H Bay

Recently, there has been a lot of research about personal efficiency. It led to great insights and practices to getting more done in a given amount of time. Various experts such as David Allen, Leslie Perlow, Tim Ferriss, and Tony Schwartz propose solutions that work when correctly applied. In this post, I would like to summarize some of the key ideas and present some of my own learnings of effectiveness. I believe that getting things done is not only about the professional life, it is about being an athlete. Here the key points of efficiency (at least the ones that work for me).

Write it down. As proposed by David Allen in his book Getting Things Done, the basis of productivity is to create todo lists. Not only the todos of the day or the week. No, the lists should contain the todos for the whole life. Therefore, whatever I want to do one day, I write it down. Starting with writing email to team, or reading Marc’s monthly report, until subscribing to Japanese classes, or crossing Pacific Ocean via Marquesas islands. Multiple lists sorted by projects or fields of responsibility guarantee some level of overview even with thousands of todos. The greatest fun is when defining my most ambitious projects (or dreams) and then break them down into single, feasible todos. The fun part is that the first todo converts the dream into reality. For example, if the project would be to sail around the world then the journey already starts with looking up sailing courses on the Internet. Read more about this approach on my previous blog posts about productivity.

Start eating frogs. In his book Eat That Frog, Brian Tracy proposes to start the day with the most annoying todo item in the list. The idea is actually simple, it is all about discipline, regardless whether you start or finish the day with the todo that sucks most. Without discipline and rigorous execution, the best plan remains nothing than a plan and there will be no outcome. Discipline is the first and last ingredient to effectiveness. Define goals (projects) and work towards achieving them (one todo after the other) needs discipline. Often it’s fun, but sometimes it sucks. Best way for me to be more disciplined is called “don’t think, just do!”. It’s a similar state of mind as before jumping into cold water. Allow your body to jump while your brain says “No!”. This state of mind lasts only for a short moment when you have to let go. Once started, you can start thinking again. That’t the best way I can describe it. If you want to feel it, just do 10 push ups, go, right now, don’t think, do it.

Add some rhythm. Nobody can be 100% productive, 12 hours a day, 24/7. This would be unnatural, and not really sustainable. The rhythm of our life starts with the first heartbeat about 21 days after conception. The heart alternates contraction and relaxation in order to transport oxygen to all the organs. Oxygen comes from respiration, another rhythmic movement. Everywhere is rhythm. Also working needs rhythm. “More than 50 years ago, the pioneering sleep researcher Nathan Kleitman discovered something he named the basic rest-activity cycle — the 90 minute periods at night during which we move progressively through five stages of sleep, from light to deep, and then out again.” Our work rhythm is 90 minutes, Therefore, Tony Schwartz proposes a break after 90 minutes for energy renewal. For me personally, this one needs the highest level of discipline. However, it really works. But I don’t stop here. Rhythm is not only important during the day, but also during the week, the month, and the year. As for athletic training units, I try to start the week slowly and increase intensity during the course of the week to result in maximum workload on Friday. In order to guarantee a slow start, I try to fix meeting on Monday and some on Tuesday. Business trips, which are most exhausting, I try to schedule for Thursday and Friday. The monthly rhythm is difficult to realize. Athletes often have 5-week rhythms. First week easy, second week hard, third week harder, fourth week full steam, fifth week recovery. The yearly rhythm again is easier due to European summer holidays and Christmas. Typically, the year starts slowly and increases in intensity when approaching summer holidays. Then after summer holidays, same story again until Christmas. Feel the rhythm!

Live a healthy life. Live like an athlete. This means, in order to be highly productive, our organism needs to run at 100%. We therefore need things such as a healthy sleep (quality and quantity), healthy food, healthy drinks (avoid alcohol during the week and even on weekends), and some physical exercises. The physical exercises should be well balanced and include endurance, muscle training, stretching, and physical relaxation. Living like an athlete favors hormone production, quick regeneration times, strong nerves, less sensitive to tress, enough oxygen in the brain, etc.

Breathe. One can live for weeks without eating, several days without drinking, but only a few minutes without breathing. In general, eating and drinking gets a lot of attention by any athlete, but breathing is highly neglected. However, it is by far the most essential action. Therefore, one should pay more attention on breathing. Controlled breathing leads to shorter recovery times, more active metabolism, higher level of attention, and better brain power. The effect is immediate. But proper breathing has to be learned. Several Yoga exercises (Pranayama) help to learn correct breathing techniques. Start breathing, you will love it.

Great TED Talk of Simon Sinek. The author of the best seller “Start with Why” has a simple but powerful model for inspirational leadership all starting with a golden circle and the question “Why?” His examples include Apple, Martin Luther King, and the Wright brothers — and as a counterpoint Tivo, which (until a recent court victory that tripled its stock price) appeared to be struggling.

For the 10th anniversary of the Swiss Venture Leaders program on Sept 3rd 2010, about a hundred Swiss entrepreneurs met to party in the Residence of the US Ambassador Donald S. Beyer Jr. in Bern. The event was perfectly organized by Venture Lab and the Gebert Rüf Foundation. It was like a family reunion in a warm and welcoming environment. Companies such as Amazee, Doodle, Poken, Routerank, etc. were present.

Some of the Venture leaders 2007, from left to right, Christian Broennimann, Dieter Naeher, me, Jochen Mundinger, Silvia Santini, Giovanna Davatz.

The event started at 4PM with a networking Apéro. At 5PM, the US Ambassador Donald S. Beyer welcomed the invitees with a charming speech, followed by some words of Rudolf Marty, president of Gebert Rüf Stiftung, and a short speech of Walter Steinlin, president of Innovation Promotion Agency CTI.

At 5:15PM, the entrepreneurs were leaving their footprint with a short pitch and overview about their respective state-of-the-art.

Poken Founder Stephane Doutriaux

After the pitches, everybody was invited to take place at the dinner tables. Before the dinner was served, there were two extraordinary keynotes. The first one was given by Robert Hemphill, president and CEO of AES Solar Power Ltd. His presentation was both educative and very funny. He was speaking about his do’s and dont’s as an entrepreneur. The audience applauded when he said that business plans are useless . The second keynote was held by Xavier Comtesse, director Romandie Avenir Suisse. He announced that he is planning to establish a creative think tank for Swiss entrepreneurs.

US Ambassador Donald S. Beyer Jr. and me.

The food was delicious, I never saw such a vast choice of tomatoes of all colors, red, green, yellow, violet, etc.

While talking to Mr. Ambassador, we figured out that we both read Yvon Chouinard’s “Let my people go surfing“, he also recommended the movie “180 south“, which I will certainly watch soon. By the way, Yvon Chouinard is a highly productive manager. He practices what he calls MBA, Management By Absence. There is no more productive. 0 effort, 100% outcome .

At 9PM, Donald S. Beyer was presenting some closing words and a great event was over. Back to family .

Now, a bit over three months are passed since I started applying Getting Things Done (GTD) for organizing my life. It really changed the way I work, and I am just getting slowly used to it. I still have the same empty and distraction-free desktop as when I wrote my first post about GTD. My desk still looks the same except that I removed one of the three boxes on the table. Furthermore, I started using a tool for the desktop and the iPhone, which proved to be quite useful. It’s called Things and it is a task management software according GTD for Mac. It is really great and I can heartily recommend it.

One thing I need to improve is defining more projects. There are a lot of Things that can be clustered into projects. This allows for a better overview of your tasks. Instead of 100 Things, you have 5-10 projects with 10-20 Things each. That is better to keep the “vue d’ensemble” of your tasks. Also once you started Things in a project, you continue on them until they are finished. That keeps the flow and your mind concentrated on one topic.

The second day at TechCrunch50 was by far more interesting than the first one, because I had the chance to visit all the booths and seeing some presentations. Many companies like Clixtr, Wander Mobile, OnTheRoad, etc. present an iPhone as an image taking device. The images are synchronized with the user’s online profile and there used for sharing and collaboration. Basically, what we do without recognition

A useful application comes from myinfoQ. In order to remember things, the user can send any text via SMS or app to her online profile, where it is presented with all the needed context information (direct links to related Websites or Google search results). This saves browsing and searching time.

Also Interesting is the approach of the news aggregator thoora. It presents just the relevant news in a condensed manner. Very useful in times of information overflow. Another interesting approach comes from motally. The idea is to provide Google analytics for mobile websites and mobile applications, which in general do not support javascript (in other words Google Analytics).

