May 26, 2010

How Mind Mapping Software Can Decrease Your Productivity

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Businesspeople exchanging card, world map in background, close-up

Attention Mind Mappers!

First, Why You Really Should Mind Map

I’ve loved mind mapping for years.  Mind mapping has improved the quality of my thinking and learning, helped me generate thousands of ideas, helped me plan for my business, my work and personal life as well as saved me time and effort in many areas.  I’ve adapted mind mapping to help me in so many situations…but there’s a huge problem, particularly with mind mapping software…

You Can’t See the Wood for the Trees

It’s expansive.  There are no limits to what you add to your map – the screen keeps scrolling on and on.  It’s designed to not break your thought flow. Its very strength is also a potential weakness. This open ended platform for thinking is great for generating ideas, but it doesn’t get you to close any loops.  It doesn’t force you into making any decisions, which puts a halt to your actions and results.  A major mind map idea generating session can also leave you slightly overwhelmed and unfocused when you look over what you’ve done.  And some high value ideas can get lost in all the ‘noise’ of your mind map.


Increase the Quality of Your Ideas and Focus

Mind Mapping software helps you generate quantity of ideas, not necessarily quality.  That’s fine, because to get great ideas you usually need lots of ideas as a starting point.  The quality may come later. But I had an idea myself on how you can force better quality and more focus from your mind maps, and turn your best ideas into action more easily.

Some time back I started transferring my electronic mind maps on to half a sheet of A4 paper.  The physical limits to your paper force you to make decisions on what you include.  It forces you to increase the quality of your thinking and communication, be it choice of words or pictures.  It forces you to think about the important stuff and communicate it concisely! It’s handy of course to keep your writing standard size for this to work.  If you shrink your writing, you don’t benefit from the physical limits, so you’re probably shrinking the quality of your thinking too.

Take it Further Still

You can enhance your focus and quality of thinking even further.  Consider reproducing your mind map on the back of a business card.  What would you include and exclude?  Keep your writing standard size.  This really sharpens your thinking.  You get down to the main important points, and force yourself to make decisions. You gain focus.  Things become clearer.  It kind of tells you what you should be getting on with next.

Some people may already have control of their focus and ideas when mind mapping.  They may naturally manage their mind maps towards making decisions and taking actions.  But I’ll bet most people who use mind mapping software have lots of ideas, thoughts, resources and snippets of information that they’ve overlooked and that get buried in their maps, all because they haven’t forced themselves to make decisions to bring them to the surface and act on them.  I know I’ve been guilty of this, but I’ve really benefit over recent months where I’ve forced myself to make more focused decisions on what I think, learn, focus on, and on what I’ll turn into action, and in particular how I word my ideas.


The Missing Final Step

Plug my business card idea on as the missing final step to your current electronic mind mapping approach and let me know what it does for you.

May 14, 2010

How I Became Addicted to Eating Frogs

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Man Holding a Toad

One of the best things I ever did was become addicted to eating frogs. No, it’s not from my years dining out when living in Belgium, it’s ‘productivity speak’ for ‘getting the biggest, ugliest, hardest thing of the day done first’.

I learned the idea of eating the frog first thing in the morning from Brian Tracy’s book, ‘Eat That Frog‘, which is all about productivity.  He explained that often the task we really don’t want to do – the thing we’re resisting the most, is often the thing that will make us the most progress in our work. The frog, is the important thing, that MUST get done today. Most people habitually put it off until the pain gets really high and they have to do it (often when they’re out of energy and their performance levels are are low). Or, it just doesn’t get done and they miss a deadline.

I start my day identifying the frog by asking myself, ‘if I could only get one thing done today that would make most impact on my work and customers, what would it be?‘  That’s my frog, and that’s what I’m addicted to getting on with in the morning, first thing, until it’s done.

I guess I became addicted because of the feelings of progress it brings.  When you’re done, and you tick it off, you feel great. You almost feel like you could take the rest of the day off, well earned. It’s become a habit of mine to get up and eat the frog, almost every day. I’d recommend you schedule to identify your frog Monday morning, and immediately get on with it until it’s done.  See how it makes you feel, and what it brings you. Sometimes it puts you right in the zone where you’re ready to identify your next frog and eat that too.  It can become addictive.  Do it for a day, then schedule to do the same the next day, and the next, until you get addicted to this great rewarding productivity habit.



May 5, 2010

How to Make Massive Progress at Work and at Home

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Here’s a productivity lesson I’ve derived from sales training.

Ever heard the old sales training advice ‘ABC’?  Always Be Closing.  If you’re not in sales you might have heard it in movies like Glengarry Glen Ross or Boiler Room (two excellent movies by the way that everyone should watch if they want a taste of the life of a salesman! Great ‘learning’ movies too.)

