Tag Archives: productivity

Pain & piece of mind

My back/shoulder pain is still continuing after almost 6 weeks, and I have just started new meds that make me feel loopy. Trying to describe the pain, I thought of a play on words for the phrase ‘peace of mind’ and switching it to ‘piece of mind’.

There is no peace of mind when pain has a piece of your mind. Pain sits with you like an unwanted, unliked friend who is constantly nagging you. Sometimes the pain is in the background and while it’s only vaguely present, you can’t find peace. When it’s worse than that it sits in competition with anything else that’s happening.

I have some clarity now, but writing yesterday’s post would normally take me 20-30 minutes and it took me over an hour to write. I wasn’t doing anything else, I wasn’t distracted with other tasks, but I was feeling a lot of shoulder pain. Constant unrelenting pain. And a 30 minute task took me more than double the expected time. There is no peace of mind when pain has a piece of your mind.

I know this will pass, but it truly gives me a new respect for anyone who deals with daily pain. It’s not fun, it’s not productive, and it’s not easy to act in any normal way when pain has a piece of your mind.

Nobody told me

Nobody told me that there would be days where all I do is go to meetings and deal with emergent issues. Or how important it would be to deal with these emergent issues immediately. Nobody told me that my priorities would be whatever other’s priorities are, and that my priorities would take a back seat on my to-do-list truck of things that need to get done.

But that is the job. It’s about getting everyone on the same truck, going the same direction, while emergent issues come at you from any and every direction. The biggest challenge: making sure you have enough gas in the tank… both metaphorically and literally.

Nobody told me there would be days like these. Strange days indeed!

Get stuff done mode

I must admit that I was lucky. Having been away and needing to do some catch up yesterday, I was working in my office with my door closed. And as it turned out, it was an unusually uninterrupted kind of day. Normally interruptions are what my day is mostly about. But yesterday was quiet and I was in a a real ‘get stuff done’ mode.

It’s not like things didn’t come up that needed my attention, and I had over 3 hours of online meetings that I actually had to pay attention in. But every moment before, after, and between these meetings was dealing with one task at a time.

If I was interrupted, I dealt with the interruption immediately, then went right back into what I was doing beforehand. No squirrel-brain bouncing around and forgetting what I was doing. No email rabbit hole of distractions. It was go-go-go.

Coming off of being sick and taking more days off in a week than I took in the last 2 years, I needed a day like yesterday. I wish every day could be like that… but as I said, I was lucky. Things don’t always run that smooth, and I’m not a hide in my closed office kind of principal. Sometimes the job is mostly about interruptions that can not be easily solved. But I’ll worry about that another day. For now I’m just going to celebrate having a great ‘get stuff done’ kind of day yesterday.

Email Fail

I think email is broken.

1. Spam – it’s not just annoying, it’s dangerous and people are scammed all the time. Sometimes you just need to click a link and you are in trouble. I’ve seen stats ranging from 45-84% of all email being spam. While spam filters might block a lot of this, too much still gets through.

2. Unsubscribe – how many things have you not subscribed to that you have to unsubscribe from? And sometimes the unsubscribe process is the way that spammers know they have a working email and so they target you more. I’ve resorted to ‘block sender’ to unsubscribe from subscriptions that I didn’t sign up for.

3. Unsolicited invitations – worse still is the follow-up, “I don’t know if you saw my first email.” I take the time to block sender when I get these. I don’t owe you a reply when I don’t know you and you cold call me through email. I didn’t miss your email, I wasn’t interested the first time, and I’m just annoyed the second.

4. “Thank you.” – You want to thank me, please do so by not sending me an email thank you. Thank you’s are very polite in conversation, they are just another email adding to my inbox when sent digitally. I know this sounds cranky, but unless you are sending me a hilarious gif that says in some way, ‘Hey, I was so thankful I found this to make you smile’, then save yourself the effort and just don’t reply with a ‘Thanks’.

5. Reply All – Hitting Reply All should require effort, such as a double check to make you think about it:

It is way too easy to Reply All, and this is used far too often. Whenever possible, I blind cc emails when they go to a lot of people and might solicit a Reply All. Sometimes I wish Reply All wasn’t even an option. For the amount of times I’ve used it, I would still be saving time if I had to type everyone’s email in to reply to all, but then also avoided receiving so many in my inbox because it was equally hard for everyone else to send them.

