Productivity Challenge – Day 4 of 30

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Interesting day in terms of productivity. When is a task in fact a displacement activity for the Most Feared Task? 

First off, I admit I put off the famous AA phone call until today. So much for AA Ay ay!HOWEVER, it proved tremendously worth calling them today. I was anticipating minutes of painful hold time and a frustrating conversation. Instead, after a mere 3 minutes or so of holding, I was put through to a human being. I threatened, in the manner I now know from experience to be highly motivating to the corporate mind, to leave the AA as the price of membership (£351 for a year, for God’s sake!) was just unaffordable (true on both counts- by the way, not an idle threat).

First of all, miraculously, the cost of the same services (e.g. Homestart, roadside recovery etc.) dropped by £123. Just because I asked. Then by stripping out some other, mostly unnecessary, services, the price came down to £101. Result!  Lessons learned.

I also finally managed to get the bank to divulge the top-secret account number and sort code of my company bank account (for the orchestra). Ridiculous but I finally got it. I think the trick with these institutions is to be (politely ) relentless (plus occasional bluntness, as long as it is just about courteous and sans  swearing). So now I get to buy and sell things. How painful was that to set up? Amazing how hard it is to open a bank account these days. Amazing in a very bad way.

One of my most feared tasks is to Clarify the vision of the orchestra- why we exist, who (exactly) we serve, what (exactly) we offer and of course, what our USP (Unique Selling Point) is.

Feared because it is quite big. BUT also, it is a good displacement activity from other MFT, designing and creating flyers/posters.

Analysing it, the block here was twofold: I didn’t know what the process should be for designing, nor did I feel I knew the right people to run the process. Nor indeed a neat process for finding them if needed.

If you’re still reading these posts, you may wonder why any sane person would analyse processes like this. The point is this: most people (me included) don’t do what they are capable of. They don’t achieve their dreams, they don’t use time well, they don’t make the money they could or want, etc. etc.  Yet the answers are often on paper obvious. So my constant mission now is: not on paper but in (mundane?) reality, what are the actual blocks to taking action/getting progress?

Often, it’s a simple but unholy mixture of ignorance (how do I do this?), combined with fear of not getting it done (What if I can’t do this?) and fear of doing it but badly (what if I get this wrong? What if I waste money/time etc?). A deadly combination.

So the solution must be the opposite: to zap fear by getting clarity as quickly as possible (Google, anyone?! Or how about conversation with your colleagues?), then to satisfy yourself that you therefore can do it. A bit of research, aka, looking at other people’s flyers (which to be fair I’ve been collecting since 2006!), and due diligence, aka, shopping for 2-3 quotes for printing services, should zap the remaining fears of getting a bad result or wasting money.

Fortunately I have some highly resourceful friends, including a photographer with an eye for design, and some contacts who are in fact designers. Coupled with my lovely set of examples of the finest orchestras’ brochures and season brochures, I should be set to do a 24-48 hour design to finish of the flyers. I better had because in 10 days I’ll need several hundred to put out at a concert with the perfect audience members!

While I just casually design the entire marketing approach of the orchestra simultaneously…

Funny how a specific item (the flyers) needs to be finished by a specific date (ready to go out on 20 April) because of a specific occasion (someone else’s concert).

By the way, for choral fans, the concert in question is Berlioz‘s extraordinary Grande Messe des Morts, to be sung by Godalming Choral Society, which I conduct, and Epworth Choir, which I don’t, in Guildford Cathedral. Should be worth hearing if you happen to be a fan of large-scale choral works. When I say large, I mean large in this case. )

Of course I’m sure I should be having meetings and getting input on that and I will! I will! But time is a-calling and I need to just create some kind of initial answer to the key questions (who, what, USP, etc.) That’s my excuse. While I greatly feel  the need for the structure and accountability of a more formal team structure, the cardinal thing seems to me to have some kind of structure right now. That can always be tweaked and edited and generally criticised by others, no problem. But it’s much easier to edit something existing than to start with a blank sheet.

I kind of like speed and directness anyway…after years of jumping through hoops for trustees (worthy as they may have been), I’m not sure I don’t rather like being the sole director for once…

Productivity challenge – Day 3 of 30

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My successes today

Well…the good news is that I further refined the presentation I was working on, which is one of the key projects, due for delivery next Wednesday. I presented it to an intelligent friend, who pointed out that I was not making it relevant enough to the target audience, in a really direct and simple way. Good advice. So I rewrote the presentation and changed the Keynote slides. That’s overall about 6 hours’ work on a key project.

Seth Godin – Startup School

I also listened to some fantastic advice from the great Seth Godin for business start-ups.

Seth Godin if you haven’t come across him, is kind of the Tom Peters for the Noughties and 2010s, ie, a “guru” of management consulting. He writes a superb blog which all marketers, entrepreneurs and freelancers would be well advised to visit regularly.

The podcast is relatively rare, since Seth Godin decided a while ago to focus on blogging (an interesting, clear media strategy decision) and comes from recordings of a private business retreat he did in 2012, which he calls “Seth Godin’s Start-up school”

The three key sections I caught today were about “Creating Scarcity” “Cashflow” and “The ShipIt Journal“, all of which were invaluable.

