The Features

1) Have a digital inbox. I assume this allows you to opt to receive mail you select as important, such as a bill from phone or electricity company. We’ll see when it launched what this actually does.

2) Pay bills. Australia Post has done this for ages, but now it seems they’ve made that accessible through their new app.

3) Store files in one location. This is possibly the most powerful feature. It essentially allows you to store files in one place. I’m assuming, given point 1, that it will all be electronic and that your files will be accesible through requesting documents.

The API

This one is more speculation about what Australia Post might be up to. I doubt they’ll ever open up an API completely, but imagine the possibilities if they allowed people to create products on top of the services they offer – in a way that’s not to dissimilar to how Amazon’s Human Mechanical Turk or many Virtual PA services.

It’s exciting to see and I congratulate Australia Post on making this step. They must have made some large investments in their core services behind the scenes to make this possible, and it’s exciting to see what possibilities that now creates. I love an innovative ‘utility.’

The video was great, because Dave talks broadly about where he sees social technology and the internet going. He talks about how we’re moving on from the PC era into a place where the mobile is the most used and valuable tool in a persons armament every day, and that it informs different behaviors not possible on a PC. Many of those behaviors are related to keeping in touch with a smaller group of important friends and family.

Path, he says, is built for the favorites list from your contacts. Having a simple tool available, like your mobile phone, makes it much easier to keep in touch with those that are closest to you – family and close friends. I wrote about my own experiences with Path a little while ago and I’m still finding it excellent today.

I think we’ll see this same progression in enterprise technology. At the moment, many companies are coming to terms with the social graph that exists within them for the first time. Morin says that Facebook has now pretty much mapped the social graph for everyone, which would seem to be true. Once that’s complete, he says, it creates space for more intimate uses of technology to remain relevant in each others lives; not just connected.

In an organisational sense, we see this with friends that remain close after working together or colleagues continuing to share in a community of practice once they leave a particular workplace. We’re not there yet, but it’s important that we continue investing in building out the social graph within organisations because it will ultimately allow for more intimate relationships to flourish inside them.

VoiceBunny allows you to quickly source a voice recording for anything you need. It allows you to submit text to the site, and turn that around into a professional grade recording in either minutes/hours/days depending on your needs.

The most clever thing, though, is that they have allowed you to write to their API. I can’t wait to see more of these services, which help people access content on the internet in different ways, bubble up over the next few years. It’s going to be a big trend, especially as more diverse languages come to the net.

Having had a very quick look at their API, it looks like I could create a service that would allow me to submit my blog to be completely voice recorded, up to a dollar limit. So I could build a web service on top of VoiceBunny that would allow people to have their blogs turned into audio blogs, for redistribution. That’s cool. Now imagine if I could build a system on top of a language translation API that would translate my content instantly, or caption my video within in hours. That’s powerful. Continue that line of thought by thinking about plugging in something like Twilio, and it’s not unforeseeable that you could create yourself a virtual phone-menu for your small company by cobbling together retail web services.

It’s going to be an exciting future.

“It’s gotten to the point where it’s almost unnatural if I haven’t done it”

Often, when faced with something new, you need to give yourself the time to make sense of it. There will be times when you’re presented with a new tool or system to use. And you won’t get it right away. If you’re not using a GTD system, or not across all the things you need to be, chances are a new system introduced will increase your anxiety and stress because you don’t understand it. And, importantly, you don’t see how you can make the time to understand it.

Even if the system would provide you a logical benefit, your current state of mind prevents you from seeing that because you’re it’s completely consumed processing all the things you need it to remember. This makes me sad for my fellow knowledge worker.

So if you’re in that position at the moment and there’s a new system being presented for your use do me a favor. Book yourself some time in your calendar, take yourself off to a small room where you won’t get distracted by Business As Usual, and give yourself the time you need to make sense of it. If you still don’t get it or like it – fair enough. But without it, you might not know what you’re missing.

Now, I don’t keep a ‘done list’ like the one outlined in this article. I think that would be a valuable thing, but I’ve not done it before. So, instead, let me share a few things I do that help me stay positive about the things I’ve been able to make happen and the things I’m working on making happen now.

1. Getting Things Done to remove the small tasks from your mind

I’m a big fan of the Getting Things Done methodology. Ross and I have both written about this before, as have many others. This video of David Allen, the GTD guy, at the Do Lectures is also excellent for this.

We’re a fan of the method, because it speak directly to being able to remove the worry from your mind by keeping it somewhere else. Don’t worry too much about the idea of a ‘to do’ or ‘done’ list – it’s the approach that matters.

Do you have an inbox full of unread emails? That awkward feeling that you’ve forgotten something? It all stems from trying to keep everything in your head, which directly impacts how you approach each and every day. If I could recommend any one thing for the prospective knowledge worker to begin learning and working towards, it’s understanding the principles of Inbox 0 and GTD.

It’s hard to feel good about what you’ve done, if there’s an impending feeling you’ve still got many things to do.

2. The big things come from the small things.

Understanding GTD is important, because it’s through feeling confidant that you’re across most things that you can allow your mind to focus on the bigger picture. I’ve found this myself recently.

I went on leave for 5 days to watch Rose swim to Rottnest Island. In doing so, my email pilled up and I had a large amount of things to catch up on when I got back. I’m not alone in this – I’m sure you’ve come back from a hiatus to find a big pile of stuff to catch up on. It has probably taken me a good 3 weeks to get back to place where I’m in control of my inbox again. There is a lag affect here that takes time to work through your system.

The same applies to anything that you are making happen. You can kick off the process but it won’t be ‘done’ until a time after that. This is why GTD is so important. It’s hard to look back and reflect on anything you’ve done if you’re not aware of when you have time to look back. If you’ve always got a full inbox and tasks spilling out of various notebooks then you’ll always feel under the pump to organise it all.

Intuitively, we might think the opposite is true. That by taking time out to organise everything from the largest idea possible down, we’ll feel better. In my example above, had I taken this approach, I would have left many of those emails unread and begun working on the largest possible projects that had come up recently. I might have gone to the whiteboard and re-strategised my approach and reshuffled things.

Instead, I just answered my emails as best I could and begun catching up. And funnily enough, now that I’ve removed many of those smaller issues from my brain and feel comfortable I’m across the things I need to be, I can (and have) done many of the things above such as reorganising how I’m approaching some large projects at the moment.

3. Keep it simple and talk about the things you’ve done – not the big things you’re going to do.

The other big tip is best said by Ben Chestnut from Mailchimp. The best way to reflect on the things you’ve done is to have them active in your day and to grow your approach with them.

Ben says that at Mailchimp nobody walks around saying “I’ve got this great idea, can you help me with it?” Instead, they walk around saying “I’ve done this thing, can you help me do more with it?”

There’s a very big difference there, and it’s substantial. I’m a big talker and love discussing macro ideas, but I’ve realized lately that these actually just stress me out. I begin subconsciously pilling tasks onto my to-do list which I know will be very hard to do. I have no desire to do them, because I’m drawn not by the small tasks, but by the big dream at the end of it.

Instead of dreaming big with your colleagues and fellow students, share instead what you’ve just completed. Which, in a way, brings me to my final point and the main topic of this post.

4. Reflect with people what you’ve done

It might be that you’ve just hit Inbox 0. You might have just finished a paper and handed it in. Tell someone about it. Show them. Ask them what they think they might be able to add to it, or what they think you should do next.

I don’t keep a ‘done’ list but I do often debrief with people stuff that has just happened.

Whenever we organised a Trampoline, Pat, Melina, Aida and I used to make time to chat with each other the day after to discuss the things that worked well and those that didn’t work well. We would discuss the excitement of the day and how we felt seeing it all come alive. Tick! Done!

Ross and I do the same with many of the things we do, too. It might have been a blog post we’ve just done or a meeting that we just had together. We’ll grab a coffee and debrief what we did. Did we tick any boxes? Sometimes, unknowingly, you have. Tick! Look at what we did then!

At the fourth Trampoline, Melina asked the audience at the start of the day to put their hands up if they hadn’t been to a Trampoline before. About 60% of the audience did. We didn’t plan on asking this question, it was just one of those things that hit Mel at the time and it seemed to make sense. We were blown away by it. In our debrief the next day we discuss how we had managed to keep the event diverse and a good mix of new people flowing through it. Tick! That’s something we had done!

