Michael Linenberger's Blog

July 26, 2011

ToodleDo just released a complete user interface (UI) makeover, and it looks great. Read about it here:

http://www.toodledo.com/info/news_201107.php

And here is a screenshot:

Michael

July 23, 2011

Just a few months ago I reported these market share numbers:

Google’s Android platform at 36.4%, Apple at 26%, RIM (BlackBerry) at 25.7%

Just two months later, look at them now:

(From NYT): “The consulting firm Millennial Media estimated last month that Android devices accounted for 54 percent of the global market for smartphones, followed by Apple with 26 percent, RIM with 15 percent and all others with less than 4 percent.”

It’s amazing how fast this is changing.

Michael

July 21, 2011

We all get too carried away with setting deadlines on tasks, either explicit or implied—and then we feel bad when we don’t meet them. I feel we should use deadlines much less often, and we should even avoid implied deadlines—like that implied by a “daily task list.” Otherwise we are breaking “promises” all day long and we lose respect for our own abilities. The reason? Priorities change too fast to schedule deadlines for everything.

For example, it feels proactive for us to create a long list of tasks that we are “going to do” today even if they’re not absolutely required today. That’s what most people do—they call it their daily tasks list and it creates an implicit deadline of today for everything on the list. But then we all feel regret when, because other more important things pop in that day, we finish only a few of the original tasks. And so each day we push the incomplete tasks forward to the next day, and when we do that day after day, we feel guilty—like we are not meeting our expectations.

All of this comes from getting carried away with deadlines. In my opinion, the only deadline that has any real significance is what’s absolutely due today. Why?  Continue reading →

July 11, 2011

As you may know, I recommend using ToodleDo for tasks if you cannot use Windows Outlook for tasks.

One thing great about ToodleDo is that it has an easy way to convert e-mails to tasks from any e-mail system (Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, etc.), and I wrote about that in an earlier post. Briefly, you just forward the e-mail to a special ToodleDo e-mail address, and it gets inserted into your task list.

Well, here’s a nifty way to use that feature for creating Follow-up Tasks in ToodleDo. Continue reading →

June 30, 2011

If you use a task system a lot, like most MYN users do, one of the things I bet you hate are tasks that never get done—tasks that just sit on your list. If too many sit like that you tend to lose faith in your system—faith that it is working for you.

Well, much of the MYN system is designed to avoid that, and it does so well. But here is a new idea about another way to prevent the negative impact of those lingering tasks: put a question mark at the end of many of your task entries.

Why do that? Well, if you put a question mark after a task in your list, it changes the whole meaning of the task entry. It converts it from the implied statement “You should do this task” to a much softer question to yourself “Do I want to do this task?”

One reason we hate incomplete tasks is that they make us feel guilty, like we aren’t meeting our commitments. But many of the tasks we write down were never intended to be full commitments; rather, they were merely ideas or aspirations we wrote down for later consideration. Continue reading →

June 22, 2011

There is a concept in MYN that actually represents an important new principle of task management. It’s to favor start dates on all tasks, over due dates, when scheduling tasks. What do I mean by that?

You’ve probably heard the concept that if you don’t set a due date on something it won’t get done. This principle sounds very proactive. It is the reason nearly all task management software programs have a due date field for their tasks. Nearly all paper tasks lists also show a due date space for you to write into.

But setting a due date for all tasks is another one of those old principles that sound good but don’t in fact work.

Why won’t it work? Because you’re trying to trick yourself and you aren’t that easily tricked. It’s like the person who sets his wristwatch ahead 10 minute thinking he’ll be on time for all meetings from then on. But after a few days he mentally adjusts to the time change and starts being late again. It’s the same with artificial due dates; if you set a date that’s fake you’ll know it’s fake and you’ll ignore it. In fact you may miss some important deadlines because you’ll get in the habit of ignoring all due dates you write down.

Continue reading →

June 16, 2011

I did an interview with John Assaraf the other day and we discussed the topic of procrastination. John is doing a series on that and he wanted my thoughts on why we procrastinate and what we can do about it. After putting it off for a while (just kidding) I did some thinking about it and came up with these guidelines.

So why do we procrastinate?

I think there are three reasons you may find yourself putting things off.

1) First, you may be truly overloaded and so you are just letting some items fall off the bottom of your day (the ones you procrastinate on). That’s not really procrastination, that’s just being too busy.

2) Or you are truly avoiding some items you don’t want to do. These are tasks that sit on your list day after day. I call these “Sinker” tasks—your heart sinks when you see them on the list and so you skip over them.

3) The third is more subtle: you just don’t know what to do on particular task to progress it forward. I call these “Huh!” tasks because when you get to one of these on your list you just say “Huh!” not because you dislike them, but because no action comes to mind. You don’t mind doing the task; you just don’t know what to do next. So then you just skip over it and go to the next item on the list. And they just sit on the list forever.

So what can we do about procrastination?

Well, first identify which of the reasons we just discussed are at play in the stuck thing. Each one has its own solution, so let’s talk about each one.

Continue reading →

June 6, 2011

According to the data released by ComScore this Friday. The data, which was for the month of April, 2011, puts Google’s Android platform at 36.4%, Apple at 26%, RIM (BlackBerry) at 25.7% and Microsoft at 6.7%.

By the way, that’s a 4.7% decline for BlackBerry since January (which continues a long slide).

Android’s growth continues to amaze me, especially compared to Apple. It was not much more than a year ago that Android’s market share was below 10%, far behind Apple; now their share beats Apple significantly. I used to think their growth was largely because iPhone was on ATT only and so dedicated other-network users were being forced to Android. But Android continue to grow market share even after Verizon released the iPhone.

I am purely neutral on which of the two phones is better (I have both phones and like things about each). But most reviewers of smartphones continue to say the iPhone is a better phone than nearly all others, yet Android continues to grow.

So what is your opinion as to why Android continues to take off compared to Apple’s iPhone? I’d love to start that discussion. Leave a comment below.

Michael

June 5, 2011

I sometimes get comments from people just learning the MYN system that essentially state this:  “The juice of what we do at work is in our most important items; so shouldn’t we be focusing on our goal-based important items in MYN and not focus so much on urgency?”

Well, to answer that, I usually tell them a story that goes like this: When I teach a seminar or give a speech, often the first thing I ask to the crowd is “How many of you have been trained to focus first on your most important work?” and nearly half the room raises their hands. I then ask “So how’s it going? How many of you are succeeding at that?” Almost no hands stay up.  When I ask for individuals to explain why, they almost invariably state that they are spending too much time putting out fires and so they cannot get to their important items.

And that’s exactly the answer to the question of why we focus on urgency in MYN. We focus on urgency because out-of-control urgency is what prevents us from focusing on our important work. I assert that we need to get urgency under control first so that we have the time and composure to shift into our important work. That’s exactly what MYN does.

In fact, any to-do list that uses “Importance” as the primary prioritization approach is doomed to failure. Why? Continue reading →

June 1, 2011

The Contest winner for the Nook Color e-reader/tablet is Richard Owen of Reston Virginia. Congratulations Richard! Richard mentioned he has all three editions of the Total Workday Control Using Microsoft Outlook book, so I think the right person won!

Michael