Here were my take-aways:

Creating Scarcity

  • Client Q: Would I hire that product or service to solve my problem?
  • I’ve heard your story. I trust it. Now so I want to hire it to solve my problem.
  • Probably why:. To impress my boss. To impress Family. Connect with people because I feel lonely. Etc.
  • I don’t say “get the expensive wine because the placebo effect will make it better”.
  • We read non fiction books because the act of reading it makes us feel better.
  • The difference between  manipulation and marketing -manipulation-you regret it later. Marketing-you feel happy after.
  • Q: If what you’re doing catches on, what stops someone else doing it for 1/2 price?
  • Eg1 Google -there are other people who do search as well
  • Eg 2 same provider for freelance copywriter that your business has been using for years.
  • Answer: Lockin effect. It’s just too hard to switch.
  • Eg elementary school goes over to Mac. Dell approaches with cheaper computers. School doesn’t change over.
  • Sometimes this is technical, e.g., software is not compatible.
  • Often emotional. Because you have to admit you were wrong.
  • Starbucks markets Starbucks card because of lockin.
  • American Airlines -frequent flyer miles. In fact, frequent flyers don’t really need air miles anyway. BUT it Feels emotionally important because robbing selves of numbers!
  • App market. In large measure suckers game. Here’s why:
  • 1. 1m apps. Needle in haystack.
  • 2. Most apps forgot to be social. Exception Instagram. Eg I can look up and see stars. But if I don’t tell friends. It’s over
  • 3. If you want to sell app they won’t know how good it is.
  • With digital stuff we never buy before we have tried it.
  • We never buy a record until we hear it on the radio!
  • So-make sure it’s viral, quietly grow ok a circle of people.
  • Some ideas don’t go viral! Don’t build something that isn’t going to work!
  • A warning example: Al Gore eBook was beautiful. Cost $Hundreds of thousands of dollars.. Lost loads of money. No reason to tell friends because if didn’t work better if your friends using it too!
  • Things that DO work better with more people using them:  Instagram. Email.
  • 37 signals just need 1 person in room to use it. Then they will market it themselves.
  • You’re not entitled to the business you want!
  • What problem is my customer waking up in the morning with?
  • Your job is not to find more customers for your products. It’s to find more products for your clients.

Cashflow

  • Having clients “fund” your start-up is infinitely better than investors. Here’s why:
  1. the money doesn’t have to be repaid
  2. you stay in control
  • As long as you don’t run out of cash, you stay in control!

The ShipIt Journal (or how to get your Project to deliver on time)

  • The Big Lesson: “THRASH EARLY”
  • Most projects run very late because each department asks for input from another department at a late stage when its work seems “complete”
  • Then there is a lot of change needed, which delays the project
  • a change in one dept, eg legal, implies another, eg, software design (eg because of intellectual property law)
    • which implies implies a change in another, eg sales (because of eg higher cost so higher price needed)
  • This also leads to escalating budget
  • Changes at the start of a project are very cheap
  • Changes late in the project are very expensive

SO…THRASH EARLY (aka iterate/discuss etc etc)

  • Get everyone involved in a project to worry about ALL the details as early as possible in the project
  • THEN Before starting any further work, get everyone to commit to signing off the plans
  • Especially important for any boss/other authority who can make/break project
  • Also includes external entities, eg, Health Board etc etc who can make/break project
  • Be clear to the boss: Once the boss has signed off the project, s/he has no right to interfere later!
  • The best building projects have this shape:
  • the later into the project you go, the more contractors (people who implement plans) are involved, and the fewer decision makers.
  • Definition of/characteristics of a true Project:
  1. Has a delivery date and time.
  2. Can fail.
  3. Has one person who is responsible.
  4. It can be split into multiple projects, each of which can have a sole responsible person.
  5. However it is at the same time, still one project.
  6. for example, Facebook is not a project. Adding comments ability to photos is.

My MFT Most Feared Task

Confession time – I have been putting off creating a marketing plan for “my” orchestra and getting the hell on with it. Guess what? That’s probably to do with all the factors Seth Godin mentions. However – I must say that I feel I’ve learned some warning lessons from the podcast. SO I need to sit down with all the decision-makers and thrash out what they will consider workable. Then DO DO DO!

Of course, my first part of the plan has to be to find decision-makers and people to implement!

So..I have a very busy week ahead…However, at least I’m now clearer on the process of designing the project.

I promise I’ll do my MFT tomorrow…

Productivity challenge – Day 2 of the 30-day challenge

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As for once I took the whole weekend off, I’m counting today (Monday) as day 2 of the challenge.

The whole question of time off versus productivity is an interesting one. Business Coach Paul Avins  recommended this once at a meeting to entrepreneurs I was at as a productivity strategy “Take more holidays – it’s amazing how much you get done in the days before you go away!”

This is worth another whole post but I have to say I’m terrible at really booking proper holidays and making things really black and white re work versus rest time. That “grey” time is probably a modern curse. For example, I’m now listening to Webern’s Passacaglia* (this counts as pleasure) and writing a blog post. Is this work? Yes, although I’m not (yet) getting paid for that kind of thing. Is it in 9-5 window? Emphatically no (it’s just gone midnight). But then I do work best at night.

(* for normal people this would not count as a pleasure. My musical tastes are a bit specialist sometimes. However it's a real Marmite effect piece. If you love it, you love it!)

Tim Ferriss recently pointed out in a Podcast  that most writers he knows tend to work between 10 pm and 8 am – they either stay up pretty (really) late or get up really early. Me, I’m definitely a night owl. That’s because, he reckons, they can guarantee a block of uninterrupted, single-task work. Makes sense to me. Plus for me, evening is  a time for synthesizing the day’s events into learnings and new thoughts.

So, how was today for productivity? Pretty good. If not my Most Feared Task, one major Feared Task got say 70% of the way  to finished today: preparing a presentation linking an opera to “The Hero’s Journey” for Entrepreneurs and their Brand marketing! (If you’re intrigued, I’ll be posting more about it once the exclusive first presentation  has been made to members of a certain marketing group…). This is the kind of thing which- although I’ve been looking forward to it – because it is both complex and open-ended to a degree (although the time limit of 20 minutes really helped), can end up being undone for days. As indeed it has done.

So why did it get done today? Simple.  I had a deadline – a meeting – and was presenting my results to a respected mentor. A killer combination. Plus time afterwards to implement learnings from the meeting.

My mentor seemed pleased I was preparing properly, and gave me some excellent guidance on how to make it more relevant to our audience.

