Over the past two weeks I have been reading Todoodlist, an e-book by Nick Cernis of Put Things Off (the laid-back productivity blog). It took me two weeks for three reasons:

1. it was a spare time activity (and I did not have a lot of spare time)
2. I couldn’t wait to start todoodling and sudoku calendering
3. it inspired me to re-read Zen To Done again

Although Nick mentions Leo Babauta of Zen Habits and his ideas on productivity, he doesn’t tell you to read Zen To Done. But Nick’s ideas on productivity and the simplicity they radiate, really reminded me of Zen To Done and the message it brings across (in a word: simplify!).

Now I have to tell you that I was already a little biased. At the end of last year I wrote about my switch back to paper, after trying several electronic devices and various online services for dealing with my to do’s, notes and appointments (the Getting Things done stuff).

One of the things I rediscovered is that I really (I mean really!) like to write stuff down by hand. And after some time I found myself drawing more and more in my little black moleskine and little red calender. Now why am I biased because of this? Well the tagline for Todoodlist is: “Technology is great. Pencils are better.”

Todoodlist

The e-book consists of three parts. The first part is a series of essays with funny titles like “Parrots in Space”, “Einstein Shaving” and “Zen Kitten in a Box”. The essays are an introduction to the ideas behind going back to paper and pencil.

Those ideas are presented in the second part of the book. You’ll learn about how to make todoodlists (yes they are special to do lists, and yes they kinda incorporate GTD’s projects and Next Actions), what Sudoku Calenders are and how nice it is to write on a banana. Allthough the last part is better performed with a ballpoint pen, instead of a pencil. All of them are rather simple ideas that make things easier and more fun (Sudoku Calenders are a lot easier than actual sudokus).

The third part of the book deals about how to embrace simplicity using several concepts. To be honest, most of these concepts I was familiar with (so I skipped some parts of that particular part of the book). Some of the concepts I have written about myself, and if you read The four hour work week by Tim Ferriss, you’ll recognize some of them too. Don’t get me wrong, they are valuable ideas and if you haven’t read about it, they’re simply gold.

I loved reading the first part of the book. I started reading it as a relaxing activity in spare time, and that part perfectly fit the need I had. I had some laughs, and some stories to help me in explaining concepts (thanks Nick!). The second part was so inspiring that I often stopped reading to get my moleskine and a pencil to start using it. And the third part I was skimming for the most part. All in all a very valuable e-book, well worth the $14 it sells for.

Zen To Done + Todoodlist = ZenToDoodlist

So it took me over 500 words to get to explaining the title (but you probably figured it out already). Why ZenToDoodlist? Because they are perfect additions to eachother. Zen To Done is a series of habits that will lead to a simple and effective productivity. The 10 habits are:

1. Collect



2. Process
3. Plan
4. Do
5. Simple Trusted System
6. Organize
7. Review
8. Simplify
9. Routine
10. Find Your Passion

In habit 3 Plan, one of the things to do is to plan your Big Rocks for the week. The Big Rocks are the things you really want to accomplish in that week. The same things goes for the daily schedule, but then they’re called MIT (Most Important Tasks). I find myself working with projects (GTD-style) as Big Rocks and the Next Actions in those projects as MIT’s. And the Todoodlist is the perfect tool to divide a project (big rock) into smaller actions and decide on the Next Action. And as soon as the context of these projects and actions is clear, planning them is a lot easier.

Habit 5, Simple Trusted System are my two little moleskines (black notebook and red calender). Black works as my ubiquituous capture tool, and it contains my todoodlists. Red has my appointments (and soon my sudoku notes and glyphies) and it contains my scatter-to-do’s (the random stuff that’s not project related). They simplify my system tremendously (to hand - pencil - paper). The only downside is that there are still two moleskines. So there’s some area of improvement is left…

If you follow Todoodlist closely, you’ll also find several tricks (with sticky tabs) to speed up your review process (I haven’t implemented them yet). Then go back to Zen To Done again and adopt the habits. The most important one: habit 4 Do. After that, look into habit 9 Routine. These will really get stuff done, the others are just there to help you not lose time on stuff that doesn’t matter.

