Going Green(er)

KATE AND I HAVE BEEN READING the NY Times Magazine Green Issue from several weeks back, and it's prompted us to make another wave of changes in our habits (the first wave came after we watched An Inconvenient Truth: CF lightbulbs, insulated water heater, and wind energy from our utility). What we're doing:

• A set of changes as part of the renovation we're doing to our house this summer: New energy-efficient windows, furnace, and water heater. During the demolition we've also learned our home was not insulated (!) other than by its siding, so we'll be adding fill insulation throughout.
• Buying groceries that are as close to local, organic, and seasonal as possible, with a preference on seasonal.
• To help with that, joining a local produce CSA.
• Using cloth bags at the grocery.
• Buying products with the least possible packaging.
• Leaving off the furnace and aircon as much as possible (helped greatly now that, due to the construction on our home, we have no aircon!).
• Line-drying much of our laundry.
• Leaving the lights off as much as possible.
• Using cruise control in the car as much as possible, and leaving the current MGP monitors on so we can better judge our consumption.

There are other changes we hope to make soon: Walking to any destination within a mile's distance is one. I've also been toying with getting a bike or scooter (90 mpg!) for local trips. Next summer we'll be planting a large garden in the yard, and will begin composting as much of our garbage as possible (probably now) in anticipation of the garden (with one of these).

The real problem is air travel, and my personal carbon footprint is enormous as a result (over 50,000 lbs of C02). I'm not certain how I'm going to crack that, save via carbon offsets. But there has to be a way ...

Reflections On Italy

TODAY WHILE TROLLING the hard drive on my Macbook Pro I came across a .txt file titled "Reflections on Italy." I must have written it while returning from our trip to Italy last Summer. Here is the full text; I think it's still good advice.

Spend less time on news, the Internet, and TV and more time reading, working in the garden, and listening to music.

Spend less time rushing from place to place and more time walking or strolling.

Walk more upright and with a swing in your arm.

Wear simple clothes that fit you well and are made from quality materials.

Don't worry so much about making a fantastic meal. Make meals that are simple and fresh, and they'll turn out fantastic all by themselves.

Take time to enjoy those meals. Eat them face to face, not in front of the television, and savor the courses and the conversation. A meal is a gathering and a reward to enjoy, not a task to complete.

Enjoy your wine regardless of its cost.

Plant more flowers, and lots of herbs, in your garden.

Have a simple breakfast every day.

Walk to the local market.

Enjoy the fruits of your own city. It has museums and architecture, too.

AN INTERESTING ARTICLE in the Journal (reg may be required) about how some firms are mandating meeting / conference call-free time for employees, with Dow Corning mandating one meeting-free week per quarter and IBM rolling out "ThinkFridays," keeping Friday afternoons free of meetings and interruptions. Great ideas, both.

I call this type of time "white space," and have tried to incorporate it in my own schedule for a few years now as a means of managing continuous partial attention and schedule overload. My approach is to have one week a quarter with no air travel or overnight stays (as for me, it's the travel that's more of an issue than the interruptions). I've also blocked one day a week as a "No Travel" day for several years, although this year I settled on that day as a Friday and started blocking every Friday afternoon from noon to six PM with "No Appointments" on my calendar. Only I am allowed to schedule things during this time (as opposed to my assistant or other staff and team members).

I've found that block of time irreplaceable, not so much that I can work without interruption, but so that I can be free to control some block of time as I choose, be it for work, spending time with my direct reports, or leaving the office early to spend time with Kate. How do you manage a schedule full of meetings? By scheduling non-meeting time. How's that for irony.

How I Handle Email (And Keep My Inbox Clean)

This WS Journal CareerJournal article -- How You Handle Your Inbox Can Say a Lot About You -- is well worth reading. Thanks to Getting Things Done I've made the shift over the past two years from the generally cluttered inbox to the clean. Regular processing and the weekly review are the keys. The current count: 46 emails in my office inbox, all read, none older than Monday, and none needing an immediate reply (or they did, and I have replied but not finished processing the message into a task, calendar item, or folder for keeping). I have some travel time coming up, and I'll use the flight time to knock the rest off and get my inbox to empty.

The fact is, 500 emails in your inbox create in most people an enormous sense of guilt: guilt for not responding to people with whom you likely have some meaningful relationship, and guilt for not keeping up with your workflow. 500 untended-to emails are like 500 little broken promises, to others and to yourself.

Here are my simple principles for keeping up with my email flow:

Turn off your email program's "auto-fetch" feature. Most email clients download mail on some schedule -- from every minute to every hour. I've turned mine off on all my tools: laptop, desktop, and phone. Get email when you're ready to deal with it. This dramatically reduces your interruptions through the day and dramatically increases your ability to focus on the work or person in front of you. After all, you have a mailbox outside your house that anyone can use at any time, but you don't check it 12 times a day, do you? (Note: I often have people say "But what if something's urgent?" You have a telephone. If it's urgent they'll call. "What if it's my boss and he expects me to be checking email constantly?" Turn off auto-fetch for a week and you'll slowly change your boss' expectations of your availability.)

