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Archives for January 2009

A Quick Thought on Areas of Responsibility, GTD, and the 7 Habits

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I’m beginning to think more and more that being able to view my actions by area of responsibility (parenting, learning, community, household, etc.) is far more important to me than being able to view them by context (at home, at office, at computer, etc.).

Here’s why: It’s easier to make sure that you are doing the right things.

For when you have your actions grouped by context, you don’t see what purpose they serve. Let’s say you have have 25 “@computer” actions, 18 of which involve your “learning” responsibility because a few friends had a field day sending you interesting articles all week that got deferred onto your action list. (I actually rarely defer online reading to action lists, but it was the clearest example that came to mind.) The by context view would not illuminate the fact that maybe you’re doing enough learning this week, and need to have a higher mix of actions pertaining to other areas in your plan.

I know that it is not GTD orthodoxy, at present, to explicitly bring areas of responsibility to bear on the day-to-day. The approach is rather to let your intuition bring this on its own, if needed, and to review an areas of responsibility trigger list maybe once a month. However, this has never satisfied me. It has never overcome my sense that something is missing when we organize actions by context.

So my hypothesis for the last while has been that what is missing is this wider connection to our roles. Plugging away at 23 “@computer” actions typically leaves me feeling aimless. Sure, I did a bunch of “computer” stuff, but what did I really get done?

This is where the focus on the higher altitudes that Covey’s perspective in The 7 Habits can be a good supplement to the GTD methodology. There is a way to relate actions to roles that complicates, for sure, but there is also a way to do this right. More to come down the road…

Sometimes, Work Creates Work

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It is an interesting phenomenon: Doing work doesn’t always result in less work to be done. Sometimes it results in more work.

For when you complete task A, at least two things might happen. First, you might be freed up to then do the next step on something — which might even be bigger. Second, you might notice that there is something else that needs to be done that you couldn’t see before.

This is not necessarily a bad thing. But it does mean that we shouldn’t necessarily think that the way to “get on top of things” is to do more work, in the elusive quest to ahead of the game on all fronts.

Now, I do believe that there is a way to get ahead on all fronts, if we define that accurately. But the path is probably more counter-intuitive than we initially realize. The one thing I do know is that it takes something other than simply working through our tasks to get there.

I think Stephen Covey starts to get at the heart of this when he says in First Things First (and The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People) that the key is “to not prioritize what’s on your schedule [or action lists], but to schedule your priorities.”

In other words, we should not simply be “doing” our work. We should also be asking if this is the work we should really be doing. We should not simply do something because it ended up on our list — even if we are the ones who put it there.

In addition to making decisions about what’s already on our list, we also need to ask what things are truly a priority to us, but are not reflected on our current action or project list. Then we need to make those our top tasks.

There are a few ways to do that. One way is to actually schedule them on your calendar (which I know is not in line with the GTD approach in general). There are other ways as well, but that’s for another post.

Interruptions: Minimize … and Utilize

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Fast Company has a helpful interview on interruptions with Gloria Mark, an informatics professor at the University of California, Irvine. She talks about “When is interruption is helpful? Why can’t most of us stay on task for more than three minutes? Is the best way to achieve flow to just unplug?”

Here are some key points:

Interruptions are bad for innovation and flow:

I argue that when people are switching contexts every 10 and half minutes they can’t possibly be thinking deeply. There’s no way people can achieve flow. When I write a research article, it takes me a couple of hours before I can even begin to think creatively. If I was switching every 10 and half minutes, there’s just no way I’d be able to think deeply about what I’m doing. This is really bad for innovation. When you’re on the treadmill like this, it’s just not possible to achieve flow.

But not all interruptions are bad:

If an interruption matches the topic of the current task at hand, then it’s beneficial. If you’re working on task A and somebody comes in and interrupts you about exactly that task people report that’s very positive and helps them think about task A.

There’s been a lot of research into the psychology of problem solving that says if you let problems incubate, sometimes it helps in solving them. A good example would be a software developer who just can’t trace a bug so they put it aside and let it incubate. The answer may come back to the software developer later while he or she is working on another task. This is an example of how switching tasks may be beneficial.

