Productivity? Are you SERIOUS? (A selection of Time Management Humor)

I had an interview lined up with someone who wanted a lighthearted spin on productivity and GTD. The interview didn't work out (ironically the host was a no-show. twice), but I'd like to share some of the material I whipped up. I left a few unfinished (look for "??"). Got any to share?

Cheers!

(Hey - Amazon has a Time management - Humor / Entertainment category!)

Top 10 clinical causes of productivity-related ambulance calls

• Thumb crushed in filing cabinet
  
• Labeler-loss induced panic
  
• Over-capture syndrome
  
• Internet down
  

15 topics not covered by GTD blogs

[silence]

Q: Which came first, the __ or the __?

??

Three GTD belts you haven't yet earned:

• Puce (Never heard of GTD)
  
• Heliotrope (Mind like oatmeal)
  
• Chartreuse (You've reached the ultimate empty mind. You see all, know all, and can focus on any topic like a laser as long as you like. You're also in a hospital for the "gifted.")
  

Due to the economy, David Allen has laid off the 40,000 and 50,000 foot levels.

How to use a labeler to survive a cougar attack

• Print "LAY DOWN" and - quickly, now - flash it in his eyes
  
• Print some blank tape and cover its teeth (only if using plastic tape)
  
• Print "Not Meat" and stick it on your forehead
  
• Throw and run
  

Q: What's the one action you'll never see on a GTD'ers list?

"Drop GTD"

Firefox productivity add ons you NEED to get

(Also check out Top 11 Worst Firefox Extensions.)

• quit-immediately-after-launch
  
• every page redirects to http://www.this-page-intentionally-left-blank.org
  
• Stumble Away
  

Q: How is President Obama getting things done?

??

Four ways to say "no"

• No.
  
• No!
  
• No?
  
• Noooooooo
  

Q: How many GTD bloggers does it take to change a light bulb?

43. One to hold the ladder and 42 to argue whether it's an action or a project.

12 Wild Things People Are Visualizing, In Addition To "Wild Success"

(In case you missed it here.)

1. type and mutant hemoglobin proteins
   
2. success (OK, I included anyway, despite the title)
   
3. shapes
   
4. Saracenic tribes adorned in flowing colored togas
   
5. bastards
   
6. sexual fantasies
   
7. gesticulations
   
8. geometry of invariant sets
   
9. urban adventure
   
10. rush of kayaking off a 100-foot waterfall
    
11. beaver
    
12. sensations of the rainforest
    
13. beauty of the rainforest
    

Q: Why did the GTD blogger cross the road?

He didn't. He was too busy trying out a new fountain pen and $23 notebook.

GTD-ers do it...

(Inspired by this post.)

• ... @Bed [dirjy]
  
• ... in the office
  
• ... with 100% focus
  
• ... on schedule
  
• ... @anywhere
  
• ... in two minutes or less [Pascal Venier]
  
• ... on the runway, at 10,000', ...
  

Q: What's more irritating than someone who's just adopted GTD?

Nothing.

Top 10 things people are Getting, in addition to 'Things Done'

(In case you missed it here.)

• pregnant
  
• a passport
  
• married (NB: *after* pregnant! Leaving the country first?)
  
• "to know you" questions:
  
  
  
  • WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE LUNCH MEAT? [cat]
    
  • DO YOU STILL HAVE YOUR TONSILS? [yes, they're in a jar on my dresser]
    
  • WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ICE CREAM? [cat]
    
  
  
• away with murder
  
• over a break up
  
• rid of fleas
  
• away with murder (lots of murder!)
  
• out of debt
  
• pregnant tips (like beef tips?)
  
• rid of mice
  

Q: If a GTD-er file falls in a forest and no one is around to hear her, does she make a sound?

??

100 books from the IdeaMatt Anti-Library

(A light post this week as I'm finishing up my first little ebook, "You did WHAT? 91 Tiny experiments for having fun and living a happier and healthier life")

In response to my post On Keeping An Umberto Eco-like Anti-Library, Patrick Rhone asks in this comment about some of the books in my anti-library, the key choices and why. I'll cheat and just list 100 of the titles. Shoot me an email if you want details.

BTW I found a meme tag for this, originating with What is in your Antilibrary?

I'd like to pose a question to those who read this blog entry: What are three to five books on your shelf that lay unread and what knowledge do you hope to retrieve from them?

There are some great titles in the comments. Check it out.

(Side note: Googling meme tag gets some specific tags, but there's no wikipedia entry for it. Surprising. Interestingly, in an example of synchronicity I found a 1998 MIT paper Meme Tags and Community Mirrors: Moving from Conferences to Collaboration. It apparently involves wearing a gadget around the neck while interacting at conferences. Bonus: Schmooze rates, and pictures!)

I'm really curious

• What's you your anti-library?
  
• Any titles you recommend for me?
  