Conclusion

Both Todoodlist and Zen To Done are valuable e-books, well worth the price the authors are charging for them. The combination makes it even more valuable, because they really go hand in hand in creating a simple trusted paper based system that will boost your productivity, simplify your life and inject some more fun into it.

PS: My own e-book Personal Core Values can help you with habit 10: Find your passion. You’ll discover what your personal core values are, and how you can use them to build a personal mission statement.

I’ll admit it, I’m a stats junkie. I like to track progress, see numbers, have charts on whatever it is I’m trying to accomplish. I share my blog stats with you on a weekly basis in the weekly reviews.

I track my goals and habits on a daily basis too. For this I use Joe’s Goals, a simple web app designed to do just that. In this post I’m going to share with you how I use Joe’s Goals.

Setting up an account

This is a breeze! No annoying questions, just an email address, a nickname and a password and you’re all setup.

Configuring your goals and habits

Once you setup your account, you can start configuring your goals and habits. There are two types of entries that you can make, Goal or Logbook. Goals have scores, Logbooks are meant for comments.

I use both types. Goals are meant for checking off on habits I have completed successfully for the day or for checking of on activities that lead me closer to accomplishing my goals. The Logbook-type I use for planning purposes and for making notes on things I have done. And I use them in combination too, more on that later.

As you can see in the images, the setup screens for an entries are pretty straightforward. They have a nice set of options, but nothing too fancy.

• Goal name
  Like it says, this is where the name goes. Choose any name you like, you don’t have to worry about sorting, because you can change the sort order later.
• Tags
  You can put tags in here. I don’t use this feature.
• Weight - goal only
  You can give a score to the checks you put in this goal. Values range from 1 to 10. This is something I use to give relative weight to my goals and habits.
• Type - goal only
  You can choose whether you want the goal to be positive and earning you points, or negative making you lose points. All my goals are positive, because I want to reward myself for doing something I like, not punish myself.
• Target Days
  Use this feature to mark on what days you want the goal to be active. My weekly review habit for instance is only active on Sundays.
• Display Stats - goal only
  Here you can select what stats you want to see in the overview screen.
• Notes
  And finally, this is where you put whatever it is you feel you need to write down. This does not show in the overview screen.

Sorting your goals

Goals and habits are initially ordered in the order you create them. But fear not as it’s easy to sort them later on, when you discover one you forgot. Just click in the upper right hand corner on the link to “sort goals”. There you can sort them by Alphabetically, by Goal Type or Weight.

If you’re like me, you want neither of those orders. For people like us, you can create a custom sorting order by simply rearranging the goals in the list. Scroll down and click on the “Save Custom Sort Order” button in the bottom.

The overview screen

When you trusted all your goals, habits and other thoughts to the program, you get a nice overview of all your entries in a table. The entries are listed on the left, and you get a week’s worth of spaces to mark your progress.

The default view places the current date as the last date in the table. But using the arrow in the top right hand corner, you scroll forward into the near future. By clicking the calender icon, you can choose a date further away.

Some of my tricks

• Injecting Planning: This feature, combined with the Logbook item, is a great way to inject some planning into the table. I use this for my renovation project as you can see. There’s not an awful lot of room for text, so you can’t be too verbose. By putting the Logbook for actuals (a) right below the planning (p) I can see instantly how much of my plan got executed (and consequently whether I need to adjust my planning).
• Divide into sections: Another trick I use is to divide my table into sections, by inserting a Logbook item with no active days. This results in a blue bar across the table. Make sure to give it a clickable title though (like the dashes I used). I have one goal dangling on the bottom of the table, where I brilliantly used the spacebar to give it an unclickable name. I still need to send a mail to ‘Joe’ to get that one removed from the database.
• Declining points for ‘old’ habit changes: As you can see I used the weight function a lot. For the habits section, I more or less have a system for that. The habits that I have been doing for quite a while now get a lower score than the ones that I just started. But some of them are multi-clickable, like the “Drink water” habit. Every glass of water results in a checkmark.
• Extra credit for perfect days: When I have a perfect day with all my habits, I allow myself to check the main habits goal as well, scoring me an additional 10 points. This is one I came up with fairly recently, so I have yet to get the pleasure of putting in a checkmark there!

