Clarity of Purpose

Anna Wintour: “People respond well to people who are sure of what they want.”

We somehow think that a clear purpose will come to us from above, as the Ten Commandments were given to Moses, or as Buddha achieved enlightenment sitting under the Bodhi  tree.  Some people are lucky enough to know early on their where their talents and interests lie.  Anna Wintour reckoned she was just 15 when her career in fashion was fixed[1].    For the rest of us, being clear about our purpose is hard work. 

There is no escaping the fact that a clear vision is essential to the success of any organisation, and essential to the success of those within the organisation.  

If being clear about your purpose was easy, though, everyone would be highly focused on their specific goals.  Sadly, that’s not the case for one very simple reason: being clear about your purpose means making a choice.  By choosing one path you close off others.  For many people that is very difficult; the grass always looks greener someplace else, particularly when things don’t turn out as you planned.  So our attention wanders to something we think might be more profitable, more interesting, or just plain different from the problems we are facing.  However, that is exactly why clarity of purpose is so powerful; choosing forces you to focus your time, resources, and energy on one thing.  And doing one thing vastly improve your chances of success.  The old saying that the hunter who cases two rabbits catches neither one is as true in business as it is in the woods.  

When we are sure we are doing the right thing, we can sink ourselves fully into the activity.  Free from distractions, we become absorbed in our work.  Disturbances that would normally cause annoyance are ignored as we focus on the job.   Concentration and effectiveness are at their highest when we have absolute clarity about what we are doing and why we are doing it.

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[1] When Anna Wintour was just 21 years old she told her co-workers that she wanted to be Editor of Vogue.  She achieved her ambition in 1988 and 24 years later she is still Editor-in-Chief of American Vogue.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Wintour.

Eat and Sleep Routines

“You wouldn’t forget to eat or sleep, would you?”  I can still remember the piercing gaze staring at me across the table.  “So why did you forget to write your monthly report?”  The message was crystal clear, if not completely logical. 

My boss was telling me in no uncertain terms to make my monthly report as habitual as eating and sleeping; if I wanted to carry on working for her, of course.

It’s a lesson I have never forgotten, even though it was many years ago.  When something is as habitual as eating and sleeping, it doesn’t get forgotten.  Ever.  I know other people who also treat their monthly reports with the same reverence; they don’t forget either.  You don’t need to add it to your “to do” list, you don’t need to worry about it, you just do it.  As easily as you eat and sleep. 

The difficulty, of course, is that some pretty powerful mechanisms were designed into us to make sure we don’t forget to eat or sleep.  The same cannot be said of monthly reports. 

But if you can make something into an “eat and sleep” routine you have found a pretty powerful way of increasing your effectiveness. 

Benjamin Franklin recognised the benefits of cultivating positive habits.  He called them his 13 virtues and he spent many years of his life trying to live by them.  He wrote about them in his autobiography and it is an early glimpse we have of how difficult it is to change behaviour. 

There is a lot of guff out there on the magical World Wide Web about how it takes 30 days to form a habit.  I can muster quite a lot of evidence to say this is codswallop.  It takes much longer, particularly if the habits are difficult.  So we need reminders and rewards.  We need persistence and perseverance.  And we need to keep our new habit visible, so we don’t forget what we are trying to do.  Even after many months or years, we still have to be vigilant in not letting it slip.  Benjamin Franklin used a little paper notebook for most of his life to try to make his 13 virtues as natural as eating or sleeping. 

If all this sounds like a lot of effort, I’m afraid it is.  But the payoff is enormous.  Good exercise habits are not easy to cultivate, but they keep us out of hospital; as do good eating habits.  Good working habits are every bit as difficult, but lead to a more productive and effective career.  It may take more effort, but the rewards are there for the taking. 

So what sorts of habits improve effectiveness?  Strangely, the monthly report is one of them, or at least it has the same effect.  Reviewing and evaluating our work on a regular basis leads to better decision making.  It’s not rocket science, but also not easy to do.  It is, however, very effective.  As is good planning; equally difficult to do on a regular basis, but invaluable if you want to be effective and successful.

My old boss is now a millionaire several times over and looks younger now than when I was working for her.  So her advice is perhaps worth listening to. She also had the uncanny knack of putting the fear of God into the people who worked for her, but that’s a completely different story …

Working with calmness and composure

By knowing how long things take

 

It is stressful and unpleasant being late for an important deadline. 

There is nothing elegant or enjoyable about running, red faced and flustered to catch a train.  And it is traumatic and disruptive burning the midnight oil to finish a key report that was started too late.  Creative juices do not flow and it’s not good a good way to work, or to live.  Of course what I’m describing here is different from being in “flow mode” where you are so lost in your work that you don’t notice the time. 

