Month: March 2022

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Productivity Taxonomy: Making Tags Work in Your Personal Productivity System (Part 2)

This week, Ray, Augusto, Francis and Art continue the conversation about tags, discussing how they use tags in their own lives and work, and how to deal with the limits of software when tagging. (If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit https://productivitycast.net/128 for clickable links and the full show notes and transcript of this cast.) Enjoy! Give us feedback! And, thanks for listening! If you'd like to continue discussing productivity taxonomy from this episode, please click here to leave a comment down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post). In this Cast | Productivity Taxonomy, Part 2 Ray Sidney-Smith Augusto Pinaud Art Gelwicks Francis Wade Show Notes | Productivity Taxonomy, Part 2 Resources we mention, including links to them, will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context. Remember the Milk Skedpal OneNote Workflowy Evernote Raw Text Transcript Raw, unedited and machine-produced text transcript so there may be substantial errors, but you can search for specific points in the episode to jump to, or to reference back to at a later date and time, by keywords or key phrases. The time coding is mm:ss (e.g., 0:04 starts at 4 seconds into the cast’s audio). Read More Voiceover Artist 0:00 Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling productive life, then you've come to the right place productivity cast, the weekly show about all things productivity. Here, your host Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks. Raymond Sidney-Smith And Welcome back, everybody to productivity cast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity, I'm Ray Sidney Smith. Augusto Pinaud I am Augusto Pinaud. Francis WadeI'm Francis Wade. Art GelwicksAnd I'm Art Gelwicks. Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:25Welcome, gentlemen, Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:26and welcome to our listeners to this episode of ProductivityCast. Today, we're going to continue the conversation that we started last week. So in our last episode, we opened up the dialogue, because of a topic are brought to the team and wanted to discuss and that was all about tagging in our personal productivity systems. And we discussed really what productivity tagging really looks like, what does what does a taxonomy really stand for in a personal productivity system, we talked about some of the topics relating to it, but we really didn't dive into how we all use tags on our system. So I think that would be a really great conversation for today. So how do you tag and use tags in your personal productivity system Francis Wade 1:08as little as possible, whereas you can tag everything from now until the cows come home? I think the purpose of tagging is, as we discussed in the last episode, to be able to manipulate large volumes of data by focusing on some smart attributes. And I think that one of the rules I have is, and this was from bitter experience of trying to use multiple tags, and all sorts of fancy hierarchies and tags, using attributes that were the most interesting is that we should be always aiming to use as least the least number of tags as possible because they extract extract such a cost. The managing tax isn't easy for us psychologically. And we should be looking to manage the minimum number possible to get the biggest benefit. There's a Pareto effect. In other words, so this is not a matter of and I see people asking questions all over the internet, you know, what should I tag? Should I tag this, I'm tagging with 10 different attributes. No, whereas they may be cool, and they will be fun. It is a utility problem. And we have a capacity to the number of tags that we can use. So my first technique, whenever I go to tag is use as little as possible, minimum number that I can get away with and still be effective. And then I'm going to add another level of tags or another dimension or degree,
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Quit Complaining About Prior Strategies

Do your managers complain about key strategies their predecessors failed to craft? It seems as if they have all the answers, but you suspect that they may be kidding themselves. The truth is, they may not be very different. If so, how should you intervene so they don’t handicap future generations with more poor decisions?

Hindsight is 20-20 vision. After the fact, it’s easy to be an expert. On Monday morning, after the contest is over, you can say exactly what the coach and players needed to do.

The same applies to your company. If it’s been around for more than a few years, then your firm is benefitting (or suffering) from strategic plans created and applied by prior executives. They made some decisions (and failed to make others), forcing your organization into its current position. Like the Monday morning experts, it’s tempting to sit back and criticise them. With disbelief, you wonder out aloud: “What were they (not) thinking?”

However, as a leader, you could be committing the same mistake. In other words, you and your colleagues may be so engrossed with today’s issues that you are “kicking the can down the road” i.e. setting up traps for the next generation of managers. Essentially, you are abandoning them to a future they can’t influence today.

