always thought of my career as a series of projects, not jobs. Projects... things to be invented, funded and shipped. Sometimes they take on a life of their own and last, other times, they flare and fade. But projects, one after the other, mark my career. Lucky for me, the world cooperated and our entire culture shifted from one based on long-term affiliations (you know, 'jobs') to projects.

This is almost exactly how I conceptualize my own career. The world is moving away from titles/professions while turning toward the actual verbs of work. "What are you doing?" rather than "What are you?" I love this change in how we think about work.

Aloha from the Hala Kahiki - The Distance

I love this side project from Basecamp. If you aren't familiar with The Distance, the idea is to share stories about businesses and the people behind them who have been around for a long time. In a world where the start-up is glorified it can be easy to look past the less glamorous examples of good business. This issue is about a tiki bar in the suburbs of Chicago that has been open since 1966. The other issues (this is the 3rd) are worth checking out, too.

Divide and Conquer: How the Essence of Mindfulness Parallels the Nuts and Bolts of Science - Google Tech Talks

[youtube=://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XCWP4pODbs&w=640&h=480]

This is a pretty old talk but it's one of the best I've heard in terms of giving a very clear and simple description of why meditation is such a powerful force for people who practice it. I've read quite a few meditation books and have a fledgling meditation practice of my own, but this talk helped me understand why it's so worth doing this incredibly difficult activity.

As always, I want to know what you've read or watched recently that has had an impact on you. Shoot me a link at @samspurlin on Twitter or email me at sam@theworkologist.com. I also recommend signing up for the Monthly Newsletter in which I share more ideas like you see here on The Workologist and in which you receive a free copy of my e-book, Work Better.

Photo by Neil Conway

Work-Life Balance vs. Work-Life Integration

Figuring out how to structure and maintain your professional and personal lives is tough. In the days of yore when most of us worked blue collar jobs with clearly delineated tasks and a regular eight hour shift it was a bit easier. That's not to say the work was easy (it usually wasn't) but at least there wasn't much of a question about what to do when you got there or much of an expectation that you'd be taking work home with you. Work has gotten decidedly more complex since that time.

If you're a typical knowledge worker you're likely faced with multiple forces that make your personal and professional lives come into conflict. The ubiquity of the smartphone and the constant stream of information, requests for your attention, and the expectation to be available can make work seem like the primary factor in our lives.

Work-Life Balance

One way to approach this conundrum is through the metaphor of balance. Like a seesaw with Your Professional Life on one end and Your Personal Life on the other, you try to make adjustments to each sector of your life in order to keep the seesaw balanced. This approach, work-life balance, places an emphasis on creating distinct lines between your life and your work and not allowing them to bleed into each other. By keeping them as separate as possible the idea is that you can spend the time away from work fully engaged with your family or hobbies and the time at work completely dialed into your job.

In practice, work-life balance often leaves a lot to be desired. For many, it's a framework for burnout because instead of removing items from both sides of the seesaw in order to keep it level they instead are constantly adding to both sides. The result is an unsustainable pace of life that ultimately leaves one side, work or personal, being overshadowed by the other. Additionally, the increase in remote work, mobile communication technology, and globalization means that work never really has to end. In a world that's constantly "on" it can be tough to keep work and personal life truly balanced.

Work-Life Integration

Another school of thought is that we shouldn't strive for balance between our work and personal lives, but for integration. Work-life integration argues that it's futile to try to separate areas of our lives into separate domains when we only get one life and can only be in one place (physically and mentally) at a time. Instead of trying to respond to others' expectations and balancing out our commitments to work and life, they argue we should start from an internal perspective and identify the values and goals that will allow us to create the type of integrated life we want to live.

In practice, work-life integration often ends up very heavy on the work component of the equation. When there are no lines between professional and personal life it can be a slippery slope toward being chained to your email during vacation, sneaking peeks at your phone during family time, and never creating a chance to rejuvenate. Doing work-life integration well requires an extremely high level of self-awareness, self-knowledge, and a willingness to reflect on how things are going and make changes if problems are beginning to emerge.

Which Is Best?

