Wade Armstrong

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Productivity in a Moment

Posted Wednesday August 8, 2007 in Productivity

I always fall down on my planned approaches to productivity when, at that moment, it’s not productive to be productive. I’m sure you know those times — I should do something, it’s actually kind of important, but it’s either inconvenient or impossible and so I don’t do it right then. And then the moment passes and the thought is lost or the task becomes even harder to do. For a while, recording my mileage, keeping up on my credit card purchases, and even capturing ideas on-the-go were all in this category. But, lately, I’ve been doing a lot better — because I made the effort to set myself up to be productive in a moment, any moment.

What Happens In a Moment?

Some of the tasks that I find myself doing in a single, small moment are themselves small - recording a credit card purchase for later entry into Quicken, recording my mileage or updating someone’s contact information, for example. But others are quite important — jotting down an idea that suddenly pops to mind, or adding a to-do based on an interaction. These are all actions that I find appear in a moment and pass just as quickly if I let my mind move on to the other things on my plate.

For years, I was bad at these. Great ideas disappeared, contact got lost, and innumerable write-offs disappeared. That’s because I always put off these momentary tasks until long blocks of time were available in which I could complete them; but the task was out of mind by then.

Building a System for a Moment

I started carrying around computers with me because I wanted to be able to sync my contacts and calendars. First it was a Nokia 3650; now it’s a Treo 650. With both of these platforms, I found that I was able to add on new programs. Suddenly, my smartphone wasn’t just my reliable look-up center; it was my reliable capture tool, too. And, because it was in my pocket, it was there in every moment.

But just being there in a moment isn’t enough — the tool needs to be useful, otherwise it’s still to easy to not get things done. For me, I find that there are a few specific things I tend to do in a moment:

1. Update contact information
2. Make new plans
3. Capture new thoughts
4. Update existing thoughts and plans
5. Track my mileage, for tax purposes
6. Track my expenses, for budgeting

The others all require specialized tools. These are what I prefer; your mileage may vary, based on your particular needs and proclivities

Ideas and Plans and Contacts and Tasks and Events, Oh My!

Sure, I could take care of numbers 1 and 2 using my smartphones’ built-in software, but it takes too long to create a new contact or event or whatnot, as it takes too long to fire up the Notes application and write down an idea. I use the built-in applications to manage and update the data I already have in there, but to capture new data I use the completely indispensable Slap.

Very simply, Slap lets you enter free-form text and then automatically converts that text into a note, contact, task, event, or more.

Slap is good stuff, and, most of all, it’s there in the moment. I hit the button on my Treo I’ve programmed for Slap, type in what I have to say, and then save it. The rest, I can sort out later. Of course, for plans and ideas I already have on my Treo, it’s just a matter of opening the note (having a predictable naming scheme matters here). The last time I got my car smog checked, I spent 40 minutes waiting for it to get done and I spent all 40 of those working on projects, making calls and planning out tasks, based on the notes I kept on my Treo. (More on how I use Outlook and plain-text Note files to manage ideas and project plans in a later entry, probably)

Administrativa

Administrativa is only convenient to do in the moment. That’s why I rely on Palm applications for it as well. Auto Slate is a reasonably nifty program that lets me track mileage, gas, and maintenance; best of all, it spits everything out into an Excel file when I sync.

Programmed to one of my Palm’s buttons, Auto Slate is always there when I park my car so that I can record my mileage right then.

And just when I make a credit card purchase, MoneyPlus is there. Like Auto Slate, it’s a little too complicated, but it lets you input transactions and it outputs files you can import into most versions of Quicken. It’s easy to enter a transaction when I make it, much more so than when there’s a pile of receipts in the inbox.

I’m usually a Getting Things Done kind of guy, but I think all of this productivity in a moment stuff is pretty strongly linked to Covey’s idea that you should just do any task that takes less than two minutes right when that task comes up. Go ahead, do a task right now, in this moment. That’s a productive approach.