How I’m spending one hour per day of productive, focused work, to resume my side-business and consistently “move the needle”. This post also serves as a site update.
Why, hello there!
It’s been a while since the last post. Indeed, this year I only posted my 2019 Goal Review and, for St.Patrick’s Day, a list of 17 Ways How To Be More Sustainable. But I haven’t been idle, so I thought it time for an update.
As I said before, the business took a back burner while I studied a Masters in Consulting in Paris. I experienced lockdown there, and it actually wasn’t so bad at all for me, thankfully. I was busy enough with university never to get bored, with a few friends remaining around the residence, and a view of the Eiffel Tower within my 1km permitted walking radius. Not too shabby! And when lockdown lifted and exams were over, I had the once-in-history opportunity to explore Paris without it being full of traffic or tourists. Silver linings!
Anyway, throughout the year I did only a small amount of contract work for this company, and ignored the blog. It’s important to prioritize the most important parts of a business and not try to do everything!! Blogging is a ‘nice-to-have’, especially if doing it prevents you from pursuing actual cash.
Since exams finished in May, I’ve resumed writing my eBook on Productivity. I’ve also started a day job with which to pay the bills and finish my Masters program (in lieu of a thesis, you do a work semester and a report on it).
An hour per day of focused work
So, what I now do is dedicate the first hour of my day to my own business, and then start the day job afterwards, with evenings being my own for relaxing or meeting friends. This way I work on my own stuff while I’m most fresh, and before distractions start to arrive (I don’t even turn on my phone before I’ve finished this hour).
One hour per day may not sound like a lot, but it’s 7 hours per week of focused work on the Most Important Things in the business. If you work a 40 hour week you still get at best 5 hours per day of productive work, for 25 hours per week maximum, and it’s frankly never even that much. Spending 7 hours per week minimum, of focused work, makes this about a 1/3rd-time job, focused on the activities that will move the needle.
Since I’ve started I’ve written several thousand words for the eBook, taught two workshops, arranged for more upcoming ones, and build a couple of websites for clients.
Consistency
The trick is consistency! And it’s easiest to be consistent when you build a habit around what you’re trying to do, and schedule it in that part of the day where it’s least likely to ever get disrupted.
Working from home is of course a great help! Any time that would have been lost commuting has been regained, and what time remains is often a bit more flexbible. I’ve long been an advocate of remote work, despite its challenges. I’m even giving free talks on the topic to workplace groups at the moment. Please get in touch if you’d like to discuss this.
Given that I’m only working about 7hrs per week (but consistently and sustainably), I’m focusing now on coaching only one topic – Productivity! I’m the most passionate about it, and in the time of COVID and work-from-home, it seems like it will provide huge benefit to people.
So please keep an eye on the site for what comes next. Join the newsletter (coming soon), follow me on Twitter, or just email me if you’d like to know more about anything discussed above.
Well, this is the first post in a while. With all the classes for my Masters moved online thanks to coronavirus, there’s a bit more time on everyone’s hands. Actually, I say that, but the remote work consulting side of things has understandably started to take off too. But this post is about becoming more sustainable! How come?
Last week saw St.Patrick’s Day(… well, technically, there wasn’t much to see). Some very inspiring friends of mine are moving for people not to just wear green and drink green beer, but to DO something green on this day each year, raise awareness around sustainability, and inspire people. As my action, I wrote a guide for our university’s CSR department on 17 things people could do to become more Green and sustainable… and then I had to rewrite to be a bit more aware of social distancing… and then still got complaints because French readers thought I was encouraging them to break quarantine. Ah well, no good deed goes unpunished.
So, please, take this as a general guide on how to be more sustainable any time of the (normal) year, and hold off on breaking quarantine until it’s safe to do so. Many of the suggestions are things you can do at home or online. And so, let’s get to it.
17 things that you can do on St.Patrick’s Day (or any day) to live a greener life!
Tip #1
Set Dark mode for Windows, Firefox and many other applications. Many of our favourite apps and web browsers can be set to Dark Mode. It takes more energy to light a whole screen up white than to simply keep it black. Consider searching how to set Windows 10/ macOS or many other apps to Dark Mode.
Tip #2
Nature Cleanup. Take some reusable bags to a park, beach, or river, and spend some time making it beautiful. This is even more fun with friends! As a bonus, when the community sees you doing this, they get warm and fuzzy feelings, and are that much more inspired to do something themselves.
Tip #3
Plant A Tree. If you have a garden,or live near a wooded area, consider getting a sapling, grabbing your spade, and planting a tree. They look beautiful, provide homes for birds, and, of course, produce the oxygen that we need to live. Help offset your carbon footprint today.
Start an urban garden (grow your own food).It’s spring time! Even if you don’t have a garden there are some things you can grow for yourself at home in potted plants on a balcony or windowsill. Imagine growing your own tomatoes, spinach, or strawberries! Yum!
Tip #6
Check out Ecosia, the search engine that plants trees! They’ve planted over 87 million trees so far, and all you have to do to help is search!
Tip #7
Compost your food waste. This tip is brought to you by Diversion.
Composting needs five things to work:
1. Air 2. Moisture 3. Green Materials 4. Brown Materials 5. WORMS ♡
To start a compost today, you will need a standard 330L plastic compost bin. If you don’t have one, use a bucket or an old plastic bin for now!
Make sure to cut off the end and find a lid to use.
Home composting is all about balance. Pop in your kitchen green & browns then your garden green & browns and keep going.
The green provides the nitrogen and the brown provides the carbon.
The worms and other insects will be attracted by the smell of the kitchen materials.
Do not place cooked foods, meats or dairy in the compost, it will attract vermin.
Start a petition. When people act together they can make a bigger difference. Maybe you’re finding that with the quarantines you get more work done at home on your own timetable, having set up remote work/work from home arrangements. Getting enough people to encourage your employers and/or government to support the practice will mean less commuting and carbon emissions in the future. Remember that contacting your local elected representatives at any time is something that they want you to do, and that helps democracy. The representatives want to know what their voters are thinking. If the environment is important to you, tell them! You don’t always have to wait until the next election.
Tip #9
Get a quote to improve the insulation of your home, or to install a solar panel. This makes heating bills cheaper and uses less fossil fuel energy from the grid! Search for you local suppliers today and get a quote.
Tip #10
Pick up some Bamboo Toothbrushes. Did you know that plastic isn’t your only option for toothbrushes? You can buy biodegradable toothbrushes made from bamboo that work just as well as the real thing. Ask in your local health-food shop, or order them online. Learning from the previous points above, maybe even start a petition asking the big supermarkets in your area to start stocking bamboo toothbrushes. Let them know that there’s a demand for them.
Tip #11
Shop local. Farmers markets, smaller stores, etc. Remember to consider where our food and clothing comes from. Just transporting it half-way around the world to you means that you’re making a higher carbon footprint buying big-store clothing and exotic fruit. When we shop at farmers markets and buy from local manufacturers we’re supporting the local economy and the environment. When you have a choice, try to buy local.
Tip #12
Plan your next vacation locally. We all love to hop on a plane and see far-off places. It’s exciting, but it also takes its toll on the environment. Yet how much do you know about the world within 150km of your home? How many fascinating stories, battles, castles, food/wine tours, hikes, and festivals can be found within driving distance of your house? Learning more about where you come from can be a great way to get in touch with your heritage, save money on flights, protect the environment, and not have to worry about airport security.
Tip #13
Learn a vegetarian or vegan recipe. With all this extra time at home, we should have plenty of opportunity to try out tasty new recipes. Whatever your views on the morals of eating meat, we should remember that the keeping of animals, especially cattle, has a huge impact on the environment.
