Fire and Knowledge

I’m curious how other people track the projects they are working on. I usually have about 50 or so projects I’m tracking at any one time, and I use a combination of a paper daily task list, spreadsheets, basecamp, and a task management application (Things).

How ’bout you?

W. Clement Stone, who built an insurance empire worth hundreds of millions dollars, would make all his employees recite the phrase, “Do it now!” again and again at the start of each workday. Whenever you feel the tendency towards laziness taking over and you remember something you should be doing, stop and say out loud, “Do it now! Do it now! Do it now!” I often set this text as my screen saver. There is a tremendous cost in putting things off because you will mentally revisit them again and again, which can add up to an enormous amount of wasted time. Thinking and planning are important, but action is far more important. You don’t get paid for your thoughts and plans — you only get paid for your results. When in doubt, act boldly, as if it were impossible to fail. In essence, it is.

—Steve Pavlina

If you choose to manage a project, it’s pretty safe. As the manager, you report. You report on what’s happening, you chronicle the results, you are the middleman.

If you choose to run a project, on the other hand, you’re on the hook. It’s an active engagement, bending the status quo to your will, ensuring that you ship.

Running a project requires a level of commitment that’s absent from someone who is managing one. Who would you rather hire, a manager or a runner?

—Seth Godin

Here are Alexandra Samuel’s tips on how to “mitigate the personal and social impact of multitasking, and amplify the benefits”:

1. Ration your e-mail: E-mail is one of the chief sources of distraction since so many of us feel compelled to check for new messages throughout the day. Different friends have shared their strategies for keeping e-mail at bay, like scheduling a specific two-hour period to process e-mail each day, or checking for new messages only after emptying the inbox. I rely on Gmail filters to support my own system for maintaining an empty inbox and I find that the practice of processing my inbox to zero also helps me focus my e-mail checkins on the moments when I actually have time to respond.
2. Structure your monotasking: I’m used to working with a dozen programs and fifty windows open on my computer, and as per the practice reported by the Times, I’m switching windows constantly to follow links or check e-mail. So when I’m trying to write a report or do any kind of focused work, I break my multitasking habit by working on a computer that has very limited memory (so I can only have a couple of applications open at a time), or I restart my main computer and launch only a couple of applications. You could even create another account on your computer that has access to only Word or Excel, and no Internet connectivity, so you can force yourself to monotask.
3. Take a tech sabbath: The National Day of Unplugging married the Jewish practice of observing the sabbath with the growing need to get some distance from technology. Try taking one day with no screen time. That means no TV, no Blackberry, no Internet. If you find it creates a useful pause in your wired-up life, consider making it a weekly practice.
4. Find hope outside your inbox: Last year I started experimenting with ways to break my constant email and Twitter check-ins. I realized I was looking for that jolt of excitement, the possibility that some sort of good news would come my way with each check-in. When I started exploring other ways to get a little unexpected delight in my day — by talking to a stranger, or visiting a new part of town — I was able to reduce my reliance on the net as the bearer of good news.
5. Use your right brain/use your left brain: If you spend your computer time geeking out in Excel or checking Google Analytics, it’s time to give your right brain a workout with a browse through Flickr or a film editing project in Final Cut. If you spend your computer time writing poetry or creating collages in Photoshop, it’s time to give your left brain a workout with a game of Scrabble or some financial management with Mint.com. The more you vary your online diet with activities that draw on both hemispheres, the more you’ll be tapping into the net’s potential to grow your brain’s circuitry.

There’s some good advice in this profile of Jim Buckmaster, CEO of Craigslist. Here’s a summary of his management philosophy:

• Listen to what users want. Try to make the site faster and better.
• Hire good people. “We work hard trying to get the right kind of folks.” It pays off: they hardly ever leave.
• No meetings, ever. “I find them stupefying and useless.”
• No management programmes and no MBAs. “I’ve always thought that sort of thing was baloney.”
• Forget the figures. “We are consistently in the black, so if we do better or worse in any given quarter it is absolutely irrelevant.”
• Occasionally, give people “a very gentle nudge”. This can be done over lunch or on the instant messaging boards.
• He doesn’t reply to any of his 100 daily messages, most of which beg Craigslist to do a deal. “I’m not real chatty on e-mail.”
• Put speed over perfection: “Get something out there. Do it, even if it isn’t perfect.”
• “Don’t screw it up by doing things that make people feel worse about their work.”

I have onset insomnia. I lie awake at night for a couple hours thinking about all the things I’m going to do or what I did that day. I think about new ideas. I think about new businesses I could start, projects I should do, essays I should write. It’s ridiculous, but I’ve done it ever since I can remember.

I was browsing Tim Ferris’s blog and found out he has the same thing. Here is what he does about it:

I have — as do most males in my family — what is called “onset insomnia.” I don’t have trouble staying asleep, but I have a difficult time falling asleep, sometime laying awake in bed for 1-2 hours.

There are two approaches that I’ve used with good effect without medications to address this: 1) Determine and set a top priorities to-do list that afternoon for the following day to avoid late-night planning, 2) Do not read non-fiction prior to bed, which encourages projection into the future and preoccupation/planning. Read fiction that engages the imagination and demands present-state attention.

I’m often guilty of reading non-fiction before bed. The worst is if I read something about business or entrepreneurship or new ideas. I’ll end up thinking about it for hours while I stare at the ceiling.

Writing a to-do list the day before is a great idea. I’ve been trying to do that simply because it helps to have a focus as soon as I start my day. But this gives me another reason to do it.

Autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward are, most people agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying.

—Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers (2008), p. 149

Audible.com has the audiobook of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey available for free for a limited time. I found the book helpful, even though it’s a little dense in parts.

If you’re into audiobooks, you should definitely get it for free while you can.