Pages

▼

Wednesday, January 17, 2018

"Focus": my One Word for governing my life in 2018

This is the first in a series of blog posts that I will publish during 2018 for my One Word of the year which is"focus". The Twitter hashtag for this activity is #OneWord18SiFi.
The “Si” in the hashtag is me and the “Fi” is Fiona Michaux. More on Fiona and what we are doing as the story unfolds below.
This post is structured as follows:-
  1. Review of my 2017 in the context of "discipline" being my One Word
  2. What happened towards the end of 2017 that has set my approach for doing One Word 2018
  3. The process I went through to get to the word "focus" for 2018
  4. The learning and development plan I have put in place for 2018 to implement "focus"

This is the Fiona-produced logo we will be using for all activities relating to our One Word 2018 collaboration:


oneword2018---Fiona-and-Simon_thumb3
1: Review of 2017 in the context of "discipline" being my One Word

2017 was the first year I have done One Word instead of my usually-futile attempts at new year's resolutions.

I blogged the backstory in this blog post at the end of 2016.

The following book trailer gives some background to One Word:

Key to the choice of the word "discipline" were the following graphic and video that set my course for the year.

discipline---bridge_thumb1

I now look back at what I said were my issues going into 2017 and assess where I am up to now with each one. For the record, I already set my learning and development plan for 2018 without reviewing last year's development areas! For me, this then became a more interesting exercise as I am a different person now than I was at the start of 2017.

