The other improvement I have done is adding what contests I’m running on Hummingbird604.com. This enables me to keep track (given that I no longer have interns and I still get pitched quite a lot) of the contests I am running.

When a contest turns pink, it means it’s passed and I should have drawn tickets already. And because I have my Google Calendars synchronized with my iPhone, I get instant notifications of when the contest is about to expire. One thing I can tell you is – once you start tracking minute by minute the time you spend on activities, you realize how much of your time is actually wasted, and how little productivity you have. And sad as this sounds – social media is one of those distractors that makes me lose productivity!

Related posts:

1. Tip # 10 – Book time for creative activities
2. Managing your favorite photos on Flickr
3. BMO Marathon 2012 New Track Unveiled

I am often flattered that people think that I am an overachiever. False modesty apart, I am very lucky to be able to complete as much in the time I have during the day. The reality is, my mind wanders all the time. I am excited by so many things, thinking of all the great stuff I could do and when it comes down to having to finish everything I commit to do, it’s often hard. So you may ask yourself, how do I do it all, then?

Here are 3 things I do and all of them have one word in common: DISCIPLINE.

1. I’m disciplined in my blogging.

Even on the days I don’t want to write anything, I still make it my priority to at least, answer emails, check who won my contests, write down ideas for posts, etc. I keep the discipline of dedicating at least one hour (and right now, I’m hoping MAXIMUM one hour) to my blog.

2. I’m disciplined in my academic work.

Even on the days I would rather sleep in, I still try to write bits and pieces of my research. I review a draft manuscript, I write an abstract, I add a couple of pages to my book manuscript, I review graphs, or I read journal articles. I always dedicate at least 6-7 hours of my day to my academic work.

3. I’m disciplined in my consulting work.

Even on the days I would rather just go out, I still try to update myself, read e-newsletters with tips on how to do what I do as a consultant better, improve my speaking and training skills, rethink how I will write my slides, and network. Since much of my consulting involves training, speaking and mentoring, I work every day at least 3 hours of my day in improving that.

The bottom line: It’s all about discipline.

Related posts:

1. On achieving work and life balance
2. My goals for 2011: More time for reading
3. My goals for 2011: Improve my photography

“It’s not so much how busy you are, but why you are busy. The bee is praised. The mosquito is swatted – Mary O’Connor”

Truer words have never been spoken. And I have taken them to heart. As I review my schedule (I have to check my Google Calendar regularly to ensure that I am not quadruple-booked), I realize that I am glad that I have focused on scheduling so much.

I schedule pretty much every single minute of my life. I block chunks of time to do the things I have to do, and that I am learning to say NO much more often. Yes, I still have that tendency to have my heart melted and agree to do 6 things because (a) they are charitable (b) they are for a non-profit (c) they are for artistic purposes, and the arts community here is so devalued (d) they are for my friends.

But I like being THAT kind of busy. The busy that brings me forward. Busy as a bee. Busy as a hummingbird.

Related posts:

1. What kind of heart do you have
2. Raul is a busy guy
3. What kind of cuisine are you? (Quiz)

Coming from my humanities background, I wasn’t much used to teamwork. We usually do our own thing and have it approved by other people who also do their own thing. So I had to adapt and find a solution to my most pressing problem: how to reduce the amount of emails flooding my inbox?

Raul gets a lot of emails, and I only end up seeing a tiny fraction of them. But even then, the constant back and forth between me, Jessica and Raul about posts, covers, meetings and other projects quickly became difficult to manage. I would have several email threads for one topic, multiplied by a dozen or so every week at least. So it’s in this context that I sought an online project management application to help streamline our communications.

Why I chose 5pm

After much research and considering of price against function, I finally set my sights on 5pm. I first started reading about it on forums reviewing more popular applications like BaseCamp. However, what convinced me to pitch 5pm to Raul was

1. The ability to choose a smaller account for a lower price. BaseCamp has one price for all accounts while 5pm has several different prices depending on the size of your team;
2. The simplicity of the interface. Since 5pm is a web-based account, it can’t accommodate very complicated functions; but since our work is rather simple (plan, write and follow up on posts and giveaways), we didn’t need much more than that;
3. The list of current clients. It includes McDonald’s, Best Western hotels, Autodesk, Olympus and Hyatt hotels.

Interface

Everyone in the team loves the 2-window interface. On the left side you have the list of projects and tasks; on the right side you can toggle between the Info, Activity and File tabs for all projects, single projects or even single tasks. There are easy color-coding features for visual cues as well. The interface is easy to learn and provides all the information you need in a single glance.

Timeline

We ended up finding the timeline aspect a little useless, but that might be because of the nature of our projects and tasks. We have to plan events in our calendar and there’s no way to do that in the 5pm timeline. I personally think it just isn’t meant to be a calendar, but it’s kind of annoying that we can’t sync our Google calendar with 5pm while we can use Google Docs. Maybe adding a calendar sub-function to the timeline would be a good idea, and allowing for integration with Google Calendar an even better one.

Messaging

The messaging function is definitely our favourite part. Instead of sending emails through every time we need to discuss a minor detail, we use the 5pm messaging to avoid flooding our email. You can still have the message copied in an email to your team members, but at least they’re also in the 5pm system. It’s great for things that don’t need instant attention. You can write notes about entire projects or single tasks. This is definitely one of the best features of 5pm.

Files

We used the file system a little at first but quickly dropped it because of limited space–we filed mostly pictures. But now that we’ve figured out how to work with Flickr as a team, we just don’t really need to use it anymore. It’s useful only if you don’t have access to another shared-space app like DropBox or if you absolutely need to have your files attached to tasks or projects. In any case, you need a more expensive account for it to be worth it.

Sorting

Another great thing about 5pm is that you can sort projects and tasks almost any way you like. You can hide the stuff you’re not working on and keep only what you’re attached to, or see everything (depending on your access level). Assigning tasks is easy, too. You can add tags to projects or tasks and sort them through that as well. There’s a way to hide all finished tasks without deleting them, leaving you with only what’s still open. You can sort by due date, alphabetical order… it’s pretty customizable.

