Dealing with Inept and Shirking Co-Workers

In my January 8th Philosophy in Action Webcast, I answered the following question on the ethics doing the work of inept (and shirking) co-workers:

Is it moral to help inept co-workers? On my team at work, we have only a very few people who use their time productively. We all get paid for 8 hours of "work", every day, but most of my team would rather talk on their phone, hide from management, and underperform at their job. We also belong to a union, which makes it harder for management to fire the ones who don't work despite being informed about the situation. I often find myself in the position of helping these people, or going in behind them and fixing their work. I am beginning to feel taken advantage of, and am getting fed up with most of my co-workers. Is it moral to continue helping people who do not take their own work seriously?

You can find my the audio of my answer in the archive of Philosophy in Action.

Here, I want to offer the answer given by another. Rachel Garrett posted the following remarks to OProducers, and I'm reposting them with her permission. Her advice is excellent -- and her way of framing the issue in terms of your obligation to your employer definitely helped my own analysis.

Without further ado, here's Rachel's answer to the question:

If the extra help to co-workers is getting in the way of fulfilling your own job responsibilities, you would need to devise strategies to cut down on the amount of assistance you render. But since you didn't say that, I will assume that's not the case.

It's frustrating to be in a situation where your productive energy is getting drained by people who don't perform their own job responsibilities. However, I would be cautious of how you've framed the question. You've given yourself an alternative: either continue helping these lazy co-workers and be taken advantage of; or refuse to help them (telling yourself it's the moral thing to do).

The important thing to focus on is: What is my contractual obligation to my employer? What is my job? If you are getting paid for eight hours of productive work, and you finish your own assigned task in six, then the right thing to do is to spend the remaining two hours as productively as possible on your employer's behalf. This may include teaching others how to do their job better, finishing tasks that others have left undone, and fixing others' mistakes.

You're not a manager of this environment, so the work atmosphere is not your responsibility. It's your employer's problem that they are getting crap for productivity from this part of their workforce. Going "on strike" and withdrawing your help, in order to force others to do their own work, would not be appropriate. Managers are the ones who should be monitoring and evaluating employees' performance, and motivating them to do better. That job's not yours to do. If management is not doing their job, there is nothing you can do that will fill that gap.

The best course of action largely depends on how good of a relationship you have with your own manager, how you're evaluated, and how you envision your future at this company. If this is just a job, it's perfectly fine to tell yourself, "I'm just here for the paycheck," and stop caring about your co-workers. If the company is not connected to your long-term goals, then your co-workers' goofing off shouldn't mean anything more to you than a grouchy grocery clerk -- something unfortunate that inconveniences you for a while, but doesn't affect you much. If you can't let it go, do everything within your power to find a new job before you become embittered and lose perspective.

If you have a decent working relationship with your manager, I would suggest logging all your extra work and fixes, for a week or two. Ask your manager if you can add a phrase to your job responsibilities ("Train other departmental personnel on X and Y procedures...") that would help this count toward your upward development. Or perhaps you could find a job responsibility that you enjoy, and that would fill up your time and make you unavailable to pick up others' slack. (Whatever you do, don't sound complainy. You have a right to complain and you deserve sympathy from rational people who value their work, but complaining is almost certainly a bad strategy to get what you want from your manager.)

There are also some smaller things you can change or do...

• Make people work for your help. "Sure, Amanda! I'd LOVE to help you get that month-end report fixed! I tell you what, I've gotten this question a lot, so how about I walk you through it and you take notes so you can write up the procedure. Then next month, we can use that as reference."
  
• It's wrong for your co-workers to spend time on non-work activities when there is work to be done. However, most people do want to do things the right way and feel good about what they got accomplished. Your co-workers have the same human need for productive work that you do. They may be mismanaged and socially pressured, or they may have a genuine rotten attitude. There's no way to reach inside and see. So give them the benefit of the doubt.
  
• When you think about the situation, don't use judgmental labels like "lazy"; use factual words like "unproductive".
  
• Reach out to your company's Quality department for Six Sigma training. Identify common snags and mistakes in your department's processes. Run a process improvement project(s) to fix them.
  
• Increase your skill/knowledge level of Microsoft Office or whatever other software/systems you're using. Learn how to automate and error-check to help avoid mistakes.
  
• Read the book Crucial Conversations -- I think it would be a great help in having some of the conversations you may need to have with your manager and/or co-workers.

I hope some of this helps.

Indeed it does! Thank you, Rachel. for that excellent advice!

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Video: Tenacity in Pursuit of Goals

In Sunday's Philosophy in Action Webcast, I discussed tenacity in pursuit of goals. The question was:

How can I become more tenacious in pursuit of my goals? I find that I give up too easily on some of my goals, particularly when success is far away and much effort is required now. What can I do to make myself more tenacious?

My answer, in brief:

Tenacity is an important quality of character to cultivate, but it must be used selectively. If tenacity is a problem for you, don't wallow in guilt: find creative ways to motivate yourself.

Here's the video of my full answer:

If you enjoy the video, please "like" it on YouTube and share it with friends in e-mail and social media! You can also throw a bit of extra love in our tip jar.

All posted webcast videos can be found in the Webcast Archives and on my YouTube channel.

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Video: Responding to Expressions of Hatred for Work

In Sunday's Rationally Selfish Webcast, I answered the following question about how to respond to expressions of hatred for work:

How should I respond when people disparage their work? Often, people make comments about the great burden that work is -- not in the sense that they're unhappy with some problem in their current job, but that they resent the need to work at all. These are the kinds of people who live for weekends and vacations. I don't feel that way about my work, and I think these people are missing so much in life. How can I respond to such casual remarks in a way that might make the person re-think their attitude?

Here's my answer, now posted to YouTube:

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My Year in Review

Since it's the last day of 2010, I wanted to write up the highlights of what I've done in 2010. These doings are in rough chronological order.

• I started 2010 as a half-dead, nearly-senile corpse, thanks to my crash into hypothyroidism in the fall of 2009. I'm not yet fully recovered, although I'm doing darn well and expect to be even better with further increases in my dose of desiccated thyroid. Basically, by diligently working on the problem and opting for unconventional treatments, I've returned to life. Everything else that I've done this past year depended on that. So... YAYAYAYAYAY!
  
• In the spring, I re-organized and re-designed all my web sites due to the forced transition of my blogs from FTP to Google's hosting. They're all better for it, although definitely in need of another update now.
  
• With much assistance from others, Front Range Objectivism has expand under my leadership. In January, FRO launched its third discussion group: 3FROG. FRO completed its two Atlas Shrugged Reading Groups in March, then created two new FROG discussion groups from them in April. Now FRO has five monthly discussion groups spread out from Longmont to Colorado Springs.
  