  1. Work Life
    1. The nature of my work role is such that there are multiple immediate (project and live systems support) tasks always on the go and pressing. I am easily distracted and chop and change instantly between them. Latterly this year, I have even been finding composed emails that have not been sent. I have been playing with KanbanFlow a whole ago and Trello/Pomello more recently to help me focus more but can do much better than I am doing currently.
      December 2017: Slightly better now. Still not got an ideal working practice in place for work management. I continued to use Trello but not all the time. I still do not have a trusted system in place to guarantee that I do not miss things if I write things down to remember them! No major issues arose though in my service delivery. I know this could be better. To be addressed further in 2018.
    2. I have reduced the number of notifications I receive on the laptop and mobile but need to go further. Not having email on and checking it regularly is probably a non-starter given that support of live systems is a part of my job role.December 2017: I suspect this was slightly charitable. This needs to go a lot further, including switching off all notifications on my ipad when I am reading eBooks. Tim Ferriss mentioned switching devices to airplane mode as a nuclear option. To be addressed further (and finally) in 2018.
    3. Working from home each Friday is a positive for me but there needs to be clearer split of work time from personal time as I tend to start and end work later than when I am in the office.December 2017: Still lacking discipline in this area. To be addressed further in 2018.
  2. Personal Development
    1. Using the Personal Knowledge Mastery 3-stage classification of Seek, Sense Share, I assess myself as follows:-
      1. Seek: there is nothing too wrong with the variety of my incoming streams of content. My issue is probably that my interests are too wide and there are multiple “inboxes” that contain intimidatingly large quantities of content items. This results in me often not being able to locate content that I know I have seen. I blogged about this recently in my post titled “My input content streams, content management and content sharing tools”.December 2017: No major improvement in 2017. Number of items in my Evernote InBox simply growing day by day. To be addressed further in 2018.
      2. Sense: On the back of the proactive and reactive Seek-ing above, I don’t do much sensing unless the Seek-ing is for a specific personal immediate need. I do not spend a lot of time Sense-ing and definitely need to do more of that and go deeper with the content I have seen. Arguably, I need to do more Sense-ing than I do currently on Share-ing. In the second half of the year I played with Degreed as a way of curating content into role pathways. I need to explore this further as a way of helping me group content together for specific reasons.December 2017: No further playing with Degreed in 2017. I Storify-ed every Twitter Chat I participdated in during 2017 but then rarely reviewed these later. To be addressed further in 2018.
      3. Share: I recently analysed, at a very high level, the tweets I had sent in 2016 in the post titled “Analysis of my 2016 Tweets”.I share content in the following ways (nearly exclusively via Twitter but latterly I am interacting with more non-social groups on Facebook):-
        1. imply sharing what I am watching, playing, listening to etc with no named recipient]
        2. sharing specific content with named recipients if I believe it will be of interest to them
        3. responding with specific content to people who have asked specific questions or where they have said something that I want to respond to.
          December 2017: Still a key area of strength for me. I continue to proactively and reactively share content and address people's queries in communities such as the Working Out Loud Facebook Group and latterly in 2017 on LinkedIn. No plans to do an analysis of my 2017 tweets. No plans to significantly change how I operate in this area in 2018.
    2. Using Isabel de Clercq’s 3 Levels of Participation in Online Knowledge Flows (see graphic), I assess myself as follows:-
      1. Consume (existing materials): I do lots of that!
      2. Contribute (to existing materials): a weakness of mine and I need to do more of this.
      3. Create (new materials): I do very little of this and have already more recently been addressing this via blog posts.I have started reading Cal Newport’s Deep Work and have been deeply challenged by the book already across Work and Personal Development dimensions of my life. I need to take specific actions away from that book and get on with it.
        December 2017: The main change is that I have created more of my own content in 2017 than in any other year. This was a core part of my 1st WOL Circle goal in Q1. "Deep Work" is one of the books on my reading list for 2018. Contributing to others' material will happen as part of how I will do One Word in 2018 (more to say on this below). To be addressed further in 2018.
    3. I am hoping to start a WOL Circle shortly and may even lead/facilitate it if no one else wants to! This will be a challenge in terms of time but know it is something that I need to do to develop myself more formally. I have high hopes for what I will learn about myself and from others.
      December 2017: Running WOL Circles and associated book clubs has been my greatest success in 2017 as well as being all-consuming in a good way. I have rarely felt more alive! To be addressed further in 2018 hopefully on a grander scaleI recently took part in an #LDinsight Twitter Chat that asked the question "What are you glad to have done in 2017?". See the full curated set of tweets in Storify. The Tweet chain below was my response and gives a flavour of what I have got up to this year.
      https://twitter.com/srjf/status/941589951946350593
    4. TweetChats: These were new to me this year and already these are an important part of me marshalling my knowledge by contributing to the chat and also realising what I do not know and need to know more of. Some of the tweetchats are with tribes that I would not normally consider my natural home.
      December 2017: These have become a core part of my reflection on my learning in 2017. I intend to continue to do the same in 2018 with a possible review of the chats that I stay involved in and do more on the WOL circle exercises relating to identifying new communities to be a part of. An issue in the short term will be to address what to do about curating tweets and migrating Storify files from Storify as that free service ends in 2018.
  3. Personal Organisation
    1. Despite being what other people would call “organised”, I know I can do much better.