Now get started!

There are more features to be discovered in Joe’s Goals, and I could write a lot more about it. The truth is that I don’t use the rest of the features, so I’m not going to elaborate on them.

The biggest benefit of using Joe’s Goals is the fact that you’re inclined to check in daily, to score your progress. Doing this on a daily basis will help you build your goals and habit changes into your daily routine, increasing the likelihood of success.

The important thing is to get started. So surf on over to Joe’s Goals and start tracking your progress. Use my tips if they suit you, or come up with your own hacks. But ultimately it’s not about the hacks or the tracking software, it’s about getting serious about change and progress. But this sure is a nifty tool to enable you to succeed.

Oh…and in case you’re worried about forgetting to check-in on a regular basis: you will get an e-mail reminder (after a configurable number of days) to get your butt back to the site and hold yourself accountable!

I hate going to the dentist. Ever since I was about 14 years old, a visit to the dentist never came without a follow-up appointment for a treatment. I tried my best to prevent it, but to no avail. I also tried not doing my best … that obviously didn’t work either.

The torture treatment sessions were a story apart. I don’t respond very well to anesthetics, they work kind of slow on me. So one of my dentists (I’ve had several) simply didn’t believe me when I said I felt pain after getting a shot, only to get numb for hours after the torture treatment was over. The next one didn’t believe in anesthetics (which was fine by me, because it didn’t make a difference anyway), but he kept on passing guilt on me for needing treatment (I grew to dislike this guy very much).

Now the father of one of my friends is my dentist. At least I can laugh with this guy, because I like him a lot. The treatment and the anesthetics still are no fun and even at 31 years old, I’m procrastinating big time when it comes to making that dreaded regular check-up appointment.

So what’s with the dentist story?
So imagine what my first associations were, when I got to preview a book titled “What can a dentist teach you about business, life and success?”. Insert sounds of high pitched screaming dentist drills, and feelings of nerve pain down your jaw. Not pretty.

After shrugging those associations off, I really got curious about what the answer to that question was going to be and started reading. And I was pleasantly surprised.

Dr Joe Capista is the dentist we’re talking about here, and he’s also the author of the book. In the book he tells his life story, about how an average Joe with a vision of becoming a dentist grew to a successful businessman leading a multi-million dollar dentist operation.

The concepts in his book, like the circle of balance and the success triangle are not really groundbreaking if you’re an avid reader of personal development and business literature (like myself). They contain value and if you’re new to the matter they can be very useful to both areas.

What I liked about his book is the story. Joe Capista realized early in his childhood that he wanted to be a dentist (that was beyond my powers of imagination by the way). He set out to realize that dream, only to get massive amounts of obstacles presented by life. For one he was simply told he wasn’t smart enough and that he was never going to make it. Take that when you’re a child!

But Joe pushed on, and eventually made it to a dentist school, graduated and started his career. Joe is very successful, and not only on the financial measuring stick as he will point out in the book. But what’s interesting to read is that he isn’t a self-made man. Joe accepted mentorship, he listened, he learned and grew along the way.

Joe isn’t talking about how great he is, or how brilliant he has done stuff or how extremely talented he is. In fact he does the opposite, he tells the story of an average guy with a clear vision, determination and the guts to accept help. Kind of like the story that would apply to most of us.

“What can a dentist teach you about business. life and success?” by Dr. Joe Capista is launched this week with a massive Amazon promotion. Ordering this book makes you eligible for over $2000 of other products. If you want to learn more about the guy, check out his blog.

The last two days something really interesting is unfolding on some blogs I follow (and some I didn’t follow yet). It’s something like a pub crawl between blogs, with online entrepreneurs and freelancers challenging eachother to put each other’s lessons in practice.

