Viewing Category: Productivity
It's already April 4th, and I admit it: I've been slacking on my Groundhog Day Resolutions. After 2007's promising run, I'd hoped that 2008 would be even stronger, but this hasn't been the case. I think I know why too: so far, there is nothing to get excited about. Looking back at last month's review, I can see the malaise creeping in; instead of being a source of joyful ambition, this year's Ground Hog Day Resolutions feel like a chore. Just look at this list from last month's weenie post:
- Get a Hobby
- Build Reputation
- Build a Financial Engine
- Be more Outgoing
I mean, it's a fine thing to want to improve myself, but this list sucks. It's boring, and it completely lacks specificity. I'm surprised...I should know better.
What's Exciting? I Dunno
I know that the logical next-step is to define my goals so I can take concrete, measurable steps toward them. I'm just not that excited about them, therefore I haven't mustered the energy to define them. The promise of a nebulous "better future" doesn't really capture my imagination, and I just realized why that is: I am envisioning a toolish future of a smooth-running financial operation that gives me time to pursue my hobbies. This is a future based on the premise that I need security first before I can even think of the fun stuff that comes later. Without that vision of the fun stuff, I can't get excited about. I am, as Tim Ferriss might say, being a DEFERRER, putting off the things I want to do. But WHAT is that?
My sister Emily, the source of many of the cooler things I've been exposed to, recently sent me British author Tom Hodgkinson's The Freedom Manifesto. She'd picked it up one day while in a foul mood at the South Station book stand, and she said it "cheered her up." I actually didn't read it for quite a few weeks, figuring that I'd already "freed myself" from a lot of the preconceptions that the book purported to address. When Em reiterated that it was quite good, I decided to read it while on the long flight to San Jose last week; this was the missing half of the solution to the life puzzle I've been working on. The first half of the solution was realizing that yes, I could start to create my own means to pursuing a more interesting life, which was triggered by the review copy of Tim Ferriss' The 4-Hour Work Week I'd read last April. The book is designed to giving you the means to construct a self-funding lifestyle along with the necessary supporting mindset; while I'd had pieces of that mindset, I didn't have a workable model in my head. Hodgkinson's The Freedom Manifesto is proving to have a similar effect on me, this time from the angle of defining an interesting life. And the answer is surprisingly low-key: I want to have a good life with my friends. This dovetails neatly with my previous insight regarding the kind of people I want to be around, the positive-minded, conscientious, self-empowered and kind folk that make life a pleasure. In other words, I'd rather like to loaf around and do interesting things with my friends. The book is remarkable in its cheeky stand against the guilt-driven productivity mindset. The attitude is quite refreshing, and it's helped me figure out just what it is about GTD that leaves me uneasy: I don't want to just get better at clearing my inbox to reduce my anxiety. Instead, I don't want to have an anxiety-inducing inbox in the first place; figuring out a way to do that is what I'd rather be doing. That's the basic premise of The Freedom Manifesto. I am outlining the book so I can do a full review on it later.
Anyway, what both books have in common is the don't defer mindset. In Ferriss' book, he does his best to break you of the notion that you have to follow the same path that everyone else is following to retirement, and describes in detail how you can create a means of supporting your dreams if you put the work into that right now. It's quite practical in its approach, though the lack of a politically-correct justification for the techniques described (outsourcing, selling products) bothers the people who believe there is a moral component to making a living. Hodkinson's book is all about morality, and his stance is that capitalism and the pervasive anxiety-inducing work-ethic--which he argues is the fault of no-fun Puritans and the Industrial Revolution--is just plain evil. So don't play into those enslaving systems, which trap you in their cycle of working-and-consuming for the benefit of feeding massive corporate profits, and start living now. At first I was skeptical, but after reading the book I have to say that there's much to reconsider regarding my so-called goals. Many of them are rooted in the notion that self-improvement is a noble pursuit in itself, as are career building and social responsibility. Hodgkinson points instead to self-sufficiency, vocation, and taking responsibility, which resonates with me more.
