Did the diet work?

Well…it’s been a while since I’ve posted to the blog. What happened?

Did I go crazy from the lack of msnbc.com? Think maybe I couldn’t cope without knowing what was going on in the world? Wait! Presidential election? You mean there was an election? I finally checked out msnbc.com today and that guy looks nothing like Bush!

Just kidding. It seems that I was so productive at work that I was sent into a spiral of work that nearly led me to complete burnout. I am not kidding at all. The big downside of being productive is you might be expected to kick it up a notch. And like some people, it took me a while to get skillful in understanding my limitations and the need to pace oneself.

The great thing is I am still alive. I’ve learned a ton of life lessons all along the way, and I regret not sharing them with my readers.

But all that is about to change. As you can see, I have revamped the blog and I will be making more exciting changes along the way.

With renewed vigor I bring back Possess Less Exist More to help others find fulfillment in life from within instead of from without.

Special thanks to all my friends who stuck with me through my difficult times (you know who you are).

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To paraphrase Al Pacino, “The more I try to get productive, the more they try to suck me back in to un-productivity.”

Since I was getting my work done so quickly, people in my office started asking me if I could “help” them (do their work for them) or “discuss a few things” (talk about nothing).

These time vampires (to borrow a term from Dan Kennedy) literally sucked all my productive time away.

Well, today I will employ a tactic my 4-year-old uses—the NO tactic.

I have written about it before, and have used it to great success. But it seems that when you start getting more productive, the time vampires smell blood. They figure that since you’re not “busy” you have time for them.

So, I will be cultivating my “busy” image even more. And when people ask me for help, I will use some phrases like:

“I’d love to, but I really have to take care of something right now.”

“I only have a minute because I’m on my way to X. Let me see what I can do now.” –Only at the end of yesterday did I employ this tactic (because it was true). But by forcing people to deal with me right then and there and putting a short time limit on it, those “emergencies” completely disappeared.

Do not and I repeat DO NOT let them say they can talk to you about it later. With the time vampires, if you leave the door open for them to “ask you later” then by gosh they sure will come by and ask you something later.

We’ll see how combining NO tactics with my media fast improves my productivity.

On the LeBron Front

It’s amazing what you can learn from headline news! I heard briefly that there was some trade to help out LeBron.

Now, I wasn’t able to read commentary telling me what to think about this trade. And I don’t even know the details. So, I can’t be so sure if this qualifies as giving LeBron respect.

I mean the media could spin the trade in so many ways so as to show utmost disrespect to LeBron. I’m sure they can. But since I’m not reading it, I don’t know.

I just have to deal with the raw facts of the matter and make up my own mind about what it means. Here goes that critical thinking again.

But with all the stories about the trade I’m sure some joker of a sportscaster will talk about how LeBron has “no more excuses” or use some other term that shows disrespect to LeBron. So, I’ll hedge my best and say they are still disrespecting him.

The protest continues…

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The results so far?

Here are a few things I’ve started to notice from my media fast:

#1 Productivity has nearly doubled, but I have a lot of work

I roughly doubled my productivity. I’ll give myself a few more days to see if this wasn’t just a fluke. But what used to take me all morning and half and half an afternoon now took me only 3 hours.

I’d say that’s pretty good. Was I mindlessly surfing that much?

But this sudden jump in productivity made me realize I do have a lot of work. I’ll need to address that issue pronto!

#2 Is my critical thinking kicking it up a notch?

I do love politics and political news. As one my regular commentators to this blog Corinne Edwards said she couldn’t live without MSNBC, I was starting to feel the same way.

You see, I like election coverage. From headline news I know who’s winning the primaries. But without reading all the commentary, it feels like I don’t have anyone to tell me what to think anymore.

I may have to start thinking for myself. Perish the thought.

Seriously though. I get this same feeling I used to get in college. I used to read primary sources so I could come up with my own conclusions before reading others’. But with news, I find myself looking to see what others say before I make up my mind.

