Orderly Chaotic
In the middle of well organised chaos. How to flow within chaos.
Hello Friends,
This part of my life I am living now is hectic. Doing more than anyone can do if they are in my shoes. Fortunately, I was prepared. The tools I were exploring and learning to use were here to help me to cope up with the busy-ness. Now I am reaping the benefit of the sharpened axe (digital tools I am using and optimised workflows). My hectic life couldn’t stop me from writing and sending this museletter to my readers.
How did I manage to be productive in chaos? Simple, I had a productivity system and personal knowledge management system in place which does the most of work. Second most important thing is, capturing things. Capturing tasks, capturing notes, capturing ideas and putting it in to a assembly line like process (that’s your system) and then planning for desired outcomes based on your goals and purpose is the crux concept of my system. I am handling multiple projects than ever before. I only can spend less time in each project, at the same time I have to make the project move every week. To stop me doing unwanted or things that gives low impact to the desired result, I made sure I read ‘my purpose’ in each project I hand. Rather than making decisions based on “Goals”, I started to decide what to do, when to do and how to do for a project based on my Role and purpose in the project. This gave me a clarity and to my surprise the clarity sustained for long time. Now I can delegate most jobs without much fear or doubt.
I will be explaining my method clearly in another blog article…
What I Wrote…
To Do… to Done… and things in the middle… — www.alvistor.com
Why our plans and methods fail often when it comes to productivity despite enough efforts? Why our productivity tools not coming to rescue while we accrue torrents of ‘to-do’s to our list everyday?
Measuring the quality of a writing ethically. — www.alvistor.com
The quality is not on words wrote, its on the thoughts shared. Most importantly intentions behind it.
Hey, I am also writing in Medium (tharan.medium.com), and a copy of free versions of this Museletter also be published there.
Read… & Reading…
Books: Now reading M.K. Gandhi’s “The experiments with truth”, an autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi. Resuming to read “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” by John Gray and “Art of War” by Sun Tzu is in the line next.
The Mind at Work: James Nestor on breathing as the brain’s killer app | Dropbox Blog
Ignore the title of this blogpost. The content describes the research outputs of how breathing can affect one’s mind, health and thought process. It discuss what is the best/perfect way to breathe, how long to inhale and how much to exhale. Controlling this semi-voluntary action of body can do wonders wholly to our body and mind.
The Theology of Productivity - Superorganizers - Every
Exploring why productivity can feel empty, and how we can make it whole again. This article is Spiritually (not religiously) inclined.
Stop Thinking About Your Bad Habits! [Do This Instead.]
Ruminating on bad habits just makes them harder to avoid. Then what to do? Read this wonderful tip to get rid of your bad habits.
for my fellow educators
16 Characteristics Of A Critical Thinking Classroom - — www.teachthought.com
16 characteristics in one picture.
Related to leadership & journaling benefits.
Why Intelligent Minds Like Jeff Bezos Embrace the Rule of Writing | Inc.com — www.inc.com Take a page out of Jeff Bezos's book and follow the rule of writing. It'll make everyone better.
The quiet and powerful advantage of mindful leadership
A small patch to your leadership idea.
What My Morning Journal Looks Like – The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss — tim.blog
Not satisfied with your writings in diary. Does it look awkward, embarrassing? No need to worry. Have a look at Tim Ferris’s own morning journal to get an idea how rough, raw your journal can be.
Quotes from what I read
Systems Thinking is only of expertise. I found these content (originally oriented to developing better UX) to be too worthy to understand how a system should be. It explains the behaviour of a system very well. Kudos to the author, Arturo Rios.
Reid Hoffman’s Two Rules for Strategy Decisions — hbr.org
”Making the complex simple does not mean ignoring complexity”
“Wrestle with complexity, yes, but frame and commit to a decision that’s simple enough for everyone to understand and act on.”
Look for the “Single Decisive Reason”.
From systems thinking to systems doing | by Arturo Ríos
“A system is never the sum of its parts; it’s the product of their interaction”
“The performance of a system depends on how the parts fit, not how they act taken separately”
“A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked”
“The system always kicks back. Complex systems exhibit unexpected behavior. It is almost as they would have their own will, and that will is not friendly with changes.”
New productivity apps I am trying
Drafts | Where Text Starts — getdrafts.com Drafts, Where Text Starts
Drafts is a “Quick Capture” text editor with powerful functionality to take out the text to any other form or to any other app or service. I’ve tried this app few years ago(when Evernote used to be snappier to capture text), now I am gave it another try and happened to like it already. I am planning to write an article about Drafts (app) next. Unfortunately its not for any other platform than iOS, iPad OS and Mac.
Refind | Where News Starts — refind.com
Get most relevant links to your interest from around the web. With summaries by the authors and highlights.
Most of my friends wonder how I get to read more news every day. Honestly I read less, I read from quality source and I read highlights first to judge whether I should read the article fully or to glance. When I was using Feedly, the feeds of news link are like flood and 95% of content is not targeted or curated by machines (in case of other news app) or by recency (in case of Google News). Refind clears the path, by only feeding the links that community added and recommends. That’s great. I highly recommend Refind to anyone who wants to be updated in their field.
Finally, to the end. Did you get any value from my creations, then share this to your friends. Or reply/comment to this issue of Museletter. Wishing you a great weekend ahead!