What's Best Next

The Truly Creative Do Not Just Generate Ideas — They Implement

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A very good point by Steven Furtick, via Zach Nielsen: 

Let’s define creative. Cause it seems like to me that the way we often use the term in church work today misses the point.

Some people fancy themselves as being “creative,” or ”creative-types,” because they have a lot of ideas. Cool. You have ideas.
So does my 3 year old.
That doesn’t make you creative.
An idea without implementation isn’t creation.
It’s imagination.

By definition, being creative requires that you create something.
True creative people don’t just dream it — they do it…or oversee the strategy to get it done.
True creativity results in a product. Not just an idea.

We’ve all met people who shy away from the hard work of action steps because they “don’t do the details.” They’re “more into the creative side of things.”
But as far as I can tell, the Chief Creator didn’t just think about light, stars, and human life…the proof of His creativity is the tangible detailed expression of His vision.

That’s what I appreciate so much about our creative team at Elevation.
They imagine — then they implement.
Otherwise, they know they’d just be playing make believe.
And we don’t give paychecks to big boys and girls for playing make believe.

What will you create today?
Don’t settle for conceptualization. Bring it into existence.

Simply having great ideas does not make you creative. By definition, being truly creative means you actually create something. So there are really two components of creativity. As a semi-motto of GTD that I’ve seen goes: “Make it up, make it happen.“

The Action-Priority Matrix

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Mindtools has a good overview of the Action-Priority Matrix.

The Action Priority Matrix is a simple diagramming technique that helps you choose which activities to prioritize (and which ones you should drop) if you want to make the most of your time and opportunities.

It’s useful because most of us have many more activities on our “wish lists” — whether these are bright ideas to pursue, exciting opportunities or interesting possibilities — than we have time available. By choosing activities intelligently, you can make the very most of your time and opportunities.

You unfortunately have to register to read the whole thing (What’s Not Best!), but you still get to see the four quadrants, which are:

  1. High impact, low effort: Quick wins
  2. Low impact, low effort: Fill-ins
  3. High impact, high effort: Major projects
  4. Low impact, high effort: Hard slogs (now called “thankless tasks” in the article, but I like “hard slogs” much better)

Where Social Networking is Going

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TechCrunchIT has a good Q&A on the social web with Google’s Kevin Marks. Right away, his comments on the first question are very significant:

Q: We keep hearing that “Google wants to make the web more social.” What does that mean?

Everything on the web is more interesting when it takes place with friends. Today’s social networking sites are the online contexts where you and your friends go to be social, and the time we spend on them shows the attraction.

But the model of going to a single website to interact with other people is changing. In the future, we expect everything on the web will become more social, augmenting the many things you already do on the web. Whether you’re shopping, deciding what to read, or researching a topic, knowing what your friends, or family, or the people you respect think about that product, book, or source of information is a vital part of the web.

I call this the “social cloud,” meaning that “social” will be integrated with the web so that you don’t think about it anymore. Charlene Li calls this same idea “social networks become like air.” The web itself is like this — following links seems like second nature to us because we know a URL can take us anywhere. Social isn’t there yet, but that’s the highest level goal of the OpenSocial project — to make interacting with people a natural part of how we use the web.

Read the whole thing.

A Few Quick Examples on How to Make Your Tickler File Electronic

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A “tickler file” is part of the standard GTD approach; most productivity folks also recommend having one. It allows you to “mail” actions and items to yourself in the future.

I have an “electronic tickler.” Instead of doing 43 physical folders (one for each day of the month, plus one for each month) and doing this manually, I just have a specific action list in my productivity system called “Action Calendar.” I keep my tickler items on that electronic list.

Here’s how that works. Every item on that list has a due date. “Due date” there really means “do on.” I check that list every day (well, most days) and the items with that day’s date are things that need to be done or brought to my attention on that day. I ignore everything in the future. The point of this list is that you don’t need to think about anything in it until the day it comes up.

This is a great way to keep track of repeating tasks that need to be done on a certain day. For example: changing your furnace filter every month or so. I have that as a monthly repeating item in my action calendar (probably every 6-weeks, actually, but you get the point). When it comes up, I change it. During all other times, I don’t need to think about it.

Another instance is processing notes you capture in your “capture tool.” You don’t want to just capture action items and other stuff you need to process, and then just leave it to your brain to remember to do it. I have a repeating task in my action calendar to process my notes.

An action calendar also works well for single items that come your way, and which you have to do at a certain time and cannot do until them. For example, when we moved and started our new trash service here, the company sent us two coupons for two free months. The problem is that you can only use them in two (future) months which they designated.