Back to My Goals
Here's what's important to me right now:
- Figuring out how to be a full-time writer and content creator. I like this, and I'd like to make a living at this.
- Reducing my needs. If I can live cheaper, then I need less money. Gotta pay off debt, also, but this can happen over time.
- Work based on my Vocation. I can finally say this with certainty: my vocation is understanding and communicating ideas so ordinary people are empowered by them. That's what I do well, and it's what I love to do. It's not design development, or even writing; these are just the tools that serve the vocation.
The key activities that relate to my goals are pretty simple:
- Make Content, and Sell It. I still have a bunch of ETP pads to sell, but my ecommerce solution doesn't handle inventory. Gotta get on that.
- Learn how to do my own book keeping. Hire an accountant to set me up.
- Start changing my "service offerings" to reflect my unique blend of skills, emphasizing communication and clarity as my essemtial product.
So let's see how that goes on May 5th (5/5), the next Ground Hog Resolution Review Day.
It’s March 3, otherwise known has Groundhog Day Resolutions Review Day No. 1. I’m slightly embarrassed to say that I actually never got around to defining what they were, nor did I fill out the new forms I made. I have been caught up in projects, and haven’t had time to really sit and reflect.
CONTINUE READING ...
I'm way behind on my Ground Hog Day's Resolutions this year, but it is primarily because I was creating new custom forms to kick off the 2008 season based on last year's experience.
What are these "Ground Hog Day Resolutions" you ask? You can read the original writeup, but the general idea is that I'm not ready to make any resolutions come January 1st. For one thing, I'm exhausted by the holiday season. Secondly, I've got to catch up with all the stuff I didn't finish, and am in no mood to make any new resolutions. Thirdly, I think Ground Hog Day deserves more recognition than it gets, as it's one of my favorite "holidays". Lastly, "Groundhog Day" is one of my favorite movies ever, the crowning jewel of Harold Ramis' directorial accomplishment, and extols themes that are close to my own heart: self-improvement and establishing genuine relationships.
The goal of Ground Hog Day Resolutions is to make tangible progress on a few self-improvement goals, so I have specified several review days that follow the January 1st, February 2nd pattern. March 3rd (3/3), April 4th (4/4), and so on are all Ground Hog Day Resolution Review Days (GHDRR), when you check up on your progress.
Setting My New Resolutions
You can read all my progress reports if you're curious, but to recap there were three main goals:
- Commit to Deriving Income from Writing and Making Stuff
- Build Sustainable Social Networks
- Sell a Product
These were goals that were pretty much business related, though I did get a few bonus personal goals like going to the gym and waking up early out of the way as well. What was really on my mind for 2007, though, was how to become happier and more independent. The first and last goals were related to independence by way of acknowledging that I would love to be writing and making my own stuff full time. The middle goal acknowledged that I can't really stand alone, and I need regular human contact to be happy.
For 2008, my goals are largely the same business-wise, but I don't feel the need to set them as my Ground Hog Day Resolutions (GHDRs) because the change has already been set in motion: I totally want to continue to make things, shift toward independent content creation, and meet as many awesome people as possible. I've already shifted my development environment to a laptop so I can theoretically work anywhere in the world, though I have to finish my current commitments for 2008 before I can really explore that option. So this year, I want to choose some resolutions that are related to future mobility:
Pillar 1: Reputation as a writer and designer, so people outside my home area are interested in talking to me or working with me in their home town or country. My theory on reputation is that people find it much easier to assess you when they can actually see what you've done and what you've written. Also it has to do with how you present yourself in public, and how visible one is in the community. The way I approach this is by figuring out how best to contribute to it. Reputation is an important currency; if you have it, people will tend to invite you to participate, which gives you something to do with mobility.
