Living in the moment, preventing regret, and appreciating life

This week I was reminded of something a former boss shared with me regarding appreciating wonderful things in life. At the time (mid-80s) my wife and I were living in the Cocoa Beach area, and had been introduced to a tiny restaurant called George's. It was run by an elderly French chef and his Australian wife, and while the decor was average, the food was amazing, his prices were low, and he cooked and served meals with his wife's help, which provided a wonderful experience. After taking us there, my boss told me: "When you find something special like this, take advantage of it as much as possible because it will not last." He made a point to eat there rather frequently, and at the time I didn't quite get it, even when the restaurant eventually closed.

However, I've tried to keep his advice in mind and be present, which has been especially helpful as a husband and parent. In fact, it's become one tactic in my goal of fully enjoying my daughter (now 6 years old) - that of protecting against regret, as much as possible. For example, I try to spend the maximum amount of time with her, even when I'm tired or bored or sick, so that I can't later say "Boy, I wish I'd seen more of her." OK, I know I'll still say that, but at least I can have a reasonable mental answer - I did live with her as fully as possible for me at that time in my life.

What brings about this reflection is the recent closing of the L.A. Burdick cafe in Northampton, MA, the small city next to my town. Briefly, my wife took me to the place after dinner one night, treated me to some hot dark chocolate and bon bons, and my life was never the same. (Hyperbole, you ask? Don't laugh until you try it yourself [1]! And yes, I do have a Chocolate file - but not an entire drawer. Yet.) Once I was hooked, I insisted we go there at least once a month (more likely once every week or so), and so when I saw the announcement last month that it was closing I was able to "make peace" with it relatively painlessly [2]. But I was glad I'd frequented the place as much as I did!

This reminds me of the classic You don't know what you have until it's gone concept popularized by Joni Mitchell:

Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
Till its gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot

There are lots of resources for mindfulness [3], and I'm less than a beginner. But I do try to remind myself daily how fortunate I've been - in friends, family, blog readers, work, and co-workers. And yes, there is life after Burdick (suggestions very welcome)...


References

• [1] First, order some of their chocolates, and - if you're lucky enough to live near them - try their hot dark chocolate. (If not you can make something similar and delicious yourself at home; see How to Make The Ultimate Cup of Hot Chocolate.
  
• [2] Actually, since the general manager left her name on the notice, I took the opportunity to call her and talk about chocolate, the closing, and to say thank you.
  
• [3] I enjoy the writings of Thich Nhat Hanh, but I found that training can be crucial - a point George Leonard makes in his excellent book Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fullfillment. (Instruction is one of his five keys, which include Instruction, Practice, Surrender, Intentionality, and The Edge.)
  

My Black Belt Productivity article is up, FYI

Just a quick note that the nice folks at Black Belt Productivity have published my guest article GTD: Space + awareness = *major* action, part of their Black Belts Series. I was pleased to be asked to contribute (though I've got a ways to go before I'm a black belt), and I hope you enjoy it.

Personal Productivity Playing Cards!

As I'm learning how to present personal productivity concepts [1] effectively to individuals and groups, I've come across some people and areas of study that have given an idea I want to share: Personal Productivity Playing Cards. In the interests of open sharing, and in the hopes that you'll have some ideas, I'd like to provide my initial thoughts on how they might work and what games could be played. I'm a total novice at this, so your feedback is especially welcome - and I'm quite interested in seeing something like them come into fruition.


Purpose & inspiration

I really like the idea of using cards for education, esp. in group settings. I think Roger von Oech's Creative Whack Pack (cards) is awesome, and I really enjoy pulling out my deck of Oblique Strategy cards when I need some inspiration. Two others neat decks include 2006 Drivers of change cards ("What will our world be like in 2050? This set of cards identifies some of the leading drivers of change that affect our future.") and IDEO's Method cards for design.

But by far the neatest deck (and the one that made me think of cards for personal productivity) is the Extreme Programming Playing Cards that Joshua Kerievsky et. al. put together [2]. First, the cards are physically satisfying to play with - solid, smooth, and attractive. More importantly, they've come up with some clever games to play with them [3].

So the idea is to create a set of cards - and some corresponding games - that participants can use to learn modern personal productivity concepts, in order to handle modern life's information overload.


