Hey folks, my name is Justin DiRose
I'm a web developer productivity writer and a community owner over at the productivity guild. I wanted to start off today by thanking
Francesco for hosting prodcon 2019
I think this is a fantastic place for us all to gather together to learn things about our systems that we maybe didn't know
Now, I've been a Productivity nerd for the last decade or so
I started off learning productivity through discovering David sparks in the Mac power users podcast
Which led me to folks like Merlin Mann and systems like getting things done
The process of learning productivity methods systems and tools honestly has taken me a long time
I feel like I'm only starting to feel comfortable with the systems that I developed in my life and
over that process that journey of learning productivity
It's taken taking me learning to be honest with myself
And with other people to really figure out what works for me and what I need
now I've been writing about productivity for a few years now and
it's easy for us productivity teachers to look like we have it all together, but
honestly, we don't we have struggles failures and issues just like everyone else just like you do and
I found that being real about these places of difficulty brings the best ideas and paths forward
Sometimes it's a little scary to open up and share and say hey, I'm really not getting this
but that opens the door for other people to encourage us and lift us up and bring us into a new place of understanding and
So today I want to talk about how being authentic and honest with ourselves and with other people
Gives us the power and the ability to create better systems to lead the effective life to become the person that we want to be
I'm going to show you three different ways to do that first to build systems iteratively
Second to build systems for ourselves and to use cycles of review to help us identify areas
that may be causing us issues and
third to build our systems with
Now it's really easy
Especially when you're starting out to think that you have to have it all figured out right out the gate
that I have to have the right folders in the right context inside of
OmniFocus or the right tags inside of Evernote to make sure that I'm capturing and gathering all the information
And keeping it and saving it in the right spot so I can find it later
But I realized early on that. I tend to heavily over complicate things when I try to figure it all out up front and
frankly, you don't have to and I found it better to start with a light framework and let the system develop as
The need arises from there
So for example with the task manager
Start with something like getting things done
just the basic process is there and build the rest in over time or use something like agile results and
Doing this has alleviated a lot of stress from me
because I don't think I have to figure it all out up front, but then additionally
More stress has been released from my life
Doing this because I don't encounter as much friction in my systems because I can make changes as I go
One way that I have learned to make changes throughout the process of building a productivity system is to start to do productivity experiments
The way I do this is in 2 weeks cycles
I'll pick two or three experiments over the course of a couple weeks to have going at one time and
Then what I do is I create a project in OmniFocus that does two things
First it pops a up a daily check-in where I just ask myself
hey house is going it mainly serves as a reminder for me that the
experiment exists and it's something that I'm doing because sometimes I forget honestly if I'm trying to do something new and
It also gives me just a moment to reflect on what actually I'm doing and how it's working
Then at the end of two weeks
What I'll do is evaluate three things is the experiment valuable
is there anything that I can do to improve the experiment to make it more valuable and
am I actually going to keep it around and
What that this process enables me to do is test out ideas that I have required from a people
To and be able to move on from them quickly if they don't work
Now I find it really helpful to be able to learn from other people through the sharing of workflows, but there's a temptation
When we are especially when we're starting off to look only at other people's workflows for things that work
Now, let me be honest here. I let's be honest with ourselves
Our lives are unique while we're all people and we can share ideas with each other that can work on a broad basis
You know things like getting things done
That's that something that has worked for a lot of people because it's very general
But there are specifics inside of your system that are unique to you because your needs are unique
So while other systems may offer good ideas, they're never necessarily going to solve your individual problems
And so to combat this I've found that as part of the iterative process to develop
cycles of mindful review and using those to identify areas in my system that don't meet my needs is
Really helpful. I wanted to spend a couple of minutes breaking down what I do to try to review my systems
So on the big picture I tend to do an annual personal retreat
So a personal retreat is a time to reflect on the previous period of time for me
It's a year to identify areas that I can improve in and then plan for the upcoming year
This is the big planning time for me for projects and dreams for the next year and with that often comes
different needs different
responsibilities, so I'm evaluating in this time if it's important for me to change any aspects in my workflow if
I need to shake it up a little bit because something's not working
For me or if I need to really do some thinking and find a new process for an area in my life for my business
Additionally, I'll do seasonal reviews and at those times I'll do and look those seasonal reviews are actually you know once every about
Three months or so and in those times, I'll review my directions and goals
Directions may be a new term for you. And it's something that I've come up with that's been helpful for me and my system
Directions are year-long intentions that I set so instead of setting a year-long goal that has a defined endpoint and outcome
What I'll do is I'll say this is what I'd like to do in this year
This is the direction that I'd like to go
so an example of that for 2019 for me is
To increase my social connections because being a remote worker and a business owner who works from this house
It's not always easy to have social connections. You have to be extremely intentional for that
So the direction that I'm setting for this year is to be more intentional there
one thing I found with goals versus directions is that sometimes goals can lock us into an outcome and
Something shifts in that process and then we have to completely re-evaluate our goal
Directions has given me the flexibility to be able to
change direction
because you know
I the way I see it is that if I'm walking down a path I start at one point and
Then I meet a juncture at the path and I have to decide I'm going to continue
Am I going to continue down the path of?
