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.

On Sundays I’m looking back on the past week. How did I perform towards my goals? How did my blog do? And how am I keeping up with my productivity habits?

Six Weeks. I told you last week it would be six weeks between my last and next weekly review. So here it is:

Blog performance

Average daily subscribers:	1061	( 13)
Average daily visitors:	190	( 31)

These stats are compared to the stats from six weeks ago. And for six weeks of virtually no new content, that’s not too bad in my opinion. Thanks for sticking around people! New free content is coming. It may still be not as much as you were used to, because I’m still working on finishing the renovation project. But that’s really coming to a successful finish this month, after which I have seriously simplified my life. The amount of topics in need of my attention will have dropped tremendously by then.

Progress towards goals

Interestingly, there was no goal for writing an e-book. Yet I finished that in the past six weeks. I guess some things are hard to plan. I did not plan to write an e-book, yet the time to write it was right. And it was too powerful a feeling to let it pass unfulfilled.

I had major progress on the renovation project. But as I already told you last week, I cut down on all other activitities that weren’t contributing to either the renovation or the e-book. So there’s no progress on the marathon goal, which makes it increasingly challenging (but not impossible!).

Renovation Project
Status:
Overdue, since 02/2008.
Progress this week:
Very strong progress. Currently working on the last big project: installing/modifying the central heating. That’s a job I’m quite inexperienced in, so it takes longer than the other jobs. And even though I planned and spent a whole day preparing it and getting all the material, I came short in supply after all.
Planning next week:
Finish heating system. Paint, sand, paint.

Semi Marathon training
Status:
On hold, no longer on schedule. Deadline is October 12, 2008.
Progress this week:
Nothing.
Planning next week:
Nothing.

Productivity Habits - weekly review

In my spare time I’m reading the e-book Todoodlist (will review it this week) and re-reading Zen To Done. I’m still on a paper system, and the ideas in Todoodlist are very much aligned with a paper attitude. And Zen To Done simply is a great book with many valuable ideas, many of which I haven’t adopted yet.

I’m happy to announce the official launch of my first e-book: Personal Core Values; a practical guide to discover YOUR personal core values.

Personal Core Values is all about discovering your values. If you’re a regular reader of How to be an Original, you know that I’ve gone through the process of discovering my personal core values years ago. And I use them on a regular basis to this day. I’ve written about my personal core values on this blog before, and I talked about how I used them when I wrote my personal mission statement.

Those articles are an account of how I found my values, and how I use them. But this is not about me, it’s about you. Because reading about how I discovered my values may be nice, what’s ultimately more important is how you can discover yours!

That’s why I wrote this e-book. It’s a guide for you, that will help you start discovering your personal core values, one by one. To accommodate this there are four (actually five) exercises. Every exercise has a brief introduction of what you can expect and how to prepare. Most exercises have worksheets to help you through the process (some of them contain gems!).

The 66 page e-book is divided in three parts:

1. What are Personal Core Values
   This part explores what values are, and more specifically what Personal Core Values are. You will learn the various characteristics of values and what it takes to make it one of those special Personal Core Values.
2. Discovering Your Personal Core Values
   This is where you’ll find the four exercises that will help you discover YOUR Personal Core Values. Choose the ones that appeal to you, you really don’t need to do all of them (but you’re more than welcome to!)
3. Using Your Personal Core Values
   At the end of Part II you will know your Personal Core Values. Part III gives some examples of how you can use them in relationships, decision making and for crafting a personal mission statement.

You can get this e-book for only $14. After that all you have to do is invest the hours for reading it and doing the exercises. And a couple of hours and 14 bucks is a great deal for this kind of life-aligning knowledge.

The instant-download e-book is easy to print or read on screen. And not to forget, you also get a 30-day money back guarantee, in case you’re not satisfied with it after all. Click here to buy it now.

The complete table of contents:

1. Part I: What are Personal Core Values
1. Doing what you love to do consistently
2. Characteristics of values
3. Personal core values
2. Part II: Discovering your Personal Core Values
1. Exercise I: Brain Writing
2. Exercise 2: A Trip Down Memory Lane
3. Exercise 3: The Last Speech
4. Exercise 4: The Treasure Hunt
5. Wrap up: The Final Five
3. Part III: Using your Personal Core Values
1. Using Your Personal Core Values
2. Personal Core Values in Relationships
3. Personal Core Values and Decisions
4. Personal Core Values and Your Mission Statement

Affiliate program:
If you have a blog or website and would like to offer the Personal Core Values e-book to your readers, I’m offering a 50% affiliates commission. If you’d like to become an affiliate, sign up here. Mail me if you need banners.

Six Weeks.