Mobile

I haven’t had to use it much since I spend most of my time at home anyway. 5pm has both a mobile website (mostly for tablets) and a dedicated app (for iPhones). It mostly enables you to see tasks and follow up with messages, but there isn’t much else you can do with them. They’re great for keeping track on the go, but the full web application is necessary to access the more advanced functions.

A screen capture of someone else’s project, just as a showcase of 5pm

Overall

We would recommend 5pm for small teams like us who just need a space to put everything together instead of relying on emails and individual task lists. Our favourite features are the messaging and the sorting functions. It’s helped us a great deal for our communication tasks as well as to make sure that no one’s writing the same post twice! The learning curve is very low and the simple interface makes it really easy to understand. There are useful videos on the website to help you get started as well.

If you’ve used 5pm, how do you like it? Do you use another web-based project management app that you’d like to share with us?

RAUL’S NOTES ON 5PM:

The one thing that I’m very curious to explore is the Clients element. Right now, I can’t consider PR companies and/or restaurants, arts companies, non-profits and everybody who pitches me as a client (as they don’t pay for the posts, and I don’t do pay-for-play). But I wonder if at some point, with some large PR projects it would be useful. For example, we are doing A LOT of coverage for the Vancouver International Fringe Festival, and I media-sponsored the Vancouver Latin American Film Festival. Given the size of those projects, maybe I should consider using it.

This review was written by Anabelle with input from Jessica, my two wonderful interns, with a couple of comments from me (Raul) which are clearly indicated on the post. 5pm does not actually know we wrote a review. We were neither paid nor do we get any free perks (I pay for the paid version of 5pm). I just have fallen in love with this project management software and would encourage anyone who likes project management to consider it.

Related posts:

1. Breaking down a project in smaller tasks
2. Breakdown a project into smaller tasks [Productivity]
3. Keeping a project journal/logbook

While my professional activities (academia and consulting) don’t necessarily demand from me to be connected all the time, I’ve gotten to a point with my online life that I am almost connected 24/7. My good friend Alexandra Samuel has written extensively on how your online friends and online lives are also real life. I loved listening to Alex speak at Northern Voice on this very topic this year (Stop Apologizing for Your Online Life).

photo credit: jamalfanaian

But the truth of the matter is that sometimes I am connected even as I eat dinner. With someone who is NOT on Twitter. With someone who would very much appreciate my full, undivided attention. And that’s just on the personal side. What about the professional side? As an academic, I need reflective time to think and ponder about how to further the body of knowledge. And I can’t do that by cross-tasking.

I have explained before here that there is no such thing as multi-tasking). In the past, I have attempted (rather unsuccessfully) to completely disconnect from the online world. I lasted a total of 2 days.

photo credit: dbaron

But as I have mentioned in my 6 months self-assessment, one of the biggest reasons why I now have interns for Hummingbird604.com is because I NEED the time to focus on my academic work. Right now, my consulting is going great as I juggle my lives, but academia DOES require more time to think, reflect and analyze data. And I can’t do that if I’m always online. That’s how I came up with the idea of Disconnected 3.

Disconnected 3 is a challenge that asks from you to spend a total of 3 full, non-interrupted hours offline. I considered letting text your significant other be off the program, but I think that academic work requires full concentration on one task and therefore texting would break the flow. I asked my good friend Minna Van (co-founder of The Network Hub) to take the Disconnected 3 Challenge with me. We’ll see how far we get.

It’s definitely possible to keep track of the process: If you want to tweet, you can begin your 3 hour period of disconnection by saying “Going #Disconnected3 back around XX time“. You can even use Twitter to keep you accountable, by tweeting a summary of what you did during your #Disconnected3 time.

I have it relatively easy in terms of the process to disconnect. I need time to read the articles I assign my students, reflect and prepare Power Point slides. As for my consulting, I need time to read documents that I can save on to my PDF reader and then reflect and write analytical summaries. I also need time to meet with my students, interns and colleagues.

I think that once you implement it, you’ll discover it’s easier to disconnect than what you think (my hypothesis is that once *I* implement it my life will be MUCH easier). But I want to challenge myself to slowly grow the time I’m offline and the time I keep cross-tasking.

What do you think of my crazy #Disconnected3 idea, my lovely readers?

Related posts:

1. MukMuk rally to upgrade to full mascot at Vancouver Art Gallery
2. Music review – Somebody Help Me by Full Blown Rose
3. On the digital disconnect (or how to take a real holiday from online life)

When my Mom visited Vancouver recently, she noticed that my apartment (I live in a shared household but my own private apartment, as you may have read if you’ve followed my blog for long enough) could have used some home improvement. She insisted that we throw all the garbage in common areas of the house, organize my kitchen cabinets, wash and mop floors, wash the bathroom, etc. Basically, we did a whole cleaning out of my apartment. I have read somewhere that “cluttered space, cluttered mind”. Don’t get me wrong: I’m extremely organized. EXTREMELY.

I would not be able to juggle my academic, consulting, social and personal lives if I were not organized. But there is always room for improvement, and my Mom showcased that to me. So we threw a lot of garbage out, I acquired a new couch, and lots of kitchen organizing stuff. And I hired 2 interns for Hummingbird604.com. Having a Content Manager and a Project Manager allows me to free my brain to do what I need to focus on: my consulting and academic lives..

This is a new era in my life.

Doing all these changes to my life at the beginning of August 2011, ensuring that I have a clean(er) start as we move into the 2011-2012 academic year makes me think that this will, by all standards, one of the best if not THE best professional year I’ll have. As Gus put it very nicely the other day, I have, indeed, worked extremely hard to get where I am. And I can now more clearly see the fruits of my work.

I’ve needed to trust now my interns to do stuff and I’ve begun to learn that when you choose the right people and the right fit, you can achieve great things. I have a lot of faith in both of my interns, in that I determined that I had found the right people to work with me. I’ve built a great team and now I look forward to doing the same in my academic and consulting lives too.

Related posts:

1. How much of your professional life depends an internet connection?
2. In between the corporate and the academic life
3. I schedule my life to the very last minute, do you?

The more I have disclosed my ‘secret to having a full academic/consulting life and a full social media life’, the more people seem interested in knowing the routines I follow to make things work. The next one in my “Raul’s Productivity tips” series is this post, wherein I tell you Secret #3: I get up and work, first thing in the morning.

