Productivity aid: Scripton Chronodex Planner

One of my daily productivity habits is to spend a few minutes each evening reviewing how the day went and planning the following day. This does not take long – usually 20 minutes or so.

Part of this process is to block out time in for the following day to ensure that my MITs (Most Important Tasks) get done. I have been doing this as a simple vertical timeline which I sketch into my notebook each evening as I set up the page ready for the day ahead. This works well for me but lacks a bit of flair.

Then I found Scripton Chronodex and their DIY day planners. Put simply it is a stylised clock face on which to plant your day and your blocks of time.

It is a really creative way to visualise your day and taps into our instinctive reaction to analogue clock faces.

The website has a number of different, free to use, downloadable templates to try and some very detailed instructions for creating a calendar and todo list notebook.

My favourite way of using the system is to print them onto sticky labels. Then I peel one off each evening, put it on the next blank page in my notebook and then plan away.

I think that you might find it useful to plan ahead and enjoy this interesting visual stimulation along the way.

Use your feet to commute

Why?

 I read a recent article in a trade magazine which was about options for driving down travel expenses for knowledge workers.

One section was on the topic of commuting to work or to meetings by foot. This post is the result of my thinking on the subject.

What are the benefits of commuting on foot?

 There are some obvious benefits to walking for work:

• It’s green – reduces greenhouse gases
• it has physical and mental health benefits – works you body and allows time to think
• it is cheap – no more £0.50/mile expenses to sign off!

There are some less obvious benefits too:

• it takes longer than the equivalent drive (depending on traffic) – this gives you some valuable time to think
• it can offer an opportunity to discuss projects with any co-walker you may have commandeered
• it allows you to arrive at work / meetings alert and ready for action
• it provides time for reflection after a meeting or day at work

Is it always possible to commute on foot?

In truth there will be times when it is not an option but if you commit to doing it you might be surprised how seldom walking is not possible.

I’m lucky enough to be in the position where my major client is within a 15 minute walk of my office. But several of the sites we are working on are not.

When we have a site based meeting I set off in the car in good time (often taking the client with me) and we park about half a mile to three quarters of a mile away from the site (where we can get free parking) and we walk the last bit.

This is a great way to get the bulk of the travelling done quickly but then get the benefits of walking and talking the last bit before the meeting starts.

It is amazing how often we can discuss and agree a point of view on agenda items, work out tactics and the like as we walk that last half mile.

A great example of the walking commute can be seen here in my home city in the legal quarter. All through business hours the solicitors can been seen walking between each others offices, some times alone, often in pairs or small groups and always ‘switched on’ and getting on with the business of doing their business.

“But you’re wasting time, adding 30 minutes to the duration of every meeting”

If you are unlucky enough to have a boss or co-workers who cannot see the benefit of walking on company time then give them a few points to consider:

• as knowledge workers we can always ‘work as we walk’. Not everything we are paid for is a ‘thing’, we don’t just ‘do’, we think. There is no better way to find some thinking time during the work day than to get out of the office for 15 minutes and get away from the phone, email and your colleagues
• your performance at work or in a meeting will be enhanced by the thinking time you gained and the buzz from having done 15 minutes of low level exercise
• it provides time to reflect after work or a meeting

Also – is it really wasting time? If the journey on foot will only take 15 minutes then I ALWAYS walk. By the time I have rung forward to ensure a parking space will be available, walked to the car, driven a mile, parked, got your stuff from the boot etc. I could have walked there and ordered my coffee.

Don’t forget

…to bring along a capture device. I have some of my most insightful thoughts while I’m ‘off’ and walking is one of those situations where I need to capture a thought quickly and without any friction.

Always carry an appropriate capture device. For me this is a small notebook or a voice recorder on my phone. Here are a few alternative capture devices:

• notebook and pen
• index cards and pen
• voice recorder app on your phone
• phone app such as toodledo or OmniFocus
• dictaphone (old school!)
• voicemail – you can call your own answer service

Your memory is NOT a capture device

Conclusion

• give your feet and your brain a chance to play their part in your work day
• timetable enough time around your meetings to allow you to consider walking all or some of the way
• encourage your reports to do the same

For additional credit why not walk home from time to time? I live four miles from my office but three or four times per month I will choose to walk home. It is a great way to get some serious thinking time – but make sure you have a notebook and pen with you because you will come up with some really useful stuff!

Web finds, Wednesday 09 May 2012

Here we go again with another dive into the things on the internet that I have found interesting….

