Numinous Nonsense

In the first part of this series I shared some of the techniques and principles I’ve adopted from the books, Bit Literacy and Getting Things Done. In this post I continue to share some of the other techniques and tools I’ve found useful in my personal productivity system.

Agile Develoopment

From the world of agile software development, through the training in Project Management that Brian Robertson and Tom Thominson of Holacracy One gave our company, I’ve also found these practices useful:

• Project Iteration Cycles - In GTD a project can take any amount of time to complete, although if it takes too long then it’s probably a goal and not a project, but a principle I’ve found useful is to define the project in terms of the shortest possible iteration cycle that one can complete it in (in my case it’s 1 week). In defining projects this way, one can quickly complete a project and can steer their focus in a more dynamic way from iteration cycle to iteration cycle.
• The Cork Board - At work we have large cork boards. The one for our production team is 8 foot tall x 4 feet wide. On the board we have weekly projects and then the next actions beneath them along with a colored tack that identifies who that action belongs too (my buddy Nate somehow ended up with the pink tack. Sorry bro.). This method has been extremely useful with team projects, where multiple people are working on things together and where a project manager needs to have a visual reference for all of the work happening at any given time. This method is way more useful then those ridiculous gannt chart programs, as it’s more dynamic, visible, and connected to the work being done.
• The Backlog - The backlog is an idea similar to David Allen’s “someday / maybe” list, where one can accumulate projects that one might want to work on in the future, but aren’t being worked on right now. This is especially helpful for those people who have tons of ideas, but find that it hard to get traction with them because they are overwhelmed with all of the great ideas they have.

Other Additions

Many of my other additions have to do with the specific tools that I use to carry out all of these things. They aren’t techniques per say, but rather useful tools that integrate well with these techniques:

• Mac Attack - The Mac, especially the notebooks, are some of the best productivity devices. From the ease of use, to the super-efficient hot corners, to Leopard’s new “spaces” features, the Mac is one of the best machines I know to do work on. And it’s sexy to boot.
• iPhone Integration - Being a Mac-Geek, I ended up getting an iPhone (check out this talk a co-worker and I recorded about the iPhone and Productivity). Fortunately it’s integrated well with everything else in my system. GooToDo works with e-mail so by having my iPhone on me at all times, I can send myself todo items, as well as check my e-mail, or reference my todo list on the go. It also integrates with my Google Calendar, so that I can have everything I need to remember where I’m supposed to be and what I’m supposed to be doing. It’s almost like it’s my master… hmmm.
• Mindmapping Software - My friend Lion turned me on to mindmapping, which is a great visual way of using David Allen’s natural planning model, or just for brainstorming in general. I use Mindjet’s Mindmanager software for the Mac.
• Google Apps - I use Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Docs for all of my personal and company-wide knowledge management. Google is great at creating highly collaborative software, and it’s free. Granted they’ll be taking over the world soon, I’m not sure that’s a bad thing.

Balancing it Out with Being

With all this focus on doing, on being productive, I often find it useful to remind myself that it’s great to also spend time being. Being is a state of non-doing, of non-striving, one where we can be with this body and mind and focus only on present-tense experience. I have used the practice of vipassana meditation to be extremely helpful in this regard, and find that developing a calm, clear mind allows me to balance out all of the action I end up taking.

The other piece is that a productivity system, if properly implemented, should actually help create a clearer mind, not a busier one. Mark Hurst talks about productivity in terms of attaining emptiness of bits, and David Allen speaks of a “mind like water”. Both of them are referring to the fact that the more organized and clear one is about what one is doing and how, the easier it is to let things go when they arise in the mind. In that way productivity can actually be a great support for relaxing into the simple feeling of being. In the end, I think productivity is not just about doing more, but also about living a life of fullness.