Media fast day #1 is showing me that I can come up with my own opinion about Barack Obama’s victory sans three columnists telling me what I should think about it and all the major implications thereof.

#3 Playing toy animals with a 4-year-old is quite fun

Cutting out some TV, I instead played animals with my daughter. I mean WOW! That kid does a spot on imitation of me and her teachers at school. She thinks I’m a zebra.

I thought I should be the lion, but nope…zebra.. There you have it. In the animal kingdom, I’m a zebra. Her teacher, however, got to be a tiger. My daughter was a small tiger.

I think I preferred it when my daughter was on a Star Wars kick and I got to be the Emperor.

#4 Lost is a cool show

I picked up the first season of Lost on DVD. I took in 45 minutes of TV this evening and watched an episode. Cool show.

I’ll tell you though. It pained me to listen to Daniel Dae Kim’s Korean. I’m sure most Americans don’t know, but I certainly hear the difference in his Korean and Kim Yunjin’s. No matter though. I liked Daniel Dae Kim in Crusade, so I won’t hold his Korean ability against him too much.

#5 Somewhere out there is LeBron James still getting disrespected?

Of course, my protest continues! Because I am not reading any sports pages, I have no idea whether or not LeBron is getting any respect. I assume he is not.  But this media fast continues until LeBron James is shown some respect.

Those are my thoughts for today. I’ll keep you posted on this media fast and you can read more on how it is affecting my work and my life.

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I’m about to tell you something that I am not proud of. Are you sitting down? Here goes:

I am a junkie.

An information junkie. Troubled by a lack of production recently, I decided to track my internet usage. And lo and behold (though don’t tell this to my current employer) I spend WAY too much time looking at news sites. I then go crawling through to other sites and next thing you know, I’ve been reading news sites for over an hour.

And what was the result? I simply read six different people’s opinions about whether Roger Clemens was telling the truth about steroids—nary a one of them defending ol’ Roger.

So, what can I do about it?

Well, I’ve decided to take the advice of one Tim Ferriss, writer of the Four Hour Workweek. Tim spoke at South by Southwest last year at the same time I did. And let me say, this is one of my favorite books of non-fiction. I’ve been re-reading it recently, and he has an entire chapter on a low-information diet.

Tim recommends cultivating “selective ignorance.” This means acquiring information that is “actionable” and being ignorant of the rest (or simply ask knowledgeable people on a subject).

Like me, Tim really doesn’t buy into the whole time management concept, as much as he says that “time management” is a process of eliminating wasteful activities. I quite agree.

So, I have decided to battle my own demons here. In the past, I turned off my internet connection when I worked. This is a great method. But it’s time I battle this head-on.

To that end, I am going on a one-week media fast. According to Tim Ferriss, a media fast means:

1. No news web sites (so long WSJ, MSNBC, Slate, please not Fark.com too)

2. No newspapers, magazines, audio books, or talk radio.

3. No television, except one hour of pleasure viewing each night.

4. No reading except for Tim’s book and one hour of fiction.

5. No web surfing unless it’s necessary to complete a task for that day.

I shutter just thinking of these. How will I find out about the Hillary-Obama showdown? How will I know about what happened to Roger Clemens? In Ferriss’ book, he recommends taking 5 minutes to read some headlines and asking people what’s going on. As for me, part of my job is writing an educational program based on the news, hence I tend to go to sites in order to confirm some information only to find myself NEVER getting off.

So, I will limit my news intake to only that which my job requires: listening to a 4-minute headline news broadcast and reading tow Korea-related news articles. And that’ll be that.

But some will be easy. I don’t really watch TV unless you count the half-hour of Power Rangers I should endure in the evenings with my daughter. There’s nothing I love more than watching the Japanese version of Power Rangers with Korean dubbing over the top!

But I do read a lot of fiction. Tim and I will agree to disagree on the role of fiction. He finds it’s good to put you to sleep, but I find fiction triggers the creative process.

I will document how my media fast is going. And you will see if it boosts my productivity any more than it is now.