• Mac service AppleScript for word count Mac OS X Hints has published a guide to adding a character, word and paragraph counts service in OS X. This works on any block of selected text in any application (except MS Word for some reason!)
• Learn to Listen Art of Manliness has a post on how to listening. This is a personal hobby-horse of mine. Far too often we are forced to attend meetings where some of those present are inattentive or just plain rude. If you are in the company of someone then give them your attention. Even the dullest of meetings are an opportunity to learn something, strengthen relationships and leave the room with a different perspective. All you have to do is listen!
• Memories of the Tandy WP–2 The always excellent David Sparks. I love old tech and David clearly thinks the same. It’s just a nice read
• The Productivityist Manifesto Mike Vary has an interesting take on what it means to be productive and how best to achieve it
• The rolling to-do list Lifehack have an alternative to the traditional to-do list. Take a read and see if it’s something you can use
• Mark Forster’s Final Version Despite sounding like a thinly veiled totalitarian global take-over bid this is actually a variation on the rolling to-do theme and well worth a look. You do need to subscribe to Mark’s newsletter to receive the instructions but in my experience he does not spam or bombard you with email. You can always unsubscribe later
• Why I look at OmniFocus Give that this is about Omnifocus you might think that this is a Mac only post. Well, oO=n the face of it this is a discussion about OmniFocus – but really it is about developing the habit of looking at your lists and acting upon them
• The Weekly Review: How one hour can save you a week’s with of hassle and headache Lifehacker is not as good as it used to be but there is still some good content mixed in with the ‘make your own toothpaste from bacon rind’ posts. And this is one of them. A really concise, clear set of instructions to either introduce you to the weekly review or get you back on track if you skipped a week (or 2, or 3)
• Why I write about bathroom fans and pillowcasing strategies Not about productivity, just an entertaining read from Marco Arment, creator of instapaper

Pomodoro technique

A great way to crank through a lot of work in concerted and intense way is to use the Pomodoro Technique. It is especially useful if the thing you need to crank through is something you just cannot bring yourself to do! You have those too, don’t you?

The system is named after the tomato shaped kitchen timers (pomodoro is Italian for tomato) and a timer of some sort is essential in allowing you to adopt the system.

The theory is that you have a 25 minute sprint on a given task, a five minute break and then repeat. After you complete a given number of pomodoros (usually 4) you give yourself a 15 minute break. Rinse and repeat.

The reason the technique works for me is that I can fool my brain into reducing resistance on a task because ‘I’m only going to spend 25 minuets on it’. Before I know it I’ve cycled through 4 pomodoros and I’m sitting back with a cup of tea and patting myself on the back because the task is all done.

Not everyone is a fan – see this great article by Mike Vardy on the problem with the pomodoro technique. All I can say is that it works for me, it might work for you and why not give it a try – the cost of entry is almost nothing. In fact you may already have a suitable device in your kitchen cupboard.

You can also download software timers for Mac or Windows. There are smartphone and tablet apps to be had as well. My favourite is this one for the iPhone. It has the uninspired name of ‘Pomodoro – the best Pomodoro Technique App’ but it works well. It has a customisable timer function, keeps stats of your completed cycles and a basic to do list. I use the todo list to plan a series of runs for the morning ahead of time so I can just get my head down and get the work done.

If you want to learn more about the technique the I suggest you take a look at this video or just goole it and have a poke around.

Personal kanban – an introduction

kanbanflow.com

First things first, what is a kanban and what is a personal kanban?

Wikipedia can help us out here. In short kanban was developed to feed the ‘just in time’ manufacturing method, but has been adapted and adopted by knowledge workers and software developers using the agile method in particular

This is where the notion of the personal kanban comes along. The best resource I have found for this is over at the excellent personalkanban site. Jim Benson defines a personal kanban as “a simple way to visualise and control your work.”

There are just 2 basic rules:

1. Visualise your work – usually with post-its on a whiteboard
2. Limit your work-in-progress – don’t work on more than you can cope with. It is not unusual to limit yourself to just one WIP when that is the best way to get from here to there.

Visualisation

A basic personal kanban board has 3 columns:

1. to do (sometimes rather pessimistically called ‘backlog’)
2. work in progress (or ‘doing’)
3. done

You store up work in column 1, move it to column 2 when the time comes to work on it and then move it to column 3 to get a nice warm feeling once it is done

Limit work-in-progress

This is, for me, the major strength in the personal kanban. You only move work to column 2 when you are really, really working on it. And you do not break your chosen limit of how many items you can have in your WIP column.

Now – advice on what limit you should have on your WIP varies but there is pretty consistent advice that it should never exceed 5. I think this is pretty sound advice and for me it seldom moves above 3.

When to use a personal kanban

I don’t use a personal kanban all the time. But I do use it when I know I need a sustained period of ‘heads down, full throttle’ on one or two projects.

When I have a whole bunch of work that I must get through in a relatively short period then I turn to my kanban, say 1 week.

I spend some time listing all my to do items in column 1 – a mixture of small projects or sub-projects or even down to the level of Next Actions. These must, when aggregated, get me to where I need to be at the end of my sprint.

Then select a number to move to the doing/WIP column, the number will depend on the limit you set yourself. Typically I chose 2 or 3 items.

Digital personal kanban

A physical personal kanban can be set up on a whiteboard, in a note book, or in a digital format.

Chose the one which suits you and meets the requirement of best allowing you to visualise your work.

I have found several digital options:

• kanbanflow Is a great option, it’s free, allows collaboration and includes a pomodoro timer to help you focus
• kanbanery Has a free plan but with some limits
• onlinekanban Is a very simple kanban