Being on time, with a little time to spare has much to recommend it by, not least the higher quality of work that gets done.  Planning ahead, having time to think, and finishing things to a high quality causes less worry and is more enjoyable.  It encourages “flow mode” because the brain isn’t stuck in "panic mode".

Repeatedly hitting deadlines without compromising quality requires a number of things to get done:

1.     Creative thinking or brainstorming about how to give it the “wow factor” (less appropriate for catching the train, more appropriate for key reports).  Sometimes referred to as the “fuzzy front end” it can have dead-ends and wasted work, but is important nonetheless.

2.     Identifying tasks - figuring out what needs to be done (talking to certain people, reading around the subject, checking the train timetable, etc)

3.     Estimating how long things might take (easy for how long the train will take to get to Edinburgh, less easy for creating and agreeing an outline for a report)

4.     Planning what will be done when, and who will do what.

5.     Creating checklists for repeating tasks.

6.     Accounting for other things that need to be done – so you can be confident that you are working on the right thing, at the right time, without another problem cropping up elsewhere.

7.     Working the plan – trying to do what you said you were going to do, when you said you were going to do it.  And trying to get everyone else to do what they said they were going to do, when they said they would do it.

8.     Reviewing and adjusting – either for this project, or for the next one.

Reading through that list makes me, and probably you, realise just how much scope for error there is in the whole process.  Not least because things take longer than we think they will take, other people don’t do what they said they would do, etc. etc.  To such a degree that many people don’t believe it’s worthwhile to make a plan because “things change anyway”.

A particularly difficult (but crucial) step in this process is estimating.  Figuring out how long things might take is difficult for many reasons, but up at the top of the list is the belief that whatever it is we are doing is a “one-off”, with the second being optimism.  The “one-off” argument says that this project is different from the last one, and that the problems encountered on the last project won’t be encountered on this one, which inevitably leads to optimism.  Instead of thinking we will have different problems, we think we won’t have any, and therefore believe the new project will be quicker to do. 

How do I know, for example, how long it might take me to write this blog article?  I don’t know when I start how long it will be, or how complicated the subject matter might turn out to be.  The only way to know is to time myself when I write blog articles - long ones, short ones, difficult ones and easy ones.

Only then will I know whether I'm likely to finish one before I have to leave the office to catch a training in 45 minutes.  Otherwises I'm likely to start, get absorbed and then end up running for the train.

I appreciate that timing what we do is counter-intuitive, but much of what we depend on today were once considered alien.  Like the trains running (roughly) on time or knowing how long a policy document might take to write.

All the planning in the world is useless if everything takes twice as long as the plan says it should take to complete.  Or even longer.

The Value in Neat and Tidy

Tidying up is a thoroughly therapeutic task. Organising something that was previously chaotic has so many benefits, quite apart from the calming effect on the soul. My kitchen cupboards recently unattached themselves from the wall thanks to an over-enthusiastic washing machine. Rather than have their precious contents become part of an insurance claim, I emptied the cupboards. This was not only hard work (who would have thought kitchen cupboard could hold so much?) but also revealing.

I found ingredients that had been bought twice (a surprising number), ingredients that should maybe be eaten up (nothing earlier than 2009, but even so …) and bottles that had never been opened (but will be now). In short, I had only a vague idea of what was in my cupboards. And I only moved three years ago!

Although kitchen structural defects are not to be recommended to anyone, I have found the act of clearing out, cleaning up, and re-organising to be extremely valuable. I have reassessed what I really need, what is only used occasionally or not at all. And I have resolved to simplify: which should save money, save space, and improve efficiency.

Transferring the same ideas to work is even more worthwhile. Although my hard-disk is unlikely to fall off its perch due to too much data, a spring clean and re-evaluation of what’s important yields similar benefits. Pruning projects has even more value than throwing out duplicate ingredients. The CRM database is next ….

So, it’s Summer Cleaning for me! It doesn’t have the same ring to it as Spring Cleaning, but it has all the lemon-scented benefits.




PS Getting to Excellent isn’t going into semi-retirement, despite appearances. I was away for two blissful weeks in Provence and surprisingly not motivated to blog. I wasn’t sure you would be interested in thyme-scented hills or how all food tastes better in France …

How to proofread for zero defects

Over the Christmas break I was asked about how to improve attention to detail and proofread work so that it is error-free. It’s an interesting question and one I have given much thought to over the years.