• I launched Modern Paleo in March. I'm particularly grateful to its blog editor, Christian Wernstedt, and the other contributors to the blog, for their efforts. I have exciting plans in store for the site in 2011.
  
• Between January and October, I recorded the remaining 13 podcasts in my set of 20 podcasts on Atlas Shrugged. Those podcasts turned out to be much more work -- and much more interesting -- than I expected. I'd hoped to start turning those podcasts into a book in 2010, but that got delayed by other projects... but hopefully not for too much longer.
  
• In June, I tested out a new method of financing intellectual work by asking people to pledge for a podcast on finding good romantic prospects. That first pledge project was hugely successful, and I've funded other work via pledges since then. Oh, and that podcast is still available for sale.
  
• In July, I gave a course at OCON entitled Luck in the Pursuit of Life: The Rational Egoist's Approach to Luck. I was pleased with how that turned out. I had tons of productive fun at OCON in 2010.
  
• I launched four new OLists, with the help of their managers. OProducers, OShooters, and OGardeners launched in April, and OHomos launched in July. You can expect a few more OLists in 2011, likely OCrafters and OGeeks.
  
• Paul and I adopted our little spitfire, otherwise known as doggie Mae, shortly after OCON. I took her through a fantastic basic obedience class at Come Sit Stay in the fall, where she made huge progress on her fear of strangers. I enjoyed that so much that I did the same class with Conrad a few weeks later. I plan to continue with that obedience training because I enjoy it so much.
  
• In September, I interviewed Stephen Bailey, Republican candidate for US House of Representatives for Colorado's Second District, with the help of Ari Armstrong. Although Bailey lost the race, he ran a good campaign, and I was proud to support a truly free-market candidate.
  
• In August, Ari Armstrong and I expanded and updated our "personhood" paper, now titled The 'Personhood' Movement Is Anti-Life: Why It Matters that Rights Begin at Birth, Not Conception. It's the most in-depth defense of abortion rights from an Objectivist perspective written to date -- and it would not have been possible without people's generous pledges.
  
• In October, I launched my Rationally Selfish Webcast, answering questions on practical ethics every Sunday morning. I've gotten much better at those webcasts, and I'm really happy with the addition of Greg Perkins as the man charged with keeping me in tolerable order. I'm very grateful to everyone who is supporting those by their contributions to our "tip jar."
  
• I bought a new horse -- Lila -- in late October. In addition to all the riding I've done -- including cantering along the road through blinding snow yesterday -- I've done clicker training with her, which is really quite marvelous. I've the last few weeks, I've made some long-overdue progress in setting up my new barn too.
  
• My hypothyroidism destroyed my physical conditioning, but I got into better physical shape than ever thanks to the kick-ass workouts at CIA FIT Gym. Also, I went on my first backpacking trip in September, and I enjoyed three fantastic days of skiing in Breckenridge in December. Of course, I continue to eat paleo, and I've enjoyed cooking and eating immensely this year.
  
• With much help from others, I launched two new still-ongoing Atlas Shrugged Reading Groups this fall for Front Range Objectivism. And plans for March's SnowCon are underway!
  
• In November, Adam Mossoff gave a fantastic pledge-funded webcast on intellectual property. That's now become a monthly series of pledge-funded webcasts with Objectivist intellectuals, with Eric Daniels speaking on the foundations of free speech in January.
  
• And... last but not least... I enjoyed another stellar year of marriage to my most excellent husband. And I experienced the deep pleasure of friendship with many truly excellent and admirable people.

Overall, 2010 was an excellent year for me... but I'm really looking forward to 2011!

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OList Happy Hour

Due to a blog post by Amy Mossoff last year listing her accomplishments month-by-month, I've kept track of all my major doings this year. Now that I'm done with school -- and working on more projects than I can remember at any given moment -- I found that really quite satisfying and motivating. Hence, I'm super-excited by this week's topic for the OList Virtual Happy Hour:

As we approach the end of the year, I think there is real value in looking back on our individual achievements from the past year, both as a source of spiritual fuel, and as a means of checking one's bearings in contemplation of goals to set for the new year.

And, in the spirit of Christmas gift-giving, what better way to remember the year's achievements than to share them with others?! Which brings us to this week's menu:

Appetizer: What were your major achievements of the past year? Which of your achievement(s) of the past year make you the most proud?

Drink Special: Did you have any achievements that had a particularly significant impact on your life? Was this expected or unexpected? How do these achievements impact your expectations and goals for the new year?

The OList Virtual Socials are weekly online chats exclusively for subscribers to my OList E-mail Lists. Both lurkers and subscribers are welcome to join the chat. (I sent the instructions for joining the chat to all the lists in a December 18th message with the subject "OList Announcements, so please look for that before you e-mail me or Earl for instructions.) They start at 6 pm PT / 7 pm MT / 8 pm CT / 9 pm ET on Tuesday evenings. Officially, they last an hour, but people often chat longer than that.

I'd love to hear what others have accomplished this year -- and, of course, to brag a bit myself -- so OList subscribers, please do stop in for a virtual drink and bite to eat!

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Productivity Versus Productiveness

Note: I discussed this issue in last Sunday's Rationally Selfish Webcast, and you can hear that in podcast form via NoodleCast.

On occasion, I hear Objectivists use the term "productivity" when they mean the virtue of productiveness. That's a mistake, and I think people make that mistake because they're not clear about the difference between the two terms. So I'd like to take a moment here to sketch the distinction as I see it.

Productivity concerns a person's capacity to achieve his goals effectively and efficiently, without wasting time, effort, or resources. Hence, the dictionary notes that its concern for "the effectiveness of productive effort." Productivity is wonderful -- but only provided that a person's goals are life-enhancing. I'd love for Steve Jobs to increase the productivity of his workers because Apple products enhance my life and happiness. Michael Moore, on the other hand, is more than welcome to spend days doing what could be done in mere minutes. For him to be efficient in the creation of his loathsome movies is not a value.

In essence, productivity focuses on the means by which a person achieves his ends, without evaluating the worth of those ends per se. The techniques of productivity -- such as David Allen's Getting Things Done -- might be used to further the creation of beautiful sculpture, the marketing of new invention, or the dissemination of rational ideas. Or they might be used in expanding church membership, lobbying politicians for more environmental regulations, or writing a smear biography of Ayn Rand.