Shouldn’t I be fasting in protest of something?

As I am about to end this post, it occurs to me that shouldn’t I be fasting in protest of something? I think personal development is great cause in and of itself. And going on a media fast to increase productivity is great.

But I mean, think about it. All the other great fasters fasted for a great cause. Every time I read in the news about someone fasting, it is in protest of something. So, I think I’ll come up with a noble cause to go along with my media fast.

I guess I could say this is about protesting the media. But I kind of like the media. Why don’t I use my last few minutes before fasting to get on a news site and find a cause worthy of my media fast.

Let’s see…world news…Darfur, war, poverty…too heavy for this kind of fast…US News…Obama..Hillary. McCain..nah, politics is not my thing..I’ve got it. Sports! Frivolous enough, yet taken seriously. Let’s see…videotape scandal…steroids…hold the phone…here we are…LeBron James is quoted as saying his team doesn’t get any respect.

I’m a basketball fan, so there it is folks. From today, I am going on a one-week media fast to protest the media’s lack of respect for LeBron James and his team. Since the media has upset LeBron James, I too am upset.

(cue the rage) How dare the media criticize LeBron’s team! They made it all the way to the finals last year for Pete’s sake (only to get beaten by my beloved San Antonio Spurs).

But you wouldn’t know that by the way the media totally disrespects LeBron James. I’ve had enough!

I will continue this fast until the media starts showing LeBron the respect he deserves. And I am sure after my one-week fast I can google up a puff piece on LeBron, but until I do so–I am fasting.

Wish me luck.

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My desktop reflects this tendency. Many times I’ve looked at this giant mass of programs running as I creatively think of ways to shut them down. Or how many times have I been doing something (like writing this blog post), glanced at my open internet browser and just started surfing…uh, I mean, researching?

It happens to a lot of us. But with desktops getting more “gadgetized” I have found some free tools that help you to “devolve” your computer.

I call them computer Zen. I’ve heard the term Zenware. And that’s exactly what these programs do. They seek to save us from ourselves. They seek to aid the ADHD user that dwells within us. And help they do.

There are a lot of programs out there nowadays that help you to stay focused on what you’re doing. And I wanted to share with you some of the tools I used to help me stay focused on my work.

1. Swept Away

Cool program that hides programs that are on your desktop that you are not using. The only drawback is if you do get distracted and start surfing internet sites, Swept Away will “sweep away” the work you are supposed to be doing so you can focus better on being distracted.

All in all though, it works well.

2. Dropcloth

Cool little app that overlays a solid window over your desktop. Out of sight out of mind. This app covers that cluttered desktop. Use it in conjunction with Swept Away, like I do, and watch your focus go WAY up.

3. Dark Room

MS Word. Love it, but man it distracts the you-know-what out of me. I fiddle with margins and formatting like you wouldn’t believe. Enter Darkroom. With its retro green monochrome with the flickering cursor, it keeps me focused on one thing and one thing only—writing. Guess what I’m writing this post on right now?

Those are a few tools, and I know there are more out there. If you know of any, please comment and let my readers know.

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A book fell on my hand! It literally came crashing down smacking my right hand and sending my co-workers rushing to my rescue. To gain maximum sympathy, I acted as if my hand was broken and would have to go to the hospital at any moment.

After a couple of minutes of method acting, and my co-workers leaving me to my misery, I wanted to discover how it was that a book (a thick usage dictionary) came to land on my hand.

Well, it was little crazy actually…

…because the book was on top of a large stack of papers, which in turn was on top of a large stack of folders. And when the wind was blowing through the office, I guess I put the dictionary on top of it, to stop all those papers from flying all over the place.

This got me thinking. As I looked at my desk, I saw it was full of books, papers, post-it notes, pens, and all sorts of other “stuff.” I thought it made me look busy. The only problem is that I couldn’t find anything. And despite my efforts, the stacks of papers never seemed to disappear. In fact, the stack only got bigger.

