Productivity – Harrison Hansford

Get what you want, more often: how to communicate with busy people

In any job, it is likely that you’ll have to communicate with people in writing, be it applying, asking for help or for others to do something for you. This is something we do without much thought, we just write what we want to convey. But, have you ever sent off an email and had no response? Crickets…

Everyone is very busy. If you asked your colleagues, friends or family, I can almost guarantee most would say they wish they had more time. People get on average 100 messages a day, and in the working world, 100 emails a day. So when we are communicating with people, we are asking them to give us some of their already precious time, amongst a sea of other requests. When I’m asking someone to give me some of their time, it’s important I make my request as clear as possible, and make the time-commitment as little as possible because that means they are more likely to do whatever it is I’m asking.

There is a great talk by Todd Rogers from Harvard University detailing the science of corresponding with busy people. However, on the topic of saving time, here are the five points on how to more effectively communicate with people.

1. Use as few words as possible

We think we really need to set the scene for a request, often leading with an explanation of what we are doing and finishing with a request of the reader. However, reading big blocks of text makes most people’s eyes gloss over. A more effective way to communicate is to just cut to the chase. Introduce yourself and ask your question, cut the lengthy explanation in the middle. Rogers showed when the number of words is reduced, focussing on only the main point, there was a 78% higher response rate.
This is counter intuitive, because we would assume more information explaining why someone should do our request would improve response rates, but it doesn’t, it just makes people lose attention.

2. Make the text as easy to read as possible

The more effort the reader has to put in to read your text, the less likely they are to respond. Think about most academic papers, it’s really hard to focus because it is often written to be understood by experts. Compare that to a buzzfeed article, it’s hard to stop reading it is so simply written. Obviously they are two extremes, but the point is, if you write something as basic as possible, it will be more likely to be read.
The way to do this is to reduce the number of syllables per word, ie. simple words; reduce the number of words per sentence, stick to one simple idea; and keep the grammar simple.

3. Use formatting to direct attention

If you write something in a block of text with no paragraphs, no highlighting or bolding, you’re not letting people skim easily, making them less likely to actually take any of it in. You WANT people to be able to skim your writing, so make the important parts bolded or highlighted. I’m sure when you read the paragraph in point 1, you read the heading, then the highlighted section, with my main point.
Highlighting is a powerful way to draw attention, but it can also work against you, because it makes people less likely to read the rest of the text, so use it carefully. Also, do not overuse it, because if you highlight a whole paragraph, it loses its power, and nothing becomes highlighted. Think back to a time when you highlighted paragraphs in textbooks, I guarantee not much of it stuck.

4. Make the key information obvious and noticeable

Ensure that your main points jump out to the reader immediately. Think the subject of an email, the first sentence, last sentence, bolded/highlighted sections. Allowing readers to skim the text makes a response more likely.

5. Make the response required as quick / easy as possible

If the person who is reading your request has to jump through hoops, no matter how simple it may be, the request is less likely to be met. A strategy I’ve employed is to re-phrase open ended questions like “What do you think about this …” which takes a long response, to be a closed-question, which is much simpler for the respondent, “I think this… please let me know if that is okay.” This just takes a simple “Yep, sounds good” from the respondent, making a response much more likely. Even better, depending on the situation, you could also say “I am planning on doing XXX, please let me know if that is not okay.” By doing that, you are making them opt-out, so you don’t even require a response.

Summary

Everyone is very busy so its important our communication is as clear and easy on the reader as possible

Write as simply, and as briefly as possible
Use formatting to allow people to skim the most important parts
Make the response as easy as possible

I recommend watching the video for a more in-depth explanation of how effective these strategies are and some more concrete examples of them.

Writing Better: Why I choose to write in public

I have been writing a blog post every day up until the end of the year with the goal of improving my writing skills. The reason I started doing this was because I realised that I was not a very ‘correct’ writer; my writing had a lot of grammatical errors, and didn’t flow very nicely. I am very bullish on the value of being able to communicate well, it is one of the most characteristics that almost all successful people share. I am a natural talker (although this definitely needs work as well), but writing was letting me down, so I decided to practice it. I didn’t just want to write something for myself every day because I knew I wouldn’t do it, I wanted to practice in public. I got the idea of this from David Perell and it was a game changer for me. The pressure of knowing (hoping) that other people would read my writing naturally made me be more thoughtful about what I wrote, and put more effort into it.