So, on something of a tangential note for the New Year, here are my tips for proofreading and zero defect copy:

1. Allow time between finishing the work and proofreading. Ideally this would be several days or at least overnight, but even an hour or two will help. Allowing the brain to focus on other things allows you to come back to your work with a more detached view.
2. Read the document several times to check for different things, eg whether it makes sense, whether it flows nicely, whether it is factually accurate, whether there are any misleading sentences, etc. Proofreading is not the same as reading through your work. We often mix up proofreading with these other activities, trying to do too many things in one reading. Separate them out to improve accuracy.
3. Use an eye-guide such as a ruler, your finger or the cursor to check each sentence slowly and methodically. Because we are capable of reading quickly, we do. But proofreading requires us to slow down and purposefully read each word. The physical act of moving a ruler or a finger helps.
4. Change the look of the document. Word processors enable us to very quickly change things such as the margins, font or pagination to get a different view of the text. Make the text larger to see if errors are easier to spot.
5. Use the spell checker. This is standard in most word processors but some software requires it to be switched on. Never release a document without spell checking it.
6. Read your work aloud. This has two benefits; firstly you “hear” errors more clearly aloud than when you are reading to yourself. Secondly, it slows down the process, also making errors easier to find.
7. Always go back and re-check your work after you make a change. Many mistakes slip through because of last-minute changes that alter the sense or structure of a sentence. If you make a change, carefully re-check that section.
8. Ask someone else to read your work. No book publisher would ever allow a book to be printed without several people carefully checking it. Someone else will more easily spot awkward sentences, sentences that make no sense, spellos, typos and other gremlins. Even better if you know someone who is a stickler for grammar and punctuation.
9. Concentrate on the proofreading process. Often this “last lap” is done without the attention it deserves. We allow our minds to wander as we work. Proofreading for zero defects is strenuous and requires 100% concentration.
10. Listen to your inner voice. Often we notice errors even though we don’t do anything about them. Grammatical errors or using the wrong word register with us on a subconscious level; listening to your inner voice at the checking stage often saves a red face later.
11. Have good references. Using a good dictionary, a good thesaurus and style guide all help in quickly checking the correct word or phrasing.
12. Create your own checklists. A checklist for things to check, eg grammar, style, readability, clarity, accuracy, completeness, spelling, typos, accuracy of numbers, etc. A checklist for favourite mistakes, eg words you frequently misspell or grammatical errors you make often. Every time a mistake creeps into your work, add it to the checklist so you improve next time.
13. Create your own style guide. Each industry has its own best practice. Create a style guide that includes common company names, abbreviations used in your industry, etc. Include good examples of other people’s work. Include favourite references such as dictionaries or web sites that are useful. This is another feedback loop that helps improve writing with every piece that is published.
14. Read your work in different ways. As authors of our work, we start at the beginning and lovingly read through every word. Readers don’t do that. They scan the title, intro and random paragraphs to see if it looks interesting. They miss bits out or skip to the part that is relevant to them. Simulate a reader’s behaviour by reading random sections, or parts you know might be read out of context. Do they make sense? Are they clear and unambiguous? Try reading backwards and focusing on each word rather than the sense.
15. Proofread from a printout; don’t rely on working from the screen. I know it’s not ecologically sound, but moving away from the computer to a quiet place makes a big difference. You can work slower and more thoughtfully.
16. Build proofreading time into your schedule. Nothing ruins good work like silly errors that should have been picked up long before they get to the reader. It is tempting to think they don’t matter, but readers subconsciously mistrust error-prone work.
17. Use a professional service. I have employed a copywriter to check my work for important work and it doesn’t have to be costly. If you have a large or important document, it could be worthwhile.

It’s a long list. And I’ll admit to having made each and every mistake going. Working in the software industry teaches accuracy, even if it doesn’t come easily and is an on-going struggle. But proofreading and producing zero-defect work is a process rather than a talent. Certainly some people have better attention to detail than others, but technology and checklists help.

Does anyone else have any tips or techniques to share? I’m sure there are more and I’d love to hear!

The gentle art of working together

People can be prickly sometimes, can’t they? We easily get upset when left off the email distribution list for one of our projects, or when someone doesn’t invite us to a meeting. Rightly so – work is an important part of everyone’s lives.

As work becomes more complex, and pressures build to do more, we need better ways to collaborate and share. Email gets a message from one machine to another, but does nothing to help organise and prioritise. The internet has done a great deal to put more at our finger tips, but sometimes the result is overwhelming – so much information, so much to do, and so little organisation.