That’ll be the time between my last weekly review and the next one. That didn’t just happen by incident. Almost six weeks ago, I decided to focus on two things, and two things alone:

• The renovation project
• Writing an e-book

The renovation project

The renovation project is an ongoing activity for such a long time now. It’s hardly a project anymore, it’s a part-time job (or that’s how it feels at times). So I decided to focus a lot of time and attention to it to get it to the point of being done. And while I’m still not completely there, I made tremendous progress over the past few weeks.

The confidence that I’m going to finish it soon is back, and I ordered the carpeting last weekend. They’ll be laying the carpet August 22nd and I know I’ll be done by then. After that the renovation project is DONE! Sure there’s a ton of other chores to do in and around the house, but the major project is done.

Writing an e-book

I never expected it to take six weeks, but that’s the time I needed to write an e-book, make the graphics, have a cover designed, and get it proofread by native speakers. And to redesign the graphics, rewrite parts of the book, and redesign the graphics some more. It was an interesting process, I can tell you that.

But the good news is that I finished it. From start to finish, it took me six weeks, give or take a couple of days. The book will launch tomorrow (Tuesday July 29).

Confidence booster

Some of you may have read it between the lines, but as things progressed in the past few months I wasn’t quite satisfied with myself and with the progress I was making. That’s when I decided to focus my attention on a very limited set of things: my regular things (family and my day-job) and two projects. Nothing else. And that meant no blogging, no twittering, no running, no nothing.

It felt like an extreme measure, but it paid off. It was a real confidence booster for me, experiencing the progress when you focus on a very limited number of things. And to experience the fun coming back to them. Instead of grinding my thoughts over the lack of progress, I got empowered by focusing on making progress on the projects AND working on them at the same time. It was great.

I think I might even do better when I just focus on one project, beside the regular things. There have been times where the projects where biting each other, in time and mind-space.

Naming my own company

For a while now I have been walking around with the idea of starting my own company and transferring my online activities to it. It’s easier to make the income fiscally comprehensible, and it’s a platform on which I can launch other activities. I hadn’t gotten around to it yet though. And one of the things that was holding me back, was that I wanted to have a good name for it.

Almost at the end of the six weeks, in a spare moment when I was the only one awake in the house (I’m back to my night owl rhythm currently) I watched the movie Fight Club. To relax a bit, but also inspired by Brett Legree of 6weeks.ca. There is a particular scene, where six weeks is a crucial period for someone. He (a random dude called Raymond K. Hessel, who looks nothing like his Germanic sounding name) gets six weeks to change his life in such a way that he’s in pursuit of his dreams again. Or else…

Six Weeks again. 42 days. 42.

Wasn’t that THE answer? The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything? Yep, it is.

That was enough for me to decide that it should be the name of my company. Now the company name will not be very visible as I want to launch activities on their own names and brands, but nevertheless I want it to have a meaning. You never know what it might grow into (ambitious as I can be).

So Six Weeks is the name of my company. I did run it by Brett to make sure he was okay with it. After all it’s the name of his blog, but he quickly replied that I should go for it. Thanks Brett (you know I’ll be crediting you for a long time to come…).

So you may find Six Weeks as a name associated with How to be an Original, in the footer of the blog, but also in my Paypal account for instance. Don’t worry about that, it’s still me!

I loved the power of focus in the past six weeks. I will revisit that feeling often. But it’s also damn good to be blogging again!

On Sundays I’m looking back on the past week. How did I perform towards my goals? How did my blog do? And how am I keeping up with my productivity habits?

Blog performance

Average daily subscribers:	1074	( 3)
Average daily visitors:	221	( 13)

Still working on other stuff besides blogging. I have been writing a lot last week, because I started to write an e-book. It’s about discovering your personal core values, and it’s progressing very rapidly. I guess the time was right, because most parts of the book have already formed in my head.

My activity online reduced to virtually zero because of the other activities and the e-book. I have even taken a break from Twitter to focus on the other projects. Next week won’t be different, so this is most likely the only post I’ll write this week.

Progress towards goals

Good progress on the renovation. No progress on the marathon goal.

Renovation Project
Status:
Overdue, since 02/2008.
Progress this week:
Good progress. Windowsill is nearly ready, needs a coat of paint before I can really finish the construction. Did a lot of small jobs that made a lot of (visual) progress.
Planning next week:
Painting. Finishing windowsill and sliding doors.

Semi Marathon training
Status:
On hold, but still on schedule. Deadline is October 12, 2008.
Progress this week:
I planned to do a 4k run, but I did not run this week (again).
Planning next week:
Do at least one 4k run.

Productivity Habits - weekly review

No news.