Black Notebook

How Cool Are These

Mr Hughes put me on to these. I've just gone mad at JetPens and ordered them for everybody. Ooops.

The Return Home

Seven months to the day and here I am again. I thought that this blog was dead and gone and seriously considered closing my Typepad account a couple of months ago. I could not see the point of continuing to pay for something that I was just not using. It was not to be. Over the last few months I have had a hankering to return to my own personal piece of the web. It felt like I need to return to a warm and familiar place, a childhood holiday home or the house of favorite uncle. I have blown off the dust the furniture, opened the windows to let in the fresh air and I am ready to begin. The theme of the blog is going to change again. I simply do not have the time to invest in blogging about personal productivity (no laughing at the back) and there are so many people doing a better job. My intention is to return to a more personal site. A bit more reflective and a lot more about the things that are really important to me.

Ultra Portable

There has been a lot of buzz recently about the possibility of Apple introducing an ultra portable Macbook.

We run our business on the Mac platform and I was initially interested in the idea of a smaller and lighter Macbook product. I currently own a 15" Macbook Pro and it used to be my main machine (but more of that later) for the last eighteen months. However, over the last six months I have found its weight in my bag has been starting to cause me problems with my back. By my reckoning, the Macbook Pro and charger weigh about six pounds and that seems just enough to throw my back out of alignment.

The ultra portable sounds likes a potential solution. The reports suggest it will be light (perhaps 2 pounds) and small. A perfect solution? Not quite - because I don't want to stump up another £1000 - £1500 for another machine. My Macbook Pro is certainly looking battered, due to heavy use, but it still works. If I sold it on Ebay I now I would not get a decent price. I need to find an interim solution. By examining my working practices I was able to develop a much more cost effective solution. I spend a lot of my time travelling which means I use my Macbook Pro both on the train and at client offices. However, I realised that I do not need all the processing power of the Mac when I am on the move. All of the activities I undertake when travelling are generally text based:

• Email
• Reports
• Client Proposals
• Blog Entries
• Creative Writing

The solution was the £180 Asus Eee PC.

For those of you not familiar with this wonderful piece of kit, the specification is:

• 7" Screen
• Intel CPU
• 512MB DDR2,
• 4GB SSD HDD
• WiFi
• HD Audio Mic
• 3 USB ports
• VGA Out

Its small, comes with Open Office, it has great battery life and does just enough. What more could I ask for?

It has simplified my work setup enormously.

I have my Imac in my office.

I leave my Macbook Pro at the clients office.

I use the Eee PC when I am between the two and swop files with a USB memory stick.

The Macbook Pro can be used for editing complicated documents when I am with the client. As as aside, as noted above, my Macbook Pro used to be my main machine but I have now replaced it with the 24" Imac. The reasons

• The Imac has a better screen and its viewing position reduces pressure on my back and eyes
• I keep all of my important documents on my .Mac account so I always have access to information regardless of which machine I use
• I do my best work in my office, on a desktop machine. The Macbook Pro is the compromise for when I am with clients and I need to do urgent, rather than important, work.

What is Coaching?

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I was going to start an executive coaching practice. The good news is that I have been accepted on a prestigious two year coaching Masters Degree and the journey has now started. I am very excited about this new phase in my life and have been telling everybody about it. During one of these conversation, my friend asked me "what does coaching actually mean?" so here is my current definition.

Coaching involves a one-to-one relationship that helps the client develop:

• A "working alliance" with the coach, generally on work related issues.
• An increased awareness of themselves and those around them
• A deeper level of reflection on the dilemmas, choices and alternatives that they face
• Problem solving and decision making skills
• The ability to review the outcomes they have achieved and understand what they have learnt from the experience

However, it is important to be clear what coaching is not. Coaching assumes that the client is generally a strong and well-functioning individual.
Coaching is not therapy or counselling.

Over the course of the next two years, I am sure that my own personal definition will grow and change, but this is my starting point.

