In This Episode…
Today I put together the finishing touches on the first iteration of my Research and Idea Generation process. Now I love a good process because that’s what appeals to my mind but today I got to experience the potential impact this particular process is going to have on my well being. I explain all in today’s episode.
Episode Transcript (Edited)…
Hi and welcome to today’s episode of the Profit Productivity Podcast. It’s your host, Michael Tipper. Who else would it be?
Now today’s episode is going to be called “Why Take Aspirin For Relief When A Well-Designed Process Will Do Just As Good A Job”.
So there’s some background to today’s episode. Yesterday I talked about how I was sharpening the saw and how I’d taken time out to understand what my information research needs were. I also needed to get clearer on where I was going to get the information from and what I was gonna do with it when I got it.
Now today I finished designing version one of my research and idea capture process and I’m almost ashamed to share with you just how much I’ve enjoyed it. To me a well defined process is a thing of beauty and putting it together the one today has been a joy for me, almost bordering on an obsession.
It’s because I realise the benefits of a well defined process and I must admit, my mindset and my approach to thinking really is perfect for putting one of these things together.
However, what I’ve started to see, just practically speaking, is understanding the benefits of this process. This is because one of the problems I have had, and the reason for taking a step back and putting together something in place to fix a problem, was that I had a huge backlog of things I’d yet to process.
A lot of this backlog was clogging up my email inbox and there were bits and pieces and stuff basically sat round all over the place without any real organisational clarity. And that was causing a bit of a mental drain.
We have a brain that when something is started, the brain will open a loop until it is finished. And so the cumulative effect of all these things, open-ended loops in my mind, is one that drains the mental space that I’ve had. And I’ve really felt the impact of that.
And so now I’ve got a system to help deal with that. So there was this huge sense of relief that washed over me this afternoon as I was putting together the final touches of the actual step by step process of how I was going to apply this.
Now what’s happened is I’ve got clarity because I’ve defined exactly what I want. I’m able to make some really good decisions about whether I read or watch something or not. And I’ve defined exactly where I’m going to get this information from.
I’ve identified key influencers, people who create a lot of relevant content online, as my primary source. I’ve also identified a couple of gurus I’m going to follow. I’ve basically limited my scope to that a small handful of sources because there’ll be enough information there for what I’m looking to do with it.
I’ve also defined exactly what I’m going to do with information when I’ve captured it and I’ve defined the pathways and also the resting places for the bits of information as it goes through my system. And at any point in time, the piece of information can come to a conclusion, even if it’s a temporary conclusion.
That means my mind doesn’t have to worry about it because it’s in my system. And so even if I find something that is really useful for me and I don’t have time to process it, I’ve got somewhere I can put it and know that I’ll be able to go back to it and find it and process it later on.
I didn’t have that before and as I was putting this together, I suddenly realised I’ve got four or five things in my inbox that have been hanging around just waiting for me to deal with them. Now I know I’ll be able to deal with those and it was amazing sense of relief.
I’ve also designed the system to make it easy for me to find the information when I want it again.
So it is like I have this amazing research black box that I can just plug information in, it’s processed and then out comes the information in a form I need and can use.
Of course I’ve got to do that processing, but now I know I can track it and keep on top of it and see how that process is going. And it’s just a huge sense of relief for me that those activities to run my business are now taken care of and I can breathe a little easier. I can relax a little bit more and I can feel a little bit more of relief that I’ve talked about earlier on.
Who needs an aspirin now?
All I’ve got to do is make this work and refine it in the light of it actually seeing real information for the first time, but more of that in future episodes.
Until tomorrow…