Demand for meat means more farms, which means trees are cut down to clear farmland, which means that methane-gas-producing cattle are kept for years, then killed and transported all over the word.
When you consider all this together, we realise that replacing just one meal per week with a veggie/vegan alternative is one of the most impactful changes we can make in our lives. After one, maybe you’ll even love the recipe and double your impact by replacing two meals per week…
Unplug your TV, PC, etc at night.We’ve all heard that leaving these devices on standby mode continues to waste electricity, yet we all still leave them on. It’s just convenient. Well, maybe this St.Patrick’s Day before bed, go and turn off all of these devices at the wall. Every little bit helps, and can inspire others, especially impressionable children. Who knows? Maybe you’ll start a new green nightly habit tonight.
Tip #15
Take a group to the woods. Appreciate nature. Depending on what country you’re living in right now, you may not be able to get to the woods (thanks Corona. Sorry Italy and Spain), but in Ireland and France (where I am currently), you still can, though public transportation isn’t advisable.
At any rate, going to the woods solo or with a group of friends can renew our sense of wonder and love for the natural world and remind us what we should be fighting to protect. Spending time in nature has also been proven to boost our happiness and sense of calm – something a lot of people could probably use these days.
Tip #16
Learn how to make your own cleaning products. Did you know that you can make your own soap, toilet cleaner, and several other cleaning products at home using things like baking soda, vinegar, and lemon? Pouring less chemicals down the drain protects our water supply. Get started with this simple blog post.
Tip #17
Share this PDF. It’s all well and good doing our part, but we can’t save the world alone. The best thing we can do is multiply our impact by inspiring others (without being preachy, or showing off – because this just alienates people). We’re all in this together!
And that’s it! Easy!
Well done, everyone! Everything Green that you do makes the world a better place just for you having been in it.
Hello all. A long time since a post has gone up here, so a perfect chance to review the 2019 goals set in January’s blog and explain the reason for the absence all at once.
The Big Shift – Msc in Consulting
Well, the big event that changed everything for me and the business in 2019 was that I decided, during the Summer, to move to Paris and study a Masters in Consulting with IESEG from late August, until at least the middle of 2020.
Prior to making the decision, I found that I was really enjoying working with the clients I was coaching, and that I loved hearing about their businesses and helping to solve problems, but I had so far struggled to find enough clients to make the business viable by itself, and (this may just be my false perception) felt that I lacked an immediate credibility because I hadn’t a consulting or coaching qualification, even though the clients I have worked with have all made great progress and given valuable testimonials. Anyway, that led me to get a quick Level 6 Cert in “Train the Trainer” in the early Summer, and to decide to invest in levelling up my career by getting serious about consulting with a Level 9 Masters.
I had last posted about Remote Work, stating that I intended for that to become my coaching niche, but as I made the Masters my focus, it didn’t make sense to try to launch a new strategic direction like that without having the time to give it sustained effort for at least a year.
The first few months – dialling it back
As I sorted myself out logistically for moving out of my apartment in Wicklow and overseas to Paris, I was far too occupied to continue writing blog entries, which I had previously chosen to treat as nice-to-haves rather than a core part of the business strategy, as they rarely produce clients, though they do provide credibility.
I ran another of my “Business 101” workshops in Dublin before leaving in August, and continued working with the few clients I already had, but knew that I’d now have to treat the coaching as part-time, and worked to figure out the best way to keep it going.
The Plan – Ebook, Productivity
Once classes commenced, I had to figure out where in the week I could take time to spend on the business, and what I would do in that time. From my time in the games industry I remembered the phrase “embrace your constraints”. They give you clear lines to paint between and make a lot of decisions easier.
Practically, this meant that I wouldn’t be able to do very much to grow the business or handle many clients, so what would be the most valuable activities that I could do over the year to advance it? After reading Key Person of Influence by Daniel Priestley I decided that writing an Ebook (already one of my 2019 goals) would be the best use of my time.
Since I was trying to maximise my limited time, I was already pulling out all the tricks and tools (and trying some new ones) to become more productive, so choosing ‘Productivity’ as my topic seemed like the perfect answer. Of course, I asked a few colleagues some sample questions to gauge the idea, but found that most of the information I’d gathered over the years was news to almost anyone I spoke to. Someone may journal, but not know the Pomodoro technique. Someone might know binaural beats, but not use chunking, etc. Most especially, nobody seemed to have discovered the best ways to slot all these techniques together.
I also found that my residence in Paris (The Student Hotel) try to put on montly talks so I volunteered to teach a quick workshop on productivity techniques for students in October. It was only midly well attended, but everyone there took away a lot from it, and in writing the notes/handouts for afterwards, I had a good start on content for the book.
The Enemy – workload
Well, no plan survives contact with the enemy. The Masters course I was on, from October until the end of classes in December, got extremely intense! I had gotten a few thousand words into my book by getting up early and writing after doing my morning routine, but as I worked on college assignments later and later into the evenings, and then past midnight, I found myself less and less productive.
You can know all the productivity techniques and diets in the world, but still nothing can top getting enough sleep for boosting your cognition and productivity.
[That reminds me, a blog on the audio interview I conducted with Treasa Spragg last Summer is still due, but it never came because the file got moved onto a hard drive that stayed in Ireland after I travelled. Will try for that again soon. My apologies to those who were looking forward to it]
Alors (as the French say), just to function I found myself cutting short my exercise routines, meditation, journalling, planning the next day’s 5 tasks (as they were just ‘finish that project before the deadline tomorrow’ there wasn’t much planning to be done – just reacting), and eventually also needed to put a pause on the writing and even some client calls, though I’ve now caught up with them again since the Christmas break.
It has made me realise that as I begin the 2nd semester, setting goals for this business during college time is unrealistic, as my time is basically not my own to a large enough extent to achieve business goals, though the Ebook can still progress along.
2020’s plan
The plan is not to make a plan until the Summer, most likely. I know I won’t get much done before classes end in May, and I know that to finish I’ll also have to complete a 4-6 month internship/job somewhere. Given that I don’t have this yet, I can’t predict if it will be 35 hours a week (normal for France) or 60 hrs a week in some other country (sadly typical enough for game developers, masters students, entrepreneurs, and many ocnsultants… I’m tired just thinking about it).
Once I know where the job is and what it will be, I’ll keep coaching part-time and get the Ebook released, and over the coming months decide if I want to stay in consulting as the day job long-term or return to running my own coaching/consulting business full time.
Essentially, right now the business plan is just “finish the Ebook and see”.
Revenue targets – I didn’t share the figures, but naturally these were missed once I depriorisitsed the business half way through the year.
Attend a non-Irish conference – I didn’t technically, though I’m attending all sorts of business talks now in Paris, so I’ll count that as a win.
Release a free eBook download by April 30th – Missed, though this became the notes to the Productivity workshop, whose notes I give out as PDF for free if you attend the free talk, which I’ll continue to give.
Release a paid eBook by August 31st – Missed, though it is about 1/3rd written now.
Speak at 2 conferences – I didn’t speak at any conferences, but still did some public speaking.
Community
Volunteer 1 day per month average – Accomplished! I played in a nursing home in Ireland several times, volunteered with Utopia 56 in Paris again (did a week with them in 2018) when I first arrived, and joined the school’s CSR group, giving out water bottles and commencing a 3 year plan to work towards making IESEG for sustainable and socially responsibile.
10 Climate Actions by November 15th – For the Cool Planet Champion program. Missed 10, though I completed several and now these actions roll into IESEG’s “Responsible Leaders” CSR program that I’ve joined, which actually results in more than 1 day per month. Hopefully the impact of the projects by May 2020 will have more than made up for the 10 “actions” (a very loosely defined goal that they set for us).
Health & Personal
Sober January – Done.
