10 mindset tips for designing your personal optimization system

Definition: your personal optimization system is that which involves stepping back, evaluating your processes, doing work in a way that involves effective record-keeping so you can stay on your path, and access/use your past work effectively to further your future work. Such a system may involve: tracking logs, agenda, goal planning. It is characterized by a culture where personal independence comes with personal responsibility. In this you are your own CEO, secretary, analyst & advisor.

Despite this, the best personal optimization systems cannot disregard our need & indeed the true utility of sharing our burdens & playing different roles for each other.

Some people need a less supportive system than others, as their minds are capable of recalling the totality to such a degree of resolution, at any time, so that it is rather more efficient for them to move forward without continual recording & rechecking.

I refer these 10 mindset tips to those of us who do not currently embody this happy facility, & are in the process of designing their own systems of optimization:

1. The design of your personal optimization system depends on your current ability to maintain & comprehend it immediately.
2. If load of maintenance >= your core work, you are in trouble.
   If load of maintenance = your ability, this is not a worthwhile endeavor : redesign/simplify your system to the more essential or urgent.
3. It is likely you are an optimist. No one lacking a single ounce of hope would endeavor such a project. In which case, you can hope/do by building up your ability/energy incrementally. Choose one step first, try to see how long it can last, and then add another.
4. Take care that your tendency towards perfectionism does not stymie progress in other parts of your life. Instead, conduct this as a process – personal, joyous, where set-backs & mistakes are often more informative than successes, and your own encouragement to  yourself as a support is more necessary than the approbation of others.
5. If social motivation comes into play, please note the caveat of your posted product as a process to your audience. Your honesty with others on what is inherently a personal process is vital to your honesty with yourself, lest you suffer from the ills of becoming corrupt onto your own path.
6. & learn to also disregard the comments of others. In this path you must forge the strength to become your own judge of what works. Gradually shift your social motivation to that of making a presentable record of your own path – for your own reflection. This use of social motivation has the natural benefit of :– clarity
   – succinctness
   – thoroughness
   – honesty
   – & most important of all: our never-ending strive towards nobility – to not speak anything to yourself in a way you would be afraid to let known as a sentiment of your character. Because when we focus on the darkness within ourselves – the jealousy, resentment, hatred & superiority, we not only diminish ourselves in the eyes of others, we grow in the very aspects of our being that will ultimately make us an object of our own disgust.
7. use a pseudonym if it serves your needs. (but not as a foil to allow yourself to be cruel)
8. Convictions are landmarks; contradictions are the necessary movements of the steering wheel that keeps the car on the path. Do not expect the path to be straight.
9. Whenever you feel little, think of what love you can give to those around you, in small acts of service & attention, that can distract you from the self-absorption that you are unconsciously visiting upon yourself. Self-absorption is an act of feeding upon yourself until even your accrued virtues are consumed.
10. Remember our innate conundrum as social creatures, whose worth not only includes that of our ability to help ourselves, but also that of sharing our burdens with others. For we cannot act but see or feel ourselves as a part of others. And we cannot enter into the true affections of others without making ourselves in some way necessary to each other.

I speak this to myself as well as, hopefully, of some utility to you.

 

Writing hand photo credit: Green Chameleon on Unsplash

digitalizing the four trays method

Over the past year & a half I’ve been steadily modifying my system for processing information in a way that facilitates my ability to use it effectively (eg. write). This has involved a great deal of trial & error. I ask nearly everyone I meet – faculty, doctorate students, my own peers – what they do to organize & process information. Responses I’ve received have been broad, & non-specific to my question, such as:

• “I just write”
• “maybe I’m just a nerd” – which characterizes a disposition (that may be more generalized among our graduate student population than the speaker had first considered), but is not a method.
• ways to structure a paper – not the question.
• a book for how to learn
• “I just do it.”

I realized that I may not be getting specific answers due to several reasons:

1. The person has already automated the process & doesn’t even think of it as a process. So recalling steps is difficult. (this is more often for senior members or people who have optimized their processes much earlier)
2. The person’s challenges are different from mine, so questions I ask will tend to be re-directed towards their own personal focus.
3. The person is under pressure & is unlikely to reveal their processes to me because they feel competitive pressure in their work. This makes them not keen to give others advantages they have themselves.

I have wondered over point 3, as someone yet unproven in the field of research I do share this anxiety periodically. On the other hand, for one, we all have our own paths of inquiry that are unique regardless of our technique. For another, I find enough happiness in my own inquiries, even if they have not yet reaped benefits for me yet, and third, now I have more confidence in my flexibility and systematic thinking – so that even if I don’t get into a research career track, I am capable enough to be worth someone paying me a salary for diverse range of jobs – that I should like to indulge in the part of myself that likes to be open. This also gives me an opportunity to document my processes, which I would like to have anyway if I should ever get to point 1 – have an automated process.

The Four Trays

The tactic I’d like to examine here is Raul Pacheco-Vega’s four trays method. In summary, he uses four trays to arrange process:

tray 1 : for a paper that’s being worked on

tray 2: should be memo’d

tray 3: for someone else

tray 4: to file

Besides these 4 trays, he also has what he’s currently working on, and his everything notebook. These I would say comprise his current work platform. It actually took me a while to realize that no, I cannot be actually working on several platforms on the same time, and that each time I switch platforms I run the risk of distraction and time waste. 

In tray 1 he has items related to his own projects that he needs to make decisions on: such as marking one for ‘to read’, item scheduling into data processing, contacts …etc.

In tray 2 he has papers or books that need to be read, made notes on, and the notes filed into his notes system.