In contrast, productiveness is the Objectivist virtue whereby "man's mind sustains his life." In Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, Leonard Peikoff defines it as "the process of creating material values, whether goods or services." Here's how John Galt describes it in Atlas Shrugged:

Productiveness is your acceptance of morality, your recognition of the fact that you choose to live--that productive work is the process by which man's consciousness controls his existence, a constant process of acquiring knowledge and shaping matter to fit one's purpose, of translating an idea into physical form, of remaking the earth in the image of one's values--that all work is creative work if done by a thinking mind, and no work is creative if done by a blank who repeats in uncritical stupor a routine he has learned from others--that your work is yours to choose, and the choice is as wide as your mind, that nothing more is possible to you and nothing less is human--that to cheat your way into a job bigger than your mind can handle is to become a fear-corroded ape on borrowed motions and borrowed time, and to settle down into a job that requires less than your mind's full capacity is to cut your motor and sentence yourself to another kind of motion: decay--that your work is the process of achieving your values, and to lose your ambition for values is to lose your ambition to live--that your body is a machine, but your mind is its driver, and you must drive as far as your mind will take you, with achievement as the goal of your road--that the man who has no purpose is a machine that coasts downhill at the mercy of any boulder to crash in the first chance ditch, that the man who stifles his mind is a stalled machine slowly going to rust, that the man who lets a leader prescribe his course is a wreck being towed to the scrap heap, and the man who makes another man his goal is a hitchhiker no driver should ever pick up--that your work is the purpose of your life, and you must speed past any killer who assumes the right to stop you, that any value you might find outside your work, any other loyalty or love, can be only travelers you choose to share your journey and must be travelers going on their own power in the same direction.

To be productive in this sense involves a far wider range of actions than productivity. Most of all, productiveness requires that the material goods produced serve human life and happiness.

We often use the adjective form "productive" to refer to both kinds of activity, i.e. to productivity and/or productiveness. Yet they need not occur together. A person can be productive in the sense of productivity without being productive in the sense of productiveness. That's Michael Moore. Or vice versa: I might waste time each day trying to find relevant papers for my current projects because I don't use any kind of filing system.

Ideally and in the long run, a person should be productive in both senses of the term. A person's drive to create the material values that sustain human life should impel him to seek the most efficient and effective methods of achieving his goals. Yet particularly in our day-to-day life, we need to maintain our awareness of the distinction between productiveness and productivity. Why?

By keeping that distinction in mind, we know that our occasional failures of productivity are not some kind of moral crime: they are not failures of the virtue of productiveness. In many cases, they're just ordinary errors in managing our work-flow, and our aim should be to notice and weed them out over time. In other cases, they're morally proper given the broader context, as when we work an easy day after weeks on a grueling project or when we take time off to tend to health problems. Moral guilt in such cases -- which I know I've felt before, and I suspect I'm not alone -- is not warranted and not helpful.

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Productivity-O-Rama

• Twenty Ways to Stay Productive When Working at Home. Most of the advice applies to productivity across the board, not just when working at home.
  
  
• Trey Givens on Management Experience: My First Fail and Management Experience: This is How I Do It. (It's Friday Night). Yup, you can screw up completely, then learn to do better.
  
  
• What study methods actually work? Forget learning styles and teaching styles. Instead, try varying your physical context, switch between topics in any study session, and space out your sessions over time.

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Rationally Selfish Q&A: Learning to Concentrate

When the mind insists on wandering, what are some good ways to help it settle down and focus? How can a person achieve deep concentration? How can a person train himself to concentrate better, aside from sheer discipline?

People often say they can't listen to audio lectures in their car because their mind wanders too much.

My reply: Baloney! You can do it, if you choose to train yourself.

When I began listening to lectures in my car many years ago, I found that I couldn't maintain concentration. My mind was simply used to wandering when I would drive. So I chose to cultivate different habits. When I'd notice that my mind was off-track, I'd rewind the tape back to some point I remembered, remind myself to stay focused, then continue listening. I had to do that repeatedly, so often that it probably took me four hours to listen to first hour of lecture. However, after a few lectures, I was able to concentrate well. Since then, I've enjoyed so many lectures from The Teaching Company and the Ayn Rand Bookstore, as well as books from Audible. That education has been invaluable for me.

The lesson to draw from that story is simple yet revolutionary: you can train your mind to develop new skills and habits.

Jut as with athletic training, your mental training must be effective. You will accomplish nothing by passively accepting the goings-on of your noodle as "just the way I am." You will do yourself damage by attempting to bully your mind into doing its supposed duty. Instead, you must seek to understand the nature of the problem. You must ask yourself: Why do I find it difficult to concentrate deeply? If you can identify the problem, then a solution will likely suggest itself.

Consider, for example:

• Do you really dislike the work that you're doing? Perhaps you need to acknowledge that to yourself. Perhaps you need to identify why the work is important to your goals. Perhaps you need to change what you're doing, e.g. change your career, quit school, or drop a hobby.
  
  
• Are you overwhelmed with work? Perhaps you've committed to too many projects, and you need to scale back. Perhaps you're trying to do too much yourself, rather than delegating. Perhaps you need a system to manage your workflow, like GTD. Perhaps you need to prioritize your projects more clearly.
  
  
• Are you subject to interruptions that preclude concentration? Perhaps your co-workers pester you, but you need large blocks of uninterrupted time to work. Perhaps you interrupt your work by checking e-mails and blogs, not to mention Twitter, Facebook, and Cow Clicker. Perhaps you've gotten in the habit of seeking out those distractions when you encounter some difficulty. If so, shut down those applications, so that you check them only in scheduled breaks.

Personally, I struggle with these kinds of productivity issues on a regular basis. I'm always trying to monitor what I'm doing -- and tweak that so as to make my work time more productive. I'm not alone in that, I know! So I hope that you'll post the tweaks you've found effective in the comments.

Update: I'm now answering questions on practical ethics and the principles of living well in my weekly Rationally Selfish Webcast. It happens every Sunday morning at 8 am PT / 9 am MT / 10 am CT / 11 am ET. Each week, I select the most popular and interesting questions from the ongoing queue of questions. Please submit your questions, as well as vote and comment on questions that you find interesting!

If you're unable to attend the live webcast, you can listen to these webcasts later as NoodleCast podcasts by subscribing in iTunes to either the enhanced M4A format or the standard MP3 format.

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Rationally Selfish Q&A: Hierarchy of Values

How do you keep track of your hierarchy of values? How often do you make revisions to it? How detailed is your value hierarchy, how many levels does it have?

Every day, we make choices about what values to pursue from the vast range of possibilities. You might decide to by a new laptop, rather than pay for expensive repairs on your current machine. You might sign up for another martial arts class rather than devote that time to writing a novel or learning to cook. You might forgo your afternoon plans in order to meet a troubled friend for coffee. You might might spend a few cents more to buy the onions you prefer.

These choices might be complex or simple, difficult or easy, wise or foolish. No matter what, they're shaped by your "hierarchy of values," meaning the sum total of your judgments of what matters to you and by how much. To the extent that you think before you act, you choose what values to pursue (and your means of doing so) by consulting your value hierarchy in light of your circumstances.