So, I said “this is it.”

With the exception of some immediate work, I threw away all the papers. I put the books on the bookshelf and was left with a perfectly cleared off desk. The only thin on it was my computer, a red pen, and 6 pages I needed to edit right away.

The then the most amazing thing happened. I edited the pages. Done. Finished. That was my big job for the day! So, I went onto tomorrow’s task on the computer. One hour later. Done finished.

Before it would have taken me a day to do it. What was the difference?

Lack of clutter on my desk. Seeing my productivity go up leaves me with only one conclusion:

A cluttered desk is a cluttered mind.

Once I removed the clutter from my desk, I got a new sense of purpose. The clutter on my desk was not aiding my work ability; it was distracting me. And having a bunch of things on my desk did not make me look busy; it made me look unorganized (which I was).

So, now, I keep a clear desk. At the end of every day, I clear off my desk completely and come to work the next day with a clutter-free mind.

And today I recommend this to you. If you want to get more work done with a clearer mind, take all the garbage off your desk. Try working in a clutter-free environment and see just how your mind reacts to it.

I think you’ll see, just like I did, that your production will increase dramatically and more importantly you can take the pressure off yourself. The stress of having all that clutter around you adds a lot of pressure to finish it all. And you also can feel like you aren’t getting anything done.

By removing the clutter from your desk, the pressure and stress it produces in your mind will be removed as well.

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That demon was…

Production Murderer #3: Reading Internet News Sites

Here was a day in the life: go to msnbc.com, then jump over to CNN, and then Yahoo News and so on and so on. And what did I read? Pretty much the same stories over and over again.

But wildfires are raging, it’s flooding, and somewhere in the world there’s a war going on…clearly all this is so important that I need to read it over and over again all on different news sites, right? And I need to read all the varying opinion of the effects of wildfires on global warming, the economy, and a far-off war. And then I need to head over to the blogosphere to hear what Jack from Canada has to say on the issue. I really really need to know what is going on in the world!

Well…not really. What I found is that most of these sites get their stories from the AP, so they all sound fairly similar. And news, for the most part, is the product of very bored people looked for something to say. If you don’t believe me, mosey on over to www.fark.com. You’ll see some of the things that pass for news these days.

So, how did I resist the temptation to go to news sites every other minute? Mind you, my job required me to know have a good knowledge of news, so I couldn’t just stop cold turkey.

So, I did 2 things that helped:

1. Deleted news sites from my favorites (and removed Yahoo from my home page to stop myself from clicking on the latest headline). You’d be surprised how having to type in a URL cuts down on your news site surfing. By not being able to see the temptation before my eyes, I went there less and less.
2. Set up a 30-minute block of time in the morning to read news. I’m a fast reader, and in 30 minutes I pretty much got most of the important things going around. This usually gave me time to scan headlines, read an expose in Newsweek or Time, and to read one of my favorite sports columns every Monday and Tuesday. Some say that 30 minutes a day is too much. But I like reading news and don’t watch any TV news whatsoever. And by giving myself a set amount of time to read news, I found over the course of a 2-week period of doing this that not much happens in the day that requires immediate attention. Everything I needed to know could wait till tomorrow. And wait it did.

So, there you have it. Three activities that murder work efficiency. In the last part of the series, I will show you a simple solution that can take care of this and pretty much any computerized distraction. In fact, when I employed it, my efficiency jumped almost 300%.

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What could it be?

It’s our smiley-faced, emoting, winking buddy…the instant messenger.

Production Murderer #2: Chatting on Instant Messengers

Whoo hoo! Now…there’s the ticket. At one time, I had not one, not two, but at least 3 instant messengers going all at the same time. (Heck, I hear now some messengers can actually combine your accounts from different instant messengers, thus giving you access to a wealth of contacts you’ve never dreamed of).

And what did these messengers do for me? Lo and behold my friends, family, and people I didn’t’ even know had unlimited access to my time. And they needed to talk to me NOW.