Run a Marathon – Not a 1 year goal. I accomplished a lot to train past a chronic ankle injury. I can run about 5km every few days now, whereas last year I couldn’t run to the end of the street. To me this is a huge success! A marathon is 42km. I still have some ways to go.
Take 1 Holiday overseas – I got to Tenerife in March. Beautiful!
Personal Budget – Kept, accurately!
Other
I performed a few times. Twice for comedy, and produced MBI again, but didn’t have any guitar gigs this year, which makes me sad. I couldn’t even find open mic nights in Paris yet.
I learned how to juggle in just 6 weeks at the start of the year.
I still can’t do a handstand, but I’m working on it (cue ‘thud’ of me falling to the floor).
In Conclusion
Some goals were successful, some were missed, and lessons were taken away. Overall I’m very happy with the year, though the business has necessarily been moved to the back burner for now.
I just wanted to take the time to fill people in as I still get some queries about the Ebook and other activities. Acknowledging the failures and successes publicly is great for accountability too.
That said, I won’t take the time to list out the person goals here (I didn’t last year either) as the post is getting a bit long, they’re less relevant anyway, and I’ve already mentioned that there are no SMART business goals at this time.
Remote work is a concept that’s rapidly growing in popularity. In an age where most people are living in or moving to cities, spending 15 hours per week commuting, are increasingly concerned with the environment, and where many feel as if they’ll never be able to afford a home near their jobs, maybe it’s not so hard to see why. However, remote work does present several challenges, and may not be right for every organisation or worker.
Remote work is the ability to do your job away from the office. There may not even be an office in the case of “fully distributed” teams. Thanks to books like the 4 Hour Work Week, people have an idealised vision of getting their work done in a few hours on the beach and then surfing and sipping margaritas for the rest of the day. The beautiful thing is, this is sort of possible. Remote work does facilitate more travel, ‘stay-cations’, or a ‘nomadic lifestyle’, but it’s not the norm for most remote workers. Workers tend to put in approximately the same level of hours as before, just minus the commute if they work from home. They may even still commute to a local coffee shop or co-working space like WeWork just to get out of the house.
It has its challenges, but I’m a huge advocate of Remote Work for all of the reasons that I’ll mention today (and alluded to last week). Let’s go!
Types of Work Today
Traditional: Nearly everybody has worked in this way at some point in their career. It’s work that is fully dependent on the worker’s presence at the location. Many of these jobs can’t yet be done remotely (restaurant staff, electrician, builder, tour guide) but many can (customer support, sales, marketing, programmer, anything to do with software products nearly).
Remote: The work is done entirely off-site, if there even is a site. Communication is all online or over the phone. We’re talking about home crafts businesses, digital nomad bloggers, influencers, freelance coders, etc.
Hybrid: Well, it’s what it sounds like. It blends the two extremes. Workers have the option to work from home, but are often required to come in to the office to meet clients, have team meetings, or access certain equipment or confidential information. Hybrid workers aren’t typically free to fly off to Bali at the drop of a hat, but this form of work is rapidly becoming more common as companies begin to experiment with remote work but aren’t quite ready to commit fully.
I’ve worked all 3 types. Most of the last 5 years have been Remote for me, but within that I also moved back to a traditional role for a few months. It really would have benefited from a hybrid model (it was a software company with a young staff) and while I enjoyed the role, it felt a bit like stepping back in time in certain respects.
Remote Work Benefits
Cost Savings
According to facts presented to the Oireachtas (Irish Government) by Vanessa Tierney of remote work recruiters Abodoo, a company can save €10,000 per remote worker, while the worker saves €7,000 on average. Salary expectations amongst workers living in rural areas are 10-20% lower because of lower cost of housing. Worker attrition (globally) has been measured to improve by a whopping 40% when companies embrace remote work. Lastly, worker productivity increases by 15% when working remotely. From the company’s point of view, investing in remote or hybrid work (if applicable to the business) should be a no-brainer. Moreover, younger workers are increasingly expecting companies to have this option. Those who don’t when they could will have a hard time attracting and retaining talent in the future.
Mothers Re-entering The Workforce
Remote work is increasingly facilitating new mothers to keep their jobs or re-enter the workforce. I’m writing on the Irish context, but it’s true in many places that the costs of childcare are astronomical these days. One spouse can spend the majority of their income on childcare. In that context, it makes sense for one parent (usually the mother) to become a stay-at-home parent. Working online prevents companies from losing the valuable skills they’ve trained into their employees.
It’s a similar story with someone who suddenly has to care for an elderly parent.
I love to hate commuting. It robs us of hours of sleep just to sit in traffic inhaling fumes. We arrive to work tired and unproductive, and get home at 8pm too exhausted to do anything but eat and hit the hay. It’s bad for our mental health, bad for the environment, and bad for workplace productivity. And not to put too fine a point on it, but it carries attrition. More tired people on the roads means more accidents. Commuting kills!
The only thing I’ll say in its defence is that it’s good to get out of the house to do your work, so that you can be switched off when you’re at home. This has been a personal challenge for me, especially when I was making games.
Working remotely can solve one of the scourges of modern society. Probably the biggest “first world problem” we have. But commuting is a real problem.
Worker Productivity
Instead of forcing all workers to conform to an office timetable, working autonomously can allow people to structure their day in the way that best suits their body-clock. Morning people (larks) and night owls don’t work productively at the same times of the day. Some work better if they get some morning exercise in first. Others want to work as soon as they get out of bed. The autonomy afforded by remote work allows workers to get into their own best routines and do better work with less mistakes.
The Challenges of Remote Work
Trust: Measuring Output instead of Input
A common managerial complaint about switching to remote is “how will I know if my employees are working?”. Even forgetting the availability of time measurement tools, this is a backwards answer. We tend to measure the value we get out of a worker by how many hours they spend in our building (even if they might take 30 minute bathroom breaks and spend 2 hours gossiping at the coffee machine), when we should be measuring what they produce. Do they meet their targets? Do they exceed them? If so, we’re getting the value from them, and it really shouldn’t matter to the company if it took them 10 or 40 hours to do it.
Shifting this thinking is crucially important to the adoption of remote work.
Communication
While tools like email, Skype, Slack, GitHub and Trello can keep us talking to and working with anyone in the world, there really is a lot lost in our messages when we strip out body language, tone of voice, and eye contact. Nothing so far can replace interacting with other humans in person. It’s what we’re built for. Especially when we need to collaborate on creative work, being in the room with people is legitimately far superior.
Text communication can be ambiguous. People can take offence or become anxious just by assuming the wrong tone of voice in a message, or not noticing the intended jovial tone or sarcasm.
Dr. Nick Morgan, a communications consultant/coach, speaking recently on the ‘Face Forward – Inspiring Change’ podcast (ep. 25), advocates for an increased use of emojis in business text communication, to replace some of the missing body language. He also proposes being far more verbal with our reactions in audio-visual communication. For example, going so far as saying “that makes me feel very X” over a group Skype call, rather than staying silent and allowing misconceptions to run amok.
Communication really is the key to success in most endeavours, and it needs some improvement in the area of remote work. I encourage you to listen to that podcast episode if you’re at all interested in this area.
Hardware Constraints
Having worked in games, and occasionally with video editing programs, I know that I really need my desktop PC to do most of that kind of work. Nothing short of the most expensive laptops could be used to run high-end video editing, game engine, or CAD software. Further, it can be painful to shift back down to a small screen when you’re used to working on 2 or 3 big monitors at once. This currently puts a damper on the remote work ambitions of these types of workers, but with the advent of cloud computing, high-end programs can be run “on the cloud” and streamed to any device. Just see the new Google Stadia platform (embedded below) for an idea of what I mean.
