Tool: STOP!

This week my tool in battling procrastination is STOP. It’s not a fancy acronym. It’s just what I say to myself when I find my mind wandering off into the land of distraction. I work at home, by myself, so I can actually say it out loud. And while saying it, I use my physiology. I firmly clap my hands once and sit up straight. This puts me in a state to take action.

When I’m in the right state, I decide on what to do next. I can continue with the task I was doing, or decide that I need a break from that. At the least I determine my next actions and put them on my digital scratchpad (Google Tasks in my case). So far I find this is helping me to get more done, without any complex system. Just Stop and think.

By the way, you can also mark the completion of a task in this way, by saying DONE, supported by your physiology. It anchors the good feeling of completing a task and your subconscious will crave that good feeling. I hope….

Progress: Information Diet

So I’ve been on my information diet for a few days. It’s early to tell if it’s a success, but I’ve noticed a couple of things. First of all, cutting down on most of the feeds in Google Reader seriously took away a big distraction from actual work I want to get done. I used to have a notifier, so everytime there was a new item, I would know about it and check it. Getting rid of the notifier and watching the feeds once a day has been very helpful. The same goes for e-mail, but it’s harder. I become a bit restless and I find myself wondering if I’m not missing anything important that needs a quick reaction. But I’m sticking to checking it three times a day.

A side effect of my info diet, is that I’m running out of excuses to do something else than what I should be doing. I get to points in my tasks where I want to procrastinate, but I’ve taken away a lot of the distractions that allowed me to do that. As I figured, it’s not the distractions, it’s me. Duh. I knew that, of course, but I can actually feel it and experience it now. So that’s a good thing.

I don’t think it’s going to be hard to keep up this information diet. I don’t miss the articles I’m skipping and I’m slowly letting go of the fear of missing critical e-mail messages. I think my next step is working on my physical and mental energy levels. Procrastination always sets in when my energy is low. Well, more on that later.

Action: Information Diet

I’ve decided to put myself on an information diet. I have found that I have set up so many information channels that I spend too much time and attention on keeping up what’s happening where. Now I won’t go cold turkey and I will keep my channels, like Google Reader, set up, maybe clean them up a little. My information diet will involve three steps at this moment:

1. I will take inventory of what’s on my information menu
2. I will cut down the frequency of checking for information
3. I will filter out information on the highest level

What’s on the menu?
This is the first thing I will do. I will make a list of what information sources I regularly check. These include:

• E-mail accounts (2)
• Social networks (3)
• Google reader feeds (20+)
• News websites (just 1)
• Other websites (5+)

For each individual item on the menu I will decide whether I want to keep it or skip it. If I skip it, I will remove it from Google Reader or my bookmarks. I want to end up with a clean list of information sources that have value for me.

How often will I check it?
For every item on my menu I will decide how often and when I check for new information. For instance, e-mail will be checked 3 times a day, at 10am, 3pm and once in the evening, depending on my schedule. Feeds will be checked once a day max, and I may even take it down to once a week. Do I really need social networking news (Mashable) every day? I think not.

What will I actually read?
I will scan more and read less, at least that’s the plan. I will look through the titles of my information items and only read further if I think the information has value for me. I see different levels of value in information. It can be roughly divided into:

• Information I can use directly for work
• Stuff that’s more like general knowledge in my fields
• Nice to know and nice to forget

Most times I’ll just look for the first level, other times I may just read some of the forgettable stuff, to take my mind of things.

What do I expect out of this diet?
I expect that I will keep my head clear for important tasks during the day. I also think it will teach me the relative value of different kinds and sources of information. It’s good to know that life goes on, even if you miss a day or two of new information. I will post my results on this blog.

Start of the new year

I have been on holiday to Florida, to recharge the battery, and I’m happy to say that I feel fully recharged. I’ve taken the time to take in the sights and enjoy the weather, even it was a little colder than usual. I also took time to think about self improvement stuff and I did a lot of writing about it in my notebooks.

One thing I’ve decided for this blog, is that I’m not going to plan it out too much. I will take one step at a time and when I get an idea that appears useful for the blog, I’ll just add it. That’s it. I also think it’s a good way to go about self improvement. You get an idea, you try it, you evaluate it. The important thing is keeping an open mind. I did that in Florida and really got into a good flow with a lot of ideas. Now comes the hard part: action.

My first action will be to put myself on an information diet. More on that later.

Call me Ismael…

As this blog is a personal account of my quest for self improvement, I thought I’d start the year by introducing myself.

So who is this “Self Improver”?
My name is Paul. I’m 43 years young, married/no kids. I’ve always been drawn to creative activities, like composing, singing, dancing and photography. I ended up being an IT Consultant for 15 years, before quitting my job in 2008 to figure out what I want to do. Since then I’ve been getting back in touch with my creative self, and I’m now a dance & fitness instruct0r, professional photographer and budding web designer.

Why “Self Improver”?
I’ve always been somewhat of a perfectionist and my own worst critic. I always feel that this or that could better. Not just about myself. As a consultant, improvement has been a driving force for me. As long as I could make people work smarter, I was a happy guy.
For myself, self improvement means trying out lots of lifehacks for a bit and moving on to the next in an unstructured way. That’s what I want to do different in 2010.

What do you want to accomplish?
I have no goals set in stone for 2010. Part of the journey is setting goals, making plans and seeing what works. I do have some areas I would like to improve on, but I’ll make my choices on that later. Some areas of improvement I’ve identified are:

1. Procrastination
2. Getting things done
3. Writing
4. Assertiveness
5. Work Life Balance
6. Social Networking Tools
7. Confidence
8. Exercise
9. Healthy eating
10. First impressions
11. Personal Knowledge Management

Now I know that’s a lot and each of those can have a number of goals, but it’s good for me to have this list as a starting point. I’m a multi-tasker, so part of the challenge for me will be to make choice of a limited number of things to work on at the same time.

So what’s next?
I will be in Miami, FL on vacation for the first two weeks of 2010. I will use that time to figure out the plan for my self improvement and this blog. When I return, I will make a post about the plan and my first goals and the journey will have officially started.

If you have any tips for me on self improvement or whatever, let me know through the comments.

Learn from the past. Plan for the future. Live Today!

52 Weeks To Self Improvement

I’m starting on a project called 52 weeks to self improvement. Like many folks out there I’m a self improvement junkie. I spend a lot of time on the web searching for life hacks, tips on getting things done, ways to boost my confidence…you know the drill.

It isn’t a very structured way to go about self improvement. In the time that I’ve been bouncing from one source to the next I could have actually improved myself, which was the goal anyway. So for 2010 I’ve decided to structure my self improvement efforts. I will use this blog both as a structuring tool and notebook on my progress, successes and failures. I will plan as I go along, so I will see how many times I will write.

The idea is that I’ll try life hacks and other self improvement tips I find on the internet and report on them. I also may try some of my own ideas. In the end what I would like to have is a set of tools that work for me.

In my next post I’ll explain who I am and what’s my starting position. I have no expectations about anyone following this or commenting, but if you happen to have any comments for me, don’t be a stranger.