Some of Matt's Anti-library

• A bias for action


• Achievement factors


• Always bear left


• Beyond code


• Bird by bird


• Book yourself solid


• CEO of me


• Change or die


• Change you voice, change your life


• Coaching


• Coaching for leadership


• Coaching successfully


• Conquering chronic disorganization


• Conscious breathing


• Crashproof your life


• de Bono's thinking course


• Dig your well before you're thirsty


• Don't shoot the dog


• Everything's an offer


• Executive coaching


• Executive coaching with backbone and heart


• Extreme programming pocket guide


• Failing forward


• Find more time


• Finding time


• Focus like a laser


• Fun works


• Getting started in personal and executive coaching


• Getting to yes


• Goals!


• Guerrilla marketing for consultants


• How the way we talk can change the way we work


• How to be of use


• How to run your own life


• How to stop worrying and start living


• How to win friends & influence people


• How to work a room


• How we know what isn't so


• How you stand, how you move, how you life


• I can see you naked


• In search of excellence


• Information anxiety 2


• Lean software development


• Let's connect!


• Little gold book of YES attitude


• Loving what is


• Managing multiple projects


• Mastering self-leadership


• Million dollar habits


• Mindfulness


• One minute manager


• Optimal thinking


• Orbiting the giant hairball


• Overload syndrome


• Quality or else


• Questions that work


• Real success without a real job


• Rules for renegades


• Simple works


• Success through a positive mental attitude


• Surviving information overload


• Ten powerful phrases for positive people


• The 10 natural laws of successful time and life management


• The 7 habits of highly effective people


• The E-myth revisited


• The art ad practice of leadership coaching


• The art of innovation


• The art of learning


• The artist's way


• The attention economy


• The back of the napkin


• The book of good habits


• The connoisseur's guide to the mind


• The contented achiever


• The difference a day makes


• The experience economy


• The fifth discipline


• The four agreements


• The healing power of humor


• The high-tech personal efficiency program


• The inner game of tennis


• The marketing gurus


• The new brain


• The new psycho-cybernetics


• The now habit


• The overwhelmed person's guide to time management


• The paradox of choice


• The power of full engagement


• The power of now


• The power of the 2x2 matrix


• The self-talk solution


• The success principles


• The ten faces of innovation


• The ten-minute trainer


• The toyota way


• The trusted advisor


• Thick face, black heart


• Think better


• Thinkertoys


• To learn with love


• Total workday control


• What should I do with my life?


• Who moved my cheese?


• Write it down, make it happen


• You can't teach a kid to ride a bike at a seminar


• Your attention, please

Plus a fun bunch of cards like The Creative Whack Pack!

My @Context Interview Podcast Is Up!

I had an entertaining and wide-ranging conversation with Tara Robinson and Augusto Pinaud for their popular @Context GTD podcast series. Find it at @Context: Episode Eleven: Matthew Cornell, and tell me what you think. A big thanks to Tara and Augusto.

On Keeping an Umberto Eco-like Anti-Library

In Reading Redux, Plus A 501 Productivity Roundup I wrote:

Lest you think having a large candidates library is bad, consider this passage from Taleb's The Black Swan: "Read books are far less valuable than unread ones." (He attributes the "anti-library" to Umberto Eco.)

To this reader Jim emailed me this question:

What exactly is the point of the anti-library? The things we don't know is more important than the things we do?

Good question! I'm still wrapping my head around the idea. First, here's the original passage, via Umberto Eco's Anti-Library:

The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and non dull. He is the owner of a large personal library (containing thirty thousand books), and separates visitors into two categories: those who react with 'Wow! Signore professore dottore Eco, what a library you have! How many of these books have you read?' and the others - a very small minority - who get the point that a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight read-estate market allows you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary.

My unread books are an expression of faith. I'm banking on my future self needing them some day, and I want to give him everything he needs when the time comes. It's a kind of preparation for the unknown, I suppose. Already there have been times when I was happy I could search my library for knowledge on various topics, say when I get a media inquiry or write a blog post.

The library is also symbolic - a tangible representation of my unknowledge, and the fact that I acknowledge the limits of what I know. OK, I admit I'm full of crap, but there may be something to its reflecting an important perspective that needs reinforcing: Taleb's view that there are two ways to approach randomness: Skeptical Empiricism and the a-Platonic School (ideas based on skepticism, on the unread books in the library) vs. The Platonic Approach (ideas based on beliefs, on what they think they know). (I don't deeply understand the philosophy here - anyone care to comment?)

My anti-library is growing, and it does invoke a bit of unease. All that work to do! So much I don't know! So much I'd love to learn! At the same time I feel some pride when I look at my shelves, and I respect the spirit of insatiable curiosity sitting behind those books.