The cards

My first take on the card format is to have separate card types, much like the XP Problem, Solution, and Value cards. NB: For clarity (because my blog audience is GTD-ware) I will use GTD® terminology to describe the cards, but final versions would be system-agnostic. Following are the card types, each followed by a count (i.e., # cards in the deck) and description:

• Phase (5: Collect, Process, Organize, Review, Do; each would summarize basic concepts),
  
• Process step (6: What is it?, Is it actionable?, What's the next action?, Can I do it in two minutes?, Can I delegate it? Can I defer it?; each would have examples?),
  
• Process diagram (1: something like Allen's WorkFlow Diagram)
  
• Tool (9: IN, Trash, Someday/Maybe, Reference, Waiting For, Next actions, Calendar, Project plans, Projects; each would summarize concepts and list typical examples),
  
• Stuff (~15 cards representing typical stuff, with details),
  
• Challenge (~5 cards describing typical personal organization challenges, e.g., Papers piled everywhere, Late to meetings, Important emails being lost, Can't find project materials)

Note that, instead of having separate cards for each sample project, action, and delegated task, I've envisioned putting a few on their corresponding Tool cards.

I'm painfully aware these are very preliminary, but I hope you get the idea.


Some example games

What kinds of learning games could we play with these cards? I can think of a number of them right off, and I'm certain I'm missing some good ones. A few examples:

• Stuff busters: Apply workflow processing and organizing concepts to Stuff cards, using Process Steps to decide and placing each item on the appropriate Tool pile. This is similar to the quiz in part two of Organize Your Office! Simple Routines for Managing Your Workspace by Ronni Eisenberg, where she asks what would you do with:
  1. a business magazine you need to read;
     
  2. research material a subordinate has just given you that you need for a report;
     
  3. a written request form someone for some information;
     
  4. a booklet explaining new company benefits;
     
  5. a memo requesting your presence at an upcoming staff meeting
  
  
• What's the solution?: Pick a random Challenge card, explain the problem, then demonstrate how other card(s) address it.
  
• Just do it: Decide your current work "state" (e.g., start of day, lots to do, sick baby, didn't sleep) and apply the four criteria model to decide which action from the Next actions (Tool) card might be done now, and why not others.
  
• Pocket/Purse/Briefcase surprise: Pull something out of one of these and apply the Processing step cards to determine what to do with it.
  
• Phase skip: Collect the five Phase cards, pull one out, and describe the problems that skipping it could cause.
  
• WorkFlow puzzle: Re-create the process diagram starting with a jumbled up pile of Process step and Tool cards.
  

Importantly, I understand that debriefing is crucial for learning, and to foster discussion.


Summary

I believe a set of productivity cards could provide a nice tool for simulation games to help people get better organized, and I've sketched out a few rough ideas. What you think? I'd love to hear your ideas for both the card types as well as games you think would be enjoyable and educational.


Related

I didn't realize I have a soft spot for combining games (and technology [4]) with learning, until I recently connected with Marc Shiman (his blog is Inspiring Discovery), who knows a lot about this area. I've heard it called simulation gaming, and NASAGA seems to be a great starting point. Also related is the broader field of professional training, and one of its top organizations is American Society for Training & Development.

In the category of simulation gaming, you might enjoy Playing With the Rules: An Interview With Thiagi and An Interview with Marc Shiman. In particular I like Thiagi's take-away tips:

• Take an improv class.
  
• Plan with your left brain and implement with your right.
  
• Keep an open mind and a playful mood.
  
• Always conduct a debriefing. The game is just an excuse for having a discussion among the participants.
  
• Don't count the number of games, but make a few games count.
  
• Play with the rules, rather than within the rules.
  
• Start with a minimal set of rules and introduce more as needed. Intervene only when necessary; let players' behaviors determine the flow of the activity.

Finally, Steve Sugar (another top-notch game thinker) writes Ten of the Very Best Reasons for Using Classroom Games (and for Justifying Their Use in Your Organization):

• Reason #1: Games are Fun with a Purpose
  
• Reason #2: Games Provide Feedback to the Learner
  
• Reason #3: Games Provide Feedback to the Trainer
  
• Reason #4: Games are Experiential
  
• Reason #5: Games Motivate Learners
  
• Reason #6: Games Improve Team Work
  
• Reason #7: Games Provide a Less Threatening Learning Environment
  
• Reason #8: Games Bring Real-World Relevance
  
• Reason #9: Games Accelerate Learning
  
• Reason #10: Games Give You Choices for Your Classroom

Neat!


References

• [1] I'm working on a "next generation" time management practice by integrating ideas from David Allen, Kerry Gleeson, Sally McGhee, and others.
  
• [2] I took their excellent five day Extreme Programming Workshop a while back, and I think every programmer should attend. Highly recommended!
  
• [3] The games include eXPlanations, XP War, Retrospective Roulette, and Value Squares.
  
• [4] In fact, I came to UMass to work with Beverly Woolf in the field of Intelligent tutoring systems.

Limited posting next ten days, plus a request for readers

First, for the next week or so I'll be in the Denver area with my family to visit some dear friends who recently moved there, so I'll be skipping a post.

