Category Archives: Productivity

Subversive gardening

Quote

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“A person who undertakes to grow a garden at home, by practices that will preserve rather than exploit the economy of the soil, has set his mind decisively against what is wrong with us. He is helping himself in a way that dignifies him and that is rich in meaning and pleasure. But he is doing something else that is more important; He is making vital contact with the soil and the weather on which his life depends. He will no longer look upon rain as a traffic impediment, or upon the sun as a holiday decoration.”

Wendell Berry, A Continuous Harmony: Essays Cultural and Agricultural

Don’t send that email

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I recently read this Harvard Business Review article by Anthony K. Tjan, CEO of Cue Ball. In it he makes the case for having live conversations rather than electronically-mediated communication (such as email and social media).

This is especially the case where important decision need to be made or conflict needs to be addressed. He writes,

There is a rising and unproductive trend towards people trying to do digital conflict resolution. The de facto path for issue resolution seems to be increasingly via email. More accurately, email has become a convenient mechanism for issue-avoidance. It is easier, quicker, less stressful, and less confrontational to have critical or challenging issues sent over email versus a live one-on-one with a counterpart.

The immediacy of email, as the fact that it appears less confrontational, all mask the hidden cost of email:

  1. It is hard to get the EQ (emotional intelligence) right in email.
  2. Email and text often promote reactive responses.
  3. Email prolongs debate.

In light of this, my resolution is to pick the phone up more rather than send off an email. What do you think?

How to slay your dragon before sunrise

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Many of you know that I enjoy reading Mike Hyatt’s blog. I read it because he provides consistently excellent material around the topics of leadership, productivity, and writing. I’m not a naturally-strong leader or a naturally-productive person. I’m a stronger communicator and teacher than I am a leader. To the extent that I lead, it is often by my words (spoken or in print).

For that reason, Mike is a mentor or a coach–for free–on topics like leading well and working effectively. Over the last couple of years Mike has helped me to live and lead more intentionally–I’m a work in process and always will be prone to be more professor than CEO, but I’m moving toward growing in my strengths (writing and speaking) and managing my weaknesses (leading and managing).

Here’s a recent post I found helpful on the importance of slaying your dragons before sunrise. I found this post especially helpful because there are, at least for me, two critical points in the week.

  1. Sunday night. An hour spent in thinking through the week returns at least four times that much during the next five days. It’s so much easier to think and plan when there’s no pressure–no calls, no emails, no deadlines. Yet I often choose to let Sunday night go past without getting my head around the week–and it costs me.
  2. Every day just before quitting time. It’s wise to give yourself thirty minutes before leaving the office to wrap your mind about what the morning will hold (and the rest of the week too). A lot of times I crank out work until quitting time and then mentally say, “OK! Time to go.” It helps me a great deal to slay the 8 o’clock dragon (i.e., the stress and pressure of planning the day) before I leave the office the night before.

Here’s Mike’s post, what are your thoughts? How do you get a jump on the week/day?

What are you resolved to do?

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The almighty index card

Bill Hybels has a great chapter in his book Axiom: Powerful Leadership Proverbs called “Six-by-Six Execution.” In it he describes a transformative practice he implemented at Willow Creek.

Every six weeks he would take an index card and write the question: “What is the greatest contribution I can make a Willow Creek Community Church in the next six weeks?” He then answered it and used the answer to focus his energies for the next six weeks.

As we move further into 2012, many of us have made resolutions. If your goal is actually to achieve your resolutions its important that you follow Hybels’ advice and focus your energies.

Enter Michael Hyatt who has posted some tips on making resolutions stick.

  1. Keep them few (focus!)
  2. Make them “SMART” (Specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, time-bound)
  3. Write them down (and review them regularly)
  4. Go public

In the spirit of “going public” here are my personal resolutions for 2012 (our fiscal year run July to June so I do my professional planning at or before July each year).

  1. Lose 40 pounds by December 31, 2012.
  2. Practice a weekly date night with Anna.
  3. Spend quality, focused time with both Nathan and Eliza daily.
  4. Take a monthly spiritual retreat.
  5. Take a walk with Anna and the family at least three times per week.

So, what are your resolutions for 2012?

Driven to distraction

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It’s Christmastide, which means one thing–travel. During our annual ten-plus hour drive to the Gulf Coast of Alabama we stopped in a remarkable gas station north of Atlanta. As I moved around the car to take the gas pump in hand, I was confronted with a smallish flat panel television mounted immediately above the price display. It was showing NFL highlights complete with sound. High above me muzak wafted out from speakers in the awning and together with the tunes clearly audible from a neighboring car (despite closed windows) it formed a perfect trifecta of noise-pollution.

Random moments of quiet are quickly shrinking from our lives. Every nook and cranny of our waking hours is filled with some form of stimulation designed to propel us toward the consumption of some goods or services. Go to a restaurant, even a relatively expensive one, and you’ll find at least one television. Find yourself in your doctors office waiting for an appointment and there will be some form of visual and auditory stimulation offering you information about some disease or condition sponsored by a purveyor of one drug or another. Noise is ubiquitous. 

It’s amazing how comfortable we have become with noise and other forms of stimulation. The instant the power goes off during a winter storm or an electronic device fails many of us start getting really anxious–stir crazy. We need something to do. That’s because distraction is addictive. I forget where I read it but scientists have found that the “ping” of a new email releases a small amount of dopamine into our brain–we keep going back to email, Facebook, Twitter, because we get a biochemical reward for it.

The key to focus is learning to steward technology and distraction so as to control it rather than be controlled by it. It’s unlikely that you’ll ever be able to get away with not having email–we have become too accustomed to this technology to be able to move past it yet.

Some ideas for keeping your focus:

  1. Turn off new mail notifications.
  2. Schedule time to process email. Try 30 minutes twice or three times a day (10am, 1pm, 5pm).
  3. Get noise-cancelling headphones.
  4. Automate and schedule your social media interactions. Try an app like Buffer <www.bufferapp.com>

How do you maintain optimal focus at home and work?