J.D. Meier's Blog : Productivity

Productivity Personas

J.D. Meier — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 17:41:54 GMT

I wrote a post on Productivity Personas at Sources of Insight. It's simply a way to identify and label some common behaviors you see in yourself and others when it comes to producing results. Once you know the personas, you can effectively switch hats and use the right personas for the job. Using these personas, you can also better analyze team performance. For example, if you have a bunch of "starters" but no "finishers" you might be in trouble bringing things to closure. Here's a list of the personas:

Starter
Finisher
Thinker
Doer
Simplifier
Maximizer
Critic
Can do
Opportunist
Perfectionist
Details
Big Picture
Facts and figures
Controller
Tinkerer
Marketer
Achiever
Randomizer
Daydreamer
Procrastinator

For a quick summary of the personas, check out Productivity Personas.

Sources of Insight is 6 Months Old

J.D. Meier — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 19:52:44 GMT

Sources of Insight is 6 Months Old. It's growing up fast. I'd like to say I have the perfect plan, and everything's gone as planned, but I don't and it hasn't. Life's funny like that. What I can say is that I've made the most of it along the way, and I continue to fail forward. Onward and upward.

Sources of Insight is my blog for sharing patterns and practices for skilled living. It's how I scale myself as I help others unleash their inner awesome. You can think of it as a collection of insight and action to get results for work and life.

Here's some key features on Sources of Insight:

Browse guest posts by best selling book authors
Download my Free eBook - The Zen of Results, a quick guide to getting your life back.
Browse my hand picked collection of top personal development books
Browse my hand picked collection of top personal productivity quotes
Browse my posts of insight and action to help you make the most of what you got.

The Zen of Results and Evernote

J.D. Meier — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 01:18:47 GMT

I tested Evernote with my time management system, The Zen of Results. Evernote is like ITunes for knowledge. Check out how easily The Zen of Results fit with Evernote:

It took me under 5 minutes from start to finish. It was intuitive and friction free. One of the keys to effective time management techniques is getting rid of friction, otherwise it's death by a 1000 paper cuts in the long run. I expected some learning curve or some issues, so I was pleasantly surprised. Maybe I'll be unpleasantly surprised later, but so far so good.

Results
The quick test was a success:

I found it very easy to create folders and lists – just like I do on my hard-drive and in Outlook.
I like the idea that it’s an online/offline system. It's a S+S (software plus services) application.
You can tag stuff too.
It’s nice and crisp.

Notebook Summary
Here's a summary of the notebooks I created in Evernote for The Zen of Results:

Vision / Mission / Values - my internal compass.
Outcomes - my overall big picture accomplishments.

Action

To Dos - my daily outcomes – the value I bite off for the day.
Queue - my list for each project and my backlog of pending stuff.
Weekly Outcomes - my “Monday Vision” for the week’s planned results. It sets the weekly forest from the monthly trees.

Reference

Notes - any random dumps from links to whatever.
Thoughts - my little “ah has” or ideas – it’s a thought catcher.
Sessions - my running dumps where I’ll dump my notes from stickies or notes from the day (I keep a notepad file open so I always have a place to dump my brain without wasting think time)

Checklists / Scripts

Checklists - my checklists ;)
Scripts - my step by step instructions – for anything from a routine to an “improvement script” that I cycle through to improve.

Improvement / Results

Results Log - my daily log of stuff I accomplished. I only use it if I get in stuck mode or feel like I’m thrashing or churning or just don’t feel good about accomplishment.
Monthly results - my monthly snapshot of results – a simple bulleted list of things I did. Perfect for reviews and for sending to management each month.
Lessons Learned - my distillations on projects or from other people – it’s whenever I do the exercise.

My Related Posts

Jason Taylor on The Zen of Results

J.D. Meier — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 18:24:11 GMT

Jason shares how he implements the Zen of Results workflow as well as a dialogue around some sticking points with his team. Jason's one of the most effective people I know and his insights are always crisp and actionable.