Christine O’Kelly (Self Made Chick) was put “On Notice” by Dave Navarro (Freelance Folder / Million Dollar Leverage), when he decided to start a 30 trial by putting the lessons of Christine’s e-book into practice. Christine in return shouted out to Dave to “Show her the money“, taking up a similar trial with the time management lessons of Dave.

Both of them are pushing themselves to improve, and openly challenging, praising, questioning and discussing what they experience. It’s a lot of fun to follow and read and discuss along. More great people are following and discussing, like James Chartrand (Men with Pens), Monika Mundell (The Writers Manifesto), Michael Martine (Remarkablogger) and Naomi Dunford (Ittybiz).

eBooks

I somehow missed the fact that Christine published a 26-page eBook “How I Built A Profitable Freelance Business for Under $50 (And How You Can Too!)”. I got my copy, but have yet to read it (probably tonight).

I did download and read Dave Navarro’s eBook “How To Turn Your 24 Hour Day Into a 30 Hour Day”. Sign-up for his newsletter to get your copy. It’s a small e-book as well, but it really rung a bell with me. Dave touches on some points that I had discovered in recent months as well. He talks about not getting started, about keeping focus and eliminating distractions, about keeping yourself accountable for your goals and about having too many goals. So he got my attention!

Now where’s the cash?

Well the C.A.S.H. is a four-step program Dave discusses in his book:

• Clarity - identify your top priority using a checklist
• Accountability - review progress on a regular basis
• Strategy - adjust your strategy until your done!
• Honor - honor the process, by starting over

That’s in a nutshell where the cash is, and how you can find your 6 hours. If you want to know more about it, download the book.

My top priority? Plan my days!

Well, it’s been staring me in the face for a while now. When I used the simple checklists of Dave, they pointed out to me that I’m doing pretty good at my time results management already. My single top priority is to plan my days though. Planning my days is something that I have not been doing, but with a tendency to overcommit and a tendency to underestimate the time needed to complete a task, it’s quite essential.

So I created my own daily sheet to plan my day. Basically it’s a sheet of paper with a timetable divided into 30 minutes segments, with a column for my planning, a column for my actuals and a column for remarks. I’ll put it up for download soon. Update: download the daily planning sheet (pdf) here.

I’ve only been working with it for a day and a half now, so it’s hard to say that I have achieved results with it. I have noticed some thing already:

• It has made me more aware of how I spend my time and on what.
• It works as a focus tool, reminding me when I’m not working on the stuff I planned.
• It’s going to be a great reference to learn about how much time certain activities actually require.

And Dave’s convinced that most people who feel that they overcommit, are actually underplanning. So if I get this down, maybe I don’t feel overcommitted anymore.

I’ll keep you posted!

First impressions, mind reading, snap decisions and thin slicing.

Those are strong concepts, some of them even mind boggling. But these are the very concepts that Blink, the book by Malcolm Gladwell is all about. This book will help you think about the way you think, especially in the first two seconds of meeting someone or seeing something. The two seconds where our unconscious takes over and let’s us think without thinking.

First impressions

The book has many examples about first impressions. About instinctively knowing whether a statue is a forgery or whether a service at tennis ends up as a double fault. These are examples from real life where experts knew instinctively what the right answer was in a blink. But not only experts do this, we all do this all the time. The first two seconds we look at something or at someone are the two most decisive seconds we can imagine. It’s hard to grasp, but most of the information we use to make decisions are packed into those two seconds.

Thin slicing is the concept behind the 2 seconds. In those two seconds we observe a lot, but our unconscious picks out only a small amount of decisive information. But as it is our unconscious doing this, we don’t consciously know what those critical pieces of information are. It’s something we learned to feel intuitively or instinctively. Blink takes a look at studies that have been conducted about what those thin slices are in particular situations.

One of the studies I really liked was a study about facial expressions. In this particular study the movements of the face were broken down into the smallest bits of muscle contraction (action units). Every movement was identified and facial expressions where tagged with these action units. By methodologically eliminating action units from an expression and asking lots of people to interpret it, the decisive action units where determined. They thin sliced the human face (although that sounds gruesome…). Nice fact: the results of this research have been used to create realistic facial expressions in animated movies.

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