6. Email doesn’t stop – I have a vampire rule for email that I follow: Unless someone that works for me asks a question or needs my help (invites me in), then I’m not allowed to enter their inbox on weekends or after 6pm on a work day. It is annoying how many steps/clicks it takes to delay an email delivery until the next morning, but I’ll do it to avoid sending someone an email when they won’t be dealing with it until the next work day anyway. I rather inconvenience myself than add work to people at or after dinner or on their weekends. Even if I’m sharing a useful resource, it can wait until the next morning. I wish more people did this. If someone wants to think about work on their time off, it should be because they want to, not because a work email came in to interrupt them at home.

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In a blog post titled Finding Balance, that I wrote over 8 years ago, I created and shared the image above and I said,

“Email is not a productivity tool. It is a poorly used form of communication that engulfs productivity time and requires a disproportionate amount of our lives.”

In the past 8 years I haven’t seen any innovation in email and it still hinders more than helps productivity. Currently I use Microsoft Teams with my work teams and tell them that I will check messages there before email. At least this tool lets me contextualize the messages and so prioritizing my teams is easier than looking at the most recent email that has come in. But email still sucks too much of my time for the value that it does (and mostly does not) return.

Essentially, email has failed, and I would love to see it go away in the same way the fax machine did.

Filling time

Ever find yourself filling time rather than spending it? You have a task to do and you have two hours to do it in, and you get it done in 2 hours. If you had 1.5 hours, that’s how long it would have taken… and if you had 2.5 hours you might get it done in just under 3. While that’s a bit of an exaggeration, I think it makes the point.

We recently hired a company to help us with tidying and organizing our garage and basement storage. We floundered over a couple weeks figuring out what to throw away and how to organize things. Then when we were getting help that was costing us more the longer it took, we transformed our garage. It went from a dumping ground that got out of hand when we had to throw everything in there for our main floor renovation, to a fully useable space with organized shelves and clear, labelled bins. We didn’t even need to add more shelving than what was already there.

If we had to keep going on our own without help, I think that we would still be rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic – moving things around in a disorganized garage that still looked like a disaster.

That’s an example where outside help got us through what needed to be done, but some of this filling time issue is more personal. For example, I haven’t been getting my morning routine done every morning. Sometimes I get to my workout later in the day. When I’m not on summer break, I wake up at 5:15, I write, meditate, and work out and I’m usually in the shower by 7am or shortly thereafter. But now my writing could take an hour and I could head to the basement for a workout that’s usually 20 minutes cardio and 20-25 minutes of weights and stretching, and turn it into well over an hour. However, I’m not doing more, I’m just procrastinating and stretching the time. I’m distracted by my phone. I’m taking very long breaks between sets. I’m doing a 10 min cooldown on a 20 min ride on my stationary bike.

Sometimes I just stretch the time I spend on things just because the time is available. I’m not spending time doing things, I’m filling the time available. While it’s nice to have the time to be able to do this, it does feel like I’m just wasting time… and time is a limited resource. The question is, if I didn’t just use my ’empty’ time up, what would I spend it on?

Perfection Paralysis

Most of us can’t imagine working on something for an hour or two then ripping it up or clicking ‘Select All’ and then hitting delete. But for students who are bitten by the perfectionist bug, it’s just something they do when what they’ve done doesn’t meet the high standard they place on themselves. They will miss a deadline because what they have written will only get them a low ‘A’, rather than a much higher one that they have their heart set on. They will have done 2 hours work on something they think will get them a 90%, then another hour and a half making it a 95%.

This is achievable for a perfectionist working on one project, but will absolutely bury them when they are trying to do this on 3 or 4 assignments simultaneously. The thing is, trying to tell a perfectionist something is ‘good enough’ is like telling a Golden Lab to save some food for later. It’s just not in their nature.

The message we try to give at our school, which has its fair share of perfectionists, is to choose your perfectionism. Don’t disregard it, but use it in some places and not in others. We do agile/scrum projects where part of the project is ‘defining done’ so that students can achieve tasks and move on, rather than spending too long on too many parts. We set challenging timelines where the focus is on completion rather than perfection.

It’s not about taking perfectionism away from a perfectionist, this is a skill many others need to learn. Instead, it’s about helping them learn to harness this skill without it consuming them. It’s about channeling perfectionism where it matters, on projects that matter, and not overwhelmingly on everything. It’s not a habit to break, it’s a skill to use when doing things where perfectionism makes a difference, rather than being something that consumes a kid with unrealistic stress and hours of wasted time.

Do it for 2 minutes

Taking my own advice here. I’ve been staring at the blank page for nearly 20 minutes with nothing to write. But I just gave a friend who is struggling to exercise regularly some advice. I said do 2 minutes. That’s it. Do a 2 minute workout, but do it. In reality, you’ll do a bit more, but if it’s just 2 minutes, it still keeps the streak going.

Too many people talk themselves out of workouts, or journaling, or reading, or eating healthy… because it’s too much work. It takes too much time. Everyone has two minutes to spare. Everyone has 5 minutes to spare. Everyone can build a habit if the habit starts at 2 minutes.

I’ve already written for more than 2 minutes, now that I’ve actually started. Procrastination isn’t just about putting something off, it’s about stealing time from you, time that could be productive enough to complete the task and still have what would have been more procrastination time left over.

It can start with just 2 minutes.

Death by a thousand paper cuts

This is the term I use when too many small things come my way. I then spend my entire day successfully getting two-thirds of those things done, and creating an unruly ‘to do’ list for the next day, after staying at work a little longer than I hoped.

I haven’t done it yet this school year, but today I’m blocking some time in my calendar for a project I’m hoping to get done in the coming weeks. It was a September goal that never happened.

It’s quite apparent to me that unless I slot time in for visioning and projects that move my schools forward, the paper cut tasks win me over and consume my day. Blocking this time off won’t magically create more time in my calendar. I’m not going to suddenly have less little things to do… but I’m not going to go home feeling like I spent the day getting paper cuts. I’ll feel more like I had a productive day rather than just a busy day.

I know that when I do these things that I want to get done, (which I know are good for my school), then I don’t go home feeling like I want to describe my day as ‘death by a thousand paper cuts’. I know that I will feel a lot more like my day accomplished something beyond the many little (but important) things land on my desk.

Feed your focus

In my morning meditation’s lesson, as part of the Calm App‘s daily 10 minute meditation, this quote was shared:

“Starve of your distractions, feed your focus.” – Daniel Goleman.

This is a wonderful quote, but it is easier said than done. It’s challenging because our distractions often bring us joy or at the very least, entertainment. But this goes well with the idea that, ‘Your priorities are not your priority‘. What is your focus? If your focus is just getting work done, or completing a series of tasks, that’s not really something to focus on. It’s analogous to having many priorities, which in turn is not a priority.

What’s your focus? What do you want to accomplish? If you find that thing that drives you, that makes you want to wake up earlier in the day to achieve or that you will stay up late trying to finish. If you find that kind of focus, well then it’s easy to feed. It’s then easier to starve your distractions… or at least limit them.

Things that I do:

• A morning healthy living routine to feel a sense of accomplishment before I start my day.

• Time limits on apps that I enjoy, and that entertain me. (This way I can still get some joy out of distractions, but the time spent on them fit within a threshold that doesn’t suck my time away mindlessly.)

• Calendar time to do the thing I really want to get done, and not just the things I have to do.

All that said, I still go through times when I seem to lack focus, or forget what I truly want to focus on. I still have bouts of procrastination and distraction. There are times when I have to intentionally starve my distractions. But in combining teo ideas, if I choose a single priority that I want to accomplish, and I also feed my focus on that priority… I get stuff done, and it feels amazing.

Meh

It’s 10:30pm and I feel like I’ve wasted most of the day. I did help my wife with some garage clean-up but we didn’t spend that long on it. I did have a wonderful dinner with my daughter, but then I came home and fell asleep on the couch. I started writing this and realized that I forgot to hit publish on yesterday’s post. I back dated it, hit ‘Publish’, and now I’m writing this before doing a meditation and a guilt-ridden workout, having not worked out yesterday.

This is the challenge of not having a routine. This is what scares me about the idea of retirement. I often need a schedule to be and feel productive. I can waste away time like it’s nothing and end up feeling like a day has completely escaped me. I didn’t even listen to much of my audiobook that I’m thoroughly enjoying. I didn’t take time to do archery, which I just mentioned enjoying yesterday (although I only published it tonight).

This is not me at my best. I’ve got to be present rather than simply let the present become the past without even realizing it. I’ve got to get active early in the day and set a personal goal or two to accomplish. It can be as simple as listening to my book, or writing this before 10:30pm… it’s not about needing to do anything great, it’s just about make moments of ‘meh’ into moments I value and appreciate. It’s interesting that my only two mentionable moments from today were with my family and my meh moments where when I was alone. I usually enjoy times of solitude, but now it’s obvious to me that I have to be more present and focused about how I spend my alone time, rather than wasting it away.