Here's my key take aways:

Free yourself from your tasks to focus on delivering real value.
Be mindful of your results.
Avoid becoming attached to your backlog. Time changes what's important.
Use the weekly cycle and reflection to improve your ability to execute.
Reprioritize, delegate, and defer.
Watch out for common binds - randomization, poorly planned objectives, fuzzy priorities.
Create a workflow that revolves around delivering value, not completing tasks.
if you're not hitting your goals, figure out why - don't spiral into the pit of despair.
Results build momentum.

Additional Resources

The Zen of Results Free E-Book (Sources of Insight)
Rituals for Results (Sources of Insight)

My Related Posts

The Zen of Results Free E-Book

Personal Productivity Quotes

J.D. Meier — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 08:03:47 GMT

I shared a set of personal productivity quotes on Sources of Insight. There's some classics from Bruce Lee, Lao Tzu, Peter Drucker, Tony Robbins, and more. I framed the quotes for quick browsing. There's buckets for action, focus, time management and more. Enjoy!

The Zen of Results Free E-Book

J.D. Meier — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 00:10:06 GMT

Personal productivity is one of my passions. As one of my little experiments while I'm out of the office, I put together The Zen of Results E-Book. I turned a slide deck into a PDF to see if it makes it easier to share. It's brief (17 pages) and quick to flip through. More importantly though, it captures the heart of how you can improve your productivity, in a principle and pattern based way. It's a lightweight approach and it's easy to tailor for your situation.

The Approach in a Nutshell
Here's the keys to the approach:

Scannable outcomes to guide your activities and tasks.
Life frame to organize and balance the important hot spots in your life.
Monday Vision, Daily Outcomes, Friday Reflection to guide your week.
Daily Outcomes to guide your day.

Thoughts on Productivity
I'm not a fan of productivity for productivity's sake. Instead, I care that I'm working on the right things, I care that the time I spend working, is as efficient and effective as possible. I also care that I can carve out time in a way to achieve work/life balance. I care more about outcomes than activities and I work backwards from the end in mind. To put it another way, I put more emphasis on learning, improving, and enjoying, than simply going through the motions or putting in my time. I'll also add -- I like my downtime and my free time ;)

What The Zen of Results is Based On
I'd like to say it's based on Getting Things Done, but somehow we just never crossed-paths. Instead, it's born from a combination of the school of hard knocks, masters at Microsoft, software development practices, and my mentoring experience. when I first joined Microsoft, I was overwhelmed. I was on a sink or swim team with lots of trials by fire. I wanted to swim. Long story short, I learned from anyone and everyone around me. In fact, I started seeking out people in the company and comparing email practices, storing information, and how to become more effective. I learned a lot.

Software Engineering Meets Project Management Meets Productivity
When I joined patterns & practices some years ago, a few things happened. I had to figure out project management in the context of a competitive environment where the ultimate judge is results. Not just the results of what you produce, but how you produce results. How many dead bodies and what sort of wake do you leave behind?

Meanwhile, Agile was becoming increasingly pervasive and I had the benefit of working with folks like Ward Cunningham and Peter Provost. They taught me lot about the principles and concepts behind Agile. Somewhere along the way, I had figured out how to catalog, manage, and prioritize an endless stream of potential activity from various sources: my teams, my manager, my inbox, my head.

I learned that improving an hour, improved a day, improved a week, improved a month. I learned the value of sharing lessons learned. I learned the value of biting off what you could chew. I learned that it's better to finish what's on your plate and go up for seconds versus overflow your plate up front. I weaved in my timeboxing lessons from performance and my compartmentalizing lessons from security.

I used my lessons from my manager to focus on strengths over weaknesses to keep a high level of energy. Bottom line, the sum is more than the parts, but it's an integration of software development, project management and personal productivity with an emphasis on meaningful work for a meaningful life ... by design (that's my inner engineer talking).

Enjoy!

3 Great Results for Today

J.D. Meier — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 18:59:24 GMT

What are 3 great results for today? That's the question I ask to bootstrap my day. As simple as it sounds, I find it's the most effective way to cut through the fog each day. There's a lot of things I can do and there's lots of activities I'll be doing, but what are 3 great outcomes for today. That's it.

Example
This is an example of my 3 great results for this past Monday:

Ship Beta 1 of App Arch
Beta 1 Post for App Arch
Draft of Designing Your Architecture

Great is relative.