As an independent worker myself there are elements of both philosophies that I really like. In the work-life balance camp I really try to not let my work interfere with my personal life when it comes to spending time with loved ones and being present with them during non-work time. I like to do a shut down routine at the end of my work day that signifies I'm finished with work for the day, even though my office is in my house and it's easy for me to just bop over to my computer and keep working if I want to. I like creating a clear line between my work day and my free time whenever possible.

On the other hand, there are components of the work-life integration approach that really appeal to me as well. One way I fall into this camp is by keeping only one calendar that mixes personal and professional commitments. Since I can only be in one place at one time I think it makes sense to keep one calendar. If I were to maintain separate Personal and Work calendars I'd be much more likely to schedule conflicting activities. Another work-life integration idea that I fully endorse is the commitment to creating a job for myself where I'm able to utilize my strengths, apply my values, and where I can feel like what I do for a living is directly supportive of what I believe in as a person. With a work-life integration mindset I bring more of myself to my work every day than I might if I was always trying to keep distinct lines between who I am in my personal life and who I am in my professional life.

My experience leaves me with the conclusion that both a strict work-life balance and a strict work-life integration approaches are wrong. Instead, I'm doing my best to figure out which components of each philosophy I can mix together into my own life.

Every month I send out my best ideas to the Workologist Newsletter subscribers. You can sign up for it here and as a thank you you'll receive a copy of my e-book, Work Better.

Photo by takasuii

How Your Work Is Like a Chemical Reaction

There was a period of about three months in high school where I thought I was going to go to college to get some kind of chemistry degree. All that really means is that I can cobble together enough chemistry related facts to make this basic metaphor about chemical reactions, activation energy, catalysts, and doing great work. Join me on this ride down memory lane and into basic high school chemistry!

First, I want you to think about what it feels like when you're super engaged in your work and everything is flowing extremely well. You probably feel like you're being swept along with relatively minimal effort and you're just guiding the overall trajectory of the work. It's a great feeling and it's basically what Csikszentmihalyi calls flow. What if you could get this feeling every single time you sat down to work? How awesome would that be? The problem, though, is figuring out what to do to make that happen more regularly.

Activation Energy

Think about finding flow in your work as being similar to a chemical reaction. In a chemical reaction you may take two seemingly inert chemicals, combine them, and suddenly you have an explosion. Picture vinegar and baking soda. On their own, they aren't anything special. Combine them, though, and you get a volcano. Your work can be like that, too. You may sit down at your computer to work on your latest project and not be feeling particularly motivated or inspired but every once in awhile you're able to find the groove and can explode into your own version of a violent/productive chemical reaction.

In order for a chemical reaction to occur, however, a certain amount of energy has to be applied to get it started. The amount of energy varies depending on the materials involved, but the overall concept is called "activation energy." Activation energy is the minimal amount of energy needed to start a chemical reaction. I think the same idea can be applied to finding flow in our work where the work explodes out of us like a chemical reaction. Sometimes we need a lot of energy to get the reaction started and sometimes we need less.

Activation energy can take many different forms for the typical knowledge or independent worker. Merlin Mann of Back to Work says he has to move his fingers on the keyboard for 11 minutes before any real writing happens. For me, I almost never find flow in my writing unless I spend 10-15 minutes with a clean piece of paper, a pen, and the creation of a mindmap/outline of what I intend to write. Merlin's activation energy is created by moving his fingers for 11 minutes and not worrying about the words that are being produced. My activation energy comes from getting my ideas out of my head and onto a piece of paper.

When you adopt this metaphor of needing activation energy before your work really starts to get going you can lower the expectations to getting started. I think a lot of our hesitancy and procrastination can come from dreading how it feels to be working when that reaction hasn't gotten started -- when we haven't hit the proper amount of activation energy. Instead of being willing to sit there and build up that energy we don't allow ourselves enough time to hit that threshold and get the reaction started.

Catalysts

A catalyst is a chemical that increases the rate of a chemical reaction. Keeping the chemistry metaphor going strong, there are "catalysts" we should be identifying and cultivating when it comes to how we work. One of my favorite catalysts is something called "front end decision making." This is a very simple idea which says figuring out the what of our work is distinct from actually working on our work. When I've clearly thought about what it means to work on a project (essentially giving myself a very discrete and clear next-action) then it's much easier for me to get engaged with the work itself (the chemical reaction starts much easier). Another example of a catalyst in my own work experience is working in an environment that promotes deep concentration and focus. I've been crafting my home office for optimal engagement with what I'm doing and I've found it's much easier for me to find flow when I work there than in a busy café.

