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Being Smarter by Not Thinking

Thereā€™s a popular
myth that says we only use 10% of our brains
.

Itā€™s simply not true. Studies (including the source of all scientific truth: an episode of
MythBusters) have proven that all areas of the brain have a function, and while
the percentage that weā€™re ā€œusingā€ at any given time varies by task it can
certainly exceed 10%.

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One thing that seems very obvious to me without needing to
cite a study about it, however, is that I certainly have unused brain capacity,
and it can do amazing things when you leave it to its own devices.

As an example of what Iā€™m talking about, I refer you to a
link I posted on this very blog some time ago: Why
Great Ideas Always Come in the Shower (and How to Harness Them)
.

In the brief commentary I added, I mentioned that never in
my life have I had a good idea in a meeting. Great ideas come to me while Iā€™m
doing other things. Specifically, other things that do not take much in the way
of thought and offer little in the way of distraction: things where my brain
gets left to itā€™s own devices and has an opportunity to wander ā€“ showering,
certainly, but also commuting, trying to get to sleep at the very end of the
day (infuriatingly), and when Iā€™m at the gym.

Talking of the latter one, I havenā€™t been to the gym for
quite some time.

When we lived in our apartment there was a gym in the
building, and that was great. I could easily fit in a solid 45 minutes there at
lunch. Any spare 30 minute window in my schedule could be turned into 20
minutes on the stationary bike.

I want to go back, but now that weā€™ve bought the house there
is obviously not an on-site gym. Thereā€™s a gym at the office (20 minutes away)
and a Goodlife Fitness close by (10 minutes away) where Iā€™d get a discounted
rate, but small though it is even that travel time is putting me off. I will
most likely join Goodlife, since I rarely go to the office these days and
installing a home gym just isnā€™t in the budget right now, but Iā€™ve been missing
the ability to easily take 30 minutes and get some exercise, and Iā€™m sad that
none of the solutions will offer me that. In the absence of a perfect solution,
I havenā€™t done anything at allā€¦ until yesterday.

Since the weather here in Calgary is distinctly spring-like
these days, I went for a walk before I started my work day. I didnā€™t go far ā€“ a
little less than 2km, according to the Google Fit data from my phone and watch
ā€“ just down the road a bit and then back along the pathways that run through
our neighbourhood.

I liked it so much I did it again at lunch time, and then
for a third time this morning.

The physical benefits of this, though Iā€™m sure not huge by any
means, are probably much needed at this point. Really though what I like about
it so much are the mental benefits. Iā€™ve never been much of a morning person
and I would never consider going to the gym before work, but rolling out of bed
and attempting to be productive more or less immediately is not a recipe for
success either. Feeling like my day has already started by the time I sit down
to get some work done definitely gives me a mental boost that Iā€™ve been able to
capitalize on. More significantly though, thereā€™s a lot to be said for the kind
of problem solving that can only come from not thinking about something too
much and letting my subconscious guide me in ways that Iā€™d never have come up
with if I were sitting at my desk consciously trying to focus on something.

Itā€™s amazing what you can do when youā€™re not trying to do
anything.

Blog

How to Recover From an Unproductive Day Like It Never Happened

There was one day last week where I accomplished more in the last hour of my day than I did in the previous 6ish. This happens to everyone from time to time: despite our best intentions, there are all sorts of things that can cause a workday to go sideways on us.

We all have unproductive days. Maybe an unexpected event throws your schedule for a loop. Maybe youā€™re not feeling well. Whatever the reason, it can be tough to get back on track. Hereā€™s how to get past the dip in productivity and back into gear.

For me, key to recovering when a day turns unproductive is to find a way to reset and tackle the remainder of the day with a renewed focus. I spend 15 or 20 minutes at the start of every day composing a to-do list and defining my action plan for the day, and when I find myself unable to execute on that plan for whatever reason I repeat that exercise and re-define my action plan based on my new reality. I also find it helps a lot to have a change of scenery: if Iā€™m in the office and my day isnā€™t going the way I wanted it to then Iā€™ll go home and work the rest of the day from there. If Iā€™m already home then I might head to my favourite coffee place and spend an hour or two working in that environment.

I also find that as part of redefining my to-do list itā€™s important to be fully inclusive. My day consists of both big and small tasks, and itā€™s tempting when putting a list together to omit the small ones and just do them immediately, but of course this only leaves the big tasks where Iā€™m more reliant on others and unforeseen things are more likely to occur. When things donā€™t go to plan itā€™s entirely possible to end up with a to-do list that has nothing checked off at the end of the day, and itā€™s important to me not to finish my day that way ā€“ Iā€™d much rather spend my evening relaxing with at least a small sense of accomplishment than worrying about a perceived lack of achievement. If Iā€™m only able to achieve smaller things that day then so be it, but thatā€™s better than nothing and cause for correspondingly small celebration, but celebration nonetheless.