Ross was saying recently that people in the Defense Forces that he had recently spoken to were quite unimpressed with the lack of retrospectives and debriefs that take place in the world of work, as well as training. If you go into battle or war, it’s a requirement that you debrief with your team afterwards to discuss what happened and what went well. We do this all the time at Yammer, but in others roles I’ve had before it’s been something that didn’t happen enough.

In conclusion: Talk about the things you’ve done, not the tasks you haven’t

We can get consumed by the flowing list of tasks that still need to happen (see point 1) or worse, the tasks that people want to dream up with you (see point 2). Focus on keeping your ideas simple enough that you can do them (point 3) and then, go and grab a coffee and someone to talk to and walk them through what you’ve just done (point 4). You’ll find it much more positive and inspiring, and a great way to figure out what to do with that success next.

This years one looked even bigger and better than the first one and looks like the participants got a lot out of it. I wasn’t able to make it this year, but it’s been fun following it from afar. I already can’t wait for next years installment.

The guys from Hello Medical have put together an awesome video capturing the day, as well as the brilliant website unconference.org.au. Yes, unconference.org.au! How cool is that. Check it out.

Here’s hoping for a second award…

I’ve often spoken about being mindful and staying aware of your mind whilst you’re in the middle of a situation. I’m always working on getting better at this, because it’s something I think I’m not naturally very good at. I’ve often had anxious moments, often for hours or days at a time. Continued stress, in the traditional sense, often causes this.

But by stress, I want to instead talk about it being a consistant effort towards a particular goal. Defined in a more physical way, the word stress is used to point to a strain put on something in one particular direction. You may strain against a set of ropes, which causes them to become stressed. We are no different in work and life. We may strain to do the things that we do – in fact, we should be concerned if we’re NOT straining. When we strain against something, it means we’re probably pushing up against an edge that exists for ourselves. Chronic strain, however, is not a healthy thing for a human and this is where we begin to feel stress as we define it in a more mental health aspect.

So, I’ve been straining to deliver and understand things at work lately. And I’ve really been enjoying it. It’s still been something I’ve been very mindful of. I can feel myself changing tasks and the energy that drains from me. I’ve needed to keep my mind in the same place to get most out of it. And so, I decided to miss a couple of days of blogging because I could feel the amount of effort that would be involved in doing that and how that would add too much strain into my day.

But, as Nick Crocker says, missing a few days isn’t a bad thing when you’re building a habit. Just get back to it and in a beautiful way that’s probably what I’ve learnt most in the last 3 or 4 months that I’ve been working on blogging more. I know I can just pick it up back up again and get going.

So, to all those of you taking part in the #b03 this March and are worried you’ve missed a day, don’t worry about it. Just make sure you mark off your habit calendar tomorrow.

Working with the awesome Caroline McLaren and with some help from Pat we’ve just announced that Trampoline will be happening in Sydney on Sunday, April the 15th.

Photo by @jonathannen

Tickets will go on sale this Friday. Make sure you’re on the mailing list to get notified when that happens.

We’ll begin the day in the very cool Oxford St Design Store in Darlinghurst, and sessions will take place there and in the neighbouring co-working spaces Home/Work and Fishburners. A huge thanks to Alex, David and Josh for playing host to us at their respective spaces.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Things at Yammer have been heating up as we approach our Yammer On Tour events, as well as a number of awesome things happening with our clients. I also took a few days out to watch Rose swim to Rottnest Island. All of that is a recipe for an overflowing inbox. My personal inbox is in a state of disrepair at the moment – something i’ll need to fix this weekend.

So, reading Joe’s advice I’ve taken a few extra little hints with me to manage the inflow. Here’s a few things I’m going to try.

1) First up, i’ll be removing _every_ notification message I can from my stream and placing it in a label. I’ve tried doing this before, but to no avail. I’ll go through my inbox today and try to remove the things I like to read, but add noise, into another place.

2) I really love the idea Joe raises of moving any message I’m CC’ed on into another label. This makes sense as he outlines it, but I wonder how many times people would email me with a CC and still be expecting a reply? It can’t hurt to give it a try. If you need a response from me, address your email TO me.

3) Likewise, If I need a response from someone I’ll now be placing their name in the ‘TO’ box.

That’s it really. What did you think of Joe’s post? How do you use email?