Productivity in the Workplace (and at home): Doing the work

I was recently interviewed by the Juice on ways that I stay productive at work. I thought that I would write a short series on my particular methods of productivity. This is more of a description of how my system works, there will be very little technology mentioned. If there is interest, I could write a followup for the specific techniques that I use, however, I suspect that such information would be less useful to others than the general overview that follows in this series.

[flickr]photo:173246876(small)[/flickr]And people called the emergency work “do it” and the non-emergency work “defer it”. And priorities were the first system.One of the huge things that came out of GTD for me, was the idea that, if something needed to be done and took less than two minutes, just do it right away. This is the so called “two minute rule”. The power behind the idea is that it keeps the little piddly stuff from building up and distracting you with a huge pile of stress from un-done work.This works well, and is hugely important in reducing turnaround time. However, I have found that the negative here is that it can get you so focused on “cranking widgets” that you never get to the long-term work.  See, the idea is balance. In the GTD system, you are to collect incoming work and then prioritize as you go, balancing what needs to be done against it’s urgency, your available resources, and your energy levels. David Allen uses a system of “contexts“, where you store your task items on different lists depending on the resources needed to-do the task. This makes perfect sense as you might have to-do certain things in different places.

Most of what I do is online.

Thus, contexts don’t work for me. I wound up with a handful of tasks that I needed to-do at home (vacuum, wash the cats, cook, etc), and everything else was in a “do anywhere” context. I wound up prioritizing by energy level. If I had the energy to-do a task, I’d do that one. The flaw here is that I tended to-do the easy tasks first, which left with less energy with which to tackle the more important and more complex tasks. I needed to get priorities back into the system.

  • Do you know where your employees work?
  • Do they work differently in different places?
  • Do they work differently at different times?

Productivity in the Workplace (and at home): Task Management

I was recently interviewed by the Juice on ways that I stay productive at work. I thought that I would write a short series on my particular methods of productivity. This is more of a description of how my system works, there will be very little technology mentioned. If there is interest, I could write a followup for the specific techniques that I use, however, I suspect that such information would be less useful to others than the general overview that follows in this series.

[flickr]photo:1867095482(small)[/flickr]And people saw the tasks, that they were good: and someone divided the emergency work from that which was not.

Until this point, I had prioritized my tasks by what needed to be done when. The concept of urgency and energy levels had never even occurred to me. GTD looks at tasks according to their “actionability”. If it doesn’t need to be done, don’t do it. If it is to be done, either do it or don’t, depending on several factors.Generally, the process you are supposed to-do is as follows:

  1. Do I need to-do it?
    1. If No, do I need it at all?
      1. If No, get rid of it (trash, delete, burn, etc)
      2. If Yes, store it.
    2. If Yes, what is the next action?
      • If you need to-do it now, and you can, do it now.
      • If you need to delegate it, delegate it to someone else.
      • If you need to-do it, but not now, put it in your futures system
  2. Track it in your tracking system

The ultimate goal is to achieve a state of flow. By processing the work as it comes, not doing it, you don’t have a disordered pile of work that sits there and taunts you. Instead, you have an organized and (more or less) self-prioritizing list of tasks. You pick one and work on it until you’re done, then you pick the next one. There are numerous little things to consider such as your general energy level and the fact that some tasks require you to complete other tasks first. However, it is important to remember that every little bit helps.

If you currently have no task management system, even implementing an imperfect one will generate results. All you have to do is get started and you’ll start working more effectively. Even better, if you can get others to use a similar system, the organization as a whole will operate more tightly.

Work will get done more quickly, and work will not get lost, and best of all, everyone will enjoy it more.

That’s what flow is all about.

  • Are your employees changing tasks often?
  • Does this impact their work flow?
  • How often is work lost?

Productivity in the Workplace (and at home): Stressful Productivity

I was recently interviewed by the Juice on ways that I stay productive at work. I thought that I would write a short series on my particular methods of productivity. This is more of a description of how my system works, there will be very little technology mentioned. If there is interest, I could write a followup for the specific techniques that I use, however, I suspect that such information would be less useful to others than the general overview that follows in this series.

[flickr]photo:303331939(small)[/flickr]In the beginning someone (they fail to claim responsibility) created home and work.
And the work was without structure, and void of purpose; and chaos was upon the life of the home.
And someone said (again, no record as to whom) “Let there be tasks”: and there were tasks.

Thus, did I experience life after college. In my first professional job, I thought I knew how to work. Until that point, “work” consisted of going to a place and waiting for someone to need help. Then, I would either help them or explain why I could not. Really, it was the same model whatever I did:

  • Food Service (wait for customer to give me an order and then give me money)
  • Book Sales / Retail (wait for customer to require assistance choosing a book or checking out, otherwise straighten and restock)
  • Helpdesk (wait for student or employee to need help with a problem, otherwise play with technology and surf the net)

In other words, the model was “Do A until B occurs. Once B occurs, deal with B. When B resolved, go back to doing A.”

Real life turned out to be a tad more complex. I had a boss for whom I had to make more money than he was paying me. I had numerous things that needed to be done, and I had crises that I had to resolve. In my first year, I had the following responsibilities:

  • Update web site, whether or not any of my fellow employees or boss gave me any content to post.
  • Create a LAN and network all our workstations together.
  • Research, learn, and implement two ISDN lines.
  • Build a Linux-based appliance to process data and securely deliver documents to our clients’ customers’ customers.
  • Learn Perl and write CGI code to handle the above.
  • Write processing scripts to manage different data formats.
  • Be the low person on the totem pole and deal with anything they didn’t want to do.
  • Receive phone calls from irate clients and attempt to resolve their issues.

Of course, I handled conflicting priorities in the time-honored tradition of the entry-level professional — I worked late.

Sometimes, I worked REALLY late.

Once I remember working 96 hours straight. (By the way, Cisco tech support is very helpful, even if you have to bounce between international call centers as the night wears on.)

But I digress.

In an effort to bring things under control, I restructured my day. It was difficult, as the boss required everyone to be there from 8 to 5, but being young and full of nearly infinite energy, I decided to work from 8 to 8 every day. I would leave the office at 5:00 PM and then put three hours learning a language (Perl, HTML, XHTML, Javascript, SQL, etc).

That made me a very good programmer. I could now be unproductive the right way.

As things went on, the requirements piled up, and I had to be responsible for system architecture, security analysis and correction, system administration, etc. I wound out building my own Linux distribution, guiding development policy (jointly with another), and generally being a rocking tech geek.

Then I changed jobs.

When people change jobs, there is generally a period where you get up to speed. You generally don’t have pre-existing assignments, and you actually have the time to think. After the massively stressful point where I was doing everything that my former job entailed AND getting certifications on my own AND getting a new job, I needed the downtime, so I sat and thought.

I realized that I needed something to keep my bright and shiny new job from rusting out and falling apart like my old job had. I needed a system. (queue dramatic music here)

As I’ve always been a bit of a bookish person, I headed to my local Borders and looked for the book. You know the one, it’s about two feet tall, about six inches thick, has a black leather cover and very yellowed parchment pages. It rests on a pedestal in the middle of your library and is always opened to the page that has the exact information that you need, inscribed in spidery handwriting with reference notes in the margin.

Borders doesn’t carry that one.

What I did find, however, was Getting Things Done by David Allen. While it was obviously a far cry from an ancient tome containing all the knowledge in the universe, it was, however, $15.00. I decided to risk it.

Thus started my journey on the path of stress free productivity.

  • Do you have a productivity system?
  • Do your employees?
  • Should they?

Real Life Lessons: Legal System

[flickr]photo:497353227(small)[/flickr]The fifth lesson was of the legal system. As you recall, I chose to not involve the police. If I had, I likely could have filed charges against the boy. (Not sure if it would have been breaking and entering, since he didn’t seem to break anything.) I chose to not do this. There were several reasons:

  • No harm, no foul.
  • It would have taken a lot of time to deal with the paperwork… and I had a full schedule.
  • I do not know how the law would have handled it, but to my own mind, I was just as negligent as he was.

In effect, I made a business decision that to involve the law would likely cost more (in time) than it was worth. Many people are faced with decisions like this, and most people have a different invisible line that must be crossed. I have known businesses that would call the police at the drop of a hat. I have also known business that would ignore successful network intrusions, considering them a “cost of business“.

