Learn to Focus to Stand Apart from the Crowd

One of the best ways to ensure your continued relevance and even enhanced prestige in anything is to be able to do something that most people can't do. I think it's a good habit to periodically look around yourself to see what skills seem to be in demand that many people are lacking. The most glaringly obvious one to me right now is the ability to truly and deeply focus on one thing. This skill, and that's what it is, a skill, seems to be fading from the personal arsenals of many people I know. I think it largely stems from a lack of adaptation as our world changes under the weight of incredible technological advancements.

The new norm is to multitask when working at the computer. The constant chime of notifications follow us from desktop to commute to personal time away from work as our phones, tablets, and computers become more mobile and ubiquitous. There's nothing inherently bad about information and there are plenty of reasons you may want to be constantly connected. I'm simply arguing that this reality is resulting in fewer and fewer people who can shut out these distractions and truly focus on something for a sustained period of time.

This starts to become important when you realize how much of the truly great work that exists from history and today relies on the ability to focus. Without focus we are constantly flitting across the surface of ideas and concepts -- never diving deep enough to figure out how they are, or may be, connected. Deep insight requires deep focus. Large projects with complex parts require us to shut out the world long enough to interact with information and ideas at a level that can only be reached with sustained focus.

Focus requires effort and it's incredibly difficult. It's easier to be distracted. It's easier to live and work on a more superficial level where the constant tug of distraction is a welcome respite from the hard work of thinking long and deep about challenging things. Luckily, there are two forces working in your favor if you choose to develop this ability. First, because it's so difficult there are less people willing to put in the hard work to get good at it -- making you more valuable and rare. Second, as you may have noticed from my choice of verbs a couple sentences ago, the ability to focus is something you can develop. It's something you can get better at with practice.

I've been spending the better part of the past few years trying to do exactly that. It's a long process and often results in frustration with how slowly I'm making progress. But like anything worth doing, the difficulty is justified.

Meditation and the development of mindfulness is always cited as a great way to develop the ability to focus, and I won't argue with that. My meditation practice, when I'm doing it consistently, is incredibly valuable. However, I think there are other ways you can train yourself to focus better so I'd rather share some of those lesser talked about ways:

1. Listen to an album in complete solitude.

2. Watch a movie with full concentration.

3. Work with a paper and pen.

4. Read with nothing but the content in front of you.

5. Wash dishes by hand and in silence.

6. Run without audio stimulation

Boring? Maybe. Do you have to do these things like this every single time? Of course not. If you don't normally listen, read, watch, or run like this, though, you'll quickly find that it can be very difficult to do these things with full focus. And that's the point. Try picking one of these things to do each week and take notice of what the experience is like. Build up your tolerance for focus over time by slowly adding additional time or activities to your "focus regimen."

You will be one of very few people who knows how to cut through the discord of distractions to bring your mental abilities fully to bear on tough problems. Kind of like when a professional body builder shows up at an average gym, you will be on a different level than most people -- and you will be noticed. Over time you can develop the reputation as the person who works with such deep focus that you can fly through work in half the time as most people and the solutions you come up with are deeper and creative than those who never learned to focus can develop.

It can be hard to predict what specific skills you'll need in the future but it's an incredibly safe bet to think the ability to focus will be at the center of any great work.

Photo by Sylvain Courant

Workologism #1: Multiple Types of Work, Multiple Locations

Have multiple types of work to do throughout the day and access to multiple locations? Try slightly shifting your work environment to stimulate your brain. A recent day of work for me looked like this:

• Read newspaper and drink first cup of coffee while sitting outside.

• Stand at my desk to do some administrative work and get organized for the day.

• Move to outside bar/countertop and a tall chair for second cup of coffee and a couple hours of writing.

• Respond to emails in recliner in the living room.

• Move back to standing desk to do a couple coaching calls.

• Take care of some business reading in hammock on back porch.

• Go to office on campus to meet with student and do some academic writing.

• Finish off the work day by doing some editing and more emails sitting at the kitchen table.

Your mileage may vary depending on the types of work you have to do but try expanding the various locations you're willing to work in throughout the day. No need to make massive location changes -- even just changing locations within your office or house may be enough to get your mind moving in novel ways. No reason to chain yourself to your desk if you aren't getting the level of productivity you think is possible.

