Sleep On It

I've discovered something about myself that is very simple but very
powerful: problems get easier when I sleep on them. If I'm feeling
hopelessly stuck on something, I won't necessarily feel like that when I
sit down to work tomorrow, and must remember that and not despair. I think
this because of what creativity researchers refer to as incubation - the
thinking that happens when you're not working hard at it, while you're
walking around, taking a shower, doing your morning routine, etc. Also it
could be related to how my brain rehearses things during REM sleep - I'm
certainly better at presentations if I've had a sleep after memorizing it
and rehearsing it.

However it works, good reason to start as early as possible so as to allow
a good number of sleeps as I bang away on a problem. What's important is
to keep focus on just one major problem at a time, over a few days, and to
put in the work to get really and truly stuck on it - stuck hard. Only
then will this process get to work. Next, go to bed.

10 online apps for scheduling a meeting online

http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2009/09/the-top-ten-apps-for-scheduling-a-meeting-online.php

I've tried Doodle at least, and it worked pretty well!

Achieving Your Goals the Lee Marvin Way

At the library the other day I randomly picked up the book Get Up: A
12-Step Guide to Recovery for Misfits, Freaks and Weirdos by Bucky
Sinister. Though I've never had a drug or alcohol addiction, it turns out
to have lots of wisdom about living in general, told in entertaining, no
bullshit style. I especially liked his discussion of setting goals and
pursuing them, using the movie Point Blank as illustration:

"In this film, Lee Marvin is after $93,000 that was his share of some
unspecified heist. What stood out for me was his use of a step method to
get his money back. He calmly yet violently moved from one step to the
next in the quest to retrieve the money owed him.

We have two main lessons to learn from this: Be specific in your
goal-making, and be ardent with each step. Marvin doesn't look to get any
more than a specific amount. He's not interested in getting $100,000, he
wants what's coming to him. His resolve goes no further than what he needs
to do for that part of his journey."

Bucky Sinister goes on to talk about how asking "What would Lee Marvin
do?" helped him get through the horrible process of getting back into
school as a 35 year old 4th year dropout, and eventually getting work that
would earn him $40,000 a year. He resolved to do something on this quest
every day, whether it be a short phone call, or filling out a form. No
matter how complicated and intimidating the subgoal, he tackled it step by
step. After all, Lee Marvin started his quest with "nothing but one
address of one person who was slightly involved in the old caper. He went
from there, step by step, to figure out what he needed to do."

Clearly the really hard part is setting the right kind of goals, molding
them out of the amorphous blob of wants and fears for the future that are
always floating around inside my head. This is something I struggle with a
lot. Some of the subtle things I think make the Bucky Sinister type of
goal different than some of my past attempts:

-the specificty, to the level of what kind of car you want, what *colour*
it will be, the exact amount of money you want. That way when you achieve
it, you *know*. The specifics can be adjusted over time, but there's
motivational value in making yourself *see* what a goal will look like, in
great detail, when it is finished, *feel* what it will feel like. Some of
the decisions in visualizing it are arbitrary of course, but I think
there's power in making those decisions.

- There shouldn't be too many at a time. Even three might be too many.

- Each big goal has a smaller goal in front of it, blocking it from view
and from my mind, that I can start on *right now*, and that when done
will get me closer. Something that shouldn't take more than a few weeks.

- Sometimes thinking really big, like decades-long. Bucky talks about deciding that 10 books is a good lifetime's work for a writer like him, and getting started on the first one. Get Up was the second.

- At the same time, not setting deadlines for them (except, of course, death). Deadlines can be discouraging to me, at least if I take them too seriously (here we're talking about projects that don't have actual deadlines). If you keep going after each small goal steadily, a little bit every day or week, the rate doesn't matter that much.

- Still it's good to have automatic, indisputible metrics of your progress. For instance Mr. Sinister can count how many books he's written. A friend set up an automatic script to update the number of words in his thesis file on the front page of his website every day. Making every smaller goal have a very specific end state, so that you're very clear when it's done (and can celebrate!) is a big part of that.

There's more great stuff in here, for instance about using your inner
hustle monkey for good and how you need to nurture all four aspects of
your personality symbolized by members of the A-Team (this is not your
everyday self-help book) but I'll stop for now.

Huh, almost convinced myself watching point blank is my most important
next step...

The Cult of Done

I printed this poster out and put it on my wall:

I love the spirit of this because of its emphasis on *finishing* projects
so that you can move on to the next. I don't really understand #1 or #11,
but I like all the others, even the ones I semi disagree with.