Interestingly, Denver has some big-name productivity consultants, including Sally McGhee (an expert in a neat system with a lot of GTD similarities - see her book) and Laura Stack (a well-known writer and speaker). I haven't yet been introduced to either of them, but I admire them both and would very much welcome any connections you might offer.

Second, I would appreciate some feedback: Contrary to conventional wisdom, I cover a variety of topics here, rather than having separate blogs for each one. My question: Would you prefer separate blogs for productivity/GTD, creativity/ideas, personal growth/development, and consulting/coaching/networking (for example), or do you like the current mix?

Feel free to respond in comments, or email me directly. Thanks!

GTD: A tool for *forgetting*?

I once had a drum teacher (Afro-Cuban style, using drums like the djembe and ashiko) who, along with being a great player and drum builder, prided himself on his memory. I remember a time when he criticized people for writing down things like phone numbers, with the implication being people were lazy if they didn't work to memorize things like that. I felt bad about it for a while (I wasn't practicing GTD at the time, but I did have an address book), then forgot it.

However, he recently came to mind after reading the following passage from Kerry Gleeson's book The Personal Efficiency Program: How to Get Organized to Do More Work in Less Time [1]: Under Forget Remembering he says:

Most people I speak with take a certain degree of pride in their ability to remember "everything" that needs to be done. It is a mental game they play. While that may have been okay at one time, the pace of today's work and home life has accelerated and the volume of activities we could or should keep up with has grown so much that it is impractical to expect to keep on top of 1,000 things to do. No doubt you do remember these things to do, but it may not be at the time it's most convenient or effective, such as three o'clock in the morning, when you sit up in bed and think, "Oh, I have to take care of ..." This constant thinking about, planning out, tracking everything you need to do - remembering everything you need to follow up on - simply overwhelms people.

He goes on to say

What people need is the right system in place, to allow them to remember this myriad of details when, and only when, it's necessary for them to remember.

...which will make any GTD-er feel warm and fuzzy. Why? Because one of David Allen's central insights is that our minds work best when unfettered by daily minutiae like phone numbers, things to do, checklists, etc. "Write it down" is a classic time management concept, and Allen has taken it further by observing that getting it all out of our heads frees up tremendously our natural creative potential. I've experienced it [2], as have my clients, and apparently many other practitioners.


I researched the idea a bit further and came across some great related quotes attributed to Albert Einstein [3], [4]. From How to Gain (or Lose) 30 IQ Points - Instantly! [5]:

Einstein himself was fond of saying that his pencil was smarter than he was.

I also loved this passage from Time Management for System Administrators (sample chapter here):

In Chapter 1, I mentioned the story about Albert Einstein trying to reserve as much of his brain as possible for physics by eliminating other brainwork, like deciding what to wear each day. Legend also has it that Einstein didn't memorize addresses or phone numbers, even his own. The important ones were written on a slip of paper in his wallet so as not to use up precious brain capacity. When someone would ask him for his own phone number he would tell them that it’s in the phone book and politely ask them to look it up. Be like Einstein; reserve your brain for system administration.

A final piece of evidence comes from the field of memorization tricks, such as The Memory Book and (ironically) The Einstein Memory Trainer. If it takes methods like these to get our minds to reliably store and recall such bits of information, isn't that evidence that they're not meant to be used in this way? This is the essence of why such tricks are so impressive.

To wrap up, consider the post GTD means never forgetting by user flexiblefine:

My biggest general success with GTD is adopting the collection habit. Collecting things as they come to me means not having to worry about remembering anything until "later" when I can do something about it.

So give yourself a break, forget (smartly) some things, and let your brain do what it's great at.


More Einstein Quotes

OK, the man was not just brilliant, but wise and had a sense of humor. Here are a few more quotes I really liked:

• Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.
  
• He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.
  
• I do not know with what weapons World War 3 will be fought, but World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones.
  
• I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.
  
• The important thing is not to stop questioning.

References

• [1] From the second edition. Note: I found a lot of useful ideas in his book, with much GTD overlap (though there are points of conflict). More at Institute for Business Technology (via their international listing).
  
• [2] In my thank you email to Allen I mentioned some of the big changes his book enabled in my life, including loosing 15 pounds, curing my insomnia, making great strides in a back problem I've had all my life, and switching careers after 20 years. Pretty neat!
  
• [3] I couldn't find any authoritative versions online, unfortunately. I'd love to know some sources if you have any.
  
• [4] Interestingly, my neighbor has apparently met him - see My Half Hour with Einstein.
  
• [5] From the same article: "Einstein himself was fond of saying that his pencil was smarter than he was."