A few other catalysts from my own experience include:

• Knowing my tools (hardware and software) so well that they seem to become an extension of who I am.

• The practiced ability to concentrate and focus.

• A deep sense of purpose and meaning behind a task or project.

• Being well-rested and physically healthy.

When these catalysts are present getting my work done is much, much easier.

The next time you sit down to work try not to be frustrated if you don't immediately find yourself immersed in the task at hand. In order to find that flow you need to invest the proper amount of energy to get the reaction started. Start moving your fingers, start outlining your thoughts, or use any other strategy of your own creation, to start pouring energy into the project. Bring in a couple of the catalysts I mentioned (be well-rested, have a sense of why you're doing what you're doing and/or know your tools inside and out), or develop some of your own, and the next thing you know you'll find yourself and your work set on fire (hopefully metaphorically).

Another catalyst may be reading my guide to better work, Work Better. Signing up for my monthly newsletter gets you a copy of the guide in your digital reading format of choice.

Photo by Kelly Teague

Weekend Reading #5

As usual, here's a dose of the good stuff for you to digest over the weekend.

Hacking Happiness: Why Your Personal Data Counts and How Tracking it Can Change the World - John Havens

I read a lot of books about happiness/positive psychology so I'm a pretty critical (I want to say "consumer" but if you read this book you'll know why I hesitate at that word...) reader. John has done something with this book that is a much more refreshing and interesting look at what it means to strive for happiness in a world soaked in technology and data. Also worth checking out is the non-profit John has started, Happathon. I had the pleasure of having a phone call with John earlier this week and he is working on a lot of great stuff to make the world a better place. Check out this book and keep John on your radar -- he's making good things happen.

The Ancient Wisdom Project

I'm not sure who turned me onto this site/project, but I'm glad they did (I think it might've been Cal Newport?). Anyway, the basic idea is that the author does a series of 30 day experiments in which he commits to "practicing, studying, and reflecting on a single philosophy or religion with the hopes of personal growth." I love the concept behind the project. I've only read the first couple of his articles on Stoicism but I'm looking forward to getting further into it.

It Was Me All Along (available for preorder) - Andie Mitchell

I had the pleasure of meeting Andie a few months ago when we invited her to speak at the TEDx event I was co-organizing. One of our planning team members recommended we reach out to her because she knew Andie from college and was familiar with her story (thanks Susan!). Turns out, Andie is a phenomenal speaker. Her talk ended up being one of my favorites of the day. In addition to being a great speaker her upcoming book, It Was Me All Along, is now available for preorder. If it's as good as her talk then it'll definitely be worth your time.

[youtube=://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-q7SVJYaO0&w=854&h=480]

What was the best thing you read this week? I'd love if you'd share it with me on Twitter (@samspurlin) or in the comments below.

If you like this stuff -- books about happiness, articles about personal development, and inspiring talks -- then you should consider signing up for The Workologist Newsletter. Once a month I send subscribers a recap of what happened on TheWorkologist.com over the past thirty days and an article expanding on the best idea I had this month. As a thank you, I also give you a free copy of my e-book that shows you how you can work a little bit better by paying attention to some of the research that has come out over the past few years.

Photo by Katherine Lim

How To Use a Whiteboard to Stay Organized

After posting a picture of my newly constructed standing desk on Instagram a few weeks ago somebody asked me about how I use the whiteboard mounted behind the desk. I typed out a response but it was long and I had to skip over a lot of the details as to why I use my whiteboard the way I do. Needless to say, it needed an article-length response -- not a comment. Thus, here is my incredibly in-depth system for using a whiteboard that is mounted directly behind my desk.

The Main Areas

My whiteboard is broken into 6 main areas:

1. 3-4 month goals: These are the things I'm trying to accomplish over the next 3-4 months. Every week I should be making progress on at least 1 or 2 of these goals. They are updated at the end of the 3-4 month cycle.

2. Weekly hard landscape: This is a list of the appointments and meetings I have for the upcoming week along with the times at which they are happening. The only things that go on this list are activities where I'm expected to be somewhere or doing something at a specific time.