Edit - Great minds think alike? Cal Newport just published an article with a similar idea he calls a "concentration circuit." Check it out!

Photo by me

A Coaching Case Study: The Challenges of Working From Home

One of the biggest obstacles to working with a coach is simply having no frame of reference for what working with a coach is like. It seems that the majority of my clients end up telling me they wish they had started earlier and that the actual process of working with a coach was not as scary or intimidating as they thought it was going to be. To that end, I'm going to start a series where I offer some case studies of real coaching engagements I've had with real people (with identifying information removed, obviously).

The relevant information for this case is that I'm working with somebody who is transitioning from a traditional 9-to-5 office job to 4 days a week of telecommuting. He's having troubles making this transition to working from home dealing particularly with distraction, lack of productivity, and procrastination. He thought it was going to be an awesome change to his life but now he's wondering if he made a huge mistake.

Here is what our coaching process looked like:

• Our first session was centered on building rapport and me learning as much as possible about the client. He filled out some paperwork ahead of time to help get me up to speed so we didn't have to spend a ton of time with background information.

• In addition to building rapport, we spend most of the session talking about why he pushed for this change in work arrangement and what his vision was for how it would change his work and life. I left him with a homework assignment to complete before our next session which involved writing about what being a successful telecommuter might look and feel like to him.

• In our second session we talked about his homework assignment and really solidified what he's shooting for. We then spent the rest of the time doing a values elicitation exercise to help him get super clear on his underlying values. Once his values were extremely clear to him we started the process of identifying where his current behaviors were falling short of the values he holds. We also identified where in his life and work his behaviors and values are aligned. We started creating a list as we ran out of time in the session. His homework was to finish creating the list.

• We started the third session by looking at the list of mismatches between his values and his behaviors. I had him pick the one that seemed the most important. He homed in on the idea of a lack of discipline in the way he has treated his working from home even though Discipline is one of the values that emerged from his values elucidation. We started talking about the changes he would need to make to bring more discipline into his work. We brainstormed a bunch together and I asked him to pick just one to focus on for the next week. He decided that he wanted to try a Morning Start Up Routine that involves planning his upcoming day, writing in his journal, and completing 20 minutes of his most important work task before checking email or any social networks.

• I sent him an email a couple days later to see how things are going and offer some support.

• We started our fourth session talking about how the Morning Start Up Routine experiment went. He found a decent amount of success when he did the routine but forgot to do it a couple of days. We talked about how he can prevent himself from forgetting to do it in the future and he decided to add it as a recurring task on his calendar and he made a little note to stick to the bulletin board in his office. He decided to try adding on an End of Day Routine experiment and we talked about how he could best install that habit given what he learned from the Morning Start Up Routine experiment.

• Moving into our fifth and final session he felt pretty good about the two experiments he had done so far. In order to make sure progress was going to continue after this final coaching engagement we spent most of the session creating a list of other experiments he can do to reduce the gaps between his daily behaviors and the values we elucidated in our second session. We spent some time talking about the order in which he should tackle these and how he will judge whether he was successful. This led us into a brief discussion about the importance of self-reflection and this prompted him to add the development of a self-reflection routine into his list of experiments.

• We finished up the final coaching session with a virtual high five and the promise to check-in after a couple months to see how everything is going and possibly consider an additional "booster" coaching engagement if he feels it's necessary.

Coaching Toward Self-Development

Across five sessions he made serious progress on tackling the productivity issues that emerged from shifting into a telecommuting role and not being used to that style of work. Most importantly, he built his capacity to self-develop by going through the process of identifying mini-experiments he could conduct by himself and then coming to conclusions about whether or not they are improving his situation. Any good coach should be able to teach his or her clients how to continue coaching themselves after the coaching engagement is completed.

Hopefully that gives you a bit of a glimpse into what a potential coaching engagement with me actually looks like. Do you have any other questions about the process of coaching? Shoot me an email (samspurlin@gmail.com) or leave a comment.

Photo by Arlo Bates

The List #15

Welcome to another edition of The List. The List is a curated list of my favorite things from the past week. Articles, videos, podcasts -- the media always changes but the unifying characteristic is that I loved whatever I end up sharing.