In the event of a breach, most businesses consider it as follows:

  • dollar amount stolen + dollar amount of lost time in repair
  • dollar amount of successful prosecution times likelihood of successful prosecution – cost of successful prosecution – loss of trust in the market

It is often easier for a business to simply accept the loss than to risk greater losses by involving the legal system… but sometimes there is no choice. An increasing number of states have disclosure laws. If the breach involved any personal information (names, addresses, credit card numbers, social security numbers, etc), you may well be required to disclose the incident and accept any negative consequences that arise.

So, what is a business to do? First of all, you should have a lawyer that can help guide you through such a decision. Secondly, you should have a lawyer before a problem occurs – so that they are already familiar with your business. Third, you should know your data and know what possible ramifications might exist from storing it. Fourth, and optionally, you should have a security office or consultant who can look at your system and offer ways to limit risk and/or detect potential breaches. See, you’ll want to be the one telling your clients about the guy that broke in… not the newspapers.

Once you have these, your primary question should always be “Do I need to keep this data?“. If you are keeping information on users “just because“, and if that information would cost you if it got out… DELETE IT! It’s OK, if your users want you to have it, they’ll give it to you again.

My questions to you:

  1. What data do you store on your employees, customers, clients, and partners?
  2. If that information were stolen, how much could it damage you? (fines, lost clients, stolen clients, blackmail)
  3. How many years would it take you to recover?

Real Life Lessons: Social Engineering

[flickr]photo:36572011(small)[/flickr]The fourth lesson to learn from my incident is that of social engineering. Simply put, social engineering is using predictable social response to create a situation that benefits you. From a security perspective, this technique is often described as a tool used by the bad guys, but it can also be used by the good ones. In my case, once I became aware of the situation, I did the following things:

  1. I finished getting dressed. This puts me at a higher level than a person who is waking up disheveled. Though it was likely not consciously noticed, the distinction might have played in my favor. This helped to create the predictable response of a subordinate to a superior.
  2. I positioned myself between the light and his head. This way, when he awoke, he would be at a visual disadvantage. I would be able to see him clearly and, to him, I would appear in silhouette. The response I was trying to get here was to maximize his confusion while also maximizing the amount of information I could get when he awoke.
  3. I held a weapon on him, and I chose one which I could easily control and would likely create a feeling of fear but not create a feeling of terror. This way, I could anticipate a logical response (no terror), but a manipulated response (because he was scared).
  4. I awoke him with very specific instructions and questions. The socially acceptable response to these questions when one is in an inferior position is to simply answer the questions.

By arranging the environment and taking control of the situation, I was able to very quickly get the information that I needed to determine whether or not he was a threat (he was not) and make a decision (to let him go and not involve the police). Since I was in control, I was also able to get him out of the house as rapidly as possible, while minimizing the harm to either of us or anything that I had in the house.

From a business perspective, you face social engineering all the time. Most business relationships (whether between boss/employee or company/vendor) are hierarchical. Where hierarchies exist, there are ample opportunities for social engineering. This can be something as simple as a coworker asking you for something and stating that your boss had asked them. It could also be as complex as an attacker calling in and pretending to be an irate customer — leading you to believe that if you do not do as they ask, your company will lose the account and you will be at fault.

There are only a few ways to combat social engineering. The first is through constant and thorough training. This is time consuming and costly. It is, however, the best way to secure your business. That said, if you go this route, you must take care that the training plan is based on reasons and reasoning. All too often training programmes focus on the threats instead of on analysis and consideration. This makes your business utterly secure against yesterday’s attacks . . . and completely open to tomorrow’s.

The second way to protect against social engineering attacks is to eliminate the time pressure. You can do this by empowering your employees to solve problems in non-standard ways. If the “irate client/boss” refuses to accept rational non-standard solutions, there might be an attack going on. In such a situation, escalating the issue to someone with more experience just makes sense. You can also eliminate the time pressure by investing in highly redundant and flexible systems. This works well if you are devising a new solution… less well if you are supporting legacy technology. If you are handling legacy systems, the risks of inflexibility should be considered the next time you build a business case for overhaul and replacement.

The third way to protect against social engineering is to implement an identification system. If your front-line people can know, with certainty, that the person with whom they are talking is really who they claim to be, most concerns can be eliminated. There is, however, an element of client training to such a system. Any challenge-response system is accepted more easily when all parties are expecting it.

So, my questions to you are:

  1. What would you give an angry client or boss in order to make them happy?
  2. What if it wasn’t really them?
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Josh More - Entropologist
Expert in removing chaos from
I.T. and business systems.