Pillar 2: Financial Resources fund possibilities. Reviewing the 4-Hour Work Week last year helped snap that into focus, and for me this means making things and trying to get that "idea-to-product-to-fullfillment-to-revenue" cycle going. Last year's goal of selling a product for the first time was the first step. Expanding this into a self-sustaining revenue stream is step 2. With this in place, I could actually afford to go places and work on my writing projects.
Pillar 3: Chutzpah to self-promote and just be unafraid of trying things publically. I'm quite shy when it comes to making claims about myself one way or the other (which is one reason I prefer to concentrate on letting the work speak for me). Need to get over this, though every fiber of my being is rebelling against the idea as I type this. I have absolutely no desire to push myself in this area...which is why I am listing it. At the very least, it means publishing an ebook for download, initiating contact with like-minded people I find out about, and figuring out ways to (sigh) monetize the site. The relation to mobility is, I think, one of adjusting my attitude toward business collaboration. I tend to think like an independent, but I am increasingly aware that it's possible to "roll up" opportunities if you can see how the connections between people are made AND can carry it through based on strength of character and willfulness alone. It baffles me a bit, but it's something I want to get a better handle on.
Personally, there are also some personal creative goals I'd like to pursue:
- Play an instrument / Play one song well
- Compose a song with an interesting arrangement
- Do some illustration with character, become more comfortable drawing
- Master a physical activity or sport
- Develop an effective physical training regimen
So that's what's on my mind right now. I am actually going to defer my specific Ground Hog Day Resolutions until next week, as I haven't had time today to reflect on what the tangible results should be, and I have to prepare for a trip to California.
In the meantime, though, I can share the new forms I was working on to help guide the process.
Tangible Goals and Downloadable Forms
If you're familiar with my Concrete Goals Tracker, you know that I tend to emphasize tangible accomplishment; when it comes to making a real impact on the world, the accomplishments that matter are the ones that leave an impression on someone OR creates something useful in the physical plane. Things you can see are also countable, which helps create a sense of progress.
This year I've added some of this process into two new forms for tracking my Groundhog Day Resolutions. The first is a worksheet for establishing your resolutions:
This worksheet asks you to:
- List your general resolutions. Just get them out on paper.
- List the tangible results that you expect to happen as a result of achieving your resolutions. This takes some imagination and understanding of the world. Get help from a friend if you get stuck.
- List the specific actions you can do that will actually achieve those results.
This is a pretty basic methodology that should be familiar to many people.
The next step is to figure out when you're going to do them. The second sheet is the compact calendar adapted for the Ground Hog Day Resolutions schedule. There are a few additions to the schedule this year:
In June, there is a summer break during which you are not expected to pursue your goals. Last year I and others found ourselves losing steam, possibly because the weather started getting too nice. Of course, if you'd rather work just do it; the summer break is just a suggestion. I figured since there was a winter break it made for a kind of symmetry.
There is a goal reassessment on July 7th, to make adjustments to your GHDRs given half a year of doing them. You can chose to discard or refine your goals at this point.
There is a mandatory pick your finishing tasks directive for the November 11 review day. You basically have a month left to finish your GHDRs well, so plan on finishing something on December 12. It may not be what you had originally planned, but it's important to have that ship or die mentality to push that last real bit of accomplishment out for the year.
Otherwise, the GHDR Calendar is very similar to the Compact Calendar I use for project management. Print a bunch of these special GHDR calendars throughout the year to help plan when you're going to do things.
Download the Ground Hog Day Resolutions Forms
Although these two forms should be useful to the new GHDR practitioners, I'll just have to see how it goes this year. In the meantime, feel free to download these forms below and give the system a go.
When I get my specific GHDRs ready next week, I'll post pictures of my actual filled-out sheets.
Last year there were 3 or 4 other bloggers that were using the system to push themselves through their goals, and it was fascinating to see what people were doing. It also helped me keep pushing forward as well. Let me know if you'll be doing it this year, and I'll add a link to this page to your kickoff entry.
