PocketMod

Here’s a really useful little tool that just makes your life easy.

The PocketMod is a small book with guides on each page. These guides or templates, combined with a unique folding style, enable a normal piece of paper to become the ultimate note card.

To me it’s also a wonderful example of simplicity in design. Stripping out everything that is non-essential we end up with a product that is simple and that maximizes function. For all productivity buffs and organizational freaks out there, this is something really cool.

Check out the PocketMod site and build your own PocketMod.

Meeting With Self

Just the other day I was talking to a friend and sort of complaining about how I seem to have lost my grip on my calendar… again. This tends to happen from time to time, but this time I was feeling like I couldn’t even find the time to get my ideas in order and have some free, creative thinking time.

Well, my friend just smiled sympathetically.

“Quite common. It happened to me as well.” he said as a matter-of-fact. “What I do is take notes of things that interest me throughout the week. I don’t make any assumptions about the things I note, just try to put them down factually. To go through all those notes, I scheduled a two hour weekly meeting with myself. It’s a recurring appointment and I try to choose a different environment than the office. That way I’m generally not interrupted.”

I didn’t give it much thought then. In fact, two days had gone by before I recalled the conversation and decided to try it.

First thing I did was book a weekly two hour slot in my calendar.

“Let’s see how long I can make this last.” I told myself as I hit the save button.

A few weeks have passed since then and I’ve managed to keep holding my weekly “meeting with self”. I’m also becoming much more proficient in taking (meaningful/useful) notes (mind-maps help a lot) and have already quite a collection of interesting ideas to explore and follow on. Also, some of these ideas have already started to pay off as I’ve been able to incorporate them into some of the projects I’m currently working on.

Designer and creative thinker Stefan Sagmeister also suggests an interesting approach to work-life balance and how to find time for creative thinking. His approach is a bit more radical, but I guess creative types usually are. Stefan’s approach involves taking a year long sabbatical leave to think and try new and different things. During this year, he collects ideas to fuel his work for the next seven years, before taking another leave. You can see Stefan Sagmeister’s talk on The Power Of Time Off in the Videos section.

Having time to think, sort out ideas, throw away those that are not interesting and focus on the ones that are is a precious commodity nowadays. Don’t count on having time “later” to do everything you need to do. Book the time in you calendar. That way everything else just tends to fit together.

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• Stefan Sagmeister
• The Power Of Time Off   

Root Cause Analysis – 5 Whys

Anyone who has kids or occasionally interacts with five-year olds knows about their uncanny ability to exhaust all your justifications simply by asking “Why”?

Interestingly enough, this characteristic that we often find exasperating in an infant is quite a powerful tool for identifying root causes of problems. As a “tool” it’s quite simple to understand and to use.

 

1. Identify the problem under analysis;
2. Ask “why” and obtain an answer;
3. Keep asking “why” to each answer until you find the root cause (when the only answer you can come up with is “Just because!”, that’s probably the root cause);

The beauty and applicability of this technique lies in it’s utter simplicity. Granted it’s just useful for root cause analysis, but understanding root causes is often more than halfway home in solving a problem.

This technique is called the “Five Whys” not because you should only ask the question five times, but simply because more often than not five iterations are sufficient to reach a root cause. Here’s a quite quick example of this technique in action:

Problem: My project is behind schedule

Analysis:

1. Why?
   Because we couldn’t deploy the software on time
2. Why?
   Because we had integration errors in three components
3. Why?
   Because they weren’t integration tested
4. Why?
   Because we don’t have the proper testing environment
5. Why?
   Because the email ordering the machines wasn’t sent on time

This technique is said to have been invented by Sakichi Toyoda, Japanese inventor, industrialist and founder of Toyota Industries. However, I believe kids throughout the ages might have gotten it even before that.

Mind-Mapping

I clearly remember that one of the things I usually felt throughout my student years (high-school and college mostly) was that somehow the notes I took weren’t quite effective. At times it felt that I almost had to write down everything word for word so I didn’t loose any valuable piece of information – everything seemed important and I had a hard time identifying key concepts and ideas and jotting down just the relevant pieces of information that allowed me, later on, to mentally rebuild the whole idea. I eventually toyed with the idea of learning shorthand, but fortunately I eventually found out about mind-mapping.

I have been using mind-mapping regularly for several years and it immediately felt a very natural and easy way to persist information in a way that I could trace it’s flow from one idea to the next, allowing me to recall information at a much deeper level. At the same time, note taking required much less granular notes.

Today, after some years of practice, I find that mind-mapping not only helps me effectively with note taking, it also helps with creative problem solving. I use it for solo and team brainstorming sessions, whenever I am exploring any new subject.

Creating a mind-map is quite simple:

1. Get a clean sheet of paper (I usually use plain white paper – no lined or squared paper) and write the topic you’re exploring in the center of the page inside a large circle. This helps clearly identify the subject;
2. As you explore the subject, write notes on lines that originate from the circle;
3. As you explore deeper, draw new lines linked to the line with the note that originated the new ideas. This way it’s very easy to persist a line of thinking (and remember it later on);

I have seen mind-maps where there are few notes and each branch is just a heading/subheading organization with the final branches (the ones furthest from the main topic) representing the facts, but I prefer a more free-form where each branch represents an idea. I usually take a lot of notes as I explore the topic further and further.

Having used mind-mapping for a number of years now, I find it an indispensable tool for note taking whether I’m exploring possible solutions to a specific problem or whether I’m just studying any given subject.

SQ3R

 For those of us who have to consume large amounts of technical/professional information and really absorb it, SQ3R is a reading and study system that enhances information retention and absorption.

The name of this system, SQ3R, is an acronym for it’s five stage process:

• Survey
• Question
• Read
• Recite
• Review

SQ3R helps you create a mental framework that you can use to fit the information you read and to further enrich it with new facts from additional sources.

• Survey – Survey the document by scanning it’s contents, gathering the necessary information to focus on topics and help set study goals.
  1. Read the title, introduction, summary or a chapter’s first paragraph(s). This helps to orient yourself to how this chapter is organized and to understand the topic’s key points.
  2. Go through each boldface heading and subheading. This will help you to create a mental structure the topic.
  3. Check all graphics and captions closely. They’re there to emphasize certain points and provide rich additional information.
  4. Check reading aids and any footnotes. Emphasized text (italics, bold font, etc.) is typically introduced to catch the reader’s attention or to provide clarification.
• Question – During this stage, you should note any questions on the subjects contained in the document. I suggest surveying the document again, this time making a note of any questions that you have while scanning each section. These questions become study goals and they will become information you’ll actively search later on while going through each section in detail.
• Read – Read each section thoroughly, keeping your questions in mind. Try to find the answers and identify if you need additional ones. Mind Mapping can probably help to make sense of and correlate all the information.
• Recall/Recite – In the recall (or recite) stage, you should go through what you read and try to answer the questions you noted before. I suggest doing this for every section, chapter or topic. It’s in this stage that you consolidate knowledge, so refrain from moving on until you can recall the core information.
• Review – Reviewing all the collected information is the final step of the process. In this stage you can review the collected information, go through any particular chapter, expand your own notes, or discuss the topics with colleagues and other experts. An excellent way to consolidate information is to present or teach it to someone else.

The image below presents the SQ3R system as a workflow of tasks, the way I have been applying it.