When I started I was following the thought process which has been promoted by many people who are in the business of creating content, be it books, youtube videos, blogs, etc. That is, the mindset of “your first 100 pieces of writing are not going to be good anyway, so don’t try to perfect each blog post, just write, and accept that it won’t be good.” This was great in helping me form a habit of writing every day, which is arguably one of the hardest things about writing. I also think it helped me think more creatively in general; I had to write something, so I had to have an idea, not the other way around. If I had waited for an idea to come to be so I could write about it spontaneously, I would have written a grand total of 3-4 blog posts, and none of them would have been great.

I know that I haven’t written any blog posts that have been amazing, some are definitely more interesting than others, and some are flat out boring, but throughout the process, I have felt writing come easier and easier, which is conducive to writing more, which will result in improvements. Or will it?

One of my friends raised the point that he had some issues with the “just produce a lot of content” idea of improvement, because it means you become comfortable with producing bad work, rather than aiming for higher quality work. I realised I didn’t have a comeback remark to this, and it made me think whether my writing has actually improved. I just looked back at my first blog post of the 50 days and was expecting to be embarrassed by it, but it was actually quite good, and incidentally, my most liked blog post. I compared it to a recent blog post explaining cryptocurrency and I struggle to see where I have improved. This is a bit disheartening but I think it’s important to always try assess yourself to see if your efforts are actually paying off, and simply putting up a blog every day without too much regard for quality doesn’t seem to be working for me. So whats the plan?

I still want to improve my writing ability, so what I plan on doing is upping the level of ‘public’ I go. Currently I just upload every blog to my website, and share the occasional one to LinkedIn where I have a few friends and other people in the area of exercise physiology. I don’t have any of my supervisors or other people I would want to impress on there. So to help me improve my writing, I’m going to add all of those people I look up to on LinkedIn, as well as begin sharing my posts to Twitter, or even write tweet-storms about thoughts I’m having. I’ve told myself a million times I should not be worried about what other people think about my work, or me in general. Beginning to post more to these channels will be one way to achieve both goals, improving my writing, and getting out of my comfort zone.

You can’t always work at 100%

At placement months ago we were talking about fatigue and managing fatigue as a clinician and our supervisor said there are days we all have where we simply just aren’t all there. Whatever reason it is, be it lack of sleep, personal issues or just feeling a bit off, these days are inevitable.

No matter how well we schedule our lives or how productive our habits are, we all have days where we feel bad. Our supersivor said it’s important to permit yourself to give 70% some days, because that means you’re able to recover and get back to giving 100% quicker.

Today is one of those days for me, I’m just feeling a bit all over the place today and rather than beat my head against a wall trying to get stuff done, I’m just going to chill out and recharge for tomorrow. These days are important and shouldn’t be a source of angst or produce a feeling of failure

Do we really need deadlines?

At the end of a brutal interval running session I was thinking, “I should set myself some deadlines for getting X done.” I thought to myself, why, if doing X is something I enjoy, should I set myself a deadline if there is no external reason it needs to be done at a certain time. This whole idea goes against my whole notion of productivity and I thought I’d challenge myself to write a blog post essentially playing the devils advocate against myself.

There are a few assumptions I’m going to spell out first, I’m assuming that the task you’re doing is not an assignment or any other task which is ‘due’ at a certain date. This automatically disqualifies a lot of scenarios, this post is about work we tell ourselves we ‘want’ to be doing. If we want to do something, it should get done in our free time, it should be something we enjoy doing, therefore, doesn’t need a deadline.

What does having a deadline do to something we enjoy? First of all, I think deadlines create pressure on ourselves, which can be a very good thing, challenging us to get things done more efficiently, so we have more time to do other things we enjoy blah blah blah, you’ve heard the spiel a thousand times. Deadlines create pressure which can turn things we genuinely enjoy, into tasks we have to do and I’ve never met anyone who loves to HAVE to do something. Furthermore, if it is a creative task we are doing, deadlines create a very end-product focussed lens at which colours the way we see our work. Anything that we enjoy doing, creative or otherwise, should be enjoyed for the love of undertaking the task, not completing it. The endpoint is not the goal, the endpoint is merely a consequence of the goal, enjoy doing the task. Simply having a deadline inevitably makes the endpoint the goal.

