5 years ago, on the cold and grey day of December 15th, 2003, I concluded the lengthy registration process of my company “apivision.com”.
Half a year after my graduation, when most of my friends from the Management Studies went seeking great jobs with great companies to hunt for great salaries….
… I decided to start a great company myself.
I wasn’t sure what to expect. I had some clients in my portfolio already (the ones I was already doing some gigs during the studies) and some ideas for products and services online (actually I had one online service in the preparation already).
Why did I start my own company? (without any prior experience of working for someone else) I had my reasons:
I did have some work experience, I took a series of internships during the studies, so I had a vague idea of how working in a big company can look like
My both parents are entrepreneurs - my father is running an advertising agency and my mum had several businesses in her career and currently owns a cafe with gallery. I had great role models… and I was aware of the risks.
“No risk no fun” - I wanted to give it a try. I knew that if I failed, I’d go and seek a job and will find one fairly quickly, I wasn’t afraid of trying and failing (I was young and bold
Freedom - I loved the idea of working from anywhere in the world with a laptop - I wrote my thesis about virtual enterprises and teleworking and I just wanted to try it in practice. I knew the theory and wanted to see if the “real thing” matches the hype.
I wasn’t risking all that much. Although my parents didn’t help me financially in any way with my company, they did support me with their advice and experience… and at the time I was living with them, so they wouldn’t let me starve to death if I failed.
Fast forward five years…
… and I’ve helped many businesses sell their goods and services online. I’ve created several web applications and I’ve given employment to several people… and I’m running a very successful (in my terms) web application called Nozbe.
I’m not all by myself in this endeavor. I have an assistant, developer and a handful of freelancers that work with me on a regular basis… which makes my company a true “virtual enterprise”… just as I’ve described it in my thesis.
And loving it!
I’m enjoying every moment of working for my own company. I have some really great people working with me and we’re working on really great stuff. I could easily quote Guy Kawasaki saying: “My company not only makes money, we make meaning”.
Thousands of people are using Nozbe to help them get things done… and it really works! I know, because they write to me and tell me. What started as a project to help me be more productive, ends up being a productivity solution for everyone!
I’m pursuing my dreams!
With the birth of the Productive Magazine I became a chief editor of it and it’s a lot of fun and great work. With everything my company currently does, I feel I’m developing my own personality even more. I’m learning to work with people, to motivate them, to educate customers… and I’m spending my time doing what I love.
I’m glad I made this decision 5 years ago….
… and started my company. I believe I chose a great path and I’m looking forward to what’s ahead of me. I’m eager to learn more and to accelerate my business even more… and to make more meaning.
Any productivity guru you ask about some basic productivity tips for starters will tell you this - you need to have a clutter-free place to be able to work efficiently and focus on your work.
My personal experience has taught me the very same thing. Clutter-free desk makes all the difference and helps me really concentrate and get things done.
But what if I’m a computer geek?
Chances are you’re a computer geek like myself and you’ve got lot’s of computer gear… which basically means = lot’s of cables, charges, and the like… Well, you can still work in a clutter-free environment! Read this blog post to find out how.
Some like desks, especially these ultra-modern glass ones, Apple-style… but in this regard I’m more of an old-school guy and I like cabinets. Especially that me and my wife live in a very small appartment (one bedroom, one living-room and a kitchen). When I work at home, I have to do it in the living room and having a cabinet lets me just close this thing and all of the sudden my work area is not visible to anyone.
What’s in my home-office cabinet?
A lot… you wouldn’t believe me so I’ve got photos to prove. My guests don’t believe me when they see this small IKEA-cabinet in a corner of our living room. Here’s what’s inside:
My primary work computer: IBM Lenovo Thinkpad X60 TabletPC (update: I’ve just switched to the Macbook Air)
My “home server”, which is actually another laptop: Toshiba M200 TabletPC
External 21″ Gateway LCD display
Two USB2.0 Hard Drives: 750GB for storage and 250GB for backups
External DVD RW drive in a USB enclosure.
A network switch, lot’s of cables, chargers and power cords.
Below the cabinet you can see a black box - it’s a subwoofer for my Home DVD Movie Theater setup which is… (you gussed it) on the cabinet. As you can see, it’s plenty of stuff to fit into one small cabinet.
Decluttering my cabinet
The idea is simple:
Put all the gear below the cabinet, with only 3 cables to connect to 2 computers and one power outlet. That’s it. All the rest of the cables stay below the cabinet.
So where how do I put these cables below the cabinet? Easy, I found this metal drawer in a local furniture store. This drawer is normally used to store socks, pants and other clothes… in my case it’s perfect for my cables:
The cool thing about this drawer is the fact that it’s made of aluminium and has lot’s of “holes” for the air to circulate and cool down all the devices that are supposed to fit in there.