Immediately after the meeting, rather than just drive back home and forget the insights I’d just had, I sat in my car for nearly two hours and rewrote the presentation on my laptop. This is a trick I learned in some direct sales work I did years ago- immediately after a meeting with a prospective client, I would sit in the car and go through what I’d learned. I believe immediacy after an event, whether a formal “learning” event (aka training/education), or an interview etc., is a great time to really remember your learnings and I always make a point of doing this (and back in those field sales days, it helped me go from selling nothing for 3 weeks straight to being no. 1 in the company after 6 weeks. The sales job was mercifully brief but I learned a hell of a lot of business lessons from it).

I then used my car journey home to try to speak through the rough words I’d use for the presentation, and to time how long I was still needing, and notice what I needed work on. Very useful – and very revealing, without visual reminders, how much more I needed to get the structure clear in my head.

This evening, after my yoga class (I know, I know, look at me polishing my halo, doesn’t happen as consistently as I’d like but it is a timetabled public commitment…), I felt inspired by some great music a friend mentioned on a phone call. I put on the music that inspired me, and got to some of the more mundane task tracking down materials to put together more details of the Keynote presentation. So I figure with the pre-meeting motivation (immediate deadline/respected person’s opinion), post-meeting tweaking etc., I’ve put in 6-7 good hours on the presentation and now it’s just a matter of tweaking and agreeing with the mentor.

Lessons learned: In the 3-4 hours before a scheduled meeting  with a significant figure, you get a lot of work done! So – schedule such a meeting!

-immediate review after significant meeting leads to immediate work.

-use car time for practising spoken presentations and sales/persuasion conversations

-do your best to finish a mini-project, if only  around a day’s worth of   work, in a day, or get it very close, while your motivation is high, and other projects have not yet interfered.

Right. This still not helping my other resolution to start going to bed before midnight, so I must cease and desist, as the lawyers put it.  However, another good day. Another item to wipe smugly off the Whiteboard of greatness…

Productivity challenge – Day 1 of the 30-day challenge

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Productivity systems…are they worth bothering with? that’s what we’re here to find out on the 30-day challenge…

Since I made the commitment to taking my own medicine in my own post (To do or not to do?), I thought I’d better follow through today on day 1…

Today, I dragged out of the corner a whiteboard that is twice the size of the little one I had been using, but which had been covered in the remains of a brainstorming session from a meeting a while back.

Mundane details: I cleaned it, and divided it neatly into 3 areas for my big projects (the biggest being of course setting up Orchestra Eroica).

The result was a clean, blank white sheet. Mundane, but I mention it because oddly, the effect on my mental clarity was just as cleaning. I copied over the relevant tasks to my clean new whiteboard, and immediately felt more in control.

The acid test is that I actually did several tasks I’ve been putting off for days, some for weeks.

My MFT – Most Feared Task – of the day was in reality probably 3 tasks I’d been putting off.  The most significant in terms of potential outcome was probably to just contact someone at a local organisation to ask them about putting out flyers at a concert to publicize Orchestra Eroica’s next concert. Small and simple. But I’d somehow put it off.

I guess it implied getting the design clear and various other decisions that are still getting done. But guess what? I’m sure once I’ve said to them that I’ll put out the flyers, that will give me both a commitment and a deadline to get all the rest of the process done!

Of course they could say no, but that is in their power. My initial task is done.

Silly, really, what we put off. Analysing this little one, I’ve realised that it’s a combination:

1. identify task as significant,

2. perceive task as being a bit complicated/involving other as-yet-un-fulfilled tasks,

3. therefore put it off,

It seems that is the magic  combination for turning something  into a Feared Task and thus Procrastinating.

So I guess the reverse process should be obvious:

1. identify task as significant.

2. Immediately identify the next step without getting over-involved in all the implications.

3. Move quickly to do the next step before you start thinking about it and making excuses.

That seemed to work today.

Of course, I still have “create design”, “get 3 quotes” under “create flyers” but the starting gun has been fired. And with involving someone else and the deadline ( their concert date), I’m pretty sure that task will get completed.

I’ve also actually cleared my whiteboard completely of all the emails I planned to send today. I have to say, that’s a first for me. Ridiculous, but I always leave one or two niggling at me!

One email to send had been on the board for literally a month. I just wrote and sent it a few minutes ago, and it took me just under 8 minutes!

Why the delay? I think the answer is: it was to a person who is significant to me, and important in my industry, (and whose opinion I value)…and that was enough to cause a month’s hesitation. So I think the underlying psychology was:

1. I built it up in my mind as something “significant”. Which it is. AND

2. created the mental equation “significant”=”difficult”. Which it most definitely was not.

Interestingly the inner manager (the person whose job it is to say “Do this task now”) acted as if  I were going to suddenly lose the ability to compose a meaningful and respectful email. I must write hundreds of the things a month!

So the solution is: change thinking: “Significant” can also be “easy”

I must confess that knowing I was going to write about this helped motivate me to get those final two emails crossed off my list and wiped off my whiteboard. Did I mention public commitment? Aka, in some sad way (for God’s sake, I’m just sending emails, not conducting in the Albert Hall!), boasting…

Anyway. So far, so good. I’m not sure I had a really clearly defined MFT (Most Feared Task) but I certainly had 2-3 VWAT (Vaguely Worried About Tasks), which have all been done!

Tomorrow I get to call up the AA (Automobile Association, if you’re wondering, I don’t think I have a substance abuse issue except of course with caffeine), and ask them why they are wanting to charge me the princely sum of £351.80 for a year’s coverage. I’m sure that in reality, that is more than the car is worth. Sadly, I’m not kidding. I bought it for £600 4 years ago.

I must say that I felt I had indulged myself by writing a long blog post yesterday when I knew how much I had to get done. But for once, spending time really working through, and greatly personalising,  systems that should be about making you more productive has actually made me productive!

That might sound like crazy talk – what else should it do? Ah,  but in my personal experience, this has often (let’s be honest, most of the time) just meant I wasted time obsessing about some new system instead of doing things (nobody else is so foolish, surely…?).

