A person is not a brain driving a meat robot; it all runs together. If work is stymied, ask: are you eating clean? Getting enough sleep? Did your heart pump more than a sloth today? Start with your body, not your work methods.
- Frank Chimero published A Modest Guide to Productivity a few weeks ago.
These kinds of posts can often be kinda cheesy but Frank has some good points:
- ✍ Get enthusiasm on the cheap by buying a fancy wooden pencil to write everything down.
- 🧠 Dump your brain on to a sheet of paper—every single thing you could hope to do in the next 3 to 4 months.
- ⚖️ On a scale of 1 to 5, label each task with its perceived difficulty. You now have your master list for the quarter.
- 🌅 In the morning (or the evening before), make a to-do list for each day by selecting items from your master list.
- 🔣 In the middle of large projects, take a quick read on things at about 20%, 40%, and 80% completion to see if adjustments are necessary.
- 🔎 When you’re done, see if your estimation of a tasks’s difficulty was correct.
- 😓 At the end of three months, there is The Reckoning. Go through your quarterly list and see what is still not done.
- 😌 Maybe another way to look at The Reckoning is as a valve of forgiveness: many of the things you thought you needed to do in the next few months were left undone without noticeable consequences.
- ✨Here’s a good way to avoid those fearful items if you can’t cut them free: always be tidying up.
- 📝 The last step of every project is to properly document it. Take this seriously, because by neglecting it you subject yourself to the cumulative anxiety of partially finished things. This can bury you.
- 📜 Stay on paper as long as possible. Sketch and write things out long-hand, possibly even emails. We all know screens are distracting.
Hopefully, these inspire to introduce some method to your madness ; )
As always thank you for reading,
Jon
p.s.
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Cycling
Compass has a new web site
So Supple! Go to www.compasscycle.com and check it out.
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Startups
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Sales & PR
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