As I was walking back with my friend Lauren and talking about how I make my time count, she asked me what I did, and I said “Secret #2: I schedule my life to the very last minute, including time to sleep, eat and socialize.”. Then as I was walking home, I began reflecting about what would be the next secret. And this morning (I wrote this blog post on Sunday morning) reminded me that yes, it’s the fact that I get up and work as soon as I am awake.

Even during the week, when I go to the gym, the first thing I do is – get up and sit down and do some work. I wake up at 4:45am, set up my coffee maker, and if it is a day where I am supposed to go to the gym and do some consulting or social media work, I just pour a large glass of water and start writing (or analyzing data) until about 5:45am, when I head to the gym. If it’s a day when I teach or do academic work, I read a journal article, write a bit of a research paper or simply go over my lecture notes. I jump-start my brain as soon as it’s up. If it’s a day like today, when I’m not going to exercise (I take Sundays off), I simply put on a cup of coffee and start writing.

I find that if I get some of my goals accomplished even before I hit the gym, the work day seems substantially shorter (and ends up being shorter as I’ve already worked for an hour before I exercise). Maybe this productivity tip will work for you. I’ve read other folks can’t work before they even have their morning coffee – does this happen to you?

Related posts:

1. Scheduling project work early in the morning
2. My Sunday morning routine
3. The 7 day work week

Yeah, I don’t want that to happen to me. That I have no clue what I am supposed to do? Never. So, I schedule my life to the very last minute. Do you? Slowly, my life has evolved in a way in the past couple of years, that I have found a way to commit to work on doing both things (my academic/consulting life and my social media life).

The way I manage my life may not work for everyone, and admittedly, I do sometimes look exhausted when it’s 2:30pm (or 6pm, usually when the workload hits me – think about it, I wake up every morning at 4:45am). But in order for me to be able to complete everything, I schedule my life to the very minute. I book every single appointment on my Google Calendar and then I sync it to my iPhone Calendar application.

I even book time to eat and sleep! And in the past few months, I’ve booked time ONLY to do research and ONLY to read. And for those of you who think I don’t socialize – I book time for my friends, and my loved ones. And more importantly, I make sure to prioritize my loved ones before anything else (there’s one person in my life who gets to schedule time with me before anything else gets in the calendar). Work/life balance is always SO important!

Related posts:

1. Raul’s 6 Tips to Manage Yourself as a Project: Schedule Your Plans To The Very Minute
2. A packed and exciting schedule #ThankfulThursday
3. Google Calendar owns my life

Anybody who tells you that they are multi-tasking is lying to you. And if you think you are multi-tasking, you’re lying to yourself too. You are not multi-tasking, you are cross-tasking (and it’s wrong). And I’m here to tell you why. A couple of nights ago, I was staying late at my office at The Network Hub and I had to submit two academic abstracts before midnight. Normally, like any other Multi-tasker Addict I would jump back and forth or other tasks.

This back-and-forth, come-and-go, activity has done for me but distract me and slow me down. And I’m shifting my own behaviour and training myself to just stay focused. This is very, very hard. Despite the fact that I have a PhD, I’ve always been a hummingbird at heart. My attention spans are very short. But I’m working to my strengths and you could too.

You’ll see, when you think that I am publishing a lot of tweets, it’s in fact (most likely), a number of tweets I’ve already pre-scheduled to go live. When you see me retweet stuff from people, it’s me concentrated on the task of sharing interesting stuff to my readers while I commute on the bus.

I have been working the discipline of just focusing on ONE task at hand, instead of cross-tasking. Just in the same way Heisenberg’s Principle applies and two bodies can’t occupy the same space at the same time, your brain can’t really be in two places at the same time either.

My friend Pete Quily is an ADHD Coach (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) and he has suggested through all the years he’s known me (we became friends as he is also a blogger and I’m the organizer of the Vancouver Blogger Meetup and we see each other at events) that I need to focus on one task at hand. And it’s working.

For example, while I knew in my head that I had to reply to about 6 emails, I decided to just sit down and go through and finish this blog post Even if that means that I have to write down on my notebook “do not forget to respond to X email”, writing the task down leaves my brain space clear from clutter and allows me to focus on the task at hand.

And no, I don’t read self-help books, so this tip did not come from Getting Things Done or any of those books. I eschew those books. I write about my experiences and share productivity tips primarily because that’s how I make MY life work the way it does. And I think these productivity tips might be of use to you too.

Related posts:

1. On working from home and multi-tasking
2. Gay-bashing on Davie Street? What’s wrong with this city?
3. Cross-promoting Blogathon 2009

I wake up at 4:45am every morning, with regularity. This wake-up time is routine except on very rare occasions when my schedule gets a bit screwed due to unexpected circumstances. The first thing I do is set up my coffee maker, pack my bag and head to the gym. If I have some time before hitting the gym, I schedule some tweets or approve comments (or I read). Some of you have asked me why I keep waking up “at Death O’Clock” Why waking up at 4:45am is smart? Because Peter Shankman said so.

I recently came across a blog post by Peter that validated my strategy. I would have not read this post had it not been for my friend Scott Stratten, who retweeted it (and I favorited it).

I have been waking up earlier and earlier as I made my own commitment in the past couple of years to maintaining a full-time social media life simultaneously and in synchronism with my academic and consulting life. I don’t want to quit either, so I cram a lot more in the day. As I read Peter’s points, I patted myself in the back “yes, yes, YES. I do ALL of these”. I felt incredibly validated

But this post is not an exercise in self-glorification. It’s a personal self-reflection on the fact that, almost no idea is new. My *brilliant idea* of waking up earlier and earlier and exercise, do my social media, read and work before anybody else is awake is not new. Peter Shankman blogged about it. And I’m sure others have too.

I love what I do, and the past year has been simply amazing to me, and I love that now I am making time to read (as I committed myself to do in 2011) – and I read more stuff exactly, as Peter says, while you all are sleeping.