I have to say it taps into something else I didn’t even put down on the list- creativity. The process of creating and writing is enjoyable to me, indeed, I have a hard time to stop either creating spoken or written word.  So, writing about the process of productivity, which I (I realise very clearly from my analysis of the tasks I’ve been avoiding) have associated with more pain than pleasure, has been my best way to make friends with it, and make it part of who I am at my more comfortable (writing/creating mental structures).

Plus, I like communicating and (at least imagining) people recognising what I’m doing. SO, it’s a great combination for me! Like a diary only…public.

Interestingly, I’ve periodically resolved to keep a diary but never managed to get myself to follow through often.  I’ve never really got beyond the lack of motivation of  writing something nobody else would read. I guess that’s an extrovert for you (to some degree, anyway). Maybe this taps into the performing thing plus my inner geek (okay, some would say it isn’t so inner…)

So, what the heck has this got to do with productivity any more? For you personally, maybe nothing – directly. But actually, indirectly, everything. Because if you can link something you currently associate pain to – in this case, getting certain things done – and instead use a process something you actually enjoy – in my case, writing – you might actually transform the painful area.

Worth a thought, eh?

Right. Tomorrow, bring on the Automobile Association of crazy fees. Inviting? Not exactly. But will I put it off now it’s on my whiteboard? Hell no! A.A.? Ay, ay!

 

 

To do or not to do?

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Getting productive: 15 ½ actionable insights from two productivity masters: Steve Pavlina & Tim Ferriss

To do or not to do? – that is the question.

What to do and what not to do? And how to choose what to do at all?

These are questions that confront any freelancer, or self-employed person, including musicians. If you’re running a start-up organisation – these are the questions of the hour.

To stop paraphrasing and do the Bard the courtesy of direct quotation (should he appreciate being dragged into this at all)- I feel a creeping sense that:

“I’ve wasted time; and now doth time waste me”

(I’m aware that quoting this in the context sounds like an entry worthy of Pseuds Corner- anyone else read Private Eye ?) If you feel this acutely, you can cut to THE NO-NONSENSE, ACTIONABLE PART below.

If you’re in even more of a hurry, cut to THE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY FOR SUPER-BUSY PEOPLE at the END OF THE POST (sorry couldn’t resist those last CAPS…by the way, just before you go, are you busy actually doing the important or simply keeping busy to feel important? Don’t feel bad if the latter-I am a professional at this. After all, it’s endemic with conductors. That’s why we need help. Stick around if you…ah, he’s gone. See you at the summary…)

To put it simply, I’m not getting any younger… and my career’s not going to magically improve without lots of stuff getting done – mostly by me…

It’s particularly scary wondering what to do next when you’re setting up an entirely new organization, in my case Orchestra Eroica, especially if it’s not one you’ve done in the same way before.

(I’ve set up two non-professional orchestras before, one was actually a post- student orchestra, but it’s a different beast).

To help me in my hour of need of business skill – which, after all, was never part of my music training – I’ve gone back to some tried and trusted sources.

One such is Steve Pavlina. Another is the extraordinarily hyper-productive Tim Ferriss. Okay, so one (Steve) is a techy, computer and internet person. The other (Tim) is a polyglot, body-obsessed entrepreneur and author. How is this relevant to a musician?

Good question. Here’s another: How many highly effective musicians do you know as time/task managers? Good conductors sometimes manage it. Many don’t. As for the majority of musicians, we’re not exactly famed for it…so let’s learn from those who are…

This is loosely based on Steve’s excellent blog post, 33 Rules to Boost your Productivity, which I stumbled across in old-fashioned hard copy (printed on paper, God forbid) while clearing some old files out. The rest is, broadly, from Tim Ferriss. I’ve furthered boiled them down based on two simple real-world criteria:

1. I’ve actually tried them;
2. They actually made me more productive.

So, enough pre-amble, here comes…

THE NO-NONSENSE, ACTIONABLE PART

1. Daily goals

Set targets for each day in advance. Obvious? Sure. So you always do this? I confess, while I Do have multiple to-do lists, I rarely craft a new daily list each day. However, I know this to be foolish – as when I do, it works.

One major, major caveat though: it only works, if I first massively reduce the amount I think I can do in a day. At the very least, as Tim Ferriss says, NEVER approach your computer without a clear written set of planned tasks. I fail often on this, and nearly always waste silly amounts of time. When I do do this, I get a lot more done. QED.

2. Separate Brainstorming and SELECTION/prioritisation

This is not something I’ve seen written elsewhere but it works for me:
When I do write to-do lists (I do it often but don’t relate it well to daily lists), I have a nasty habit of creating a to-do list for a day that actually would fill over a week. Anyone relate to this?

Here’s my patented solution:

Think of this first list as a longlist for job candidacy. Then pick the most obviously crucial/productive, and Cut out the rest (80%). This is your shortlist. Then, interrogate the list viciously and pick only most crucial 2, MAX 3, as your key to-dos for the day. Sure, you can have a list of 15 things to do, but in my experience, I don’t get through them.

This makes me stressed and unhappy (and a mean human being to encounter around 5 pm). It also distracts me from the one or two challenging, scary things that would actually move me forward.

A confession: I rarely am this disciplined. But if you manage to in reality identify just one truly important (aka high future impact) task and 5 minor ones, and do them, in my humble, that’s not such a bad morning or even day.

2.5 Do what you most fear…second

This is essentially about the criteria for critical task selection – how to choose the number one critical task that will (or at least could) change your day/week/year.

Yes, reflection is vital. But once you’ve made the space to list the tasks you’re considering, there is really only one question:

Which of these tasks moves you most effectively/quickest towards your biggest goals/dreams? What’s that? You don’t have those defined yet? (that’s another entire blog post series… ). Well here’s a hint: Don’t do it now!

If you haven’t defined your big goals and dreams as precisely as you’d like yet, of course you should do it. Just never try to do it in some amorphous way just before you start a day’s work. It’s a cue for spending the whole day reading self-help books and blogs (you’re reading this post, aren’t you?), writing pro and con lists and generally coming out with nothing done.

Siren-like, it’s highly seductive… and completely fatal.

