Welcome back! It's good to see you again. Please note that I am now publishing all new material at my hub site: StephenPSmith.com

Ever since I started my Getting Things Done practice 2 years ago, I have struggled with my system of reviews. Primarily due to my ADD, but also because of the many, many changes and transitions that my household has undergone in that time.

Since the Lovely Bride and I were married in March of 2005 we have moved 4 times, lived in 3 different states, and had 11 different jobs (combined). That is a LOT of change and those of you who know me personally know that I can have trouble adapting to change.

Since we are once again in the middle of an enormous transition I have taken the opportunity to get a head start on my Annual Review. It turns out that in spite of (or perhaps because of) the challenges 2008 was a pretty darned good year.

• Our marriage is strong. The Lovely Bride and I have faced some serious challenges, at home and with her career, but we have remained strong, positive, and pro-active about making things happen.
• We are ahead of the curve. With the economy in the state that it is, we were able to look forward and make some choices and take actions to stay out of the worst of the troubles:
  • Beating the Christmas rush - we started buying presents in March, and were able to finish in October. All of our gifts for family and friends were wrapped, packed, and shipped by the first week of November. What an amazing feeling to have all of that done during this week of Christmas! Buying gifts this way allowed us to avoid a massive hit to the budget during a fairly lean period, as well as providing the opportunity to find things in our travels that would be personal and special for the recipient.
  • Living with less - both of us have a tendency to hoard “stuff”, and we have been moving boxes of junk from place to place for 3 years. This fall we decided that boxes that have not been unpacked in two years are likely to contain things that we do not need. We did a massive sort-and-purge, donating a ton of clothes, books, and small appliances to charity.
  • Creating alternate income streams - both of us have worked in the hospitality industry for most of our careers and a down economy hits that segment hard. We have been creating products and services that we can sell online, and in October I took the leap and went to work for myself.
• I started my own business. And business is pretty good! The main site is called Business Development in Context and I have been writing about Social Media, Blogging, and Networking for success. I have found a handful of clients, and some clients have found me. I am not making a fortune (yet) but it is paying the bills and financing our adventure. The funny thing is, I work as many or more hours than I did when I had a “real job” yet it is so much more rewarding, fulfilling, and enjoyable. I should have done this years ago!!
• I accomplished nearly all of my goals for the year. In January of 2008 I sat down with a workbook on goal-setting and laid out a plan for achieving some goals over the course of the year. (In no particular order)
  • I lost 25 pounds and kept it off.
  • I started a new blog for business purposes, and it is growing.
  • I attending the SOBCon conference in Chicago and learned a LOT about this business of blogging.
  • I paid off one of the credit cards.
  • I purchased a new laptop computer.
  • I took a job as a paid writer online.
  • I joined a Chamber of Commerce and got involved with the local business community.
  • I spent at least one full day each week with the Lovely Bride doing something fun and building our relationship.
• Use a more positive vocabulary -My Lovely Bride asked me to add this point as her contribution. I have always been a very optimistic person, but since we have been married my wife says that learning to use a positive outlook rather than a negative one creates a much different framework for approaching a problem.

Now it is your turn. How was 2008 for you? What did you learn, achieve, or accomplish? Be sure to share in the Comments. Later in the week we will look at setting some achievable SMART goals for 2009.

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/957gqy. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen

Michael and Jason from Black Belt Productivity have asked a few productivity writers to weigh in on a comment that was posted at BBP a short while back. The commenter was looking for advice on how to measure the effectiveness of a productivity program:

Hi! My name is Mayra. I work as a Black Belt in a Mexican company. I want to know the best way to measure the performance of a BB. I mean, Which metrics are the most appropriate way to prove that a BB is reaching his/her objectives in the company (# of projects, savings, etc)? Thanks for your help!

The short answer is “all of them”.

The long answer is, measure everything. Then select those tasks and activities that promote your objectives and track them for improvement. The next question is how to do this in the framework of your Getting Things Done practice, since GTD does not have a specific process for measuring productivity improvement.

The good news is that GTD does include a mechanism for creating your own measurement tools.

Adaptive Productivity Management

The beauty of the GTD system, for me and many others, is that it is remarkably flexible in its application. Digital or analog, PDA or Moleskine, there are nearly as many methods of executing the GTD practice as there are practitioners!

The core principles that make the GTD method so effective are the Workflow Process and the Weekly Review. With these two tools you can get a grip on your inputs and outflow, and track your progress from beginning to end. The specific methods of implementing these tools are up to you, from a master to-do list all the way up to the design of your workspace.

Lets do a quick review of these fundamental principles and see how they can be used as a device for measuring one’s productivity.

Collect

Process

Organize

Review

Do

These 5 steps in the GTD workflow, when iterated regularly, are enough to improve your personal productivity and help you accomplish the things that need to get done.

In order to measure the results of your program and the success of its implementation, you will need to create your own, personal process map.

My workflow diagram looks something like this:

Select Something to Measure

Thus, when it comes to measuring any part of your workflow, there is a built-in template for picking a component and recording your progress. Select any one of your activities, e-mail management for example, and record how much time you spend on that activity. Alternatively, you can create a time log and record how you spend your workday on all of your activities.

The important thing is to keep this measurement in context. Without a starting point, you cannot measure anything. And if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. [*note*] This initial piece of information will be your baseline with which you will compare to measurements you make in the future. The time to compare these two sets of measurements is the Weekly Review.

Before and After

The differences, if any, in the two measurements is a quantitative expression of how productivity has improved. For example, say that our sample employee spends one hour every morning responding to e-mail before starting with their other tasks (measured before implementing the GTD process). At the end of the first week, they can measure again and record any improvement. This process can happen every week for a month, at which point a trend should have appeared. For the sake of our example let’s say that learning to deal with e-mail in a productive manner has reduced this initial e-mail processing time to 30 minutes daily.

This quantitative measure of time saved can be expressed in units of time, wages, or even increased billable hours spent on other work.

There is also a qualitative measure of productivity improvement, which I consider to be even more important. The ability to get your work done and go live your life should be the driving force behind all of your productivity practices.

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/5e94x4. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen

Just a quick reminder for those of you who are using the book of days that I put together, it’s time to order the July through December edition if you haven’t already.

For more information on what it is, click here.

To order the second volume of the Book of Days click here.

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/6o3hdb. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen

I have compiled this list of questions from a variety of resources that I have used to turn my Weekly Review into a tool for personal and professional development.

Consider jotting down the answers to these questions on a weekly basis, then look over the answers at the end of the month. Do you think you may be able to spot trends in your thinking and the execution of your To-do’s? You may be surprised.

What do you feel so far?

• Excited? If not, why not? What can you do about it?
• Confident? If not, why not? What can you do about it?
• In control of your success? If not, why not? What can you do about it?
• What was your biggest accomplishment?

What has bothered you so far?

• With whom have you failed to connect? Why?
• Of the meetings you attended, which was the most troubling? Why?
• Of all that you have seen or heard, what has disturbed you the most? Why?
• What was hard for you this week? Why?

What has gone well or poorly?

• Which interactions would you handle differently if you could?
• Which things exceeded your expectations?
• Which of your decisions turned out particularly well?
• Which of your decisions turned out not so well?

What were the missed opportunities?

• What can you improve on next week?
• What was the biggest waste of time?
• Are you doing the things that bring you closer to your life goals?
• What is one thing that you could be more proactive about?

I have also created a worksheet of these questions, for you to download and print. For those of you that like worksheets. (.txt version) (PDF Version) Please feel free to share your thoughts, and the worksheets, no copyright or anything.

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/5qr5pz. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen