Do Busy Right - The Task and Attention Management Podcast

This one's about optimism and pessimism, and what that has to do with productivity. I and the whole thing is a productivity concern for me. We talk about confidence around these parts. That's because I think confidence ties to productivity. The tie there is imposter syndrome. We struggle to understand what confidence is. But confidence is fundamental to what we're trying to do, particularly as kno...

I want to talk about the history of knowledge work productivity. And it's going to involve a lot of different names. It's going to involve the triumvirate, well, the quadrumvirate (that's the real word), the Mount Rushmore.   Only through understanding what they were thinking about can we extend that thinking. Then we can work on knowledge work productivity.    We'll go all the way back to the sta...

I started out talking about the lies of productivity, but I'm going to change to fables because it's just things we collectively believe without much evidence. Plus, I don't think anybody's intentionally trying to mislead us. We just move without much actual data.   A couple of those fables collided with a post by Cal Newport with the evocative title of "productivity rain dances", which is a prett...

Most everybody involved in knowledge work is involved with technology. It's what we do. We deal in information, so we deal with information technology. We believe that it makes us more productive – "better" at our jobs.   But what is the evidence that information technology is helping us be more productive? After all, that is its purpose in the modern workplace. I'd suggest that many people believ...

There's an article in The New Yorker "What If The Attention Crisis Is All A Distraction" by Daniel Immerwahr. I think the attention problem (if there is one) is important for us to understand and resolve and, frankly, to have a debate about.   I thought I'd report out on this article, and the state of play. Where are we? What's the evidence? How do we form an opinion on what's going on with societ...

It's time to update on philosophy of work; I've got some more info for you. A lot of this is going to be review, but I think it's absolutely critical that we put ourselves in the right mindset towards work. It's important because work is what actually produces the things that we then associate with productivity. Unfortunately, there's a lot of a lot of weird stuff going on in our heads about work....

One of the primary uses of information is to help us learn. When we are explicitly learning, we work to collect information. It works the other way, as well. As we are exposed to new information, we have the opportunity to learn.   The relationship between learning and merely storing information in our brains is mysterious. Many people would say that 'learning is more than storing facts', but when...

This episode is about the history of personal information management as viewed through a now ancient technology, PAPER   We'll have a couple of takeaways:   One is human beings have been trying to manage their own personal information for a long time, so we don't need to be so worried about the current need – we're humans so we manage information.   We'll glean wisdom from these previous efforts t...

We need a new operating system.   We need one that is specifically dedicated to knowledge work. So I'm going to point you to one that already exists. When we start talking about ways to manage our information, the tech is really important, and I'll explain why. But the tech is dealt with and managed through some sort of overall plan, and some tech is better than other tech, and we'll talk about al...

This episode is about what it is I'm trying to do with attention compass. And why I hate current productivity "help".   I developed this AC stuff. I didn't discover it. I didn't invent it. These are the principles, and they produce specific results. I make no bones about the fact that a lot of people went before me did a lot of really good thinking about productivity.   AC is derived from Stephen...

I rarely talk about what we need to do to have a meaningful, successful career.   So I gathered some sources...   The first I'll bring up is Seth Godin, the author. The book that we'll look at today is called Linchpin. He's got some things to say about being successful in the modern era.   On this podcast, we're looking at knowledge work, at improving it and getting better at it. We also look at t...

If you've listened to this podcast for very long, you know that I'm fascinated with human performance.   Particularly when it comes down to work, how do we do work? How do we get better at work? I don't think there's a ton of knowledge out there, so I'm trying to move the needle a little bit here, and get us some more information about this thing.   We know that our work is stressful. We know ther...

I'm interested in this difference between busy and productive, if there is one. It's hard to tell the difference, even from the inside. I think this has something to do with the relationship between the terms.   Busy is a state that we are in intermittently, occasionally, as circumstances drive us. We mean that our time is fully or somewhat over committed. It is a term of reaction. We would like t...

I want to explore what we mean when we say we don't like to work, or we don't like our work, or we don't like a task.   A buddy of mine, Justin Janowski, captured this recently saying about a task, "It didn't feel like work, it felt like hanging out with friends and having discussions." Punchline: I think he was referring to recording marketing videos in an all day session - something many people...

I was having a sales conversation, discussing several ideas around managing tasks and attention. I happened to mention the background of the term multitasking and his eyes got really big and he started asking questions.   I realized that he was not familiar with the story of how we arrived at the term "multitasking" and so I told it to him. He was fascinated and realized that there is really very...

Anytime you talk about task management, you talk about actually doing things. It's one thing to know you have something to do. It's another thing to prioritize well and what I have to say will have something to do with prioritization. But actually doing things has a lot to do with the third thing which is, given a prioritized task, will you do it?   The challenge here: What do we know about contex...

I got this question from one of the participants in the current Attention Compass group training – "What should I be recording/capturing?"   I had mentioned that I kept Book Notes. There was some debate on the usefulness of capturing Book Notes, around the usefulness/efficiency/etc. of broad capture of information.   For about 75 years now, people have been thinking about 'ubiquitous capture". I'l...

The 0 - 60 - 0 model of vacation and time off   It's pervasive in the Knowledge Work culture. I haven't decided what to advise for this.   This is less than 10 minutes. I've given you 40+ minutes of your life back. Take the time you would have given listening to me and give it to someone else.   Spend time over Thanksgiving and Christmas (in the US) with people.   Give them your attention.

Our attention is our primary productive asset. Therefore, we need to protect it. Today, we'll talk about how to do that in the face of modern technology.   I'll describe the neuropsychological model of attention, how it gets abused by modern technology and what we can do about it.   This is critical understanding – your productive asset is being hijacked right under your nose and used for nefariou...

We're looking at burnout, overwork, these kinds of things. They are a clear indication that we're doing busy wrong and I don't like that. I'm going to talk about one way to combat the problem. How to decline work assignments. But we talk about burnout, we talk about work life balance, we talk about all these challenges that we face around our level of busy in the modern workplace. And I think thos...

We had group class yesterday. It was our second of eight group meetings to implement attention compass.   Nick is in the class, and he was talking about communication and interruption. Nick's the one that has the office job with teammates and folks that that can reach out to him anytime. He has very little control over who can hit him up. So we were thinging about controlling communication, both e...

I talk about the tool set for the kind of information and attention management that Attention Compass provides. I get a lot of questions about: I use tool X. What about tool Y? What tools should I use? Most of this revolves around "where should I keep my stuff?" And we'll talk about that today. When I say tool, I mean online service, system, database, to keep my stuff. Google Keep, Apple Notes, Cl...

Fable: It's quick and easy to figure out what I should do, or I just know what I should do. It shouldn't take much effort. Corollary: I'm wasting time managing my stuff when I need to do things. Spoiler alert, it's not that easy, and I'll talk about the reasons. For now, if we have this mindset it leads to poor management: I'll just get to the office and whip out a piece of paper and I'll make my...

Do Busy Right – philosophy and some basic mindsets I'll start out with a client story. Her name's Kelly, and we were talking about attention compass. "Well", she said, "I don't know anything about all that. But I admire the Larry Zen". I loved it. But, I didn't know what "Larry Zen" meant. So, I asked. And she said, "nothing seems to bother you, nothing seems to get under your skin. You don't get...

What do you mean? I don't think I'm doing busy wrong.   I don't really get this one directly, but it's a consistent subtext when I talk to folks, and it's not that I misunderstand. For years, I thought I wasn't swinging a golf club wrong, but   I think maybe people take it a little bit too personally, let's think about why this might be so.   The cultural idea: One's ability to use technology in t...