Why 3 things? It forces me to prioritize among a sea of potential results. Also, I can remember 3 things without writing them down, so throughout my day, I know what I'm working towards. I can say it in the hall.

If you manage endless to do lists and work on a bunch of stuff but don't actually get anything done, try focusing on 3 great results each day. It works.

Life Frame

J.D. Meier — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 19:53:00 GMT

What is your life frame? What are the key buckets in your life that you need to balance across? If you have a frame, you can balance your life through thick and through thin. If you have a life frame, you can more thoughtfully allocate your time and energy for maximum results. More importantly, when things aren't going well, you have a tool to help you spot where you are not investing enough.

Life Frame
This is a baseline of your personal portfolio of your most important assets:

Mind
Body
Emotions
Career
Financial
Relationships
Adventure

Note - if those buckets don't work for you, change them. It's a starter set.

I've been sharing this life frame with those I coach, and some colleagues and they've found it helpful, so now I'm sharing it more broadly. It's a great starting point when you're not getting what you want out of life.

Spread Your Energy and Time Across Your Buckets
Spread your energy and time across them. If your current investment's not working, turn up the dial on some. If your stuck in one area, then try turning up another. For example, if you're not getting the results you want at work, then crank up your relationships dial. Remember that with this portfolio, the sum is more than the parts. It's the net effect.

What Can Happen When You Don't Use the Frame
When I first got to Microsoft years ago, I didn't have this frame. Sure I knew about these areas of my life, but I didn't have the mental model of a portfolio. Instead, all I knew was that I would throw all my energy and hours at my career bucket. To put that in perspective, 80, 90, 100+ hours a week. The problem is I consistently got rated highly and produced results. But at what cost? Well, if you spend 100+ hours in one bucket, guess how much energy you're spending in others? Granted some buckets overlap, but I'm talking about when you really shine the spotlight on them.

Improve Your Approach Over Spend More Time
Time is a limited resources. So is your energy. Interestingly, while working on performance modeling, the light bulb went off. If I carve out a minimum for some buckets and a maximum for others, it would be a forcing function. What's the maximum I would throw at my career bucket? 60? 50? 40? Timeboxing my career bucket forced me to identify the real value of all my work and to heavily prioritize. It also forced me to find the most effective principles, patterns and practices for project management, personal productivity, running high-performance teams, ... etc. Which is better ... more time at the problem? ... or better techniques, more value, and a sustainable pace?

Set Boundaries (Minimums and Maximums)
The real lesson is that if you don't first set your boundaries, then you never really have a way to prioritize. For example, if you allocate fifty hours to your career bucket weekly, now you know how much to bite off at a time. Otherwise, you'll just work until everything's done, but there's always something more to do. Priorities, focus, and value are your friends.

As another example, I now continuously invest in my relationships bucket. For example, each week I have lunch with an old friend, and lunch with someone new. At Microsoft, and in life, it's what you know and who you know.

How To Use This
To get started, just put these categories on your whiteboard or a pad of paper. Take a look across your portfolio and figure out your current investments in time and energy. Look at your results. How well are you balancing? If you're on track, great. If not, try increasing your investment is some areas and lowering another. The goal is to improve the quality of your life. If you want to really put some focus in an area, try a 30 Day Improvement Sprint.

My Related Posts

Success Strategies

J.D. Meier — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 19:39:33 GMT

As part of my improvement sprint focused on leadership, I'm making my way through The First 90 Days, by Michael Watkins. In a nutshell, it's a guide for how new leaders can be successful. I think it's actually relevant for any new role or situation. It's a very practical guide, full of real-world lessons learned. In this book, Watkins basically studies the failures and success of people on the job and turns them into patterns and anti-patterns for success.

I'm finding that the book is full of gems of insight. In order to share with my friends, family, co-workers and mentees, I've been posting bite-sized nuggets on The Bookshare. The Bookshare is simply where I chunk information from my favorite books, down into bite-sized nuggets that are fast to read and easy to turn into action.

My latest post is a distillation of the recipe for success from The First 90 days, along with my key take aways. If you're a new leader or dealing with change, or simply want to be aware of key strategies for success at work, read my post on Ten Key Success Strategies.