About what? Truthfully, I can’t remember even 1/10th of the things I chatted with people about on instant messengers. But I sure spent a lot of time on them.

So much time that one day on a lark I decided to calculate the time I spent chatting on instant messengers that day, and it ran at about 4 hours. 4 hours! If you think you don’t talk that much on a messenger, then track your time on it.

You’ll find that you spend quite a long time on an instant messenger: going through the pleasantries, small talk, and then important discussions on how bored you are and never seem to have enough time to work.

Recently, I a friend of mine was complaining how it took her all day to do her work. But when I saw all her IMs going, I advised her to stop chatting on IMs, so she could get some work done. She explained, “But Carlon I use it to talk about work.” Then I asked her, are the things you talk about so important that they can’t wait till you are finished with your main task. She didn’t answer. We both know what the answer was.

It’s probably the same answer you would give if you were asked. As with e-mail, the best way to reclaim your time from the instant messengers is to turn them off. In fact, I would uninstall them. (I heard that Windows gives you a hard time if you delete MSN messenger, so be careful).

If you absolutely must use an instant messenger, like I use Skype to communicate with friends and colleagues abroad or back in the States, the best way is to leave it turned off until you need to use it. And when you use it, you use it like a phone to talk to someone and then “hang it up.”

The more you leave an instant messenger on, the more you are inviting someone to waste your time.

Tune in for the next installment as I reveal the activity that was the #1 murderer of my work efficiency (the answer just might shock you).

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How was it that I sat there at my desk all day and managed to do absolutely nothing. Nada. Zip. Not one iota of work.

But I had been so busy all day. How was it that I completed nothing.

Certainly, I had done something, right? I was super-busy all day. The only problem was that all the things I was doing had nothing to do with work.

Welcome to a typical day in the life of the busy, yet unproductive. That was your glimpse into the reflections of a worker who did not exist. He was simply a figment of the imagination of the payroll department that cut checks to this “worker” who did very little, if any, work.

But it was not my fault really. The problem was that I really couldn’t figure out what I was doing with my time. I had no idea why I wasn’t getting any work done. And let me tell you when I set up my own business I had to figure it out quick or I would have gone broke in the

Does this sound familiar?

Well, in this 4-part series I will present to you the 3 things that I found had cut most deeply into my work production and how I solved all of them in one fail swoop (after a lot of trial and error). Needles to say, they all involved my computer.

The key to existing more is having more time to do the things that are important. And we can’t do that until we learn to be more productive and shed the “activities” that prevent us from using our time wisely.

Let’s start with the first of these murderers of production:

Production Murderer #1: Checking E-mail

I can hear the sound already. That Whoosh MS Outlook makes when I get a fresh, hot delivery. As I stated in an earlier post, though, it was usually from someone trying to sell me something, and in most cases that was my fault because I got on the person’s list in the first place.

Or how about that “urgent” e-mail from a friend that they so lovingly forwarded to me and 100 other people? I had better answer it right away before I forget about it.

I can tell you that at least once every 5 minutes I was checking my e-mail. And how much of it was urgent? Not a one. They all could have waited. In fact, 90% could have been deleted.

The truth is the people sending me e-mail were just as bored as I was. So, we sent each other e-mail all day going on about how bored we were when we should have been working.

But there is a quickie solution production murder by e-mail—turn it off.

Turn off your e-mail client. If you use Outlook, don’t open it. If you use web-based e-mail, don’t open your browser until your work is done. It’s that easy.

Some will say, “But Carlon I need to check my e-mail…that’s how I get clients.” That’s fine. But if you want to be productive, check your email at certain intervals in the day (like at 10:00 & 3:00, once every 2 hours, etc.). or check it after your most urgent task is completed. That way you can be sure not to miss any e-mails (trust me, most e-mails don’t need immediate replies) and still get some work done.

Tune in tomorrow, as I show you the second production murder and how under its smileyface-winking-sharing facade lies the potential to waste week after week of work with absolutely nothing to show for it.

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