    2. When saving non-work-related content onto a hard drive, I tend to simply save into a “Downloads” directory and not think about where it should really go for long term saving and retrieving. This is also partly an “Inbox” issue as things go there that I intend to read later.
    3. I have been trying to go paperless, scanning paper documents that do not need to be kept in paper form. This is another “Inbox” issue as these pile up until I need to “tidy up”.
      December 2017: All of these remain issues getting in the way of me becoming more effective. To be addressed further in 2018.
  4. Physical and Digital “Possessions”
    1. I have a strong hoarding instinct. This is not quite as bad as some of the worst cases you see on TV where there is no floor space to be seen. I downsized boxes slightly when we moved house in  May 2015 but there are boxes of books etc that have not been opened since the house move which was also the case before we moved. In the recent past this was my “change challenge” that I used on the Harvard “Immunity To Change” MOOC in Q2 2014. This was the deepest MOOC I have done in terms of inward thinking and challenge. During that course, the exercises revealed lots of deep things about me (note: having just now reminded myself of that content, there is too much to add here but I may do a separate blog post on just that).
    2. This hoarding also extends to digital hoarding of content which is easier to get away with as no one else sees it directly! I note that some of the same tendencies with my physical hoarding extends to digital hoarding. I often share this BBC Radio 4 Digital Human podcast “Silt” on this subject.
    3. Ideally, the boxes all need emptying from my home office, the dross chucked and bookcases bought and setup and “populated”.
    4. Since moving house and now only playing mp3s, I have an objective to clear out all my CDs. The (smaller number of) vinyl records (also need to be sorted out).
      December 2017: More deterioration on all fronts. To be addressed in 2018.
  5. Calendar
    1. I am always on top of my Work Calendar but less so on activities outside of work – nothing catastrophic missed! – just a case of knowing I could be better
      December 2017: Still an issue. Increasing need to ring people to ask about meeting dates and times as events not in the church diary etc and up-to-date. To be addressed further in 2018.
  6. Culture Club and All Age Worship (both at Church)
    1. These are two types of events (monthly and 6-weekly respectively) that I lead and deliver. The former is going well (involving others in the planning and delivery) but the second could be tighter in terms of planning, developing and getting more members.
      December 2017: Need to identify the films we will do, market them better and issue the schedule. To be addressed further in 2018.
  7. Exercise
    1. The only exercise I do currently is a 3-mile 55 minute walk each lunchtime when I am in the office. I know I could do more specifically on days when I am not in the office.
      December 2017: I still walk on the vast majority of days that I am in the office. I will look to do similar on days when I am not in the office including weekends! To be addressed further in 2018.
  8. Weight
    1. I do love my food and I know I am slightly (??) overweight.
      December 2017: This is probably the year I should start to keep score! To be addressed further in 2018.
  9. Book Club
    1. I am a member of a fiction book club that meets in real life monthly. I often fail to finish the book in time and not always because the book pulled out of the hat is dire! Some planning ahead and getting on with some actual reading would help.
      December 2017: In  the second half of the year I stopped going mainly because of time pressures but also the choice of books were not to my taste and I cannot afford to spend time reading and talking about books that I am not interested in! No plans to resume attending BUT I am always on the lookout for others to join me when I read specific books. To be addressed further in 2018.
  10. Planning vs Spontaneity
    1. As a type-A project manager, I prefer planning than spontaneity but I know that I need to be able to handle interruptions better, regardless of the context.
      December 2017: 2017 was a year when I surprised myself at how many times I acted on instinct and impulse and led to some amazing adventures throughout the year. Mel Robbins' 5 Second Rule later in the year gave me words to explain this. Interruptions have been less of an issue but may return in 2018 given likely work projects. To be addressed further in 2018. I need to do even more of this and scare myself even more!
  11. Finance
    1. My family do not have an extravagant lifestyle. The joint credit card has always been paid off in full each month because we use the card as a substitute for cash. However, I know I could budget better and track actuals not in a heavy way but just to have more of a forward look. I am also aware that having worked for a number of employers I have a number of pensions that should really be reviewed for any changes to be made as appropriate. I am not financially knowledgeable and tend to defer these issues ad infinitum. I am also aware that I am not getting younger and now heading for my 55th year.
      December 2017: This year has addressed this via the processing of my Dad's estate. The family budget remains something I/we need to get a better handle on to be more proactive. To be addressed further in 2018.
  12. Building a MOOC
    1. Those that know me well will be aware that I have started and completed a large number of MOOCs and that one of the more recent ones was “Making MOOCs on a Budget”. Following on from that course, I had a real urge to build one for myself and once I had started I realised that would be able to do this for free for anyone to do the MOOC. In the months since, this enthusiasm has waned significantly  as other things have become of more interest. I know that I need to nail this task and actually deliver. My progress to date is summarised in this graphic where red is course stage, green is 1st pass content done and yellow is 1st pass content to do. This needs to be on the list for completing at the very latest by the end of this year!
      December 2017: This is completely on the backburner. It occasionally comes back in response to people's queries and needs but nothing has brought this fully to the forefront. This is something that I still retain an interest in. To act on this would need a specific needs/ goal to drive it. No plans from me to progress this in 2018. I would also say that as my content creation increases, some of that may be readily shareable in course form if that was appropriate.