So why am I talking about ‘Always Be Closing’ as a productivity tool?

I’m referring to closing what I call ‘open loops’.  Open loops are things you’ve started and haven’t finished.  They’re everywhere,  all around you.  Stealing a part of your attention and focus.  Niggling away at your mind as you try to get on with something else.  Looking up at you as you walk past.  They are what puts you in that frustrated, slightly overwhelmed mood.

There’s no benefit from these ‘unclosed loops‘.  They took time, money or energy to start, and there’s been no (or little) pay off so far.  So a waste of time then.  Until you close them.

By close them, I’m NOT suggesting you continue each one to completion.  Dumping, deleting or ditching them is also closing them, and it’s the fastest way to do so.

So here’s my sales advice translated to productivity: spend the next 48 hours CLOSING whatever you can by deletion first, and completion next.  Obviously defer what needs to be deferred and get it out of your focus for now.  Or delegate, and get someone else to CLOSE for you.  (But that’s still an open loop until you know the job’s done).  But at all costs, go on a 48 hour ABC frenzy.  Keep repeating to yourself, ‘Always Be Closing’.

Then stand back, stand proud, and admire your progress.

P.S. If you really want to make consistent progress, don’t stop at 48 hours.  Do another 24 hours.  Then repeat.

April 19, 2010

How to Be More Productive Than Your Computer

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Be Productive

Really?  You can be more productive than your computer allows you to be?

Yep.  Well, of course your computer is the right tool for certain jobs.  But it’s all too easy to get lazy and try to do everything via your computer.  Ultimately, using your computer for too many things chokes your productivity.

Ever heard of Maslow’s Hammer? Abraham Maslow once said, “It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail”

I think that the computer has become the new Maslow’s Hammer.  It’s not always the right tool for the job.

Here’s how you can beat the productivity of your computer: don’t use it so much.  Get off the computer more often.  And I don’t just mean to take a break.  I mean get off the computer and invest more of your time doing these, which will make you much more productive:

  • thinking – take an hour a day out to think away from the computer.  Think to answer this question: How could I change how I work to make much more positive impact on more people who pay me, more often?  Jot your thoughts down
  • reading and learning – take an hour a day out to learn whatever you need to learn to be able to do your job twice as well as you do it now.  If you could work twice as well as you do now, what would you most need to learn?  Learn it for an hour a day away from your computer (read, listen to audio, attend courses or chat to experts)
  • planning your next 3 months, your next month, your next week and tomorrow (the objective of your plan is ‘what would I have to do to earn myself a forever increasing supply of TIME, MONEY or ENERGY?’  I’d just pick one of those for now and make your plan to achieve that
  • doing physical activity
  • consider calling some people with the objective of getting ‘an answer’ instead of emailing them (I’m not suggesting to always call instead of email, I’m suggesting that each one is the right tool for a certain job. Emailing can be too passive.  Calling can be too intrusive.  Get the tool right to create a win:win where you can).  You can even start the call cheerily and say, ‘I’m spring cleaning, I’m organising my time for the months ahead – I’m tidying up all unmade decisions around me so that I can focus my efforts on what’s definite’  This tip is about asking for what you want. You’ll be amazed the impact it has on your progress towards more TIME, MONEY or ENERGY.  Most people don’t get the things they want (and deserve) because they don’t ask
  • just resting

Each of those are healthier for you, your mind, your eyes, and your body and each are an investment with potential high returns in the short, medium and long term.  They will make you much more productive.  Since most people don’t do them, you’ll be well ahead of your competition if you do, and you’ll be rewarded appropriately over time.  It’s not rocket science this, it’s pretty simple.  Just turn what I’ve told you here into some actions, schedule to take them, and when the time comes, just get on with them. Then come back and let me know how you went.

April 7, 2010

Positive Thinking Can Land You in Trouble

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Its about time I nailed this. Positive thinking is encouraged everywhere you look these days. But I think it can land some people in trouble.

How to Think Smart

Smart thinking requires looking at potential consequences, both positive and negative of decisions and actions in the short, medium and long term. You want to check all three of those time scales if you want to think smart, and you must look at upsides and downsides for each if you want to make well thought out decisions.  Failure to neglect any decreases the quality of your thinking.


The Problem With Failing to Acknowledge Reality

The problem with inveterate positive thinkers, is that their default setting is to strive to look only at the positives.  But reality always has a downside.  The downside is there whether you’re prepared to acknowledge it or not.  Whilst I agree that positive thinking can make you feel better in the moment and should increase your chances of acting towards more positive outcomes, you’re also open to the surprise negative consequences you failed to look at and failed to plan contingencies for.  This breaks people.  I’ve seen it happen a lot.

