The Productivity Show #38 - John Duckworth (Cognitive Weekly Review)
My guest is John Duckworth. He wrote to me a few weeks ago with a short guide on doing the Weekly Review. He asked me to read the guide for him. Better than that, I invited him on the show. John has read a wide variety of productivity books, and combined that with cognitive solutions to getting the Weekly Review done.
Getting Thing Done - To help with software development.
Weekly Review - Needed improving and John looked at other systems to help do GTD.
Web Development - In Wigan, Lancashire
Mixed Nuts - The greatest productivity tool ever. John hates them and uses them with the guide of Aubrey Daniels. Need to reinforce something immediately after the something happens good or not. Getting off the internet. Mixed nuts worked best! Use something you hate, immediately, to reward yourself for bad behaviour!
Stopping things being a chore - Don’t see things like the Weekly Review as a chore, but something you’re motivated to do. Improve the thing you’re doing so you love it.
What is a weekly review - An hour per week, to review. But many don’t give the time over to fully do the review or something interrupts you.
Divide the Weekly Review into tasks - It might not end up as a single complete hour, but several tasks which can be split. Split the parts of a weekly review into actions which can be completed in different contexts.
When to do the Weekly Review - Calendar it. Make it crucial to start it to get into the habit of doing the weekly review, even if you don’t complete it, to get into the habit.
Why don’t we do our Weekly Review? - Procrastination. Not well defined. Give it a next action. Have a checklist to complete for the review. Picture it in your mind so that you encourage yourself to do it.
Task list of physical action to do for the review - Get Folder out. Dump papers in in-tray. Small tangible things.
Commit to the Preparation - The set up to get you moving. Mark Forster’s Do It Tomorrow. Getting ready to do the action. Getting the ironing board out as a precursor to ironing.
Essays, Reports, Proposals - We have the solution! Morning Pages (The Artist’s Way). Something to get you moving with a set (small) time.
Make Tasks Smaller - If a task is endless you probably won’t do it. “You can do anything for 5 minutes” Set the time as smaller and smaller until it gets you started. It breaks the resistance down.
8 minute training! - There’s a school in the UK trialing Eight Minute Lessons! With 10 minute breaks! YouTube?
Match your concentration span to your task - Cut it down to chunks of your concentration span. Why 1-2 hours of working on something when it doesn’t work for you.
Flow - Paul McKenna. On auto pilot in the zone. Focused on the single activity. Getting into a flow state. Flow - The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Just to Get Going - The preparation to getting going. Next action. What about after the first action? Do the next action at the same time.
The Weekly Chore! - Convert into something more pleasant. Anthony Robbins - Quality Quantifiers. Change the environment, put music on, gingerbread man! Improve the experience at the time of doing it, not as a reward afterwards. Make things fun.
How to enforce the habits - A reminder. But also make it a pleasant experience. Get the GTD Buddy.
Rehearse a Habit - Do it 20-30 times.
Getting Horizons of Focus to work - Do It Tomorrow (book), Scatter Mapping (text only mindmapping).
Follow through on projects - Belbin Roles (John’s a Plant), putting a flagging project in every day even if it’s 10mins per day. Authors of productivity books fix themselves but this doesn’t always work for the readers.
A Perfect Mess - We don’t need to be organised.
4 Hour Workweek - What would you do with only 2 hours in a week to do things.
Capture Notes - Task diary (Do It Tomorrow tip), capture goes into next day’s diary, projects captured in John’s own coded software. Capture on to mobile phone. Take a photo of any visual notes/reminders. Use the voice/note taker on the phone.
Footballers’ Favourites - Windows Mobile, MyYahoo, Do It Tomorrow, Buy a Kitchen Timer, Less Travel, OMD, Bad, Huey Lewis, Bolton Wanderers.
March 27th, 2008 at 4:55 am
Most useful podcast yet! I just went straight back to the beginning as soon as it finished. And good to hear Do It Tomorrow getting such support - a great time management system and less overhead than GTD.
How refreshing to hear from someone who did not have a book/website to flog.
Best of all John is a fellow ‘north of Englander’ - though the wrong side of the Pennines ;^)
March 27th, 2008 at 4:57 am
btw - does John have a blog we can look at?