Related posts:

1. Life in a post-smart phone era
2. Movie review – Get Smart
3. The Power Smart BC Village of BC Hydro

A number of friends asked me if I had written a “Goals for 2011″ blog post the same way I did for 2010 with my “in 2010 I want to focus on my personal growth” manifesto. You could say that my 2011 manifesto is “to take care of myself before I take care of others“. Differently from how I felt about my 2010 major goal, in 2011 I am not 100% sure of the actual pathway. Particularly as I start 2011 helping organize a charitable event (you’ll hear more at the beginning of the coming week). And I still work the 7 day work week.

Those of you who have read Tim Ferriss’ book “the 4 hour work week” may find some resonance with both our titles (full disclosure, I have NEVER read anything of Tim Ferriss, other than a ONE-time glimpse at his Twitter feed). But the truth is, the reason why I thought of the fact that I continue to have a 7 day work week is that, much as I have begun to say NO to a lot of things and try to cut down on commitments, I still work 7 days a week.

I thought of staying at my office late last night (I did end up leaving after 8pm) so I could finish all the work I had pending and my body just couldn’t take it. I had to go home and eat dinner and go to bed. And despite the fact that people seem to continue to think that blogging is an activity that does not take time, maintaining this blog DOES take a lot of time, and should be considered work.

Liaising with PR folks, theatre producers, restaurant managers and other people who approach me to blog about them DOES take time (I wrote a lengthy post on the value of time a while ago that I need to polish and publish). Running contests, contacting winners, mailing prizes DOES take time. So, while I still blog for myself and I love it, it’s still work. I still have to think about an editorial calendar (thanks to my friend Kate Trgovac for the idea). I still have to write blog posts, find photos to go with my posts (or upload my own). All these activities take time!

So I end up working 7 days a week. My goal for 2011 is to go down from working 7 days a week to a maximum of 6 and hopefully to a maybe longer work week (I work easily 9-14 hour days sometimes) but hopefully, full weekends and more holidays this year. That’s one of my goals in 2011 – to move slowly away from the 7 day work week.

Related posts:

1. Bike To Work Week BC (Nov 1-7, 2010)
2. Get up and work, first thing in the morning
3. Scheduling project work early in the morning

Growing up with academics in the family always made me ponder what the best procedures were so that I could be as productive as my parents or my brothers. We were raised on a multidisciplinary, multi-activity household, where we did arts, science, volunteer work and sports. But for some reason I often struggled with sitting down for hours to write.

It was easy for me to run regressions, create mathematical models or design programs, but during my graduate coursework (especially the PhD), I had a hard time spending long hours writing and in particular, getting started on papers. So I asked two professors at UBC what their technique was to jump-start their day. The question I asked was – what do you do first thing in the morning that allows you to concentrate on academic work rather than on administrative trivia.

One of them indicated that the first thing she did was read an academic paper (book chapter, journal article, etc.) to get her thinking juices started. The other one suggested that she sat down to write. Just wrote for an hour or two, or even three. She got her coffee and sat down to write, and around 11 am she would check email, etc.

Now that I’m spending 60% of my time on campus, my routine is a combination of both of these. I arrive to my UBC office, coffee in hand, and I read at least one journal article. I then write my thoughts on the article (like an annotated bibliography) and, if said article is included in the paper I am writing, I bring those thoughts into the paper. I don’t let anyone interrupt my workflow until after lunch (my office hours are 2:30pm to 3:30pm).

If I am preparing lecture slides, I still read an article or two, and then move on to writing the slide deck. I usually prepare my lecture one day in advance, and on the day-of, I simply go through my slide deck and rehearse once more.

If your primary activity is writing (and/or research, or any activity that requires long, intense periods of concentration), what is your morning routine? How do you jump start your days?

Related posts:

1. Dedicating one day to research tasks [Productivity]
2. The painful process of writing academic book chapters/articles
3. On furthering my academic writing

It’s August 31st and I am (as usual) planning for the month ahead. Moreover, since the beginning of the academic term is next week (right after Labour Day) I am also planning for the next few months. I But the one thing that I began to think about as I was – when are we supposed to actually take stock and see what we accomplished? On the day of the end of the month? Or afterwards? When do YOU assess what you accomplished over a period of time?

Related posts:

1. Plan for the month or week ahead
2. Planning for the month ahead
3. Vancouver Asian Heritage Month 2011

I can’t, unfortunately, work at night anymore. It is actually quite rare that I will be able to work late at night. I mostly start work early (6 am or so) and then work through until around midnight (on a day when I am overwhelmed with work). I do try to schedule workouts early in the morning as that’s something that works for my weight-loss program.

But lately I haven’t had as much time to work out (because I’ve been super busy – and before you scold me, yes, I know I need to go back to my super rigorous training regime). Though, I’ll admit, something that is working for me is to schedule the most work in the mornings (early) so that I can get the project work out of the way and then focus on other stuff.

When do you schedule your heaviest workload? Mornings? Afternoons? Evenings?

Related posts:

1. Get up and work, first thing in the morning
2. My Sunday morning routine
3. Wednesday Link Love – Early Morning Edition

When I was writing my doctoral dissertation, I read a lot of books about “how to finish your PhD thesis and not go insane in the process”. Well, that was the gist of it anyways. I most often laughed (particularly at the beginning of my PhD) because everywhere I found the same piece of advice – “break down your project into smaller tasks”. I laughed because I thought to myself “oh, geez – let’s see, today I am going to read 5 articles on industrial restructuring, and write 4 pages on environmental policy in Latin America, and answer only 10 emails”. It looked to me as though silly advice. As my doctoral research progressed, I learned how to break down specific elements of the dissertation into smaller, more manageable tasks.

I devised ways to write just some sections of the thesis, and read only literature associated with it. This piece of advice, that once I laughed at, has stayed with me and helped me complete other projects, even those that aren’t related to research.

For example, I hate doing dishes. With extreme hate, I might add. So I decided to apply this piece of advice to myself. I washed first all the cutlery, then all the plates, then I took a break, then I washed pots, pans and bowls. At the end of 3 hours, I was all done. In between tasks, I read, I wrote, I made a few phone calls. But I got it all done.

So it’s time for me to admit that yes, most of the time, breaking down a project into smaller tasks can be helpful to your productivity. I think the key is to find which tasks are the most helpful.