Apart from the drawer, I’d also need cable ties and cable pipes:
The “pipes” for cables are mostly intended to combine cables together, you’ll see later.
Let’s get to work - here’s how the clutter will be placed in the drawer:
It’s important to put the chargers on a different side than the hard disks, as the chargers generate lots of heat. Please note I’ve put an extra space between the chargers. When I added the cables and two USB hubs, the clutter started to show up:
I’ve also added power outlets to actually power up all of these devices. After that I started to organize everything using the cable ties and the outcome is more less like this:
As you can see, there is a “Drives’ Zone” and a “Power Zone” in the drawer. And there is space between. On three sides of the drawer there are power outlets. The black power outlet (on the right) is the one that will eventually charge the whole thing.
Where’s the DVD drive? Below the drawer, here’s why:
This way I can access the DVD drive anytime, right below the cabinet.
Now, how did I actually mount the drawer to the cabinet?
Quite simply, here’s what I used:
Just screw the hooks to the wooden bottom of the cabinet like this:
Now I just use a wooden dowel to hold the drawer. I need 4 mounting points like this one to ensure the drawer holds well and will not fall out. It’s a great way of mounting the drawer since I’ll be able to dismount it whenever I want to.
Now, before I mount the drawer, I need to make sure there are just three cables going out of it. Actually there are more cables, but thanks to the pipes, this looks like this:
Only 1 power cord, one “pipe” with power, USB and LAN going to the server and another pipe with power and LAN going to the Laptop.
As you can see the pipes look really nice and professional and make it easy to connect to the computers.
Mounted Drawer below the clutter-free cabinet
Here’s how the drawer looks below the cabinet:
Everything nicely mounted to the bottom of the cabinet. The DVD drive can be used at any time and ther is only one Power cable going to the power outlet. (the grey cables you’re seeing in the background are the cables from my hi-fi set and they’ll need to be taken care of as well).
Presto! Here’s my home office environment:
Update: Actually after one month of working like this I got a new Macbook Air and now the updated home office looks like this:
There you go. Here’s my home office. Now, whenever I need to work at home, I’ve got a perfect work environment and I can always put the screen to the side, close the cabinet, and nobody would notice there is so much great computer gear inside… and so many cables… all totally clutter-free.
Hope you like my setup and hope it inspires you to do the same for your home office (and real office).
Now I can get my stuff done in a nice clutter-free environment.
I’m happy to announce that we’ve just released the first issue of the Productive Magazine! I’m particularly proud as this is my first attempt as the Editor-in-Chief of a Magazine.
33 Pages, 17 articles, 3 MB FREE PDF download that looks like this:
Before you download…. watch the video of me introducing you to the magazine (only 6 minutes):
Interview with the David Allen himself - the best-selling author of the Getting Things Done book
17 great articles by the most active productivity bloggers in the blogoshpere, make sure to check these out!
Thanks to all the contributors and to everyone who helped me make this happen!
After you’ve downloaded the magazine, please do come back to this web site and post your comments to let me know what you think! Thanks!
- Michael Sliwinski (Editor)
P.S. Productive Magazine is sponsored by Nozbe - Simply Get Things Done tool that keeps you productive when you’re by the computer or with the mobile phone or the iPhone.
I’ve been recently very busy working on new Nozbe and iNozbe - and decided to optimize my Email setup to make sure I don’t spend too much time with Email and can get stuff done.
I’m so happy with this new simple setup and with my recent IMAP discovery (I know, IMAP has been around for ages…) that I decided to go back to the good, old 2-minute productivity shows. Hope you like the new episode:
How do you setup your email? Please let me know in the comments below!
Here’s the next episode of the 2-Minute Productivity show. This time I’m sharing my tips and tricks that help me read lots of magazines quickly and efficiently.
Note: This new article of mine has been published yesterday on the GTDtimes blog.
We all strive to make everything easier-to-use, more accessible, etc.
We strongly believe that if all of our applications and all of the tools we use on the daily basis are properly optimized, we can get more done and have everything accomplished.
This is true in 80% of the cases…
I couldn’t agree more – I love it when everything goes more easily and automatically. Actually I’m always coming up with ideas on how to make certain aspects of my life “more automatic” to make sure I’m not doing the same boring stuff over and over again.
But in 20% of the cases… I’m trying to complicate my life… on purpose.
I know this sounds weird. It struck me the other day upon a conversation with a fellow GTD-er Testeq that as strange as this may sound, this is actually a good thing to do.
So why would I want to complicate my life if I can get stuff done the easy way? Why would I do something manually if I can have it done automatically or semi-automatically for me?