Within Anatec we use Microsoft SharePoint to share information and coordinate goals. That’s not a great surprise as we are Microsoft Certified Partners. But I think everyone’s needs concerning collaboration are pretty similar. Here is my top ten list of what’s important to get the best out of other people:

1. Be clear. Collaboration sites need to have a good hierarchical structure so information is easy to find. Colour coding by department can help orient people in a large site.
2. Make it attractive. Just because it’s work doesn’t mean to say that the look and feel of your collaboration site isn’t important. The better it looks, the more likely it will be to be used. Have a house style so that fonts and headline sizes are used consistently: it’s a lot easier on the eye.
3. Consistency of purpose. Make objectives consistent and visible and ensure company communications reflect current priorities.
4. Time to think. Make key documents or discussions available to everyone involved. The more time people have to mull over a problem, the better their input will be.
5. No surprises. Ensure key dates are visible well ahead of time. A shared company calendar with dates for exhibitions, people’s holidays, key presentations, etc. helps to keep people focused on the major events during the month.
6. Make it inspirational. Whatever your line of work there are people who will live better lives as a result of what you do. Share the inspiration with your co-workers though words or pictures.
7. Keep content up-to-date. Intranets are a great place to share things, but they need to be kept up-to-date and they need to keep people’s attention. If they always see the same old stuff, pretty soon they will stop reading. If there is a key report you can share though your intranet, then do. People will get familiar with the structure and content by using it more.
8. Make it interesting. Is there a relevant RSS feed you could include on your home page? Can you use appropriate and attractive pictures to help get your message across? It all makes work more enjoyable, and collaboration more effective.
9. Don’t make it optional. Whenever a new system is introduced, there is always resistance. Don’t be tempted to keep emailing documents, just because it’s easier. Put the document on your collaboration site and then email the link. Keep on eye on what people are accessing to make sure its being used.
10. Get everyone involved. Collaboration is exactly that – people working together to create something more than one person could do alone. Ensure there is a structure to the way you work, then use it at every opportunity - in meetings, as a way of discussing things, even as internal presentations.

Collaboration through intranets is not new, but options are opening up for smaller companies to use tools that the big boys have enjoyed for years.

Getting high priority tasks done

I know what my highest priority is, what I’m less clear about is why I’m not getting on and doing it. Well, I have some idea, none of them very worthy:

• It’s difficult
• I’m not guaranteed success
• The things I am doing instead are easier
• The things I am doing instead are more fun
• I’m tired

It takes mental discipline to always do the most important thing at any moment in time. Some days are easier than others. Today I am tried and have been distracted by several meetings and other work not directly related to my Highest Priority. My attention has slipped, focus has wandered, and I’m writing a blog post instead of Getting On.

Identifying and the one thing that should be getting your full attention is a good start, but it’s not good enough on its own. Others have given helpful advice about exactly this sort of problem:

• Chopping big tasks into smaller, achievable tasks
• Time boxing the difficult activity so you get something done
• Planning it

This is helpful and effective advice and now that I read that list I’m back onto the task in hand. My own personal favourite is to start my stop watch, which is exactly what I have done. So if you will excuse me, I have work to do … And don’t you have a high priority task you should be doing?

What should I NOT do today?

We seem to live in a business world that is determined to do more and more. Until very recently I’ve been right up there in my eagerness to add things to my To Do list.

Just lately, though, I’ve concluded that my strategy is all wrong. Instead of adding things to my To Do list, I should be taking things off. Not just little things, but big things. Whole great swathes of stuff that takes up my time need to go.

So one by one I have been reducing my commitments, and freeing up my time for project work and planning.

Jim Collins in Good to Great made the point that great leaders start by figuring out what Not to Do, before they decided what Needs to be Done. What markets should NOT be served? What expertise are we NOT going to employ in-house? What services are we NOT going to offer? Of course there are more things that we don’t do than we actually do, but the point is well made.

Of course what I should not do today is not the same as what I could not do today. I could leave a whole bunch of stuff until tomorrow, but what should be done today, is still better being done and not put off.

Making good choices about what not to do is the greatest time saver ever, but more importantly it frees up brain power for the stuff we really want to excel at.

Do one thing at a time

Only yesterday I was reading tips about how to make better use of standing in line at the supermarket by texting or phoning business contacts. As I read the article I felt rather ordinary. When I stand in line at the supermarket I don’t do anything much, I just queue. Yet another part of me wondered what sort of experience these business contacts might be getting from these calls or texts. I concluded it couldn’t be that good to have to share time with grocery shopping.

It seems as though doing one thing at a time is out of fashion. Harvard’s Management Tip for Today is to Prioritize Value over Volume. Research shows that multitasking produces mediocre results, however single-tasking is not recommended either. It’s too slow, argues the author, for today’s world.

I say bunkum to that, and here’s why.

1. Thinking time is valuable. The times when we appear to be “doing nothing” like queuing in the supermarket or taking a shower are often the times when our brains come up with the best ideas. Valuing downtime, rather than trying to cram it full of more “doing” things is ultimately more successful. Allow the brain to worth through problems and find good solutions in a relaxed way.


2. Most things have scope for error. Writing proposals, answering emails, figuring out systems, paying for groceries all can go wrong in small or large ways. Concentrating on the task in hand reduces the possibility of error. Doing things without error means you only do them once, which is a great deal faster than doing them twice.