Enjoy!
For the past few months I've been feeling unsettled about my planning balance. Since I only have one major project to focus on at the moment, I had thought that finally I could actually pace myself easily. This hasn't proven to be the case, as the extra time has merely allowed other things to expand into my immediate consciousness. Things like:
- Maintaining Social Commitments
- Maintaining Physical/Health Commitments
- Maintaining the Blog
- Maintaining Business Relationships
- Creating and Shipping Product
- Keeping the House Clean
- Planning for the Future
I have to admit to myself that the system of "winging it" for the past couple months just isn't cutting it because, again, I am not feeling like I am making progress. Objectively, I could sit back and point out all the very interesting things that did happen, but that does not address the feeling of falling short. The system that I need to put into place doesn't have to handle the objective tracking of things I've done, though functionally this is what it would appear to be. The real heart of the system I want is what will address the feeling of not being productive.
Of course, there are many approaches to this. David Allen's Get Things Done is one of the popular ones, and the approach focuses on getting to the point where you can relax. That is, you can trust your systems to tell you the real deal, and when you've got information you can actually trust it's a lot easier to get into that productive mind state. I'm not a GTD expert, but my assessment is that GTD is a mechanical methodology designed to keep your mind optimally aware of what's going on so you can choose to do that "next action" free from doubt. I can certainly see that following this methodology would work, and maybe I should just suck it up and just do it. What I really want, though, is a system that does a better job of putting my project work in context with my goals. I'd like the system to also remember where I was when I last left off.
As I write, I'm realizing that I'm actually wishing for a lot more than just a task tracking system. I'm really looking for something to provide some semblance of meaning outside of myself. I think such a system would be the keeper of my goals and projects. Additionally, the system would "know where I am" in terms of goals and projects at all times, maintaining a sense of continuity for me when my attention is elsewhere. The two tangible deliveries of the system would be (1) a "map" with a big arrow that says YOU ARE HERE, and (2) the set of tasks that I know will make that arrow move a certain distance. You can see my video game design background peeking through there. I don't really want to relax. I want to know what I'll be doing next to move my piece in a direction I like, and I want to have some choice in the matter without having to process everything all the time. The trick is to provide the RIGHT choices along with ACCURATE INFORMATION about where one happens to be in life.
I don't have any immediate solutions to this, but I'm writing it down anyway so I don't lose the thought. My first inclination is to revisit the Concrete Goals Tracker and ponder the Task List Creation (you know, the weighed points) process itself.
I don't know if this is common around the world, but after Christmas Day there is a frenzy of returns at retail outlets across the United States, as people trade-in/trade-up their gifts to something they like better. To make exchanges easier, stores issue gift receipts to gift purchasers with the price omitted to maintain some semblance of propriety. Call me sentimental, but when someone gives me a present, I find it difficult to treat it as just another material asset to be cashed in. It just doesn't jibe with what I think of as The Spirit of Giving. Why not leave warm cups of "Drano" out for Santa instead of milk while we're at it, or have a nice reindeer venison stew for Christmas Dinner as we throw rocks at elves? But that's just my moral outrage masking the true issue at hand: sometimes I get terrible presents and I'm not sure what to do with them. The barbarian materialists exchange their presents and are materially happier afterwards. Traditionalists like me get principles stuck in their craw, muttering bitterly as their houses fill with junk they can't just throw away because "they were gifts."
There is another gift-related practice here in the States called the Yankee Swap, associated with office Christmas parties, where you can potentially bring all your unwanted junk and gift it away to some poor sucker. Each person brings a present, and gets one in return. The trick is that each person draws their present based on a number, and they have the option of exchanging whatever they got with whatever someone before them got. It's deliciously balances the Spirit of Giving with the Spirit of Taking Away, just the sort of spirit one needs to survive the modern corporate environment. We are what we are.
