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Old November 10, 2022, 12:45 PM
Dien Rice Dien Rice is online now
Onwards and upwards!
 
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 3,357
Default Great, inspiring post!

Hi Gordon,

For me, this was a great post!

One thing I got from it is how you can spend just 10 or 15 minutes a day working on one thing, and split your time during the day between different projects...

I haven't mentioned him much, but my Ph.D. advisor, Charles Osborne, was a remarkable man...

(Sadly he passed away in 2012...)

He's someone who did many things, in many different fields...

(Sound familiar? I suspect you, me, and him have some things in common... )

He was a professor of physics...

Yet he also was involved in many other areas...

Probably his biggest claim to fame is that he coined the phrase "digital watermark" - which is an important field.

(A "digital watermark" is a way of putting a kind of "hidden tag" in electronic data)...

You can see his name mentioned in the Wikipedia article on "digital watermarking" (in the "history" section)...

In his youth, he was a guitarist in a rock band, The Sapphires... (He's briefly mentioned in this Jan. 17, 1962 article, in a magazine called "The Australian Women's Weekly"... here, under the subhead, "Local Talent"...)

Along with his Ph.D. in physics, he also got himself a diploma in psychology... and had his own psychology practice on the side!

(It probably differs around the world... In those days, you could open up a psychology practice in Australia with just a diploma, which is not permitted any more nowadays...)

Anyway, you've reminded me of some advice Charles gave me...

He also recommended to have multiple projects going on at one time.

His advice was - when you get bored with one project, then go on to the next one...

I had no idea about ADD/ADHD at the time... but I think he recognized it in me...

And with hindsight (and now that I'm more knowledgeable about the topic), I think he may have had it himself, too...

Thanks for the advice, Gordon!

So... what I'm "testing" now is kind of like a modified "Pomodoro" technique...

The Pomodoro technique (for those unfamiliar with it) is where you work for a certain amount of time... 33.33 minutes seems popular among copywriting circles - since that's what copywriter Eugene Schwartz did, apparently.

When the 33.33 minutes were up, Eugene Schwartz would then take a 10 to 15 minute break... Then start another 33.33 minute session after the break.

However... Sometimes "switching" tasks is almost as "mentally refreshing" as a break... (At least to me.)

So, I'm testing out a modified version (inspired by your post)... Work for 15 minutes on one task or project. When the 15 minutes is up... Switch projects...

Though I'm allowing myself not to switch if I'm on a "roll" and want to keep going...

Anyway, I'm testing this out... We'll see how it works out. I was testing it all day, and so far I like it, and I do feel it helps to make me more productive...

Best wishes,

Dien

Quote:
Originally Posted by GordonJ View Post
Thanks Dien.

I had a cushy job as a manager of a brand new storage facility; at the time it was top line, state of the art, in an upscale area. A year later, the unpaid units went on the auction block, you wouldn't believe what people abandoned.

No turtles, pythons or pets, yet a lot of stuff. I was and remain amazed at what people hold onto until they just walk away from it.

A lot of storage is from events; divorce, deaths, moving, etc. But being a hoarder, pack rat is an American tradition, and without it, Marie Kondo wouldn't have even sold a book. But her concept, now a popular expression, lets KONDO that thing...means sending it down the road.

Anyhow, to address the STORED VALUE issue, many of us have.

What has helped me is bits and pieces of time REGULARLY, and RELIGIOUSLY adhered to. Take the second hour of my work day.

15 minutes to write thoughts of the day. 10 to review past ones. 10 to continue a short time project, 15 on long, 10 to fiddle fart on any of them.

Solid, everyday, for decades. A routine. Now maybe you or most don't have an hour. But I have made that sacrosanct, sacred, habitual. It has allowed me to get a lot of things done.

By taking a longer view, a longer time and allowing ACCUMULATION. See, that is why we need all those extra storage spaces, we ACCUMULATE so much stuff.

I habitually reduce this pile on a daily basis. So, for example, I may have several Word (Open Office) docs open during this work hour, and pick up the train of thought because I left right in the middle of one.

So, just by reading the last paragraph, I can easily just start from there...and a 50 page report, gets done in two months by 10 min. a day.

What happens, is and I think maybe you can see this...we tend to let the pile get big, and then it is overwhelming.

But spend 10 min a day on your algorithms, and by next year, you have your product. What most will do, is put it off until they think they have time to attack with all their time and attention...and years go by.

The year is going to go by anyhow, remember sitting at the Sheraton? YIKERS, but 10 minutes a day, every day, EVERY day, over a 20 year period and one has more work done than most will ever do in a lifetime.

I am a big believer in small increments of time, USED efficiently, and purposefully rather than trying to clear the busy plate off and trying to tackle something when time allows (it never does).

Likewise, in the Sprint to Freedom one gets to that 1k a week level by small increments of dollars kept in circulation.

I have scores of notebooks, most will never see the light of day, but all of them filled not because I went to Walden Pond and wrote non stop for a year...but because I faithfully committed to that hour a day of writing in small bursts, on many things at the same time. It is how I've been able to create over 100 (so far) small reports and HOTSHEETS.

Now recently, that hour has been tough to do, energy and health...but even through my covid, I've been pretty faithful.

SMALL amounts of time ACCUMULATED = Productivity

SMALL amounts of $$ ACCUMULATED = Profits and Prosperity

Gordon
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