3. Weekly flex landscape: This is how I intend to spend the rest of my work week that isn't taken up with hard landscape activities. I estimate how long each task will take and write it next to the activity. I try not to schedule more than 7 hours between hard and flex activities each day because a.) I'd prefer not to work crazy hours if possible and b.) I need to leave flexibility in my schedule to respond to urgent requests.

4. Percolating projects: This is where I put projects I think I might want to start soon but I'm not 100% sure. At the very least I don't want them to disappear from my awareness so I stick them in the corner of the whiteboard and review them weekly.

5. Weekly goals: This is the criteria for whether or not I had a productive week. If I met my weekly goals then the mission was accomplished.

6. Motivational reminder: I like to stick some sort of pithy motivational reminder at the top of the whiteboard so I see it everyday. My current one (work = time spent x intensity) is courtesy of Cal Newport and has been up there for at least 3 or 4 months. It's a good reminder to not get sucked into the "hours worked = productivity" mindset.

How It Evolves Throughout the Week

I reset my whiteboard during my Weekly Review every Sunday afternoon. However, it's not that I only touch the whiteboard on a weekly basis. Instead, it's constantly evolving and changing based on how my week goes. First, I cross out hard landscape and flex items as I accomplish them. This gives me a nice sense of progress as I proceed through the week. If I don't get to a flex item on the day I scheduled it I'll often draw a box around it and put a star next to it. This lets me know that it's a day behind and I should probably get it done ASAP.

I try to avoid scheduling meetings and appointments for the week I'm currently in but sometimes it's inevitable. When that happens I'll write them into the hard landscape or draw arrows if something is being rescheduled within the week.

On the right hand side that is currently wide open I'll add urgent items with imminent deadlines. Sometimes someone will ask me to do something that isn't possible to have seen coming and scheduled into my weekly flex time. For example, sometimes a colleague will email me something to look at on Wednesday and they'd like to have my feedback by Friday. On the right hand side I'll often add a reminder to get that taken care of and will then cross it off once I finish it.

On Friday afternoon I'll take an index card and jot down the chores and activities I want to complete over the weekend. You may think this sounds way too structured when it comes to taking time to relax but I've found that my weekends are much more rejuvenating when I take a few minutes to think ahead and write down what I'd like to do. For example, last Friday I wrote down the titles of a couple magazines I wanted to read, a reminder to check out the video game I bought on sale earlier in the week, and a couple of life chores that I needed to get done (laundry and grocery shopping). I like writing this stuff on an index card because it can be kind of a pain to write that much stuff into the area I allot for Saturday and Sunday on the whiteboard itself. I'll then stick that index card near the bottom of the whiteboard with a magnet where Saturday and Sunday's hard landscape is written.

The Weekly Review

A significant portion of my Weekly Review is taken up a.) reviewing the previous week's completed whiteboard (what didn't get finished? did any hard landscape items get rescheduled to the upcoming week? did I make progress on any summer goals? did I meet my weekly goals? do I want to activate any percolating projects?) and resetting it for the upcoming week. Resetting the whiteboard consists of writing the hard landscape for the upcoming week, seeing how much time I have leftover after accounting for my hard landscape responsibilities (40 hours - time committed to hard landscape) and making a list of the other work I'd like to accomplish this week (the flex landscape). Then I try to slot that work into my available days in a logical way taking into consideration due dates, and amount of available time (i.e. don't schedule a bunch of writing tasks in a day where I have a bunch of hard landscape commitments). I round out prepping my whiteboard for the upcoming week by writing my 3-4 weekly goals in the bottom right corner.

Is this excessive? For me, no. Through months of trial and error I've refined this system to be as useful as possible for the way I work. I like being able to see my week at a glance in terms of meetings/appointments and the work I intend to do. I also like having the higher perspective areas (weekly goals, 3-4 month goals, percolating projects) that allow me to not get buried in the weeds and ensure I'm moving in the right direction.

Do you think something like this will work for you? If you give it a try I'd love to hear how it goes and if you have any questions feel free to drop a comment and I'll go into greater detail about anything I do here (and/or why).

