I just got back from the SxSW interactive conference in Austin. I went there to give a talk about fueling sustainable productivity by balancing periods of fully absorbed attention with intermittent renewal.
Peering out into that vast hall, I fear I saw the future: a sea of the digital elite hunched over blinking technologies, tweeting and texting as I talked.
Here's what I later learned some of them were saying, all in 140 characters or less:
"I'm splitting my attention between @tonyschwartz & tweeting that 2 B gr8 U have to be willing to suffer/practice."
"Tony Schwartz tells SXSW attendees to go to bed earlier. Tough sell."
"How can Tony Schwartz stay sane giving a speech on focusing on task at a time while the audience is on their iPads/iPhones at same time?"
I wasn't so worried about my own sanity — I was only doing one thing at a time, after all — but I was a little concerned about theirs. We've truly entered a world of nonstop input and output.
So what exactly would it take to seize back control of our lives? We need a series of deliberate practices to counter the powerful forces so accelerating our lives.
1. Just say no.
Imagine for a moment that you're downsizing from a house to an apartment one-third the size. Everything you have seems necessary until you realize it simply won't fit in your new place.
There's always room for less.
You likely already have too much to do, too much information to absorb, and too many choices to make. If so, your challenge is learning to say no far more often — "no" to more projects, more meetings, more emails, more tweets, more Facebook updates, more purchases, more friends, more "likes", and more fans and followers.
Prioritization isn't just what you want to do, it's increasingly what you ought not do. What can you delegate and eliminate, take off your plate or put on the back burner in each dimension of your life?
If you're going to take on something new, what are you going to stop doing? How are you going to be more ruthlessly selective?
My colleague Scott Belsky refers to this as "curating" your life. Curate comes from the Latin curare, meaning "to care" — in this case for yourself. Think of this as a Not To Do list.
2. Create more space in your brain — and your life.
Our working memory can't hold much information. The first solution, as David Allen spells out in Getting Things Done, is to write down everything that's on your mind — the more often, the better. The less you're thinking about at any given moment, the calmer and more receptive you'll be, and the better you'll be able to manage whatever arises.
We also need to create more space in our days. To make sense of our increasingly complex and demanding world, we need times during the day when we step back, reflect on and metabolize what we've just taken in.
We need less data and more context, less volume and more depth. That can't happen if we're running from one meeting to the next, and emailing, texting and tweeting in every moment in between. Where can you insert purposeful pauses?
3. Do one thing at a time as much as possible.
I appreciated having the SXSW audience tweet short bits about my talk to their followers, but while they were tweeting, they were likely missing whatever I said next.
Human beings aren't designed to do two cognitive tasks at the same time (much less three or four). The research is clear that we're far more efficient when we do activities sequentially rather than simultaneously. We also do higher quality work when we're singly focused, and remember more of anything we're trying to learn.
4. Revisit and reevaluate.
I've kept a journal most of my adult life. In my 20s and 30s, I filled it with anguished evaluation of my life's ups and downs. Today, thankfully, I use my journal as a place in which to collect ideas when they occur to me.
The real value of doing so, I've discovered, is periodically revisiting what I've written. I do that on plane trips, mostly, because that's the least interrupted time left in my life.
By revisiting ideas, and reevaluating them with a fresh eye, I find the best ones become richer and more layered, and the less good ones naturally fade away. It's a practice that serves as an antidote to instant action, and allows ideas and projects to ripen so I don't act on them before their time.
5. Take regular breaks from your technology.
The digital devices we all now carry around are stunningly seductive and addictive, providing endless access to instant gratification: tweets and texts, stuff to buy, games to play, apps to add, and constant new information. Our devices are the means by which we get our work done, but they're also a form of digital crack. If they're turned on, you'll almost surely use them and very likely abuse them.
Here's the threshold question: Are there websites you check 10 or 20 or even 30 times a day?
Consider treating yourself like a parent does a child. Ruthlessly limit the time you expose yourself to irresistible temptation. While I'm writing this blog, for example, I have my cell phone and email turned off. At 90 minutes, I'll check back in.
The other move I've decided to make— and am committed to stick by — is to leave my laptop and phone in the kitchen when I head up to my bedroom at night. I'm convinced I'm better off reading books than I am Google Analytics, and truly relaxing with my wife rather than aimlessly surfing websites.