Turn off your email notification sound. In the event that your email client must have some schedule for download (you can't turn off auto-fetch), turn off the notifications -- the bells, pop-ups, and other things that say "you've got mail." Again, you don't need the distraction.

Separate processing time from work time. Whatever you do, don't flip back and forth between dealing with email and doing work. Set aside time several times a day to download and process messages. Then go back to work. I usually process messages three or four times a day: once in the morning, once at night, and maybe twice during the day. (Again, doing this will also recalibrate the expectations those sending you messages have about your availability.)

When processing, complete any email task that you can complete in two minutes or less. This is the only exception to the "separate processing time from work time" principle. Emails aren't really messages, they're work in message form -- commitments to honor, conversations to have, things to read. items to print. When I read an email the first thing I ask is "Can I deal with this in two minutes or less and be done with it?" If the answer is "yes," I do that thing right away and delete the message. This might be writing a short reply, printing the message, filing an attachment, or putting something on my calendar. But I do it, right then, and then dispose of the message in a folder or the trash. This "two minute rule," which I credit to David Allen, is very powerful, especially when applied to your life as a whole. Walk around today and every time you see something that isn't how it should be, ask yourself if you can make it right in two minutes or less. If so, do it -- and see the results you have by day's end.

When processing, arrive at one of four ultimate dispositions for every message -- turn it into a task, place it on the calendar, file it, or delete it -- and then get it out of the inbox. As I noted above, I don't think of emails as messages, I think of them as bits of work that I have yet to convert into their proper form. A message saying, "We're on for our call tomorrow at 11" isn't fully formed as work until I've placed that appointment on my calendar. I do that, and then delete the message. An email that says "Please read this" is a task yet to be completed. I print the item, place it in my briefcase, and delete or file the message. An email with contract details which I need to keep is actually a filing task. I drag it into the folder for that project. The point is that the art of having a clean inbox isn't about "dealing" with or "responding" to messages as much as it's about "converting" them. When I see email I say "What do I need to make of this? Is it a task, appointment, something I need to keep, or something I can delete?" I then help that message along it's way to its final destiny and get rid of the message accordingly.

Use handheld tools to process messages on-the-fly, but NOT to reply. It may be possible to type emails with a BlackBerry or phone, but it's also darn slow and inefficient. I never write messages of any length with my phone. I limit my replies to a few words and that's it. I do, however, use my phone to ensure I have no emergencies and to get some processing time in when I'm on the go. It's very easy in the back of a cab or at an airport gate to download mail (remember, I don't use auto-fetch), make some quick dispositions of messages, delete spam, and send a few "yes / no" replies. I then won't have to deal with those messages when I connect on my laptop, and those that do require a long reply I can then deal with using a real keyboard, saving me significant time in the process.

Some of this I've picked up along the way, some I owe to David Allen. Take what you will, but this is what works for me. I can say this: My life is a heck of a lot more relaxing coming home at night and knowing there are NOT 179 possible commitments, tasks, or appointments sitting out there, needing my attention. I may appear anal retentive, but I sleep great.

Go forth and convert!

All Thumbed Out

Reading the newspaper -- a real one, printed on real paper -- is still a ritual in our house. One of the first articles I read over my morning coffee today was this piece by Adam Bryant. (Free registration required.) It's a letter to his BlackBerry, which he seems to have stopped carrying.

It's been a few weeks since we parted company. I'm sure you've forgotten me by now and are still hard at work for my former employer.

That's good. No hard feelings. I've decided I'm actually better off without you.

Why? Because even though you made me feel more productive, I'm realizing that in fact you made me less so.

...

Sure, I'm to blame, too. I made some mistakes. I liked your alarm feature, so I kept you bedside. I'd check you late at night. I'd check you first thing in the morning. Sometimes I'd even check you on Sundays, and often regretted it.

But you gave me something to do in idle moments, while I was standing in line or waiting for a train. With you, there was no dead time. It seemed great for a while.

Living without you, though, there's more time to think.

Daydreaming is an underappreciated pastime, and I've been doing more of it since we broke up, often to good effect. The idea percolator works better with fewer distractions.

I realize that not everyone can let go like I did. People who are on the road a lot, in particular, are still smitten.

But here's a thought. What if they cooled it just for a week? Wouldn't that leave more time to puzzle through what-ifs and how-abouts, the kind of questions that help us keep a step ahead of the competition?

Spot on. Of course, continuous partial attention is the fault of the user, not the technology. (As a quick aside, when I saw Edward Tufte speak last year he noted only two industries call their customers "users": tech and illicit drugs.) These things have an off button, and the wise person uses them frequently, turning a way for the world to reach them into a way for them to reach the world.