Foldable screens and VR can also help with providing us a “bigger” work space without carrying around bulky hardware.
While hardware is currently a constraint, it won’t be for long. Hooray!
Isolation
A big downside of working from home is the loss of the camaraderie that you get in an office. You don’t see the same people every day and form friendships. If you work completely on your own, loneliness and even depression are likely to set in. Loneliness has been proven to be a huge factor in mental and even physical health issues.
Thankfully this isn’t too hard to remedy. Hybrid workers can still choose to go to their office on certain days. Fully remote workers can join nearby co-working spaces, or work from their local library or coffee shops and get to know the other workers or staff there. The thing to avoid (take my word for it) is working from your bedroom, never seeing people, and never switching off because you wake up in your office. It’s sinister as it seems great at first, but really takes a toll over time.
Organisations like Grow Remote in Ireland are working to promote remote work around the country, but also to create communities and support groups for remote workers around the country to meet in their local areas.
Self-Discipline
This really is one of the biggest challenges, at least at first. If your remote working day doesn’t include a few fixed points like meetings or calls, and if you don’t have to get kids to school, it can be all too easy to stay in bed a little longer some days, or tidy the house instead of tackling a spreadsheet you don’t want to look at.
This problem isn’t as pronounced if you’re working with a team, but on your own, a lack of a schedule, or a tolerance for letting things throw it off can be a killer to productivity(I’ve upadted this article by adding a link here to another company’s very useful blog on the topic, which goes deeper into the super-powerful world of habit-forming and psychology to maximise productivity at home. Should be very useful while the world is struggling to adapt to Work-From-Home in the midst of COVID-19).
When I started RetroNeo Games in my late 20s, I had no team mates, no customers, no meetings, no kids to take to school, and no idea how to prioritise the 10+ different jobs that a solo indie developer needs to do to run a studio. I’m a very disciplined and regimented person by nature, and I still found this an immense challenge. I did gain control of my schedule, but even then, without accountability, it was a challenge to stay in control. In the end, I found my most productive days were either when the artist or composer (who joined later) were relying on me to complete a task, or it was one of the 2 days a week that I’d scheduled to live stream. I would never miss that appointment to turn on the camera and start coding. Often, there was nobody even watching, but there was a public record of me showing up on time and doing the work. Accountability is huge.
If you have a team and co-workers, or are accountable to your customers, this won’t be as much of a challenge, thankfully. But be aware of it. I’ve coached a few game developers on regimenting their days, getting the most important tasks done first, and reclaiming a work-life balance. If you feel you’d like some help with this area please get in touch for a free discovery call and we’ll try solve at least one problem in half an hour.
Conclusion, and my new ‘Why’
Remote work is the future for many many companies and workers. The enthusiasm, support, and momentum are building and it won’t slow down. Recruiters like Dynamite jobs and Abodoo are popping up and are 100% dedicated to remote jobs.
Two of the reasons that I stopped working in games were A) that I wanted to do something that I felt was more meaningful (like work on behalf of the environment, or to help alleviate Ireland’s homeless situation and housing crisis), and B) I wanted to regularly work with new people and solve interesting problems for them.
Last November, that led me to the idea of business coaching, since I’d helped game developers with the tax and legal ends of their businesses before and loved doing it, but I hadn’t yet chosen a specific area of coaching to focus on.
As I mentioned last week, I think I’ve found a new area of focus for myself. Working to promote and enable Remote Work can help to ease or solve the housing crises in major cities like Dublin, can improve the lives of commuting workers, can reduce vehicle carbon emissions, can make my clients (companies or individual workers) more competitive as they embrace hybrid and remote work, and it allows me to meet new people regularly and see their businesses. It also allows me personally to do most of my work online and be location independent – a goal I’ve had for over a decade (when I worked as a game developer at home, I was ‘remote’, but still dependent on my desktop PC in the home office). So I believe now I’ll position myself more as a remote work consultant, or at least focus more deliberately on marketing that angle.
I’d love to hear your own challenges or desires in the comments, and as I’m trying to grow the blog and business, let me ask directly for you to please consider sharing this article on social media or just with individuals that you think would like it.
Until next time…
PS As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. I’ve linked the book “4-Hour Work Week” above. It costs you no extra to buy through the link, but I get a small percentage as a referral bonus.
My time management was going out the window. I was more prone to being distracted. Basically my soul was protesting. I needed a holiday.
It’s been a while since my last post. I’d been busy first and I’d been on holiday. Today I’ll talk a bit about the latter.
I wanted to get away. I could feel it not just in my tired eyes, snow-white skin, and freezing cold hands after a long winter, but also just in my soul. I’m not an overly-spiritual guy, but a phrase kept coming to mind every couple of days:
“I’m soul-tired”.
I knew this feeling from before. It’s more commonly known as burnout, but for whatever reason, my subconscious had come up with a new term for it.
I wasn’t suffering so much physically, as I’d been taking care of myself with sleep, exercise, and eating well, so I wasn’t run down or getting sick, but my routine was slipping as my mind protested its shabby treatment. My time management was going out the window. I was more prone to being distracted. Basically my soul was protesting against doing the same(ish) tasks in the same place for months on end without being able to draw out a paycheck yet). Without having seen much sun or warmth all Winter, and tired after nearly 3 months of bidding for semi-state training contracts (bureaucratic form-filling is not fun… not sure if you knew) I just needed to escape and get some warmth into my bones.
I had missed the last holiday I’d planned to take due to timing complications in my last workplace, so it had now been 11 months since I’d been anywhere (and even that was for a work conference).
So, with my birthday approaching, I decided to get away for it (in the end I departed 2 days after, but whatever) and looked for some quick, all-inclusive Sun holidays. The best deal to be had was for Tenerife, so I booked, and flew out less than a week later.
Puerto De La Cruz, Tenerife. Photo Credit: Kevin Murphy
Switch off. Charge up.
Don’t bring the laptop
I debated (for about a second) bringing my new laptop so I could work by the pool, but no. This was about NOT working. I knew I needed to get somewhere that I couldn’t work, even if I wanted to. Since I usually work from home, it can be hard to delineate the working day from the relaxing part of the day (though I usually use dinner time as the cutoff). I needed to get somewhere that was unambiguously for relaxing. Luckily I hate typing on my phone, so I wasn’t prone to answering any but the shortest of emails on that.
Go All-Inclusive
If you ever have the option to go all-inclusive in a holiday hotel, I do recommend it. It usually works out cheaper (unless you eat away from the hotel a lot), but the main thing it does for you is takes an extra mental load off. You don’t have the stress of budgeting for food or drink, or overspending. “Splashing out” on dessert isn’t a concern. You just have it. Or don’t! Whatever you like! It’s already paid for, so enjoy it at your leisure! Just not too much on the alcohol…
Yes, the booze might be watered down (wasn’t here though), and the food may leave something to be desired, but as Napoleon Bonaparte said; “Quantity has a quality all its own”. 😉
Read
I love reading a fresh book on holidays. I used to always read fiction but lately have read a lot more non-fiction. I wasn’t sure if bringing a ‘work’ book with me would defeat the purpose of the holiday, but I risked it. I actually brought two but only read 100 pages of the first. I was just having too much fun (also Tenerife was actually cold so I didn’t spend a lot of time reading by the pool).
At any rate, I’m still reading, and quite enjoying, the classic ‘Think and Grow Rich’ by Napoleon Hill. I’d put off reading it for a long time because of the cringey title, but when I realised that it’s a classic written in the 1930s, from which most of the other self-improvement books out there (good and bad) owe their lineage, I added it to my list. If nothing else, there are some fascinating case studies in there.