Being a Business Analyst can often feel like being a rag-doll in the mouth of a large dog. You often have a diverse group of stakeholders who all have different wants, availability, communication schedules, deadlines, priorities, documentation requirements and the like. Meanwhile you are responsible for obtaining approved requirements from everyone in a seemingly unreasonable timeframe and can't even get properly started because you keep getting called into meetings that have no bearing on your specific work. Some days can feel like you've made little or no progress on any of your main deliverables, even if you've been 'heads down' all day.
Personal productivity is a critical factor that influences the overall performance of a Business Analyst. Personal productivity is a concept that goes beyond the typical time management topics that concentrate more on the allocation and prioritization of activities. To be productive, you need to maximize the results of your actions while minimizing the amount of effort that you need to spend in order to accomplish a task. After all, most of us don't want to work more in order to get more done; we need to learn how to get more done in less time.
Over the past few years I have experimented with various actions to determine what things I can do within the Business Analyst role which can help to improve my productivity. Over this time period I have worked with several clients in a wide variety of projects, ranging from strategic enterprise analysis and needs assessments to scrum-driven software development. Through my experimentation I have found several principles that have had a dramatic impact on how much I can get done in a given timeframe, regardless of the work environment or constraints.
Clear Your RAM
As human beings we have a limited amount of short-term memory available to us. We use this memory to keep track of things that we sub-consciously understand we don't need to know forever; stuff like taking out the trash on garbage day or even the deadline for our requirements document. The more information we internalize and try to keep 'top of mind', the more difficult it is for us to focus on accomplishing a task or processing new information. As Business Analysts we are often constantly bombarded with new information and must perform many thought-intensive tasks, so if we're trying to keep track of numerous mental markers we're bound to be less productive than we could be.
Clearing your equivalent of Random Access Memory allows you to not have that nagging feeling in the back of your head that you need to get something else done or may be forgetting something important while you're working on a task. In order to get to this state of mind you need to develop a process that allows you to immediately document thoughts that could be stored in short term memory and thus interfere with accomplishing your current task. This documentation should be done in a format that will allow you to trust that you will be able to retrieve the information at the appropriate time. For some people a simple to-do list tucked in their pocket or smartphone may be sufficient. For others a more sophisticated system like David Allen's Getting Things Done ensures there is a place for everything and everything is in its place.
Whatever you do and whatever tool you use, you must feel comfortable letting go of non-pertinent thoughts so you can ensure that your mind is able to focus on the task at hand. Learning simple techniques can help you clear your mind once you're comfortable with your chosen documentation system. Things like brief meditation can possibly be used to help you remove those lingering thoughts before you begin working on what you need to.
Eliminate Distractions
How many of you think that you are a great multi-tasker? In the truest sense of the term (i.e. doing two or more things simultaneously) you are actually pretty horrible. Research demonstrates that humans cannot do more than one thing simultaneously, and when it comes to rapid switching back and forth between multiple actions, most of us can only really handle two tasks even somewhat decently. In the golden age of social networks, instant messaging, pop-up notifications and the like, we are ever more prone to face multiple stimuli concurrently, all of which serve to distract us from accomplishing the task that we set out to do. I find that when I remove as many distractions as possible during thought-intensive activities, such as requirements analysis, I am 3-4 times more productive than if I allow myself to even have the slightest possibility of being distracted.
Here are some things you can do to eliminate distractions in your day to day life:
Close your e-mail and as well as setting you the phones to go to voicemail and/or putting them (since we all seem to now have more than one) on silent. The lure of virtual contact with people by responding quickly to e-mails is one of the greatest time wasting activities we face today. If you need to focus on getting something done, this is the one thing you can do to dramatically improve your productivity. While you're at it, close all non-essential tabs on your browser and minimize other windows. If you are in an 'always available' environment, put on appropriate auto-responder or voicemail messages to explain your absence.
Find a 'right noise' place for you to get work done. Some people are hyper-productive only when it's completely quiet in their surroundings. Others enjoy the white noise of a bustling coffee shop or open office work setting. Figure out which type of environment you thrive in and go there when it is time to get serious work done.
