Getting the most out of your life.
Just get into bed.
Stop doing what you’re doing. even if you don’t feel tired, get into bed early.
Tomorrow will be better for it.
Today will be better for it.
Now will be better for it.
Even if you read for a bit, chances are you’ll go to bed earlier.
Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent.
Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.
Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.
Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
I’ll admit, I fail at this a lot. But each time I come back to this lesson, I’m reminded how powerful it is.
Don’t do ten things at once.
Work on one thing at a time. Or two. But never more than two.
In a well-known graph about productivity and multi-tasking (from a 1990’s Harvard Study by Steven C.Wheelwright and Kim B.Clark), two researchers showed the benefits of multitasking – but only in situations where the subject worked on two things at once. Any more than two, and productivity declined. A lot.
In an NPR story about multitasking and performance (it’s a little over a year old, but still relevant) – they discuss the impairment associated with multitasking, revealing that people who multitask actually do far worse on performance than people who eliminate distractions and focus their attention on one or two things.
What spaces are conducive to good work? Do you work from home, in an office, in an open studio, in a coffee shop?
Where do you get your work done?
Look around the space you’re in, right now. What does it help you do? What behaviors are you engaging in? What is the most distracting thing about your workspace? Is it the people around you, the colors, the internet connectivity, your own brain? Write down what distracts you from doing your work. Then write down a way to remove those distractions.
Choose the environment that is best suited for the behaviors you want to encourage. For me, that’s the library. I pack up my books, take the effort to load up the backpack and walk down the corridor, and I sequester myself in the quiet, well-lit space because that’s where I get my work done.
Eliminate the distractions. When I need to write, I turn off the internet. When I’m at work and I need to focus, I take myself out of the flow of people-traffic in my office for a few hours, dedicating time to what I want to do.
Set up systems that work. Turn off the distractions. Be pro-active about your work efforts. Reduce clutter. Clean off the desk. Work on one thing at a time.
If Seth Godin tells you to read something, you better freaking read it.
I’m on a plane back from LA, enjoying the peace and quiet of a non-wireless flight with no distractions. I’m re-reading the book REWORK, on my to-read list for 2011, and highlighting the best parts.
I’m trying desperately to ignore the sumptuous McDonald’s bag being consumed next to me (tiny little airplane seats!), or the blare of the noise from the headphones from all the people around me blankly watching movies.
When did I get so old to think that reading, writing, thinking, and moving were such wonderful inventions?
I suppose we do live in a world of zombies.
I digress. I’m on a plane. I’m scratching this out, pen-and-paper style, on my ever-present notebook.
It’s refreshing. For everyone who thought that the ways we work are inefficient, who has questioned the value of meetings or debated the validity of staying late simply for staying late, REWORK tells the story of other, better ways to make fantastic things happen.
Written in an engaging, quick, and grabbing way (no chapter is longer than a handful of pages; each idea is accompanied by a great illustrative), REWORK can be skimmed, it can be pulled apart, and you can read it starting from any place in the book. You’ll want to read the whole thing, but it won’t take long.
Great.
Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson’s mission statement is simple:
“We’re an intentionally small company that makes software to help small companies and groups get things done the easy way.”
I have a confession to make. I LOVE their products. I’m a fan of basecamp (use it to freelance as a project management software and I’ve recently integrated it into daily use in my career job) and the other platforms – backpack, an internet knowledge-sharing tool, and Campfire, a business chat tool. Best part? They are open-source (just like wordpress, the platform I use to run this blog) – in their invention of the computer programming framework Ruby on Rails.
Alright, I’ll stop geeking out on you (but I LOVE geeking out. I like knowing how things work. … and am always uber-impressed by the people who make the magic of the internet happen: you are ALL my HEROES.)
1. “The truth is, you need less than you think.” If you’re waiting for the right set-up, more money, or more time, then you’re making excuses. You can probably make it happen with what you have right now. RIGHT NOW. (If you can’t figure out what you need to get started or what’s holding you back, you’ll have a hard time making it)
2. “Less is a good thing.” Embrace constraints. People make excuses all the time – their response is simple: “constraints are advantages in disguise. It forces you to be creative.”
3. “You’re better off ignoring the competition.” Just make a good product. Worry less about comparing yourselves to others or spending too much time running analyses. Just make a good product.
4. “You don’t need to be a workaholic.” Workaholism is stupid. Work less, do more. “Workaholics aren’t heroes. They don’t save the day, they just use it up. The real hero is already home because she figured out a faster way to get things done.” CHEERS to that!
5. “All you need is an idea, a touch of confidence, and a push to get started.” Instead of calling them entrepreneurs, REWORK calls people who put ideas to action “STARTERS.” There are thousands of people making profits and doing what they love, on their own terms, and getting paid for it. They created businesses. All it took was just getting started. (I love this idea – absolutely love it – eee! more on that coming soon!)