The Zen of Zero Mail

J.D. Meier — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 20:48:40 GMT

You too can have a zero mail inbox, if you choose to. I chose to go zero mail in my inbox when I first joined Microsoft years ago, and I'm glad I did. With a single glance, I know whether I have new mail to deal with. I never have to scroll to see what my next actions are. At a more basic level, an empty inbox feels good. I thought it was just me, but others say the same.

Proven Over Time
It was tough when I first joined Microsoft. My inbox drove me. Eventually, I learned how to drive my inbox. I studied the masters around me. I also studied those that failed (there's no failure, only lessons.) I refined my approach over the years. Since then, I've successfully taught my mentees and others how to spend less time on administration and more time on results. Now I'm sharing with you.

Slides
Here's a short deck that steps you through and highlights the keys:

Slides: Download The Zen of Zero Mail Slides

Note
Normally, I work with my mentees one-on-one and tailor the approach for their particular scenario. It's a learning by doing approach. While I've blogged about clearing your inbox before, this is an experiment in how effectively I can share techniques in slides. If it works out, I'll do additional slides on focused topics. The more I can reduce friction around sharing, the more I can share. If you have tips or tricks for improving my slide sharing approach, send my way.

Focus and Energy

J.D. Meier — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 07:26:00 GMT

A colleague drew a chart on my board today. I'll summarize like this:

Procrastinators - Low energy and low focus
Disengaged - Low energy and high focus
Distracters - High energy and low focus.
Purposeful - High energy and high focus

I like new lenses. They make an old song new. In this case, it's a reminder of the power of focus.

Improving Your Feed Reading

J.D. Meier — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 12:22:00 GMT

I like to sweep my practices at the start of the year. My feed reading practices needed a revamp to reduce some friction. I have some friends ramping up on blogging and feed reading, so I figured I'd share my approach.

Steps for Improving Your Feed Reading
Here's the steps I used to improve my feed reading efficiency and effectiveness:

Step 1. Archive your feeds.
Step 2. Define your critical set.
Step 3. Carry your good feeds forward.
Step 4. Chop high-traffic feeds down to size.
Step 5. Add tools to your Web browser.
Step 6. Test it and modify your approach.

Step 1. Archive your feeds.
Create a clean slate by archiving your feeds. Personally, I find it easier to let things go if I archive a snapshot that I can always go back to.

I had a bunch of feeds I built up over the year, particularly for research projects. Although I periodically trimmed, I still had bloat. I find it's faster to archive everything and carry the good forward, than to try trim the fat. While doing this, I realized I had a large set of feeds that were really more of a reference set that just didn't belong in my day to day working set. For my working set, I realized that, rather than focus on which blogs to follow, I should figure out which circles of people to follow. In other words, rather than find the best spoutlets of information, find the best interactive forums of insight. I'm thinking I'll get more from connecting to the circles of people, conversations, energy and momentum, rather than just harvesting blogs on topics. A great blog is often a reflection of a great network.

Ultimately, the beauty of picking your feeds is you get to pick who you spend your time with.

Step 2. Define your critical set.
Carve out your critical set. This is your immediate circle versus your outer circle. These are the blogs you really want to stay on top of and actively participate in. These are your vital few. Use limits if it helps. For example, first identify your critical twenty.

Keep this list flat, even if it varies by topic. When you open your reader, this is the main list of feeds you first see, before going into any folders. The key here is to not exceed your capacity. You'll want a set of feeds you can make it through each day within whatever time-box you allocate. (For me, I budget 30 minutes a day for feeds, including commenting.) I find it's easier to add than to take away, so start small.

This is probably the single most important step. It's the difference between feeling bogged down in your feeds or being on top of your game.

Step 3. Carry your good feeds forward.
You've probably accumulated tons of great needles among your many haystacks. That's why it's important that you first carved out your critical set. Now you can simply carry forward all of your good feeds. Lump them under a general bucket. For me, I named a folder "Feeds," and dumped them all their.

What this means is, I open my reader and I immediately see my MUST list. With one click I see my SHOULD/COULD list. This is similar to opening up your inbox and only seeing the most important mails before checking any other folders you route things too.

Once you have your large bucket, you can consider carving out a couple of your priority niches, if it helps you focus. For example, I carved out a bucket for my fellow patterns & practices team. I also created buckets for Microsoft, personal development, blogging and productivity.

The key here is to be able to open your feeds, cycle through your priority list, and then be able to hit your niches or explore your larger "catch all" bucket. What you don't want is a large set of categories to bounce around in.

Step 4. Chop high-traffic feeds down to size.
If you have some high volume feeds, that seem to bog your down your randomize you, now is the time to slice and dice them proactively. It's hard to see the forest from the trees when you're chopping your way through the jungle. You can use two approaches:

Tools. One of the tools I'm liking is aideRSS. I'm using it to chop high-volume feeds like TechCrunch and BoingBoing down to size.
Human aggregators. This includes friends or people you trust in key areas that seem to always send you just the right information.

Step 5. Add tools to your Web browser.
Obviously, this depends on the tools you're using, but think in terms of finding, storing, and sharing. For me, I'm focused on three key things for now:

Links toolbar. Drag links to your favorite Web 2.0 sites (FlickR, Technorati, Digg ...etc) onto your Web brower's links toolbar.
del.icio.us. I added the del.icio.us buttons to my browser so I could quickly bookmark sites and posts.
StumbleUpon. I added StumbleUpon so that I can potentially benefit from circles of people slicing and dicing the Web. This will potentially help me refine my feed set over time, as well as discover new feeds and sites to pay attention to.

My overall model is to depend more on people and sites that I trust over time, as well as social networks. Otherwise, I can search as needed.

Step 6. Test it and modify your approach.
Cycle through your routine for at least a week, so you can test it and tune it. What I did was set a quota of commenting in five blogs per day. This helped me both find communities I might want to interact with, as well as get used to my feeds lists while using delicious and StumbleUpon.

The biggest change for me from the past, is that commenting is forcing me to focus more on the people participation than the raw knowledge of the site or blog. This is making me rethink feedback platforms in blogs and the various patterns of blog interaction.

Key Take Aways
I know there's plenty more I could do. For now, I thought it would be good to get back to the basics. Here's the key points:

Factor out your MUST feeds from your SHOULDs/COULDs. Less is more.
Chop your big feeds down to size with tools like aideRSS and with human aggregators.
Optimize your browser for your feed reading experience. Reduce as much friction as you can. Don't let your feed reading die a death of a thousand paper cuts.
Cycle through and test your approach. If something's not working, change your approach. Don't get stuck.

Reward Yourself in the Moment

J.D. Meier — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 13:36:43 GMT

Happy New Year! It's a new year and many of you will be setting new goals for yourself as part of your New Year's resolutions. I want to give you an important nugget you can use when you implement your goals and start to face some potential discomfort or pain. This insight may be exactly what you need if you've ever failed at changing a habit or meeting your goals in the past.

Creating New Habits and Reducing Friction in Your Goals
I actually wasn't sure whether to title this post with "catch yourself in the act," "reward yourself in the moment", or "how to change a habit" but I think "reward yourself in the moment" is a simple enough rule to remember and it's more precise. The key point is to reward yourself in the moment. If you do so, you can actually rewire your associations of pleasure to a task you don't typically enjoy. It has to be "in the moment" when you are actually "feeling" the pain. The very precise point is that it's in the moment versus after the fact. "Timing" and "feeling" are the keys.

We're Creatures of Habits That "Feel" Good
How many habits do you have that you don't enjoy? I don't mean a habit that's not good for you. I mean, are your habits things that make you feel good or things that make you feel bad ... in the moment? I bet that most of your habits you have, make you feel good and you do them for exactly that reason. It's in the moment. (You might feel bad afterwards or you might "think" the habits are bad, but you "feel" good while you actually do them)

"Thinking" vs. "Feeling" Associations
When I was younger, I didn't understood why you had to catch the dog while they are in the act of making a mess, and not after the fact. I knew the rule, but I didn't get how important the timing was. It's because you have to associate negative in the exact moment of "feeling." It's also why immediately rewarding your dog with a snack when they show good behavior has a powerful effect. Unless your dog is Scooby Doo, it isn't going to reflect (think) on its behavior. They are simply responding to feelings from one moment to the next. They'll move toward pleasure and away from pain. If you punish or reward them after the act, it's too late.