Here’s a big clue: you probably already know what you should be doing by now. You’ve brainstormed and you’re selecting. If you need that much rational help, I’m suspicious: you’re turning it into a displacement activity (so I’m writing a blog post, Mum, it’s work, honest!). Here’s a bigger clue:

“That which you fear most is usually that which you need most to do” (Tim Ferriss- apologies, Tim, if I’m misquoting you).

Simple.
Tough.
Highly Effective.

I’m suggesting you put it second.only because I think it’s bad psychology to have the first act of the day be so challenging. Start with something to get your brain/body into higher gear. Just don’t , whatever you do, let that expand beyond a clearly defined, short time. If time is short, just do the hardest/most feared thing first.

3. Keep it Simple
(The iPhone is not mightier than the Whiteboard)

I’ve used various systems for task lists, including “Things”, which I have both on my iPhone and my MacBook Pro. You know what? I love interface and it looks pretty and I feel in charge and powerful while I’m creating the projects and tasks.

You know what else? It’s just overwhelming. If I had a team of magic elves (or I guess assistants/employees etc.) to do all of it, that would potentially work.

In reality, for my own tasks on a day-to-day basis, I use paper and a whiteboard. Low tech? Sure. Highly productive? Definitely.

Paper is potentially a menace as it flaps around, needs filing, etc.etc.

Here’s the solution: use it to dump your thoughts on, or- better – check it against your electronic lists of tasks, and scribble out say 10-20 of them that seem relevant to do today/tomorrow. Then throw it away as quickly as possible!

With two obvious provisos:

A) You record it somewhere if there are new thoughts (that might be a task for some online or smartphone/computer based system, I admit).

B) You have first taken out and prioritised the top 5-10 and then Re-prioritised the top 2-3 tasks of the day.

The white board is a simple idea from Paul Avins, another fantastic productivity guru, and it’s really working for me:

a)Put up a whiteboard
b) Divide it into max 3 project areas for your big projects right now. Write up your tasks daily
c) Cross them off as they get done. At the end of the day, if you wish to, track what tasks got done. Either way, then erase the crossed-off tasks.

Sure, sure, I can hear you tech types thinking, “It’s not synchronised electronically”; “it’s not co-ordinated with other people”. No, it’s not. You’ll have to do that manually. But that’s just a matter of recording stuff. What really matters is that important stuff actually gets done!

This is a classic case of where limitation (max space on the board at any one time for tasks) really boosts output. Here’s why: Electronic systems have an ability to store tasks that dwarfs any one human’s ability to actually do the tasks. Ironically, means that the more tasks get stored, the fewer actually get done, certainly as a percentage (and maybe even in absolute terms on a bad day).

Talking of the virtues of limitation as a boost to productivity…

4. Pareto’s Law meets Parkinson’s Law (courtesy of Tim Ferriss)

The basic concepts are::
A) Pareto’s law: 80% of results come from 20% of inputs.
B) Parkinson’s Law, is phrased usually in the negative sense of wasted time: put simply, it states: “Work expands to fill the time available”.

So far, so mundane…for most of us self-development addicts, anyway (well, you’re still reading, aren’t you?).

Now comes the clever Ferriss bit…

To really maximize productivity, we combine the two principles:
a) cut out the least productive 80% of tasks to leave only high-impact tasks.
b) calculate and then allow the minimum time needed to achieve the remaining, highly productive, 20% of tasks.

Counter-intuitive, non? But again, highly effective.

Like so many things in the realm of productivity, this is a killer principle from Tim Ferriss, who is potentially I believe that God of productive use of time, amongst many amazing things. His books The Four Hour Workweek is an absolute must read for anyone struggling with time famine and task overload (this is not an affiliate link – I’m just a big fan because so much of what he says works).

5. Peak time

ID your peak productivity times and put most important tasks then.
Obvious. But how often do you spend the first part of the day checking email/going to the post office/looking online for music etc.etc? Or is that just me? That is related to the next point…

6.Shut out the world

Block times where you turn off the phone/email/internet (Ever been on a certain social media site for 40 minutes without even realising it?). Use these for crucial tasks. This really works if…

7. Timeboxing

Give yourself a fixed period to make headway on a task. (I’ve found this highly effective. In fact, I’m using it right now to get this done quickly). e.g., to rough-write this post, ca. 60 minutes.

The trick is to calculate a reasonable time for it, and then to add a margin of say 25-50%, depending on

a)how many times you’ve done the task (and hopefully measured how long it takes) and therefore how well you can assess it, e.g., blog post: add 50-100% as I don’t yet have much of a routine/system.
b) how predictable the time is for a task of that nature. (ditto)

Then, try to stick to the time pretty rigidly. Be careful: for new/unknown tasks, be careful to allow LOTS more time than you can imagine: my rule of thumb is make a rough calculation then just double the time for things you haven’t predicted/technical stumbling blocks! The key is this: once you’ve committed to a time-limit, stick to it!

For mundane tasks like email, which I’ve practised nailing daily, I’m pretty good at staying well within my own time-limit if they don’t involve lots of thought. If they do, I put them to one side.

For more complex tasks, my rule of thumb is to run over by no more than 15-30%, as you would in a very very generous financial budget. (Why should you value your time so poorly compared to money?) So if you do run over, reset the timer by 10-15% more time and wrap it up! e.g. 60 mins for blog post add another 15 mins (25%) and cut to the chase!

8. “Nested timeboxes”

For regular tasks, create a precise “nested timebox” (my own perhaps rather ugly phrase…): split a task (eg writing a blog post) into stages:
Rough draft (15 mins)
Picking the best bits and deleting the rest (5 mins)
Re-writing if needed (15 mins)
Editing (10 mins)
Proof-reading, spell-checking (5 mins)
Uploading etc. (5 mins)

(Thanks to Kevin Bermingham for his writing system, on which this is loosely based. Kevin is an expert at getting business owners to produce books to a tight schedule. His system works! I completed a chapter title myself in about four hours a week ago.)

