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I’ve got some ambitions. Realizing them may require me to continue learning, working, and getting better for decades. And while self-discipline is necessary, achieving something big is not a product of sheer will power and determination–these things simply aren’t sustainable or scalable.
Rather, I’ve found the ability to accomplish something significant ultimately boils down to the right system of habits. When something becomes habitualized, it falls into the back of our minds and becomes almost effortless (imagine reflecting on the day replacing your habit of biting your nails). The right habits allow us to continually improve, make good investments of time, and scrap for the next inch. Creativity and mental energy are freed to be spent on more worthy tasks, and our ability to move forward is much easier.
Until you habitually do all the right things at the right time (if ever), taking steps to actively implement a system for doing so is a good investment. I’m going to dive right into the system that I’ve implemented. The system I will describe focuses on developing behaviors and keeping metrics. It is not about project management, managing and processing tasks, setting goals, dealing with deadlines,etc. These also require the right system, but there is a lot of content out there with good tips I think (I’m happy to share if necessary/desired). What I haven’t seen is a system for higher-level self-management and for tracking metrics that allow for better decision-making and focus.
Below is the machine in its current state, my rationale for its design, time required by the system for each step, and a few other tips:
Performance System, version 0.9
The Nuts and Bolts of the Day
Time Required: 10 minutes/day
Every day at 9:45PM, I get a text message from Google Calendar that contains a link to my daily survey. I use Google Docs to run the survey (or a “form” as Docs calls it), and the survey contains 7 multiple choice questions. My iPhone allows me to directly click on the link in the text message, and since multiple choice questions are easy to answer on an iPhone, doing this on my phone wherever I am is easy.
The questions you ask yourself, what you measure, is important. Here’s my 7 questions and my rationale for answering/asking them:
1) Did you read for 1 hour today? Reading is a valuable learning tool, I enjoy it, and it usually leads me to many valuable ideas, so I want to make sure I’m investing some amount of time in it each day. I spend a significant amount of time in the car, so I listen to audiobooks and podcasts and count that as reading as well. I actually don’t want to spend much more time than an hour because time spent reading (/consuming content) is time spent not doing. I want to answer this question with a ‘yes’ every day.
Twice the fun, Twice as fast
(A slightly crazy) tip #1: if you have an iPhone, there’s an option to listen to things at “2x” speed. Try it out. You can listen to more, but I find I also listen better. (Please don’t wreck due to trying this.)
tip #2: Yifei Zhang recently pointed me to LibriVox, tons of great audio content for free from the public domain, read by volunteers.
2) Did you work out? Physical condition is directly connected to my mental energy levels and general well being. I know this to be a fact, and if I fall out of the habit of working out, things go downhill. I work out 3 – 4 times a week, and this makes sure I keep track of when I do. It also keeps me honest on those snowy days when I don’t feel like going, even though I should.
tip(s) #3: have your workout routine planned, use super-sets if lifting, track progress, 45 minutes is all you need, leave your mp3 player at home and get focused, keep it interesting and fun. I’m a fairly accomplished athlete and played college football and basketball, so I’ve been working on efficient workouts for a while. I may expound in a separate post sometime.
3) Did you have a plan? I’ve found that if I don’t have an actionable set of priorities for the day, I get significantly less done. The funny thing is that for some reason, even though I know this, I’ll have periods where I’ll get lazy and won’t write out my plan for the day (ideally the night before). Measuring this helps me be more cognizant of this and is a constant reminder that this is something simple that I need to do. I’ve been able to stay on track because of this.
4) Did you record your mood? Mood can be a great high level indicator of some things, but more importantly, the act of tracking it makes us more self-aware, and allows us to piece together causation if the data is collected properly. I’ve started using a tool called MoodScope to do this.
Moodscope Graph
MoodScope
I haven’t tried many mood tracking tools, and I chose MoodScope because I thought the motivation behind its creation was strong, and I thought its purpose would work for mine. It measures your mood on a scale from 0 to 100 based on series of questions, gives you a line graph, and marks your min, max, and average. You can also write a 140 character note for the day(which I use for other parts of this system.) As simple as it needs to be, and no simpler.
This is actually the most time consuming portion of my daily routine (7 minutes), and I do need an internet connection (ideally a computer) to do it. But, although I started doing this as an experiment, I found the psychological effects to be very positive. Overall, mood tracking has lead to 4 important outcomes
- an active awareness of what effects my happiness (it’s amazing what we’ll continue to put up with)
- a log of daily data that I can later use to reflect on what I’ve accomplished during the past week or month
- a brief reflection on the day.
