Category Archives: Time Management

Book Notes and Comments from Derek Sivers

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One of the great things about books and Amazon.com is reading comments left by other readers who’ve taken the time to post thoughtful feedback!

However, since I don’t know these people I usually feel somewhat detached from their opinions and recommendations.

That’s why I’m very impressed with what entrepreneur Derek Sivers (former owner of cdbaby.com) has done on his personal site.

derek-siversHe has a link to a page called Books | Derek Sivers: Books I’ve finished recently.

I spent some time checking out his selection and reading through the notes put together for each book.

If you don’t know much about Derek Sivers, look over his blog. He’s had one heck of an adventure in life and business.

I’m always interested to know what successful people like Derek are reading but I also appreciate how he’s shared his experiences (think ‘roller coaster’!) and learning in the blog. I can almost sense why some of those books are on his list!

And the one I most want to read?
‘The Talent Code’, by Daniel Coyle.

How about you?

- Mark McClure

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Stop Wasting Time – 30 Day Accountability Experiment

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I met up with my friend, Jacinta Hin, on Friday night to talk about the goals we each have for 2010. We found a pleasant pub in Tokyo’s Ebisu district and over some fish and chips and a Guinness, started swapping stories.

It soon became clear that although we both have some solid goals and even plans to accomplish them, the w-o-r-k required is simply not getting done quickly enough.

And the culprit?

That old favorite – not enough time!

Ha! Dear Reader, are you perhaps familiar with that sorry excuse for under achieving? Well, for coaches it’s doubly embarrassing because we’re supposed to know this stuff and also have the magic tool box for dealing with the blockages.

Thing is… there’s no magic wand to kick procrastination to the kerb. And in my experience, willpower usually isn’t the answer either for reasons I discussed in improving personal productivity.

No, I think the solution is not to battle procrastination head-on, but rather to launch a series of flank attacks and feints (military metaphor time!)

What we decided to do was agree on a 30 day accountability experiment. Jacinta is going to (in fact she’s already started!) avoid her iPod movie addiction by posting regular updates on FaceBook (and possibly Twitter. I can’t exactly recall what was agreed after pint # 2 hehe!). The time saved will be available to work on her big goal.

I’ve decided to kick two habits in these next 30 days:

Habit #1 Internet news access for me is now only on Sundays.
Staying “in touch” daily was eating up almost one hour each evening BEFORE I got started on my big goal.

Habit #2 Drinking a beer with my evening meal weekdays. This one might seem trivial (it’s only a 350 ml can!) but the combined effect of being on the go since 6 am, along with alcohol, means I get dozy around 9pm. Yet, I’ve stuff I want to do between 9-11 pm. Something has to give, and it aint my goal!

One level of accountability is present because we will be updating each other via email.

And another level will be the public nature of releasing Internet status updates. In my case, I’ll be adding a comment to this post most every day for the month of June. If I miss one, please remind me ;-)

OK, so let’s see how May 31st goes – the practice run! Evening meal’s about to be served. A beer would go well with it.

Let the experiment begin…

Change Your Habits AUTOMATICALLY!

- Mark ‘ Procrastination Fixer‘ McClure

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Playing The Generational Homework Concentration Game

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Here’s a conversation that recently took place in our household:

“You’re almost fifty, getting shorter and just don’t understand how FaceBook and multi-party video chats help with our studies.”

“Now, just a minute, don’t you know it’s taking all evening to finish?”

“That’s because we mix online socializing with study. You guys don’t have a clue.”

OK, I’m paraphrasing what was actually said (mine’s the middle sentence of the three above) but if you’ve got a teenage son or daughter with Internet access, I’ll bet you can probably relate. Continue reading →

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Does LeechBlock Lockdown Improve Personal Productivity?

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When working online are you focused on what needs doing most of the time?

Or are interesting amusements catching your attention and leading you astray?

I’ve noticed that I can easily become caught up in exploring various social media tools (e.g. Marketing and Copywriting Forums, LinkedIn, Twitter and more recently, FaceBook) to the exclusion of getting the actual work done.

This is not good and leads to burning the midnight oil in an effort to meet other deadlines.

So, having experienced this unwanted behaviour I’ve decided to up the ante and have technology come to my aid in the form of the LeechBlock plugin for FireFox which I posted about last June in, “The App Between Your Ears“.

leechblock-lockdown

However, this time I’ve not only blocked my access to a list of social media and news sites Monday to Saturday inclusive, but I’ve also made it difficult to change these settings.

That means there’s now an extra step involved if I wanted to “cheat” on my own productivity rules. Of course, I could always remove the LeechBlock plugin and noone would know :-)

What’s stopping me from doing so are two useful allies:

  • My pride in “doing the right thing“. (It’s rather stupid to blog about personal productivity systems if it’s obvious that I’m uncommitted to making them work. Like many people interested in time management that I know of, it’s often a case of two steps forward and one back. But press on, press on…)

  • My “Primitive Guidance System” (For details of the ‘PGS’, see my post about the good people at ‘Habit Change’.)

My PGS ‘knows’ I have the login details for a ton of sites I visit stored within FireFox on this particular computer. (Yes, I do have secure backups of this data.)

Meaning that it’s a right pain in the rear to start accessing my ‘banned sites’ either via another browser such as Internet Explorer or on another computer (I’d need that login list and have to type in the details at login time.)

The path of least resistance would therefore seem to be to continue to use FireFox.

We shall see.

Anyway, I’m just a few weeks into this ‘lockdown’ experiment so too early to conclude one way or the other.

I have noticed some interesting ‘withdrawal’ symptoms when I try to access Twitter or LinkedIn because someone’s sent me a link or I’ve read an entry on a blog post and want to retweet it.

Naughty! Naughty! No retweeting until Sunday… and by that time I forgot about it or thought that most weren’t worthwhile. (I can just hear the gnashing teeth of sundry social media ‘gurus’. Tough titties.)

Now, what was it you were working on again?
Ouch! Put up or shut up time…

How about you?
What systems and programs (beyond ‘willpower’) help you stay on track and commit to what you know needs doing?

- Mark McClure

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How To Stop Your Life From Leeching Away

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Yikes! What a gooey title but here I am back bashing the typewriter keys thanks to this electronic marvel, Q10 – see last Friday’s personal productivity post.

time-leech1

Yes, folks, it’s personal productivity again – or rather the lack of it, that is the subject of this week’s post.

Now before you get all hot and bothered over another “you can have everything you want if you only damn well work hard enough”… err, it’s not. (I don’t believe that’s true let alone possible. Subject for another post.)

I’m all in favor of “optimal performance” (aka getting the best from yourself) but there is a time and a place – or to put it more poetically, “a rhythm for each season.”

My experience has been that maximum performance (in any area) can only be maintained for a relatively short time without rest and recreation. All work and no play makes Jack/Jill very, very dull indeed etc.

Continue reading →

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