Since my holiday was about recharging, I also bought the audiobook of The Charge, by Brendon Bruchard. I really enjoyed listening to this as I walked around exploring Puerto De La Cruz in Tenerife, getting some sun, taking in the sights and smells, and just gaining some perspective on my life and work by being away from the desk. I’d recommend this book to anyone feeling drained, though the audiobook format isn’t ideal for this one as there are a number of lists and activities to complete that would prove challenging to find again in audio format. Paperback recommended.
Listen to music
I also enjoy having a bit of a soundtrack to a holiday. I like to buy new music (I’m not a Spotify fan) and associate it with a trip or activity. That way, when I listen to the music again, I can in part bring back the sensations and feelings associated with that music. Music has a very mysterious and wonderful superpower that resonates with us deeply – so why not try and use it. I chose the synth-wave band Gunship’s two albums to explore and I loved them! Check out one of my favourite tracks below (I tweeted out this video recently).
Meet new people
One thing I’m so glad that I’ve learned over the years is how to just strike up conversation and make friends wherever I go. It’s invaluable. I definitely have those days where I’m feeling too deflated to talk to strangers, because it does take a little effort and energy (I’m naturally introverted), but when I’m in a new space I can usually manage it. Really it just takes the an opening line and then conversation just goes from there. In a tourist hotel for a week (5 days in my case), you’ll see the same people again and again and it pays to have made a little effort. Effort is the wrong word, even, as it sounds like you gave up something, but you know what I mean.
One of the highlights of my trip was talking to the rep, Richard, from Lonten Tours (he’ll most definitely look after you well if you’re ever on holiday in Tenerife). I went down to book a boat and a bus tour around the island, and just ended up chatting for about 90 minutes about the books and podcasts we consume, and about the side/main businesses we’re both into. We really hit it off. I asked where was there good live music to be found and then got talking about the nightlife. He said they sometimes run pub crawls, but not at the moment. The next thing I know we’ve arranged an impromptu pub crawl for that evening with a few of the other young travellers around. So we’re getting in free (with free shots) to a few of the town’s better clubs and we’ve a small posse getting to know each other, all because of striking up a conversation.
That was my 2nd night only, so for the rest of the week I’d a small friend group who I saw repeatedly. Now I’ve (even more) friends I can visit in the UK, and I’ve a contact (friend too) who I can refer group holiday bookings to while he’ll send me potential business coaching clients that he meets. New friends, a few great nights out, solid tourism advice, and a new business contact – all for the price of striking up a friendly conversation. Whoever thinks that “networking” has to be creepy and salesy is doing it wrong!
Extra tip: I love karaoke too. The first night I banged out Frank Sinatra in the hotel bar karaoke and they asked me to do 2 more songs and close out the night! Not only that but people kept saying hi the next day, recognising me as “that Frank Sinatra guy”. If you can fight your nerves and get up and sing, it’s a real shortcut to making friends, as well as being damn fun in its own right.
All good things must come to an end
All too soon, it was time to return, but I found some clarity there that I could take home with me. I very much hate commuting, and love to travel. I want to see so many places. I want to visit friends that I’ve made that are scattered all over the world. I left Ireland with a choice to make following an interview done the week before. I was considering whether I wanted to get another office job in a Dublin company, with either a nearly 2 hour commute each way, or the necessity to move into the city and lose half my salary to extortionate rents. I was strongly considering that, as unattractive as it sounds (the company was doing exciting things, to be fair).
But that’s the wrong path for me (and most people I think, but it’s just what Dublin offers right now so many are stuck with it). The books I read on the holiday (especially Brendon Burchard’s, mentioned above), as well as the perspective gained from just leaving Ireland again for a week, solidified in my mind that I want to be in charge of my own career, and have it be a Remote Work career primarily. I returned with a new commitment to my business, and a new Why, which I’ll talk about soon.
In Conclusion
We all need a rest, and some perspective. Life is about balance, and I was off-balance. If you’re feeling “soul tired” or burned out, I strongly recommend taking a few days off. Even if it’s just to run errands, clean the house, and clear Breath of the Wild, that would do you some good, but getting far from home and seeing somewhere new can’t be beaten for casting your own life in a new light, revealing both the beauty and the stains that you’d missed.
Until next time…
PS As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. I’ve linked some books above. It costs you no extra to buy through the link, but I get a small percentage as a referral bonus.
What having a To Do list gives you, is a quieter mind, ready to focus on the task at hand, not distracted by what needs to be done later.
Yes! Christ, yes! Of course To Do Lists are still a good idea! Forgive me for doing a test on a click-bait title, but it gets me fairly directly to the point I want to make today.
Everyone seems to need an edgy opinion now, and a click-bait title, just to get some of that sweet sweet traffic. This became crystal clear recently (obvious as it already was) when I signed up to the blog site Medium and got their daily email of story summaries. I’m seeing blog titles like “Crypto is a fad!” right next to “Why Bitcoin will save the environment!” (I’m paraphrasing), and blogs on getting up at 4am right next to ones about the critical value of getting 8 hours of sleep. [Stay tuned here, as in the coming weeks I’ll be doing an interview with someone specialising in sleep and productivity, and together we’ll be taking a strong stance against the current wave of “struggle porn”.]
How long will it be before we’re back to advocating ruling employees through fear and cheating the customer as “the forgotten best practices to make millions!”? I can almost see it happening. Mark my words.
Apart from maybe the title today, I do prefer the higher-integrity approach of actually trying to teach useful habits. You’d think that the basics wouldn’t need to be covered any more, but an epidemic of careless blog and video topics with misleading titles (like mine today) are actually eroding our knowledge-base when it comes to productivity at work, and conveniently for me, opening up space to talk about the ABC’s again.
To Do Lists under attack
Almost just to be contrary it seems, I’ve seen more and more people advocating for a NOT To Do list. This isn’t a bad idea per se, as it’s good to highlight our time-wasting habits and work to eliminate them, but some “influencers”, in a careless case of Chinese Whispers, I think missed the point when they started saying to create NOT To Do lists at the expense of actual To Do lists. How does that help anyone?! Use both, by all means, but if you’re picking one only, you must have an actual list of tasks to get done. You can’t fumble your way away from what you don’t want to do and somehow arrive at success.
Other suggestions are to write ONLY your Top 5 most important tasks to do the next day (or 6, if you’re talking about the Ivy Lee method – it seems we’ve lost one sixth of our productivity over the last century), and trim everything else off your To Do list! Just don’t have them on there. Again, I think this is crap advice. Have your longer To Do list, and move 5 items to the top, or to a separate daily list, or circle them, or whatever you want! You can figure this part out without a blog.
What am I dancing around?
Okay. For a second, let me stop speaking reactively about what not-not to do, and speak in favour of To Do Lists on their own terms. The fundamentals.
What having a To Do list gives you, is a quieter mind, ready to focus on the task at hand, not distracted by what needs to be done later.
If you have something near you (a phone or notebook) that you can trust to remember things for you, you won’t expend mental energy trying to move short term inspiration or information into medium-to-long term memory. We learn this is as children when the teacher says to “write down your homework”. They won’t allow that you forgot what it was. They know you have a list that you are to refer to when you go home, so that you do the work they’re expecting and arrive back the next day not having had the time to build a tree house, or whatever that algebra was keeping you safe from.
For some influencers to be contradicting this advice is asinine. And you know that they don’t follow what they’re saying! Listen them speak on a panel at a conference and they’ll speak about the tools like Trello and Google Sheets that they use to coordinate their team and “make sure things get done”.
I first learned the absolute necessity of To Do lists when I was running stage shows with a crew of around 30 and had to liaise with venues, suppliers, cast, crew, ticket suppliers, and my dad to borrow the van! It’s impossible to run something like that writing down what NOT to do, or even writing just 5 tasks. And once you’re in the habit of writing down the “urgent” task that comes to mind, you can sleep easy knowing that tomorrow it will be handled. Sleeping better of course will also let you do that work more quickly and with less mistakes. Double benefit!