Inveterate positive thinkers can become delusional.  I don’t value the positive thinker standing next to me telling me that “it’ll all work out alright” when I’m faced with an important decision.  They don’t have the authority or credibility to tell me that.  As far as I’m concerned, I might as well have a clown advising me.  Similarly positive thinkers who are into extreme sports just scare the hell out of me.

The positive thinker who thinks it’ll be OK if she jumps off a cliff and will land safely and lightly on her feet also concerns me.  Its just not useful to think positively in certain situations.

Positive thinkers may now think I’m being negative. (Or will they? Maybe they’ll see the good in what I’m saying?)


Useful Thinking

Its why I don’t talk of positive and negative thinking, and instead developed the terms “useful thinking” and “unuseful thinking”. Its useful if it enables you to avoid or minimise negative consequences (think short, medium and long term) and instead steer you towards the outcomes you really want.  Its unuseful if it doesn’t.  Some positive thinking is “unuseful thinking”.  Some negative thinking is actually “useful thinking”.  Think about it.

Some of you may feel that this post has a negative tone to it.  I’d say it has a useful tone to it.  I hope you find it useful.

March 24, 2010

The Best Ideas Come After the Big Decision

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Lack of ideas, and therefore options prevents many of us from heading down new paths and trying new things.  The thing is, once you take your first step towards something new, lack of ideas is no longer a problem.  Once you’ve decided and stepped forward, your mind is no longer split and your focus tightens.  You tend to get showered with ideas of your own, and from other people.  It seems you have to take a bit of a leap of faith to be in that position.

If you’re holding back from heading down a potentially exciting new path because you lack ideas, head down it anyway (whilst hanging on to the day job!)  Then you’ll find the ideas you were looking for and a whole new set of options.

March 15, 2010

Get Home Early Today – A Productivity Boost

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Hate to say it but most people are ineffective.  They often don’t get the job done on time AND they don’t get home on time.  No one wins.

Effective habits don’t come naturally to us.  Our default setting is ‘ineffective’.  And ‘effectiveness’ was never a subject at school.  It would be ironic in my opinion if it was.  In fact, the very ineffective approach to the way school works ingrains some bad habits in to us that we carry through in to later life. However, effectiveness is learnable.  And over time, the habits can give you a sense of liberation from your work.

Want to get home on time today?  Try this:

You’ve possibly heard Pareto’s Law.  One application is that 80% of our results at work get done in 20% of our working time; that amazing 20% when we’re focused and in flow, getting the job done well.

If you could extract that magic 20%, and only do that, then theoretically you’d get 80% of your work done.  That’s within 2 hours of a 10 hour work day.  Then you could use the rest of the time how you like.

How can we get to the magic 20%?

One way is to use forced efficiency which I write about in a previous article here.  Ask yourself, ‘if I only had 1 hour at work today and then had to rush off, what would I get done in that 1 hour, and how would I do it?’

You’d  probably start by politely telling your colleague next to you to shut up about what was on TV last night.

You’d devote your attention to scan over all that needs to be done, and you’d instantly start recognising the key priorities. You’ll soon pick out the few actions that will have the most impact or consequences to your work.

You’d think about who you could delegate to, what you could defer, what you could just scrap doing altogether.  You’d find existing work that you could re-use to save re-inventing the wheel.  You’d instantaneously be a lot smarter as you consider how to achieve your desired result.  You’d probably write a quick neat list of what needs to be done in that 1 hour.

Then you’d just get on with it with urgency.  And often this way, you quickly get in to that state of flow.

You’ll be surprised by your progress if you start the day like this.  Never mind the exact figures in the theory, they don’t matter.  It’s just probabilistic.  It increases the chances heavily that you’ll not only get your important work done, but also get home on time, or earlier.

Just do it and see what it does for you.  And let me know how you go below.

March 3, 2010

Smarter Learning: The ‘Theory’ Rash

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A lot of people come out in a rash when they hear the word ‘theory’.

Theory is boring isn’t it?  We want the fun, hands on, useful practical stuff.  What you may not consider though is that the practical experience came before the theory (and will come again if we apply it).  The theory, usually, is developed from noticing cause and effect over time.  The theory is the learnable set of rules or observations that we can translate into action and results again.  Well…that’s the theory.

The big problem with theory these days is that it becomes out of date faster than ever.  Often, it no longer applies.  Things change so fast that we’re forever playing on a different playing field.  Or it applies to some people and not others.

So what can we do about it?

1.  Learn to recognise the theory or laws or rules that are timeless first of all.  Even then, be careful.

2.  Stop learning new theory and instead upgrade your learning ability.  Learn how to learn fast.  It’s a learnable skill.  You’ll need it moving ahead.  You’ll be forced to do it sooner or later, so you might as well cash in on it now and build your skill.