The answer: to fight temptation… and reduce procrastination.
Let me give you an example. I love blogs and RSS feeds which let me read great up-to-date information from many sources across the web in one place. To read RSS feeds, I used to use a great plug-in for Firefox called “Sage”.
Sage works really great, just press “CTRL+Z” and your RSS feeds appear on the left side of your Firefox browser and once you click on the feed that you want to read, you can see all of the feed’s content right there in the browser. Neat.
The problem… I would turn on “Sage” too often… and instead of actually browsing for the stuff I needed for my work, I’d happily turn “left” to check how the feeds are going and if there is some new interesting info that has been published…
When this “habit” of checking feeds turned into a temptation I couldn’t resist, I decided to put an end to it. I removed all of my feeds from Sage and copied them to my Google Reader account.
Now when I want to read the feeds, I need to explicitly log in to my Google Reader account and start reading… and since I’m not logged in to my Google account for most of my day, this takes several steps to do.
A “Tempting” habit turned into a conscious decision…
Now, instead of “clicking and checking what’s up” I need to decide: “OK, now I’m going to log in to my Reader account and read the feeds for 30 minutes”. After that I’ll log out and won’t be reading them any more.
You can apply the very same thing to email. If you use Gmail like I do - just log in to your Google Account only when you want to check your email. Decide to check your email. Once you’ve processed your email, log out and continue with your next action on your Next Actions list.
Conclusion: focus on your next actions and help yourself resist temptation.
So there you have it. I’ve made my life a little more complicated, but then again, I don’t get distracted all that much anymore. When I want to read my feeds, I log in to my Google Reader account – once I’ve read them, I log out. When I want to process my email, I log in to my Google Mail account and also log out once I’m done. However to make sure I know what to do next, I’m always logged in to my Nozbe Account to see my list of “Next Actions”.
How do you fight your distractions? Do you complicate your life as well? Please do let me know in the comments what your daily temptations and distractions are and how you fight them. I’ll be happy to learn from you!
Last week one of my dreams came true and I had a chance to participate in David Allen’s GTD seminar and talk to the “guru” himself in person. The great thing about this seminar is the fact that you can actually get a sneak-peak of how David applies his methods in his real life. He showed us his desktop, the applications he’s using and actually demoed to us his very own GTD workflow.
One of the “a-ha” moments - 2-minute rule.
When we talked about processing inboxes and checking email, he reminded us about the 2-minute rule:
“Do it. If an action will take less than two minutes, it should be done at the moment it is defined.”
We thought, “yeah, right… but what can you do in just two minutes?”.
And then David went ahead and played us the 2-minute timer he has on his computer and asked us to watch it closely… the first 15 seconds… 30 seconds… and we thought it would take ages for the 2 minutes to go by… 1 minute to go… I’m bored already… and David said: “look, we’re just in the middle of the two minutes…” 30 seconds to go… and I thought 2 minutes was as very short period of time!
You can get lots of stuff done in just 2-minutes!
When I came home I quickly set up my very own 2-minute timer and started checking out what I could do in just under 2 minutes. Here are my results (in no particular order):
Read and reply to at least one email message. I discovered that when I’m in a “process-emails-to-zero” mode, I can process up to 3-5 email messages in under 2 minutes!
Read a blog article. I’m reading blogs a lot. Again, if the article is very interesting, it takes me usually 2 minutes to read, if I’m scanning, I can scan up to 10 or more articles in just under 2 minutes!
Write a short draft for an article. I’m using MindManager mind mapping software to write drafts of my articles. I wrote the draft to this article in 1 minute and 50 seconds! Of course it took me a lot more time to actually write this article, but I had my draft and outline ready!
Empty 5 or more items from my inbox before my weekly review. Again, quick decisions and quick processing… and all in just 2 minutes!
Perform online operations like online-banking wire transfers, paying bills, sending file attachments to clients or friends… all of these tasks that I’d normally put on my “action list” in Nozbe, I’d completed them so quickly that I couldn’t believe it!
The key to successful application of the 2-minute rule - quick decisions!
My tip for you - in order to apply the rule successfully you need to decide fast what to do with the item you’re processing. When you’re reading an email - decide what to do now - reply if you can. If you can’t respond at this moment, convert it to an “action”. Don’t hesitate, don’t open email messages more than once! The same applies to anything you process. Decide fast, don’t think too much. “Just do it. Nike” ☺
Try it for yourself! What can you do in 2-minutes? Let me know in the comments!
Please challenge me and let me know what you discovered you could do in under just 2-minutes and I’m hoping to learn something new myself. I’ve known about this rule for so long and never really applied it and now I’m glad I finally did. You’ll amazed yourself. I’m sure of that.