In Conclusion
Just as Animal Farm was a book about Communism, and not animals (I did not appreciate this the first time I read it… I was young!) this was a blog about runaway edgy “advice” and not so much To Do lists. Do try out new ideas, but question them, too. Ask the person giving it if they follow this advice, or what they’re basing it on.
I follow this advice. I used to use a .txt file on Dropbox as my To Do lists, as I could access it on my PC or mobile app, but I’ve now switched to Workflowy as it has more functionality that a text file, and also has an easy-to-use mobile app; something I don’t find with Google Sheets.
I also bought a small whiteboard to leave on my door with my absolute most important medium-term tasks on it. I found it helped to have them in my face every day.
I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments. Do you’ve any recommended tools or approaches to getting everything done?
Until next week…
PS As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. I’ve linked to a Whiteboard above. It costs you no extra to buy through the link, but I get a small percentage as a referral bonus to support the site.
But the one thing that’s worked really well for me is to just have two times of the day that I’m batching emails.
This week I want to share the idea of ‘batching’ as it relates to productivity at work, especially when applied to emails. I’m someone who’s borderline obsessed with productivity and constant incremental improvements (kaizen) to my work process. I want to get more done in less time, and still have energy left at the end of the day to balance work with life, and maintain my health.
You can find lots of info and blogs out there on productivity (including this one, today). But did you know that a huge amount of it originates from a single source? One of the undisputed masters of productivity and work-life balance is Tim Ferriss – author of the 4-Hour Work Week, and host of the Tim Ferriss Show.
Although batching is something we all do to one extent or another, the first person I saw codify and apply it to office work is Tim Ferriss. So, what is batching, how does Tim use it, and how can it help you?
What is Batching?
As the name perhaps implies, batching is the grouping together of tasks with the objective of doing them all at once. Bakers bake a batch of bread, not a single loaf, factories produce a batch of thousands of items in a single run before resetting the machinery, and productive workers batch all their calls, emails, meetings, and creative time into separate batches as well.
This reduces “switching costs” (the amount of time it takes to re-focus on a task after you’ve been distracted away from it) and prevents us from being reactive all day. How many times have you sat down to resume your actual job, only to have your train of thought broken by an email or IM notification three minutes later? You read it, send a quick response, and try get back to work, but then you remember further info that might benefit the original sender to you go look up a link. While you’re browsing, that Twitter bookmark calls to you from the top bar and now you’re scrolling for no particular reason. It happens. A lot! But a lot less when you adopt batching.
Tim Ferriss’ email batching
Tim wrote about how he started to only check emails at particular times of the day, and get them all done within a set time-frame. For the rest of the day, emails didn’t happen as far as he was concerned. Then he’d increase this batching to only certain days of the week, until eventually he was only checking email once per week total!
He was helped in this by some automated response systems that explained how he would only check emails periodically, but if your query related to X, then the answer was Y, or if requesting a speaking engagement, he currently wasn’t taking any, etc.
He also empowered his staff to handle any customer service disputes up to a value of $100 without checking for his permission. Since 90% of disputes were for values worth less than $20, and he would previously have been emailed about every dispute only to usually say “yes, grant that”, this saved a huge amount of time for himself and his staff.
But what if I miss an important email?
There are two nuggets of wisdom to consider here.
You train others how to treat you
If you tell the key people that communicate with you that you’re adopting a new email-reduction approach, and will only be checking it once per day, they won’t expect instant replies. This also results in receiving less emails about trivial matters. They will also know that if there’s an actual urgent issue, that they should walk up to your desk, or phone you to get instant access.
Things are rarely that urgent
Things are rarely (depends on your profession, I understand that) so urgent that an email can’t wait a few hours. It’s not an urgent medium. Maybe some day you’ll miss first-come-first-served on a spare concert ticket or something, but what’s the value of that to you? A ticket might be worth €80. What’s it worth to you to have less distractions at work and get more work done more quickly every day?! The trade-off is a no-brainer in my opinion.
How I’ve adopted it
I’ve designed and redesigned many timetables for myself over the years. I think mostly they work at first, then the routine (any routine) kind of gets to you, and you switch things up a bit. I don’t think there’s one perfect timetable for anyone, let alone for everyone. But the one thing that’s worked really well for me is to just have two times of the day to check emails. In my situation I could actually get away with once, probably.
So at 10 am I’ll check email in a 30 minute window. All emails. Personal, work, other work, Facebook and Twitter messages, WhatsApp texts. I’ve 30 minutes to clear it, or postpone things. This includes checking links on newsletters, special deals, articles, etc. I limit my time so I can’t endlessly go down the rabbit hole. If there’s a long article I really want to read I’ll bookmark it for the evening.
Also in this time window I’ll usually send a message to someone I haven’t spoken to in a while. People I met at conferences, friends who live overseas, cousins, etc. That takes 5-10 minutes of the time usually. If there’s any time left over I’ll also try to get in a few mental exercises, memorising lists. I do this habit every day. This is how I can name you 50 States, 28 (soon to be 27?) EU countries + capitals, 32 Irish counties, all Bond movies (by year), and how to say “Cheers” in over 30 languages and counting. I really want to get email out of the way so I can get to this more fun mini-game before starting ‘work’ work.
I repeat this at 2pm. So my day has its communication time and its work time separated. It also means that any query to me should be answered in a half a working day or less, which is perfectly acceptable.
After dinner I have no rules about email or messages (Tim Ferriss would disapprove) but this has worked wonders for me. Outside of those two half hours, (before dinner), all notifications are off. The phone is set to Do Not Disturb (while allowing calls through, since I get very few and they’re usually somewhat important).
Bonus Tip: Gmail Snooze
Gmail’s new(ish) Snooze Button
Gmail now has a Snooze button for emails that allows you to send something in your inbox away and have it return unread at a set time. This is great if you want to clear the clutter and rush to inbox-zero, but without addressing an important issue yet, but not deleting or risking forgetting it either.
Bonus Bonus Tip: Pause your Inbox
You can also use the Boomerang plugin for Gmail to completely pause your Inbox for a time, so that if you need to work inside Gmail but don’t want to be distracted by new messages, they’ve got you covered. This plugin is also how your schedule an email to automatically send at a later time – something Gmail can’t do for some reason.
In Conclusion
Yeah, pretty much batch your emails into one or two times per day, max! You batch your laundry into a single load – why not email and texts? You can experiment with batching other things too, like cooking several meals for the week on Sunday night, or doing your bookkeeping/receipts every 2nd Monday morning. It all takes a little discipline and planning, but it can save huge amounts of time and keep you focused on your real work.
I hope you found this useful. Please share some of your favourite productivity hacks in the comments, or just say hi and let us know if you’re going to/already use this one. If you’d like to read my recent blog post on combating Procrastination, click here.
If you’d like to set up a free call to talk about how I can help double productivity for you or your team, please get in touch. I’m happy to chat for 20 minutes and offer some quick wins at no charge.
Until next time…
PS As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. I’ve linked the book “4-Hour Work Week” above. It costs you no extra to buy through the link, but I get a small percentage as a referral bonus.
Yin and yang is work-life balance. Run your conclusions by other people. Yin and yang is realising that great minds think alike and fools seldom differ.
The taichi symbol, taijitu, or more commonly referred to as Yin and yang or yin-yang is an instantly recognisable icon around the world. The object of countless tattoos and copy-book sketchings is an ancient Chinese symbol of balance. Plenty of other cultures have their own symbols and fables, too. There’s the concept of Heaven and Hell. Buddha taught about the Middle Way. All of nature is subject to day and night cycles, and even at the atomic level, everything we are seems to be a balance of positive and negative charges. Dark and light, order and chaos, male and female, etc. We’re all inherently familiar with the idea of balance.