Reward in the Moment, Not After the Fact
Here's an example I heard where this finally hit home for me. In this example, you want your kid to clean their room, but they want to go out and play. You tell them they can go out to play when they are done. However, they "feel" pain the entire time while they are cleaning their room. They internalize hating it. The promise of playing when they are done doesn't help. They still hate how it "feels." What happens when you step in and sincerely thank them *while they are doing it*? They "feel" good and now associate pleasure while cleaning their room (assuming you showed them appreciation in a way that resonates for them.)

How You Can Apply It
You can use this insight on a daily basis to reduce friction and find the joy in tasks you normally hate. The key is to find ways to enjoy how something "feels" when you normally don't, while it's in the moment, not after the fact. You'll get better at this, once you figure out your own reward patterns, so it's a skill that gets easier over time. Since it's a little bit of thoughtful work, don't overload yourself. Just pick a few things that hold you back the most and work on those first. The challenge with this is that you have to figure out your personal reward system. The upside is, your the best person to know what you like and don't.

You can actually game yourself to enjoy some things that you normally don't. Here's how I applied this to my workouts when I was "feeling" the pain. When I realized that the pain was growth, I suddenly "felt" differently about the "pain" and it became pleasure. I didn't just "think" differently; I "felt" differently about it (your thoughts create your feelings.) I also make it a habit to play my favorite music so I associate pleasure in the moment. This is an important distinction. It's why promises of rewards at the end of the month don't work. It's disconnected from "in the moment."

On the job, I try to catch people in the moment, and show appreciation "in the moment," particularly when they are performing a task they don't enjoy. A little appreciation, at the right time, goes a long way.

How Not to Reward Yourself
I'll use the principle of contrast to show how NOT to reward yourself. Let's say you want to drop 10 pounds this month. One way is to tell yourself you will reward yourself by going to your favorite restaurant when you are done. Well, you might give yourself motivation, but you haven't changed how you feel when you workout. If you don't find a way to enjoy your workout, then you may eventually give up.

Chunk It Down
Find a way to enjoy all the friction points you feel along the way. If you work out in the morning, this includes finding a way to enjoy getting out of bed. Sure this takes some thought and preparation up front, but eventually you'll not only get used to your routine, you will enjoy it. We're creatures of habit. In this case, you're building good habits that you'll keep up simply because you'll enjoy them. How many habits do you keep up that you really don't enjoy?

Best Wishes on Meeting Your Goals
Best wishes on meeting your goals and changing your habits in the New Year. I hope you find this nugget of insight helpful and use it as another tool for your personal effectiveness.

Rituals for Results

J.D. Meier — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 06:56:00 GMT

Routines help build efficiency and effectiveness. Consistent action over time is the key to real results. If you add continuous improvement or Kaizen to the picture, you have an unbeatable recipe for success. The following are some of my rituals for results:

Put in your hours. I heard that Hemingway wrote for two hours a day. The first hour he edited the day before. The next hour, he wrote new. My marathon runner friend says the key for her is putting in her hours.
Schedule It. If you schedule it, it happens. ("One of these days is none of these days.”)
Carve out time for what's important. You don't have time, you make time. "Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion." - Parkinson's law. "Things which matter most, should never be at the mercy of things which matter least." - Goethe.
Model the best. Success leaves clues. Using reference examples can help you shave off tons of wasted time. Who can you learn from that will take your game to the next level?
Expand your toolset. When you only have a hammer, everything's a nail. Adding new tools to your toolbelt can exponentially improve your results.
Build a library of reference examples. Collect working examples to draw from.
Build feedback loops. I think feedback loops help us improve and keep us going. For me, I use a sounding board of people I trust.
Have a compelling "why." A compelling "why" is what will give you the energy and get you back on your horse, when you get knocked down.
Have a compelling "what." Your "what" should be a great manifestation of your "why." Use it to guide your course. This is your vision.
Check your ladder. Is it up against the right wall? Nothing's worse than climbing a ladder to find your destination was wrong.
Work backwards from the end in mind. Working backwards from where you want to be can help make you more resourceful. Look to working examples and reverse-engineer.
Stay flexible in your approach. Be flexible in the "how." If you have a compelling "what" and "why," you'll find the strategies. If something's not working, change your approach. Sanity check by asking yourself "is it effective?" See The Better Adapted You Are, the Less Adaptable You Tend to Be.
Think in terms of a portfolio of results. This means both producing results in different categories as well as having some results you count on and some that are risks. Diversify your results over having all your eggs in one basket.
Balance your buckets. Balance your results across your meaningful buckets. For me, I use a life frame (mind, body, emotion, career, financial, relationships) Within my career bucket, I make time for results, thinking, administration, improvement and relationships.
Establish a rhythm of results. Don't let the tail wag the dog. Factor your creation cycles from your release cycles. Your release rate should match absorption rate and demand. Your production rate doesn't need to be tightly bound to your release. For instance, you could write your eight blogs posts on Sunday, then trickle out over the week. See Drum-Buffer-Rope.
Deliver incremental value. Chunk it down. Focus on value-delivered over backlog burndown. It can be easy to be productive, but ineffective. Focusing on delivering value, keeps you asking the right questions and making the right calls on priorities. Remember that backlogs tend to suffer from rot over time. If you focus on value-delivered, you'll miss less windows of opportunity, or at least you're considering those windows when you prioritize. The other secret here is that focusing on value can be more energizing than tackling an overwhelming backlog, even if all you really changed is perspective ;)
Know the sum is better than the parts. Consistent action over time produces real results. Think about how much you've accomplished over the long run, just by showing up at work every day and doing your job. See How To Overcome Resistance.
Improve your network. Who you spend time with probably has the largest impact on getting results, personal growth, your quality of life ... etc. Tip - build a mind map of your personal and professional networks and see where you need to tune, prune or plant.
Play to your strengths. Improving your strengths can help you achieve more than improving your weaknesses. The exception is liabilities. Reduce the liabilities that hold you back.
Reduce your context switching. Context switching is one of the worst productivity killers. If you're spending more time switching than doing, it's a problem. Consider how you apply the following software patterns and practices: batching, remote facade, implicit lock, lazy load, coarse-grained lock, proxy, RI and FI, buffers, and Drum-Buffer-Rope.
Manage energy for results. Manage energy, not time for results. When you're "in the zone," you get results. How well do you get things done when you're emotionally or mentally drained? See Manage Energy, Not Time and The Secret of Time Management.
Use focus as your weapon for results. Focus is your friend. A batched and focused effort can produce amazing results. Few problems withstand sustained thinking or effort. 30 Day Improvement Sprints, Why 30 Day Improvement Sprints, Making 30 Day Improvement Sprints.
Reduce friction. Create streamlined execution paths. create a fast path for stuff you need to do frequently. There's probably a few scenarios where you have more friction in your process than you'd like. I use 30 Day Improvement Sprints for my perpetual friction points.
Use checklists. I'm a fan of using checklists. If the air force can use them to avoid task saturation and improve effectiveness, so can I. See Execution Checklists and How To Avoid Task Saturation.
Build a system of profound knowledge. See The Deming System of Profound Knowledge and Deming's System of Profound Knowledge This is about thinking of the system as a whole, knowing the impact of changes in the system, focusing on knowledge management, and taking into consideration the people-side of things. Remember that just because you might not be in a learning organization, doesn't mean that you can't set an example.
Do more, think less. I'm not advocating thoughtless actions. I'm countering actionless thoughts. Thoughtful actions produce results. If you're already acting on your ideas great, otherwise, action is the best oil for rusty results.

Try the ones you like. Experiment with the ones you don't. You might get surprised. As Tony would put it, "If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten". Adopt a growth mind-set over a fixed mind-set. I'd be interested in hearing success stories or your favorite rituals for results -- what techniques have personally served you well?

Kaizen

J.D. Meier — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 07:48:00 GMT

Kaizen is a Japanese term for continuous improvement. A little Kaizen goes a long way over time. From a personal development standoint, it's key for overcoming resistance.