Graham Allcott

A healthy body really does mean a healthy mind.

As well as nutrition, it’s important to take care of your body with regular exercise. You’ve probably heard the doctor mention this, that woman on TV has mentioned this, and probably the annoyingly fit and active cousin in your family has, too. It’s a cliché because it’s such valuable advice.

EXERCISE DOESN’T NEED TO BE STRENUOUS

A few short periods of, say, half an hour exercising each week is enough. If you live two or three miles from your office, you could probably get everything you need by simply walking to and from work more often than not.

Over the years I’ve tried many things and only a couple have seemed to really exhibit results for me (whilst I’m sure no exercise I’ve tried has been bad!). I know someone who works in central London and runs in from one of the outer suburbs every single morning. I wish I had that kind of dedication, but I do know for certain that it definitely beats being pressed up next to someone else’s armpit on the rush hour tube!

WHY BOTHER WITH A GYM?

Establishing a regular gym routine can be a great way to keep fit as well as improve your strength and physical resilience. I tend to aim for three gym sessions each week (usually two mornings before I start work and then one session at the weekend).

The important thing is to find something that you can fall into an easy routine with and that works for you. (For a while I was trying to do four sessions a week and I found that I was exhausting myself). For me, the gym is a million miles better than running: I get a more strenuous workout, I build strength by using a lot more muscles in different ways and I can treat myself to a sauna and Jacuzzi at the end as well. It’s worth saying that many of us struggle to fit the gym in to our regular routines.

It can be easy to lose momentum and get stuck. We have an inner monologue telling us the bed is warmer, that we don’t have the time, that we don’t have the energy, that we have more important things to do and so on. Celebrate it when momentum is good, but please don’t beat yourself up if there’s a week when it doesn’t quite happen. It won’t make a huge difference in the short-term. Ninjas are human beings, after all.

EXERCISING AT HOME

If you don’t have the time to get to the gym, or the money for a regular gym membership then why not incorporate a gym style workout into your home routine? All you need is enough floor space to do push ups, squats and core

strength exercises like the plank and you’re away. A quick surf around YouTube will give you all the instruction you need to get started. Likewise, if you’re going to the supermarket, why not run there rather than walk? You can do arm and chest strength exercises whilst carrying home all those heavy items! There’s really no excuse!

KEEPING MOVING

The whole purpose of exercise in terms of its value to attention management is to keep your body active. Keep your muscles working, your lungs working, your digestive system and metabolism working and you’re more likely to have a better functioning brain. You’re also less likely to get ill, which of course is an immediate and humongous sap of energy and attention.

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Tags: exercise, gym, healthy, Productivity, productivity tips
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The Weapon-Savvy Productivity Ninja

Graham Allcott

This is number 3 of the 9 Characteristics of a Productivity Ninja….

Using the right tools makes Productivity Ninjas more effective. There are a range of tools out there to help keep us on top of our game. There are two broad types of tools that the Productivity Ninja needs to have in their armoury:

Thinking tools
Organising tools

Choosing what to use and when, and being aware of the capabilities of each are key to success. Tools need to give us confidence and ensure that through their productive use, we’re rarely interrupted by our own ineptitude.

Thinking tools

As our decisions get more complex, our need for tools to assist our thinking becomes more apparent. Strategic planning processes or line management feedback situations are often where we first encounter such tools, but their value is still underestimated. There are a broad range of such thinking tools and frameworks that have been created to help make our lives easier and our decision-making better.

Organising tools

From Microsoft Outlook and iPhone apps to the humble stapler, there are so many ways to be organised. The trick is to get to a very good level of organisation rather than an excellent or mediocre level; this ensures that the time spent on getting organised receives the optimum payoff in increased productivity, rather than becoming a drain on our time and an unwelcome and unnecessary distraction.

Don’t get seduced by ‘productivity porn’

Tools are there to help us get things done, but our obsession with them can occasionally become a distraction. There are some great productivity websites out there – often created or led by influential and insightful thinkers – like Merlin Mann’s http://www.43folders.com and Leo Babauta’s www.zenhabits.net, but whilst we do need to keep up with technology and innovation to the extent that it increases our productivity, we also need to be hyper-conscious that this is in itself ‘dead time’, away from the completion of our priority tasks and projects.

I worry when I hear someone talk about their productivity purely and exclusively in the context of which new iPhone productivity app they’ve just downloaded. These tools assist our thinking and organising: they don’t replace the need for it. Worse still, it’s not uncommon for people to retype all their projects and actions from one piece of software to another under the oft-mistaken premise that they’re increasing their productivity by 5% by doing this. No, that’s just a day of procrastination.

Modelling decision-making

At the heart of the way of the Productivity Ninja is improving our ability to make decisions. By challenging ourselves to continually improve and innovate, the quality, quantity and speed of our decisions will increase. Remember that informed and clear decision-making is our aim. Thinking tools help boost our mental agility, but so does the right information.

Twitter and Facebook are fantastic tools for throwing out questions or issues to a group of trusted friends and colleagues: it’s so valuable getting a second, third, fourth and fifth opinion on something. It’s amazing how much time and mental energy you’ll save. But equally, don’t be afraid to think independently and draw your own conclusions when your instinct tells you to

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Tags: Leo Babauta, Merlin Mann, Productivity, time management
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Reasons to be Wakeful

Martin Farrell

This blog post originally appeared on Martin’s site Get2ThePoint

Image by Emran Kassim

sleepy eye

Well, now I have recovered. But a month ago I was deep in it. And two months ago too. I was having a tough time by day and a tough time by night. No fun at all.

One night – it was 4am – I had woken and was sitting on my sofa. It is silent at that time of night, but inside my head it was noisy. Raging in fact.

Reason to be wakeful number one – being angry.

Why was that person making a difficult situation harder by sending loud emails to everyone with shouty CAPITAL letters telling us all how bad things are and we had better take responsibility. Yes we know that, now lets get ourselves together to sort it out. Shall we?

Idea for processing anger in the dead of night: write write and write. And don’t stop until you run out of anger and it’s all spilled onto the page. For me that was 8 pages and an hour later. Phew. Get it out there. Putting words on paper has the liberating power of expression but is way less painful than hitting someone.

Reason to be wakeful number two was fear.

Deep down gnawing fear. I had failed, it was all going over the edge, it was my fault. Arrgghhh. Helllllp.

My tactic for surviving that was to sit in a warm living room, light a candle, have calming low light on and drink chamomile tea. And not only that, but my calming voice of choice was that of Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese Buddhist master. I know the voice. I know his message and it put me in a place where the part of me beyond the fear, could believe that one day this time of panic will have passed (which it has). See http://pvom.org

Then there was excitement.

Input overload. Not what you need at 4am – especially not when combined with jet lag when you’re part way through a four day Board meeting as a new boy on the block. That was my first Board meeting as Europe Director of the International Association of Facilitators. So much we could do, so much to take in, all so exciting. Wow.

My tactic of choice was to sit, just sit. Wrapped up in a big duvet. Upright. Warm feet. Let my mind go where it wanted. This idea and that. Ramble over all the impressions coming my way – and to follow my breathing.

Breathe in … breathe out … breathe in … breathe in … out .. in .. out … in … … …

That’s all. Those are my three reasons to be wakeful – anger, fear and excitement.

Oh yes and one more tactic in the night – fire up your device of choice, find your headphones, and also find Ian Dury on YouTube – Reasons to Be Cheerful. There are lots. Play it loud (find the video below)

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Tags: insomnia, Productivity
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Free up your time: Weekly Checklist Pt 2

Graham Allcott

Just joined us? Check out Weekly Checklist Pt 1 first!

Now you’ve set up your Weekly Checklist, it’s time to use it. I liken this next part to deep-sea diving. It’s like diving into the depths of your second brain, your own mind and your soul. You check what your second brain says is on your plate and make sure it’s accurate. This is about listening to yourself. Are there any ‘unconscious projects’ that you haven’t named and recorded? Any that you’ve been thinking about or contemplating whether to do, but haven’t started consciously managing in your system? For your lists to truly become part of your second brain, you need to trust they have everything covered.

During stages 2 and 3 of your Weekly Checklist, the thinking you do here is crucial to your entire week. It’s the time when your main lists interact with each other:

Projects List
Master Actions List
Waiting List
Calendar

Each of these four components are fine on their own, but it’s the bringing it all together that generates the confidence, trust and control. Doing this thinking well now allows you to almost forget about everything other than just your Master Actions List and Calendar for the next seven days.

Everything you need is on your Master Actions List for you to look at each day and your Calendar provides the guide to any time-specific things you need to think about. Here are the suggested elements for getting your second brain up to date. Again, you can choose all, some or just a few of these.

Calendar/Diary:

Go through each appointment in my calendar for the last two weeks – are there any follow-ups I need to do?
Go through the next three weeks of my calendar – any new actions here?
If I have a paper-based calendar, make sure it has all the same appointments in it as my Outlook calendar!
If there’s also a wall planner for the team in the office, do the same with this. Think further ahead in the diary and look for initial conversations, or where I need to make advanced travel plans like booking flights, booking rail tickets in advance, and so on.

Master Actions List:

Check for completed items and cross them off.
Read and ensure I have clarity about each action listed.

Waiting For List:

Are there any items on here that I’m no longer waiting for and can remove?
Do the quick 1- to -2 minute emails to chase up any items that are now becoming urgent.
Add anything that is going to take longer to chase to my Master Actions List.

Projects List:

Any projects that are finished or simply no longer need to happen?
Any new projects to add?
Do I have any additional projects kept somewhere else such as a team project plan? (If so, add these to your Projects List so that you have everything in one place.)

Watch out for Pt 3, coming soon!

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