I’m actually so happy about this rule that I’m adding a small javascript 2-minute counter to my Nozbe web application (the feature will be out next week) to remind my users that maybe before you add a task to Nozbe, it can be done in just under 2-minutes?
BTW, it took you around 2 minutes to read this article… Wasn’t that fun?
I’ve read the book “Getting Things Done – the Art of Stress-free productivity” many, many times. I actually own the English, Polish and German copy of the book… and I’m buying the Spanish one now. Every time I’m reading the book in different language, I keep discovering new things, new “hidden gems” and re-discovering techniques I thought I mastered already. It’s like reading the book from different perspective each time (because the translators tend to take a little different approach each time).
One of these hidden gems is the concept of what David Allen calls: “Cranking Widgets”.
The concept is simple – according to David – one of the healthiest jobs psychologically is the one where you show up at work and you see three things:
• A bunch of un-cranked widgets
• A widget-cranking machine
• A bucket to put the cranked widget
Isn’t your job now tad simpler? All you have to do is just take the un-cranked widget, put it into a widget-cranking machine and later put the cranked widget into its bucket.
Why is the concept simple?
It’s because all the “thinking” has been done for you. All you have to do now is just to do the job and go home. At home your mind will be free – you won’t be thinking about your job and about your widgets… and you’ll have all the energy to do something else, spend time with your family, do sports, whatever you wish… isn’t that great?
Converting our office work into a “cranking widgets” job
This is the key of Getting Things Done. If we want to master the GTD techniques, we should learn to convert our tasks into a series of widgets to crank. We should actually think about them as “widgets”.
Of course, our “widgets” will be a little more complicated that the ones shown in the example above, but still, they will be only widgets. How to convert your actions into widgets which are simple to crank? There are three main rules to keep in mind:
1. Each Action must be “actionable” and must represent a small step.
How many times we catch ourselves putting actions on our to-do lists like “prepare dinner” or “prepare power-point presentation” or “check all the systems settings”, where all of these actions are actually projects which should be split down into small, very small actionable items. In our “prepare power-point presentation” example, we can divide this into:
• Gather data to show in the presentation
• Prepare pie-charts with representing data
• Prepare a structure of the presentation
• Prepare presentation template
• Add first slides as a presentation structure
• Add data and pie-charts
• Fine-tune the layout of the presentation
• Add animations and other effects…
• Etc.
Get the picture? Each of these steps is a small actionable “widget” to crank and once you have this list, all seems very logical. What seemed like a tedious project is now a series of simple widgets to crank.
2. Choose “Next Actions” of as many projects as you can and try to move them forward.
This is one of the rewarding thing that happens to you when you practice GTD on your daily basis. Just choose a next action of each of your projects and put them all into your “next actions” list. Start cranking these “next actions” and by the end of the day you’ll feel simply great.
Completion. You’ve moved each of the projects forward! Although they were small steps, yet you’ve progressed in so many of your projects and you’ll feel like you’re the king of the world. I live in my “next actions” list every day and I know how rewarding it is to see your “next actions” list done and completed.
3. Try to avoid binding your actions to time. Don’t be a slave of your calendar.
With Outlook or other calendars we tend to plan our day with a minute-to-minute schedule. Like I’m going to call Ted at 12:14 and I’m going to “Gather data for my presentation” at 12:18 until 12:47 when I’ll be replying to the email to my boss… etc. You get the picture.
Then all of the sudden, Ted’s line is busy, gathering data for presentation takes longer than 30 minutes and your boss has already phoned you and you don’t need to write him any email… your nice structure is gone forever and you feel frustrated and unproductive.
David Allen repeats several times that your calendar is a sacred place and you should put only appointments there. Or any other time-related stuff for that matter. Something that happens on this particular date and time, or will not happen at all. Other stuff can be done at any time.
Once you have your widgets ready, you can crank them at any time you wish. You can change the order of them or choose to skip some and do the others, depending on your contexts. It’s all up to you. Don’t be a slave of your calendar, focus on flexibility when cranking your widgets.
You can convert your sophisticated office work into a simple “cranking widgets” job.
It’s easier than you think , it’s very rewarding and you feel like you’ve done so much when you master the “cranking widgets” method. I’m still learning this but the more I succeed the better I feel about it.
What tools to use to create your “widgets” list and “next action” lists?
Any to-do list will do. A sheet of paper will do actually. I’m using my Nozbe web application as it gives me the ability to easily mark with a “star” a next action in each of my projects and later see all my “next actions” in one list. I can even reorder my next actions list too while I’m completing them. I actually spend my day looking at this list in Nozbe and I’m trying to crank as many widgets as I can.
How do you crank your widgets? Let me know in the comments!
