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 19, 2010

Get Stuff Done

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flying bee

Here’s a great way to get stuff done.  Do what you feel like doing when you feel like doing it – but ensure you’re knocking things off your ‘important’ list.  I’m a big fan of this approach to working.  Time Management expert Mark Forster knows how to get stuff done and has turned this approach into a set of systems he calls ‘Autofocus’.  You can check them out here. They won’t suit everyone, but you can always adapt them to suit.  Start by using them to get stuff done at the weekend for example.

I’ve used a similar approach over the last couple of years.  I determine what has to be done and what I really want to get done that day.  I list them.  I swallow the frogs first (great tip here).  Then I use ‘autofocus’ to get the rest done when I feel ready to do them.  It’s an interesting way to keep up your energy and motivation.  Give it a go.

P.S. You should enjoy your working day more using this approach as well as become more productive.  If you consistently don’t feel like doing anything on your ‘important’ list then you’re probably in the wrong job. You might want to think about finding a career in which you’ll nearly always feel like doing something from your ‘important’ list. You can help yourself here or join the Facebook page here.

May 17, 2010

Email or Phone?

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Businessperson using phone with at sign and world map and fiber optic cable behind them

This discussion is a bit old now, but something I read got me thinking again.  I’m writing this post to simplify the solution.  This ‘successful’ (I think that term should always be in inverted commas) CEO claims he does everything by email as it’s more effective than using the phone, plus it creates a written record.

I prefer to use email often as you can keep the message on track, you’re not interrupting anyone and you can send your message without waiting for their immediate attention.  They can then read it at a convenient time.  But this is all very passive.  It’s not so good if the person you’re communicating with isn’t much of a reader, doesn’t pay attention to detail in your note, is unlikely to type back, is on the road all the time without email access, or is someone you need to develop rapport with first before asking for action.

So do you call then?  It’s certainly more active.  Doesn’t mean it’s more effective though.  If I’m working on something that’s likely to be more important than my ringing phone, unless I need a break I ignore the phone.  I’m not ignoring the person, I’m ignoring their demand for my immediate attention.  My answer phone takes their call and I can get back when it suits, just like I do with email.

So which is best?  It depends on the nature of the communication, your job role (the types of calls and emails you receive and their importance), who’s involved and the timing.

My simplified easy-to-apply advice for which is best:

Know the outcome you want and then get to know the other person as fast as possible.  Starting by knowing the nature of their job, make an educated guess as to which method they’d respond best to that will get your desired outcome.  If you’re wrong, it doesn’t matter, you’ll soon learn and you’ll know for next time.

Does anyone have any other thoughts on which works best?

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 13, 2010

How to Create Better Quality Teachers (For Yourself, Your Organisation and Your Kids)

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Graduating Teacher Holding Eyeglasses and Chalk

I’ve met a lot of teachers over the years who want to get out of teaching.  Why?

I’ve also met and worked with lots of people over the years who consider teaching for one reason above all else: because it’s great for the holidays.  What?  What about the longer working part?  And the effect it has on your personal life?

Of course, you’re sending your kids along (or at least you probably will be) to spend much of their time with people who either don’t want to be there, or who only want to be there because they can’t wait until school’s out.  (This might ring alarm bells in your own work too).  That’s an awful lot of people who don’t really want to be there teaching your kids.  I don’t know about you, but it scares me.  I don’t want someone helping to grow, develop and teach my children, when their heart isn’t in it.  Because when their heart isn’t in it, then their performance, energy and results aren’t in it either.  The impact on your child’s learning, results and life, is huge.

For the record, I’ve also met a handful of teachers over the years who are in their ideal career, working not for the holidays, but for their passion and enjoyment for teaching and helping integrate children into the real world.  These people are the bridge to accelerating learning.  These people are driven to make it work.  They really care about their pupils and seem to put the needs of their pupils before their own.  And they tend to be remembered by their pupils. You may remember some of yours and you may even have the urge to get hold of them if you could, to thank them.  They made impact and they made learning enjoyable and powerful too.  A couple of my teachers stood out like that.  A couple, out of about 50.

Please note, I don’t blame teachers at all and I’m not having a go at teachers.  Because what’s going on here is going on in your field too.  My advice to teachers though who don’t really love their work is to get out and find and get into something that really makes you bounce out of bed in the morning and give it everything.  Something you’re driven to get better and better at and something that puts you in the best position to really help others doing what you do best.  My advice to everyone else (especially if you have kids) is to help teachers you know who are considering a career change to see it through.  They might be very pleased to hear of www.thegreatcareerescape.com.  Getting in to their ideal career will make them happier more productive people, and it will make way for teachers who were born to teach well.  They are out there, possibly working in the wrong job.  Think of the number of children’s lives this will positively influence over time.

And while you’re at it, consider how and where this is going on in your own industry too.  Perhaps some strategic repositioning will positively change your life and the lives of your customers?

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.

May 3, 2010

How to Leap Ahead in Your Career

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Hand holding chess piece

I’m going to show you how you can make a huge leap of progress in your career.

I meet plenty of people through my work, all at different stages in their career.  It doesn’t take me long to decide which of three general attitudes they have towards their work:

1.  There are those who think they’re on a moving walkway in their career.  They think that just because they’re employed in a certain position, that all it takes is time for them to move up the ranks, and that in 30 years they’ll be in a successful, senior position.  It happens to some, but not to most (how can it work for everyone when there’s only a few places at the top anyway?)  If that’s you, then you can leap forwards in your career by understanding my next point…

2.  There are those who realise that there’s no moving walkway, and that no one owes them anything, that it’s not a fair playing field they’re playing on, and that they won’t get their ‘turn’.  They realise that if they want more back from their career, their employer or their life, then they’re going to have to get up and make it happen themselves.  You have to earn what you want.  Their priority is to get their hands on what they need to learn, and then put it into practice as fast and effectively as possible. They can leap forwards in their career by learning how to learn twice as fast (they need their employer to provide them with something like this) and learning how to manage themselves effectively to apply what they learn fluidly and consistently.