While this year I received no bad presents (in fact, they were all awesome), there was an interesting moment at one of these events when someone recognized a "real" gift from a Christmas many years in the past re-gifted to someone else. This created some awkwardness on the part of the re-gifter, though the original gift giver didn't mind at all. This got me to thinking: we already have gift receipts. Why not take it a step further and include a re-gift receipt that establishes once and for all that once you are given a present, it's yours to do with what you want?
Design of the Re-Gift Receipt
To create the Re-Gift Receipt, I used my Stockwell Rubber Stamp Kit (I'll have to write about this sometime later) to create the RE-GIFT RECEIPT: YOUR GUILT-FREE PASS lettering at top. I scanned this in, colored it to resemble the purplish ink on old-style receipts, and laid out some text using an 8-point monospaced font (Bitstream Vera Sans Mono if you are curious...it's one of my favorite console fonts).
Since I wanted to reproduce the length of the typical gift receipt---they are often filled with legal mumbo jumbo---I had to write some filler. I figured it wouldn't hurt to cover some of the basic scenarios that lead to "poor gifting". Here's what it says:
RE-GIFT RECEIPT POLICY
This present has been given to you by your (CIRCLE ONE):
CO-WORKER(S)
CASUAL BUDDY
REALLY BUSY BEST FRIEND
SIGNIFICANT OTHER
OTHER ACQUAINTANCE
If you like it, great! However, in the event that dismay and polite confusion ensued rather than joy, please allow that (CIRCLE ALL THAT APPLY):
I DON'T REALLY KNOW YOU THAT WELL SO I JUST WINGED IT
IT LOOKED MUCH BETTER ONLINE / IN THE STORE
I'M A CLUELESS GUY/GAL WHAT DO I KNOW ABOUT PRESENTS
I GENUINELY THOUGHT YOU LIKED THIS KIND OF STUPID CRAP
I DID ALL MY SHOPPING AT THE SAME STORE THIS IS WHAT THEY HAD
I THOUGHT YOU COULD USE IT FOR HOBBY/WORK BUT WHAT DO I REALLY KNOW ABOUT IT
MOM SAID "IT IS THE THOUGHT THAT COUNTS" AND I BELIEVED HERE
In the True Spirit of American Giving, this RE-GIFT RECEIPT entitles you to pass this item guilt-free to a third party, no questions asked.
AUTHORIZING GIFT GIVER:
RECIPIENT:
by re-gifting this present, you agree that there is no reason to ever mention this again
I think this covers about 80% of all bad-gifting scenarios, and having it in an easy "circle your excuse" format really captures the Spirit of Exchanging Gifts For Better Ones: convenient, cheerfully impersonal, with no hard feelings at all.
After I got this text laid out in Illustrator, I noticed that the overly-crisp quality of the text was at-odds with my scanned rubber-stamp letterings. I applied a 1-pixel gaussian blur over all the text using a raster-based effect. It's cool that you can do this stuff now; back in the old days, I'd have had to convert the whole file to a high-resolution TIFF file and that would have been a pain in the butt. Blurring the text slightly made everything fit together visually. I was pleased that the file size didn't get too large either. At about 250KB for the PDF it's about 100K larger than the non-blurred version, but that's acceptable I think for the visual result. On the minus side, there's a good chance that non-Adobe PDF readers will render the file incorrectly; let me know in the comments if you come across this problem. I'm curious.
Download the Re-Gift Receipt Forms
There's three Re-Gift Receipts per 8.5"x11" sheet. Just trim along the print marks and you'll be ready to start disavowing any intended thoughtfulness to your gift giving. You could also use these forms to legitimately (sigh) let your friends know that you did your best, but there is no obligation to hold on to it...just don't give it BACK. :-)
If you appreciated the dubious value of this download, you might also like my Chain Letter Nullification Certificate, Arm-Mounted Task Nagger, Procrastinator's Clock, and Social Yardstick designs. Enjoy! :-)