3. Many things are difficult. Finding the right words to convince someone of your point of view, ensuring your communications are not misinterpreted, or ensuring the numbers add up all require focus and double-checking.

My two favourite Swiss artists, Fischli and Weiss, produced a simple list entitled “How to Work Better.” It hangs on my wall close enough to my desk so I can glance up from time to time to read it. And I do. I often glance up and I do read it. The first item on the list is “Do one thing at a time”. More often than not I don’t get past that first item because it reminds me to focus and go back to the task in hand.

Single-tasking is surely the fastest way to accomplish anything, despite what management gurus would have us believe.

Email me if you would like a copy of Fischli and Weiss’s list, then you too can have one for your office wall.

Putting the boot in: sustainability

As I stood in the shoe repair shop on Saturday I realised that my boots are not sustainable. They were not sustainable from the moment I bought them, even though I love them to bits. Their total lack of sustainability comes from them requiring heeling every three or four weeks. You would have thought after the years I have been taking them to be heeled it might have dawned on me how impractical the boots were, but it did not. I have been walking around in un-sustainable boots.

Sustainability is being able to keep something in balance for the long term. When something is out of balance, sooner or later something will happen to attempt to regain the balance: just as we have seen with inflated consumer spending, the recent financial crisis and subsequent recession. As we are increasingly recognising the importance of climate change, the fragility of our environment, and how to generate clean energy, sustainability is a word we need to take more notice of.

My boots made me think of my other practices that are not particularly sustainable: using the printer a little more often than I should, trying the replicate the British Library in my office, etc. etc. There are more, but I will spare my (and your) blushes.

I doubt that I am the only person who is recognising that sustainability and balance are more important to us than ever before. I think sustainability is an idea whose time has come, not only in taking control of the planet’s future, but in taking control of our own personal and business future.

As consumers we have drastically cut our spending and reassessed priorities. As businesses we are digging in, cutting back and working hard to survive during difficult times. As societies we have become more aware of cause and effect, and thanks to the state of the economy we are being given long enough to reflect on sustainability for lasting changes to be made.

Sustainability is not always a simple concept – there is plenty of opportunity to push problems around. But it is a concept that is worthy of a great deal more thought than we have given it in the past, whatever the economy is doing.

Eat and sleep routines

Seth Godin wrote a short blog post the other day entitled “Make A Decision.” He suggested that imperfect decisions are better than no decision at all: quite right too.

He went on to say that we should make more decisions, and that making more decisions will make more of a difference, even if the decisions turned out to be the wrong ones. It made a neat little blog post, but I’m not at all sure he is right.

I would go as far as to say that we should work to be making fewer decisions, so that the big decisions have more room to be well thought through.

There are many things in day to day work that should be done, but are not always. These could and perhaps should be made into habits, because when they go onto autopilot they get done regardless of what else is happening. They get done faster and more efficiently. So the more things you can decide in advance must be done every day, or every week, or whatever, the less thinking is required and the more gets done.

Every time I hear of someone who has “lost the entire contents of their hard disk” and that they don’t have a backup, I wonder about their daily habits. An ex-boss used to call them “eat and sleep routines”. You wouldn’t forget to sleep, she would argue, so why forget to backup your computer? There was very little wriggle room when put like that! The same principle applied to many things she considered to be part of our core work.

Decisions are needed, and many things can’t go onto autopilot, but the things that can should. Give some thought to what should be part of your eat and sleep routine, and get more done, more easily.

6 big benefits to working tidy

The world is happily divided on working tidy.

Many people are proudly disorganised. I spoke to one such contented individual the other evening. “You wouldn’t be able to find a thing in my office”, he boasted, “but I can find everything!” I had a mental image of what his desk might look like, and wasn’t entirely convinced by the argument. There was clearly no point in debating the point; maybe he is extremely creative/efficient/happy with his working style. He probably is.

After having some success in working tidier on all my projects, however, I think there are some real benefits to working tidy. Agree or disagree, here is my two-pence-worth:

1. Focus. Tidying, filing and clearing allow focus on what’s important, rather than what’s on top on top of the pile. Using email or a postal in-box as a “to do” list does not encourage active planning. Working to a plan ensures the important, as well as the urgent stuff gets done.
2. Calm. Seeing papers, emails or other clutter around constantly pulls the mind away from the task in hand. It’s like having a little voice constantly saying “isn’t this more important?” “why don’t you work on this?” “have you forgotten that?” A clear desk and empty in-box stops the voices and helps concentration.
3. Prioritise. Clutter is just a pile of stuff that hasn’t yet had decisions made about it. By taking time to file and tidy things away decisions are made: whether the decision is to bin it, act on it, deal with it later or file it for reference. The alternative is just a big pile of work waiting to be done. Sorting enables priorities to be established, planned, and acted on in a timely way.
4. Meet deadlines. What I really mean is don’t miss deadlines, because that’s what happens when things don’t go in the right place. Things get missed because they are not on the top of the pile. Not always, but it happens.
5. Make decisions in the here and now. Some decisions benefit from settling time or waiting for more information. Some decisions are just not important enough to deal with at all. But sometimes things get left in the clutter because they are too difficult or it has become default behaviour. Working tidy enables decisions to be made when the job is current, which means the work gets done faster and better.
6. Finding things. This is purposely last on the list rather than first. Although I have occasionally lost something and spent time looking for it, it doesn't happen very often. In my experience many messy people do know where things are – they have secret systems for which pile said item has been placed. So although finding things quickly is a benefit, I don’t rate it as highly as others on this subject, such as Giles Morris writing in The Guardian a few months’ ago.

I have no option but to keep my project work tidy and filed in systems that are designed to ensure important work doesn’t go astray. But not everything is project work, and for me at least being tidier with all my work is paying dividends – big time.

Are you a creative its-somewhere-over-there type who is productive and happy? Or are you obsessively tidy, and reap abundant rewards from your discipline?

Worthwhile problems

The worthwhile problems are the ones you can really solve or help solve, the ones you can really contribute something to – Richard Feynman.

We are faced with problems all the time – big ones, little ones, important ones and not-so-important ones. Some we ignore, some we get mad at, and some we don’t even recognise as problems. There are some things that we just live with – either consciously or unconsciously – because at some level we believe things “just are as they are.”

The Richard Feynman quotation is interesting – as a professional problem solver (more grandly known as a physicist) he had to choose where to direct his time and energy. There were many problems he could tackle, but perhaps only a few where he could really contribute something of value.

So it is with all of us, there are many possibilities for how to spend our time or where to direct our talents, but perhaps only a handful of areas where we can really make a worthwhile contribution.

Feynman’s quotation is really about choices – either proactive or reactive. What we choose to do with our days, weeks, months and years.

How we choose to make a contribution. Or not.

Caffeine: a difficult habit to break

I consider myself to be reasonably strong willed, but over the holiday weekend I succumbed and broke my 100 day challenge by having a cup of green tea. It seems quite comical that this is a big deal – as far as I know green tea is a perfectly legal substance all over the world.

I wanted to find out how long it takes to form a habit and at the time giving up caffeine didn’t seem a particularly onerous challenge. Appearances are clearly deceptive. It seems it is going to take longer than 35 days for this little lady to form this particular habit.

My weakness was rewarded by a sleepless night, which I readily admit may or may not have been caused by the caffeine.

Yesterday was a beautiful sunny day, and strolling through a pretty and ancient market town the little voices in my head insisted that just one cup would do no harm. In fact, the little voices in my head had been reminding me of just good tea tastes, and all that I had been missing.

Many people have asked me why I was giving up caffeine – they had pointed out all the benefits, including health benefits. I had already talked myself into the idea that I would return to drinking caffeine once the 100-day challenge was over.

Clearly I was setting myself up for a fall, which was exactly what happened.

After having watched “Sink the Bismark” last night I now know that worse things happen at sea, so there is little point brooding over spilt tea. The question now is whether to quietly abandon the challenge after having gone public over my lack of willpower, or whether to start again and commit to another 100 days?

After briefly reviewing the “caffeine is a good idea” camp this morning, I remain sceptical that caffeine is a necessary component of peak performance. Clearly there are benefits, not least of which is the instant pick-me-up for sleepy-head mornings. But I’m not sure they outweigh the racing heart-beat that goes with drinking too many cuppas. I am sure those more disciplined than me drink caffeine in more moderate amounts, but I have never been known for moderation with anything.

So, it’s back on the tea-free wagon for another 100 days. Oh, the joys of being stubborn!

Shine like a star with deadlines

Do you like deadlines? Some people love them – they rise to the occasion and shine like stars. Others just stress, panic and get nowhere.

Whether last minute pressure brings out the best or the worst in you, most of us do better work with a sensible amount of time to prepare.

Deadlines, however, are a fact of life and many of us wouldn’t get anything done if deadlines didn’t exist.

So here are six copper-bottomed tips for meeting deadlines:

1. Prioritise – all deadlines are not created equal. Plan ahead and figure out which deadlines are most important to you, your goals, and the people you work with.
2. Plan – plan your most important deadline priorities. Use the 80/20 rule – what is the 20% of work that will produce 80% of the benefit? Take the stress out of deadlines by doing the most important bits first.
3. Schedule – create time slots to do key pieces of work well ahead of your deadline. Create mini-deadlines to get ahead.
4. Expect the unexpected – for important deadlines allow enough time for the unexpected. The unexpected is a misnomer – we know something will go wrong or delay things – we just don’t know what it will be.
5. Polish – reread your report for grammar, spelling and typos. Check figures, iron out the bugs, and rehearse for important presentations. Polishing is important – it enables a good job to shine and look like the great job it really is.
6. False deadlines – you can’t do this too often, but consider false deadlines ahead of the real one if a number of people's work needs to come together. We all know people who have to be invited to dinner an hour early just so they might be on time – use the same trick in your work if hitting headlines isn’t someone's strong suit.