Related posts:

1. Anti-procrastination remedy: Breaking tasks into smaller bits
2. Breakdown a project into smaller tasks [Productivity]
3. Review of 5pm (project management application)

I have loathed electronic newsletters for as long as I can remember. I even devised a nifty GMail filter that allows me to move every single newsletter I receive into a folder that I have labeled “E-Newsletters” (yes, my dear friend Alex Samuel, I created that filter even before I attended your fantastic talk at Northern Voice). Before everyone who sends me their e-newsletter feels unloved, I do check that folder on occasion, at least once a week. I do like being informed of what the people I’m connected with are doing. I just can’t click on every e-newsletter I receive. Also, many of them are actually unsolicited and I often ponder what the etiquette is (you may have seen me rant about it on Twitter).

All of the above said, I’m seriously considering creating an e-newsletter (with an Opt-In, rather than an Opt-Out option). Mostly because I do realize that many people are actually out of the loop as to what I do, what I have been up to and what I’m doing in the fall and in the next year. This e-newsletter would NOT be for Hummingbird604.com, but for my own academic, research and consulting activities. I spent a solid 20 minutes crafting a long e-mail response to a dear friend of mine who asked me “so, what have you been up to”. I don’t want to have to do this with every friend.

So, I put out the question on Twitter – I had heard about MailChimp and ConstantContact. As I usually do whenever exploring a new avenue of work, I will test both platforms. My goal is to design an e-newsletter that will be short, sweet and compelling.

I am not looking to get more consulting business out of my e-newsletter, to be quite honest, at least not for now (though if it comes, well, awesome!). I am very lucky that I am working on projects I love, and while definitely open to new consulting gigs, the e-newsletter is NOT planned to do that. It will be aimed mostly at answering the question so, Raul, what have you been up to?

Many people would say “well, isn’t your blog supposed to tell people what you’ve been up to?” and the truth is, it’s no longer a diarist blog. It’s a smörgåsbord blog. I write about environment, my life, restaurants, theatre, dance, music, random stuff, tech, social media and my travels. And because I love giving exposure to local businesses and projects (particularly non-profits), I can’t really say “well, read my blog and filter by the category Personal or Academic so you can know what I’ve been up to”

So, I think I’m going to go with an e-newsletter. Yes, after criticizing them for so long, here I come. So, my dear readers, have at it on the comments section. Which platform is best for you?

No related posts.

One of the great things that I have learned about information technology is that, the more I explore it, the more excited I become with the possibilities it offers for academics like me. Let me explain. Recently, I took a few days off and went up to Whistler to my friend Lisa Thomas-Tench’s family townhouse. Lisa forewarned me that the place wasn’t fitted with wireless internet. I was excited at NOT being online.

You’ll see, whether I am at my downtown office at The Network Hub, working from home or on the road (visiting clients) or at the university, I am ALWAYS online. Given that I have had an iPhone for almost a year now (thanks to my friend Mike Yurechko), I am always able to check my emails, tweets and documents on-the-go.

Except when I am nowhere near a wireless Internet connection.

I purposefully decided NOT to get a data plan because I knew I would be connected ALL THE TIME. I knew that by keeping my iPhone purely able to log on to wireless internet, without having data plan, I would have to learn to be efficient, download all my emails, maybe download my tweets and check them while commuting from Point A to Point B.

During my retreat in Whistler (which was aimed at just focusing on writing a manuscript I am working on with my Mom, who is also an academic), I needed to download a lot of data. But I just didn’t have the time to go visit my friend Tris and borrow an external HDD.

What I did instead, though, was to turn on Gears on both of my browsers (Chrome and Firefox) and allow GMail to operate in offline mode. And it was AMAZING. I was able to catch up on a heck of a lot of emails I needed, read drafts of documents I had sent myself via email, and read drafts of journal articles I had to peer-review. Client work, etc. All available.

Google – you are geniuses.

While it annoys me that YouTube is synchronized with my Gmail account, and it also annoys me that Google.ca/calendar does not exist (only Google.com/Calendar), your tools have really greatly improved my workflow.

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1. GMail is down… again! On the dependency on tech tools
2. Cycling as a mode of sustainable transportation
3. Use an offline blogging tool (Blogging 201)

I’m heading to the gym as soon as this post is published, and while I feel really annoyed at the fact that I have had to move most of my day forward and around (and even pushing some work to tomorrow, Saturday), I feel really strongly about maintaining my exercise regime. I have noticed that, whenever I don’t exercise in the morning, my body is weaker and I want to sleep more, but not to replenish my body. This sleep feels – how do I say it? – unhealthy. I used to be a night owl, and since coming back full time to university-level teaching last year, I switched back to mornings.

The “switch back to mornings” has worked really well, but due to the massive amount of work I need to get done before my Mom arrives in Vancouver (on June 23rd, for a whole month), I have been really stressed and (contrary to what I expected), I have been waking up a bit later (around 6:45am, when normally I’d be up by 5:00am). Also, I’ve been attending a lot of media events, so that’s also contributed to my exhaustion.

What I do when this happens (unless I am teaching early in the morning) is – I just adjust my schedule to my biological clock. So for example, if today I exercise from 9-10am (and Friday is one of my flexible-teaching-days), I will not have a full-on breakfast and just have a snack, and then eat lunch at 12:00, then continue with my work and take a deserved break at 4:30pm for a few drinks.

If your schedule is flexible, I’d suggest that you adjust it to your biological clock. I know that I am needing more sleep this week, and instead of being groggy and forcing myself out of bed and go to the gym at 6:00am, I am letting my body relax and just work through this period of increased sleep in the mornings. Which, as I said is kind of surprising. The sun is rising at 5:00am and setting at 9:00pm!

Related posts:

1. Scheduling project work early in the morning
2. I schedule my life to the very last minute, do you?
3. I don’t do mornings

I usually plan my work life around a full academic year (2010-2011 in this case) and then add on top the summer months of the preceding year, so that is becomes a full fiscal year (in this case, most of my projects run May 2010-April 2011). The way I planned my academic year for 2010-2011, I made sure that the heaviest teaching load was in the January-April 2011 (two courses) as I would like to take some time in May 2011 to just have a holiday. I am a planning geek.

I was just programming the rest of this full year (e.g. June 2011 through April 2011) and booking time on my Google Calendar for everything (my office hours, the time I have allocated for Projects A, B and C) and I realized how much of my life is owned by Google Calendar. Seriously. I have gotten to the point where I ask my collaborators, and even my best friends “send me a GCal invite and I’ll accept it”. ics files and I have become very, very close buddies.

The truth of the matter is, I am always so busy that if I didn’t have Google Calendar (and my trusty iPhone who syncs with my GCal) I would probably fail at everything. I have marked deadlines for projects, birthdays, and even reminders for when I have to exercise and when I am supposed to be eating/sleeping. Not kidding you.

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1. The Hope in Shadows 2009 Calendar – Please buy your calendar
2. I schedule my life to the very last minute, do you?
3. Hope in Shadows Calendar 2011

I’m usually very successful at organizing my desk at The Network Hub because I can have clients drop by any time. Also, having my colleagues from The Network Hub see a messy desk at my downtown office would make me feel embarrassed.

But since professors are seen traditionally as “messy”, I didn’t spend much time cleaning and organizing my desk at UBC. Until this past week. I decided it was over, and that I needed all my work desk areas (at home, at The Network Hub and at UBC) to be perfectly organized. The photos included in this post show you how my desk looks now.

Organizing my desk at UBC is key because it allows me to have the peace of mind and clean desk in order for me to plan for the month ahead as well. Now if getting rid of the Box of Miscellaneous Stuff was so easy! It took me about 3 hours to clean my UBC desk, I don’t want to think how long it’ll take me to sort the BMS!

So my suggestion is, keep your work areas (ALL of them) organized at all times.

Related posts:

1. Keep your desk organized at all times
2. Are organized protests effective?
3. Devote one day to organization and cleanup

What that phrase means is, sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. And taking a taxi cab is one of those things. A few weeks ago, the night that I had to speak at The PR Group on relationships with bloggers and traditional media, I was running late. I wasn’t feeling well, had been ill all week, and I didn’t want to cancel on Sara Pereira’s event. So what did I do? I took a cab. It was certainly $ 15 dollars, and probably I went over my budget for transportation that week by THIS much.

But I arrived warm and dry, ready to sit around a round table of very smart PR people. I decided that my health (I was feeling very sick) was worth much more than $ 15 that the cab cost me. I decided that it was too rainy and cold to take the bus. Those are the kinds of decisions that sometimes one has to do. You know, by one I mean, those of us who don’t own a car and use public transit and/or bike/walk everywhere (I do walk everywhere and use public transit).

This may not be a super crucial topic to blog about, but these situations have reminded me about the value of a taxi ride. Sometimes, I just take a cab to be somewhere fast. My currency is my time, and it’s too valuable to waste it sometimes in a 45 minute bus ride, or a 1.5 hour walk.

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1. The Walk Score

The first thing I do either on the night of the last day of the month or during the first day of the month is to plan for the month ahead. I look at my Google Calendar and examine which days I’m going to be teaching, which days I’m going to be devoting to consulting, to working on my research, when I’m supposed to be travelling and where, what talks I’m supposed to be giving and which projects I’m supposed to be devoting time to.

Since we are already in March (end of Q1 or quarter 1, as people call it), I do a double-whammy examination. I plan for the month, but I also plan for the two other time frames I am working on (namely, the 4 month time frame of the semester that is about to end, and the six-month frame). For example, today, no matter how late I stay at my office, I will set my goals towards this month, the end of this semester (4 month semester, or term), the next semester and June 2010.

It helps me to break down my project tasks depending on the timeframe. So, for example, my teaching I structure it around terms. My coaching clients, I structure their activities on a 6 month schedule. My research, I plan on a yearly and 6 month basis. And my consulting, of course, is planned around the short- and long-term goals. Of course, I prioritize the tasks that are more urgent, and break down the plans I make up to the weekly level.

And yes, this month, I do plan to make sure to publish some more productivity tips!

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1. Plan for the month or week ahead
2. Taking stock of your projects at the end of the month
3. Vancouver Asian Heritage Month 2011

The beginning of the semester has proven extremely challenging for me. It’s been a long while since I’ve taught 2 undergraduate courses and 2 college-level courses. I’ve struggled this week to stay afloat. My class sizes are relatively large compared to what I was used to, and even though I had spent a substantial amount of time preparing for this new semester, I still haven’t had much time to breathe. This got me thinking…

What productivity tip can I share on how I’m adapting to being on top of my teaching, my consulting, my research AND all the additional (volunteer) work that academia brings (like peer-reviews for journals, giving feedback to my fellow researchers on draft papers, etc.) – well, I prioritize tasks.

For example, I hadn’t given much priority to blogging or social media events these past few weeks. I figured that, if it was a case of “if you don’t write about this the opportunity will be lost” I would have needed to make the time. But for example, there are some events that have happened this week that I’ve been invited to and that I would need to attend to start ramping up again my blogging and my involvement in social media.

But now that the first few weeks of teaching craziness are almost over and that the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics are right here, my plan is to get back on track with my daily, 3-5 blog posts. I will definitely not be able to attend many media events, but those that I do, I plan to give my very best. I have also prioritized attending theatre and art performances (I’m a big supporter of our local theatre/dance scene) and of course, my dancing and my exercising. So, now I’m shifting priorities again. Hope this helps you!

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1. Breaking down a project in smaller tasks
2. A short hiatus
3. Breakdown a project into smaller tasks [Productivity]

If you are like me, you probably have tonnes of little “Post-It” stickers where you have scribbled notes, thoughts and ideas. Since I am a bit of an organization nerd, I usually stick those Post-It’s in the pages of my logbook, wherever they may fit and whichever project these notes may be associated with. I had four work-related meetings before ringing the New Year.

While sitting in one of these work meetings, I realized that I had brought my 2009 project logbook along with me, while I started making notes in the 2010 project logbook. I realized that, while I like the idea, it’s rather impractical to be bringing along two logbooks with me to every meeting in January. So that made me devise the next-best idea (and a productivity tip I wanted to share). Collating the notes from the previous year’s logbook.

