This is really a case of “do what suits you best”.

I often hear people who are using a “traditional” paper based diary say “I guess I should be using Outlook/Gmail/my smartphone…”  And then there is a kind of “I am guilty” tone in their voice.

I don’t think I agree – do you?

While there are definite advantages using an electronic system (e.g. reschedule appointments, organise actions so that similar actions are grouped together, quickly looking up someone’s contact information), it doesn’t mean that everyone in the world SHOULD be using it.

One client uses a single A4 page on which she captures things to be done, her shopping list, phone calls to make, things to discuss with her business partner…

She finds using her “To Do” list very easy and reviewing it is quick and easy too.

Other people just love their Outlook and having all their synchronised Outlook info in their pocket on their smart phone.

Day specific actions go to the Calendar while other action reminders are managed in Tasks and organised using Categories.

The point is that it does not matter which tool you use to manage your life, it’s the thinking and principles that go into your system that matter.

There are certain principles of working more productively.  These principles work just like gravity or principles of flight: It works whether you believe it or not, it works for everyone, it works everywhere, it will work forever.

Here are a few:

1. You do have all the time you will ever have to do whatever you want to do.
2. You can do anything but not everything.
3. Get things out of your head and into your system.
4. Thinking “ PAUSE” can save you time.
5. Organise similar action reminders together.
6. Keep open space (time) in your calendar.
7. Take daily and weekly productivity pit stop reviews.
8. Batch process fresh input (e.g. email).

I invite you to review whatever system you are using and list the things that it does extremely well for you and also things that are not working well for you and you would like to have different.  Then give me call on 082 737 3676 or preferably email me at gerrit@789.co.za and we can have a chat and see if and how I can assist.

Have fun!

We also reflected on the value of pushing “PAUSE” before jumping to a conclusion or making a decision.

On the origin of the word “decide”:  it comes from the “Middle English” word deciden (1350-1400), which literally means “to cut off”.    E.g., if you are faced with 4 possible courses of action, and you decide on one, it means you cut off the others.  You get rid of them – never to be thought about again.

You get the idea…

So as I was lying in my bed, opening the curtains and  seeing Devil’s Peak covered in mist and cloud at about 05:20, it was decision time.

I mentally pressed…the PAUSE button to consider my choices.

•  Stay in bed.
• Get up, shower and start working.
• Go for a walk, then grab a shower, meditate and then start working.

Then I thought… If I want to live a long, happy and fulfilling life, which of these choices has the best chance of getting me where I want to be?

I cut off the bed and the immediate shower.

The walk was very enjoyable and made me feel good about the choice I made and the options I cut off!

To quote Friedrich Nietzsche:  “He who has a strong enough why can bear almost any how”.

Makes sense, so I keep strengthening my “why” – and then just do the “how”.

Enjoy cutting off the actions that don’t take you where you want to go!

African elephants have a gestation period of 640 days (so the learned Google tells me), so you are witnessing the birth of a young African elephant with this post!

I invite you to participate in conversations about SLOW Productivity and SLOW living in general.  Check out the SLOW Movement  and also the blog of Carl Honore (father of the SLOW Movement).

To quote Carl: “[Slow living] is a cultural revolution against the notion that faster is always better. The Slow philosophy is not about doing everything at a snail’s pace. It’s about seeking to do everything at the right speed. Savoring the hours and minutes rather than just counting them. Doing everything as well as possible, instead of as fast as possible.”

The  “SLOW Productivity” oxymoron is intentional.

During a recent radio talk show where I was the guest, there were clear divisions. One guy said thet the SLOW philosophy is an excuse not to work and that people subscribing to it are not the kind of people that make the world go round.  He’d better read up about the succes that IBM, Kone and Ipswitch to name but a few have had with this approach!

Others can’t stop talking about the benefits that living life at a slower pace has brought them.

As with everything, it begins in the mind… “As you think, so you will get.”

I would love to receive your contribution to my book “SLOW Productivity: The Art and Science of Slowing Down to Speed Up”.  I look forward to your mail.

Enjoy this journey with me!

Festina lente… “Make haste slowly”…”Haas jou langsaam”…”Uhambo lulawulwa yindlela”.

One of our less fortunate brothers approaches me. Dirty clothes.
Kind of a crust around his lips. He puts out his hand to say
good morning and I take it.

His hand is sticky and I decline the shake-grab-shake option.

“Are you from Johannesburg?”, he asks for some strange reason.

“I am from Cape Town, and you?” I ask him.

“I come from Port Alfred.”, he says.

We talk about Port Alfred for a bit because I have been to East
London the previous Tuesday and tell him that I saw the road
signs to Port Alfred.

We reminisce about our shared Eastern Cape experiences, then he
asked me: “Where do you stay now?”

“Just up here in High Cape – and you?”

“It depends on the weather”, he says.

“If it is warm I sleep on the sidewalk or maybe under the bridge.
If it windy it is better to sleep just around the
corner from where we are now, and when it rains, I sleep in a
shop entrance to stay dry.”

It depends on the weather…

Now that really made me think about living a productive life…

What we do in any given moment should “depend on the weather” -
our personal “weather”.

We aren’t all the same. What works for you doesn’t work for
others.

You have your unique “productivity strange attractor”.

Without going into too much detail, this means that you need to
have certain things in place for productivity to “happen” for
you, just like certain conditions need to be in place for a
thunder storm to happen or the cloth to form on Table Mountain.

What are the things YOU have to have in place to be most
productive?

Write down things like… time for strategic thinking,
delegating as much as I can, listening to my favourite music,
having my private space, clear objectives, knowing what to do
next…

Writing down these things helps you to create your own set of
“conditions for productivity to happen – for ME”.

All (!) you have to do now is to take the responsibility to make
it happen – say YES to the things that help you enjoy a
productive life and say NO to everything else.

Your productivity depends on your weather…

It’s like a clearing house…

Or applying “triage” to your Inbox.

By now you know I love to check the origins of words and triage is a great one and this is what it means:

TRIAGE:
1a : the sorting of and allocation of treatment to patients and especially battle and disaster victims according to a system of priorities designed to maximize the number of survivors b: the sorting of patients (as in an emergency room) according to the urgency of their need for care.
2 : the assigning of priority order to projects on the basis of where funds and other resources can be best used, are most needed or are most likely to achieve success.

Hey… this sounds awfully like working through your Inbox!

How will your daily life change if you apply “email triage” to your Inbox and sort your incoming mail into categories according to (and now I am freely paraphrasing the above definition) a system of priorities designed to meet their need for your attention?

Even… A system that will maximise YOUR chances of survival?

As I understand an application of triage on the battlefield, a wounded soldier is assessed and placed in one of three categories:

1. I need to work on you NOW or else you will die. Come here and let me work on you immediately
2. You will be OK even if I don’t attend to you right now so please go and wait the area designed for “ATTENTION LATER”.
3. You will die anyway whether I attend to you or not. Please go to the area designated for dying people. I can’t help you.

Same goes for your email! Just for fun I created three subfolders in my Inbox and called them:
1. Will die if not attended to right away.
2. “Will survive without immediate attention.
3. “For filing”.

Another (shorter) variation is:
1. Action NOW
2. Action LATER
3. File Away

Here’s how it works. I go to my Inbox and “triage” my mail. Emails that need my urgent attention are moved to “Action NOW”. Emails that can hang around a while are moved to “Action LATER”. Emails that I need to keep are moved to “Filing”. And the emails that “will die anyway” are DELETED (yes, rediscover your DELETE key!).

The effect of this is close to miraculous! After just a few minutes of concentrated thought and decision-making, your inbox is EMPTY! Yes, ZERO items!

Feels good doesn’t it?!

Then I “operate on” or apply my scarce resources of time and energy to the “Action NOW” crowd.
The “Action LATER” bunch can wait for…later. You need to clarify for yourself what “NOW” and “LATER” means in terms of time windows, and then work accordingly.

Why not try Email Triage for a week or so and then write to me and tell me about how you experienced it?
“Next email please!”

I wish you a fun and very productive week.

Kind regards,
Gerrit Cloete
082 737 3676 | (082 PERFORM)

As the sea was going about its daily duties of creating waves that crash into bits on the rocks, the water inside the pool remained calm – untouched by the turmoil in the ocean.

The walls of the pool and the calm water inside presented a very real picture of the benefit of creating a boundary between yourself and the rest of the world.

Within your boundary you can live and work in peace and quiet, untouched by the turmoil that happens around you. But you can’t (and should not) remain out of touch with your external environment, otherwise (like the water in the pool) you will go stale and become “unattractive” or “Stagnant”.

Just as the ocean at times overflows and refreshes the water in the pool, in the same way we should stay in touch with what’s happening outside our boundaries.

Don’t build the walls of your “pool” so high that you become totally isolated and disconnected from the rest of your world. Let the world in at the natural times.

Build your boundaries in the right place and at the right height and you will experience more calmness, focus and productivity in your everyday life.

Kind regards,
Gerrit Cloete
082 737 3676 | (082 PERFORM)

Chew on that, and then apply it in your life and see how things change!

Kind regards,
Gerrit Cloete
082 737 3676 | (082 PERFORM)

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The body of the article would then be published here in full. The idea of these articles is that they would be SEO targetted whose aim would be both acuqire good search engine rankings for the targetted keywords used and to attract those that read it to click through to one of the products on the site….

The body of the article would then be published here in full. The idea of these articles is that they would be SEO targetted whose aim would be both acuqire good search engine rankings for the targetted keywords used and to attract those that read it to click through to one of the products on the site….

The body of the article would then be published here in full. The idea of these articles is that they would be SEO targetted whose aim would be both acuqire good search engine rankings for the targetted keywords used and to attract those that read it to click through to one of the products on the site….

The body of the article would then be published here in full. The idea of these articles is that they would be SEO targetted whose aim would be both acuqire good search engine rankings for the targetted keywords used and to attract those that read it to click through to one of the products on the site….