TOTAL TIME for TASK: approx 60 mins

Then put a very tight limit on each section (eg times above). This means you look at the clock and instead of it magically disappearing time and you wondering what the hell happened, you know you have 5 minutes left to reach a very small, very precise and very reachable goal.

I cannot recommend this method highly enough. First of all, you are guaranteed to work in a much more focussed way than without this structure. Secondly, it creates a clear time framework, which, once you’ve measured against reality, you can use to predict how much time this task will take for the future. So useful if you’re planning tasks as part of a big project.

Couple it with deadlines and you’re really starting to get highly productive…

9. Single-tasking

Once you begin a task you’ve identified as highly productive, stick with it until it’s 100% complete or as complete as it can be without new input. (this is SO true).

The huge danger lurks in needing new information, or “needing” to do a small thing that is needed for the major task, and getting sucked down the rabbit hole into Alice’s upside-down world of the internet – even email has white rabbit-like magic abilities to spirit away time- and don’t even mention the F-word (we’re not talking Saxon expletives obviously).

Solutions: put a SHARP timer limit on any “extra” tasks needed to complete the main task, especially if it involves going online. My simpler advice is, if you have my level of self-discipline: just DON’T DO IT. Leave that bit of the task till later and work round it. Then do that bit later in a batched “online” session (you did get into batching, didn’t you?)

10. Set Deadlines

Without deadlines, frankly, I waste time. Of course, I’m alone on the planet in that, right? That’s why I gave myself such a scarily (some would say, foolish) tight deadline on the orchestra’s first concert.

Now I know what’s involved, I really wish I’d given myself and others 12 months to create the orchestra and the first concert. But I know that now because I got stuck into the process. If I’d given myself 12 months, I know too well of myself that I’d have let other things become more urgent for 6 of them. So I would have had ended up with 6 months to go and most of the work anyway. And ironically, I wouldn’t have realised that I needed 12 months!

If you are doing a task for the first time, your idea of the time needed may well be off the mark. The only way to really test that is to set what you think is the right time, do it, and see if you’re right! In fancier language, create a hypothesis, design an experiment to test the hypothesis, and run the experiment. (That sounds more scientific and makes me feel better when I’m running around like the animal of the proverbial blue-hued posterior…)

11. Commitments to others

To be honest, it’s the only thing that guarantees I’ll actually deliver on something….I think that’s true of most people. Solution – put something in the diary that you’ve agreed with someone else who you would feel bad about telling if you didn’t do it on time.

This is also known as “getting other people to pester you for something you promised them”. Not so glamorous but again, highly effective. Obvious, but do you do it enough?

12. Public commitments to others with a deadline

This is of course the king (or queen) of productivity measures. It’s sometimes the nuclear option (kill or cure), but there is nothing like saying to hundreds of people that a concert is happening on 13 July (just for example…) to mean that you really really are committed to doing what you need to do to get that to happen. Or even finding out what the hell that actually involves. THEN finding out how to do those things!

Stressful? Sometimes. Productive? If you give yourself no choice but to be productive, you will be!

13. Batching

As preached by Tim Ferriss. E.g., do all emails in one go, once a day. I’m only moderately disciplined about this but I’ve tested the null hypothesis: put it this way, when I’m not, I waste HOURS on email. Disastrous and very bad for the spirits too. One tip: making hours of calls to utilities/banks in one block will put you in a very bad mood (ask me what I did yesterday morning…).

Break up horrible tasks – or even better, find more elegant ways of doing things (there are downsides to putting yourself on a short deadline – some other businesses don’t play ball. Banks, anyone? Solution: either leave more time, or refuse to work with any but the most responsive people/organisations!)

14. One change can change everything

This is based on the principle of what Tim Ferriss calls the “Archimedes Levers”. Archimedes famously said, “Give me a lever big enough, and I will move the world.” Forgiving Archimedes poetic licence, and Tim Ferriss a little name-dropping (as you forgive me, I hope, who is not trying to trespass against you but to deliver you from the evil of time-wasting), the point is extremely powerful and really true.

Perhaps, for example, you might home in on just one of the principles/habits/tools in this post, for example – perhaps it resonates with, or you can see yourself doing it. If you were to apply it for just a week to your daily work, you would probably notice a very large change in productivity.

15. Thirty-Day Trial

Software firms habitually offered a 30-day free trial for a product. That’s because they know that 30 days is long enough to form a new habit (or to move on to a new one).

So just ID a new habit you’d like to form, and commit to sticking with it for 30 days. Obviously this applies to any of the above habits.

I actually did this a couple of years ago with a more physical habit: running every day for 20 minutes. After about 15 days, I felt like a well-oiled machine. Definitely works.

In fact, now I’ve written all of this, I’m really excited. I need to have my own 30-day trial… see below for more…but first, let’s make sure I keep my promise to the busy people.

Look at them, running past with their Blackberries, checking email, texting furiously, looking stressed. Give that man a raise. In corporate world, that counts as seriously productive (of course, as a freelancer or start-up you won’t get paid for any of that kind of thing). Let’s give them that deliciously concise summary of the principles…

THE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY FOR SUPER-BUSY PEOPLE

Summary of To do or not to do – 15 Actionable Insights from two masters of productivity:

1. Daily goals

2. Separate Goal Brainstorming vs. Goal Selection

2.5 Do what you fear most…second

3. Keep it Simple- Keep it physical (iPhone vs. whiteboard)

4. Pareto’s Law meets Parkinson’s Law (courtesy of Tim Ferriss)

5. Peak time

6. Block-out the world

7. Timeboxing

8. “Nested timeboxes”

9. Single-tasking

10. Set Deadlines

11. Commitments to others

12. Public commitments to others with a deadline

13. Batching

14. One change can change everything

15. Thirty-Day Trial

I hope these help you. They are genuinely based on the work of hyper-productive people, and they have actually helped me – when I’m disciplined enough to follow them!