The worst kind of interruptions are those that make you switch topics:

It’s generally counterproductive if you’re working on one task and you’re interrupted on a completely different topic. People have to shift their cognitive resources, or attentional resources, to a completely different topic. You have to completely shift your thinking, it takes you a while to get into it and it takes you a while to get back and remember where you were.

The ROWE Blog has a helpful take on this article that illustrates in a very concrete way the cost we pay when interrupted all the time.

The distraction that interruptions create is not the full story, however (as the interview itself discusses).  While we should seek to minimize interruptions, they are also opportunities to do good for others and be of use. You can’t — and shouldn’t — eliminate the possibility of all interruptions (at least as a constant way of life). Interruptions should be looked at as a chance to do good.

In fact, after two decades of interacting with a wide variety of senior executives, the author of the book Organized for Success has noted that “successful executives turn one key time management rule upside down: rather than closing the door on interruptions, they extract genuine value from them” (p. 10).

In fact, listen to this perspective of one senior executive:

What you are calling “interruptions” is my work. From the beginning of my career, I have seen my job as being able to facilitate, troubleshoot, run ideas by, solve problems, and just be a presence. If I had an urgent deadline, I would go into a conference room and shut the door. But that rarely happens.

Very interesting.

Here’s my take: We need to both carve out time for focused work, and then also weave into our days the flexibility to be freely available such that we can recognize “interruptions” as opportunities for productive interaction.

There is a both/and here: Minimize interruptions. And realize that there is a way to make use of interruptions for maximum effectiveness.

The best way I know to do this is to start your day early so you can segment it into a period of focused work for a few hours, followed by a time when you are more freely available.

I’m still working on this. But the most important thing to realize is that the biggest interruptions are those that we do to ourselves.

Way to Go, Kurt Warner

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As a graduate of the University of Northern Iowa, Kurt Warner’s alma mater, I’ll be rooting for Warner in Super Bowl XLIII this Sunday when the Arizona Cardinals take on the Pittsburgh Steelers. I think I started the year after he graduated.

I am even more impressed by Kurt off the field than on the field. Here’s a good article about Warner I enjoyed recently: Good Deeds are Warner’s Focus. Here’s a few more from his website as well.

Gmail Goes Offline with Google Gears

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From TechCrunch:

Until today, one of the biggest drawbacks of Gmail is that you could not go through your emails when you were offline. Today, that changes. Gmail is finally going offline. Google is rolling out a Google Gears version of Gmail that will be available to users starting today in Gmail Labs. (If you don’t see it, keep checking, the rollout to all users should be complete by the end of the week).

(HT: Andy Naseli)

Why This Stimulus Package Won't Work — And What Will

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There was a very good editorial in the Wall Street Journal yesterday on the current stimulus package heading through congress and why it won’t work.

Here are a few of the key reasons that it won’t work, some of which are covered in the article and some of which are not:

Public Works Projects Do Not Stimulate the Economy

The government has to fund those projects by taking the money from somewhere else (through taxes or borrowing). Thinking that public works will stimulate the economy assumes that the government will invest that money more productively than the private sector would. But that is almost never true.

Plus, the government is not our parent. It should not try to take care of us by stepping in to create jobs directly. It’s aim should be to keep us — the citizens in the private sector — maximally free to act. Let’s learn from the 1930s!

Government Spending Does Not Stimulate the Economy

This is really another way of stating point one. It is not spending per se that stimulates the economy. It is spending on profitable ventures which advances the economy. The private sector has a litmus test for knowing what society needs and wants most: profit and loss. But the government has no such means of knowing what is truly most wanted and needed.

I know that profit and loss realities alone do not create a good society — we must also have non-profit enterprises, and yes government does have a legitimate role. But the point is that, in the governmental realm, the incentives are not there to direct government spending toward the specific “stimulus projects” that society truly needs. So it needs to keep such initiatives to a minimum.

The business sector, on the other hand, has a clear test governing how it invests: the ventures that a business invests in must be profitable. But this is not so with government initiatives, since they are funded not by business results (profits) but taxes. And those taxes take money away from businesses and individuals — that is, they take it away from those that invest according to the clear and decisive knowledge of profit and loss.

