Starting and stopping a project is suicide. Ideally we could dive in to a project for 50 hours and just get the thing done. Unfortunately, our bodies aren’t made for that kind of thing. Unless you’re a cyborg, you’re limited by:

• focus
• sleep
• limbs getting tired or restless
• and did I say focus?

In college I’d occasionally stay up all night to write a paper I’d procrastinated on. The results were never, ever good. These nocturnal writing sessions produced the same quality of writing as a monkey plunking on the keyboard. And my grades confirmed my suspicions.

Yet there is one aspect of just plowing through a project that I do find helpful: you don’t have to keep figuring out where you left off. For example: I’m in the middle of a very big project. Unfortunately, when I try to pick up where I stopped working the previous day, I have a hard time getting back into the proper frame of mind. I can spend up to 30 minutes reverse engineering what it was exactly that I was working on the day before.

Gaps in our work are hard to come back from. Especially if you’re doing something that requires intense creativity. You have to get back into the mindset of the project. You have to wrap your head around the entire concept, to really be able to continue where you left the project at.

I’ve found that the only way to really wrap my head around something is to force myself back into the “zone”, so to speak. If it’s writing, I’ll re-read everything I’ve written, so as to recapture that mindset. If it’s programming, then I’ll have to go look at SVN commits, or just start digging around the code. Anything to get my mind back into the frame of the task at hand.

Once I finally wrap my head around the project, it’s not hard to get back into gear. It’s the process of climbing back up to the previous ledge and pushing forward that is a tad difficult.

There are plenty of techniques to help you remember where you left off in a project. Here are a couple that I use that never fail me:

• If I know I’m going to be revisiting the project quickly, I leave open all tools, documents, etc., so it’s like a visual snapshot
• I take detailed notes as to what I was thinking, feeling and doing when I stopped working

These techniques are simple, but they take a while to get used to. If you can become more mindful of what you’re working on, odds are you’ll get into the flow easier and quicker.

What do you guys use to get back into the continuity of the project?

Photo by coral11.

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Post written by Albert van Zyl from the blog HeadSpace.

The lives of great people give us interesting clues about how to organise our days.

All of them attached great value to their daily routines. This is because they saw it as being part of ‘becoming who they are’, as Nietzsche puts it.

For the same reason they were also highly individual in their routines. They had the courage to go against popular opinion and work out often strange daily plans that suited them.

This is perhaps the first lesson that we can learn – that it takes courage and resolve to design and stick to a routine that suits you. But as Emerson reassures us: ‘The world makes way for the man who knows where he is going’.

There are at least 10 other lessons that the daily routines of the great can teach us:

1. Don’t work long hours

Despite the modern obsession with physical presence at offices (also known as ‘presenteeism’), very few of the great worked long hours.

Philosopher Michel Foucault would only work from 9am to 3pm. Beethoven only worked from sunrise until the early afternoon. No 12 hour days here. Author Tom Robbins schedules only 3 hours of writing at his desk per day.

2. Take breaks

Even during these short days, the great took plenty of breaks.

Socrates would sometimes simply stop and hold completely still for several minutes. Beethoven was known to punctuate his mornings by running outside and walking around – he called it ‘working while walking’.

3. Take even longer breaks

The great all spent a single long period away from their desks every day to give their minds time to recover and regain its creative poise.

Beethoven started work at daybreak, but wrapped up by two or three in the afternoon which left him a good 14 hours away from work. Victor Hugo wrote in the mornings and took afternoons off entirely. Churchill would do nothing work-related between noon and around 11 at night.

4. Stop work and sit down for meals

Churchill would even have a bath and dress for meals. For us mere mortals, this injunction could simply mean sitting down with your sandwich away from you desk, on a bench in the park or somewhere else. Or resolving to chew and taste your food properly.

5. Don’t work in the afternoons

There are some exceptions, but very few of our heroes did any serious work in the afternoon.

After writing in the morning, Victor Hugo spent his afternoons riding around Paris in double decker busses, watching his brethren about their work. For us this might mean blocking off afternoons for long tea breaks and non-essential tasks.

6. Mix it up

The days of the great contain a surprising variety of activities. It seems that we don’t have to focus on a small range of things to succeed.
Even the grim German philosopher, Immanuel Kant went for afternoon walks and sat down for lunch with friends each day. Gandhi walked, spun, had a long bath and massage.

Churchill painted, fed his fish, played card games and constructed buildings all over Chartwell farm. He famously claimed that our minds don’t need rest as much as they need variety.

7. Aim low

Don’t schedule every minute of your day. Leo at Zenhabits suggests that we have morning and evening routines, and leave the middle of the day open for completing key tasks and other things that come up.

Daily routines are supposed to make things easier, not more complicated. Micro managing every minute of your day does not work.

8. Take time to relax

The great all reserved time to relax. And this doesn’t mean engaging in some semi-productive activity like reading a book or washing the dishes. No, they blocked out time to do nothing at all.