My public commitment with a deadline

Right. Enough talk. If anyone from the Orchestra marketing team reads this, they’re going to kill me. Talk about commitments to others. It’s time I created the marketing plan and got the hell on with marketing the orchestra’s next concert! SO there’s only one way I can justify this post to them short-term: my increased personal productivity!

So I’m going to take my own medicine.

I hereby commit (public commitment, #12, 11) to starting one new habit (one change #14) and trialling it for 30 days (#15), finishing on Friday 3 May (#10 deadline).

That new habit is going to be my favourite number of the list – and that number is #2.5. That number exists because reviewing my list, I asked myself the question “What is the number one thing I know in my gut is stopping me from being productive?” And that, my friends, is the dreaded MFT (Most Feared Task).

So I shall be combining that with #2 (picking out the most important 2-3 tasks for the day).

I’ll check back in on Friday 3 May.
Although I guess if I were really wanting to improve DAILY work and honour #12 (public commitment plus deadline), I’d check in DAILY…
Okay! Done. Daily it is…

Time to get things done. I’m off to a choir rehearsal.

Go do likewise! Let me know how any of these tools help…

Who are you? Who cares?

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It’s interesting to go through the process of re-examination.  In the process of daring to go for what we really want in life, as performers or as coaches/teachers (or any other profession), we have to think, among others,  about two key questions:

Who am I? (what identifies me? What are my values? what do I stand for? What is my life about?)

What do I give the world? (what problems do I solve? What great things do I do for people? And who do I do them for?)

When written down, these may sound like navel-gazing questions and self-indulgence for the busy musician or performer. It’s so tempting so dismiss this sort of thing and just go back to our comfort zone- practising maybe, or even hanging out with our other musician or performer friends and complaining about how hard it is out there (of course, you don’t indulge in such things – but I’m sure you know people who do, right?). I know I’ve been  incredibly guilty of this avoidance, and now I’ve decided to confront these issues head on.

SO…who cares? Well, we need to care from the point of how to get work doing what we love, whether that be performing or great teaching. Because when the answers are answered, they actually become a basic plank of your entire business-because they answer the  two key questions asked by your clients/audience or prospective clients/audience:

1. Who are you?

and

2. What do you do? or as put more bluntly by the marvellous business and brand expert B J Cunningham: ”Why should I care?”

So – who are you? And what do you do? Why should anyone care? If you don’t know the answer, my question is: how is your career doing relative to what you dream of? If the answer is “Not as good as I would like” or worse, then – painful or indulgent as it might feel – could it be that you need to ask yourself these challenging questions.

And if your answers are generic and unfocussed, could that be connected to the fact that you’re struggling to fight off the competition and go from people being “interested” to actually hiring you for an orchestra, a choral concert, a solo role?

I now realise that without clear, honest answers, from the heart, I will not achieve the big dreams i’ve had and the big plans I’m now beginning to implement for the next 5 years or so.

What’s your story?

The piano without-on track for lower piano performance anxiety

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As a follow-up to my discussion of my inner voices (aka piano performance anxiety, I guess), I thought it appropriate to share a bit of live video from another performance of the same programme:

It wasn’t the perfect piano (squeaking pedals in soft passages, anyone?), and I don’t claim it was the perfect performance. But  I think I managed to persuade it to come somewhere close to the sound I had in mind. And this time, the inner voices were quieter! As far as reducing piano performance anxiety goes, that was a big step up. 

Just goes to show that practice makes perfect doesn’t just apply to pieces or physical technique but also to practising the actual act of performing so you get used to it! That’s one reason I’ve been doing multiple performances of the same programme over the past two weeks or so, and I have to say, as I’d hoped, that as well as fluency increasing, nerves have correspondingly decreased piano performance anxiety. 

I have a lot more to say on the topic, (in fact I have material for about 5 blog posts just from my “ordinary life” of the past few days) but I’ve been too busy performing, practising for and promoting concerts to write it up. But do come back in a few days and you will find many  thoughtswith which I intend to entertain you.

Jazz musings on Garageband

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What does a pianist do of the evening to keep himself amused?

Funny you should ask… 

Here are two  answers…

The first is a simple version of  a gorgeous jazz standard. I decided I might as well put it into garageband and add bass and drums. It’s simple but I think it’s come out quite nicely. It’s such a great tune, I think it works either way:

What are you doing the rest of your life? (Michael Veazey, electric piano)

The second is slightly more naughty. I was practising Schumann’s lovely Träumerei one evening and started messing about with it, as I do. I then moved on to electric piano, and before you know it, I’d made a very authentic new-age version of it. While Schumann may be spinning in his grave, I’ve heard similar sacrilege at my Body Balance class in the gym.

“Dream awry remix” (arranged, performed by Michael Veazey)

 

Not that I was trying to be commercial when I wrote this. But I hear worse things at the gym/massage therapist’s etc. Maybe there’s a market for this kind of thing? Let me know what you think!

 

 

 

The voice within

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Today I performed a little lunchtime concert for a few friends, partly as a prelude to a more high-pressure private performance I’m giving next week. “So far, so what?” I hear you ask.

Well, here’s the thing: at the same time as the audience was appreciatively listening to the music, what I was hearing was somewhat different. It was my own private, unbidden  inner performance – a  dialogue -make that monologue -which appeared to start from nowhere, unbidden, with no need for prior practice, and with no invitation from me. For maximum helpfulness, it kicked in at the exact moment when I’d finished introducing myself and the silence began, and then it had its own private, parallel performance. It went something like this:

“Michael, what are you doing? You’re about to play a piano recital from memory. You need music. What are you doing? You’re not ready to do this. There are people listening.”

Naturally this was somewhat distracting but I brushed it off with the fact that I have in fact spent many hours learning the music and got on with the opening of the piece. One theme further on (so in real time about 10 seconds, but it felt longer), it’s: “You usually make a slip here…careful.” Of course, I made the slip. Great. Now I’m really starting to get a bit worried about this whole plan.