My 2010 logbook has already been started, but what I have done is divide my 2010 logbook in the following categories:

2010
- New Projects (Proposals)
- New Projects (Ideas)
- New Clients (Prospects)
- New Students
- 2009 Summary
* Current Research Projects
* Current Consulting Projects (and Clients)
* Current Coaching Clients
* Current Teaching Assignments

As you can see, I have devoted one of the sections of my 2010 logbook to present an overview/summary of the 2009 projects (consulting, coaching, students who need to be graduated, students who are graduating, students whom I’m still mentoring, research projects I’m working on, grant proposals that need to be finished, etc.) – I have broken it down into the different sub-areas that I work in so that I know exactly what needs to happen in the following months.

I share this tip with you in hopes it will be of use for you as we launch this wonderful 2010. All the best!

Related posts:

1. Keeping a project journal/logbook
2. Notes from the first #VanChangeCamp meeting
3. Blogging 201- Write your blog entry ideas on paper

I keep all my stationery supplies (stapler, pens, and notepads) as well as my “Blogging To Do” files. I also use the left-hand side working table to spread documents as I review them. As an academic, I often need to read papers, journal articles, grant proposals, etc. This working table lets me do that while keeping a dedicated desk for the laptop and processing trays.

I have previously mentioned before that I have dedicated at least one day a month to fully and thoroughly clean up. This process, while sometimes annoying, gives me the freedom to arrive the next day to a clean slate. This is something I do as well with my desk. I make sure that I have cleaned every single part of my working space so that the next morning I arrive and find it neat and clean.

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1. Keep your work desk area organized
2. Are organized protests effective?
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A few months ago, I shifted my sleeping schedule around. I went from being a night owl to becoming a morning person. Many people were shocked that I decided to turn around so drastically. Little they knew that I *had* to do it. The more my clients organized meetings in the morning, the more I would be expected to have a functioning brain at 9 am. Which, if I went to bed at 4am, wouldn’t happen.

So I decided to use the 21 day to a new habit method. I made the best of my love for routines to re-train myself into believing that it was ok for my brain to wake up at 5:30am or 6:00am and then work until about 9pm. No later than that, hopefully (although sometimes I put in as many as 16 hours of work in).

photo credit: keepitsurreal

The past few weekend mornings have been brutal, however. I have still woken up early and wanted to go back to bed. I did, on a couple of occasions. I woke up at 6:00am and then decided to sleep in for a couple more hours. Unfortunately, that hasn’t sat very well with my brain. My productivity was hindered and I retreated to just focusing on the items that had the ranking of highest-in-my-list-of-priorities. This is not a good sign.

So I decided this morning to reflect on the importance of discipline and habits. It’s an annoyance, of course, to have to wake up at 7:00am every single day even on weekends. But it provides stability and a framework for my brain to operate and be productive. I decided to just be disciplined and stay within my habits. It probably won’t go very well with my neighbours to hear the shower, but I *do* know that my upstairs’ neighbour’s kid *is* awake (and so is he). So, I am pretty sure that they won’t mind. Because, for me, it is all a matter of discipline and habits.

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1. Old habits die hard
2. On early mornings, discipline and routines
3. The importance of routines

When I was still in graduate school and finishing my doctorate, I remember having a conversation with my former PhD advisor on my goals, and the things I wanted to achieve, and so on. I clearly recall that he said “even though I want you to work hard, you should take AT LEAST one day off per week – 24 hours where you don’t think about your thesis and recharge your batteries”

I find myself having a hard time sometimes with this particular productivity tip. However, for example, last night I slept 15 hours and today I decided to write on my blog only a couple of things that were focused on productivity, rather than trying to write more in-depth stuff.

Today, I’ll be offline for the rest of today, mostly, and will spend some time doing some work around the house, although I do have a couple of grant proposals that need to go out, but those are mostly done. So, my recommendation is – if you can (and you certainly *should* be able to!) take a day off per week. It really does help me not to be thinking all academically or about consulting/teaching *all* the time.

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2. Events this week
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I am very organized 97% of my life, but the one area where I sometimes feel as though I need more organization is on deciding which chores to tackle first. As you may have read on my blog before, I am a big proponent of dedicating one day to cleaning up and of getting rid of the Box of Miscellaneous Stuff (BMS). I’m also pretty good at jumping ahead with the tasks I’ve already broken down into manageable bits, even while I travel (remember that post of mine on the Minimum Travel Work Unit, the MTWU?). But the one thing I always struggled with was – which chore to do first? I end up multitasking them all.

So, finally (and since I’m a very big proponent of reading horoscopes, even if just for fun) I decided to read my horoscope for today (as I am doing laundry, reading Twitter, downloading articles on workaholism and cleaning my apartment) and guess what it says?

Virgo: You have an unusual list of chores to do today and you might actually be looking forward to getting started on them. You don’t know exactly how it’s going to go until you begin, but don’t waste too much time figuring out all the details. Your best shot now will be to let go of your tendency to want more control; simply make it up as you go along. You have all the skills necessary for success.

My list is indeed unusual in the sense that I might need to do some additional Christmas shopping and buy some decorations for home. But what I particularly enjoyed was the advice – simply make it up as you go along. So, I’ve decided to advice what seems to be working for me now – start working on chores right away. Don’t delay thinking “should I do (a) or (b) first?” … just get going with them!

Have a wonderful day!

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1. Getting things accomplished – and chores
2. House chores ARE also work!
3. Start your week with your right foot

The Minimum Travel Work Unit (MTWU) strategy has really helped me increase my productivity, ever since I started travelling to international and national conferences. I used to hate to spend time on a plane or a ferry simply because it meant that I had to interrupt my productive activities for a certain period of time. I’ve never been able to travel leisurely. For me, travel time *is* productive time too.

The best way for me to make a trip efficient in terms of getting work done is to break down my tasks into what I call the Minimum Travel Work Unit (MTWU). A MTWU is the smallest piece of work that, as a minimum I can complete and cross the task as being finished within the duration of a trip. So for example, this evening, my MTWU was – deciding what types of policies I was going to use as case studies for next term when I teach my Comparative Politics of Public Policy.

