The Weekly Simplifier - June 28 - Making the Complicated Simple
Welcome to The Weekly Simplifier, brought to you by…
Contents:
1. A Note From Shawn
2. Quote of the Week
3. Article: How Project Management Can Be Made More Simple
4. This Week’s Simplification Tip
5. In the News & On the Web
6. Featured at ProjectSimplify.com
7. Keep Smiling
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1. A Note From Shawn
10: a very satisfying, complete number. It doesn’t feel like it’s trying to go anywhere or be anything it’s not.
Us over-active humans could benefit from a reminder along these lines. I’ll suggest a variation: Stay clear of endless quests. Simplicity colleague David Brewster from Down Under contributes the Article and breaks an unwieldy project down into “the next step”. The purpose of the Tip is to encourage you to convert a monolithic task into a small, defined game. Each journey around the world began with one step.
One of the easiest ways to avoid an endless, frustrating quest is to know where things are! (“Where are my keys?!”) From finding what you want in your kitchen pantry, to managing your book collection, to tracking updates of your favorite websites through feeds—simply knowing where to go to find something cannot be under-rated!
I’m so glad that Lance found the article In the News on Energy Management. Its publisher, the Arizona Republic, may want some basic demographic info from you in order to see it; don’t let this hurdle stop you! I foresee more exploration of this insightful industry in this neck of the woods.
And then we have bunnies. At times raunchy, at times sassy, at times just plain funny. Why would we persevere on a quest if we didn’t laugh?
Welcome to our 10th issue of The Weekly Simplifier!
Enjoy!
Shawn Tuttle
Head Simplifier, Project Simplify
2. Quote of the Week
“Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.”
-Charles Mingus
3. Article: How Project Management Can Be Made More Simple
Guest article by David Brewster
On a recent holiday I organised an activity of significant daughterly desire: the dreaded horse ride. Once again, my steed was the old, slow one. In fact he was fully automatic. I didn’t need to do anything but hold on and enjoy the view. Strangely, the jaunt got me thinking about managing projects. Come for a ride and I’ll tell you why.
We all have numerous projects on the go. Business projects of our own making and others imposed on us. Voluntary projects. Personal projects ranging from sorting out all those old photos in boxes to making that box of a house more photogenic.
If you were to list all your projects you might be surprised at how many horseshoes you are currently trying to toss.
Our challenge is to keep all these projects moving. While some seem to gallop along of their own accord, others struggle to break into a trot. Some never make it out of the stalls. Wouldn’t it be satisfying to see more progress on these?
I believe a key reason for a lot of project inertia is this: we get stuck behind an expectation that projects should be planned in great detail before we get started. This supposedly reduces the risk. On time, on budget – way to go!
It’s a noble concept, but trying to do this often holds us up unnecessarily. First, planning in great detail takes significant time. As this is time we seldom have, even a pony-sized project comes to look insurmountable. Secondly, the underlying assumption that we can predict what will work and what won’t is simply fantasy.
So get up on this giddy old horse with me. (Don’t worry; I have no right to laugh at your awkward mounting technique.) As we set off, you’ll notice that our well-worn equine takes one careful step at a time. Unable to see his own feet, he makes sure that each hoof is safely planted before lifting the next.
He knows exactly where he’s going; he’s followed this route hundreds of times before. In management-speak, he is clear about his desired outcome. Nevertheless, he plans the detail of his progress one step at a time.
Importantly, rather than plan the detail too far ahead, each step is guided by what he learnt from the last one, and what he can see just ahead. If the surface is loose and unstable, for instance, he’ll be extra careful. If it’s firm, providing more certainty, he’ll move faster.
If this four-legged friend could speak, I’m sure his message would be something like this: Next time you are struggling to get a project started, try the simple approach. Identify the first step and do that. Then decide on the next step. And so on. There’s a good chance you’ll reach your feedbag sooner.
—
David Brewster is dedicated to helping managers reduce and cope with complexity in the modern workplace. His company, Business Simplification, draws on his 18 years experience as a manager, consultant, educator and speaker.
4. This Week’s Simplification Tip
Set Time Limits
Do you find yourself having trouble keeping up with ongoing responsibilities such as clearing out the paper or email inbox, bookkeeping, and filing? No one to delegate to?
Try a time limit game. Making a little game out of a task can provide that bit of impetus your brain needs to get over that internal scream, “Nnnooo!”
- Get out the timer (one that rings or beeps as loudly as possible)
- choose one, and only one, task, ex. filing. Mono-task like your life depends on it (no interruptions, no side-tracks, period).
- set timer for 15 minutes
- go for it! File as much as you can, let yourself feel a sense of challenge and excitement
- when time is up, STOP, and go do something to shake it off
Tips:
- Keep your ToDo list nearby. If something you see triggers a ToDo, write it down and keep on your mono-tasking.