For those of you that have kindly agreed to work with me I hope it helps.

Productivity and Down Time

As I have noted in previous posts the last few weeks have been very busy. I am working on a significant commercial deal with a client and this is taking up a huge amount of my intellectual and emotional energy. Over the last few days I have noticed that I have been getting a little bit short tempered and started making mistakes. The errors are generally minor, and probably only noticed by me, but I realised that I was simply not performing at my best. I didn't feel ill, but knew that something was stopping me from operating at the top of my game.

It occurred to me at three o'clock this morning, I am not getting enough downtime. My head is effectively full with the pressures of being a good consultant, husband and father. The solution?

Nothing.

This morning I did nothing for two hours.

I put on some music and just let it wash over me. The first five minutes were filled with hysterical guilt as my frazzled brain tried to drag me back to my home office desk. It took a further fifteen minutes for my brain to switch from making endless "To-Do" lists to actually listening to the music. Once it had engaged with sound I could sense my mind starting to unspool. All those insurmountable, stress inducing problems began to break apart and by the end of the first album I felt great. By the end of the two hours my tense muscles had relaxed and my brain felt fresh. I was back in a state of "resourcefulness" and ready to get on with what I need to do.

A two hour investment in "me" and now I feel top of the world again.

Now, back to those "To-Do" lists...

A Period of Reflection

I have not updated Blacknotebook this month as I have been having a period of reflection.

I made the conscious decision to reduce some of my commitments for a few weeks. This has given me the opportunity to think about what it is that I actually want to do. Our family recently moved to a backwater as part of our master plan to calm our lives down. Unfortunately, during this process, I accidentally forgot that I was supposed to be working for a client five days a week in London (whoops). The journey to work each day has been long and arduous, up to five hours a day, but it has given me plenty of time to think. The time to think, time to ponder, and time to make carefully thought out decisions has been rare in my life and it has been an unexpected bonus.

The output of all this brow furrowing? I have decided to focus my consulting practice on coaching and personal development over the next few years. This fits in well with the personal productivity slant I've put on this blog in the last few months and you will start to see entries that reflect the broader interest in coaching.

Apology

There has been a slight technical hitch at this end and I have not been receiving notifications of comments. Thanks to those of you that have taken the time to make comments and sorry about the delay.

Media Fasting

I recently finished "The Four Hour Work Week" by Tim Ferris and it was a book that I really enjoyed and is a recommended read if you really want to reevaluate your approach to work and life. It certainly caused a seismic shift in my own approach.

One of the recommendations that Ferris makes is - "The Low Information Diet - Cultivating Selective Ignorance".

Ferris is a strong believer in reducing distractions in your life so you can concentrate on what is important to you and this particular approach is part of his strategy of "elimination" .

For the Low Information Diet he recommends:

1. Go on an immediate one week media fast. Basically, this means no newspapers, no internet, only 1 hours TV a night (pleasure viewing only), only reading fiction prior to bed. This approach is not new but what I find delightful about his approach is that you get your news fix for the day by asking a well informed person to give you a five minute summary.

2. Only use information if there is an important and immediate need. If not, it can wait.

3. Practice the art of nonfinishing. Starting something doesn't automatically justify finishing it if its not adding any value.

Moleskine Indented Tabs

David pointed me in the direction of a hardware hack for the moleskine notebook at Inventoids. By cutting slots out of pages with a Stanley knife you create a permanent page marker. What I like about this one is that you don't have sticky tabs that can fall out of the notebook.

Any organising system should be as easy to use as possible, and I like the fact that you just run your finger down the pages to find the pagemarker. Of course, the disadvantage is that if you have multiple page markers you have to remember which one is which.

Its a nice idea, but I am not sure I would be brave enough to cut my precious notebooks.

Stress

What makes you stressed? I would be interested to read your comments. A post on the subject will follow in the next few days.