Deadlines can mean ironically nothing gets finished. Many times I’m sure we’ve all not done something because it wasn’t quite right in the end and we weren’t happy with it, or that we didn’t think we would be able to produce something perfect, so we produce nothing at all. This is so common, especially when we are attempting new things, we must learn by trial and error. Our first 100 of anything will be bad, it is only after that we begin to get good at whatever it is we’re doing. This is precisely the reason why I’ve challenged myself to post a blog every day, because it forces me to get the first 100 out of the way without trying to make each post perfect. It’s an unreasonable expectation to be able to produce something perfect without practicing. Imagine you’re in a pottery class and there are two groups of people, one group who get told they have a month to work on one pot, and they can spend as much time as they want on it, the other group is forced to make many pots, at least a pot each day, who do you think will produce a better pot in the end? I know I would learn so much by making many many pots, much more than if I were to make one ‘perfect’ pot. The same applies to any skill, by setting deadlines, you create the internal expectation that something needs to be perfected by a certain time, lending itself to group one, spending a lot of time on one pot, not learning through trial and error.

So what is the solution? I believe rather than setting deadlines, you should simply set time goals for doing the thing. This shouldn’t be too much of a shift, rather than saying, “I want to have written an essay on X in 2 weeks time”, tell yourself you want to spend 20mins writing, every day. You can always spend more time if you’re in the zone, but 20 minutes is something we can all find somewhere in our days.

Writing this was an interesting experience and I’m sure that reading this back you can see me convincing myself that this was the right way to be, and I came out with a conclusion of what I actually do, even though at the start I thought this was going against my beliefs. It is interesting to pick a counterpoint to a belief or set of beliefs you hold closely and try to fight for it, it solidifies your understanding of where you really stand on the view. Give it a try, I really enjoyed doing it.

My New Morning Routine

After several months of having little control over my time, I have decided to make the most of not being at work full time. I thought long and hard how I wanted to start my day, and came up with: twenty minutes of meditation just after I wake up, forty minutes of reading and thirty minutes of writing. This takes an hour and a half and I think I could fit it in even when I start honours and am going into ‘work’ five days a week. So why was this the schedule I came up with?

Twenty minutes of meditation (6 am)

I have liked the idea of making a habit of meditating for almost a year now but I thought deep down that it was a waste of time, because you aren’t ‘doing’ or achieving anything by doing it. I’m not sure when the switch flicked but once I finished placement I meditated for an hour every day for a week. I soon realised that this was a very long time to meditate and I simply couldn’t stop myself getting distracted during it. I cut the time back to twenty minutes and have done that every day for the two weeks since. I’ve really enjoyed meditating, I am using Sam Harris’ ‘Waking Up’ app, which is pretty pricey but undoubtedly worth it. I was always resistant to the idea of meditating because of the religious and spiritual connotations but Sam walks you through it very agnostically and this really had me hooked.

Forty minutes of reading (6:20 am)

I love reading and I read every night before going to bed. Reading at night is very different to reading at any other point in the day. It is meant to relax you, give your mind a rest and ultimately put you to sleep. I’ve often been so excited by what I’m reading that I struggle to go to bed, defeating the purpose of reading in the first place! I decided to read in the morning because there is so much I want to read and my current 30minutes isn’t letting me read as much as i’d like. Reading in the morning also has the benefit that it doesn’t have to be strictly ‘enjoyable’ and can involve journal articles and other more didactic works. I’ve decided it might be a good idea to have, every week or fortnight, a new topic to read up on and familiarise myself. By doing this, in theory I’ll be well versed in at least 26 different topics by the end of the year, which sounds ridiculous, but is actually very achievable. I’m not too sure what these topics will be just yet, but I’m going to start planning this the week before (ie. now) and then every Sunday, review what I learned in a blog post; consolidating my newly attained knowledge.