increasing social connections or is there something else that's more important because if something that's changed in my life and so
Seasonally, I'm reviewing those and making sure that they line up with where I want to go
Then based off of those directions I try to do goals in two to three month blocks as well
And so I'll set goals based off of those directions
This helps me just stay in alignment with my overall life direction on where I want to see things go we can only forecast out
You know a very short period of time and so having flexibility over the long-term
Time scale is really important to me
The next cycle that I tend to go through down further is the weekly review
This is a typical getting things done style review to keep my systems up-to-date. So I'm going through my task man clearing out
Projects and tasks that aren't relevant or making active ones that are because they weren't previously I'm going through
Evernote's and bear and my calendar just to make sure that everything's all up-to-date
that I have everything in my system that I need to be there so that I am current and then they can rely on my
system
Sometimes I'll encounter friction during this times and I'll fix some too
it's really helpful to just have these regular check-ins and lastly probably more importantly is I journal I
Tried a regularly journal sometimes multiple times a day and just take mindful stock of my thoughts
emotions ideas and my needs I
Found that the wheels come off easiest when my day-to-day needs are not being met. So things like sleep
relational connection food
Exercise etc. If I'm not taking care of those things then the whole rest of the system falls apart, so
Each one of these checkpoints in my system helps me make sure that my system stays
Relevant to me. I'm constantly evaluating
Is this something that that actually works for me?
And is there something that's coming down the pipe that I need to change in my system in order to make it work better? And
sometimes in that process I'll find problems and I'll try to solve them but I don't necessarily know how to
And so that's why it's important to remember that we need each other to build our systems more effectively
you really can't solve every single problem by yourself or even by reading blogs watching videos or listening to
Podcasts I've done a lot of that
but instead I found
that every
Major change that I have made especially in the last year that's improved my workflow and system for the better
Has come from real relationship with other people talking about where I'm struggling
I wanted to share a couple of examples with you for that a
Couple years back. I started writing a Productivity journal on the productivity guild
Now this was before I owned the product killed
But I just didn't have any relationships in my life with other people that allowed me to talk about productivity
and so this was kind of a new place that I wanted to try to explore and so I started
Weekly during my weekly review posting my goals and the system successes and failures that I had in a topic on the guild
now the mere process of writing this
publicly opened discussions with others as well as bringing clarity to myself on my needs and what was working and what wasn't
I learned through this process that things like two duis wasn't cutting it for me
I just had different needs than that tool was able to offer how experimenting is good
And then it's not always best have hard and fast goals, depending on the situation just like I talked about with the directions
Another area that being real with folks about by productivity struggles has helped me with is handling my routines
so my wife works really long shifts in the job that she has
Just a couple times a week and the days vary from week to week
Now being self-employed, it's really great because my wife and I can share the load with taking care of our kids on those days
But that back and forth
Variability can make it really difficult to find a rhythm that
Consistently gets things done in your life. And so I was having strop trouble with this
Honestly, I was like really stressed out about it a few months back and a conversation with a friend of mine helped me realize that
I just can't structure my needs into a routine
and in fact
I need to check in with myself to figure out what I need next whether that's a nap or a break
Or a different type of work to do or a walk whatever it is that I need to spend time
Reflecting and just taking stock of what's going on inside of me to be able to figure out what I need to do next
Now to help with this I ended up creating a series or cut on my phone which then asks me questions
about how I'm doing, you know, it gives me a little notes pop up to just kind of give me a
Ability in day one to journal what I'm feeling at that moment and then ask me some questions like hey, you know what?
Do you need do you need a break? Do you need something else? And
How are your relational connections going? Are you feeling connected to your kids? Are you feeling connected to your wife? How about your friends?
And from there based upon my answers
It'll create tasks and OmniFocus for me to follow up on those items to make sure that I'm meeting those needs because honestly
That's the kind of person that I want to be
I want to be one who's taking care of myself and taking care of the relationships in my life and with
without a set routine
It can be a little difficult to figure out where unless you're really
Intentional to check in and be honest with yourself about what needs to happen next. I
Know I wouldn't have figured out these problems nearly as quickly and the quite a few others
Without talking them through with other people and that requires being humble and real with where I struggle and where I fail
but it's so important to be able to do that because
The sum of all of us together gives us the ability to move together forward a lot faster
We all need one another
Because we can't see all the angles by ourselves
So when wrapping all this up
The best way to improve your system is to be honest with yourself
You need to iterate
Improvements are a good way to approach it is to iterate improvements to reflect on building a system that meets
Your needs and to get help when you're stuck by being real with other people
Now there's a lot that you can do to go forward and build better systems
But if I were to challenge you to do one thing
Going forward from this talk. I would challenge you to take 20 minutes this a week and ask yourself the question
What's really not working for me? And then?
Spend some time trying to fix it. Talk it out with other people
figure out what might be broken and
Then if you need some help, if you don't have other folks interested in that area that you're struggling with in your life
Feel free to come over to the productivity guilt. We've got a free membership where you can connect with other people
Interested in productivity and the Apple platform if that's something that you're on to ask for help
We'd love to help you grow in your journey to have a more authentic
Productivity system that helps you become the person that you'd like to be