3.  Purposefully question everything you learn and ask yourself if it’s up to date and resonates well with you, whilst also being accurate and credible.  A hard one to answer sometimes, but do your best.  Definitely ask yourself these questions.  People can deliver up to date theory now online faster than ever before.  You can learn from someone’s actions that they took just hours or even minutes ago.  We’re all pulling together these days and sharing our own personal experiences.  It’s there if you look for it and connect to the right people.

4.  Remember that there’s more than one way to skin a cat.

5.  Finally, my advice is track down 2 or 3 resources that are trustworthy, useful, enjoyable to learn from and help you keep up to date in your field or work.  They’re your ‘heartbeat’ in your work from now on.

Follow those steps and your ‘rash’ will disappear.

March 1, 2010

Choose Your Rewards and Frustrations

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When you say ‘yes’ to a task or activity, remember you’re simultaneously saying ‘no’ to a whole lot of others.

When you say ‘yes’, make sure you acknowledge what you’re saying ‘no’ to.

Are you saying ‘no’ to something more important?

Are you saying ‘no’ to something that will have a bigger impact on your career or life in the short, medium or long term?

And is now really the very best time to be doing the one you’re saying ‘yes’ to?

Before deciding the long path you’ll head down, think it through.

P.S.  What did you say ‘yes’ and ‘no’ to today?  What can you do to put things back on the right track?

February 8, 2010

4 Decisions to Sort Your Life Out

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Reading time 3 mins

At the end of this post I offer you 4 decisions to sort your life and career out.  Don’t jump straight to them or you’ll fail to understand and do anything about them.

Learn to Get Whatever You Want

‘Learning’ is the key to just about anything.  Anyone can learn how to get what they want in their work or life.  Anyone can learn how to make smarter decisions, how to solve problems they face, and how to get good at what they do for a living.  But, to learn these things effectively is a huge challenge because of…

The (Flawed) System

The system keeps you in place.  The traditional educational system is hard to avoid.  It lurks everywhere, in business and organisations too.  And it feeds itself.  Graduates of the traditional educational system tend to refuel it and design and deliver learning the way it was for them.  Teachers often teach the way they were taught.  Managers often educate their teams the way they were educated.  It ‘works’ for people like them, but fails everyone else.  It maintains the status quo within it’s own bubble.  It keeps the flawed system the same.  Unfortunately then, the system won’t help you get what you want.  It won’t help you sort your life out.

No One is Coming to Save You

Individuals have to protect and save themselves from the system, because unfortunately it seems most educational institutions aren’t coming to save you.

Yes, there’s a lot of talk within educational institutions about traditional approaches not working.  Most people are nodding.  But still the tendency is to drift back to old ways and give the educators the most control rather than the learners.

How Learning Should Be

Effective learning is about learners learning and applying what they learn.  Learners are at the centre of learning.  It’s not about teaching.  There’s way too much focus on the teacher or presenter.

It’s about making the learning content available in a number of ways and styles that suits all learners, then leading and inspiring them to seek out the right ‘meal’, and swallow and apply the learning content for a win:win.

A great presentation might go like this:

“Hi folks, I need 30 seconds of your attention, if you learn how to do this you’ll be able to get these results which will mean xyz for you personally.  To learn how, here is a list of 50 resources all chosen to teach the same thing in different ways so that you enjoy learning this fast.  Check them out and pick which suits you best.  Enjoy yourself.’

Free Yourself and Learn to Get What You Want

The internet points to this idea of how learning should be.  It will change the system gradually.  But it only works when the learner takes control and frees themself from the system.

That means that you must:

1.  DECIDE what ‘wins’ you  want in your work and life

2.  DECIDE how you can improve the lives of other people or businesses (and get them to confirm this) doing what you enjoy and are best at in order to create the win:win you want

3.  DECIDE what you need to learn and apply on top of your existing knowledge, experience and strengths, to get these win:wins as fast, effectively and enjoyably as possible

4.  Seek out and DECIDE on the most effective way for you personally to learn and apply the right things.  Do NOT trust that the traditional system will help you get the wins you chose at step 1.

NOTE:  These are all DECISIONS and can only be made by YOU. No one else.  Unfortunately ‘the system’ makes these decisions for most people.  Any educators, career advisors, managers, friends, family or any one who tries to take the reigns and decide any of these for you are not helping you or themselves.  People in the wrong jobs learning the wrong things in the wrong ways aren’t creating the value they could be for any one involved.  People making these decisions for you are part of ‘the system’.  They’re part of the problem.

All my work is aimed at helping people make these decisions for themselves.  Subscribing to my posts means you’ll receive practical tips and occasional goodies to help you in these areas.  Any questions, fire away below.

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