In text format:

The Cult of Done Manifesto

1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
3. There is no editing stage.
4. Pretending you know what you're doing is almost the same as knowing
what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you're doing even if
you don't and do it.
5. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea
done, abandon it.
6. The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things
done.
7. Once you're done you can throw it away.
8. Laugh at perfection. It's boring and keeps you from being done.
9. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you
right.
10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
11. Destruction is a variant of done.
12. If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a
ghost of done.
13. Done is the engine of more.

How to Nap

I've discovered naps! (when I told this to a female friend she rolled her
eyes and said, "every man I know says that at some point. What is it with
men and napping?") When my head is drooping down to the keyboard, instead
of forcing myself to go on I have a nap on our great lab minicouch,
and leap up 20 minutes later as my watch alarm goes off, totally
refreshed.
It's all thanks to these tips my man Jim sent, source
http://longevity.about.com/od/sleep/a/napping_tips.htm

* Nap Time: Prime nap time is from 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m., when your
energy level dips due to a rise in the hormone melatonin at that time of
day.
* Darkness: Use a face mask or eye pillow to provide daytime darkness and
make your nap more effective.
* Not Too Late: Napping within three hours of bedtime may interfere with
nighttime sleep.
* Quiet Place: Assure that you will not be disturbed for the duration
of your nap.
* 30-Minute Maximum: When taking a nap longer than 30 minutes, you run the
risk of heading into deep sleep, which will leave you feeling tired and
groggy. Naps as short as 1 to 2 minutes could be effective for some
people.
* Set an Alarm: You will eventually train yourself to nap for the
amount of time you set aside. Until then, set an alarm or ask someone to
wake you up.
* The Caffeine Nap: Some people claim that drinking coffee and then taking
an immediate nap works well. The caffeine kicks in somewhere between 10
and 20 minutes, waking them up. They feel extra energy from both the nap
and the coffee. Researchers in Japan found that subjects using a caffeine
nap rated highest in decreased sleepiness and increased productivity when
compared to subjects taking a nap and washing their face, or taking a nap
and being exposed to bright lights.

One more thing I like about naps: as my conscious mind releases, I often
have bizarre, dream-like thoughts, which I love - it's a surreal break in
the middle of a mundane day, like an episode of The Office had a few
minutes of Yellow Submarine spliced into it.

Mastering My Email REVISED

Since I wrote the post about Mastering Your Email, I've made a significant
change to my system. It's to do with that problematic email folder
Deferred, where I would put things that I couldn't deal with in a few
minutes. It kept getting bigger, and causing more subliminal anxiety.

I've eliminated that folder, in favour of *actually* dealing with every
item in my inbox as I process it. If it really is going to take more
effort, I add a to-do item for it. Which means I have to have my palm
pilot every time I process my email, which is a good thing. Sometimes the
email itself contains stuff that I will need for the to-do item, but not
afterwards (I would have no reason to file it away for reference). For
that I've created a folder called TS, for temporary support. (I also now
use this instead of Deferred for my harddrive system and physical paper
system)

This has been a big improvement, because it now means that only my todo
lists have to be tamed and managed, and not the contents of Deferred as
well. It also means I decide what actual action needs to be taken as soon
as I encounter the email.

Making a Super-effective To Do list

One of the things that absolutely sold me on my Palm pilot (vs paper
solutions) was the way it keeps todo lists, with things disappearing off
the list with a satisfying strikethrough. It makes it possible to keep
ongoing todo lists, that you never lose and just continually update. So
that's the first thing, but here are some other helpful practices I've
figured out over the years to make it work.

First, to have multiple todo lists, organized by location/ability to carry
them out. The idea being you can look at the list and see only things you
can take action on right here and now. So, using task categories, I have
one for home and one for office, and one for internet, that is, things I
can do anywhere I have a net connection (so also home or office). Then I
have one for Call - you wouldn't believe how effective it is to go down a
list calling all the numbers on there one after the other, like when
you're walking someplace, especially if you store the number as part of
the todo. Others are Downtown, Groceries, Library, and Anywhere, which is
great for those things that I just need to brainstorm or figure out with a
pen and paper, for instance during a boring lecture.

I also just last week figured out a really good way to use the priority
system that Palm has built in. Basically I divide todo items by urgency
and importance. It goes

1: Needs to be done today or tomorrow. Really urgent!
2: Should be done within the next few days, somewhat time sensitive.
3: Important to my work or to the smooth running of my life, should get
done within a week or two
4: Not important to get done, but fun or interesting, or may pay off way
down the line. Like a website someone sent me to check out.

Especially having that 1 category has helped with not doing the thing that
causes anxiety, which is storing important tasks in your head. I come into
the office and check my Palm first thing to see if there are any 1 items
that I have to tackle the second I sit down.

I haven't found a use for the due date feature - it doesn't really apply
to the way I think about todo items.

Finally, the most important thing to keep them working and not gummed up
is to frequently review all the todo lists, checking off things you've
done and things you no longer intend to do, and trying to do something
with the items that just stay on the list forever. They might need
to be changed into simpler, more concrete tasks, or - and this happens to
me a lot - it's not really a todo item, in the sense of a concrete,
physical task, but rather a project, that will take multiple steps, and
should go on the project list instead.

The Joy of C Projects

One of the great things about a project list is that it lets you keep a
hold of little, less important projects (C priority on the ABC priority
system), and be just as persistent (if you want) about those as about the
big ones. Without ever putting these front and center and using up my
attention or high quality thinking time, just by doing one little next
action after another - pick up this thing at the store, take this thing to
the office, write this person an email, brainstorm about this - all of a
sudden I find it's done, even if it took *many* of those steps. This gives
me a neat little sense of efficacy, frees up a slot for a new
always-wanted-to project, and can have unexpected and nifty consequences.
Here are a few examples of things I've made happen, seemingly without
trying, and t hese are just the nonacademic ones:

* Found some awesome podcasts
* Built two new shelves to repair a bookshelf
* Learned tree identification at the local arboretum
* Bought a nice overcoat
* Developed a routine for cleaning my apartment
* Organized a bowling night and a Vincent Price film marathon
* Made a present for a clinical psychology PhD friend that was two stamps,
one that said SANE and one that said INSANE
* Started a garden
* Memorized all 10 verses of Desolation Row

Many of these may sound trivial, but they brought me pleasure and really
required very little extra time or attentino, basically just extra clock
cycles I wasn't using anyway. (it's amazing how often something will just
show up that will suddenly help you with one of the projects that have
been on the list for a while) And committing to projects and finishing
them can lead to many great consequences, even if at times you don't
really know why you're doing them (besides "it's on the list" - again like
the memento guy) For instance making the bookshelves taught me about all
the resources that are available at home depot, which could be useful
later on. And there was a call for submissions at a community art center
for a show on the theme of bob dylan, and having memorized and thought a
lot about Desolation Row I put together a performance about it which went
over really well. Which just goes to confirm my belief, which is also the
theme of a favourite book Son of Interflux by Gordon Korman, that the most
satisfying and fruitful way to spend leisure time and money is not on
simply amusing yourself, but on projects - especially ones that enlist the
help of other people.

The Project List: How to Be Like the Memento Guy

At the heart of my life as a productive person is my list of projects. I
define what goes on the list pretty strictly, after David Allen's Getting
Things Done: a project is any kind of change in the world that I want to
make happen, that takes more than one simple step, and the list are the
projects that I am currently *committed* to making steady progress on. So
I draw a line between those active projects and ones that I might want to
do somewhere down the line - which go in a list called Someday/Maybe.
Those ones I don't have to worry about at all, unless I want to move it
over to the project list. In my conception projects should take between 20
minutes and 3 months to finish, and between 3 steps and like 200.

I store projects as memos in a special category on my palm pilot. I like
this because each memo can then hold my thoughts or info about the project
(project support), like if I do a little web research I can paste it in.
Most importantly is when deciding on what the next action is for a
project, I put that in there (as well as on a todo list) One of the
biggest mistakes people make with a todo list is to put things on there
that are really projects: that require not one physical, easily defined
action, but a complicated chain of actions, or a series of tricky
decisions.

My friend in psychology has designed a scale to test people on how
persistent they are and how much they resist giving up, and the amazing
thing to me watching my own behaviour is how using a project list has
drastically increased my persistence, such that I would probably score
higher on her scale now. I can avoid a project for a while, but unless I
take it off the list it's going to be there staring me in the face - it's
not going to be swept under the rug. It's like being the guy in Memento -
rather than keeping all the projects in your head at once, which is
stress-inducing, you can count on those words (like the tattoos) to prompt
you about what you could be/should be working on. I have about 40 projects
that are currently active (though only a handful of "A" projects, see the
ABC prioritizing system) - there's no way I could keep those in my head.
Like the Memento guy it makes me feel relentless and driven: I *will* keep
calling until I reach someone who can fix the problem; I *will* keep
thinking about this issue until I make a breakthrough. No more pushing it
to the back of my mind and hoping the issue will go away (which in the
case of positive opportunities, it is certain to do). Well less anyway.