The Problem is Lack of Supply, Not Lack of Demand

During the depression, FDR and his administration kept trying to figure out ways to stimulate demand. That has it backwards. The problem is never lack of demand — human demand is basically infinite.

The problem is that, when it comes to the economy, you first have to produce before you can receive. My family needs a larger vehicle right now. The want, need, and “demand” are there. Here’s what is not there: the money (or, at least, an amount that would leave us with the savings level we want after the purchase). I need to figure out how to produce the equivalent value of a vehicle before I can actually go buy that vehicle. (Or, alternatively, I need to be confident enough in the economy to take out a loan and trust that my future earnings will be sufficient to pay that off.)

So nobody needs to convince me or anybody else to want various goods and services. The issue is that we need to be able to produce enough in order to purchase them. In other words, supply creates demand. If we define “demand” as the actual decision to purchase a vehicle, rather than simply the desire for one, we see that that kind of demand is created by supply — that is, by my producing something of value, which value I can then “exchange” for the vehicle.

The Solution is Immediate and Permanent Tax Cuts

If the problem is lack of supply, then the solution is not to stimulate demand, but to stimulate supply. Or, if we want to put it another way, the way to stimulate demand (defined as the actual decision to buy) is by stimulating supply.

So how do you stimulate supply? Well, you don’t really need to stimulate that, either. It is a part of human nature to seek to be productive. We have an ongoing thirst to create, make things, and produce. That is a good thing.

The problem is that there are obstacles that interfere with this. Sometimes the obstacles are simply that life is hard. But most of the time, the biggest obstacles are created by the government — unintentionally, of course, and usually in the name of “stimulating the economy” or “making things equitable” and such. What needs to happen is simple: these obstacles that we can control, namely those created by the government, need to be removed. The government has to “back up” a bit.

And that means tax cuts. Taxes are legitimate and necessary. But high taxes are the biggest obstacle to the ability of people and business to produce (excessive regulation is a close second). This is because taxation diverts money away from private sector investment in productive goods and services and into government initiatives. In other words, there is less money for businesses to invest in creating and expanding their goods and services.

There is objective, real-world evidence that tax cuts do indeed lead to a growing economy. We saw this with the Kennedy tax cuts of 1964 and Reagan tax cuts of 1983, for example. Further, the WSJ piece notes that “Research by Mr. Obama’s own White House chief economist, Christina Romer, has shown that every $1 in tax cuts can increase output by as much as $3.” This is in contrast even to the best-case scenario thinking behind the government spending approach to stimulating the economy, which is based on a theory that “each $1 of spending the government ‘injects’ into the economy yields 1.5 times greater output.”

Even if that theory were true, that is still only half of the stimulus created by tax cuts. But, more importantly, it’s not true. As the WSJ piece also notes, “There’s little evidence to support this theory [that $1 of government spending creates $1.50 in output], but you have to admire its beauty because it assumes the government can create wealth out of thin air. If it were true, the government should spend $10 trillion and we’d all live in paradise.”

Again, there do need to be taxes. But a 35% corporate tax rate and 35% individual tax rate for top earners is far beyond what the founders would have envisioned (in fact, we did not even have an income tax for the first several generations in our nation’s history). We are in absolutely no danger of taxing businesses to little. There is a lot of room for taxes to come down, in turn resulting in greater economic growth.

Some object that this is not a true picture of the corporate tax burden because many transfer their money to tax shelters (for example, see this article at Smart Money). But that is precisely part of the problem as well: corporations and individuals end up moving portions of their income to less productive tax shelters, which thus also diverts money away from more productive uses. It is ironic that you even see this done by wealthy individuals that espouse the “need” for higher taxes — they call for higher taxes, while at the same time seeking to minimize their own tax burden through various tax shelters.

Let’s affirm that is a good thing, not a bad thing, that people want to minimize their tax burden. Of course most people want to minimize the taxes they pay. We try to minimize the amount we have to pay for everything — we never want to pay more than we have to, whether at the grocery store, Target, or anywhere. That’s part of the reality of living in a world of finite resources, and it is a good thing.