To make truly wise choices, your value hierarchy must be the product of your best thinking about what's most necessary and conductive to your life and happiness. If your value hierarchy is a tangled mess, you will feel paralyzed, unable to choose between values. You will feel guilty for short-changing the values that you must forgo. You will tend to minor values at the expense of major ones. You will succumb to self-destructive temptations.

So, we can ask: Does clarity in your value hierarchy require you to write it down or specify it in detail?

No, although that might be helpful in some contexts.

With respect to your basic values, you should explicitly identify them, including their relative importance to you. You should know, for example, that your career is more important to you than your marriage, and that your marriage is more important to you than your hobbies. That way, you can know that, as a general matter, you should spend more of your time and effort on your career, less on your marriage, and still less on your hobbies.

If your hierarchy is confused -- if you feel paralyzed, uncertain, or guilty about your choices -- then grab your pencil and paper! Write down your hierarchy, review it, and revise it. That process can be hugely informative during major life changes too, such as when considering children or a new career.

Your hierarchy of basic values should be pretty sparse, so that you can grasp it in a glance or two. Then, to capture the details, you should track all your various projects and activities. For that, I strongly recommend Getting Things Done. You simply can't keep track of all your myriad changing projects in your head.

With that kind of clarity about our basic values and projects, we can act with the confidence that we're pursuing the values that matter most to our own lives and happiness. And that's good!

Update: I'm now answering questions on practical ethics and the principles of living well in my weekly Rationally Selfish Webcast. It happens every Sunday morning at 8 am PT / 9 am MT / 10 am CT / 11 am ET. Each week, I select the most popular and interesting questions from the ongoing queue of questions. Please submit your questions, as well as vote and comment on questions that you find interesting!

If you're unable to attend the live webcast, you can listen to these webcasts later as NoodleCast podcasts by subscribing in iTunes to either the enhanced M4A format or the standard MP3 format.

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The Cult of Busy

I liked this article on The Cult of Busy by Scott Berkun, but this paragraph struck me as particularly noteworthy:

The phrase "I don't have time for" should never be said. We all get the same amount of time every day. If you can't do something it's not about the quantity of time. It's really about how important the task is to you. I'm sure if you were having a heart attack, you'd magically find time to go to the hospital. That time would come from something else you'd planned to do, but now seems less important. This is how time works all the time. What people really mean when they say "I don't have time" is this thing is not important enough to earn my time. It's a polite way to tell people they're not worth your time.

I plan to wean myself of the too-easy habit of saying that "I don't have time." I need to be perfectly honest with myself and others: I'm not willing to make the time. That will be clarifying for me, as well as for others, I think. And that will help me make better decisions about how I spend my time.

Most of all though, I want to make sure that I'm "time-rich":

People who truly have control over time have some in their pocket to give to someone in need. They have a sense of priorities that drives their use of time and can shift away from the specific ordinary work that's easy to justify, in favor of the more ethereal, deeper things that are harder to justify. They protect their time from trivia and idiocy. These people are time rich. They provide themselves with a surplus of time. They might seem to idle, or to relax, more often then the rest, but that may be a sign of their mastery not their incompetence.

To hell with the altruism in the first sentence: time-rich people have time to devote to meaningful projects and activities!

Yesterday, I spent the whole day re-organizing my implementation of GTD in OmniFocus, so that I could gain much-needed clarity about my projects and commitments. That means that I'm extra-busy today, unfortunately. Yet it will enable me to be far more time-rich in the future.

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Managing Multiple Computers

I posted the following commentary to the OProducers e-mail list a few weeks ago. Although I still have a few kinks to work out, I'm happy to report that my new e-mail system has made managing my e-mail so much easier!

For some time, I've been struggling with the management of multiple computers, particularly with e-mail. My iMac desktop is my primary computer, but I often read and send e-mail from two secondary computers: my MacBook Pro laptop and my iPhone. Happily, I think I've finally found a workable solution, largely using MobileMe. It's not perfect, but it's a huge improvement. For many of you, that solution will be old hat -- or unnecessary. Yet I hope that others might find it useful. And I hope that folks will have some suggestions for alternatives or further improvements too!

Until recently, I'd been limping along with old-fashioned POP e-mail service. I could read e-mail -- and reply too -- on any of my computers. However, messages would only be deleted from the server only once downloaded by my primary computer, as that's where my mail archive resides. That was inefficient. Sometimes I would see an e-mail multiple times before I'd be able to file it away. My iPhone was often cluttered with old messages that I'd have to delete in a tedious fashion due to the lack of a "select all" button. While at my secondary machines, I couldn't flag a message for an action or reply, so I'd have to do that immediately -- or hope to remember it once I downloaded my mail to my primary machine. Although I could send e-mail from the secondary computers, saving those e-mails in my archive required auto-BCC'ing myself, then downloading them to the primary computer, then moving them into the "Sent" folder. Ugh!

Given the amount of e-mail that I receive and send over the course of a single day, I had to find a way manage my e-mail better. Lately, the problem seemed worse: I've often failed to empty my inbox for days or even weeks on end. That's unacceptable: I must empty my inbox twice per day in order to manage my projects effectively and keep my mind clear for substantive intellectual work.

Using a web-based e-mail system was not an option for me, as we have a fairly slow internet connection. (It was just upgraded from 1.5 Mbps to 3.0 Mbps. Yipee!) Instead, I needed some better way of syncing e-mail across machines.

Upon thinking about this problem, I realized that the best solution would be to switch from POP to IMAP e-mail. My internet host doesn't offer IMAP, and because I wanted to sync iCal, Address Book, and MacJournal too, I decided to sign up for Apple's MobileMe.

I set up my e-mail as per these instructions. My e-mail address is still diana@dianahsieh.com. However, all e-mail sent to that address is forwarded to my MobileMe account. To preserve diana@dianahsieh.co as my address on outgoing mail, I'm using a different SMTP server than MobileMe.

More importantly, all my incoming, outgoing, and saved mail is stored on the MobileMe server, then continuously synced with my three computers. Thus all of my computers are completely up-to-date with what I've read, drafted, sent, filed, etc. That's sooooo fabulous! However, I don't want to keep my mail on the MobileMe server forever. So periodically, I transfer my e-mail from the folders on MobileMe to my iMac, then sync that archive with my MacBook Pro.

I can read and manage my e-mail on MobileMe's web site. However, I can't send e-mail through any SMTP server than MobileMe, so that screws up my outgoing e-mail address. Since I don't want that, I don't plan to use the web interface, except in an emergency.