- Do this once a day. Rotate tasks to be done, ex. filing one day, bookkeeping entry the next day, clearing out your email inbox the next
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5. In the News & On the Web
If you know of something in the news or on the web that should be featured here, let us know!
In The News
What lurks behind pantry doors (Washington Times)
http://washingtontimes.com/metro/20060620-093828-7627r.htm
My solution to the “pantry problem” was to live by myself and hardly keep any storable food around. (I actually have a cabinet in my kitchen which is completely empty all the time!) But for those of you for whom that is not a viable option, there is this article which explains the fine art of pantry taming.
Energize! (Arizona Republic)
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/arizonaliving/articles/0619energy0619story.html
According to the experts in this article, “energy management” is just as important as time management, if not moreso. (And I don’t mean electricity and fuel…we’re talking personal energy here.) One woman in the article developed an “energy template”, and found that “her productivity had increased tenfold and ‘I make more money working less time - a lot more money working less time.’”
Organize Your Books and Magazines (iVillage.com)
http://home.ivillage.com/cleanandorganize/organize/0,,98bl,00.html
Organization expert Regina Leeds doesn’t want you to abolish books, magazines, and catalogs from your home—she just wants you to control them. Why? Because “brought into the average home or office without rhyme or reason, magazines, books and catalogs will take over like a plague of locusts.”
6. Featured at ProjectSimplify.com
Subscribe to Our Site’s Feed
There is a lot of unnecessary wonder over the New Great Way to publish web site content, i.e., “feeds” or “syndication”. Let’s slice through that wonder first.
Web site feed
A web site feed is simply a way to package the latest content on a site, so that it can be easily gathered, sorted, and browsed through. If you subscribe to the feeds of web sites you like to keep up with, you can then view one page which shows you the latest (headlines, excerpts, entries) from the sites in question. It saves you from having to visit each of those sites individually. You can then scan the headlines, etc. from your favorite sites, and then click through to read more only if you see something that looks yummy.
Nowadays, everybody and his grandmother has a feed for their site, so chances are most of the sites you visit regularly do too. Project Simplify has one that is served up by Feedburner, which creates a “universal” feed that cuts through all the different weird formats (RSS, Atom, RDF, etc.) to make one feed that should work with any feed reader.
Feed reader
A feed reader is just a program (or a web service) which helps to gather all your feeds together for easy perusal. There are a zillion available feed readers, including web-based ones from Google and Yahoo!, ones that work with your e-mail program, and lots more. Feedburner has a “Feed 101″ page which explains more, and has links to popular feed readers of all kinds.
Our feed
Our own feed page actually has links to many of those readers too. We also offer a one-click way to add our feed to your reader of choice. To subscribe, find Site Extras in the ProjectSimplify.com sidebar. Then click on the first link in that section called “Subscribe to our feed [+/-]“. It will expand to show our main feed link, but to keep it easy, you can just click on one of the popular feed readers listed to instantly add us to your reader.
If you’re wishing that you could do a better job keeping up with more of the sites that you enjoy, then getting into feeds may be the answer you’re looking for. Some people use a feed reader to help them keep up with hundreds of sites—a feat that’s virtually impossible via regular web surfing.
7. Keep Smiling
Popular Movies Re-enacted by Bunnies in 30 Seconds
A cute bunny can make almost anyone smile.
Logically speaking, then, seeing 25 of Hollywood’s most famous movies re-enacted by bunnies in 30 seconds each should make you smile quite a lot…for at least 12 and a half minutes.
Thanks to Angry Alien Productions, we can put that theory to the test.
The 30-second Bunnies Theatre Library can’t be done real justice by a description. Even the screenshots of the closing scenes from Jaws and King Kong below (look closely…that’s a bunny King Kong) only provide a tiny hint. You’ve just got to check it out for yourself. They’ve got classics like Casablanca and It’s a Wonderful Life, modern classics like The Big Chill and The Shining, and many other titles that will be familiar to most. Be warned, though - the re-enactments generally reflect the content (and rating) of the original movie. And some of the movies have adult situations and language, just like their full-length, non-bunny versions. :-)
Screenshots*:
King Kong
“It was beauty killed the beast!”
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Jaws |
Visit the 30-second Bunnies Theatre Library here.
*images © copyright angryalien.com
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Thanks for reading - see you next week!
Publication Information
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The Weekly Simplifier is published by:
Project Simplify
P.O. Box 597
Nevada City, CA 95959
phone: 530-205-5775
web: www.projectsimplify.com
e-mail: (newsletter@projectsimplify.com) newsletter (at) projectsimplify (dot) com