It took me less than the duration of a ferry trip to complete the list of case studies. Since I had completed my first MTWU, I felt that I had to complete another MTWU and so I did. I inserted the citations for the first six weeks of theoretical analyses. By the time I had finished that task, I had completed 2 MTWUs and I was at the Tsawassen ferry terminal.

So, next time you go on a trip, look at your list of tasks to complete, and make sure that you only attempt to finish an MTWU. Otherwise you might feel frustrated that you have arrived to your destination and you still did not complete your task.

Related posts:

1. Stage 1 of pre-travel clean-up
2. Raul’s 2010 Year In Review: Travel
3. Stage 2 of pre-travel clean-up

I pride myself in being organized and having a really-well scheduled life. One element that really helps me stay organized is having developed routines for everything. For example, when I get to my office at The Network Hub I follow the same routine every day (some steps may be skipped depending on whether someone already prepared the coffee).

1. Hang my coat, sweater, scarf, stow my umbrella.
2. Approach Monique (our coffee maker) and check whether there’s coffee made. If not, wash coffee pot and start a new fresh pot of coffee.
3. Arrive to my desk, unload laptop, cables, adapter, earphones, wireless mouse, cooling mat.
4. Plug everything to whatever needs to be plugged (laptop cord to power outlet, wireless mouse USB end to laptop, cooling mat to USB end, etc.) – start laptop.
5. Secure my laptop with the key chain.
6. As the coffee brews, go fill my stainless steel water bottle. If coffee is ready, bring a cup of freshly brewed caffeine to my desk (along with water bottle already full).
7. Log in to my account – say hi all around to my fellow entrepreneurs.
8. Start TweetDeck, various emails, etc. Check my @ replies, urgent emails, To-Do task list.
9. Check my Inbox (the physical one, on my desk) – add items as needed.
10. Quickly read one academic article – starts my juices.
11. Review my daily plan and prioritize items.
12. Get to work.

Do you have a routine when you get to work?

Related posts:

1. My weekend routines
2. On early mornings, discipline and routines
3. Create a new habit in 21 days through routines

Coincidentally, we ended up at Costco yesterday and I got to browse through some of the platter options that the hyper-market provides. It occurred to me that my idea of keeping a file of the various catering options that I’ve explored recently wasn’t a bad idea. I would probably get some of the Costco platters if I was in a rush to do an evening event and it was something light (like fruit or veggie platters), something for a late night or early afternoon working meeting. I see the value in the services of catering and event planning, and for a large event, I probably would hire an event organizer and a caterer. Really small meetups, I source on my own.

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I usually take the first day of the month to plan my month ahead. It helps me decide on targets and goals, and allows me to schedule the appropriate amount of time for each task. Unfortunately, even with the best monthly plan, variations and changes to my schedule are unavoidable. So I have learned to break down my monthly plan to weekly plans. It helps me readjust whenever any sudden changes to my plans happen.

I print out monthly calendars and weekly schedule sheets. On the first or second day of the month, I draft a rough monthly schedule of what I need to do (blogging, client work, research, teaching, preparation, speaking engagements, organizing events, etc.) Then, I break down those monthly plans to weekly schedules, including the number of hours I am devoting to each task. I also pencil in the personal time, including seeing my friends, doing laundry, etc. And then I just re-adjust the monthly plan as changes come along.

Do you have a monthly planning tool? Or how do you plan your workload?

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1. Planning for the month ahead
2. It’s OK to Plan Ahead… #BreatheYYJ @Breathe_Now (Session 1)
3. Taking stock of your projects at the end of the month

I think one of the things I enjoy the most when people read my blog is receiving feedback on stuff that I write and that people find useful. One of the elements I have incorporated on my site is a list of productivity tips. Short little snippets of suggestions on how to be more productive. But I don’t just list them as though they are abstract ideas. I list here what I do to be more productive, in a “this is how I do it, so I hope it’ll work for you too” kind of way.

While this week has been rather slow for my blogging, my client work, teaching and research productivity have been through the roof. One of the productivity elements I have assimilated into my work and personal life is to get rid of the Box of Miscellaneous Stuff (BMS). Another element I’ve incorporated is to devote one day (in full or at least a few hours) to clean up my desk/office/home. That way, as the month begins, I have different challenges, and cleaning up and organizing is not one of them. I start the month with a clean slate.

I did that a few weeks back with my apartment, and as I sit here at my office at The Network Hub listening to Styx and Friendly Fires, I’m cleaning up my desk, filing up stuff, creating labels for my folders, sorting supplies, organizing the monthly workload and schedule. Tomorrow is November 1st, and I will have a clean slate (and an organized office and home).

Related posts:

1. What I did today…
2. Tip # 2: Don’t go to bed without having a “next day” plan
3. Keep your desk organized at all times

One of the biggest challenges for someone who works long hours, is both single AND lives alone, like I do, is to find time to clean up our apartments, keep them organized, do chores, laundry, and maintain a livable place. As you may have read before, I’m keeping a strict work schedule and a fairly good degree of separation work/home. Thus, I take at least a few hours a week (in one day) to clear up my clutter.

I mostly use Friday nights to clear my desk at the office and do some filing, but I usually reserve now Sunday nights to try and organize both my desk at work and my home. I end up doing some grocery shopping, preparing lunch and dinners and rarely do I get enough time to sort out mail, file receipts and put away flyers that are really not relevant.

So what I ended up doing most of the time was to throw everything in what I called The Box of Miscellaneous Stuff. That cardboard box that I would, at some point in my day/week/month/year, go through and clear out. Well, today (Sunday) I have spent the majority of the day doing exactly that.

I think it’s important for me to recommend to get rid of the Box of Miscellaneous Stuff, at least once a month. [EDIT - I forgot to mention that I use my recommended One Item, One Action process to clear the Box of Miscellaneous Stuff]. Otherwise, you’ll end up missing important deadlines, accumulate receipts that should be filed, etc. I’m paying for not having done it in a few months now, I have THREE Boxes of Miscellaneous Stuff. But I can claim a small victory today. I have cleared Box 1 and I’m halfway through Box 2. AND I’m done laundry.

How is YOUR Sunday going?

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1. The ‘bag of additional stuff’
2. Stuff ‘N’ Junk (Fabio Bacchini)
3. Hot Stuff (I Want You Back) by the Pussycat Dolls