Outsource Your Work
No, I'm not talking about hiring a Virtual Assistant or two and then heading to Antigua for a couple of weeks, but where appropriate it makes a lot of sense to have your stakeholders do things that as Business Analysts we are used to do on their behalf. In many circumstances this will save you (and ironically enough, them as well) loads of time and allow you to focus on your "value-add" to the process.
For instance, I used to believe that in order to gather high quality requirements myself or another BA would need to run a requirements session or perform other elicitation activities and then document the results. This involved a lot of preparation and execution on my behalf and in many cases resulted in having to perform redundant activities across multiple stakeholders and subsequently collating and aggregating the findings.
With one client I decided to see how much of the requirements elicitation process I could outsource to the SMEs themselves. I held one meeting with multiple stakeholder groups to set the scope of the activity they need to perform, give them examples of what types of results I was looking for and described what would happen in future sessions. I then let the participants work in groups or individually on their own time to develop their own requirements and then send them to me. I only needed to follow up with one group to clarify on what they had written, the rest were in a very solid format that I could easily transpose into our knowledge repository. All told I performed my elicitation activities in about 15-25% of the time it would have taken for me to normally get the same results.
I've done similar outsourcing with requirements prioritization, requirements management, requirements verification and validation, solution validation, and solution performance assessment. In each case I was able to shave off at least half of the time it would have taken for me to perform the activities on my own.
Leverage Asynchronous Activities
With many interactive activities I think most of us are used to working in a synchronous manner; we have something we need to get done that requires the involvement of someone else so we schedule a meeting to discuss the item or plan to work on the task together. While there are many times that a synchronous forum is appropriate and the best method to accomplish something (for example, arriving at a decision or recommendation), there are many things that can be as effectively accomplished in an asynchronous manner that allow us to maximize our productivity by minimizing the amount of time we need to be involved in certain aspects of the task at hand.
For example, I have minimized the amount of structured walkthrough sessions that I perform with my clients by leveraging online collaboration tools such as wikis or multi-user office applications (e.g. Google Docs/Office Live) to allow individuals to provide feedback on requirements documents. Rather than having 5-15 people in a meeting room at the same time and wasting the bulk of the collective mindshare in the room by going over items one at a time I have found that I get higher quality responses and more in-depth and thoughtful revisions by allowing people to work on their reviews on their own time. The bonus is that the review process is usually shorter as well; I set a relatively short time limit on the review process which gives the reviewers a sense of urgency and priority to the activity, as opposed to spending the better part of a day trying to fit a review session into everyone's schedule three weeks out from today.
For simple tasks that require input I have also found that polls with a comments feature to be a great way to arrive at a majority decision or response quickly. The key with these methods is to have buy-in from the stakeholders who will be responsible for doing things on their own time. Otherwise such techniques enable the stakeholder to ignore their duties or claim they weren't properly informed or involved.
Focus on High Value Options
This one probably seems self-evident, but as a Business Analyst you need to focus on doing things that provide the best value to your stakeholders at a given point in time. Sometimes what is laid out in the project plan, while logical, may not give you enough time to focus on the things that really matter to deliver the results that are really crucial to the success of the project. Doing those status reports may seem like a big deal but if you miss your due date on your requirements document then it may be that your efforts were a little misplaced.
In my experience Pareto's Law applies to most Business Analyst activities; stakeholders receive 80% of the benefits of project activities from 20% of the project's efforts. As a result I am always thinking about which activities offer the most bang for the client's buck and prioritize my actions accordingly. After completing high-value activities I meet with the stakeholders to reassess the other activities and see if they're still worth pursuing, or if new high value efforts have been identified.
To help with this constant assessment and select which activity to do when I use a backlog-like list of outcomes and actions that could be worked on. This allows me to review my top priority items at a glance and pick the one that best fits the time slot I currently have to work on something. Since I can only work on one thing at a time I constantly juggle what is at or near the top to ensure that both long and short term goals are being properly addressed.
If I notice that some to do's are constantly low on the list but my stakeholders have expectations for those things to be done, I work with them to clarify the value of these activities and determine if there are ways to either automate or outsource their performance if they are indeed valuable. Otherwise I suggest they are added to the 'if there's time' pile of activities that are worked on only if all activities relating to direct value outputs are completed.