Thirty minutes of writing (7am)

Writing is something I’ve enjoyed doing throughout the later years of high school and university although it was my least favourite thing to do prior to year 10. I was convinced I simply couldn’t write creatively and I hated it, until a teacher convinced me I could make myself a better writer. That is exactly what I did and my year 12 creative writing piece was then used as an example for other classes. Throughout university I fell out of practice and my essays were always okay and would get good marks but they were never amazing. I noticed probably a year ago when studying for the GAMSAT that my punctuation was absolutely shocking and this made me realise that I need to start some deliberate practice. I remember sitting down for the first time to write a blog post and had the classic writers block and couldn’t think to write anything. I had this several times in the first week of writing every day but since pushing through that, I’ve had no issues writing; a testament to the idea from Seth Godin that practice is what breeds creativity, not the other way round. So i’ve decided to practice every day and see what comes of it, if nothing else I’ll improve my writing.

This is a routine that will definitely change overtime, especially once I go back to university full time, but one of my goals for 2020 is to keep time reserved for doing what I want, even when I’m most busy; these are the things I want to continue doing.

Treat Yourself

Amongst the fervour of being healthy, productive and financially responsible it can be very easy to stop enjoying yourself. It is very important to think about why you’re holding things back from yourself, and think if you relaxed your ‘rules’ by 5%, if it would make you enjoy your life a lot more.

Historically I’ve rarely bought anything for myself that isn’t going to actively help me achieve something, everything has a use. That was up until a few months ago where I was working less but spending more. And I wouldn’t say I was wasting my money, but I was going out with friends more and every now and again treating myself. I was out shopping on Christmas Eve and Adidas had 40% off. Previously, I would have looked around, seen a few things I liked then told myself I don’t NEED any of it and walk out with a heavy wallet and empty hands.

Everyone has had a really tough year, and it’s important to congratulate yourself for getting through it. Now, I want to be clear that if you are someone who is constantly buying stuff, this isn’t a call to continue to buy more. Unchecked consumerism isn’t something I’m a fan of, but, if you’re someone who like me, is generally very frugal, it’s important to treat yourself occasionally, as a reward.

This extends further than just clothes or presents. When I was on placement there was one patient who wanted to lose a significant amount of weight, which was also recommended by her doctors. The doctors and nurses would often say she had to eat small meals and have no treats. We would go out on walks to get some exercise in and she would say “Can I go up to the cafe to get a chocolate milkshake?” with a cheeky grin on her face, as if to imply what she said was blasphemy to me. I would respond by asking if she thought she deserved it and most of the time it was no, but sometimes yes. I explained that these things are not healthy, but are sometimes foods, so when you feel like you deserve it, or really want it, you can have it. This mindset really helped her get used to her diet and meant she adhered much better overall.

Back to the money scenario, there is only so much one can save, and I was thinking, “what am I saving for?” I am saving money to be able to enjoy myself when I want to without having to stress about it. Right now that means I don’t need a huge amount of savings for that. If I had a mortgage and kids the amount of money I’d need would be much greater. The idea is that there is no point saving money without spending it, because what is the point of saving money if you can’t use it?

I’m someone who doesn’t treat myself often, and that does not make me superior in any way, I’m coming to realise it’s actually the opposite. Sometimes I envy people who can freely enjoy their hard earned money without stress. I’ve come to realise that there is no point hoarding every penny, and its important to think about why you’re saving money in the first place.

Regardless of what it is you’re holding back on, relax a bit, give yourself a hall pass and treat yourself, especially today on Christmas.

The Yearly Review

I’ve talked previously about the power of the weekly review, looking back at your week and seeing how it was. Today I did my yearly review, looking back on my goals for the year and grading myself on how I went. I would also reflect on the goals and justify to myself the grade I got. This was a really enjoyable experience. I blocked out 2 hours in my afternoon and just reflected on my year.

I realised that I actually have had a great year, I have grown so much as a person, which is one of my biggest indicators of success. I also realised what the gaps in my focus have been.

The reason I think that everyone should be doing this or something similar is that it allows you to realise what you have achieved or haven’t achieved. This can be lost in the moment when you’re only reflecting day to day or even week to week. I believe that examining your life is crucial to being successful and growing as a person.

The Two Day Rule

Yesterday I was lying in bed and realised I hadn’t done a blog post for the day. I lay there for a minute, tossing up whether I should jump out of bed and quickly write something up. I was exhausted and obviously that is a bad idea. I’ve got another busy day today and my first instinct was to just leave the post for the evening. This is a recipe for disaster and I remembered a rule from Matt D’Avella called the two day rule. This rule simply states that if we want to make something a habit, don’t miss two days in a row.