Of course, I could have gotten IMAP e-mail elsewhere, likely for cheaper. However, MobileMe allows me to easily sync my calendar, address book, and other third-party software. That's hugely valuable to me too. For example, I can now edit my calendar via my laptop, whereas before I could only read it. And I can sync MacJournal -- the program I'm using for drafting blog posts -- between my laptop and desktop. Totally separate from MobileMe, I use EverNote to store references, notes, and other useful information. That data is stored on their server, so it's available from any computer. And I use Xmarks to synchronize my FireFox bookmarks with Safari (and thus with my iPhone) and between computers.

It's a terrible failing of the computer industry that syncing files between computers is so darn difficult. I'd be very interested to hear what others are doing. I've taken a huge step forward, but I know that I could do more!

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My New Standing Desk

Since mid-March, I've been seriously wanting to work at a standing desk.

I've never been terribly comfortable sitting at any desk, and my laptop causes some kind of mysterious muscle pain deep in my thighs if I use it on my lap. That's not due to the heat of the laptop because the pain will develop even through a pillow and blankets, when I can't feel any heat. Plus, the pain fades only over the course of hours after I've used the laptop. I find the whole thing quite alarming, not to mention uncomfortable, so I try to avoid using my laptop in that otherwise-comfortable position. (Has anyone else had that problem? Any ideas what it might be?)

However, standing desks seem to be insanely expensive. So I've delayed switching to a standing desk because I've been afraid of spending a boatload of money for a standing desk that I don't much like.

Happily, a few days ago, I realized that I could make the perfect standing desk just by moving two filing cabinets in our office. So I did! So far, it's working quite nicely. I like to stand while I work, particularly for podcasting. I feel so trapped sitting at a desk, whereas standing allows me to wiggle. (Ultimately, I'm all about the wiggle!) My feet and legs ache, but that should be temporary.

Here's my set-up:



I had to make the desk deep rather than wide to avoid the glare from the windows to the left of my standard desk. I like having the computer far back though. That allows me to lightly rest my whole forearm on the desk, something helpful for my still-lingering carpal tunnel problems. Plus, I can drive my computer from my traditional desk by just turning the monitor slightly, as well as use my traditional desk as an additional surface while standing.

When my feet grow particularly weary, I can use the barstool, appropriated from upstairs, to sit for a spell. I hope that I won't need that often or for long. The small stool is for resting one leg at a time, something that I've seen recommended. I'm going to buy some standing pads from Costco too, as those will add some more padding to our rather thin carpet.

I'm sure that I'll do some tweaking, but I'm pretty pleased with this set up. Best of all, I didn't pay a cent for it!

As a bonus, don't miss the sorrowful look of doggie Conrad. Yes, I did require him to lay on his fluffy dog bed for all of about three minutes while I took the picture. The horror!

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Weekly Reviews for Workers

I'm delighted to report that the three new OLists -- OProducers, OShooters, and OGardeners -- launched without so much as a hiccup. One week later, they're humming along nicely! Hooray!

As a taste of what these OLists have to offer, I submit the following informal essay, posted to OProducers on Friday by Santiago Valenzuela, on his sit-down weekly reviews with his workers. (He gave me permission to post it here.) It's exactly the kind of good advice that motivated me to create the OProducers list.

In case you don't know him yet, Santiago is the leader of 3FROG, the manager of OShooters, and an all-around good guy. Now, without any further ado, here's Santiago:

I was reading all the fascinating posts about GTD's "weekly review" and how useful y'all find it. It got me thinking about a management practice that I think fills a similar role in a different context that I'd like to share - weekly one-on-ones.

My understanding of the GTD weekly review is to get you "above," conceptually, the day-to-day concretes you have to deal with and let you dedicate time to thinking about things that these concretes are supposed to be contributing to - longer-term goals, projects, etc. A one-on-one serves a similar purpose, I believe, in management.

Every week I meet with each of my people for our own weekly review. It lasts 15-30 minutes, depending on them. The purpose is for them to be able to air out any concerns, questions or information that I need to know primarily - though I don't forbid friendly chatting either, as I feel that the more I know about them, their circumstances and what motivates them to work as hard as they do, the better. This serves three main purposes:

1) It lets me spend time with them individually, allowing me to better understand what drives them, get to know them more personally, and put any concerns they have on my radar.

2) It allows me to give them the "bigger picture" - how were sales this past week, how did our department do, what are my plans for the future growth of this department and how does this person fit into that plan, exactly?

3) It serves as a "bucket" - a place to put niggling things for either of us that are not pressing but should be discussed at some point - discussion about inappropriate behavior, a day where personal efficiency slacked, days off requests, updates on family and so forth.

The reason I compare it to the weekly review is because I often think of management as the conceptual level of productive work, if you think of productive work in terms of concretes (I don't mean to demean the many specialists on this list who obviously are not working with concretes; it is simply a comparison.) With individuals stuck in concrete or specialist work all day, it is refreshing, motivating and assuring for them to have a small break each week to get "the big picture" and some one-on-one face-time with The Boss.

I found in my management travails that my guys were coming up to me for the smallest stuff - problems that they were clearly qualified to work on, or at least were not so pressing that they couldn't wait - but wait until when? I think the issue was that they wanted that face-time with me. People understand, I think - on some level - that a departmental manager is their link to the "big picture" and they gravitate towards that in an effort to better understand where they stand, if the people above them understand how good a job their doing (or if there are any problems,) how the company is doing in general - what we would call the big picture. This is a real human need in productive work and I do my best to fill it for my people. In addition, the "bucket" of the one-on-one also saves time as we bundle all the small stuff that may take 5 minutes (or more) every day to deal with on a day-to-day basis, but takes 5 minutes in a week when bundled together.

I call the need to understand what is going on above you and get face time with the boss a real human need - and I think a rational one, just like a weekly review is a rational exercise on the personal level - not only for the theoretical reasons above, but practical reasons as well. It has increased honesty, trust and communication between myself and my team by quite a bit - it has been many months since I have had to deal with anything at all unexpected on the part of my team members. Personal efficiency has skyrocketed - by about 50% since I implemented one-on-ones, the reason, I think, being that individuals are inclined to work harder when they better understand how what they are doing contributes to an overall productive goal, trust their boss and know that their hard work is being recognized on a weekly basis, not just in terms of sporadic pay increases.

I think this would be a useful practice to adopt for most managers. In the 30 minute time usually allocated I give 10 minutes (the first 10 minutes) to my employee, the second 10 minutes to any issues on my end, and the last 10 minutes to discussing "big picture" stuff - growing the employee's capabilities to make him more valuable to the company, how our department is doing, how the company is doing, etc. At first I had a hard time finding the time and justifying it to my superiors, once they asked - but now there is so much time saved in terms of issues that can wait until the weekly one-on-one, and so many efficiency gains, that the meetings justify themselves no matter how busy we are.

