Andre Kibbe on “What’s the Next Distraction?”
Posted by Michael | Filed under GTD, Site
In terms of GTD, David Allen reminds us to always ask ourselves, “What’s the next action?” In a smart play on words, Andre Kibbe asks over on his Tools for Thought blog, “What’s the next distraction?”
Most of us make To Do lists that really aren’t so much about doing things, as they are lists of stuff without definition or context. We feel better knowing that we put everything on a big To Do list, but if my experience is any indication, I think many of us get “deer in the headlights” after we realize just how much “stuff” we have and no idea how to get it all done. In a 2003 interview by Management Consulting News, David Allen, states:
…what most people call a to-do list is incomplete and unclear, which is highly unattractive. Everything on your list is either attracting or repelling you psychologically. There is no neutral response: it’s either, oh boy, when can I mark that off or, get out of my face. If there are still a lot of decisions you need to make about items on your list, your brain glances at the list and says, I don’t have the energy to do all that thinking, go away.
Even if we can get out of the headlights and across the road, we’re still left wondering what to do next. This is a crucial moment of decision about whether to move forward (decide on next action) or stagnate / procrastinate / panic / etc. In his post, Andre Kibbe suggests that a common form of procrastination is what he calls “serial digression,” and he offers us the following example to illustrate his point:
Many To Do items that people write down are multiaction tasks, like “Set up Dell,” as opposed to a genuine next action like “Read Dell Quick Start Guide.” The aim of a next action is to keep your attention on the most immediate physical task instead of the outcome. A To Do like the one in the example is overloaded, conflating what needs to be accomplished with what needs to be done. Any project, no matter how large or complex, can be parsed into at least one next action that’s simple to do. Not everyone can get into Harvard, but anyone can download the admission form.
Put another way, David Allen remarks in the MCNews interview that, “You don’t usually see specific actions on to-do lists because most people haven’t forced themselves to sit down and finish their thinking about what has their attention. They collect items in their in-basket or think they have made a list, but there is another level of thinking that is required to move forward.”
What we’re left with are what Andre Kibbe defines as “Next Distractions” noting that, “Procrastination is more than not doing priority tasks; it’s doing non-priority tasks.” In terms of what Kibbe calls “Crutch Activities,” he argues that, “No task exists in isolation. A key consideration of any activity is not what the activity is, but what it leads to.”
So, whenever we go to check our RSS readers just before starting a project, fire-up our browser to find something on Wikipedia, or even write that next blog post (ahem…), be sure to remember the suggestions and quick tips that Andre Kibbe offers in his post. And watch out for the deer.
Tags: David Allen, GTD, productivity, To Do
Thanks for the praise and constructive feedback on the podcast!
Posted by Michael | Filed under Site
Just wanted to thank everyone for all the feedback you’ve provided us over the last few weeks. As we discussed in our previous podcast, we’ll be doing one or two short clips during the week, and then a full-length show every other week. Also, I’ll admit that my audio editing skills aren’t yet top-notch, so apologies all-around if the last podcast was a bit, shall we say, off? We appreciate your patience and continued support, even though it may hurt your ears a bit while we get things figured out. Definitely keep sending us your comments and suggestions.
Making sense of stuff with Twine and the Semantic Web
Posted by Michael | Filed under Site
Interesting article by Clive Thompson over at Wired.com about “New Web Apps for Coping With Information Overload.”
I had promised my editor that I’d send in a cool idea for my next column. So I was trolling through the thousands of news tips and blog posts I’d archived using services like del.icio.us. But I was drowning; I’d saved so much that I could no longer find the really good stuff. What I needed was some help — an assistant to do some sifting for me.
In my cursory understanding, Twine (currently in invite-only beta) takes the idea of social networks and moves them from being just about connecting with other people who share similar interests (a network that is somewhat inwardly-facing, mostly friends and friends of friends), to connecting to new content and collaborating within a network of other people (outwardly-facing) who share in your content interests based on the stuff that you feed into Twine. From there, Twine is able to provide more targeted recommendations about which you — and others within your network — may be interested. Or, as Clive states, Twine “…rifles through bookmarks and documents you feed it, extracts the core concepts, and then finds relevant new stuff for you to look at it.”
