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Hanging out on Twitter this morning, @jesseblayne made a remark about getting started. I replied with a more or less a blog post’s worth of info packed into 140 characters. This that blog post.

First, some benefits:

  1. Writing makes you think, thinking helps you learn.
  2. Having a list of tasks you know took one hour is incredibly valuable, you know what your time is worth.
  3. Saves time over the long term. You do your thinking ahead of time allowing yourself to rapidly complete tasks.

I have a system that works really well for me, and could work really well for you. It requires a bit of work, but it’s not hard. And it requires a timer. The work is broken down into hour chunks, and this is non-negotiable. The whole system depends on being able to walk away from a task in an hour.

The system is multi-staged. There is a natural progression from forming an idea to executing it.

Let’s get started.

When I have an idea for something, or I need to get things done, here’s the typical sequence:

  1. I write, draw or jot down lists on scrap paper. I have a bunch of B5 paper left over from a previous project, or I’ll fold letter size paper in half, 5 1/2 by 8 1/2. Folding A4 in half is B5 is I recall correctly.
  2. These notes are then (or later) entered into a web application task list. I use the Trac system, same as WordPress (just coincidence, Trac is a good system.)
  3. The Trac tasks are triaged and refactored into ~1 hr chunks. For example, I’m working on a new chapter for Blog Post Engineering (Repurposing). This was initially entered into Trac as a single task, but that’s too long. I need to spend about 10 minutes and break out all the section of that chapter as separate tasks of about 45 minutes.
  4. Execute! Once the tasks are chunked down into small pieces, it’s easy to select something interesting to work on.

Write it down

There is something magical about writing things down. It makes us think at the same time as taking action. Synergy. There’s probably weird neurological changes happening, neurons firing, synapses connecting. Or whatever.

All I know is that when I write it down, I learn it better.

I suspect most bloggers are the same (or they wouldn’t be bloggers).

Enter into Trac tasking

I use the Trac system.

You can use anything you want. Basecamp is great system if you’re collaborating; I’m using it for a couple of projects.

The key thing is that following up your writing with a little data entry further locks the task into your mind. It makes you think about what you’re doing. In other words, the data entry itself isn’t all that important, it’s the thinking that’s most important, and entering the task into your todo list (or whatever) makes you think.

Triage and refactor into 1 hour chunks

This is what an hour’s work looks like to me:

  1. Review previous hour’s tasks, check for pointers to next tasks
  2. Review Trac tasking
  3. Do the work. This should take between 30 to 45 minutes.
  4. Document the work, triage and refactor as necessary. Documentation is best accomplished as you work. It makes it a lot easier to keep track of what got done, and you capture really important details along the way.
  5. Task out the next hour. Once your finished with the actual work, you should have 2 or 3 little tasks that get you started into the next hour of work. Write these at the end of your hour summary for review the start of the next hour.

Execute!

I cannot explain in words how phenomenally productive this system has been for me. Once the tasking is down at the hour level, I don’t have to think. I know I can pretty much tackle any task and an hour later, I’m done with it. Or if not done, I’ve made enough progress to feel really good about it.

I suspect it’s not really the exact system that matters. The important part is I’ve found a system that fits how I work, my attention span, allows me to balance the fun stuff (graphics and coding) with maintenance and testing.

Handling open-ended tasks

Sometimes, a task goes into the system that turns out to be a minor career.

For example, about a week ago, I needed to run rake db:migrate to synch up my data model with the MySQL database for a little Ruby on Rails project.

4 hours later, this has turned into figuring out which of 4 possible combinations of MySQL are installed on the Macbook. Not fun. This task still isn’t factored properly. When it is, there will be a blog post somewhere on how to figure out which of 4 MySQL installations one needs for which purpose.

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I’ve had several screencast tasks hanging around in my todo list.

So I just spent an hour and scripted 3 of them. They will be much easier to make now that I know what I want to say. Each are written “out by the numbers.”

Sam Carpenter of CentraTel pounds repeatedly on the notion of linearizing your systems. This is a great notion. It works because it’s true, processes proceed one step at a time.

Which leads to the following observation: there is a cognitive difference between creating a process and following a process.

This is a no-brainer, really.

What’s more important is how these activities are monetized.

  1. Creating processes is a high dollar skill. It takes time, effort, and experience to create working processes.
  2. Following a procedure takes much less time, effort and experience.

By “monetizing,” I mean how these activities get invoiced.

Figuring stuff out should be invoiced at a high rate, provided the activity is novel (that is, you can’t outsource it). In other words, figuring out what to build is high dollar.

Actually building it is low dollar.

Whether the high dollar person needs to know all the details of the low dollar activity is a different discussion, and there are strong cases to be made on either. Ultimately, it depends on the nature of the work involved, and the expectations of who is doing the work and who is paying for it.

Think about your current blocker, that task you need to get done, but for some reason it’s not happening. Can you take a lateral approach?

Write down the very first thing that you need to do, even if it’s as simple as opening your web browser to log in to your project management system.

What’s your second step?

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Speed of Implementation: initiation and execution

June 23, 2010

Reviewing the results of 2009, it’s clear that speed of implementation can be divided into two parts:

Initiation, how fast to get started. Initiation is easy to understand, if you can’t get started on something right away, or at least Real Soon Now (for real), you’re unlikely to succeed at it.
Execution, how fast until payoff. [...]

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Frame-controlled by a vendor

June 12, 2010

Here’s the deal: the web allows consumers to publicly vent, complain, point out, and generally make their dissatisfaction about a product or service known.
And you know what?
99% of the time it doesn’t matter at all. All it does is make the complaining person look like… a complainer.
I just had an experience on [...]

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Reconciling Quickbooks $0.0 opening balance

January 31, 2010

Note: This article was first published on Oct 28, 2007 @ 19:21. The material is still good. I’m republishing to bring it forward for tax season, and for testing the behavior of RSS on republished material.

Undoing multiple reconciliations in Quickbooks may roll the internal opening balance for a reconciliation to $0.0, despite whatever [...]

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Morning Due Diligence — Making that first cup of coffee count!

January 30, 2010

What do you do in the morning? Surf the World Wide Web? Me too! Such a waste of time… or is it?
Since you’re surfing it anyway, surf it with a purpose instead of wasting time looking for Paris Hilton’s latest antics (we miss you Paris!). Use that time to check up on your personal and [...]

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Dealing With Self-Appointed Internet and Social Media “Police”

January 22, 2010

Here’s how you deal with emotional issues of getting tooled by self-appointed arbiters of the internet and the new social media applications. That is, when you get “policed” by the chattering classes.
First, let’s examine how the real world works. Consider:

Fact: If Brad Pitt does it, he’s cool.
Fact: If you do the same [...]

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Actions you can take that help your personal economy and make you feel good

November 1, 2009

For a while, I was posting regularly on financial and economic matters. The need for that passed as the news became common knowledge. That is, the problems became real for ordinary people, not just for nutjobs screaming from the fringe.
But it’s not over yet. Even if the recession is officially [...]

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OpenOffice vs MS Word: Which is better?

October 21, 2009

I’ve purchased every edition of MS Office from before Office 95 through Office 2003.
I’ve rarely used any of them. They have always been “required” purchases because everyone else uses them. This isn’t “peer pressure” because I don’t really care how other people format documents. Well, maybe it is [...]

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The Fear — And Consequences — Of Failure

October 19, 2009

I was walking around the block just a few moments ago, in lieu of actually getting real work done, and my big toe started to twinge. The big toe on my right foot just felt all jammed up. Kind of making me limp a little bit. As it turns out, I jammed [...]

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