Gandhi would often spend time just staring at the horizon. Churchill would sit down to smoke a cigar after lunch and Beethoven would stop off for a few beers after his afternoon walk. In his recent autobiography, Alan Greenspan mentions that he too makes time to reflect each day.

9. Get up early(?)

This one is the subject of hot debate. Samuel Johnson, Churchill and Dylan Thomas got up late. Gandhi, Franklin and Mandela all got up early.

But whether they were early birds or night owls, the great all make sure that they had long periods of uninterrupted quiet time; whether late at night or early in the morning.

10. Exercise!

Al Gore interrupts his work day at 3pm to go for a run. Emerson, Beethoven, Nietzsche, Victor Hugo and Gandhi all went for walks. Nietzsche said that he ‘scribbled’ notes while he took his walk and claims that some of his best thoughts came in this way.

Mandela’s 5 am walks are legendary. The story goes that he once invited a persistent journalist to interview him during this morning walk – but she ended up being too out of breath to ask any questions.

Albert’s blog provides weird, insightful and funny bits that allow you to protect and enhance your Headspace. Check it out or subscribe to his feed.

Mandela image credit: rchoephoto
Beethoven photo credit: TaranRampersad
Churchill photo credit: monkeyc.net
Ghandi photo credit: nilexuk
Greenspan photo credit: trackrecord

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Mother Jones has a pretty interesting list of facts concerning Americans and organization.  There are many little gems, like

Men who own Palm Pilots are 4 times more likely to forget their wives’ birthdays than men who don’t.

Where do they come up with this stuff?  Regardless, if you read the entire list, you’ll start to notice some patterns with the information. Many of the facts contradict themselves with regards to the way Americans perceive happiness and organization.  Here’s a few dandies to think about this Sunday.

• Since the 1970s, the average U.S. home has grown by 80%. Yet Americans face a “storage crisis,” according to ucla researchers.
•  Last year, Americans spent $7 billion on organizational products for their homes, closets, and garages.
• 80% of Americans believe they would be more satisfied if they were neater.
• 48% of office managers admit to a messy desk but claim to know where everything is. 12% have a neat desk but no idea where to find anything.
• 4 in 5 new homes have multicar garages. Most two-car garages have one or no car in them.
• 75% of L.A. garages are used in ways that preclude any parking.
• More than 70% of Americans are routinely unable to find matching lids for their 15-plus food-storage containers.

Check out the rest of the list for more interesting tidbits about the crazy way Americans deal with… stuff.

Hat tip: Unclutterer

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New moleskine products from Behance.

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Note: Behance is a sponsor of LifeDev. But rest assured we wouldn’t have written this if we didn’t mean every word. Every word.

Behance is a productivity outfitter of sorts. As per their slogan “making ideas happen”, they’ve interestingly focused their products for creative types. This is a smart move. Creativity is a very important thing to foster, especially in a business setting.

If you happen to be (or know) a very creative person, you probably know firsthand how good at coming up with interesting ideas or solutions they (we) tend to be. And you probably also know how terrible they are at implementing them. Enter Behance. They’ve created productivity tools that are creativity friendly.

I’ve been checkin’ out the Behance Action Series as of late, and I love it. But maybe I’m biased. I loved it as soon as I saw the packaging. The good people at Behance have really taken the time in every aspect of their products. Even their packaging has little mathematical formulas for creativity wrapped along the bottom.

Productive Creativity = Creativity + Organization + Perspiration + Collaboration + ….(tons more variables all the way around the packaging) = Make Ideas Happen

The Action Pad

The grandaddy of the Action Series, Behance Action Pads are like structured playgrounds for the mind. Instead of just the daunting solid white of a plain ‘ol notebook page, the Behance team has managed to create a delicate balance between structure and freedom. That’s a hard thing to do.

On the right sidebar, they’ve created space for action steps (like Next Actions in GTD). On the bottom of that sidebar there is a space for your “Backburner” items, or things to worry about later. On the top left side of the page, there’s plenty of room to describe what the page is about and other reference notes, along with a “Prep/Focus” box for refreshing your mind as to what the page means when you’re looking at it later.

(I really like the Prep/focus area of the page, mainly because it’s sometimes hard to remember what scribbles on a page mean without any context stuck to it. Kudos for creating a solution for that need! )

And wrapping out the Action Pad feature set is roughly 2/3 of nearly-white space on each page. Instead of having lines for this area for order (who needs that anyway?), the Action Series uses a dot grid to allow for more freedom than strict ‘ol lines. And they’ve dedicated the entire back side of the page to the dot grid, for maximum brainstormage. Another smart move.

The Action Pad Mini and Action Cards

If you don’t need a whole sheet of creativity, but rather just something to write down what to do next, check out the Action Pad Mini.

The Action Pad Mini has everything that the larger Action Pad has, just less of it.

If you’re looking for an even smaller place to fit just next actions and a place to write/draw, the Action Cards may be a better fit. Very hipster PDA-ish.