It has always struck me as odd, then, when we hear perfectly reasonable bits of advice, and don’t realise their absolute contradictions.
For example; “look before you leap”. We all know this one. We should plan and observe risks without being too carefree. Good advice.
Yet that conflicts with “he who hesitates is lost”. Both seem to have a lesson or valuable piece of advice, and I don’t imagine anyone would be too quick to argue against one of these well-known expressions, yet it’s cognitive dissonance to hold both in our heads at the same time, surely.
Personally I love “great minds think alike” conflicting with “fools seldom differ”. Whenever I arrive at the same conclusion as someone and they loose the expression (they usually pick “great minds” in my experience) I’ll remind them of the other. It’s a bit of fun, but it reminds me that we’re not necessarily right just because we both got the same answer.
Yin and Yang is frequently absent in business advice
“It depends” is always a safe answer, but it doesn’t make for good headlines in the same way as dramatic statements do. I just want to highlight two examples of where I’ve found the concept ‘the middle way’ to be missing.
Office Layout & productivity
I’ve come across plenty of articles and anecdotal evidence as to why open-plan office spaces are better. They encourage collaboration, a sense of team-ship, more natural light, etc. Fair enough. Yet I can balance that with plenty of articles on productivity and reducing distractions that talk about the switching costs associated with being in a flow state on your current task, then having to answer a nosy co-worker who just wants to gossip for a few minutes, and how much this costs the company.
I think that with content creation being such a necessity in the online business world now, you’re bound to wind up with a lot of conflicting information presented as absolute truth. Everyone has an opinion and has their own experience what works best for them, and many seem to think, or at least present as if, that makes it the objectively better option. To return to the above example, open-plan office space probably is much better for journalists or comic writers, and closed-cubicles much better for programmers or accountants. Office-layout advice is likely to be quite different coming from one camp or another.
Innovation vs Focus
This one is huge, because it affects entire industries and thousands of jobs, yet I still haven’t come across articles or influencers who try to reconcile these two very valid viewpoints (there probably are some, but I haven’t yet seen them, and they’re definitely rare).
Yesterday, this Gary Vaynerchuk video came up on my feed and he’s talking (totally correctly, with great examples) about the need to innovate. It’s especially important to innovate when there’s massive disruption going on, as caused by the internet at first, then mobile, and now things like AI, blockchain, and privacy/security.
Also yesterday, I’m reading (audiobook in this case… I don’t know why I still feel the need to caveat that in 2019) Simon Sinek’s excellent book “Start with Why“ and he mentions how DELL started selling music players in response to Apple’s iPod, but it didn’t work and they stopped after a couple of years.
Okay, copying the competition isn’t the same as innovation, but it did set the wheels turning in my brain. If DELL had done nothing in response, they’d have been criticised for inaction, most likely.
Nokia, once the biggest mobile phone brand in the world, died because they didn’t take smart phones seriously enough.
Tell me if any of this sounds familiar: “act, don’t react”, “focus on your customers, not the competition”, “focus on what you’re good at” or “know what your company does”.
Simon Sinek in the same chapter as I read yesterday suggested that if the US Railroad companies had seen themselves as being in the ‘mass transit’ business, instead of the railroad business, they might have started airlines and much more of them would likely still be around today. Should they have innovated, reacted, or focused on what they’re good at?
The truth is that it’s very easy to criticise when we see failure, and survivorship bias makes it easy to say that a company “made the right choice”. Yet if their competition made the same choice, we’d likely say that the competing company should have innovated instead of continuing to focus on what they’d always done.
Conclusion
(Aside: Is this called “TLDR” now? hmm… just a thought. I’ve always written ‘conclusion’… anyway!)
So when you’re out there picking up words of wisdom for the day, or especially if you’re going to base a whole business strategy on them, do consider the value of the advice (it’s probably coming from a valid place) but also consider the opposite of that advice and whether there’s validity there also. Yin and yang. Balance.
Focus on what you’re good at, but prepare to innovate when you recognise that you’re being disrupted. Yin and yang is balancing action and reaction.
Work hard some days, but give yourself time to recover, too. Yin and yang is work-life balance.
Run your conclusions by other people. Yin and yang is realising that great minds think alike and fools seldom differ.
Or that’s how I see it, anyway. Do you have any other examples, or funny contradictory phrases you’ve noted? I’d love to hear your comments, either below, on social media, or privately.
Until next time…
PS As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. I’ve linked the book “Start with Why” above. It costs you no extra to buy through the link, but I get a small percentage as a referral bonus.
…especially the younger you are, or the fresher you are in a new job, industry, or project. Today we’re going to define and overcome impostor syndrome.
Hello again! I’m excited to be back for this one. I think it’s going to be very helpful, especially the younger you are, or the fresher you are in a new job, industry, or project. Today we’re going to define and attempt to overcome impostor syndrome.
What is Impostor Syndrome?
Perhaps, I could best illustrate with an immediate example. As I write this, I may think “who am I to be offering advice on the internet? I can’t even maintain a weekly blog, seeing as how my last post was nearly 4 weeks ago (and on the topic ‘Stop Procrastinating‘, no less! (To be fair, I never actually set or publicly stated a goal of 1 week (also, I’ve been busy, not procrastinating 😉 (PS I’m a programmer, so I’m allowed to use multiple nested parentheses – get over it ))))”.
In short, it’s the feeling that we’re not good enough, and that other people don’t quite realise it yet but they’re surely about to find out, and then bad things will happen.
It’s the feeling you get on the first day of a new job; that you’ll never be able to do what these other people are doing, and you’re going to get fired pretty darn soon. Or when you walk into the first rehearsal with a long-haired, spiked-gauntlet wearing metal band and think “I’ll never fit in here. I work with spreadsheets!”.
Here’s a few of mine from over the years:
I’m not a real musician because I don’t know anything about jazz (still don’t).
I can’t work as a Tax Adviser, I only barely passed the second exams (never mind that 50% of people fail on the first attempt and I didn’t – that didn’t seem to factor in).
I’m not a real game developer because I haven’t published anything yet (despite the fact that I was developing a game) .
I’m not a real programmer because I haven’t a computer science degree and am self-taught (as were most of the original game developers and programmers).
I’m not a real entrepreneur because I haven’t had a truly successful business yet.
So what does that show? Well, apart from showing that I’ve had a few different jobs, it shows that impostor syndrome sounds a lot like negative self-talk, and coming up with excuses. It sounds a bit like “I can’t be happy until [X result]”, which is always a bad way to think.
But here’s a question for you: Would you say any of those things to your best friend? Or your child? Or your coworkers? Probably not. So why is it okay to say them to yourself?
Don’t worry, that’s not all I’ve got for you.
Overcoming Impostor Syndrome
There are a few ways to frame the feeling when it comes around to relieve that anxiousness. Here are a few thought experiments and practicals.
1. It’s common and it happens to everyone.
Thankfully, I spent several years in the games industry, which is full of the most talented, creative, intelligent, kindest, and most helpful people you could ever hope to meet. It’s where I first heard the term, and knew instantly that it referred to what I was feeling. Two minutes later, I’d learned that it applies to almost everyone.
According to the International Journal of Behavioural Science, around 70% of people experience this (it’s probably more like 98% in the games industry – common amongst artists, composers, programmers, and designers – nobody is safe! The 2% I’m just reserving for some of the Biz Dev people, and even then..).
I’ve met and worked with some very successful game developers and ‘regular’ entrepreneurs (if there is such a thing), and they’ve all suffered from it as well.