If youā€™re not able to recover your productivity within the working day? Well, that happens to the best of us and isnā€™t cause for panic. The article Iā€™ve linked to above has some tips and tricks to help us get back on the metaphorical horse the following day.

How to Recover From an Unproductive Day Like It Never Happened

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Block Out ā€œUnscheduled Timeā€ In Your Day for Proactive Tasks

I don’t know how I feel about this article. I think it goes against much of what’s represented by ROWE, and just generally feels a little infantile – my calendar is my own to manage, and if I’m not able to come to your meeting then I’ll have to decline your request or suggest an alternative time.

That said, I do find myself doing this more and more often. There’s an assumption that if outlook shows me as having some time available then that time is up for grabs for whomever gets to it first.

I work hard to keep my calendar pretty flexible, but I certainly find that the weeks where it fills up are the weeks where I accomplish the least, and instead I find myself in meetings talking about what I’m going to do the following week, or the week after that. I don’t have the capacity to do something productive any sooner than that because I have other meetings to go to in which I’ll also talk about why it’s going to be several weeks until I can do some actual work.

Part of the problem is that I don’t think I perform especially well in “meetings.” I’ve never had a great idea in a meeting – those always come to me when I’m driving home afterwards, or when I’m in the shower, or another time when my mind is free to wander.

Nevertheless, I don’t think blocking off chunks of time in my calendar is the solution. That would just make it more difficult for me to get time with people when I need their input, and for people to get time with me when they need mine.

So what is the solution? Is the system broken here, or am I doing something wrong? Let me know your thoughts!

Block Out ā€œUnscheduled Timeā€ In Your Day for Proactive Tasks

Blog

Mind Mapping as a GTD Tool

I’ve posted a lot recently about myĀ SharePointĀ development work.

Itā€™s a topic I know quite a bit about (if I do say so myself), but this is not a SharePoint blog and I have no intentions of making it one – itā€™s simply that I blog mostly about my work, of the nine projects and tasks I have on my plate currently five of them have at least some kind of custom SharePoint component to them, and two are full-blown web-apps built on top of SharePoint.

With so much going on how, I hear you ask, do I stay organized and keep on top of things?

(Full disclosure: nobody asked. Iā€™m going to tell you all anyway)

image

Mind mapping!

I’ve been aware of mind mapping for quite some time, and about a year ago I readĀ a lifehacker articleĀ comparing mind mapping tools. I was interested but I didnā€™t have a good use-case for them at the time, andĀ I’m not a fan of technology just for technologyā€™s sake.

Whatā€™s changed in the past year is the nature of my work. A year ago a was adhering fairly closely to the title of Business Analyst that youā€™ll see on my business cards – I was involved in a relatively small number of projects at a time, but I was usually only responsible for delivering on a subset of the overall scope.

As my role has evolved, I find myself putting on my project manager shoes much more frequently. I have a larger number of projects, and while I’m ultimately accountable for delivery on all aspects of them, I canā€™t possibly make myself responsible for every detail or Iā€™d drown in minutiae.

So a few weeks ago I downloadedĀ XMind, asĀ recommended by lifehacker readers, and I fell in love with it almost immediately.

At the centre of my map is a node called ā€œTo Do,ā€ but thatā€™s probably a bit inaccurate and it speaks to how I thought Iā€™d be using the tool rather than how I actually ended up doing things. Off that I hang projects, initiatives, and tasks, and branching out from those are multiple things.

There are to-do items for myself, often broken down into sub-tasks inĀ a WBS kind of way, questions that need answers, and tasks where I’m waiting on other people. XMind has markers (different types of symbol you can attach to a branch) and I use these to differentiate the types of sub-item I use. I track completion of my own to-do items on an eight point scale, I assign priorities to things, I add notes, and I call drill-down into a view of a single branch in the tree if thatā€™s what I happen to be focussing my attention on at the time.

Thatā€™s all kind of irrelevant, though. The end result is representative of a map of my mind and how I work, and your mind and approach to your work are probably not the same. The point is that the tool is flexible enough to work for you, however you choose to use it.

Regardless, mind mapping helps me keep track of the many things I have going on in a very easy to understand (for me) way. I now have XMind open on my computer more or less all day long, and itā€™s quickly become my go-to productivity tool.