For a project list to stay useful it has to be constantly pruned and
updated so that it continues to match that definition. I make myself do
that at least once a week, during the weekly review. There's a few tools I
use to make sure things on the list still match that definition. For
instance if I notice I havent moved on a project for a long time, that
might be a sign that I should simplify it - making it more immediate and
concrete - or break it into smaller projects. Or maybe I can't make
progress on it now, in which case it goes on the Projects - Suspended
list, and I put something before it that says when it's on ice til ("Til
April", "Til x gets back to me"). Or maybe I realize I just don't want to
commit to it now, in which case it goes to Someday/Maybe. Finished or no
longer relevant projects get taken off the list.

I now think of tons of things as a project, from revising a paper to
furnishing my apartment to teachinig myself a statistic to deciding where
to go for salsa lessons. It's an enormous help for planning my time, seems
to genuinely make me more effective, and also gives me a great feeling of
satisfaction when I can finish one off.

See also 5 things to do when starting a project

Mastering Your Email

The ideas in this post are from a combination of David Allen's Getting
Things Done,
http://www.43folders.com/izero
and my own trial and error. One caveat is that I usually never get more
than 100 messages a day; more strategies are probably necessary if you do.

Email is a great place to start trying to amp up your organization, and in
particular to start training yourself to use an inbox. The most important
thing about email is not the program you use or the way your folders are
organized, but your daily processes of dealing with mail.

My inbox is always empty or nearly empty, and that's because of a shift in
mindset I made at one point, between thinking of it as "dealing" with
email and "processing" email. With "dealing with it" my inbox grew into a
huge, anxiety-provoking heap. Now when I check my inbox (way too often), I
zoom through all the new messages one by one - the image I think of is a
ninja, deflecting throwing stars as they come at him - until it's empty
again. How to achieve that is what the rest of this entry is about.

The most important principle is the 10 second rule: if it can be dealt
with in 10 seconds or less, do it, and if it can't, then move it somewhere
else - be *disciplined* about processing your inbox from top to bottom
without stopping to engage with a message. So that means making a snap
judgment about every email as you go through it: delete it, fire off a
quick reply, file it for reference, or put it someplace for more thought:
the Deferred folder, about which more later. The big thing is to take as
much quick action as possible the first time you read it, so you never
have to look at it again. I think of it as sucking all the juice out of
each email, and putting it in other parts of your organizational system.
Don't use your email as a reminder system; use your reminder
system as your reminder system. You should try to have all these
things instantly accessible while processing email, and use them:
- Calendar/day planner for setting up appointments and checking when you
can make appointments for
- A place to record things you might or might not want to go to (i.e. Maybe events)
- Contact list, if someone sends you their phone number etc
- To do lists
- Project list
- Someday/maybe lists, for book or movie recommendations etc
- Inbox folder on your harddrive to download attachments to, to be filed
later (like in your weekly review)

As you can see, emptying your inbox goes best when you've got all the
other aspects of your system working well (especially the calendar and
todo lists) But if you're still getting that under control I think this
approac of emptying the inbox will help regardless.

So now most of the emails that require you to take some action have been
dealt with. Some you can delete now, others you may want to refer back to
in the future: you are keeping them for reference. For that I use Zillion
folder filing, which has as its principle that you should never worry
about creating a new folder on the spot to handle even a single item, as
long as they are organized alphabetically. It took me a little while to
get happy with the way I used these folders; at first I filed by project
or topic, like for instance pigeonresearch. But that was a lot of work,
and there were problems like if an email was about two different topics
(there may be a solution for this in google mail technology, tagging or
some such).

Instead now my folders mostly represent groups of people: one for
correspondence relating to each class that I'm in and each that I TA, one
for toastmasters, one for administrivia from the department etc. There's a
few other folders for special purposes, like one called eventinfo which
has details about events (more than will fit into a calendar entry), and
one called spam for particularly entertaining spams. Basically it's
grouping by why I am keeping it (I don't organize by date or sender name,
because that's pretty easy to search or sort by). Of course many emails I
want to keep purely for sentimental reasons, and those go into a folder
called personal. Over time, personal has become the folder where I throw
anything that doesn't fit neatly into one of the others, and that seems to
work ok. Personal is the only folder I put a lot of effort into backing
up.

All in all there's 100 folders, which is definitely manageable both in
Pine and web-based email. Within-folder searches have saved my butt many a
time.