1. Advanced Tricycling by Merlin Mann

I look forward to new Merlin Mann talks like most kids look forward to Christmas morning. I'm an unapologetic fan of what Merlin does and how he thinks about what doing great work looks like. This is his latest talk about what it means to get better at something and how to even know what you're supposed to be getting better at.

2. Looking at Productivity as a State of Mind by Sendhil Mullainanthan (NYT)

Factories imposed discipline. They enforced strict work hours. There were rules for when you could go home and for when you had to show up at the beginning of your shift. If you arrived late you could be locked out for the day. For workers being paid piece rates, this certainly got them up and at work on time. You can even see something similar with the assembly line. Those operations dictate a certain pace of work. Like a running partner, an assembly line enforces a certain speed.

As Professor Clark provocatively puts it: “Workers effectively hired capitalists to make them work harder. They lacked the self-control to achieve higher earnings on their own.”

A provocative and fascinating idea about the Industrial Revolution -- and I think it has merit. There's something to be said for the external pressures that force us to work hard and have discipline. When I talk to independent workers one of the things I hear most commonly is how difficult it is to be productive and do great work when working from home and/or for yourself.

It seems to me that the future of work is a matter of finding the balance between the oppressive yet highly productive paradigm of the Industrial Revolution-era factory and the incredibly autonomous yet completely structure-less la-la land of independent knowledge work. Building external pressure into your work day while also allowing for autonomy is a delicate and important balance.

3. Why I Just Asked My Students to Put Their Laptops Away by Clay Shirky (Medium)

If I ever teach in a college setting, I'm going to make this article required reading on day one. It's the best argument I've heard for why laptops should be put away during most college classes. I've always felt that it was important for students to be treated like adults and if we wanted to use our computers in class then we should be able to. However, Shirky makes some points that makes me realize it's more complex than that:

"The fact that hardware and software is being professionally designed to distract was the first thing that made me willing to require rather than merely suggest that students not use devices in class. There are some counter-moves in the industry right now — software that takes over your screen to hide distractions, software that prevents you from logging into certain sites or using the internet at all, phones with Do Not Disturb options — but at the moment these are rear-guard actions. The industry has committed itself to an arms race for my students’ attention, and if it’s me against Facebook and Apple, I lose."

And,

"Anyone distracted in class doesn’t just lose out on the content of the discussion, they create a sense of permission that opting out is OK, and, worse, a haze of second-hand distraction for their peers. In an environment like this, students need support for the better angels of their nature (or at least the more intellectual angels), and they need defenses against the powerful short-term incentives to put off complex, frustrating tasks. That support and those defenses don’t just happen, and they are not limited to the individual’s choices. They are provided by social structure, and that structure is disproportionately provided by the professor, especially during the first weeks of class."

If you're a professor, I'd love to hear what your take is on this article and your own policy for computers in class. If you're a student, this article might make you think about your computer usage in a new light as well.

Photo by Katherine Lim

There Are Some Things $100 Million Can't Buy

Months ago there were a spate of articles in the Wall Street Journal about Mohamed El-Erian leaving his position as CEO of Pimco, one of the world's largest financial companies. I had never heard of him and I had only recently started reading the WSJ so I didn't really know Pimco, either. I do remember being struck by how surprised everyone seemed and how there was obviously something going on behind the scenes. Most people chalked it up to a clash of personalities between El-Erian and Pimco's co-founder Bill Gross and everything seemed to go quiet for a couple months.

A couple weeks ago El-Erian surfaced again and the full picture behind his departure is a little bit clearer:

About a year ago, I asked my daughter several times to do something -- brush her teeth, I think it was -- with no success. I reminded her that it was not so long ago that she would have immediately responded, and I wouldn't have had to ask her multiple times; she would have known from my tone of voice that i was serious.

She asked me to wait a minute, went to her room and came back with a piece of paper. It was a list that she had compiled of her important events and activities that I had missed due to work commitments.

Talk about a wake-up call.

Now he works as an economic adviser with Allianz and work takes up about 50% of his time.

From my perspective, this looks a lot like why many people choose to go into independent work. Granted, El-Erian is not a typical independent worker considering he made roughly $100 million last year. It's obviously easier (if not easier, at least more financially viable) for him to scale back his work hours and spend more time with his family.