One thing I like about both of these smaller products is that the back is totally dedicated to sketches, text, or whatever else you can think of.

Overall Conclusions

I like how all of the Action Series has enough color to be distinctive and noticeable, but not so much that it bogs down the creative juices with distractions. Also, the paper is of pretty high quality, and each order comes with a kickin’ sticker. How cool is that?

If there was anything I’d change, it would be area allotted to each Action Step. It’s a tad too much for me, but I tend to write small. I’m sure that size is perfect (and even too small) for others. Also, it would be nice to see a binder of sorts to house everything in. Just a thought ;)

Behance has done a great job of utilizing the space for their products. Nothing is wasted, so you can squeeze every last bit of creative goodness on to the paper. The product itself is truly productive, even before we get our hands on it.

While the Action Series isn’t cheap, it’s worth every penny. Part of the battle of staying organized and focused in our crazy, always-connected-world is having tools that are comfortable, grab your attention, and gently prod you into getting things done and stop being a slacker. Anything that can invoke change like that is worth every cent.

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Creating My ToDo List Through Jott And Gmail

“1. If you don’t have an account with Gmail, you must set one up by going here.
2. Once you have logged into your Gmail account, go to the “Labels” box on the sidebar and click on “Edit labels”.
3. In the entry box marked “Create a new label”, type in the name of your label that you will store all of your to do’s and hit enter. (Mine is called “*TODO” – the asterisk keeps the label at the top of the list of labels in the sidebar).”
(read the rest …)

37 Signals Take on why internet is bad in airplanes [caution: stong language]

“Ironically, SAS killed the internet access on their transatlantic flights this January because nobody was using it. (Well, except for me saying “look, I’m online at 30,000 feet!!” in a chat room). And I think that’s a good indicator for offline web applications. The idea is cool, but the reality is that it just doesn’t matter. You don’t need access to all your stuff all the time. We’re already overloaded with connectivity. Cherish the few remaining strongholds for offlineliness!”

Clearing Your Inbox with Minimal Pain 

“My complete system involves a physical inbox and simple file structure, 30 Boxes for my calendar and contextually tagged to do lists, and trusty Apple Mail. Of course, any combination of web or desktop apps will suffice.” g

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As I David Seah wrestle with his productivity, I can’t help but empathize with him.

I’ve thought that if I could just find the **magical combination of workflow tools **, I could get more into a habit of being productive and be relaxed and happy. I know I tend toward impulsive behavior, so creating systems that encourage more paced activity (such as the time boxes in the Emergent Task Planner) have been on my mind lately. However, the realization that I tend toward **impulsive creativity** and that my sense of accomplishment has come from merely capturing the output has given me pause.

There’s something  very important that us “productites” (aka people obsessed with productivity methods, ironically leading to less production) seem to forget: Productivity isn’t a tool. It’s a skillset developed over time.  Like David said, it’s definitely more than just capturing what you have to do.

It’s actually doing it.

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Van’s got a simple and cheap way to keep your desk clean for under $35. Don’t believe me? Well 2,000 rabid Diggers can’t be wrong.

That’s the best part about being a geek: you can always find a cheaper, more efficient way of doing something, instead of paying for the packaged version at Office Depot. And it excites you.

[Great find Rico!]

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Since we’ve launched the Big List of Online Productivity Tools, I thought it would be good to show examples of a more physical type of GTD. That’s right boys and girls, we’re travelling back in time to a place where people still use paper, pens, sticky notes and actual wall calendars. This is organization at it’s most primative period.

Yet for me, it still works. Quite well actually. I’ve got stickies (not stikkits) hanging around the office. For as much as we care about online productivity, there’s still something to be said for the feeling of satisfaction when physically crossing something out with ink. Or the physical crumpling of a sticky note.

Here’s a couple cool implementation of old skool organization (courtesy of Lifehacker).

Sticky note todo list

Jon Symons has a cool sticky note system that is just as flexible as any online todo application.

Monster magnetic whiteboard calendar

No more wimpy, unobtrusive calendars that wait patiently for you to look at it on your terms. This gi-normous calendar commands attention from every spot in the room.

If you’ve got $160 laying around the cushions of your couch, pick up one of these beasties. Seriously though… don’t you think there could be homemade version for much less?

Conclusions

So there you have it. We don’t have to use online applications to get our stuff organized. Sometimes the physical act of crumpling and tossing a sticky note away trumps the nonchalent mouse click used to check an item off of a digital list. Keep that in mind while trying to find the Holy Grail of productivity tools…

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Looks like the online productivity app Remember the Milk has just added a dashboard widget for OS X.  This handy widget shows your tasks, either from a specific list or all of your lists.

I’ve tried out RTM before, and really liked it. They’ve got a great feature set and is one of my favorite online planner apps.

Regardles, I  ended up going with 30Boxes because of their killer calendar.  I like to have everything in one place when it comes to to-do lists and time management.  But,  to each his own.

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