(from Fevered Mutterings v3: March 2009)
I’ve been reading some self-help books recently, and I’ve found them highly self-helpful.
Today I’m feeling synergized and diligent. Yesterday I woke up and immediately I could feel that productivity was at the top of all the things I could do with my upcoming Sunday. So I got up and made a list of 10 productivity framework lists that I could use to structure my day – I call this my PFL method of blue-skying my effectiveness. I used different coloured pens, because it’s important to sustain your Inner Child when you’re dynamizing your Mission Role in life. Otherwise it has an Inner Stroppy Incident (ISI).
I believe that most of the world’s problems are due to ISIs.
So, that took 4 hours. And then I felt great! After that, it was a relatively simple process of analysing my shortlist of productivity frameworks and narrowing it down to the 5 that were definitely the way for me to make the most of the day. I did this by employing my Cognitive Hypothetical Scenario Analysis Tool, in which I constructed and posited a number of mentally-pencilled situations into which I could feed data and overarching structures in an empirical manner. This took a further excellently-spent 3 hours. Some friends rang me to ask if I wanted to meet them for a drink over at the University, but I explained that it didn’t fit into my Character Paradigm for the day, and they hung up.
Following this I had to flesh out a few Personal Feedback Inboxes, so I could monitor how well my chosen productivity framework was working, to keep a hermeneutic loop feeding Reflective Quality back into the system at all times.
(I’m nothing if not pragmatic).
It was 5pm by this point. Where does the day go?
So then it was time for my Meet Mike Hour. On my various websites – Be Effective Like Mike, Be Rich Like Mike, Combat The Recession With Mike, Fight Balding-Pattern Hairloss With Mike, etc. – I proactively advertise my MMH, a time when I throw open the doors of my temple of knowledge to you, the Public. Anyone can contact me and discuss any of the world’s problems, anything you like. Every day I feel a warm glow because I’m giving this Gift freely without personal profit. (Although if you want to leave a personal donation, that’s a noble thing to do – the larger the better, people).
But I’m starting to think that the message isn’t getting across. No messages on my six Blackberries or three Smartphones, no e-mails in any of my accounts. The landline rang once, but it was someone wanting a 13″ Mexican Stuffed Cheese Crust (I’m one digit off the local takeaway). I tried to interest him in Dynamic Self-Growth but he became aggressive and I had to put the phone down. Talk about shooting the messenger.
Sometimes all this gets me down. I try so hard. Yet sometimes you can bring a horse to the water, but he absolutely will not drink. Doesn’t make you any less skilled with horses. I recite this mantra until I feel calmer.
Today, I had breakfast at 10.13am, for 3.7 minutes. I did this because that’s what I determined yesterday, processing a number of factors to determine the optimum repast time using the ‘Laughing Monkey’ productivity framework (see my website Explore Productivity Frameworks With Mike). I ate dynamically. Possibly over-dynamically.
Today, I’ll be mapping out tomorrow. It’s gonna be a long one – but I’m up to the job.
Images: orcmid and f mafra.
Please write follow up entitled “How NOT to be a tool.” Then I will know what to do.
I’m not sure I’m qualified to do that.
However, I’ll have something vaguely similar posting this coming Friday….
Brilliant! Nothing else to say. Other than check out the satire “Happiness TM” by Will Ferguson to find out what would happen if someone finally wrote a self help book that actually worked.
Ah! How you taunt me with perhaps the only Will Ferguson book I haven’t read yet. Well, that’s me learned.
(I should mention his Hokkaido Highway Blues is possibly my favourite piece of travelogue in print. Read it?)
Fecking genius. I’m going to write a self-help manual for living life outside the manual. What do you think?
As long as you don’t rush it! You need, at the very least…
1. A pre-planning plan for your manual, and ideally a plan to plan your pre-planning.
2. A rolling 7-day work framework. Take your time drafting this. If it takes a week to complete, it takes a week to complete. You can’t hurry quality. I call this philosophy “slow productivity”, in line with “slow travel” and all that.
3. Do you have a self_assessment mechanism? Or an inner feedback cognitive thinktank? You need those, or else you’ve got no way of watching the watchmen, yes?
4. Reward yourself with some free time. We all need a carrot. Make yours a big one, and your productivity will be just as big. My carrot to myself is that once a day, I put everything off until the next day. Usually about midnight, I find. This way, I have a permanent rolling stock of things to do AND I’m happy. It’s just a consequence of my dynamic life that I start to actually get things done about 11.50pm each day. So I’m about 6 months behind with everything, including household chores. But hey, as Tim Ferriss says, don’t ask for permission, ask for forgiveness! Since I’ve been evicted 3 times since March I think you can see I’m a man of action, not just words.
I’ve not. But I shall add it to the list, provided you add Happiness TM to yours!
Amazon already has my order, sir.
Excellent tips, although I’ve been told I’m already a complete and self-fulfilled tool.
How about a self-help article on How to be Snarky? I’m starting to lose touch with that side of myself!
Thanks, Joel. Although alas, I know nothing of the art of snark. It’s all self-ridicule in here, mate.