 2. What happened towards the end of 2017 that has set my approach for doing One Word 2018

I have previously posted about this as part of my reflecting on my experience of facilitating and being part of my 2nd WOL circle. I repost here in its entirety, the bulk of which is in Tweets!

Fiona Michaux comes into my life

A couple of months back I submitted my core value for World Values Day:

To fully set this next story up, I previously posted the following text in my Goal group for the next circle:
  1. In this 2nd circle, I struggled to find people to co-create content with even though I started a virtual book club in parallel with the circle - only 1 other person read Jane Bozarth's "Show Your Work" book with me despite 10+ people registering.
  2. The book "Deep Work" by Cal Newport (see vid) has been on my list for a while and I was thinking that doing yet another book was a bit of a cheat if I did that as my goal in the 3rd circle.
  3. I did the One Word "thing" this year - my word was "discipline" - for the first time and had already started thinking I would use the word "professionalism" as my guiding light in 2018.
  4. I am getting more and more involved with communities as a subject and getting more passionate about actually doing this for real. This has also involved two Life Design convos with 2 influential community managers - 1 in Oz (Rita), 1 in USA (Kelly) - while I was doing the Designing Your Life book club.
  5. I know and need to start blogging more to be more influential.
  6. I know that Working Out Loud and Working Out Loud circles are big in Germany and that Bosch have an amazing community etc programme.
.... and then a month later this tweet thread happened ... and people say Twitter, WOL etc is a waste of time etc !!
…. the name rang a bell but this was not someone I had exchanged lots of tweets with …


We then had an immediate phone call chatting about this possibility and we both agreed immediately on that call that we would do it! The irony of Fiona’s word probably being “focus” is not lost on me! I may do “focus” as my word … either way, definitely hoping that some of Fiona’s focus rubs off on me!!
This then started me thinking. I have access to Workplace why don’t Fiona and I use that platform for our collaboration. I quickly created a group in Workplace with graphics:

Since then we have seen this tweet that is a great summary of what we will be seeking to do:


 3. The process I went through to get to the word "focus" for 2018

Until I had seen Fiona's World Values Day summary stats tweet, I had given One Word 2018 no thought at all. Once we had started our dialogue, I started my thinking about my One Word for 2018.

Professionalism was uppermost in my mind initially as my core value and wanting to explore that subject formally and deeply. It was ironic that Fiona's initial thought was to have "focus" as her One Word. As the days passed that word stuck in my head as possibly better for me to use than "professionalism".

I started going through the One Word Action Plan to get to my One Word.

The questions were

  1. What do I need?
  2. What is in my way?
  3. What needs to go?
I did that exercise and the following is my output - remember that I went through this before reviewing my proposed actions for 2017.
I want to spend more time studying subjects in depth to maintain my desire to be a generalist but also a specialist. In many cases these subjects have been on my list to study for a long time.
This will need me to:-
  • concentrate my time on specific subjects for a period of time on each one
  • become more immune or susceptible to distractions
  • become better at controlled task switching
  • manage more closely periods of time that are time sinks
  • better manage the hours that I sleep (timing and duration)

I want to have a less chaotic personal organisation setup so that I can locate any physical or digital content rapidly so that my lack of organisation never gets in the way of starting to do something new or continuing existing work rapidly.

This will need me to:-

  • finally empty the storage boxes in my home office of books etc
  • finally rip all the CDs to mp3 and discard the CDs
  • set up and implement a directory structure and backups for all my digital assets on my work laptop, personal laptop (mainly only used for my music/podcast/library and the 2 HDDs for backups
  • retain books in an attractive set of book cases that scream at me "read me"
  • set up a better process for updating and loading podcasts quickly and easily
  • scan and save appropriately all paper documentation that I want or need to keep
  • implement InBox Zero to my personal email account and my Evernote InBox which is used for bookmarking articles etc to read etc later
  • save new digital assets in the correct place in one go and not adding to the carnage
  • cancel all email subscriptions where I rarely if ever read the email content

I want to implement a "to do" process across all areas of my life where priority is clear and where nothing falls through the net.