On a very simple level, this is great evidence of what deliberate decision-making about work can look like. Regardless of our level in an organization or our income we can choose to think about what matters the most in our lives and then take steps to make decisions that support those values. The beautiful part is that this looks different for everyone. The only similarity that I'm pushing is the commitment to being deliberate about the course of action taken instead of locking into a groove and plowing away, heads down, for 40 years without taking a second to look around or ask some reflective questions.

What's the smallest step you can take to make your work more meaningful?

What's the smallest step you can take to make your work more enjoyable?

We can't all make $100 million a year or be CEOs of huge financial firms but we can all make deliberate decisions - even tiny ones - that better align our work, lives, and values.

Photo by Fortune Live Media

Creating a Sense of Progress

One of the biggest challenges for any kind of knowledge worker, especially for those who work independently, is feeling like you're never making any progress. When I was a teacher I very rarely felt like I was making any progress because I felt like I was on a treadmill of lesson prep and delivery. When I got to graduate school I quickly realized that the work never finished there either. No matter how caught up I thought I was, there's always something else I could/should be doing. Now that I have one foot in graduate school and one foot in my professional/entrepreneurial career, I'm realizing that sense of progress I've been craving and missing from before is still the same.

Occasionally, though, I'll get a glimpse of what it feels like to truly make progress. I'll have a big week and knock off two or three meaty and substantial projects. It'll feel like I have actually covered some ground -- that I've moved from point A to a distant point B and it feels incredible. For that reason, I've been trying to pay closer to attention to how I can build more progress into my work.

First, progress is simply the sensation of moving forward on meaningful projects. It's not simply doing a lot of stuff, it's doing a lot of the right stuff. It's the sensation that arises when you realize you're actually closing the gap between reality and your goals. It's being able to look at the ground you've covered so far and making a realistic prediction about when you might be able to finish something.

Second, developing a sense of progress is vital to experiencing flow in your work. In his research Csikszentmihalyi identified three prerequisites to experiencing flow: having a high skill/challenge ratio, having clear goals, and having clear feedback. The combination of having clear goals and clear feedback is also called progress. Without it you don't know if you're heading in the right direction and you're never able to fully lose yourself in the task at hand because you'll be too preoccupied.

Without a sense of progress it's a given that there will be no flow. You will also lose motivation. You will be frustrated. You will push yourself closer and closer to burnout.

Luckily, there are some things you can do to help create a sense of progress as a highly autonomous worker dealing with data, information, and knowledge instead of widgets to be cranked. Here are a handful of my favorites.

1. Work Logs: Looking back at what you accomplished at the end of a period of time and making some kind of record of it is a great way to cultivate a sense of progress. You could close out your day by taking 5-10 minutes and writing out what you did. I actually really like to do this on a monthly basis by asking myself, "What notable things did I do this month?" It's very cool to be able to look back at 12 months of entries and see a complete list of all the things I did that I felt were notable.

2. Keeping a Shipped List: When you finish something substantial don't just cross it off your list and let it slip into the depths of your memory! Slap that bad boy on a "shipped list" and keep it somewhere prominent! I like to keep part of my whiteboard reserved for a list of the major projects I've shipped in the past 2-3 months. It feels good to look at it and see how much I've accomplished.

3. Setting Clear Goals: Like I mentioned when writing about flow earlier, having clear goals is a key component of getting a sense of progress. Goals can operate at multiple different levels, but there are two types of goals I tend to set that I think have the biggest impact on my sense of progress; daily and weekly. Weekly goals are set during my Weekly Review and are usually 1-3 large/medium things I want to accomplish over the work week. Daily goals are the 2-3 things I should accomplish on that specific day to feel like I did what I set out to do. Force yourself to make your goals specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART, yo!).

4. Using Checklists: Checklists are a relatively new addition to my workflow but I'm really digging the sense of progress they give me. I wrote more about them here but in a nutshell checklists help me offload the chore of remembering the specific things I know I have to do in order to have a good day/week/month. As an added bonus (and particularly relevant for creating a sense of progress) checking items off a checklist is supremely satisfying and a great way to feel like you're making progress.

If you have other ways you build a sense of progress into an otherwise progress-less work life I'd love to hear about your strategies in the comments!

Photo by Brent Daley

The List #14

Happiest of Fridays!