We all lapse sometimes and get busy and any habit realistically isn’t going to be done every day without fail. Often the sense of failure when we miss a day of something can lead to another missed day, and another, until we stop all together. This is why the two day rule is so useful, it’s a subconscious get out of jail free card when we lapse, preventing a complete meltdown.

This seems so simple, and it is, but often it’s these small shifts in mindset which have an outsized impact of our productivity and lives. I’m back on the horse, posting another blog and hopefully continue to do so!

Four steps to slash your social media usage

A while ago I found myself getting sucked into the vortex of the news feed on facebook way too often, wasting countless hours on it. You know how you just go to check one thing, and 3 hours later you’re watching Gordon Ramsay say “you’re an idiot sandwich,” that kind of vortex.

I’m a firm believer that to change something you have to know what you’re actually doing first; kind of like a before and after assessment. So I downloaded a Chrome extension called ‘Webtime tracker‘, which simply measured the amount of time I spent on different websites. Feeling accomplished at having downloaded this I forgot about my resolve to escape the clutches of social media for a few weeks. I later looked back on the stats and I was spending something like 12 hours a week on Facebook alone.

This was when I was just beginning to make the most of my time being ‘productive.’ 12 hours seems like a very long time but if you were to track your usage I’m sure it would surprise you as well. This was step number one, tracking my usage. This shocked me but I knew I didn’t have the strength to just stop the reflex of typing f when I opened Chrome and facebook.com autofilling. I then found another extension on Chrome called ‘Block site‘ which enables you to block any website on Chrome, so that what I did. I blocked Facebook, but I only blocked it between 8am and 6pm so when I was meant to be studying it was harder to access facebook. Sounds great right?

There was one major flaw in this extension, it had the option to put in a password to unblock the website. I didn’t want this to become another thing I did reflexively so I made the password “stopdontuseme” thinking the length and message would stop me. This worked for the first week but I ended up getting so quick at putting that password in the Block site didn’t end up working. I had to make it even harder for myself.

The next step was to, rather than just have a page with a password come up, I chose to redirect the page to something else, something productive (like my ‘write’ page on my blog). This was the final step which worked, in order to access Facebook I had to go into the extension, put the password in, then go in and unblock Facebook. This was enough barriers to stop me accessing it. Now, in the past 90 days I’ve been on Facebook for a total of 2 hours!

Now, you must be thinking, “what about your phone?” Well, I overcame that hurdle as well. I simply deleted the app. “But what about messenger? How am I going to talk to people?” Luckily, on Mac you can download the messenger app and have it on your desktop so you don’t need to go through Facebook.

Now, the most common reason I used to tell myself I need to access Facebook; “my work uses it to communicate.” This one is simple, just check it every now and again on a browser on your phone, this may sound like it defeats the purpose but I’ve found I’ve cracked the addiction of it, meaning I am able to just check the news from work and be done.

Now, I’m not saying this is easy, it’s probably taken me 2 years to do this but I’ve essentially created more hours in my day to spend on what I really want to be doing.

In summary, to help with reducing your social media usage (or any behaviour change for that matter) you want to:

Identify and quantify the problem (track your usage)
Increase barriers to usage (block the website and delete the app)
Further increase barriers if needed (redirect the blocked website)
Break the habit and choose when you WANT to use it, not doing so reflexively.

I hope that my experience helps you reclaim your time, stopping you getting sucked into the vortex of Facebook, Youtube or Instagram (when you don’t want to go down it).

Write it down: How to not forget anything again

Have you ever just completely forgotten to do something, something important or even minor. That’s a silly question because we all have. As i’ve taken on more and more things I’ve increasingly been more forgetful, forgetting anything and everything that isn’t somewhere.

This is why I’ve started using my reminders on my phone or computer, adding in time and dates when I know I will have time to do the task. Although you can do this with good old pen and paper you don’t have the luxury of it vibrating at you when you’ve set it for, but do whatever works for you. This has been revolutionary when I actually put it in my reminders, which I do forget to do sometimes ironically. It is by no means an infallible tool, but it has been hugely helpful for me, clearing my head from tasks cluttering short term memory.

Write. It. Down