Harnessing Psychological Capital to Make Work Better

Positive psychology, the science of human flourishing, has a lot of valuable contributions to make to the pursuit of good work. One of the key constructs that has been developed as a result of this focus on the positive end of the psychological continuum is something called Psychological Capital, or PsyCap. It's a construct composed of the synergistic relationship between hope, resilience, optimism, and self-efficacy. The research shows that these four states, when taken together, result in more than just the sum of their parts. The fact that it is state-like means that it isn't fixed like personality but is more variable on a moment to moment basis (but not as transient as something like mood).

I think PsyCap has a myriad of applications in the world of work, particularly for indie workers (in fact, my in progress thesis heavily draws on the research done on PsyCap). Take a moment and think about how each of the four constructs that make up PsyCap impact your work life. Ever have anything terrible happen at work or make a mistake that knocked you on your butt? Your resilience taps into your ability to come back from that setback. Have you ever been given a task to do or taken on a project that seems completely beyond your ability? You were likely feeling the effects of low self-efficacy. Do you go to work each day thinking about your goals and the multiple pathways you could take to achieve them? That's hope. Do you take credit for the good things that happen in your life and don't let the bad things jeopardize your self-concept? You have optimism.

One of the best aspects of PsyCap is that it's developable. This makes it particularly interesting to companies and anybody who is interested in being as happy and productive as possible. Since it is comprised of multiple constructs there are multiple approaches to improving it. Here are a couple ideas:

1. Develop self-efficacy via personal/professional development, mentorship, or seeking other support.

Self-efficacy refers to whether you believe you're capable of achieving something. When you have high self-efficacy you feel like you have the necessary skills and abilities to reach your goal. In the realm of organizational psychology research, self-efficacy has been shown to be one of the best predictors of job performance. Developing your self-efficacy requires constantly striving to take on projects and assignments that are slightly outside your comfort zone. I say slightly outside because it forces you to develop your skills in order to keep up but it also won't crush you. Having mastery experiences, essentially deliberately practicing, is one of the best ways to develop your own self-efficacy. You can also develop it by seeking guidance and assistance from those who have greater experience or skills than you. Supportive mentors and colleagues are great places to turn when looking to increase self-efficacy.

2. Develop hope by setting meaningful goals and brainstorming the potential barriers you'll face in achieving them and multiple ways to overcome those challenges.

Hope colloquially refers to the belief that everything will turn out alright in the end. Academically, it refers to having agency (self-directed behavior) in the pursuit of goals and the ability of generating alternative ways of reaching those goals (pathways). A good way to develop your hope is to spend some time getting extremely clear about what exactly you're trying to accomplish -- your goals. Push yourself to make them specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (commonly known as a SMART goal). Once you've gotten particularly clear about what your goals actually are, then you can begin brainstorming various ways of achieving them. Think about the barriers you're likely to face as you work toward these goals. What can you do to go around or break through these barriers? How will you know when it's time to change paths? Take notes while brainstorming and review these notes at a regular interval as you work toward your goals.

3. Develop optimism by taking a larger perspective when looking at failures and by taking credit for success.

Optimism refers to an explanatory style where you are comfortable ascribing personally relevant reasons for the good things that happen in your life while mitigating the personal impact of negative events. For example, an optimistic explanation for getting a promotion is, "I worked really hard the last six months and I really deserved this," whereas a pessimistic explanation would be, "Wow, I got lucky that my boss didn't notice all the screw ups I've made recently," or, "Everybody else must really suck in order for me to get a promotion." In the case of a negative event like making a major error on an important piece of work optimism is still possible, "I made that error because I've been extremely busy and stressed out for the past few months. I know I'm not always like this and I can make sure it doesn't happen again." It's not about burying your head in the sand and not being accountable for the bad things that inevitably happen in life but explaining them in such a way as to not let them be commentary about who you are as a person.

Look back on 2-3 "good" and "bad" things that happened to you in the past few months. Why did they happen? Practice writing out an optimistic explanation for why these events happened. Try to notice the type of explanation you're using the next time something particularly good or bad happens.