3.  There are those who just don’t care.  They just potter along.  They just go to work because, well you have to don’t you?  They’re in the wrong job.  Because when you’re in the right job, you do care.  You’re compelled to make things happen and do a great job, because you enjoy doing just that, and you’re proud of the results you create.  Unfortunately, those who don’t care about their career progress because they’re in the wrong job are unlikely to be reading this blog post.  So you might need to point them towards what they need, which is this.


Join the Queue?

Brian Tracy says that you only have to do 2 things to get to the front of a queue, or to advance your career:  ‘Get in line and stay in line.’

The truth is, you don’t have to stay in line where you’re at.  You can jump the career queue, and the beauty is, it’s a fair jump too. You earn the right to jump the queue by becoming more valuable to those who pay you (and to your colleagues too).  And it’s not a single line anyway.  It’s a mass huddle of people.  It’s a crowd.  It’s like a chess board full of pieces, and you can move like a knight.  You can jump people sideways, if you like, to get to where you want.

Just follow these steps:

1.  work out what position you want to be in and why (make it a position you really care about and will be proud of)
2.  work out what value you’d need to provide to who (and how often) in order to earn the right to be in that position
3.  work out what you need to LEARN and then APPLY in order to provide that value
4.  learn it
5.  apply it
6.  repeat

Of course there are plenty of stumbling points along the way, and there are ways to move through these steps faster, more easily and enjoyably too. If you’ve got a question for me related to this, please post it below or email me and I may blog my response.

April 30, 2010

Your Perfect Office?

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your perfect office?

If you could work from home, would you? I find myself
having or hearing this conversation a lot. Many people surprise me by saying, ‘I just couldn’t work from home’.

What ‘Working From Home’ Really Means

What they may be overlooking, is once you work ‘from home’ you’re pretty much managing yourself. So long as you get your job done well, you can work where and how you want. The only real limits are technological and what you put on yourself. When I’m not working in a clients office or running a workshop  then I work wherever I feel happiest and most productive.

I write in cafes or sometimes from my iPhone in a park. I read and think on the beach, or in the shade under a tree. I learn by audio whilst walking or jogging. And if I need to socialise I’ve got the phone, skype, friends locally who work in a similar way, or plenty of people to chat to in cafes. All day long I can maintain a high level of productivity by positioning myself correctly. You don’t have that level of control and flexibility in an office.

But what about maintaining the discipline to work?

How to Maintain Self Discipline to Work

At this stage some people point out that they couldn’t discipline themselves to do their work without their boss breathing down their neck, or even whipping them! You can if you’re in the right job. You can if you’re compelled to solve other people’s problems doing what you enjoy doing and do best. It comes down to ‘how do you enjoy spending your time? What rewards, benefits and feelings do you get from doing your job well?’

Working ‘from home’ doesn’t actually have to mean from ‘home’ anymore. It means working ‘wherever you can and want’. And self discipline is not a problem when you’re fully driven to do your job well because you chose the right career path and you  have a burning desire to serve people doing what you do best.

Next time I find myself having this conversation, don’t be surprised when I flick you over this link :-)

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 12, 2010

Your Own Personal Information System at Your Fingertips

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Smart Thinking

Super Smart Note Taking for Mac and iPhone Users – 6 Productivity Tips

Tip 1: Buy an iPhone – I’m confident you’ll make the cost back if you use it to the full in terms of saved time, money and effort over time (and much more than that if you download and use the right apps)  The iPhone is one of the most useful and effective productivity tools I’ve ever come across.  It’s much more costly not to own and use one.

Tip 2: If you take notes on your Mac or iPhone, here’s a great way to do it that’s something different from mind mapping:

Download the free ‘Notational Velocity‘ for your Mac here

This free software saves you having to think about where to file your notes.  You just type, straight off the bat.  As you type, your existing notes that include the words you’re typing pop up in a list in front of you.  You can then either go into those notes to add what you’re typing, or just add a new note.  Simple.

Make it Much Better

Tip 3: Your notes will sit on your Mac with Notational Velocity.  If you want to access them elsewhere:

Create a free account at ‘Simplenote.com’ here

Then you can sync Notational Velocity with Simplenote and you’ll not only have a backup online, but you’ll be able to access them from any web browser.

Use an iPhone?  Make it Better Still!

Tip 4: Download the free Simplenote app for iPhone here

Then you can use your iPhone to view, create and edit your notes.  It automatically syncs to your Simplenote web account…which automatically syncs to Notational Velocity on your Mac.

So you’ve got all the info you need at your fingertips all the time.  No more excuses.


How to Make Your Entire Personal Information System Much Much Better

There will be plenty of times when you need some information in a certain place at a certain time.  But you don’t have it.  So you end up either looking silly, or end up not being able to do something you wanted to be able to do.  All because it’s not stored in your personal information system.

Tip 5:  Make the effort (or make a note!) to get that information in your system asap.  Set an alarm.  Get it in your system for when you next need it.  That time will come.  Maintain that approach overtime and you’ll surprise yourself as to how organised and effective you’ve become.  Then you can enjoy the rewards that brings.


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Tip 6:  Please let me know in the comments below (and while you’re at it tell me what else you’d like tips on relevant to your career or business progress, learning and productivity).  I’ll promise to be as helpful as possible!

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