Deadlines can be fun. They can produce creative and fabulous work. Deadlines can provide a welcome change of pace as you drop everything to focus on that One Important Thing.

Life can’t be lived to deadline all the time, but when you are in the eye of the storm its best to have planned to be a shining star and not a headless chicken.

The Feynman Index

Someone asked me an interesting question about measurement:

“If what gets measured gets done, are we measuring the right things? What would happen if we started to measure different things?”

What indeed?

It nicely encapsulates the problem of measurement. For any given objective we can identify things to measure – many of which either have, or appear to have, a bearing on the problem. Sometime they move us closer to our objective, but sometimes not quickly enough.

Those averse to measurement love this, because they take any weaknesses as a reason not to measure. But that’s missing the point. Any valid measurement is better than no measurement, even if it’s imperfect. Why? Because without a measure you are left with subjective views. Subjective views will be different each time you look, and provide no clear benchmark for whether things are improving or not.

But the original question was interesting – what if we started to measure different things? What if we measured things that appear a little crazy?

I have been quite inspired by reading Richard Feynman: a brilliant chap who was constantly curious. What a marvellous quality – to be constantly curious. Most of us work hard at being blasé about how much we know – experts at this, experienced at that. Few of us want to expose how little we know. Yet here was an acknowledged genius who was quite prepared to admit what he didn’t know – and was always curious to find out more.

One of his life’s ambitions was to visit Tuva – a Russian republic in Siberia. As far as I can make out he had no better reason than that it sounded like a place that didn’t exist, was in an obscure location and therefore had a huge allure for him.

Here was a dedicated and brilliant physicist who devoted a great deal of his life to physics research and teaching. Yet he also had a number of seemingly unrelated obsessions. Did his obsession with Tuva teach him anything about physics? Did his love of playing the bongos help him to relate to his students better? I suggest they did.

Feynman, as a physicist, understood the importance of measurement. In physics measurement makes the difference between something being properly understood or not. As Feynman points out, something can appear to be correct when in fact it is not. It is the accuracy of measurement that exposes the error.

So The Feynman Index takes a sidelong, mischievous swipe at the problem/objective and asks “What Might I Measure Here?” What curve ball or seemingly off-centre measurement might teach me something I don’t already know? It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t work – replace it with something that works better.

Sometimes the “Feynman Index” type measurements tells us more about the central problem than we might possibly guess from the outset… In addition, not instead of, the mainstream measurements.

4 Immediate Benefits of giving up Caffeine

I’m beginning to sound like Alice in Wonderland – amazed at every white rabbit that jumps out at me. I’ve given up caffeine for long periods of time before, but am still pleasantly surprised at the benefits. 14 days ago I resolved to give up caffeinated drinks for 100 days, and after 14 days it’s going well.

I was hoping for fewer headaches, and a more even temperament (caffeine can put me on edge after I’ve drunk too much). But I’ve found a whole number of unexpected benefits:

1. More energy. This was a total surprise – I thought I would have less, but removing caffeine seems to have improved my energy levels.
2. Less inclined to have a glass of wine. Caffeine tends to wind me up, so the desire for a glass of wine is stronger the more tea I drink. Remove the caffeine and I seem to be very happy without the wine.
3. More moderate eating. I haven’t looked up whether this is well known or not but I’m certainly finding that I’m eating more healthy foods since I cut out caffeine.
4. More inclined to exercise. The running shoes were dusted off and actually used this week. It’s hard to know whether this is the results of removing caffeine from my diet or not, but it certainly felt good.

It is certainly an easy change to make to my diet – there are no social pressures to drink caffeine and no cravings. I feel like I have already formed the habit, although I suspect that unless I have some pressure to keep going for 100 days I might slip back again with the occasional cuppa which would turn back into my normal 46-a-day habit.

The original motivation was to test out how long it takes to form a habit, rather than giving up caffeine. It hasn’t exactly been a tough challenge, but it has been one with much greater benefits than I had anticipated.

Work the problem

Anyone who has not been in a coma this last week will know it is the 40th Anniversary of Armstrong and Aldrin landing on the moon. Whatever your views on the space programme it is hard not to be impressed by the scientific and engineering achievements this milestone represented.

As footage of the space missions is played over and over again (at least in my house) one phrase is heard repeatedly:

“Work the problem, guys.” “Work the problem.”