It’s a perpetual cycle which will only continue until your company is blindsided by a new competitor, technology, pandemic or other disruption. These occurrences are ones you wanted prior leaders to foresee, and prepare your company to handle. How do you break the cycle? What if you want to quit setting up new obstacles for your successors? Try these thought experiments, preferably conducted during a leadership retreat.

1) Imagine Your Organization Doesn’t Exist

In this thought experiment, ask yourself: “What if our organization didn’t exist?”

Look to the future and predict what would happen in your industry in regards to the products and services you deliver. What would customers and stakeholders come to expect as the norm? From whom? What new technologies or market realities would have an outsized influence?

Understand that your answers rely on present developments, maturing trends, and items becoming obsolete. In this experiment, you have no control – you can only observe.

The only real question to ask today is: What is your current relationship to these external forces? How are you preparing your company to deal with them? Unfortunately, many executives do little more than complain: “Someone should do something before it’s too late.” But they fail to act, only becoming victims. Don’t make this mistake.

2) Fast-Forward Far-Away Developments

Even if you can clearly discern market or technology trends, some managers won’t. They’ll pretend these threats can be ignored. Their inertia makes the company passive.

In a strategic planning exercise several years ago, we asked a leadership team: “When will a majority of Jamaicans prefer to use online banking?” After a long discussion, the group came to agreement: “2030.”

In today’s world, in light of COVID, we can see they were far off the mark. However, by back casting from 2030, they created a feasible course of action. As such, when the pandemic broke out, they could revisit their plan, have a laugh at their assumptions, and fast-forward their transformation. Instead of going into a panic, they made a tweak.

As you can imagine, future managers look back at this kind of exercise with gratitude. Even though it was inaccurate, it wasn’t incorrect. The same might apply to your industry and company with respect to inevitable changes that may arrive far more quickly than imagined.

3) Think in Terms of a Market Winner

Finally, imagine if all the competitors in the world were to disappear, leaving a single provider. Ask the retreat: “What did this team do to be the last one standing, serving customers, while others failed?”

Chances are, this is probably the company that invested early in some critical capability that others didn’t recognize.

Bring that thinking to your situation today. How do you ensure that you become more like Netflix/Apple/Fuji rather than their failed counterparts: Blockbuster/Nokia/Kodak? Can you stop postponing long-term decisions which guarantee your failure?

Arguably, there are few companies which arrived at their dominant position by accident. For example, Grace Kennedy’s competitors in the mid-1990s are no longer major players in their industries. Why? GK’s 25-year plan helped it surge ahead, via far-sighted moves some thought were foolish.

Don’t fall into that trap and inadvertently make your company obsolete. Instead, let future generations be proud of your decisions and willingness to set ego aside for the greater good. They may even thank you for your courage.

Francis Wade is the author of Perfect Time-Based Productivity, a keynote speaker and a management consultant. To search his prior columns on productivity, strategy, engagement and business processes, send email to columns@fwconsulting.com.

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Productivity Taxonomy: Do Tags Help You Be More Productive? (Part 1)