In the end I'll keep growing mine (and whittling away at them) because I trust that I'll need them someday. Plus, it's a fun test for guests! I'll finish with a comment on Eye in the Sky: From my 'Umberto Eco's Antilibrary':

Perhaps it is in that our antilibraries represent the person we would like to be (the one that has read those books) and the one we would be if only we weren't so busy being this person. When we finally do read one of those books, it is a little graduation.

(I detect a ritual there.)

What do you think?

The word is... "Stick*" Notes, Girth, Laziness, and Pasta

This week I'm experimenting with an IdeaLab variation called "The word is..." It's an excuse to share a mix of stimulating ideas related to a particular concept. This week, in honor of my cio.com blurb in Tips for CIOs: Marketing IT, Avoiding Jet Lag and Making a To-Do List, the word is stick*[1].

Cheers!

• In your research, stick with small problems. Solving them will lead to mastering larger ones. You and Your Research
  
• In On Using Post-It Notes For GTD Projects, Instead Of Lists I wrote about using sticky notes as a non-linear tool for GTD-like lists. My thinking was lists for the visually/spatially-oriented.
  
• How about sticky notes that get progressively stinkier as they age? Put them on videos or books that have a due date. Use Them for your Waiting For list! An End-of-the-year Idea Grab Bag: Smelly Videos, Photo Stickers, Dissolving Staples, And Darkening Ink For NAs
  
• From The Lure of Laziness:

  "Instant reward is the default setting of the brain, but we like ourselves better when we tackle unpleasant tasks ... Write out your goals daily. We're more likely to stick to our plans if we monitor our progress toward a goal."

  
  
• Because clients hire me to give them a productivity overhaul, and because lasting changes like this are difficult, I'm always interested in ways to get the work to stick. A client likened this to Alcoholics Anonymous: the program is easy, but staying with it is hard. Agree? Related: Reader Question: Getting Personal Productivity Changes To Stick? and A Dozen Small Ways To Get Productivity Improvements To Stick In An Organization.
  
• From Are You Organized For Failure?

  "Using digital communications tools allows you to try everything out and see what sticks. It allows you to embrace failure at minimal or zero cost. Technology enables you to open source parts of your business."

  Naturally I love this. It connects directly with my How Do You Treat Life As An Experiment? philosophy.
  
• In the life-as-experiment category, a psychologist I know suggested this overall procedure:
  
  
  
  1. Dream up options
     
  2. Try one
     
  3. Stick with it
     
  4. Evaluate results. Done?
     
  5. Repeat
     
  
  
• From Daydream achiever:

  "Many scientists argue that daydreaming is a crucial tool for creativity, a thought process that allows the brain to make new associations and connections. Instead of focusing on our immediate surroundings - such as the message of a church sermon - the daydreaming mind is free to engage in abstract thought and imaginative ramblings. As a result, we're able to imagine things that don't actually exist, like sticky yellow bookmarks."

  
  
• Via Put Your Money Where Your Girth Is, stickK is an accountability tool to "facilitate personal commitment contracts," including weight loss and other types of personal goals. If you don't live up to your end of the contract, StickK will give your money to charity or a person you designate.
  
• From Improvise Like a Jazz Musician:

  The essence of improvisation is to churn out ideas and see what sticks.

  What's your wall look like? Sticky Spaghetti makes marks!
  
• Here's a mind blower: The brain can shift events forward or backward. Via Time Out of Mind (joystick is a stretch, I'll grant you):

  Another ingenious bit of research, conducted in Germany, demonstrated that within a brief time frame the brain can shift events forward or backward. Subjects were asked to play a video game that involved steering airplanes, but the joystick was programmed to react only after a brief delay. After playing a while, the players stopped being aware of the time lag. But when the scientists eliminated the delay, the subjects suddenly felt as though they were staring into the future. It was as though the airplanes were moving on their own before the subjects had directed them to do so.

  
  
• From the master Nicholas Bate on Productivity101:

  30. And seven that can reduce productivity ... 35. (5) Yellow stickies. Everywhere.

  
  
• From The Hamster Revolution:

  ...email is both slippery and sticky. It slithers and squirms into the oddest places and it sticks around forever. When it's unprofessional, it points a giant flashing spotlight back on you.

  
  
• From Little Red Book of Selling:

  Principle 12.5: Resign your position as General Manager of the Universe. Don't stick your nose in someone else's business.

  
  
• Me on email processing:

  Remember that email messages are sticky. Think flypaper - you touch it, you handle it - it doesn't go back. Also, it's a little poisonous, so be quick! (2 minute rule).

  
  

References

• [1] The asterisk (AKA splat - see Know Your Keyboard: Bang, Splat, Whack!) is from my programming background. It's a special character used as a wildcard, esp. for matching file names. For example, "stick*" would match "stick," "sticks," and "sticky." More general is the idea of regular expressions, one of the most powerful and (for me) complicated tool I've encountered. A productivity spin: Look for positive patterns in your work and life, and turn them into habits. For work, "compile" them into automated checklists or delegated work.