The really incredible thing is that reducing taxes not only syncs with the good and natural human desire to see as little of our income as possible removed from us through taxation, but also frees up people and businesses to more fully invest in productive initiatives, thus expanding the economy.

But the tax cuts need to be permanent, because otherwise they cannot lead to a permanent change in behavior. Further, they need to be immediate and “on the margin”:

To be genuinely stimulating, tax cuts need to be immediate, permanent and on the “margin,” meaning that they apply to the next dollar of income that an individual or business earns. This was the principle behind the Kennedy tax cuts of 1964, as well as the Reagan tax cuts of 1981, which finally took full effect on January 1, 1983.

If the Obama Democrats can’t abide this because it’s a “tax cut for the rich,” as an alternative they could slash the corporate tax to spur business incentives. The revenue cost of eliminating the corporate tax wouldn’t be any more than their proposed $355 billion in new spending, and we guarantee its “multiplier” effects on growth would be far greater. Research by Mr. Obama’s own White House chief economist, Christina Romer, has shown that every $1 in tax cuts can increase output by as much as $3.

This is not hard. Obama could solve this recession in a day. Propose a tax cut bill that cuts taxes immediately, permanently, and “on the margin;” shepherd its approval through Congress (which is controlled by his same party), and then the day that he signs it into law, the recession will be solved. The effects would take many months to be felt, for sure. And the bad loans do need to clear out as well. So I’m not saying the recession would end that same day. But the healing would begin immediately, and would lead to a true and lasting recovery via the quickest route possible.

Are You Good at Multitasking?

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Many employers have “good at multitasking” as a requirement for positions that they are hiring for. Here’s a good word on that from The Myth of Multitasking: How “Doing It All” Gets Nothing Done:

The point is, when someone tells me they’re good at multitasking, I know that they’re inefficient. Saying you’re a good multitasker is the same as saying that you’re good at using a less effective method to get things done.

It’s like saying, “Bob is better at riding a bike than Chuck is at driving a car.” Even if that statement is true, Chuck is still going to reach his destination with greater speed and ease than Bob.

No matter how effective you are at switchtasking, you are still working less efficiently than you could another way. You are going to take longer to get things done than the person who focuses on one attention-requiring activity at a time (pp. 47-48).

What Cost More in 2008: The Financial Bailout or Multitasking?

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The financial bailout, but just barely.

Financial bailout: $700 billion.

Lost productivity due to multitasking: $650 billion per year.

That number is from The Myth of Multitasking: How “Doing It All” Gets Nothing Done:

2.1 hours: Average estimated lost productivity per person per day due to interruptions, based on a 40-hour work week.

$650 billion: Estimated annual loss to the US economy due to unnecessary interruptions plus recovery time.

If you move beyond the time frame of a single year, however, you see that multitasking is actually far, far more expensive than the financial bailout.

For the financial bailout was a one-time thing. Multitasking costs $650 billion every single year. So, after ten years, we have this:

Financial bailout: $700 billion

Multitasking: $6.5 trillion

Even if a second bailout were necessary, or the cost of the bailout went up, the cost of multitasking still far outstrips the potential cost of the bailout over a ten year period.

Add to this the fact that the bailout probably prevented damage to the economy that far exceeded $700 billion (I realize that there is difference of opinion there), and you have even less of a contest.

How Do You Assess a Team for Cohesiveness?

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Lencioni offers these questions in The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive:

  • Are meetings compelling? Are the important issues being discussed? Lack of interest in meetings is a good indicator the team may be avoiding issues because they are uncomfortable with one another. “There is no excuse for having continually boring meetings” (149).
  • Do team members engage in unguarded debate? Do they honestly confront one another? Even teams that get along well should be experiencing regular conflict and intense debate during these meetings.
  • Do team members apologize if they get out of line? Do they ever get out of line?
  • Do team members understand one another? “Members of cohesive teams know one another’s strengths and weaknesses and don’t hesitate to point them out” (150).
  • Do team members avoid gossiping about one another?