Does anyone else have a similar system? Or do you have similar problems with your direct reports? I would be very happy to help anyone who's interested help roll this idea out, if my description of what happens and the corresponding results have piqued your interest.

I originally got the idea from manager tools, a podcast website, but I think they explain the rationale poorly (mostly in terms of concretes) and I've done some thinking on the reasons why its so effective, which I think I've hit on here.

That's good stuff! Oh, and you can find the "manager tools" podcasts here.

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Standing While Working

Last weekend, Dr. Mary Dan Eades posted on the effects standing and moving while working, rather than remaining sedentary: You Could Stand To Lose a Few Pounds. She writes:

For quite some time now, this very idea -- standing more -- has been something that Mike [Eades] and I have discussed at length in our ongoing search for what changed in our lives (and the lives of our peers) during the quiet slide from 40 to 60. What happened that could account for the difficulty so many of us clearly experience in holding the line against weight gain (let alone losing weight) as we age, even in the face of a eating about the same amount of food and doing about the same amount of exercise as we did in our younger years.

Then Dr. Eades describes the vast difference in daily movement when working as doctors in a busy medical practice versus working as writers and researchers. Finally, she discusses how that might relate to a person's weight. It's not so simple, but standing versus sitting might be part of the picture.

Here's the comment I posted:

Funny, I just posted to OEvolve about working while standing yesterday... I suspect you've hit on the next paleo "let's try this" meme.

Normally, I'm not active like you were as a doctor, but my pattern is to move around a fair bit during the day, both inside and outside. However, when I was seriously hypothyroid this fall, I was sedentary in the way that Gary Taubes describes in obese people in Good Calories, Bad Calories: I simply didn't move unless really necessary. (Even walking across the room was a chore; walking for five minutes with the dog made me want to lay down to rest.) That lack of ordinary movement destroyed my conditioning in just a few weeks; the effect was far greater than just not working out regularly. So perhaps wiggling around in an ordinary way has a greater impact on our fitness than most people suppose.

In any case, I do want to try converting my workspace to standing, and I've temporarily rigged it up to do that. However, my feet don't seem to be up to the task yet. They're tired! I think I need to ease into it.

I'm none too fond of my desk, so I'd love to put together a new setup, preferably so that I can stand most of the time, but perhaps with a bar stool to allow me to sit if I'm tired.

I tried a temporary set-up with boxes last weekend, but that didn't work well. To do work, I need a desk-sized solid surface, so that I can deal with papers, books, notes, etc.

Suggestions?

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Optimal Living

Tod -- the creator of the Newton Christmas Cards -- recently started a blog: Optimal Living. The tagline is "a rational approach to personal growth and smart ideas in action." So far, it's definitely living up to that promise. Here's two recent posts that I liked:

• 5 Reasons You're Not Earning More
  
  
• Suggestions for New Businesses

The practice of optimal productivity -- and success in business -- requires far more serious thought and dedication than most people realize. Sometimes, I think it makes doing super-abstract, brain-hurting metaphysics seem easy. So I'm pleased that Tod is sharing some of what he's learned. Heck, I need it!

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Productivity-O-Rama

Writing Five-Year Goals: John Drake tells us why we should know our five-year goals -- and how to formulate them. Then he tells us how he wrote his. Writing my own five-year goals is on my to-do list!

Jason Crawford has a new-ish blog "about startups, technology, entrepreneurship, business, leadership, and management." I really liked his November post entitled Query for Judgment.

Prepare for 2010 by learning from failed experiments: "This month, I'm trying out new stuff, going back and doing maintenance on previous failures, and watching things explode fairly spectacularly. Why? Because if I figure out all the failure points now, while I can mentally group all the failures in the bucket of 2009, then by the time I move into 2010, I'll already have figured out where the landmines are." I'm a bit slow in starting 2010, so I think that February will be my January. Or something like that.

GTD for Academics by Aeon Skoble. I implemented GTD in much the same way he outlines while in graduate school.

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The Complexity of the Conceptual Mind

Paul and I just returned from a few days in sunny Southern California. (We visited his family in Los Angeles, including a delightfully talkative three-year-old niece Amanda and a new-to-us nine-month-old nephew Jeremy.) I'm definitely not ready for Monday, so I'm going to allow someone else to do my work for me with this post.

A few months ago, Kevin McAllister posted a really stellar analysis of the roots of his problem with work-avoidance on his blog, Logical Disconnect. The post is entitled Overload and a Coke. I'd planned to comment on it, but much of what I had to say ended up in my podcast on cultivating concentration.

In any case, the post is well worth reading in its entirety, as it's an excellent example of the importance of introspection about such problems -- and the good results thereof. Happily, Kevin gave me permission to repost it. So that's what I'm doing. (Thanks, Kevin! My Monday morning bacon is hereby saved!)

Without further ado, here is Kevin's post: Overload and a Coke:

I have just made an important discovery about my mental limitations and my response to them. I've confirmed something I had already known, that my mental stack for sub-tasks is finite. For a while I've been troubled occasionally by a nearly overwhelming emotional need to do anything else besides my current work. For a few months now I have been seeking, opportunistically, to understand this emotional state because it seemed completely at odds with my goals and my usual relentless need to understand things.

The idea here is there are often tasks that have hidden or unrealized requirements. An example is you start out to vacuum the rug, and you need to clean up the clutter and move furniture, but when you move the furniture you discover that the leg on the chair is so loose that it is unsafe, so you go to repair it only to find that your out of wood glue and finishing nails. And to make it to the hardware store you need to stop and get gas and go to the ATM for cash. So when you originally set out to vacuum the rug you never would have said, okay well I'd better go get gas and some cash before I get started. I've heard this phenomena referred to as yak shaving. But I think most people have experienced this, and typically the stacks of additional tasks don't get too deep. However, in my work it is nearly a daily occurrence that my projects uncover things I could never have known until the work was begun. Some block your progress and some don't, some are big, but some are small. I've found it's the small ones that block your progress that were really stacking up on me and causing a problem.

If it is a big problem, meaning a full project in it's own right, and is not blocking my current progress, I simply make a note that this new thing needs to be done too and continue on my way. Even if it blocks my progress, I'll go ahead and shelve the first task and take on the second one. But if it is a small problem and blocking my progress, I just switch to this new task, and try to mentally retain all the context that got me there. Generally this works, but, often my extra tasks go down so deep that I reach a point where it is impossible to retain the whole context. This mental overload is real, and painful, and I've been dealing with it all wrong.