6. “What you really need to do is stop talking and start doing.”
7. “Make a dent in the universe.” “Great work comes from making a difference, and feeling as though you are making people’s lives better. When you find what you’re meant to do with your life, you do it.”
“You should feel an urgency about this,” they write. “You don’t have forever. This is your life’s work.”
8. “Ideas are plentiful and cheap.” Having an idea means nothing. Ít’s what you do that matters, not what you think or plan. MAKE SOMETHING. Just start creating.
9. “Have a point of view.” You can’t possibly agree with everyone. That makes you boring – and uninteresting. Have a point of view. Be particular about how you think things should work.
10. “Cut your ambition in half.” This seems counterintuitive at first. But the point is true: “You’re better off with a kick-ass half than a half-assed whole.” Lots of things get better as they get shorter. That’s why the book was cut in half. Cut out the stuff that’s merely good.
“You probably have stuff you COULD do, stuff you WANT to do, and stuff you HAVE to do. Start with what you HAVE to do.”
The world needs curators and editors.
11. Get real. “Test a prototype right away. Do it. Don’t make a proposal out of it, don’t sell an idea, don’t write a memo. Do the thing you’re going to do.”
12. “Interruption is not collaboration, it’s just interruption.” “And when you’re interrupted, you’re not getting work done.”
13. “Long stretches of time alone are when you are the most productive.” “Ever notice how much work you get done on a plane since you’re offline and there are zero outside distractions?” Funny I should re-read this sentence now. I’m on a plane.
This is a GREAT book. It captures the essences of productivity and time management and tells you to get off your butt, beat the status quo, focus on ONE THING, and test it work on it like crazy.
Enjoy.
First things First, my dad always says.
What is the first thing you did today? Check email? Work on the most important thing, or the least important thing?
When you get to the end of the day, what do you regret not doing?
Less means maybe only doing 1 thing each day. What is that one thing, the most important thing, the hard thing that you’re not working on? That you’re not giving yourself time to do? Say No to other things. Say Yes to time for the most important things.
Making important things first is critical.
You are not exactly as you are. Things change. The greatest gift we all have is the ability to learn, to develop, and to grow.
If you are not learning – you are obsolete.
Seth Godin’s book, Linchpin, speaks to this effect: become indispensible.
Be more than ordinary – be extraordinary by doing above and beyond what is required.
If you don’t know how to do something, learn how to do it.
If you’re not happy with what you currently have, figure out how to fix it.
If things aren’t working the way you’re doing it, try something new.
Everything changes. You may not see the differences now, but take stock in where you are and remember to look back after a few months and notice the changes.
If you’re the type of person who never remembers someone else’s name, don’t fret. You can learn. You can change. What type of person are you? Would you explain this away (“I can never remember anyone’s names!”) – incorrectly assuming that you, in fact, could never change this, never learn?
I think that’s wrong. You can learn. You can change. It takes practice, energy, time, and observation. But each time, a little more awareness – and one day, you’ll realize that the habit you have has changed – and it’s easy for you to remember someone else’s name.
Everything changes. It happens slowly, but if you’re making an effort, watching, observing, thinking, and always practicing new things, you’ll surprise even yourself.
Smile.
There is nothing more beautiful than a smile.
The expression you wear on your face is priceless. There aren’t too many things more powerful and contagious than your demeanor. I’m reading essays by Dale Carnegie this week, and his insights and ideas about the power of a smile are spot on:
“Your smile is a messenger of your good will. Your smile brightens the lives of all who see it. To someone who has seen a dozen people frown, scowl or turn their faces away, your smile is like the sun breaking through the clouds. … A smile can help you realize that all is not hopeless – that there is joy in the world.” – Dale Carnegie
William James : “Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.”
Shakespeare: “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
Image from here.
White space, in graphic design, is the space on the page that isn’t.
It’s the space on the page that’s blank, that echos the thoughts and points of the content by giving it space.
White space is that delicious break, that rest, the recapitulation of ideas by doing nothing at all.
White space gives the words meaning and play, letting light, color, balance, shadow, and emphasis dance across the page in new ways.
Sometimes, in my designs, my boss calls me a minimalist.
I find this funny that my writing is so abundant and my designs so crisp and precise.
White space, in our lives, is the buffer of time we give to ourselves between projects.
Unplanned weekends are white space.
Three hours between the end of work and the next task – that’s white space.
Planning only one activity – perhaps yoga- and then being open to the activities beyond – is white space.
It’s space to breathe.
It’s space to be.
White space gives definition to our activities by forcing us to be more selective, not to cram, and to CHOOSE.
Above all else, choose what fits on your page and what is eliminated.