I'm going to kick off this week's The List by being a presumptuous ass and linking to my own article. I had the privilege of having my third article published at 99U. It's about this idea I've been obsessing about for awhile and is really hard to write about coherently. Basically, what does it mean to work with dignity? I'm impressed they decided to run it because it's not necessarily the type of article that's likely to go viral but I think the ideas behind it are really important. It would mean a lot to me if you checked it out.

Which Habits Should I Focus On? - Charles Duhigg

This is a great article from the guy who wrote the book on habits. It answers one of the most common questions clients of mine often have in a really articulate and intelligent way. If you're interested in habit change and are wondering where to start you could do much worse than checking out this article.

Silicon Valley's Contract Worker Problem - New York Magazine

The more I read about the sharing economy and services like Uber, TaskRabbit, and other platforms for "independent work" the more I'm realizing this isn't what I mean by independent work. Independent work deliberately chosen for the benefits one gains from working in this fashion is not the same thing as working for these various platforms as an independent contractor so these companies can get away with not paying benefits and the other responsibilities of having employees. I need to develop my thinking on this further but its articles like this that are causing me to pause and think.

What are the best things you read this week?

Photo by Nicolo Paternoster

Digital vs. Analog: The Battle of Productivity Systems

A couple weeks ago I was honored to be mentioned on an episode of Mac Power Users about task management. Listening to David and Katie talk about task management systems got me thinking about how my system has evolved over time. One of the most common questions I hear from people who are interested in developing some sort of system to manage their work is whether they should go analog (paper, pencil, notebooks, folders, etc.) or digital (software, paperless, tablets, phones, etc.).

There's a certain concreteness, a solidity, to using an analog system. Shuffling papers, arranging notes, and actually manipulating physical material can be a great way to make your system feel more alive and personal. On the other hand, going digital means being able to handle more information more efficiently and being able to always have the entirety of your system close at hand. I used to agonize whether I'd be better off going full-digital or full-analog until I realized that was a stupid false dichotomy. I could, and should, do both.

The ultimate goal of any productivity or work management system should be tied to completing the work itself, not the details of how it's managed. Getting organized is a step on the path to doing meaningful work as well as living an overall more deliberate life. There are no style points to be won for sexy systems, no competitions for who can manage the most information, or who can have the cleanest all-digital or all-analog system. Liberating myself from the mindset that I had to choose one over the other allowed me to take the best from both worlds and craft a system that is intimately tied to the ways I like to think and work.

The Digital

My digital system allows me to capture information at will and with a minimum of effort or friction. It allows me to manage the influx of information that we all seem to have to deal with in a constantly connected world and a work life that never really seems to turn off. The digital components of my system include:

• Capturing photos with my iPhone that are automatically sent to Evernote via IFTTT (receipts, reminders, paper notes, etc.).

• Capturing thoughts, next actions, and ideas with the Things iOS app.

• Using Evernote as a "digital filing cabinet" for storing all archived project materials as well as active reference material.

• Using Gmail, archiving all emails, and trusting my ability to find anything I might need from my past with some simple searches.

• Using Things to manage all my active and deferred projects, next actions, and someday/maybe ideas.

• Using Fantastical to manage my calendar on my computer, iPhone, and iPad.

• Using Dropbox to store active project documents (which are moved to Evernote once completed).

The digital component of my system allows me to be highly mobile and trust that I can do my work wherever I happen to be. The somewhat ephemeral nature of digital information also allows me to not worry about how much stuff I'm throwing at my system as it's easy to filter and search for what I need. If I were using a paper list to keep track of all my next actions I may be more hesitant to add something minor to it. By using Things I don't feel that hesitancy which allows me to be much more complete with the capture component of my organizational system.

The Analog

The characteristics that make my digital system awesome are also what makes it insufficient for a truly complete organizational system. Since it's so easy to throw a lot of information at it and store it in a simple way I have a ton of information in it. Having to look at my entire system every time I need to make a decision about what to do next would be an extremely draining system. That's one reason I've evolved the analog component of my system.

• I create a daily index card that has my hard landscape responsibilities (primarily appointments and meetings with their requisite pre-work) written on it. At the start of the day I will also add 2-3 goals for what I want to accomplish today. This notecard is then clipped to the cover of the notebook I carry with me throughout the day.

• I have a black notebook with perforated pages that I use to take notes throughout the day. At the end of the day I tear out the pages I used and throw them in my physical inbox for processing.