When I reach this point of mental overload I run away screaming! Well not literally, but I certainly do try and do anything else. Suddenly it seems like checking my email, or going to get a coke at the vending machine is the most important thing in the world. I think there are other factors in play as well, such as, if the driving project behind these sub-tasks is something that is only mildly interesting or something I loathe then the threshold for the number of sub-tasks I am willing to endure is much smaller.

The breakthrough in my thinking was realizing that this overwhelming need to go find and clean my white tennis shoes was in direct response to learning I had yet another task to be pushed onto the stack. So the emotional response was because I was no longer able to hold the whole of my current task in my head, and I have now set up a contradiction.

I know the thing I am doing is important and more important than the new thing because it is bigger and implies the new thing, so to prevent myself from losing the broader context I will not work on the new sub-task so I don't lose any of the important details of the super task. But I also know that I cannot proceed on the broader task without working on the sub-task. As this contradiction leaves me nothing to actually do I might as well get a coke and avoid the whole irresolvable mess.

Now this has been a source of guilt and loss of productivity for me for a while because when in that mess I'm not making progress on my project. But from David Allen and Jean Moroney I've already learned the solution to mental overload. That is to write things down.

So the strategy I've just developed is when I recognize this feeling to stop and ask myself, "Are you overloaded?" If the answer is yes, then I simply need to write down the context I am in danger of losing. At this time I suspect that will consist of a list of the outstanding tasks that are standing in my mind.

If the answer to that question is not, yes, I have a backup question that has helped me with procrastination before that is, "What do you want?" I mean this in a broad way, basically, it helps me bring to mind the reasons behind undertaking the tasks in the first place.

Any similar stories to tell? Post them in the comments!

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Steve Jobs on Apple

Wow, this Fortune interview with Steve Jobs is chock full of insightful gems. Here's some of my favorites:

On Apple's connection with the consumer

"We did iTunes because we all love music. We made what we thought was the best jukebox in iTunes. Then we all wanted to carry our whole music libraries around with us. The team worked really hard. And the reason that they worked so hard is because we all wanted one. You know? I mean, the first few hundred customers were us.

"It's not about pop culture, and it's not about fooling people, and it's not about convincing people that they want something they don't. We figure out what we want. And I think we're pretty good at having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other people are going to want it, too. That's what we get paid to do.

"So you can't go out and ask people, you know, what the next big [thing.] There's a great quote by Henry Ford, right? He said, 'If I'd have asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me "A faster horse."'"

Too often, companies simply chase what consumers already want. The best companies offer us values that we've never dreamed of before. Such new values integrate so well into our lives that, in very short order, we cannot imagine ourselves without them. Apple has done that consistently, most notably with the iPhone. If I gave it up, I'd have to radically change the way I work and live.

On Apple's focus

"Apple is a $30 billion company, yet we've got less than 30 major products. I don't know if that's ever been done before. Certainly the great consumer electronics companies of the past had thousands of products. We tend to focus much more. People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.

That same principle applies to individuals too. We have to choose what we do -- and what we don't do -- wisely. We have to choose the activities where we have a competitive advantage -- and outsource or forgo the rest.

On his marathon Monday meetings

"When you hire really good people you have to give them a piece of the business and let them run with it. That doesn't mean I don't get to kibitz a lot. But the reason you're hiring them is because you're going to give them the reins. I want [them] making as good or better decisions than I would. So the way to do that is to have them know everything, not just in their part of the business, but in every part of the business.

"So what we do every Monday is we review the whole business. We look at what we sold the week before. We look at every single product under development, products we're having trouble with, products where the demand is larger than we can make. All the stuff in development, we review. And we do it every single week. I put out an agenda -- 80% is the same as it was the last week, and we just walk down it every single week.

"We don't have a lot of process at Apple, but that's one of the few things we do just to all stay on the same page."

Ah, my favorite remark!

To demand that employees conform to processes is to impose mind-numbing, productivity-killing, self-esteem-crushing bureaucracy on them. A bureaucratic company is focused on enacting certain fixed means -- rather than on accomplishing its goals by the best means possible. The result is much wasted time, effort, and money. In contrast, notice that Jobs focuses on Apple's goals in his Monday review. In fact, his Monday meeting seems like a company level GTD weekly review. It's about production, including giving employees the information they need to solve problems, not about conformity to process.

A bureaucratic company is a company that doesn't trust its employees to make good decisions. The result is stagnation and incompetence. If a company can't trust its employees to exercise good judgment in doing their jobs, then it needs to fire them and hire better employees. Or it needs to learn to trust them to do what they're capable of doing, including learning from mistakes. Bureaucratic focus on "process" and "policy" will drive away the most productive and capable employees -- or crush them. It's not a mode of business appropriate to rational, productive people.

Goals, goals, goals. It's got to be all about the goals.

(Via Bodarko.)

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Delegation Galore

Lately, I've been working on delegating my activism work as much as possible. Delegation is brand-new skill for me. My work in graduate school -- meaning taking courses, teaching courses, and writing my dissertation -- was all mine to do. (Outsourcing is frowned upon, in fact!) Traditionally, I've created and managed activism projects by myself -- like my OList.com e-mail lists. I've helped others as needed -- like by editing their op-eds and articles. On occasion, I've collaborated with other people -- like in writing the policy paper on Colorado's Amendment 48 with Ari Armstrong. However, I've only rarely delegated work.

Mostly, I've just done whatever I could on my own, without asking for or expecting help from others. In part, that reflects a strength of mine: I don't wait for marching orders from on high, nor do I depend on the approval of others, nor do I expect others to implement my good ideas. Instead, my standard approach is simply to see what needs doing and then do it. However, I've become seriously overtaxed of late -- particularly given today's unprecedented opportunities for activism.

This summer, I'd planned to delegate some work. However, I've done far more than I expected -- much to my delight. The more that I delegate, the more that I see that I could and should delegate even more. It's addictive!

Here's what I've done so far:

• A few weeks ago, I conducted a planning meeting for Front Range Objectivism to discuss future plans for the group and to divide the labor thereof. Twenty people attended; all were willing to contribute in some way. (Awesome!) As a result, many more people are doing the work of FRO. Tasks that weren't getting done well, if at all, are now well under control by others. Those people will develop new skills as activists; they will become more invested in FRO; and they'll get to know each other better as they work together. My load has been lightened, so that I'm now free to focus on the FRO projects that I'm most enthused about. The process is pretty new, and I'm sure we'll see some bumps in the road. However, I'm downright thrilled with the results so far.
  
  
• Just yesterday, I turned over the management of two of my precious OList.com e-mail lists to others. I realized that such was possible and desirable with the successful start-up of OGrownups, managed by Jenn Casey and C. August. So now, OBloggers is managed by Kate Gerber, the author of the blog CareerMama. And OActivists is managed by Tammy Perkins. I cannot possibly express my pleasure and gratitude for Kate and Tammy volunteering to take over that work. Managing those lists doesn't take much time, but it's definitely a distraction for me. (If only I could get someone to manage OAcademics; it needs some life breathed into it!)