Beautiful uses of white space come from copious amounts of editing, revision, and re-drawing. Words don’t always land perfectly on a page the first time. Trial and error is good.
But we all need white space. Sometimes more, sometimes less.
White space makes the other stuff matter more.
White space make your life activities better.
Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (And What That Says About Us)
By Tom Vanderbilt, 2008.
Traffic is an age-old problem: ever since humans have figured out ways to move beyond the facility of our two feet, we have encountered problems of congestion, traffic, movement, and organization. Advances in technology and new forms of mobility (horses and carts and bicycles and autos and cars, to buses and trains and airplanes) all create problems: problems of traffic.
Traffic is the result of movement. The desire to get someone – or something – from one place to another. The flows and lines that carry us to and from places are clogged when too many people or too many things try to use the same space at the same time.
At the heart of every traffic – and car – problem today lies a person. The central common denominator behind engineering, traffic, and parking issues lies the need to move people from Point A to Point B in a relatively efficient manner, without slowing down or impeding the thousands of other pathways also being carved out by other people following different trajectories.
My mobility questions – and my attempt to give up my car and use other forms of transportation, from my own two feet to city buses – led me to read a few more books (me, read books?) – including Traffic, The High Cost of Free Parking, and Sprawl: A Compact History (Full disclaimer: I am a complete nerd, although for those of you that read this blog, I no longer need to fess up to that disclaimer.)
Vanderbilt looks at the human and psychological implications of traffic and asks a series of thoughtful questions about people and our (notoriously bad) driving habits. Beyond just understanding what traffic is and what to do about it (engineering), he asks questions about human behavior in relation to driving. Why do we drive the way that we do? Why are we bad at merging? When do rules make it harder to drive, not easier? What are some of out psychological failings that make us more dangerous on the road? And – most importantly – will humans ever stop driving?
(Image from Michele Henry)
I ask these questions, too, because I’m curious to know how difficult it will be to separate myself from my car, now that I’ve crossed the threshold into car ownership. Vanderbilt suggests that figuring out new forms of fuel efficiency (and worrying about the implications of current fossil-fuel consumption) is the least of our problems:
“The reason I have avoided talking about the negative envrionmental consequences of the car is that I believe, as was once said, that it will be easier to remove the internal-combustion engine from the car than it will be to remove the driver.”
People are wedded to their cars. Emotionally, psychologically, financially. We are literally tied to our cars and we fiercly do NOT want to give them up. (I am just one of many anecdotal case studies of this truth.)
Throughout the book, he highlights the psychological failings of humans that makes driving so dangerous:
“We all think we’re better than the average driver. We think cars are the risk when on foot; we think pedestrians act dangerously when we’re behind the wheel. We want safer cars so we can drive more dangerously. Driving, with its exhilarating speed and the boundless personal mobility it grants us, is strangely life-affirming but also, for most of us, the most deadly presence in our lives. We all want to be invidiuals on the road, but smooth-flowing traffic requires conformity. We want all the lights to be green, unless we are on the intersecting road, in which case we want those lights to be green. We want little traffic on our own street but a convenience ten-lane highway blaxing just nearby. We all wish the other person would not drive, so that our trip would be faster. What’s best for us on the road is often not best for everyone, and vice versa.”
And, he speaks to the difficulty of driving – and why it’s so scary that we drive at all, given our psychological makeup and predisposition to tune out things that become habitual to us – making us even more dangerous on familiar roads and paths:
“[Driving] … is an incredibly complex and demanding task.We are navigating through a legal system, we are becoming social actors in a spontaneous setting, we are processing a bewildering amount of information, we are constantly making predictions and calculations and on-the-fly judgments of risk and reward, and we’re engaging in a huge amount of sensory and cognitive activity – the full scope of which scientists are just beginning to understand.”
And lastly, on how much time we spend driving:
“Considering that many of us spend more time in traffic than we do eating meals iwth our family, going on vacation, or having sex, it seems worth probing a bit deeper into the experience.”
Why do we do it, then? Why do we drive, when the cost of car ownership spirals us into greater debt, when the risks of driving are our lives and our families (because automobile deaths are one of the top causes of death each year), and when being in traffic is one of the most psychologically taxing experiences, resulting in more unhappiness each year?
Driving can be seen as both a “symbol of freedom or as a symptom of sprawl.” Much like Mindless Eating is not a book about dieting (it’s about the amazing psychological implications of our behaviors and attention), Traffic is not a book strictly about driving. It’s a book that delves into the inner workings of the mind and human nature, asking us questions about why we do things the way that we do them, and what behaviors contribute towards traffic, safety, and sanity.
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To read more about my car-free experiments and adventures, check out the category “Car Free?” and join me as I journey around the world in my car, on my feet, riding my bike, and on the bus. I still haven’t decided whether or not to sell my car – but will update you as I discover and learn more!
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