This will need me to:-

  • implement a Getting Things Done-type process where next actions are always clear
  • being clearer on my life plan and what I still want to achieve including what brings me joy

I want learn more about blogging by working with Fiona on our blogging this year and to treat the whole year of 2018 as a learning adventure with her.

This will need me to:-

  • write blog posts regularly, probably monthly, and get them reviewed regularly by Fiona
  • review Fiona's posts in whatever way she wants me to
  • look out for opportunities to learn from Fiona's experience and to look for opportunities to share mine with Fiona
  • look for ways in which our separate work on "energy" and "focus" overlap and work together as disciplines.

As I went through this process, my word that I had originally mentioned to Fiona of "professionalism" changed to "focus". This was ironic as "focus" was Fiona's word initially and she has now decided to have the word "energy". We had a conversation about whether it would be easier or harder to have different words as we blogged together. We rapidly came to the conclusion that it would make no difference and that we should choose whatever was most relevant to us as individuals.

While writing this post, I went back over my thoughts on why I originally chose "discipline" for 2017 and I came across these words:
"While thinking about what word I should use for 2017, “discipline” increasingly came to the fore. “Focus” was an early candidate."

So working with "focus" and that word implying a narrowing of work, research and application, I wanted at the same time to retain a breadth of subjects. This led me to the idea of having a monthly focus on a specific subject for each month of the year but also addressing some of the practical issues in my life that I want to and need to address.

I also started factoring in Working Out Loud circles and how they might fit into my year. Quarter 1 of 2018 sees me running a super-circle of 3 WOL Circles and it would make sense to make my circle goal consistent with the work I am doing in the first 3 months of 2018. Last year my pattern was facilitated and a member of my 1st WOL Circle in Q1, April was a "rest" month, May/ June/ July I facilitated and was a member of a book club reading and applying the book Designing Your Life , August was a holiday month, September/ October/ November I facilitated and was a member of my 2nd WOL circle and December was a month of planning for One Word 2018 and setting up and establishing the Workplace by Facebook community for my 3rd WOL Circle.

I have a decision to make about what circles I envisage doing in 2018. Q1 is already booked as that 3rd Circle. April as a rest month works well as it is Easter holiday month with the family's annual pilgrimage to Spring Harvest. We currently have no summer holiday book but it would be wise for me to use August as a holiday month.

My personal view is that WOL Circles are a good way of working on a personal goal and as such there is no reason for me not to do a circle and work on goals consistent with my One Word 2018 during the year.

This leaves May/ June/ July and September/ October/ November as candidate time periods for doing WOL Circles again and leaving December as a rest and reflection month.

In addition to all of the above, I do want to create some form of report for the Facebook execs that gave me free access to a Workplace by Facebook community and I may need to do something on that prior to the end of March as a sales pitch for having access to that platform beyond March. This would also be a good vehicle for me to reflect on my experience of stumbling into forming a super-circle and then within that circle having 3 circles and how that went from an organisational and a learning point of view.

So that all said, I now want to get specific about how I will play 2018. I decided to word this as I would a WOL Circle goal given that 9 months of the One Word year may be spent being part of a WOL circle. So ....

4. The learning and development plan I have put in place for 2018 to implement "focus"

My learning and development plan for 2018 (link: includes a Q&A about how I arrived at this plan and how it might pan out)

In the spirit of working out loud, I am posting this plan in case anyone wants to join me for any part of this journey. I am open to doing anything with anyone related to the items listed.

For the books that I will be reading, this may mean something as simple as doing a shared document of our notes and application.

For the WOL Circles, I am open to either facilitating and being a full member of a circle or simply being a member of one.

The full back story of how I got to this list will be the subject of the first in a series of blog posts co-created and co-published with Fiona (Michaux) for #OneWord2018.