In terms of making life simpler, Twine seems to address the issue of deciding how and what to tag the accumulated files and bookmarks on your computer. Further, no matter how careful you are in organizing, your system only matters to you and is only as good as you can make it. Tagging helps you to identify files, but doesn’t do much in terms of helping you to articulate different content into more meaningful sets of information. And if you stray from your tagging system, the system soon breaks-down. Built-in search capability helps to locate files, but it cannot help you contextualize and build upon the things that are relevant to you buried somewhere in the blob of stuff on your hard drive.
With this said, why not let the cloud help you out? The cliche, “A thousand monkeys typing on a thousand typewriters…” works here; not that we’re trying to write the next great play, but as we’ve seen with Wikipedia, the more like-minded people you throw at a problem, the more likely we are to start making sense of stuff. In terms of Twine and your content, not only does Twine seem to help in sorting it semantically instead of arbitrarily, it has the added bonus build upon your content new sources of related information that you’d have otherwise missed (or just never know about).
I have yet to play with Twine, but it’s possibilities are intriguing, especially in the academic sector, where the sharing of knowledge and content among faculty and students is in desperate need of an overhaul.
Although I may be completely off, Twine seems to pick up from where del.icio.us leaves off (particularly with the idea of tagging) and smacks head-on into the untapped potential of social network services + the emerging Semantic Web (here’s how Twine approaches this). I dare make a comparison to Amazon.com’s recommendations tool (You may also like… / Other people viewed… / Other people also purchased…), from which I’ve purchased many items I’d had never seen otherwise (and my bank account reminds me of this abuse every month…). I’ve never met these “Other People,” nor would I call them friends, but based on what we feed into Amazon as we browse and purchase, it turns out that we have a lot in common. Put another way according to Clive, “But the truth is, sometimes social connections are less useful than semantic ones.”
Tags: del.icio.us, Semantic Web, social networks, tagging, Twine
Sometimes, you just need to go scorched Earth
Posted by Michael | Filed under Site
On occasion, I’ll go scorched Earth on my apps, my blogs, email, social networks, my stuff at at home, even my computer (particularly when I was running Windows Vista).
Why?
Sometimes it’s just easier to wipe the slate and start over, rather than try to organize the amorphous pile of stuff. I play with a lot of apps, subscribe (temporarily, see the strategy here) to just about every blog I find interesting, and tend to collect things in piles at home (no matter how organized I think I am, these piles just appear. Really.). I’ve developed a set-point at which I am comfortable saying, “That’s it. Time to reformat.” My Partner doesn’t like this approach, but I get rather single-minded on this, so she just shrugs her shoulders and keeps her distance, especially when I decide that the furniture needs rearranged about every several months.
Seriously, you should try it, so long as you are able to keep calm and think through before you begin; “Measure twice, cut once,” as my Father would say. This includes backing up key files on your computer (trust me on this one…). Once you get underway, you’ll probably realize, like me, that suddenly you have control again, and can choose to systematically reintroduce the things that truly help your productivity, or simply make your life a bit more enjoyable.
By the way, if you aren’t familiar, the image below is from the game Scorched Earth. It’s a fantastic game. Tragic Hero’s Blog has a good write-up. Perhaps play a few rounds to get into the spirit. I recommend going heavy on the megaton nukes.
Lifehack.org posting on Living Scared
Posted by Michael | Filed under Asides, Recommended, Site
Check out this great posting over on Lifehack.org about the fear of living life. Definitely a thought-provoking posting to read in its entirety. Towards the middle, and relevant to this blog, are the following passages:
[Excerpt] Some people have been almost creating their best life for far too long. Some people have been standing at the threshold of greatness for years, twiddling their thumbs, wasting their time and talent and hoping in vain that success might somehow find it’s way to them. An interesting, if not totally unrealistic notion.
[Excerpt] Some Personal Development Junkies are masters of this. Just one more workshop, one more conversation, one more mentoring session, one more self-help book and just one more day and then I’ll do it. Okay, maybe two more days. Sadly, they don’t understand that what they really need is not more time, books, workshops or more motivational fluff, what they really need is some balls.
Tags: craphacks, fear, Lifehack, productivity