There were many more companies, but frankly, none of them really impressed me. All cover a bit about the same social media type of applications.

The winner of this year’s TC50 award is RedBeacon. Here the description by The Washington Post. “RedBeacon is a new service making its public debut today at TechCrunch50 that further streamlines this process by bringing the OpenTable model of online transactions to much broader spectrum of services.Using the site will be easy for anyone who has used a local review service like Yelp. Simply type whatever service you’re looking for (be it plumber, gardener, or hair stylist), and the site will present a list of recommended service providers in your area. RedBeacon also employees natural language processing so it can figure out exactly what you’re looking for (for example, “Cupcake maker” would search for any bakers in the area). The site will then present a list of profiles for each match, featuring reviews and comments from other users, basic information like their hours, and star reviews imported from Yelp.”

That was it for this year’s TechCrunch50 conference.

Recently, I presented kooaba at TechCrunch50 conference in San Francisco on September 14th – 15th, 2009. Here are some thoughts about the event.

In general, the organization was great and everything worked fine from registration to presentation, even enough parking space was available. Only the men’s toilets were congested from the first day on. Thanks to my jetlag I had no problem to get up at 5AM (actually, I was already up at 3AM) in order to be at the Concourse Exhibition Center at 6:30AM to install and setup our booth. Networking already started at the entrance of the conference location.

Our booth at TechCrunch50

Surprise, when I was installing the booth, somebody gave me a pat on my back. The two founders of shout’em, Victor and Sasha were presenting their venture right at the neighboring table. We first met in spring 2008 at the Mobile 2.0 conference in Barcelona. It is always fun with them.

The DemoPit was extremely busy. In the afternoon more than during the morning session. Thanks to the kooaba developer team, the demos were working fine without a single issue. From the visitor side, I met all sorts of people, mostly people other startup companies, some press representatives, investors (easiest to recognize ), and regular visitors from various companies.

With the time, my pitch became more and more efficient and I more and more tired. At the end, I was victim of the jetlag. It was 4AM in Switzerland, but here only 7PM. I needed a shower before the networking event at 8PM. The networking event took place in a club with loud music. Therefore, not an ideal environment to talk business, however, contacts during networking parties are often lasting longer than others. Summary of the day, over 100 business cards, no more Swiss Chocolate, and a good feeling about the future of kooaba (got great feedback).

Intermezzo about Swiss Chocolate at conferences. This is a secret hint to all Swiss Startup companies, which intend to present their company abroad. Take Swiss Chocolate to distribute to the visitors, it really works. It is much easier to get people to your booth. It’s less offensive to say “Want some Swiss Chocolate?” than “Wanna see our product?”.

That’s it about my first day at the TechCrunch50 conference. Stay tuned to read about the second day.

Recently, I finished David Allen’s book about stress-free productivity Getting Things Done (GTD), which I initially started in September 2008 in San Francisco. I actually wonder, why I didn’t finish it earlier .

The book describes a way how to work in an organized manner by putting everything you always wanted to do on a sheet of paper. All these sheets and everything, which has no well-defined place or task lands in the so-called Inbox. During the implementation phase, the Inbox ressembles a huge pile of mess. The hardest task is to go through the pile and decide for every single thing an action item, a project, file it, or through it away.

During the implementation phase, I completely cleaned my desk at the office (see images below). Same story at home.

My desk at kooaba before (left) and after (right) GTD.

Now, let’s see how it will look after 3 months. Stay tuned!

As winner of the venture leaders price 2007, I had the opportunity to follow a four-days workshop for entrepreneurs at Babson College in Boston, USA. At one of the numerous networking events, I had the chance to meet Jessica Livingston, author of the bestseller “Founders at work”.

Jessica Livingston and me at Y-Combinator.

Founders at work – is one of the best books I’ve ever read about start-ups. It describes everyday situations of well-known companies such as Apple, Hotmail, etc. during their star-up phase. It helps to see that others had similar problems as the ones we had at kooaba. A must-read for every IT start-up. Buy it now!

By the way, here is what Guy Kawasaki has to say about it. Obviously a bit more than me

Jessica was so kind to sign our copy of the book.

Jessica Livingston signed the book that I had with me by chance.

Thanks Jessica.