This isn’t the same as saying “you’re imagining it. Get over it”, but just that the person you’re afraid of finding out that you’re a fraud, even your manager, is probably thinking the exact same thing. In fact, the manager probably moreso (at least the good ones) because the more responsibility you have, the more prone you are to feeling it.
2. Time is a healer.
Thankfully, experience alleviates the feeling. So it doesn’t just scale infinitely. Otherwise most CEOs would be reclusive nervous wrecks all of the time.
As we grow, we gain confidence in our abilities. After all, nothing bad has happened yet! You haven’t been “found out and fired” yet. You’re probably safe.
The principle here is to compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today. If you’ve read “12 Rules For Life: An Antidote To Chaos”, this is rule number 4.
3. You’re outside your comfort zone. That’s a good thing!
Our comfort zones are safe. That’s where we know what we’re doing, and we know what’s going to happen. It’s a great place to go to recharge your batteries, but it’s also where career and personal growth goes to die. Nothing interesting ever happens in the comfort zone.
Impostor syndrome tells you that you’re in new territory. Love it for that! Pay attention, accept that you’ll make some mistakes (and are expected to by your peers), learn, and grow.
4. Keep an Accomplishment Journal
Here’s a tangible step. Open up a simple .txt file or physical journal, and start writing down all the things you’ve ever accomplished that come to mind. Indulge yourself. Captain of the school football team? Won a science fair? Rescued a puppy? Learned an instrument? Mastered a skill you never thought you could achieve? Got recommended for an amazing job you weren’t expecting? Write it down.
This in an ongoing exercise. When you’re feeling down on yourself, use this as a life-preserver and remember that you’re on a journey, these are your past milestones, and you’ve more to come.
Tip: I like to add compliments I’ve received here as well. It’s so easy for them to roll off our backs and be forgotten. Criticisms are easy to remember, but not compliments. Write them down and let them benefit you a second time later.
In Conclusion
Impostor syndrome can be pretty uncomfortable at best, and paralysing at worst. The way to overcome it doesn’t involve not feeling it any more, but rather taking the sting out of it, and leaning into it – in the same way that courage isn’t the absence of fear, but the accepting of it and continuing anyway.
The next time you feel this particular anxious feeling rising, I hope you’ll remember this article, and you’ll have your Accomplishment Journal ready to go, right? I challenge you to take 5 minutes and start one right now, and tell me if it doesn’t make you smile!
Do please comment if you found this useful, or if you have any of your own techniques. It’s nice to hear from you all.
How to stop procrastinating is one of the biggest questions we all struggle with on a daily basis. This paragraph has already taken two days to write!
Tasks that seem difficult, unpleasant, or hard to guess the duration of tend to get put on the long finger. There’s probably a physiological aspect to this. Note: I’m not an expert in any of the fields involved here, but in layman’s terms: The function of procrastination is believed to be our minds protecting us from stress, and the cortisol that we know will be released by engaging with stressful tasks. We’re particularly prone to procrastinate when we’re tired or already stressed. But our bodies don’t necessarily realise that we’ve got bills to pay, dammit!
If procrastination is a protective function though, our bodies don’t seem to consider that incomplete tasks take up mental space (though you can reduce this affect by writing things down on a To Do list), whereas getting things done produces a little dopamine hit. So it’s clear that procrastination, while natural, isn’t necessarily doing us many favours if it’s saving us from a little cortisol now, robbing us of dopamine soon, and producing more cortisol in the long run by creating more incomplete tasks.
Probably best to get a handle on it, then. So! Here are some of my adopted techniques to stop procrastinating. People in paid 9-5 employment can benefit from these too, though they apply more to those with flexible working days.
The Pomodoro Technique
This technique takes its name from the Italian word for tomato. This is because its inventor, Francesco Cirillo, had a tomato-shaped kitchen timer on his desk that he used to measure work periods of (usually) 25 minutes.
The idea is to work in 25-minute sprints, then take a 5 minute break (good to move around, use the bathroom, get some water, etc) and resume another period after that. You repeat this up to 4 times for a very productive couple of hours, then you should take a longer break.
I first started using this technique while working in my last job as a games programmer. I’d have been assigned a big feature to complete, that would take hours or days (you never quite know with games programming). I’d break the task down into chunks that should take 25 minutes or less each, and then focus intently on just that sub-feature for 25 minutes. Sometimes a task wouldn’t be complete, but I’d have definitely broken the back of it without getting distracted. When the clock’s ticking, we tend to focus better.
Now, how this helps me to stop procrastinating requires just a little twist in what you think the technique is best used for. It’s great for productivity, yes, but it also carries the strong likelihood that that unpleasant task (say, a VAT return, or employee review) will be off your plate in less than a half hour if you just start now!
That promise has seen me start and finish more programming jobs, tenders, applications, emails, and bookkeeping tasks than any other technique. I’m even running a Pomodoro clock right now. I’ve 9 minutes left. The blog won’t be finished in that time, but in one more the first draft should be done, another and I’ll have edited and added pictures, and one final one will see it posted, shared on social media, and totally finished!
You could get yourself a desk timer, but I just use a simple free App called ‘RemindMe for Windows‘ (which I also use to remind myself to correct my posture at my desk every now and again).
Accountability
As I often mention, this is one of the biggest benefits to hiring a coach. A coach is of more benefit keeping you accountable towards bigger goals and tasks, but accountability can be used in all sorts of ways.
When I used to live-stream game development, I set two times a week (and posted them on my streaming pages and Twitter) that I would be streaming live at that time. I didn’t have a huge audience, but once the info was out there, I’d be a liar not to show up and start working. Whatever else happened in the week, I always had two slots of 90-120 minutes where the game itself, in-engine, got worked on. This kept the ball rolling and not stuck in an email & admin pothole.
Similarly, once an artist and composer joined my team, I felt accountable to them, and any tasks I had that they needed done miraculously got accomplished. Most of us hate to let others down and are much more willing to not deliver on a promise made to ourselves alone.
If you work alone and people aren’t counting on you, posting things publicly, or getting an accountability buddy (accountabilabuddy – I can never let that hilarious contraction go unsaid) or coach can seriously help you to stop procrastinating and finish more tasks.
Urgency – Make Plans
This leads on from the others fairly well, but it’s a little different. Where the Pomodoro technique has you create an artificial time pressure, and accountability has you create (if it doesn’t already exist) artificial social pressure, this has you create real pressure – timed and usually social.
Parkinson’s Law states that a task will expand to fill the time allotted for it, in the same way that a gas will fill any given chamber evenly. I’ve always noticed that if my evening is free, I’ll usually wind up finishing some of the tasks that were allotted for the working day in the evening. If, however, I’ve made plans with someone to go to a show, gig, movie, etc, now I’ve now got a real time constraint on the day, and the social pressure of not wanting to cancel on my friend. If I’ve bought tickets, I’ll have the benefit of financial loss aversion too!
Doing this not only helps you knuckle down and get things done, but it rewards you for doing so and protects your work/life balance, which in turn protects your long term health, productivity, and enthusiasm. It’s a positive feedback loop that’s actually very powerful!
So rather than not make plans because you might have to finish work (you always will, according to Parkinson), say yes to that invite to the pub or games night.
How to Stop Procrastinating – In Conclusion
Using these three techniques (and others) have greatly helped me to stop procrastinating and increase the number of unpleasant jobs that I get done. Doing so has also freed up more time for me to enjoy my life outside of work hours (by basically creating “outside of work hours”).
I hope they’re of use to you as well. You might also enjoy my article “Movement Beats Meditation” (which is about perfectionism, not exercise or spirituality).
Do leave a comment if you have any of your own techniques or success stories, and please share the article if you found it valuable.
