Anti-Procrastination Month ’08: Day 15
October 21st, 2008 by Cristina Favreau
Today’s productivity tip is all about the plan!
If you don’t have a plan in place, I highly recommend you check out Ann Rusnak’s program 15 Minutes, 15 Steps: Dominate the Clock Live Webinar Workshop, starting tomorrow (which I’ll be facilitating).
I love her approach, because she teaches how to accomplish anything by breaking tasks down in 15-minute chunks (which is just what I need, with a newborn who sleeps in small spurts during the day).
JF talks about the importance of having a plan:
Make a plan. Without a plan we tend to get caught up in non value-added activities like browsing the web or reading magazines. Without a purpose, our mind wanders. Instead of devoting all attention to one important task, we will find ourselves distracted by automatic (often negative) thoughts.
I also use the process-based approach explained in iso9001:2000 for most of my tasks. It is a form of process mapping / flowchart. It takes a lot of discipline though to stick to the plan despite all of the daily distractions, temptations and interruptions. (Example: an old friend calls to play golf and you have work planned, what do you do ?) — Jean-François Giraud eng., Owner, JF Giraud & associés
I would love to have more details on the iso9001:2000 approach and how it applies to entrepreneurs. Once I get the information, I’ll be sure to pass it on to you.
In the meantime, won’t you consider joining Ann and I at tomorrow’s 15 Minutes, 15 Steps: Dominate the Clock Live Webinar Workshop?
First, I should mention that I am NOT an ISO expert, but talking through this to get it clear in my mind as we chat. So please also forgive me if you ARE an ISO expert.
ISO (International Organization for Standardization) 9000 is a series of quality standards which describe the fundamentals of a comprehensive quality management system. The previous ISO 9001-1994 could be characterized as 'Say what you do / Do what you say / Prove it'.
The revised ISO 9001:2000 promotes the adoption of a process approach and the interactions of these processes. So it might be characterized as 'Plan your process / Control your process / Improve your process'.
Example:
Under 9001:1994 I might have a procedure which says I check the internet each day for new info on Cadillacs, highlight interesting items I find, and post them to the Caddyinfo.com forum or blog with commentary and a link to the article. I would then actually follow this procedure, and be able to show that each day I posted new info or articles to the forum or blog.
Under 9001: 2000 I might have a process map that shows I need to check news site A, news site B, commentary site C, press release site D, and blog E. If a news item fits criteria AA, I write a blog entry about it. If a news item fits criteria AB, I write a post in the forum about it. If a news item fits criteria AC, I file it away for a future article. I then measure each source site to determine how many items of interest each site yields, (control the process) and replace poor or slowly updated sources with higher yield sites, (improve the process). I also might measure how much time it takes to scan / understand various sources of input and prioritize them that way to control and improve my process.