- a desire to improve tomorrow. When we measure something, we want to score well. I find that when I record an average day, I say to myself, I’m going to correct today’s mistakes and have an awesome day tomorrow.
This is a great example of how the tool, and the act of simply measuring, changes behavior in desirable ways (Remember: the tool effects the outcome.) I don’t have to carry around a checklist or remember to do these things–which would require considerable effort. The system incites these behaviors. If the outcome was purely just the data in a graph, the practice would not be nearly as valuable.
5) Were you too tired to be reasonably productive? This is an experimental, data-driven question that I’ve been taking a look at to see if I can find any patterns. I’d like to avoid those days where I’m so tired at some point that I can’t do anyting.
6) How many hours were you in bed? Sleep is important. I wish I didn’t have to spend any time sleeping, but for now, it’s non-negotiable. Tracking it helps me manage it, so I can be aware of if I start trying to cheat too much.
Sleep Cycle Data
Sleep Cycle
Tracking sleep is an example of something that is small that can be a big pain in the ass to track every day. But, it’s all about using the right tools. To do this, I use a tool called Sleep Cycle. It’s actually an alarm clock iPhone application. You put it on the corner of your mattress, and it uses the iPhone’s accelerometer to measure your movements. It then tries to use that data to figure out where you are in your sleep cycle and plays a soft alarm when it thinks you’ve come out of your deep sleep (you set the alarm for a half hour window). The app logs the data, so you have graphs of your sleep cycle as well as metrics on time spent sleeping.
I would be setting an alarm clock every night anyway so the added complexity to my life is zero. Plus, I think it’s a pretty good alarm clock.
7) Was the day a masterpiece? Broadly speaking, my goal for the day is to learn, be productive, and be happy. So my goal for my day-to-day living, is to make the day “a masterpiece” which I’ve come to define as a day that is characterized by a certain level of achievement and enjoyment. Since these things tend to go hand in hand for me, basically if I’m very happy with the day, I’ve probably achieved quite a bit. The overall goal is to make 80% of my days an absolute masterpiece. My ability (or inability) to say that the day was a masterpiece is the high level indicator that reflects my goal of learning, productivity, and happiness. This metric works for me because I know that at the end of the day this is what I want to be able to say, and I can trust myself to be honest about it.
Reaching this goal is semi-objective–mood is measured in a consistent way, and I have a checklists of items that guide me in answering this question.
Reviewing the Week and Staying Focused
Time Required: 20 minutes/week
C'mon now. STAY FOCUSED. Back to the post with you...
Every Sunday, at 5:00Pm, I get an email reminder from Google Calendar to take my weekly survey (also a Google Doc Survey). The weekly survey consists of 10 questions, plus a space for a weekly reflection:
- How much time did you spend working out?
- How much time did you spend reading?
- How much time did you spend sleeping?
- How much time did you spend on email?
- How much time did you spend writing/thinking?
- How much time did you spend creating?
- How many blog posts did you write?
- How many books did you complete?
- How much time did you spend in the Lab? (“the Lab” actually refers to Lab One of Vogel Labs, which is where I do all my personal creative work outside of my job.)
- How many days were masterpieces?
- Weekly reflection
I have targets for each of these. The purpose of these questions is to review the week, see what I did well, diagnose any problems, and see what I need to focus on for the upcoming week. The data for answering these questions comes from the data saved in Google Docs from my daily survey OR from Manic Time.
ManicTime
Manic Time tracks how you spend your time on your computer. For instance, it can tell you how much time you spend on specific websites, documents, or applications. Additionally, you can tag chunks of time for certain projects. It also has a stopwatch feature that I really enjoy. For instance, when I start work on Project X, I simply hit the stopwatch start button, it prompts me with a list of tags, and I can choose ‘Project X’.More people are probably familiar with RescueTime. I haven’t played with Rescue Time in over a year and didn’t like it too much when I did. I really enjoy Manic Time and even paid the $60 to own the pro version.
My sense of time when I’m working is really bad, so I started timing myself on things in order to know how much time I was spending on a given task. However, I never did it in an organized way. Having Manic Time measure my time makes me much more aware of how I’m using my time and gives me great metrics. But, the act of measuring time also causes me to behave differently (Remember: the tool effects the outcome). The most important outcome of measuring time in an organized, automated fashion: I now focus on one thing for a block of time. For instance, I will spend an hour focused on reading, as opposed to playing on Twitter, looking through email, and reading various links. Focusing on one thing is much more efficient. Brings me to another handy little tool….
