Momentum Part I - Five things to move every day

I just read an article called The Art of Momentum: Why Your Ideas Need Speed. It recounts the story of a musician who suffered brain trauma that almost eliminated his short-term memory. But, for some reason, if he begin to play a piano piece, it was like it returned.

As long as his fingers and his mind were in motion, he could play beautifully. Clive’s wife writes, “The momentum of the music carried Clive from bar to bar… He knew exactly where he was because in every phrase there is context implied, by rhythm, key, melody… When the music stopped, Clive fell through to the lost place. But for those moments he was playing he seemed normal.”

I'd been thinking about along similar lines tonight as I was looking over what I had to work on before bed. There are a variety of projects and tasks that need to be moved forward, and each one seems to be in danger of grinding to a halt if I don't move it forward. Not just halting in reality, but in my mind. It seems to be more and more true: if I stay in motion, it's very easy to stay in motion. But when time goes by and the momentum has been lost, it's very hard to get back. Perhaps brain trauma only exaggerates what is already true of us!

The article offers three suggestions to generate momentum, the third one of "work on your project every day" striking me as key. Perhaps we are all inertial beings, but I feel especially so. I have a difficult time stopping once I get started, but an even more difficult time restarting once I've stopped. Accordingly, which project or projects need work every day in order for me to generate, and preserve, momentum?

1. Time with the Lord: I've seen time and again that stringing a few days together generates momentum in my devotional life, and stringing several weeks together brings a freedom and vitality that makes walking in the Spirit a whole lot easier. Miss a few days? Suddenly it's been a couple weeks and I wonder why I feel disconnected from God.

2. Exercise: The more I run, the more I want to run. The more I get to the gym, the more I want to keep pushing ahead and go harder. There were days in college when I was training for road races where to miss a day was an actual fear. I knew that if I missed one, it would be easy to miss another.

3. Support: For my ten years on staff, raising support to fund my/our ministry has been done in bursts that have varying levels of fruitfulness. Ramping up to think about raising support takes time, and often times when the momentum was finally coming, it was time to get back to campus. Is this the right paradigm for me? Could it be that working every day, whether for 5 minutes or a couple hours, might be the better approach?

4. Work (whatever is the most challenging project of the moment): Right now, for me it might just be getting our office reorganization done. We're going from 9 full-time (and several other part-time) to 17 full-time with even more part-times. Making minor changes would be safe and easy, but ultimately would miss the opportunity to capture the momentum of a new year, new people, and new hope. More on that in my next post...

5. This blog: It so quickly goes from "I have too many ideas to get down" to "where do I even think about restarting? None of these post ideas seem like the right one to restart with." Thus, today's post!

Does that seem like to much to think about every day? Maybe. But as the article points out, it is not the duration of time that we give each project, but the frequency. Five minutes every day just might be better than trying to do two hours every other week. Keep pushing things forward and don't allow them to come to a stop.

Personal systems update - OmniFocus and Evernote

As you read this, I'll hopefully be somewhere between Portland and Denver en route to Orlando.

There are few times in my life with as much uninterrupted time as a cross-country flight. While I'll probably need to sleep for some of it (got up at 4 AM), I should have a good chunk to get some work done. Here are two new tools in my workflow since I switched to Mac. I'll probably be using these heavily while in my narrow little workspace.

OmniFocus: I'm still in the 14-day trial period of this Cadillac of task managers, but it's likely I'll be pulling the trigger and paying the $80 (!) when the time comes. It's really slick and helps me to stay on top of all the different projects that are starting to take shape in my new role. Being someone who needs GTD in their life to function professionally, this Mac-only software is elegant and simple but can be as involved and complex as needed. The iPhone app is another $20, so I'll be out $100 by the time it's all through, but nearly all the reviews say it's worth it. From what I've experienced so far, I agree.

Evernote: I've had this one for a while but just figured out how I'm going to use it. I'm still developing my process, but so far I have notebooks for 1. Inbox (for notes on the go that I can categorize later) 2. Groups and meetings (both prep for and notes during) 3. People (that I meet/talk with regularly - again, prep and notes) 4. Projects (thoughts and prep for different projects. When they become tasks they move to OmniFocus.) and 5. Reference (it's a catch all right now, but I'm working on breaking it down to a few simple categories. The tag feature is nice, but so far I'm just using notebooks.

So there you have it. And if you're wondering why I only have six people on my list in the screenshot above...I'm still transferring stuff in. It will be a lot more populated a month from now!

One thing I love about these products: They are in the cloud but also back-up locally (though EN does it better than OF).

What do you think? Do you use these tools? If not, what do you use to manage tasks and notes?

Change: Hard even when it's good

I just made the switch from PC to Mac.

While I think in the end I think it will be a good move, it is very frustrating right now. Getting everything transferred over and realizing all the systems I had in place that were practically automated on my PC has made this painful. Even the small things like: why does my Mac print the exact same document as my PC on the same printer and yet the Mac version is too dark? I can't figure out this out.

Makes me want to go back to the old way. My HP tablet may have run hotter than the surface of the sun and taken three or four hard restarts to boot up, but at least once it got started...I knew what I was doing. When you're making changes, the comfortable and familiar counts for a lot.

Inbox Zero and GTD

[I had a request to move this post topic up in the queue. Here it is...]

For the longest time, my inbox was an ever growing "to-do" list and emails I held on to lived in an increasingly complex folder hierarchy.

Then I read "Getting Things Done" (GTD). Here is how I do things now:

When I check my email inbox (either on my phone or computer), I immediately either delete the email, respond to it, or move it to another folder.

If it is clearly junk, it gets deleted. If I'm not sure, but don't want to take the time to figure it out, I move it to a folder labeled "action". If I can respond to it quickly (2 minutes-ish), I'll likely do so immediately if I'm able. If it's going to take some time, it goes into action. If I read it and no further action is needed, I move it to a folder labeled "reference".

Those are the only three folders I have for email: inbox, action, and reference.

Many GTD systems have more folders than that. For a while, instead of "action", I had "read/review" and "respond". I found that most of the time, however, it was just an extra layer to toggle between the two folders that really were the same - they required time on my part. For me right now, one "action" folder works best. This could be different depending on the way you use email and what kind of email you get. 

The question you most often hear with this system is "what about my folders?!?" One big folder labeled "reference" scares people. It scared me, too. However, what enables you to get rid of folders is the "search" feature found in all modern email clients (Outlook, Gmail, etc.). In over a year of using this system, I have always been able to find the email I was looking for that previously would have been in a complex folder structure. Whether it be the subject, the sender or recipient, or some info within the body of the email, the search function always finds it. This does two things:

1. You no longer have to remember where you filed something

2. You no longer have to think about where you want to file a new item

Time saved on both fronts.

So there is the system. The GTD book addresses why an empty inbox is better even if you have an "action" folder that is full: you don't think about the email that needs response every time you open your inbox, rather you only think about it when you go to your action folder.

The next step is to begin moving items from your action folder (or directly from your inbox) to your calendar or task list. But that is another topic.

The underlying philosophy with email, GTD, and any good productivity system, is always being clear about the next action required. Decide what it is, then do it, delegate it, or defer it.

Now about that "do it" part. This is where the "work" part of "workflow" kicks in...

Any questions?