And so on to the plan ...

 "My plan for 2018 and One Word 2018 is to work closely with Fiona in a variety of ways but including publishing in tandem with Fiona a set of blog posts throughout 2018 on our chosen words of "focus" (mine) and "energy" (hers).

To fulfil my core desire of being simultaneously a generalist and a specialist, I will focus my learning in 2018 as follows:-

  1. In January to further encourage my voracious appetite for learning I will read and apply Walter Isaacson's Leonardo da Vinci
  2. in February to address my issue of being easily distracted and to start working and reading more deeply, I will read and apply Cal Newport's "Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World"
  3. in March to understand Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) and and set my 1st set of personal OKRs I will read and apply Christina R. Wodtke's "Radical Focus: Achieving Your Most Important Goals with Objectives and Key Results"

    April will be a rest/holiday month.

  4. In May to understand and assess my level of professionalism in my service delivery across all areas of my life, I will read and apply David Maister's "True Professionalism: The Courage to Care About Your People, Your Clients, and Your Career"
  5. in June to improve my level of productivity, I will read and apply Charles Duhigg's "Smarter Faster Better:  The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business"
  6. in July to read and learn from a discipline I am unfamiliar with, I will read and apply Atul Gawande's "Better: A Surgeon's Notes On Performance"

    August will be a rest/holiday month.

  7. In September to further craft my work style, I will read and apply "Manage Your Day to Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus & Sharpen Your Creative Mind" by various authors including Seth Godin, Scott Belsky, Dan Ariely et al and edited by Jocelyn K. Glei.
  8. In October to explore the impact of technology on human relationships, I will read and apply Sherry Turkle's "Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other"
  9. In November to explore what it means to belong and to be a member of a community, I will read and apply Brene Brown's "Braving the Wilderness: The quest for true belonging and the courage to stand alone"
    December will be a rest/holiday month.
In parallel with the above, I am setting  the following milestones:-
  1. all loose paperwork reviewed, scanned and binned/retained (end January)
  2. all digital content moved to a new easy-to-find-stuff directory structure on all my devices including hard disk drives (end February)
  3. a document created and issued to the two Facebook execs who gave me free access to Workplace by Facebook consolidating my learning of using that platform and including the wider community's assessment of that platform versus other platforms we have used with a view to extending our use of that platform beyond the end of
    March 2018 (end February)
  4. a Lessons Learned blog post published covering the running of the Workplace by Facebook community and including members of the community's assessment of how I ran the community (end March)
  5. all my CDs ripped to mp3 by iTunes and the CDs given away to good homes (end April)
  6. all my storage boxes emptied and assessed for which books etc are staying and which are going (end June)
  7. bookcases set up to finally hold my books (end August)
  8. a summary blog post published of what I have learned and applied during my year of having "focus" as my One Word (end December)


 I have already scheduled and started the setup of my 3rd WOL Circle that will run from January to March. My intention is to do my 4th from May to July,  my 5th from September to November and my 6th from January to March 2019. These will need to be recruited for or joined the month before each circle starts."


The above plan was published before writing this post and I have retained it as-is.

The only addition I am making is to review the 2017 actions at the end of June 2018 as part of a mid-year checkpoint and in December 2018 when I think about One Word 2019.

So as 2018 marches on, it is mid-January already, I am continually inspired and challenged by the always-amazing Jocko Willink, two short videos from him. The first on how to focus on long-term goals … and the second on starting … now ….





Final Remarks

As I conclude this post, I want to say thank you to Fiona for asking me to journey with her through 2018 and to say to her that I am looking forward to that journey. It will be new for me to have a co-creator and I am hoping to learn a lot from working with her on our One Word journey.

Web Presences

Fiona will be posting her blog posts as LinkedIn articles and Simon will be posting his as blog posts.

#wol #showyourwork #OneWord2018 #focus #OneWord18SiFi #energy #getafterit #allin

at

No comments:

Post a Comment