Advice

Well That Was Easy: The Ivy Lee Method

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

Looks like my blogging this week is about productivity. I wanted to share something that set off a chain reaction in my own personal organization, the Ivy Lee method. It’s led to me rethinking a lot, which I will doubtlessly share in more, excruciating detail.

So I love all sorts of productivity methods, study them, integrate them, and so on. This is one I hadn’t heard of, probably as it’s A) Old, B) Common Sense, and C) Not insanely elaborate so you have to buy a ton of books from someone (not that guys like David Allen aren’t worth it).

Business Insider sums it up here.

Basically? Each night write down the five or six things you want to do the next day in order of importance. Never go above six.

You’ll recognize a lot here that I and others talk about. Focus. Force-ranking work. Limited scope.

I started using it to focus “in the small” as I already had plenty of Sprints, long-term plans, etc. It proved quite helpful, and made me rethink and expand a few of my other processes – which, again, you will probably hear about.

This is a good reminder of why you always want to study new ways to be productive, experiment, and revise how you work. There’s always something to find, and even the smallest things can open up enormous vistas.

Steven Savage

Productivity: When Does Your Week Start?

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

I want to ask a seemingly obvious question – when does your week start? I mean for a lot of my readers the answer is “Sunday” since it’s the first day of the week we all sort of use. But that may not be the real answer – for many of us the week ends on Sunday and starts on Monday if we’re part of a normal US work week. For many of us even that doesn’t apply.

So when does your week really start and end? Why ask this? Because it’s a key to getting things done, and it’s best illustrated with two stories.

  • I use Scrum-style personal time management. Part of that is having Sprints, similarly-sized periods of work you plan and have reguarly. I used to use a month-long Sprint, moved to two weeks, then moved to a week as my life had gotten more variable. Originally my “sprint weeks” started on Sunday and ended on Saturday – which ruined my weekend. Now my “real” week is Monday to Sunday.
  • I’ve worked with development teams who use Scrum, and their Sprints are two weeks long. Despite having the usual workweek, their Sprints start on a Wednesday and end on a Tuesday. Why? Because Wednesday worked better, since no one wants to do elaborate planning Monday or Friday, and Tuesday and Thursday were basically Monday and Friday Junior. Wednesday was perfect (and worked really well).

So look at the way you plan your work for the week. What day is really the best day to end your week and make sure things are done? What day is really the best day to start your week and make sure you know what to accomplish. Your answer isn’t necessary going to be mine or anyone else you know’s – it’ll be yours.

The best day to end your week is one where you can catch up, round up, and plan for the next week. That could be a quiet Friday each week, or a raucous Monday when you figure out where you are after the previous week.

The best day to start your week is one where you can dive in and get going, knowing where you are and what is ahead of you. Maybe that’s a Wednesday, a hump-day where everything is clear and you can get energized. Maybe it’s a Saturday, and your “real” week starts with the weekend to relax.

But there’s more. Consider the other ways you can apply this “best time”:

Daily. What times of day do you work best? Are you a morning person? Evening person?

Monthly. What’s the best day of a week or a month to look at long-term plans?

Yearly. What month in a year is good to assess your big picture goals? Or to take a break from your elaborate plans.

Either way, start by looking at your week, your own personal week, and asking when it really ends and begins – in a way that’s best for you. With that knowledge, you can rethink your whole plans – and like me, you might be surprised.

Steven Savage

Writing As A Living Thing

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

“The story falls apart,” the writer laments. I’ve heard that from many writers, and I’ve said it myself. Sometimes the tales we create turn into a pile of junk with alarming regularity, even if this happens in our heads. That’s because stories only work in motion – just like a living thing.

A story is a lot like a body, constantly in motion, and only in motion is it alive. Scenes connect, actions flowing like blood between theme. An event in one part of the story flies across the tale to create events later, a shocking nerve signal of continuity. Strong world ideas hold it together, the bones and muscles that give the tale solidity.

But if it stops moving, flowing, living, it slows. It stills. It may even die.

The problem is, we often harm our living stories.

We strangle them, trying to force them down certain paths. A story is a living thing, and its going to surprise us – the more we force it, the more it slows, the more danger we kill it.

We try to force them to move faster, as if we’re drugging them for performance. As we force them, they wear, continuity and characters malfunctioning, and if we’re not careful, they sicken and die.

We focus on tiny issues of stories, ignoring larger issues of health. Distracted, we don’t address the important parts of our story, and the story staggers and stumbles.

We become lost in huge abstract issues of our tales, ignoring important smaller ones of our tales. Focusing on giant overarching issues, we miss tiny flaws in our stories, and like our health, tiny issues grow to larger ones. We can be surprised at what we lost.

We go for crank ideas and trendy suggestions, following today’s latest trend or writing advice. Just like crank medicine and diet fads, these arent good for us, but we get caught up in the moment and the hype. It is only later that we have to figure out how we harmed our stories and fix the damage we inflicted.

Take care of your story just like you would a living thing. It’s a good metaphor – and if nothing else, can give us a bit of writer hypochondria to keep us on alert.

Steven Savage