Later (sometime around the recapitulation of the first movement, I believe), I became aware that my suit jacket felt heavier than I’d wish on the left side, and that I had my mobile phone still in my pocket. That’s when the inner voice really got into its stride and had a  semi-practical thought. I let my guard down for a moment because of that, and the floodgates opened:

“Your mobile! I think you forgot to switch it off! You left it on so your friend (who was running late and had promised to come to the concert) could call you if you got lost. What if someone calls you? I wonder if anyone is going to call me? What kind of time is it? About 1 o’clock? Who might call me? Brian? No, he’s away on holiday. I think I’ll be safe. But wouldn’t it be embarassing? I’d better switch it off after the first movement. Or would that be worse than not doing it all? Won’t it look silly if the soloist does that? On the other hand, you really can’t risk it.”

At this point, thankfully, it did actually run out of thoughts for a second. The really amazing thing is that I kept playing throughout this whole parallel theatre piece. In fact it’s amazing anyone could concentrate at all. However, needless to say, of course, after this entire Henry V peroration,  I did make another slip…

(After all of that, I felt the need to check my mobile was overwhelming, so after the first movement, I have turned to the audience, muttered “I’m so sorry”, fished my mobile out, and checked it. It was, of course, on silent mode.)

The amazing thing is that apart from the odd slips, the piece generally went well. The audience – true, not necessarily the cognoscenti, but definitely amateur performers themselves in the main – seemed to really enjoy the concert, and indeed, several said that they were impressed by the business of performing from memory so well.

So what is going on? Am I a pathological inner talker in concerts? Am I alone in my inner unwanted creative genius? In my experience, talking to my colleagues and performing friends, I don’t think so. I recently helped coach a friend through preparing for a major performance . She told me after her performance that she was having similarly unhelpful comments going on for most of the first minute of her performance.  To be fair to her, it was a much more pressured situation (including live broadcasts, etc.) But still, I suspect that a huge number of musicians, singers, actors and other performers suffer from such unhelpful inner words.

So what to do?

First of all, for the performers, it might be a relief to hear that often this extra mental work we give ourselves often remains entirely private. Many audience members who are not themselves performers may be surprised to hear about such things at all. And, depending on how we show these things, often audiences would never guess that we are having this unhelpful conversation. 

So, that implies that it is not necessarily seeming to affect our performance too badly, nor is it communicating itself with the audience. I say seeming, because obviously we know when we play or sing or perform under par, relatively to what we delivered at home/in a practice room/studio, etc.

Quite some years ago now, the indispensable  book “The Inner Game of Music” (by Barry Green with Timothy Gallwey Inner Game of Music
) was arguably responsible (along with Tony Robbins) for kicking off  the “Coaching” industry (including Life Coaching, Peak Performance Coaching, etc etc).

If you are not yet familiar with this book, and are a performer of any kind, let alone a musician, I strongly urge you to buy it, read it several times, and begin making it part of your everyday performing skills and practice

Basically the book has a simple premise: There is a “Self 2″, which is the part of you that knows how to perform well, and the “Self 1″, which is everything else that gets in the way of that. Obviously, it would be so easy to dismiss that as simplistic, but because it bypasses obscure scientific arguments and fights between schools of education etc, it actually is a very direct and powerful way of dividing up the mental skills involved in peak performance.
Part of my mind, which was not already involved in playing the piano on the one side, and worrying loudly on the other,   was fascinated by how clearly and neatly I experienced that division between the Self 1 and Self 2 parts of my mind: the ability to do my thing (play a Classical piano recital from memory, in this case) and my inner critic.

To be fair to my inner critic, I guess it had my best interests at heart – it was trying to protect me. And I guess also that it had a point in that I’ve recently been very busy conducting choirs and accompanying singers/coaching singers, so I’ve not had the time to practise the piano that I’d normally want.

Nevertheless, I managed quite well. I believe that one reason that I managed to overcome that voice within was that I am used to disbelieving  it. I accept that I am a frail human being and therefore have a lot of useless, and destructive thoughts. And I also know from experience that I am a capable musician and that audiences usually seem to enjoy the music I can play for them.

The other thing that saved my bacon, I think, comes down to one of the key skills mentioned in the “Inner Game”, which is that of focus. In other words, my unhelpful brain half was saying “Are you ready? Have you practised enough?”, while the capable performer was trying to focus on sound quality, singing line, balance between the voices, keeping a steady tempo, feeling the keyboard and trying to get a feel for what was, I think it is fair to say, a bit of an uneven piano, with a few exciting habits of its own (at one point I used the soft pedal for a gently colour and discovered that it moved the bass B up by a semitone without warning me. Most exciting).

The other key Inner Game skill that I had to apply was an undramatic one: Trust. After a while, you have to have faith in your teacher, your learning process (including practice) and in your overall skills. This is where experience certainly helps. However, specifically, positive experiences. If I know I can draw on the real life evidences: people saying “Thank you, I really enjoyed that” and “It’s so impressive”; etc etc (I’m not saying that’s my view, but it’s helpful, so I try to remember it); my own experiences of performing in a way I found satisfying if not perfect; audiences clapping and smiling, etc…if I can draw on those positive real experiences then I have some vivid visual, auditory, and experiential memories to set against the merely imagined fears  of my inner worrier.

There is so much to this whole business, and I find it pretty fascinating. I certainly imagine that I’ll be posting more about this area very naturally.

I guess part of  the fascination lies in the psychological side of things, which is one reason I find coaching so rewarding, since so much of it is about people more than music or performance skills as such. But it’s no idle interest for a performer. As today’s experience reminded me forcibly, it’s so much a part of the reality of performing that I’m just amazed that even in the elite performing training institutions I’ve studied at and been lucky enough to work in or for, this whole skill set (the mental skills of performing), is mostly left to luck.

I’d be very interested indeed to hear from anyone brave enough to share any similar performance experiences they’ve had. And if you want to see if I’m really brave enough to perform a duet with my inner critic for real, check this link if you want to come to a piano recital (if that’s your thing).

Just remember to  check your mobile before you go into the concert…