Simplicity Rules

People say the way to understand how you spend your money is to keep a log of all transactions. One of these days, I’m going to do it. First, I’m working on the same concept for how I spend my time.

Yesterday I picked up a little book called Manage Your Time. Since it held my interest for a number of minutes at the store, I bought it. It is full of ideas and encouragement, one of which is time-logging.

Today I am keeping a log of everything I do. Every thirty minutes an alarm goes off on my computer to remind me to log that half hour’s work. The idea is that after a few days I’ll be able to see a pattern and make some changes.

So far, the effect has been that I have treated the logging as mini-deadlines, wanting to get something of substance done by the next half hour.

Semi-related link: Mark Wieczorek’s Get Back to Work.

… with a technology

It must be Valentine’s Day because I’ve been thinking a lot about love lately. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about programmers and how we love our platform, browser, or programming language. What a bad idea. Don’t take my word for it–ask my father.

All Dad knows about programming he learned in his required punch card FORTRAN class in college. What Dad really knows about is tractors. Dad loves old Caterpillar tractors and is spending his retirement collecting/restoring them. These are tank-like yellow behemoths that specialize in pushing and pulling. If Dad needed to move a palette of, say, fine china, his Caterpillar could do the job, but not very well.

Dad would use a more agile tractor, like his fork lift, to move any palette. He would save his Caterpillar for moving a tree.

Programming languages are the same way. Some are heavy lifters, some are more nimble. I love Perl, but it takes a little bit of extra work to get it going on a Windows server. I have never written a shell script in PHP. I know about Mono, but I’m not so enamoured with ASP.NET that I have to run it on Unix, too.

It’s okay to love your technology, but don’t be in love. When it comes to programming, don’t be monogamous. Sleep around. You will be much better prepared for any project if you know as much as you can about your options.

I’m certainly not the only one who gave 43Things a shot after the Salon article that has been so widely discussed. Suffice it to say that the “there’s no such thing as bad publicity” adage probably holds true here. Their traffic (via Alexa) certainly seems to point to a rash of new interest:

The number of visitors who have signed up and like what 43Things is doing almost certainly outnumbers those who have been using the service and now feel betrayed. Plus, is it really such a bad thing to be associated with Amazon? It’s like being asked your biggest weakness in a job interview.

43Folders’ biggest weakness is Amazon. That’s pretty good.

Working from home since 2001 has taught me a lot about productivity. My first summer was spent in San Francisco without DSL or WiFi living in a house with one phone line and five people.

It could only get better. When I moved back to Oregon, I set myself up with a separate room. Unfortunately, I shared it with the laundry. My next space, the basement.

Now I have finally carved myself a near-perfect location and I have done some of my best work this past year. With all the excuses gone, though, I found there were still problems in the distractions. Some of these time-wasters are even part of my job.

Enter the POWER HOUR. Yes, the capitalization is necessary. For one hour during my workday, I focus exclusively on one project. Anything that could be a distraction is turned off and ignored. If I gets ideas, I write them down and deal with them at the end of an hour.

Distractions to eliminate:

Email

Instant messaging

Telephone (ringer off)

Cell phone (completely off)

Radio – even music

Another one to add to that list is television. I didn’t include it because I learned long ago that it needs to be completely eliminated. If the TV is on, I’m never doing real work.

I work for an hour or so and then start my POWER HOUR around 10. My original reason for this is because I listen to NPR and Talk of the Nation begins at 11. I’ve found that early is better anyway, because productivity breeds productivity. If I have my POWER HOUR earlier in the day, it helps my post-POWER HOUR work as well.

Why not have a POWER DAY? I need some of my distractions for my work. Say an emergency email or phone call comes in from a client. It can probably wait an hour, but rarely can it wait all day. Also, it takes a lot of effort to focus on one project for an entire hour.

About six months ago, I moved to an office. It’s still just me, but I’m away from the additional distractions that intrinsically exist in working at home. Of course, there is a whole new collection of distractions, so that means from 10 to 11, the POWER HOUR is in effect.