• My physical inbox is the landing strip for all the physical pieces of information that come into my life. I'll empty the papers from my bag into it at the end of the day, snail mail, and any other physical items I need to process. The inbox gets processed every other day or so.

• I have a black box with a handful of manila folders for storing my physical reference files. If I can I'll scan something and add it to Evernote but if it's something I feel like I should keep a physical copy of it goes in this box.

• My whiteboard is attached to the wall next to my desk and it's where I keep some weekly, monthly, and longer term goals listed. I also use sticky tack to mount my pre-made daily index cards during my weekly review. I'll also use it for my first round of mind mapping when planning an article or other project (this article started as a mind map on my whiteboard).

• I'm experimenting with keeping reusable paper checklists for daily, weekly, and monthly activities I know I want/need to complete. The monthly and weekly checklists are tacked to my whiteboard whereas the daily one usually just sits on my desk or is clipped to my notebook.

The analog component of my system allows me to focus in on a much smaller time frame. I'm able to see my daily goals and simply focus on those instead of having to constantly live inside my relatively massive digital system. It's kind of like going to the bank. I know I have more money than I actually need for the week or day in there so instead of carrying around my entire life savings I just withdraw what I need on a regular basis. My digital system is my bank with the entirety of my information living in it and I withdraw what I need into my analog system on a regular basis.

The linchpin to this system has always been my weekly review. With the weekly review installed into my routine I know that I can let go of my larger system and just focus on getting work done for seven days at a time. Regardless of what has changed in my life or the new information that has been thrown at me, I know I'll take a step back and reassess every week. This frees me up to not use mental cycles constantly thinking about the changes in my life or worrying about what I might be missing -- I know I'll take a look at the whole system soon enough.

If I had a straight analog system I'd worry that I wasn't keeping a truly complete collection of everything I have to do. If I had a straight digital system I'd be distracted by the sheer immensity of the information living in the system. By embracing both I've been able to create something that melds together the best of both.

Photos by Jens Schott Knudsenand Jenni C

The List #13

Since last week's List was a special positive-psychology edition a few of the articles I'm sharing this week are a little bit older. Doesn't mean they aren't awesome, though.

I also want to start casting my net a little bit wider when it comes to what I read on a regular basis so don't hesitate to share some of your favorite sources of reading in the comments or via Twitter.

Kick back with a cup of joe this weekend and enjoy some of my favorite articles from across the web.

America, Say Goodbye to the Era of Big Work - LA Times

I know this website does not appeal exclusively to independent workers -- and that's perfectly awesome. I'm interested in the idea of meaningful and engaging work regardless of the specific context. However, I do have a soft spot for articles about the growth of independent work as it is directly related to my academic/research interests.

The Strange and Curious Tale of the Last True Hermit - GQ

This is just one of the most interesting articles I've read in awhile. Fascinating story about a guy who lived in the wilderness for an insanely long time. There's something about the need for solitude somewhere in here as well. But mostly it's just a really interesting story.

Reboot or Die Trying - Outside

I'm a sucker for stories about people doing things to take deliberate control over the role technology plays in our lives. Between this and the Distraction Free iPhone article (which inspired one of my articles from earlier this week).

John Cage on the Necessity of Boredom - Cal Newport

I feel like every time Cal writes something on his site I end up sharing it here. Obviously, I'm a bit of a fan of the stuff Cal does and how he writes about it. This is a super short one, but it's a great reminder for anyone trying to do creative and meaningful work.

“If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.”

Photo by Jason Thompson

Write an Article About Checklists; Check

My weekly planning process is constantly evolving as the demands of my world change along with my understanding of how I can be at my best. I recently came to the somewhat obvious realization that there is a certain percentage of my work/life that happens every single day, every week, and every month. These items are a combination of mundane administration, meaningful work, and aspirational intentions. When these things happen at a pre-determined regular interval I know I'm much more likely to feel better about my work and life.