4. Develop resilience by deliberately practicing the art of "bouncing back."

Resilience refers to the ability of being able to get back to your previous level of well-being or even better after something bad happens. One way to develop your ability to be resilient is to have a plan of action in place and ready to go in case something bad happens. One of my coaching clients developed the excellent strategy of creating an "Emergency Drawer" that she filled with some of her favorite things and she would only open it when something bad happened. This helps because it helps get you thinking more positively in the midst of negativity. In a similar vein, focus on getting the next small "win" after a significant setback. Being resilient doesn't mean you instantly bounce back or that you can't experience negative feelings. Instead, it means you're able to snap yourself out of negativity and turn the tide toward recovery and growth. Getting that first win can help you begin building positive momentum again.

Do you think you're particularly strong in one of the four components of PsyCap? Do you struggle with one of the components? How else might this cornerstone of positive psychology be applied to your life?

Photo by Alex:

Weekend Reading #4

Here's this week's highlights. What have you read in the past seven days that caught your attention?

Semper Virilis: A Roadmap to Manhood in the 21st Century - Art of Manliness

This is a long one clocking in at approximately 20,000 words. More like a short e-book than an article, really. Lots of good things for men to ponder. It's a pretty measured approach to a potentially sensitive subject that left me with a lot of thoughts and potential self-improvement ideas.

Work On Yourself First - Create.Learn.Live

Jeff hits the nail on the head regarding the difference between using external or internal explanations for what is happening around us. One of my favorite things to tell my team when I was coaching ice hockey was, "Focus on what you control." The things you control invariably fall under your own self-improvement.

Watching the Corners: On Future-Proofing Your Passion - 43 Folders

This is by no means a new piece of writing but it is one of my all-time favorites. I've been working with a coaching client recently on issues around identifying career next steps and this article came to mind as something that might be relevant to her. Merlin has a way with words (which makes his inevitable book something I'm looking forward to like nothing else).

If you want to stay up to date with everything that's happening here at The Workologist might I recommend you sign up for The Workologist Newsletter? You'll get a free e-book that focuses on using positive psychology to improve your work and you'll always be on the cutting edge of the work I'm doing here.

Photo by Elana Amsterdam

The Seven Sins of Independent Work

You may be familiar with the seven deadly sins laid out in the Christian tradition. They are lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride. Using this framework I thought it might be interesting to propose seven "sins" independent workers must avoid if they want to create sustainable and meaningful indie careers. Here's what I came up with:

1. Obsession

Many indie workers are driven to their work by an intrinsic interest in their specific field. Intrinsic motivation is a great thing but left completely unchecked it can easily bleed into overwork and burnout. As an indie worker you often don't have the clear signals that mark the beginning and end of a work day so the tendency is often to work longer hours than traditional employees. There's an almost constant sense of "there's more work to be done!" when you work for and/or by yourself. You must fight this urge to let work become an obsession. You must allow deliberate restoration to become part of what "working hard" means to you.

2. Envy

If you're the flavor of indie worker who makes his living on the internet then you've likely fallen victim to envy more than once. It's incredibly easy to look around and see other indie workers who have nicer websites, more interesting projects, bigger clients, or some other aspect of their work that can fill you with envy if left unchecked. Comparison is a dangerous game to play when the comparison group consists of the entire internet/rest of the world. To the extent that you can you must use internal metrics of comparison when gauging your level of success. Instead of comparing yourself to someone in your field who seems to be doing better than you try comparing yourself to your past-self. Use whatever metrics you'd like but only use them when comparing where you are now to where you used to be.

3. Formlessness

One of the most beautiful things about being an indie worker is the autonomy to work however you want. One of the most frustrating things about being an indie worker is the autonomy to work however you want. A complete and utter lack of structure almost never works for indie workers. There's obviously a great degree of individual preference at play with how much structure we prefer in how we work but I've never seen anybody who lacks any structure whatsoever being successful. How can you build a little bit more structure into your day without turning your indie work into a regular 9-to-5 job?

4. Busyness

It's easy to equate being busy with being productive. The always busy indie worker is rarely the truly successful indie worker. Being constantly busy means you're having trouble identifying and separating what is actually important to you and the work you do from the rest of the information you're flooded with on a daily basis. Try using the Eisenhower Matrix of Urgent/Not Urgent and Important/Not Important continuums to identify where most of your time is being spent and to ensure you're spending as much time as possible on that Important but Not Urgent work that so often represents the most meaningful and difficult work we can do.

