The Rules

Little Miss 3 (nearly 4!) came up with these herself. Not bad rules to live by really.

• No crossing the road without a grown up.
• No climbing trees without a ladder.
• No going up in the sky without wings.
• No going faster than you think you can.
• No saying hello when it is nearly bed time.

Getting Great Things Done

"Great things are not done by impulse, but a series of small things brought together." -Vincent Van Gogh

I am a self confessed productivity geek; systems, methodologies & techniques for productivity, I love them. I practise a hybrid of David Allen's Getting Things Done and Leo Babauta's minimalism with a dose of techniques from Landmark Education programs. I've probably spent nearly as much time pottering around with my productivity systems and learning about new ones as I've done on actual tasks. I could argue that it's free time allowed by the increased efficiency of my systems but that's only true to a point, beyond that it's a hobby. And it's an insidious one, mucking about with ones systems looks like actual work- I know my other distractions intimately but it took a while to recognise this one.

I'm not going to give up my productivity hobby/habit just like I am not going to give up reading blogs or playing the occasional game. But I'm now on the alert for it displacing actual work. So here's my productivity tip, partially courtesy of Van Gogh; keep track of and manage your projects and tasks in some way that works for you, how isn't that important. What is important is to take actions. Little ones are best. And keep taking actions and watch them join up to cause the great things you envisaged.

NB- some shepherding is still required to ensure that the actions taken are the right ones to forward your great thing; if your aim is to build a castle, quarrying rocks is more appropriate than ship building.

Self Publishing ebook Style

I'm getting to the business end of the writing for my book Living An Inspired Life- I've now written around 55k words and my goal is around 65-70k words. There's a lot to do before it will hit the shelf any-where including I expect a lot of editing. But articles on the topic of self publishing are starting to catch my eye, herewith a few worthy of review-

Why and How I Self-Published a Book by James Altucher - I can't decide whether I like James Altucher or loathe him, he does make an art of being controversial, either way this is a worthwhile read.

How I Wrote a Book: Step by Step by Ben Nesvig -I also started with Google Docs but it became unweildy when I exceeded a certain word count. I've heard numerous good things about Scrivener but unfortunately they don't make a Linux version. LibreOffice is serving my needs nicely, I do miss the clickable index in the Google Doc though.

E-books Are Not That Easy by Daniel B Markham - despite the title there is a great checklist of things to do here, including things I would never of thought of, eg. markup validation.

And a couple of great (older) posts from A Newbies Guide To Publishing by Joe Konrath - You Should Self-Publish & Time Investment

Life Changes When You Become A Parent

They say life changes when you become a parent. I always wondered what they meant by that, I assumed it was some deep and profound change in your relationship with the world because you were now completely responsible for a life other than your own. Something unreachable for a non parent. I've been a parent now for nearly four years, I won't claim to be a great parent, I'm not. However I do think I've got a bit of a handle on it, I roughly know what this parenting thing is about and I am pretty sure I know how life has changed. I got it in a flash of insight as I was picking up food off the floor – a half chewed, thoroughly masticated and slobbered on crust which I'd just stood on.

So here's how life changes when you become a parent- you pick up food off the floor, lots of it pretty much after every time they eat. You get sneezed and snotted on and you get to clean off of you and everything else pretty much every imaginable body fluid. You get intimately involved with another humans bowel movements- I've lost count of the number of times in which I've ended up, due to some mishap or another, wearing another persons poo. You find yourself looking forward to reading “Where Is The Green Sheep” even though you know it word for word. You have locks on cupboards and you worry about cars and dogs and cats and strangers and pretty much anything that is bigger than a cardboard box and sharper than a ball and lots of things in between. A short trip to the shops becomes a major planning exercise and has to be strategically approached, packed for and executed. Your friends only see you in the hours of daylight, if they see you at all, and you always look like you've had about four hours of sleep - probably because that's all the sleep you got. And here's the real kicker- after you've been a parent for a while you think that all of that is normal, that every-one else is doing the same.

OK and life profoundly alters in deep and meaningful ways which no non parent could ever understand.

How To Complete Anything

I coach people on how to achieve the things that they've always wanted to achieve. There are a variety of tools, strategies and technologies which I train people in but if I had to boil it down to a formula it would be these steps

1. start right now
2. start with something small
3. keep on taking actions until you get there, or said differently: don't stop!
4. have a way of measuring & checking your progress

 Anything else is window dressing. It might make you feel good (which can be important) but it's not strictly necessary.

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