This week, Ray, Augusto, Francis and Art start a conversation about tags. Classifying information in our productive lives comes in many different ways. We discuss what tagging is, how tags are different from other types of organizing, and how to jumpstart your use of tags. (If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit https://productivitycast.net/127 for clickable links and the full show notes and transcript of this cast.) Enjoy! Give us feedback! And, thanks for listening! If you'd like to continue discussing productivity taxonomy from this episode, please click here to leave a comment down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post). In this Cast | Productivity Taxonomy, Part 1 Ray Sidney-Smith Augusto Pinaud Art Gelwicks Francis Wade Show Notes | Productivity Taxonomy, Part 2 Resources we mention, including links to them, will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context. Hypernym / hyponym Evernote OneNote Dewey Decimal System Zettelkasten Episode 124, Personal Knowledge Management With Zettelkasten Bullet Journal Episode 035, What Is the Bullet Journal? How Does It Work? Episode 073, Tailoring the Bullet Journal Method Episode 123, Productivity Labs, Methods Edition—Bullet Journal Raw Text Transcript Raw, unedited and machine-produced text transcript so there may be substantial errors, but you can search for specific points in the episode to jump to, or to reference back to at a later date and time, by keywords or key phrases. The time coding is mm:ss (e.g., 0:04 starts at 4 seconds into the cast’s audio). Read More Voiceover Artist 0:00 Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling productive life, then you've come to the right place productivity cast, the weekly show about all things productivity. Here, your host Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks. Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17 And Welcome back, everybody to productivity cast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity, I'm Ray Sidney Smith. Augusto Pinaud 0:24 I am Augusto Pinaud. Francis Wade 0:25I'm Francis Wade. Art Gelwicks 0:26 And I'm Art Gelwicks. Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:27Welcome, gentlemen, and welcome to our listeners to this episode of ProductivityCast. Today, we're going to be diving into a topic that is near and dear to my heart, but I think is also really important for people to recognize as a fundamental component of personal productivity systems that I think is often lost in the world of just organizing your systems for action. And that is tags, the concept of using taxonomy to be able to be more productive. And this was a topic actually brought up by art Gelwicks. And so I'm going to hand it over to you art we were Art Gelwicks 0:59talking about in one of the previous episodes, we're talking about organizing notes, and specifically recalling content from notes. And that always raises the specter of tagging. So I thought it would be worthwhile. Having talked about this in the past, for us to dedicate some time to this actual topic in and of itself, separate from applications right now separate from systems and implementations. But really what tagging means, what it means within the context of our personal and professional systems, information management for ourselves. And also, as we start to really get into it, how this helps us improve our organization. beyond some of the alternatives, things like folder structures and that sort. There's, you'll hear classically that, you know, tagging is better than folders, use tagging, don't use folders, use tagging, don't use folders. And I don't know if I necessarily agree with that in all cases. And I think that's where we need to start to dig into this, because there are so many variants of tagging so many conceptual pieces, that I think it's hard for people to really get t...
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The Power Bible: In Conversation with Comedian and Author Brendon Lemon

This week, Augusto and I sat down with co-author of The Power Bible, Brendon Lemon. Brendon is a comedian and with his co-author William Betweet, III, are the authors of this unique book on how to manage power dynamics in relationships. (We had some technical recording issues, so you may notice we jump a bit in the conversation. It still came out to be an intriguing conversation with Brendon, so we hope you enjoy it!) (If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit https://productivitycast.net/126 for clickable links and the full show notes and transcript of this cast.) Enjoy! Give us feedback! And, thanks for listening! If you'd like to continue discussing The Power Bible with Brendon Lemon from this episode, please click here to leave a comment down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post). In this Cast | The Power Bible Ray Sidney-Smith Augusto Pinaud Show Notes | The Power Bible Resources we mention, including links to them, will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context. The Power Bible by Brendon Lemon and William Beteet, III The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene On the topic of pre-reflective self-consciousness, Phenomenological Approaches to Self-Consciousness Slavoj Žižek - Wikipedia Gad Elmaleh - Official Website Gad Elmaleh - Wikipedia SugarSammy Eddie Izzard Raw Text Transcript | The Power Bible Raw, unedited and machine-produced text transcript so there may be substantial errors, but you can search for specific points in the episode to jump to, or to reference back to at a later date and time, by keywords or key phrases. The time coding is mm:ss (e.g., 0:04 starts at 4 seconds into the cast’s audio). Read More Voiceover Artist 0:00 Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling productive life, then you've come to the right place. ProductivityCast the weekly show about all things productivity, here are your hosts, Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks. Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17 Welcome back, everybody to ProductivityCast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity. I'm Ray Sidney-Smith. Augusto Pinaud 0:23 And I'm Augusto Pinaud. Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:24 And welcome to ProductivityCast. Today, we are bringing you a special episode as we are want to do a few times per year we interview people who we think are going to be useful to you out there in your productivity world. And today, we're going to be talking about a book called The Power Bible by William petite the third and Brendon lemon. And we actually have Brendan lemon with us. So just a little bit about the book. So you have an understanding. I'm just reading here from the Amazon description here. This is a quotation that James all teacher, you know, presents at the beginning of the description, it says, quote, the core of the power Bible is how to light the mastery and confidence in yourself at a deep internal level, and using that confidence outwards, to clearly see the various frames and agendas being used by the people around you, end quote. And so the the description moves on to say, to have power over another one must first have power over one's self. And so this is a book of teaching you how to really assume that intrapersonal individual and societal control and to do that, as I said, we have Brandon lemon here on the show. Brendon from his website is a comedian from Detroit, where he started performing regularly at a famous comedy castle at the age of 16. Two years later, he was filmed for the documentary funny, which featured Christopher Titus and Mike Green. He moved to Paris in summer 2013 to both write and perform stand up in both French and English. He returned to the US and live between Colorado and Chicago in Illinois, performing and writing plays as well as being featured on a TV show Sex sent me to the ER and the movie.
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Resolving the Discrepancy Between Male and Female Work Ethic

