Blogs and Discussions Best Picks for January

Now more than ever, workers need to be more productive, more engaged and more creative. However, even as we set these expectations for ourselves, it is vital that we do not spiral into patterns of self-destruction, which would put an end to our best efforts to survive this crucial period.

Harvard Business Review and ZenHabits featured posts on how each of us can and must be creative. The Employee Engagement Zingers blog ran a series of posts on an important idea regarding engagement: the ONE Ball, where instead of juggling far too many goals, you limit your focus and efforts to one particular area and determine to make it succeed. Popular productivity blogger David Seah shared his view on setting challenging expectations grounded in but not shackled by reality.

This week’s picks cover poor work habits that prevent productivity, like working during times of low energy and having confused priorities. GTD Times also ran a post revealing the importance of including pleasant and fun tasks into one’s to-do list, asserting that failing to do so would mean cultivating a reluctance to work with the list.

Stepcase Lifehack blogged about how in 2009, more people in corporations are looking for work-life balance than in 2008. The danger of not balancing life and career – working late nights, missing meals, forgetting exercise – is physical, emotional and mental breakdown.

2009 will be a challenging year indeed.

Our Top Five Career Effectiveness Picks

All Things Workplace

Hopeful Realism: The Vision People Want

Harvard Business Publishing

We Are All Innovators Now

Slacker Manager

Choices Versus Obligations

Employee Engagement Zingers

THE ONE BALL: Full Engagement

Matt’s Idea Blog

Personal Lessons Learned In 2008 – The Intersection Of Past, Present, And Future

Our Top Five Personal Effectiveness Picks

Dumb Little Man

Ten Simple Ways To Make Your Boss Think You’re Brilliant (And Indispensible)

The Positivity Blog

Nelson Mandela’s Top 9 Fundamentals For Changing Your World

ZenHabits

The Secret To Being Insanely Creative

Stepcase Lifehack

Are You Ditching Work-Life Balance Because You’re Afraid Of Losing Your Job?

David Seah

Realistically High Expectations, Part I

Our Top Five Personal Productivity Picks

Water Cooler Wisdom

5 Signs Of Poor Productivity – And What To Do About Them

Organize IT

Self-Help Myths: Work Hard, Play Hard

GTD Times

A GTD Epiphany

Slacker Manager

Is Productivity Personal?

Stepcase Lifehack

Toward A New Vision Of Productivity, Part 8: Planning For Life

Our Top Five Online Discussions Picks

DIT and Get Everything Done Forums

Mark Forster’s Autofocus: Majority Of Users Return With Positive Responses
Mark Forster’s new time management system, “Autofocus,” has been released in its beta form with nearly 2000 testers. At the time of publishing, a majority of users found Autofocus to be an easy-to-use, resistance-free, high speed task management system, confirming Mark Forster’s original claims. Initial feedback includes an increased ability to process tasks quickly and gain perspective on all tasks. Users also found reduced procrastination and that using intuition to select tasks based on which stood out worked well. Autofocus also seems to adapt to a person’s unique method of processing tasks.

DIT and Get Everything Done Forums

Mark Forster’s Autofocus: It Does Not Work For Me
While a majority of users were clearly benefiting from Autofocus, there were some who were not able to adapt it into their lives. A professor who had previously used Mark Forster’s older “Do It Tomorrow” (DIT) time management system felt that the non-linear and seemingly haphazard layout of Autofocus was too unstructured for him. Preferring the structure of DIT and closed lists, he went back to DIT, which he felt better determined the tasks to be done for the day. Another user felt that choosing tasks based on which one stood out became a source of confusion for him. These users recognised that these issues were not due to Autofocus per se, but rather a clash of working styles that did not fit with the system’s method.

Ready4Anything Yahoo Groups

Chapter 2
In discussing the second chapter, members talked about how having perspective over all their tasks in life helped them use their lists productively. The weekly review is important for gaining prospective, along with getting everything out of one’s head. The community often used Outlook, Omnifocus, and pen-and-paper, along with many other pieces of software and hardware. The most important role of these implements, as members asserted, was to put everything down so that it can be reviewed and worked with.

Steve Pavlina’s Forums

Help! Too Many Goals. How To Choose?
A member of the forums shared her frustration at not being able to pick the “right” goals to work on for 2009 – she had too many things she wanted to do, and while her desire was to do them all, she knew she would only be able to focus on one. Other members told her to “work on one goal at a time” and “just choose ONE major focus for the rest of the year” to set a direction by which all other goals would follow. Another member suggested categorising her goals to see how they fit into the various areas in her life, e.g. spiritual, emotional, physical, mental, career etc. Some suggested a few goals from her list to start with, this time asking her to work on the goals that would give her the clarity to tackle others, such as finding inner peace.

David Allen Company Forums

Pulled Down By My Daily Checklist
One of the most common disappointments of any time management system is losing interest and discipline in making the system work. People get discouraged or even repelled by their to-do lists and lose track of what they need to do. In this case, a member of the David Allen forums shared his reluctance to the to-do list. Fellow members suggested that he work on completing the full list to get his tasks to zero, e.g. processing all the email in his inbox so that all are acted upon or properly filed, which would serve as strong motivation. Some encouraged turning checklists into habits, to become familiar enough with the work to make effective decisions about how to manage it.

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