Now there's the last part of my system, the one that still inspires a
small amount of dread - though minor compared to how much my enormous
inbox used to. And that's the Deferred folder, where I chuck email I can't
deal with in less than 10 seconds. Only after my inbox is empty do I go
back and look into these. I try not to let it hijack my day, especially if
it's just writing a reply to a fun note (this is why you will sometimes
hear back a few days or a week or a month from sending something - but
hopefully you will always hear back). Yeah this is the hairy one, and I
have to make sure that despite some psychological resistance I open it up
on a regular basis (at *least* once a week) and see what's there, see what
I can make progress on, and make sure nothing that has a deadline
approaching. I think in an ideal theoretical system, there would be no
need for a Deferred folder but a todo list would replace most of the need
for it. But in practice thats just too cumbersome for me. I can say that
*eventually* everything is dealt with; it does turn over, and almost none
go back more than 2 months, plus its never more than 25 items - and that's
including friends' funny youtube links, and journal article alerts. As a
rule of thumb it shouldn't be more than one page.

So the 10 second rule, not using email as a reminder, zillion folder
filing, the personal and Deferred folders. With all these tricks and
techniques, I now feel like I have my email well in hand, which is
especially important when the student questions or participant
signups start flying.

Computer Dollars: Why to Upgrade instead of Buying New

Oh man did I come close to buying that computer. Three days in a row I
visited the apple store website, and click through all but the final
screen to purchase it - just doing research on what the whole package
would cost, I told myself. There's a certain kind of consumer lust that
apple fanatics are a particular victim of, but I think everybody with a
computer has felt this, how great it would be to start afresh with the
instant gratification of a shiny new, fast system.

My friend snapped me out of it. He pointed out $2000 is a large amount of
money, for something I probably didn't need that much. In fact if I put a
small fraction of that money towards upgrades, I could be very happy with
my 6-year-old computer which I use for modest purposes (such as blogging).
With computers especially, waiting to buy a new one is almost always
better. *Always* better? I protested. But then when would you ever buy a
new one? Well eventually, but it's important to know just how much a
new computer dollar spent now will cost you; or alternatively, how much
money you can make by holding off on buying a computer for another year.

I looked at laptops at the $1299 US price point, one which apple is fond
of and which my modest dream computer (before the bells and whistles) was
at. I compared it to the specs on the mac laptop selling for the same
price that was available 2 years earlier, to see how much more bang for
your buck you get. (note that apple has fairly messed up pricing, partly
because of exploiting aforementioned consumer lust, so the exact values
will be quite different for PCs, but I'll bet the story by and large the
same) These are both 13" intel core 2 duo MacBooks. In two years the same
money buys you twice as much hard drive space (from 80 gigs to 160) and
twice as much RAM (1 gig to 2). The clockspeed has not increased, but the
Speedmark 4.5 overall benchmark (courtesy MacWorld magazine) has gone from
185 to 195, a 10% increase assuming a ratio scale (actually I thought it
would be more - it seems after going to Intel and adding a second
processor dramatic speed gains are harder to come by - but who knows when
the next big jump will be?) Finally, it's gotten lighter, from 5.2 lbs to
4.5, a 13% decrease, and with a nifty aluminum unibody construction.

So the same amount of money buys dramatically more built-in goodness. But
it came home to me when I looked at it a different way: If, in January
2007, I had shelled out the money for a computer as good as the $1299 two
years later, how much would it have cost me? A roughly comparable computer
of the time, according to the speed tests and the ram and hard drive, was
the 15" MacBook pro with 2.33 gigahertz. This computer cost $2499, $1200
more than the 13" 2 gig model. You could say some of that goes to the
larger size of screen, but on the other hand it had a 40 gig smaller hard
drive than the $1299 2009 macbook, and it was also more than 20% heavier.
Let's knock off $300. By holding out for 2 years, its like you've earned
$900-worth of computer. Take $250 worth of upgrades it might take to keep
you content with your old computer over that period, it's still like
earning $650 on $1300 that you put aside. A 50% return over 2 years,
which is like a compounded yearly interest of 22%. I don't know anything
about investment, but that seems good. (note that another thing you
might draw from this is that it might make sense when buying a new mac to
get a low-end model, and then soup it up with 3rd party components)

There's lots of other issues I'm ignoring, like resale value (I have never
sold promptly enough for the resale value to be worth anything) and the
math will be totally different for the PC world possibly leading to
different conclusions, but this exercise has led me to think it's *always*
worth souping up your computer before buying a new one - and for PCs,
where you can actually replace the CPU, maybe it virtually *never* makes
sense to buy an all-new computer.