It's sort of like the note I wrote on silence a few days ago. "White space," I call it. Long stretches of uninterrupted time to think, stretching before you like a large, blank sheet of thick butcher paper. White space. Open for anything.

In 30 minutes or so I'm going to head to the Perkiomen Trail for my weekly Sunday long run. Today it's 10 miles, which will take me between an hour and 25 and an hour and 30 minutes to complete. It's sunny today, and not too hot, and the Perky is a lovely trail that follows a wide river, runs under a nave of arching trees, along fields and through a small town or two -- it's beautiful. I'll have my iPod on and listen to some good music along the way, but best of all I'll be alone to think, without interruption or conversation, the more distracting parts of the mind focused on the small task of left-foot right-foot, for an hour and a half.

This is the best part of my week (at least, the best part I don't spend with Katherine). Somewhere today, along the trail, I will see a beautiful thing. Somewhere along the trail, the music in my ear and the light in my eye and the endorphins in my brain will combine to form a thrill of soaring emotion in my heart. And best of all, somewhere along the trail I will have a great idea. Certainly one. Perhaps two. It's the white space that brings that idea along; the lack of interruption and low level focus of the run.

It's a wonderful thing, something I'd encourage you to have, too. Find your white space. Unroll the page. Give your brain a chance to draw.

How To Sleep When Flying To Europe

I'M PREPPING FOR A TRIP TO LONDON and thought I'd post my hack for getting as much sleep as possible when making the overnight filght from the East Coast to Europe:

• No caffeine after your morning cup of java the day of the flight.
• About 30 minutes before departure, take two Tylenol PM. The painkiller helps with the leg and back aches that come from awkward sleeping positions, and the sedative makes sleep more likely.
• If you're in business class and they offer an early meal service (usually a salad served as soon as the plane reaches altitude), take it. If not, eat before boarding. Either way, the goal is to get through the interruption meal service brings as early as possible (or eliminate it entirely).
• As soon as you've eaten (or if you've skipped the meal, as soon as the door shuts), put on your eye mask and put in foam earplugs. Most flights offer them now; if not, they're usually available in the airport.
• Hit the rack.

I've found that on the 7-hour flight to the UK from Philadelphia I can get about five hours of sleep this way. Works well for the red-eyes from the West coast to the East coast, too.

If you have any "sleep more on overnight flights" hacks, I'd be interested.

Tags: travel

DAVID ALLEN is doing a free one-hour webinar, courtesy Microsoft, on his organizational process. Date is Thursday, August 18th.

Walk, Don't Wait

A little life hack for life on the road: I'm in airports nearly every week, sometimes three or four times. And when I arrive at a gate with time before boarding, I've made a habit of taking off for a walk around the terminal. It's a great way to get closer to 10,000 steps, you can rip off some calls from your @Calls list while you're at it, and it beats standing idly in the gate area listening to others have too-loud and self-important cell phone conversations (unlike, of course, your and my cell phone conversations, which are appropriately subdued and humble).

Technorati Tags: Life Hacks 10,000 Steps

My Weekly Review

Most of the folks in my day-to-day life know that earlier this year I began using David Allen's wonderful Getting Things Done approach to workflow and time management. I was so impressed, indeed, that I ended up connecting with David, primarily so I could more confidently and directly refer him to clients and counter parties.

I'm working on a post that's a look back on the four or so months that I've been using the approach, but one thing I really try to encourage others to start is the "weekly review": the hour or two that David suggests we spend each week to fly up to 30,000 feet or so, process inputs, and plan for what's coming. It's certainly the most valuable time of my week save that spent with Kate, and as I go into this week's review today (Friday afternoon is my preferred time, but my schedule won't permit that this week), I thought I'd post my modification of the weekly review process as an FYI.

I've posted my weekly review in the extended entry. The process typically takes one to two hours, presuming I can isolate myself from interruptions (for me that means cell phone forwarded to the office, office phone on "Do Not Disturb," email off, and door closed). As noted above, it's based on David's initial recommendation, modified some to reflect my world.

I also do a brief (30 minute) home review on Saturday or Sunday, where I process the home inbox, pay bills, etc. Between the two not only do I stay more ahead of the game, I make better use of my time, and as David encourages, I'm much more able to feel good about what I'm not doing at any particular moment.

Travel Hack: How To Remember Maurice In Las Colinas

I've found good relationships with important service personnel essential to making life easier on the road. One trick I've picked up that's served me well: I keep a short list in the memo section of my Outlook with the names of key bell-people, bartenders, and especially, the hosts of frequent traveler clubs, at hotels I visit with frequency.

I can check it as a refresher on the plane (the memo syncs to my Treo phone), and then when I arrive in town can offer people the courtesy of calling them by name. Eventually I come to remember the names (like that of Maurice, the very nice concierge here at the Dallas Las Colinas Marriott) without needing the list. These kind people are always pleased to have a guest offer a personal greeting, and the relationship this courtesy helps build always serves me well when I need assistance down the road.