Resolving the Discrepancy Between Male and Female Work Ethic

Have you ever wondered whether there is a real difference between the performance ethic of men and women? You don’t want to be biased, but if all things are not equal, it would be silly to pretend as if they are. Here is my experience – not a law or rule by any means, but some more data for you to consider.

Recently, I noticed a gap between the way women and men prepare to present at online conferences. Some background: my company has delivered five 3-day virtual events in the past couple of years. They attracted over 4,000 attendees, causing us to work with over 400 presenters.

Typically, we invite quite a much larger number of applicants. The best are offered speaking slots, which involves the production of a pre-recorded video. We offer ample instructions in the form of checklists and other aides to complete the process, which can take several hours from start to finish.

In our first conference, I noticed a difference between the way the male and female speakers completed their individual projects. For the most part (but not in every case), women were models of diligence. They followed the steps laid out and met assigned deadlines. Their work product was complete, and they asked fewer questions which were pre-answered in the provided materials.

I think the men would have been surprised to hear that they were the laggards by any measure. I was certainly shocked.

Four events later, I can say that the trend has continued. Whether the conference was Caribbean-based or not didn’t matter. The same behavior prevailed as men made a mess, while women anxiously over-performed. In fact, many of the latter were concerned that their final product might not be good enough.

By contrast, men’s submittals came in at the last-minute, with no apparent concern for its quality.

Fortunately, I function as part of a team with my wife, who has been on this journey from the beginning. Playing an equal role to mine, she is not surprised at all. After several conversations, I have concluded the following.

* Female presenters are putting in the hard work. Coming from a background of outright discrimination and exclusion, they have learned to eliminate the errors that would lead to them to “not being picked for the team.”

Furthermore, they are more likely to ask to be coached and are willing to accept guidance and put it to use. They seem to believe that the system is fair, leaving them free to focus on doing a good job.

* Male presenters appear to assume that deadlines are vague guidelines rather than operational requirements. As such, the consequences of doing their own thing are few. Feedback is rare, and if it’s offered, they are prepared to overlook it.

What are the sources of these very different behaviors? Here I can only speculate and I won’t generalize to entire genders in all situations. However, I do know that in my next conference, it would be a mistake to ignore the evidence. That would be bad for business. So take the following insights with a grain of salt, but maybe use them.

My male presenters have floated on a cushion of privilege. It truly is a man’s world…at least in their experience. As such, they can get away with rule-breaking at our events, just like everywhere in life. They need not pay close attention to changing times, or expectations. The sub-conscious assumption is that things will always work out in their favour.

As a man, I can confirm that this rings true.

However, some of my female presenters would be shocked to hear this account…at first. Upon reflection, they may realize that it explains prior experiences. Some can even cite supreme efforts to reach a high standard, only to see the selection of a man reaping the rewards of his sloppy work.

It’s unfair.

If you’re a man reading this, I encourage you to check your privilege. That safe cushion is probably being steadily deflated and when it finally goes away, you may be in trouble.

If there’s any good news, it’s that in some cases (like the one I described above), the facts are plain to see. The key for us all is to adjust our actions accordingly so that we are dealing with reality and helping others do so as well.

As managers, it makes no sense to ignore these truths. The fact that there are more female than male professionals in Jamaica is only one aspect of the picture: the part I thought was most important. Now, more than ever, I believe performance matters. Therefore, men will need to step up, just to keep up.

Francis Wade is the author of Perfect Time-Based Productivity, a keynote speaker and a management consultant. To search his prior columns on productivity, strategy, engagement and business processes, send email to columns@fwconsulting.com.