5. Tunnel Vision

Personal and professional development are largely the same thing when you're an indie worker. Whereas a traditional employee may have opportunities to learn new skills via their employer an indie worker does not have anybody telling them what they need to learn next to move forward in their career. Indie workers must cast a wide net in order to read the trends in their specific market and identify which skills will allow them to do the work that's needed in the future. It can be easy to get locked into a tunnel vision situation where the only thing that appears to matter is completing the next project, responding to the next email, and cranking through the to-do list without ever stepping back and assessing the larger situation.

6. Distraction

While indie workers need to make sure they avoid tunnel vision, they also need to know how to block out distraction to truly focus on the task at hand. Distraction robs us of our ability to deliberately practice which is the best way to develop our skills. It prevents us from developing the concentration that allows us to do work that truly creative work that goes beyond the surface level. In a world where your next paycheck isn't guaranteed distraction is more than just an idle waste of time -- it's stealing money from yourself and your family.

7. Isolation

Despite the moniker of "indie worker" it's impossible to be 100% independent at all times. You still have colleagues even if you don't work in the same physical location or even in the same industry. Part of the reason for the popularity of coworking spaces is the fact that indie workers have been craving a way to connect with like-minded colleagues since there's only so much work you can do in your home office before the social isolation becomes too much to handle. Social isolation can stunt your professional and personal development and make what seemed like a great idea at the time (becoming an indie worker) seem depressingly masochistic in retrospect.

What else keeps you from doing your best work as an indie worker? What should we add to the list?

Photo by See-Ming Lee

How to Make Reflection an Automatic Part of Your Life

I've written about why I think building the habit of reflection is arguably the most important habit you can develop. In the aforementioned article I briefly referred to the idea of scheduling reflection into your routine but never went into much detail about what that looks like or shared the specific templates I use in my own reflection. I'd like to rectify that today.

One of the tricky things about making the time to regularly reflect is that you often don't think about doing it until you're kind of beyond the point where it would be most helpful. For example, before I made this a regular part of my routine I would find myself needing to "get away" and spend some time in reflection when shit had essentially been hitting the fan for awhile and I knew something drastic needed to be done. If I had taken the time to reflect before that point then I probably wouldn't have ever gotten to the point where the proverbial fecal matter was getting thrown around.

Reflection can happen across a broad continuum. Reflecting on a single project and the progress you're making on it would be a very micro-level type of reflection. On the other extreme end of the reflection continuum pondering the "big" questions about life, the universe, and everything is a completely different flavor of reflection. Given the vast differences in the reflection you can be doing it can be helpful to think about what type of reflection would be most valuable to you and your current situation. For that reason I schedule the more micro level reflection to happen more frequently than the huge macro-level type of reflection. David Allen's book Making It All Work uses an altitude metaphor which I think is a great way to think about the various levels of reflection and what kind of detail you should go into for each one.

From Making It All Work, the four levels of reflection are:

• 20,000 Feet Reflection (every 2 months)

• 30,000 Feet Reflection (every 4 months)

• 40,000 Feet Reflection (every 9 months)

• 50,000 Feet Reflection (every year)

• [Grab the templates I use here]

For each of these I have an item in my task management software that says, "Conduct 'X' Review," that pops up at the proper interval. That way I don't have to remember to do it -- it just shows up automatically. In terms of actually conducting the review, I just open the required template and spend some time jotting down my answers to the prompts. After responding to the prompts (and saving the document in Evernote) I'll go back and read the previous reflection (i.e. if I just responded to the 30,000 foot review I'll go back and read the 30,000 foot review I did 4 months prior). I like to wait until after I respond to the latest template before going back and reading what I had written before because I don't want to bias my current response. Plus, it's cool to see the similarities and differences afterward.

Setting up a system like this ensures that you're being reminded at the appropriate intervals to think about the larger questions -- the questions and ideas that will ensure you're moving in the right direction and allocating your time and attention as well as you possibly can. There's no reason to rely on your brain to remind you to take time to reflect when something like a calendar can do the job much better. Waiting until you feel an urgent need to spend time in reflection is usually a sign you've waited too long.

Photo by Hege