A different kind of productive

As we decided not to travel home for Christmas, I have had lots of free time during the holidays. It is an interesting feeling. Normally during a typical work week, you struggle to find an hour or two of free time where you still have energy to actually do something and here are hours and hours of free time staring at you. And then my mind starts chirping away: well, dude, you wanted that free time for ever…here it is… how are you going to use it?

Good question, my beloved but babbling mind. How do you use holidays where you are not travelling or attending family functions? Do you just chill and let the days glide by? Do you catch up on email or work projects you have been delaying for ever? Or something else?

Aside of a rigid schedule of midday naps, I have tried to come up with some worthwhile activities that don’t fit into small timeslots in a busy week. Here is what I came up with:

• Read a book cover to cover in a day. Yes, you can make good progress on a book in smaller time chunks (especially when you are a commuter like I am) but there is nothing like some really dedicated quiet time to tackle an interesting book in one day with undivided attention and taking notes while you go along. In my case, I read Seth Godin’s Linchpin as I have been a fan of his blog for some time now.
• Trying out new software and websites. I am a typical geek and could spend oceans of time here all year long if I let myself. Well, I indulged myself during the holidays. My first selection was Axure RP Pro which is UX mock up tool. Main reason is my longstanding jealousy of the skills of User Experience Designers.  I want them too! I am also watching video tutorials on FileMaker Pro as well as recently signed up for Quora which is an interesting new competitor for Yahoo! Answers.
• Learn something new just for fun. I bought a game of Go ages ago but never really played it much. Well, there are some really great software versions now where you can learn the game by yourself. I use Many Faces of Go 12. Very difficult game but intriguing.
• Get your financials & taxes straight. Moving jobs and countries can make your financial picture quite muddled. Lots of free time takes away a lot of excuses to actually update your personal financial “dashboard” and make sure you won’t get a call from the tax man any time soon.
• Watch a whole season of a TV series you missed but everyone is raving about. When I launched my first “solo” product in my career (ExtraTerm, now known as MultiTerm Extract), I bought a season of 24 on DVD and just watched it until I passed out. I still love to do that (except for the passing out, I am getting older). Currently, I am watching “Rome”.
• Review your GTD system & do a really in-depth weekly review. As many of you know, I am a big fan of GTD and it is great to have a large chunk of time to maintain & review your entire system: try out new software, get your inbox to zero, get all your projects pristine and take a look again at all your levels of horizon.
• Cook something new. I tend to get stuck doing the same recipes over and over again. The holidays is a great time to find some new recipes and try some new things without having to rush (except on the main holidays itself where you want proven success).

Well, that is all I can think of. How do you use big blocks of free time? I still have some days left on my holidays so any other activities you would recommend?

Mind mapping to the rescue

I have been using mind mapping for the last 10 years or so and it has proven an invaluable tool for me and a huge productivity booster.

I thought the concept of mind mapping was well-known to most but as I have been consistently getting questions and comments from people on the topic, I thought I’d share some of the details.

Software

The most often asked question in relation to mind mapping is “what is the name of the software that I am using”? (Surprising isn’t it when you are working in the tech world…) Well, it is Mindjet MindManager (www.mindjet.com). You can download a free trail version from their site (30 days). There are also free open source versions available such as FreeMind but I have always used Mindjet’s software. Luckily I have always been able to convince my managers to get me a copy.

How I use it

To be honest, I basically use it for anything that I have to organize my thoughts on but the main scenarios are the following:

Brainstorming

• One of the quickest ways to get ideas out in an external form.
• Unparalleled flexibility to move “thoughts” around and structure them differently creating new associations and insights.
• And unlike a white board it is much easier to create a clean copy for people to take away. Pictures of white boards are just not the same.

Agendas

As a program/product manager, my life consists of a lot of meetings and mind maps are an ideal way to structure them. Where I find them most useful is for my 1x1s. I have a mindmap for each of my 1x1s and as topics occur to me throughout the week I add them to mindmap. When it is then time for the meeting, I print the map out and with one glance it is clear what I need to discuss. It is also great for taking notes during the meeting.

Summarization

I often keep the program open when in meetings, webcast or even when reading business books. One look at the resulting mind map and a lot of the details come flooding back.

Writing

Especially useful for drafts for my product specifications. I move the main outline of a traditional product specification into the mind map and just let my thoughts go from there on, noting action items in a different part of the tree as they occur to me. I typically pretty much have a draft right there and transferring them to the more traditional format of a Word doc is then hardly any work at all as you already have  a clear structure and much of your thinking is already done.

Decisions

Often when I am struggling with a decision, it is because my thoughts are clouded by emotion or there are certain aspects that I am not yet clear on (although I may not necessarily realize that as it is all whirling through my head). Pouring all my thoughts into an external form allows me to distance myself for it and make more accurate analyses on what needs to be done next for me to make a decision.

Anyway, give it a go. Unless you are naturally a linear thinker, you will love it.

Wahanda

As I have stated before, I admire the people with the guts to go out there and start up a business and I recently ran into an ex-colleague who made that jump. Salim Mitha used to run Y! Answers in EU and after leaving the company he co-founded a brand new internet startup called Wahanda. Wahanda is a London based health, beauty and wellness community & marketplace and you should really check it out. Nothing like a good treat to forget the depressing news of late. But as time are tight maybe wise to stick to the offers page…

Try Yahoo! Search

With all the news about Yahoo, hardly a week goes by or somebody jokes to me they will “google” news on what is going on with Yahoo or if Yahoo is still doing search.

I am actually pretty proud of what we have done over the last year or so in Search and I hope people will give it another try.

First off, a UK & Ireland exclusive in the semantic search/federated search phase: search for a sports team or person (e.g. robinho) and notice that we have rich media content in the east rail. Frankly, I never go to a sports site anymore to check out if there is any news on my favourite team. It is just so much more convenient to just type it in the firefox searchbox. It also works for movie or actor queries.

Or have you tried our new search assist layer: as you type, it automatically offers search terms and phrases in real time. After you’ve searched, it suggests additional search terms to try as well as new topics to consider. Ultimate ego exercise is to see what concepts it suggests for your name…

Even cooler and again largely developed from the UK office is SearchMonkey. Basically you can add “plug-ins” to your search results that will show much more interesting abstracts for your search results making for a much richer experience.

Then we also have BOSS which allows you to build your own search engine (come on, you can do better than cuil) and a new homepage coming up…

Check out this article about these and other cool stuff going on or coming up at Yahoo! EU.

StumbleUpon

Just started using StumbleUpon and I love it! What a great way to find out about sites on topics that interest you.

Zoho

I am a big fan of online editors, spreadsheets, to do lists as I often use different laptops and want to feel free to update my documents at any time I think off something of value to add.

Recently, I came across zoho.com and their online suite is well worth checking out. Most of them are free for private use.