Instapaper
InstaPaper iPhone App
Instapaper is essentially a bookmarking tool. You can think of it as a central repository for things you want to read later. The value comes from being able to both save things and access this repository in a variety of ways. For instance, I use Google Chrome as my browser. Chrome has a plugin that allows you to just click an icon in the upper right hand corner of the browser, which sends it off to the repository. You can also email items into Instapaper, so if you get a long email or an article lands in your inbox, you can just forward it along to Instapaper (which is great for keeping your inbox clear instead of having that long article lingering in it).
When I have an hour I want to devote to reading some content, I then have a list of articles I’ve been wanting to read. I then take off pounding through that list, which is much more efficient that wandering aimlessly around the web–which is great to do, if you’ve got the time….and I don’t. Additionally, Instapaper has a handy little iphone app. So if I’m waiting and I have some time to kill (and don’t want to check email), I can just read things from the repository on my iphone.
The weekly form also has a place for other notes and commentary. After I answer the questions, I write a few notes on the week and record any accomplishments, any insights the data reveals, and what I want to focus on for the upcoming week. For instance, I may notice that my writing/thinking has fallen off (no posts written, little time spent on it). I can then decide I want to make writing the priority of the week. By simply acknowleding this at the beginning of the week, I raise the priority level a bit, and end up spending more time writing.
Reflecting on the Month and Celebrating your accomplishments
Time Required: 20 Minutes/month
At 5:30 on the last Sunday of the month, I get a text message and email reminder with a link to my monthly survey, which asks for me to fill in:
- Average Mood Rating
- Total (Audio)Books Completed
- Total Articles and Blog Posts Written
- Percentage of days this year that have thus far been a masterpiece
- Total Savings
- A reflection on the month
The reflection is the most important part, and is the real focus of the monthly review. In particular, I spend some time reviewing and thinking about what I accomplished in the past month, which also requires looking at progress of different projects and different goals that can be checked off the list. On the Google Spreadsheets that record the data from my surveys, I actually keep copies of my specific goals for the year. This helps guide me in prioritizing my time, but more importantly, a month is a long enough chunk of time that you can really accomplish a lot. So it’s a time to mentally celebrate all the great things I’ve accomplished in the past month. It’s psychologically important to do this. I believe I accomplish something great every day, and I try to remember this. But you’re down in the weeds when looking at the timeframe of a day. And while you can still acknolwedge the great work you did, most days things don’t come to fruition. However, at the level of a month, you can see significant goals realized.
tip #4: many ambitious people fall into the trap of brooding over all the things they could’ve done better or didn’t get done. It’s much more effective to celebrate your accomplishments.
It’s not just about you, it’s about who you surround yourself with — The Performance Meetup
by Elventear via Flickr
Time Required: 2 hours/week
As I started off with, a great system should be about inciting you to habitually do the right things that make you better, happier, and more productive. Much of this comes down to self-management. But, humans are extremely sensitive to the other people they interact with. We rub off on each other. This is how culture develops (check out the concept of a meme, a self-transmitting cultural unit). This may be obvious, but I think we underestimate the magnitude of these forces. (Check out this paper on on the spread of obesity through social networks.)
The answer is of course surrounding yourself with people that will cause you to gain the right habits and push you to get better. This is why I join in on the Performance Meetup once a week. The meetup is a 2 hour skype call every Sunday with a group of people who want to achieve something significant. They’re all thoughtful people who work hard, know they need to get better, and want to do something big.
There are many benefits to this beyond just picking up behaviors. It’s a chance to spend time with friends and have some fun.
Community is powerful. I strongly recommend finding a way to interact with a community of smart and motivated people at least once a week. Find a meetup, start one if necessary, or find a way to get in on the Performance Meetup (sending me an email is a good way to start: Kevin at Vogel-Labs.com.
3 questions for you
If you’ve read this post, this is probably a set of topics that is important to you, in which case it’s worth thinking about a bit more. The best way to do that is to write about it and discuss with other people (which is what blogs are great for). Here’s a few questions for you to get you started:
- What are some other insights you’ve had about self-improvement and productivity?
- What are some tools you use that help influence the right behaviors and make you get more out of your time (and therefore life)?
- What are the hurdles that keep you from improving and working towards your goals?
Leave a comment. Send an email. Or even right your own post on the topic. Just be sure to link back to this so we can see the pingback (hopefully) and can go read what you have to say.
I’m thinking I may write a follow-up post on the process of developing a Performance System and important aspects of a good system. I’ve learned quite a bit in my search for the right one over the last several years, and I think this will be helpful if you wish to improve your own. If this is of interest, let me know. A little positive feedback always helps.
-Kevin
2.20.2011