We received the coupons in November or something. The months they were to be used in were February and March. So, I created action calendar items for the first Saturdays in February and March that said “return [name of garbage company]’s billing coupon for free month.”

As you can see in this example, there was along with this a physical item to keep — the coupon I had to send in. Hence, I do keep one physical file for tickler items. I call it “pending.” It’s actually for more than just physical tickler items. It’s for any paper-based support material I need to keep which pertains to non-project actions. Paper-based support material for my electronic tickler fits in here great.

I thought to write this post because the action calendar item to send this in for March just came up. So I grabbed the coupon out of my pending file and sent it in. (Now I’m writing this post.)

Now, someone would say, “Paper is old-fashioned. That company shouldn’t have sent you actual paper coupons to send in.” Well, sure, but the fact is that they did. You have to be able to deal with the fact that not everything is going to be electronic.

I find this balance — keeping my tickler items electronically, but then when necessary keeping any physical support material in a single (rather than 43) physical folder that the electronic item then points me to — very useful.

I do also have other physical files beyond this one “pending” physical file, because the reality is that you do have paper to deal with. But that is for a set of upcoming posts (as soon as I can!).

Things Will Be Left Undone; Therefore…

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You cannot get everything done. Things will be left undone.

Therefore, be intentional about that. If things are going to be left undone, be sure that it is the right things that are left undone.

How do you do that? It’s one of the reasons you should have a list of goals, projects, and actions that represent a complete inventory of your work. By seeing everything that you have to do, you can identify more easily — in light of the big picture — what to delegate and what to just plain get rid of.

If You Finished Just One Project A Day…

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Project completion often comes in waves: 3 projects completed one day, 0 for the next two, then 1 more completed, and so forth. (I’m speaking of projects here in the GTD sense of multi-step but non-routine outcomes, rather than the more traditional sense of “fairly large initiatives that produce a unique service, product, or result.”)

It’s probably unavoidable that project completion will always come in waves to some extent. But in the midst of this, it’s easy to forget that if you consistently completed just one project per day, that would really add up. It would mean:

  • 5 projects completed per week
  • 20 projects completed per month
  • 240 projects completed per year

Many of those projects would be small 1-3 hour things. But in the midst of that mix would also be several very large projects as well.

If your project list seems long and you sometimes struggle to identify what is best to do next, it can be helpful to remember this: Pick one project each day that you can complete, and get it done. Then pick another somewhat larger project, and do a decent chunk of it.

Even if you feel like this is small progress, over time this will really add up. After even 10 days, you’ll probably feel that you are actually moving along at a pretty good clip.

Last of all: It may be risk to say this in the event that there are people out there clearing out 1,000 GTD-defined projects per year, but in my opinion, anyone who can consistently complete 240 projects a year just might be a productivity super star. (Assuming that those projects are the right things to be working on!)

How to Use Basecamp as a Standalone App on the Mac

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To keep Basecamp from getting lost in all of your Firefox or Safari tabs, you can create a Basecamp icon on the menu bar on your Mac. That way, you can launch it just like any other program, without first having to launch your web browser. Simon Dorfman explains how.

You can also use this approach to create stand alone menu bar icons for other sites that you use a lot, such as Gmail or your blog admin page.

(HT: Josh Sowin)

Short Call-Outs from Getting Things Done

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Sprinkled throughout Getting Things Done are short call-outs with useful quotes from people and short summaries of insight from the section. These are an easy-to-overlook but very useful feature of the book.

I thought it might be helpful to list some of these call-outs from chapter 3, “Getting Projects Creatively Under Control.”

You’ve got to think about the big things while you’re doing small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction. — Alvin Toffler

The goal is to get projects and situations off your mind, but not to lose any potentially useful ideas.

The most experienced planner in the world is your brain.

Have you envisioned wild success lately?

If you’re waiting to have a good idea before you have any ideas, you won’t have many ideas.

Outlines were easy, as long as you wrote the report first.

When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. — Will Rogers

Don’t just do something. Stand there. — Rochelle Myer

Fanaticism consists of redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim. —  George Santayana

People love to win. If you’re not totally clear about the purpose of what you’re doing, you have no chance of winning.

Celebrate any progress. Don’t wait to get perfect. — Ann McGee Cooper

Often the only way to make a hard decision is to come back to the purpose.

If you’re not sure why you’re doing something, you can never do enough of it.

Imagination is more important than knowledge. — Albert Einstein

The best way to get a good idea is to get lots of ideas. — Linus Pauling

A good way to find out what something might be is to uncover all the things it’s probably not.

Plans get you into things but you’ve got to work your way out. — Will Rogers