I decided to use this realization to more systematically plan and manage my days/weeks/months. The first step was to simply brainstorm the items that I know need to happen regularly in order for me to feel good about what I'm doing. Thinking about what I have to do on a daily basis to keep my life running I came up with this list (all lists in this article are slightly edited to censor confidential information):

• Read Wall Street Journal

• Make bed

• Take vitamin

• Meditate

• Exercise

• Write in journal

• Read for enjoyment

Mundane? Yes. However, these are the tasks I know I need to complete every day in order to not feel like I'm slacking in some regard. Obviously that's not everything I need to accomplish in a day. It's more like the bedrock on which more meaningful/important/urgent tasks are situated.

Similarly, there are a handful of things I know I need to accomplish every normal work week in order to meet my current life and work responsibilities:

• Do some bulk cooking or make sure I still have enough leftovers for quick/easy lunch and dinners.

• Read through all the academic articles I set aside for this week's reading.

• Draft two articles for The Workologist (plus a link post on Friday)

• Complete all my teaching assistant responsibilities (go to my office hour, read for the upcoming week of classes, go to the classes, respond to student emails, submit time sheets)

• Complete 10 hours on [consulting project I'm contracted to work on 10 hours a week].

• Do my Weekly Review

• Go to my weekly hockey game.

• Finish the week's issue of The Economist.

• Record [podcast I'm currently piloting with a friend].

• Have Outlier Consulting Group meeting with Jeff.

These two lists contain, at the very last, the starting points for high functioning days and weeks. Doing some of these things is pretty automatic but some of them require more conscious thought. These tasks are very important and are a key aspect of me feeling good about how I'm doing but at the same time they don't really represent the work that other people are expecting from me. I need to do these things but the quicker and more efficiently I can do them the more time I'll have to work on other things. Putting them on easy to access checklists makes sure I'm not forgetting anything and lets me focus all my energy on getting them done efficiently without having to also remember what they all are or if I'm forgetting anything.

Finally, on a monthly basis I need to complete the following:

• Write/publish The Workologist newsletter.

• Complete 2-3 hours of focused business development activities.

• Draft and record en*theos class.

• Draft and submit [monthly freelance article].

• Conduct monthly review.

The other work that exists in my life is either a semi-weekly project/task, a discrete/one-off project, or brand new information that either becomes something I have to do on a recurring basis (daily, weekly, semi-weekly, or monthly) or a one-off task/project.

By thinking about my work with this framework of recurring/discrete projects I'm gaining much more clarity about what should be a constant in my life and what I need to be more deliberate about creating time to work on. It's helping me figure out how to use my time more efficiently and allowing me to be more conscious about what I can actually feasibly accomplish. When I sit down to plan my day/week/month I can start by looking at my checklist and figuring out when I'm going to get these tasks done. The more efficient I get at these ongoing maintenance tasks the more time I'll have to complete all those projects that aren't recurring -- which happens to be the vast majority of the work I have to do. This method is helping me make sure I'm always doing those things that have the largest impact on my sense of well-being while still getting all my work finished.

Like my Weekly Review template, I expect these lists to evolve over time as my circumstances change. Even looking at them now I'm feeling like there are some more aspirational things I can add to them. For now I'm going to keep them nice and simple and if they become extremely easy to finish I'll consider adding new components to them. The important thing is to be okay with changing them over time because otherwise they will cease being relevant and I'll stop using them.

How to Build Checklists Into Your Planning

The first step is to spend some time figuring out what you need to do on a daily basis in order to feel like you're doing a good job in your work/life. Jot it all down on an index card, laminate it with some packing tape, and now you have a daily checklist you can write on with a dry erase marker and carry with you. Do the same thing with the tasks you know you need (or want) to complete on a weekly basis. Again, laminate it and then display it where you'll see it regularly. Do it again with your monthly tasks/projects. Finally, create a list of all the projects you're currently working on that have some sort of "done" state.

The recurring daily/weekly/monthly checklists are made up of tasks that you'll never stop doing -- at least not any time soon (I may stop feeling like I need to read 4-5 academic articles every week but that won't be for years down the road). The list of discrete projects is what you'll pull from to fill in the time around your recurring daily/weekly/monthly tasks. Over time you'll check these projects off the list and add new ones. Determining what to work on at any given time or which of these discrete projects should be prioritized is outside the scope of this article, but using this technique to get a handle on everything you need to do on a daily, weekly, monthly basis will make sure you're moving forward everything you've deemed as important without letting maintenance activities fall by the wayside while you focus on "real work" and vice versa.

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Photo by Palo

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.

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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