As with all delegation, I've put far more work into these projects of late than I would have done if I'd simply maintained the status quo. I'm sure that will continue for a while: I expect to have questions and concerns to address. Yet in very short order, I'm sure that these projects will be sailing along smoothly -- happily, without me at the helm. That will be very gratifying to watch.

Of course, delegation means releasing control. So the work will be done somewhat differently than I might do it. That can be a tad bit alarming. However, I'm quite certain that if I choose good people, they can be allowed to do the work in their own way, based on their own good judgment of what project requires. I think I'll see the delegated work done better than before.

Recently, I got some excellent advice on delegation from two of the super-effective people behind the Objectivist Club Network on delegation. With their permission, I'm sharing it with you. In one e-mail, the first person wrote:

Delegate as much as you can. If you optimize for short-term results you over-utilize your best people (that often means you!) and burn them out. Focus on increasing your leverage not short-term output. Start by delegating tiny pieces to someone, so small they usually agree to help. You both learn about work together and if you're both happy you'll find ways to get them involved more over time.

He then expanded on those comments in a later e-mail as follows:

I'm far from an expert on delegating or managing people, but hopefully this will start an interesting discussion. In our update we mentioned one tip, here is an expanded list of explicit principles I have that I've found successful:

1) First, know your volunteers. Understand their interests and their strengths. We keep an excel file of this and review it regularly and we schedule a short "get to know you" phone call with all new people who express interest.

2) Make small specific requests of individual people and agree on a hard deadline with them. The very first time you do this it's best to do it over the phone.

3) Follow-up with them *before* the deadline to make sure their on track. This reaffirms for them that their contribution will be meaningful to you and you're looking forward to it.

4) After they deliver let them know how much you appreciate it, give them honest feedback about the work they did and any changes you need, and let them know what's going to happen with their work. Nothing kills motivation more than someone volunteering their time and contributing something and then not knowing when their contribution is going to be used, acted upon, published, etc. If your volunteer has to follow-up with *you* then you know you didn't communicate enough.

5) Change the way you measure your own progress and success: don't focus on how much you (your group) got done this week or this month, this compels you to work harder yourself and put in more hours. Instead, measure your success by how much got done without you doing it. Focus on leveraging not output. If you maximize leverage then output will follow. Just like in business you focus on creating value and profit will follow.

The second person added the following:

Here is the approach we take:

1. We make a list of everything we need to do and then categorize the tasks

2. We then look at the categories and discuss which tasks or categories of tasks we feel we're ready to give to someone else

3. We brainstorm individuals we think can do these tasks

4. We schedule a call with the person who is our top choice and see if they are interested in getting involved and doing the task. If they cannot help then we ask if they know of anyone else who could help. Phone calls take less time than in-person meetings, but are more effective than emails going back and forth and give us a chance to sell the person on the task and get them excited about getting involved.

Here are some things I always have to remind myself that help save me time and delegate effectively:

1. No task is too small to delegate. ...

2. Everything takes longer then you think it will take, so again, you want to even delegate the small pieces/tasks.

3. It is often lazy not to delegate because it's more work in the short term to delegate something, but in the long term it makes your organization more effective. So I often tell myself not to be lazy and to delegate :)

4. Be very careful about what commitments you take on. I try to view my time like a budget and always think about the trade offs.

5. Stop giving tasks to people who have proven to be unreliable - we will give up on people so that they do not waste any more of our time.

6. Be open to new ideas and ways of doing things.

That advice was very helpful to me -- and I hope that it inspires some appropriate delegation of your work!

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From GTD-Lite to GTD-Heavy

For many years, I've been able to do my work reasonably well with a stripped-down version of David Allen's stellar Getting Things Done method for managing work. (If you've not yet read his book, aptly titled Getting Things Done, I strongly recommend it.) While in graduate school, my work projects weren't complex: "read, write, read, write, and write some more" were my basic orders for every day. My home projects mostly consisted of periodic maintenance work, not distinct projects. Still, I couldn't imagine living without the basic principles of GTD: I just had too much to do.

In my post-Ph.D work, however I've found that my projects have exploded -- not just in number but also in complexity. I've spent much of this summer attempting to clarify and organize them, while also doing what needed to get done. That's not been an easy task! I've had to think more deeply about my priorities, projects, and methods than ever before. Moreover, I've radically reworked my own implementation of GTD. In the process, I've found that I'm simply getting closer and closer to the full-blown system that David Allen recommends.

Here's some of what I've been done over the past few months and weeks:

• I'm more clearly distinguishing between areas of focus (e.g. "Beasts") and projects (e.g. "Build New Barn").
  
• I've switched from Entourage (a.k.a. Outlook for the Mac) to the more powerful OmniFocus (plus iCal). Instead of giving arbitrary dates to tasks, I flag the tasks that I'd like to do in the next week.
  
• I've begun capturing tasks, ideas, and other bits of data on the new "Voice Memos" program of my iPhone. (That "inbox" is emptied every evening.)
  
• I've set up a real office space downstairs around my iMac, including a dedicated inbox and tickler file.
  
• I've bought myself a kick-ass label printer (Dymo Labelwriter 450 Turbo).
  
• I've create a mobile inbox -- red, of course. I'm also getting into the habit of processing the various bits of paper and what-not that I collect whenever I leave the house as soon as I return.
  

Right now, I'm working on reviewing, pruning, and reorganizing my rather extensive files, using nicely-labeled folders. I can't possibly express the great pleasure I felt on trashing my collection of academic papers on Kant's transcendental deduction. That's a topic that I hope never to consider again in my whole life. I also need to organize my bookshelves, as they've gotten seriously out-of-control in recent years. That organization of my physical workspace will help me organize my projects, I think.

I've also begun identifying my three major tasks for the day each morning. Given the plethora of daily maintenance tasks that show up in OmniFocus every day, I find that clarifying. Of course, identifying those three tasks of the day is itself an OmniFocus task -- along with all kinds of other seemingly obvious things like "Feed beasts," "Play with Conrad," and yes, even "Shower." Seriously, my getting-stuff-done brain is so well outsourced that I'll forget even those tasks if they're not on my agenda.

In the process of reworking my implementation of GTD, I found that re-skimming Getting Things Done was quite helpful, as has been listening to the GTD podcasts. I'm also slowly reading Ready for Anything.

I have much work still to do, but I'm pleased to say that I'm finally getting a clear handle on the best ways to get done the things that need doing in my life.

Thank you, David Allen!

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