I can find no evidence that the words “work the problem” were uttered with the regularity that the film footage suggests, but I can imagine something similar might have been said.

As tempers and personalities flare and flash it is tempting to get defocused with who did what and why, instead of what needs to be done. NASA couldn’t afford to defocus; this was a critical time for them. They knew the eyes of the world were upon them, and that they were working with difficult and untried technology. They also knew that mistakes could mean the loss of life of their colleagues. I can’t imagine anything with more pressure.

So those 3 simple words encapsulate quite a lot:

• Stay focused on the issue
• Don’t let irrelevant details take attention away from what needs to be done
• Keep focused until the problem is solved

Having a process to solve problems can save time and tantrums, and improve the final outcome:

• Identify and define the problem
• Determine possible causes
• Agree the cause of the problem
• Evaluate possible solutions and select one
• Implement the solution
• Check that the problem has been solved

Not all our problems are rocket science, but that doesn’t make them any less important in achieving our goals.

The benefits of not working at weekends

Someone posed a question on Twitter last week – should we work at weekends? I’m guessing the question was directed to people like me who have a computer based job with enough freedom to decide when, where and how work gets done. Not those who work set hours determined by someone else.

I have become quite a fan of Twitter. It has taken a little time for me to get used to it: at first I thought it was just silly. But little by little I have grown to find it quite useful.

So – what an interesting question – should we work at weekends? He followed up by saying it was very tempting - which indeed it is.

Going back a few years I always worked at weekends, and certainly during the time I did my MBA I had no choice – weekends were quiet time to get essays written and books read.

These days I find it difficult to switch off completely on Saturday and Sunday (although I do get the hang of it more by Sunday). My mind is still buzzing with ideas and thoughts on whatever project I am working on. The big difference, however, is that I don’t have to get to my desk by a set time, and I don’t feel compelled to start doing things. I can just let my mind turn the thoughts over and play with ideas. I often write them down in my notebook to come back to later. Not really work, but a change of pace and style. It’s often a time when I re-evaluate the direction I’m going with something, or question whether my approach is right.

It’s pretty similar to the phenomenon that most of us are familiar with – having an idea in the bath or while we are driving or going for a walk. The brain is still working away long after we think we have moved onto something else. That’s why the advice to sleep on a problem is normally wise counsel. A bit of time and space, and a chance for the cogs to turn slowly on an issue mostly produce a better answer than trying to solve it there and then.

So with the exception of the urgent report, or necessary emails from the week before, I come down on the side of not working at weekends. Letting the mind have a chance to rearrange and reorder seems like useful enough work for the two days sandwiched between frenetic weekday activity.

Performance, mood and tiredness

There appears to be little evidence that a good mood positively affects performance. If that were not enough, research suggests that a bad mood can produce better performance. Watcha know?

Not only that, but researchers think that performance and mood are not adversely affected by a gradual reduction in sleep. In an experiment, sleep was reduced over a 6 – 8 month period, to about 5 hours per night, with no measurable behavioural effects. Whatever you do, please do not mention this to anyone who knows me – having the alarm go off at 6am is quite bad enough!

I can’t tell you what bad news this is to a chronically-positive-sleep-loving person like me. But isn’t it interesting? It appears to fly in the face of what I (mostly) experience for myself. When I’m in a great mood, I get loads done, and when I am very tired, I’m both unhappy and unproductive.

However, I wouldn’t be telling the truth if I didn’t admit to those times when I’ve been in a bad mood, but still been productive. Or had a dreadful night’s sleep but still got loads done. When I am under pressure I can still do good work even though I feel dreadful. And, dare I say it, there are times when I am in a good mood, have had loads of sleep, but somehow fail to set the world on fire.

So I draw some rather depressing conclusions. Whilst I would prefer to be well rested and happy, neither appears to be particularly necessary to high performance: until I can find some contradictory evidence, of course.

Any discussion about sleep, mood and performance would not be complete without mentioning chemical helpers. After years of being a caffeine-free zone I am back to drinking green tea by the swimming pool. I don’t drink coffee, but green tea has more than enough caffeine. And, yes, I think it helps to stay alert and improve concentration. It won’t be news to many of you that researchers have found Red Bull to be positively correlated with better concentration and performance. I’ve never tried the stuff myself, having scared everyone witless with my experiments with energy-boosting Guarana powder. Caffeine and Guarana certainly have the disadvantage that they can disrupt sleep, causing more, rather than less, tiredness. I imagine Red Bull would do the same.

So I guess any attempt to gradually reduce sleep would need to done without alcohol, caffeine, Red Bull or Guarana. But would it result in better or worse performance? I’ve got a particularly busy time coming up – I wonder whether now is a good time to give it a go?