Finding Your Productivity Sweet Spot
Becoming hyper-productive is highly dependent on each person; what makes you able to efficiently complete things could be completely different than someone else in the exact same situation. The key to improving your personal productivity is to track your performance of activities and quickly perform a self-assessment when you're doing tasks. This doesn't have to be onerous or documentation-heavy; just keep track of your time on a task and your thoughts about how productive you felt on the activity. Jot down some pertinent environmental factors (noise level, distractions, stakeholder engagement, etc.). Then once a week take a look at the tasks you've performed and see what worked well and why.
Over time you can reap the benefits of increased productivity by examining how to reduce your effort on specific tasks and find ways to help you focus on doing one thing at a time. These efficiency gains should help you set greater goals for yourself and deliver greater value to your organization and stakeholders.
Japan Earthquake Triggers Radiation, Toxic Rain Web Hoaxes
Radiation, toxic rain, bogus fund-raising pages, Twitter death news and other hoaxes clogged e-mail inboxes and social networking sites after Japan's earthquake and tsunami.
A hoax SMS text message claiming the radiation from Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant may hit the Philippines is making the ounds, causing a panic among the country's residents.
The Philippines' Department of Science and Technology confirmed the hoax on March 14. However, this is just one of dozens of different hoaxes emerging in the aftermath of the massive earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan's northeast region on March 11.
These fictitious accounts of what is happening in Japan are clogging the world's e-mail inboxes and spreading through social networking sites, spreading confusion and doubt about an already tense situation.
Hoax warnings about virus threats are a "nuisance," and the problem is even more severe when it's "not about a malware attack, but about a radiation health scare instead," Graham Cluley, a security consultant at Sophos wrote on the NakedSecurity blog.
Technology has "made it all too easy" to pass on scares without verifying facts, Cluley said.
"The advice circulating that people should stay indoors and to wear raincoats if they go outdoors has no basis and did not come from DOST or the National Disaster Risk Reduction Management Center," said Mario Montego, Philippine's Department of Science and Technology secretary.
One of the hoaxes that is being spread claims to be from "BBC Flashnews" and claims the Japanese government had confirmed a radiation leak at the "Fukushima nuclear plants," Cluley said. The message continues with a list of precautions residents in Asian countries should undertake, such as remaining indoors, closing doors and windows, and swabbing the thyroid area on the neck with betadine.
Other hoax messages misspell the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant as "Fukuyama," DOST said.
The messages are being spread through text messages, e-mails, Internet and "other means of communication," according to DOST. The department asked people to stop forwarding these messages so as "not to sow panic."
Companies and schools sent workers and students home after the rumors began to spread, according to Cluley.
DOST is in 24/7 communication with the International Atomic Energy Agency for advice on the current situation, and said that available data indicate "there is no immediate danger of nuclear radiation in the Philippines."
An e-mail containing a "nuclear fallout map" has also been seen. Emblazoned with the logo of Australian Radiation Services, the map claims to show how nuclear fallout will spread to Alaska and the West Coast of the United States over the next few days. Hoax-debunking site snopes.com analyzed the e-mail and said ARS is denying any connection with the map, and that the radiation levels claimed do not match the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's statements.
Radiation is not the only post-earthquake hoax making the rounds. There was a Twitter post from "a friend in Chiba Prefecture" claiming toxic rain would fall as a result of an explosion at a Cosmo Oil refinery.
"There is no basis for this statement. The tank that exploded contained LP gas, and it is highly unlikely that any gas generated by the burning will cause harm to human bodies," the company said.
Criminals took advantage of the confusion to start pushing up malicious links to fake antivirus sites on search results pages early March 11, hours after the earthquake.
Twitter had at least two death hoaxes, for Satoshi Tajiri, the creator of the Pokemon franchise, and Yuko Yamaguchi, a Hello Kitty designer. Yamaguchi updated her blog March 14, and Nintendo posted on Twitter that no one at Nintendo in Japan was injured.
The International Red Cross, Red Crescent has also issued a warning to users to be vigilant of e-mails pretending to be from earthquake victims in order to raise money for the earthquake. "You may receive fraudulent e-mails regarding missing persons. If a stranger contacts you asking for money, please notify us immediately," the warning said.
Global Voices Online compiled a roundup of current hoaxes translated from Japanese sources and reminded users to think about the source of the information and to verify facts whenever possible.
"Take a deep breath," wrote Tomomi Sasaki, as the first step.
