Madelon Young, 1928-2009

My dear mom passed away this morning from chronic heart and lung disease. She was a heck of a trooper throughout her illness, right up to the end. No complaints, kept her sense of humor, and always said thank you, even when she could barely talk. I'm proud of her.

She was a great mom and I'll miss her a bunch.

Not blogging for a few weeks

(Family emergency, things still shaking out, will resume blogging when I get the chance. I'll also get to some backed-up replies to your comments then. -- matt)

Resistance is Data

In my daily planning guide Where the !@#% did my day go? I discuss task resistance, a root cause of procrastination and something most of us face one time or another. From the Think, Try, Learn perspective, resistance is data, with its attendant opportunity to improve. Start with some questions.

• Why are you resisting the task?



• What is it specifically that is repelling you?



• How long has this been the case?

Then ask yourself how important it is to address this. The good news is that you know about it (the Awareness "A" of the three A's), the seed of taking action.

This applies personally too. Do you have a difficult conversation you're avoiding? A medical problem? Information that the economic impact on your work/company can't be ignored? Or maybe it's simply an unpleasant thought. For me, shifting from reacting to the thing (or trying to avoid it) to thinking about it with a healthy sense of detachment is a relief. And here, the detachment comes from treating your feelings as information to process, not as something intrinsic to you or the problem/situation/challenge.

I'm curious: Have you adopted this approach? How has it changed your perceptions? What data do you having entering your life these days?

Lessons for Work and Living from Julia Child and the Movie "Julie & Julia"

At the risk of being pedestrian, I wanted to share share insights inspired by the movie Julie & Julia, mostly of Julie Child's work (links below). The movie's been written about ad nauseam, but not from the Think, Try, Learn or productive perspective. So here goes! (As an aside, there's a local angle for me: Her alma mater is Smith College - enrolled at birth! - and she was honored by a local farmer's Corn Maze, of all things.)

Of the movie proper, it not only passed the Finish Test (a rarity for me), but was non-violent, moving, funny, and inspiring. We enjoyed it as a family, and Meryl Streep's performance was universally enchanting. I found the Julia Child portions of the movie the highlight (it switches back and forth in time between the two characters). In fact, an entire movie of those would have been even more enjoyable.

The number one insight for me was the importance of experimentation in her work. After all, every new recipe should be considered an experiment. Search for the word in the Noel Riley Fitch biography Appetite for Life and you'll find lots of examples.

Following are some ideas I've I distilled (through the filter of the film) that struck me about work and life. For more on Julia Child: Julia Child in the Wikipedia, her biography at Answers.com, and her book Mastering The Art of French Cooking, Volume One. Enjoy!

• Things don't have to be perfect. For example, look at my blog! Seriously, give yourself a break and allow some leeway in (gasp!) the quality of your work. (My clients regularly shoot for "A+ papers," so this isn't as controversial as it sounds.) For example, in a video she gets some chocolate on the side of a serving dish and says not to worry - it's still good.



• Be a character. She is informal, full of life, and has a unique style, including her use of language. (Here's an idea: Try this experiment: Adopt a new mannerism.)



• Be bold! Experimentation requires courage! When trying something new, like a novel project assignment, acknowledge that you've never done this before (i.e., it's OK being a beginner).



• Lighten up. Laugh at yourself, adopt some colorful language, and appreciate working with your collaborators. Check out How to Enjoy What You Are Doing No Matter What, or my own 18 Ways To Enjoy The Ride At Work. Remember, process and product should both be savored. Enjoy those little delights, such as tasting while cooking (you can see her do this all the time), or a surprisingly good result. There's another video where she drops a fillet (I believe) and laughs it off. Talk about not crying over spilled milk!



• Make yourself better. From Fitch, "After eating, there was a postmortem discussion." Kaizen fans will recognize the value of continuous improvement, something we can adopt personally (this whole blog is about that) and professionally, via staying on top of your industry's developments, adding new skills, tracking decisions and lessons learned, and honing and reevaluating your workflow.



• Redefine mistakes. Though it takes a shift, it's healthy to look at failures or mistakes as opportunities to discover something new. Again from Appetite for Life, "She was constantly experimenting and testing. If a dish went wrong, she said nothing. This was one of her maxims: no excuses, no explanations." Spinning an accident into serendipity is a source of new recipes. I love it.



• Try a new thought tool. In the scene where she and her editor are brainstorming titles, they use that wonderful brainstorming technique involving index cards with words, where you move them around looking for striking patterns or combinations. Good resources include named Rapid Problem Solving with Post-It Notes, (mentioned in On Using Post-It Notes For GTD Projects, Instead Of Lists) and the awesome Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques.

Incremental vs. Batch Processing: Examples, Dos, and Don'ts

I'm thinking about when we should do things in small bits during the day/week, and when we should "save them up" to process as a batch. Following are some thoughts.

• Email: Email management is the canonical "batch is best" time management example. We need to differentiate processing (emptying), monitoring (triage), and checking (read, don't act, and leave in inbox - waste). I suggest using monitoring for incremental (but don't go nuts), and processing for batch (use the minimum # times that you can get away with, given your job).



• Custom workflows: Switching my financial workflow (incremental processing of receipts weekly, reconciling as a batch for monthly statements) was a big productivity improvement for me. Details under "Balancing your checking account" in Custom Workflows For Knowledge Workers. Are there repeated processes in your work that can be split up into separate incremental and batch portions?



• Projects: Incremental! Trying to do a task that's too large is demoralizing, and leads to procrastination. That said, there are times when you're in the zone, and you should consider changing your plan and staying with it until productivity drops. Most of the time incremental is best - "making simultaneous progress on multiple projects" is how I put it. Even 10 minutes can help.
  



• Around the house: A lot of incremental opportunities, such as putting things away when done with them. Batches include washing laundry and doing dishes after a meal. Related: Waitress as Organizational Guru, via Collection Habit Infection, Routines, And The Value Of Creating Space.



• Writing: A specialization of project execution, I'd vote strongly for incremental: In general, steady, small steps work much better than binging. My academic clients in particular are susceptible to the latter ("I'll get this done this summer/on sabbatical.")



• Blogging: A specialization of Writing, I made this shift a while ago, and it's really helpful. As Chris says in How to Blog Almost Every Day, "Find 20-40 minutes in every day to sit still and type." I enter items into my idea capture system throughout the day, and have ~20 of them pulled out into draft HTML files at any one time. I add to these during the day as thoughts on the topics come come to me, or if I get the urge to do some image surfing.

Can we abstract some heuristics? To get you thinking: Use incremental when the job is large, or when breaking into small steps has a big payoff for the final project. Use batch when many items of the same type can be done more efficiently together. For example, when set-up and take-down are significant percentages of the job.

I'm curious: What's your thinking around incremental vs. batch? Any examples? What Do's and Don'ts can we come up with?