In tray 3 are items for other people’s work such as recommended articles, recommendation letters, school committee documents…etc.

In tray 4 are items he needs to archive into his (paper) filing system.

Now Pacheco-Vega notes that he has administrative assistant (secretary) & research assistants. So his tray 3 & tray 4 basically constitute To Do trays for others. Also, I noticed that he has what appears to be an unlimited printing quota. However, these are not realities for many of us. Another point for me is that I need to name the trays in a way that suits my need for motivating, intuitively action-oriented labels. Given these caveats, I have had to adjust his system to my own circumstances.

1. Naming

Tray 1: Stream Pipeline: these are all the items I come across that appear useful. Given my proclivity to getting distracted, I need to make sure that I do not stream away from my current task when I come across these interesting notions. So this tray is essential for all the things that I think in passing would be nice to add but I will defer decision steps for these later. Also known as the Bucket List.

Tray 2: To Memo: articles to make notes on. I like the word he uses here. It is short and not intimidating. So I am just going to use this same word. (Related: I will need to streamline my process for making notes organized & accessible in service of future-proofing).

Tray 3: Prosocial: these are all the things I love to do that further the work of others and our collective. I need to put my own work first, but I would like to orient my mindset towards this tray as rewards that I get to do after I have completed a few items on my stream pipeline task.

Tray 4: Admin: the necessaries of life. I would put bill payments, responses to scheduling (surprisingly I have found that planning my schedule takes me considerable mental energy compared to some others), babysitting plans…etc.

2. Process

I really appreciate how Pacheco-Vega has also shared that he processes these trays at set times in the week & the rationale behind these decisions. I like that he notices how Friday after lunch he is pretty much useless for anything else so he processes Tray 4 at that time. He then processes Tray 1, whose tasks allow him to be productive on Monday acting upon those items. On Tuesday he processes Tray 2 (catching up on literature  – reading & making notes) which gives him a boost for his writing work.

At the moment I’ve decided to try his schedule. In addition, at my novice stage, it’s impossible to not consider that the Tray 4 pre-tasks that I need to do daily (processing e-mails). So I restrict tray 4 to items that I can set aside for next time. I need to experiment when I to look at e-mails: either following lunch? (this appears to be a time when I might either be slightly useless, or refreshed to go to the next peak), or just prior to heading home?

3. Digital Trays

On to digital material. While I do have the luxury of printing some papers (preferred), and I have a tablet reader I can write on for other papers (I like this, but crave the ‘geographical location’ sense with paper), I need to make sure both my digital material & physical material are streamed into my process.

Currently I’ve started a Memo folder on my browser bookmarks, for all the articles I’ve yet to read to see if they’re something I would take notes on & put into my reference system. This should be my buffer step between automatic streaming into my reference system, and having this massive reference system that I haven’t read, which I have been doing thus far. (a demo of my Zotero ref stream here) I will need to place a physical placard in my physical Tray 2 to remind myself to check my digital Memo tray.

I am also considering labeling my e-mails for later as prosocial or admin. This is possible via color. The same physical placard to remind me of their existence has to be in physical Tray 3 & 4.

The key here is that I don’t have too many different formats or platforms for a discrete task, else I forget they exist. Compartmentalization & Batching have been my new keywords this past month – my personal task to work on. Pacheco-Vega’s blog post has been excellent for scaffolding my next thinking processes of how it can be done. I’ll check back in as I try this out.

 

Trust yourself – recent things I’ve learnt about learning

These few days have been very interesting as I’ve come across a few disparate nuggets about learning:

Time management: read Two Awesome Hours by Josh Davis. I tend not to spend my time on self-help books as I find a lot of it written by people whose careers are based on the self-help consultancy. This book was recommended as offering neurology-based practical advice. I found the first portion of it amazing, and the end basically a recap. But a few takeaways I found particularly useful:

1. Take the time to consider your next move: this is something my husband does. He’s amazingly efficient at entering fields he has previously little knowledge about and learning the job. Part of this is due to his strategic use of time: instead of just taking the tasks that he comes across (such as slogging through 80 unread messages in his inbox), he actually tries to be aware of what would be the best use of this next segment of time he has coming up. This is probably why he finds my way of working around the house rather bewildering – I would stop on my way to do something I had determined as important – to do a little cleaning up here, a little crafting there – and leave partially finished projects all over the place, whilst my main work is disregarded. My husband actually plans ahead what he’s going to use this segment of time to do (ex: “I need time to cleanup X’mas tree + tie up loose travel plans for vacation Saturday evening”). This has also made our partnership easier as I am informed that this time I’m expected to mind the kids.
2. Notice what effects your energy level and mood: If I do small crafts and chores in the morning, when I’m more alert after coffee, I hit an energy lull that pretty much dumps my afternoon for productive mind work down the toilet. However, if I study in the morning, I can do small crafts and chores when I hit my energy lull, because it requires much less alertness, and at that point I’m usually buzzing with the studying endorphins I got in the morning. I’m also becoming more aware of how social media taps my attention so that I might feel falsely refreshed whilst physically being really exhausted. Plus, that’s also a large segment of time that I’m not actually making progress in the things that matter. Besides social media, there are other rabbit holes I have to be aware of: I now know that reading about child abuse and mass murders can be very emotional and absorbing for me, so now I’m consciously trying to avoid clicking on these headlines or looking into the history of these things. If I know I’m going to be picking up the children next, I have to make sure that I’ve achieved something in the day so I don’t (irrationally) resent them for interrupting my time, and the things I do just before I pick them up have to be something I can just drop at the moment.
3. The environment: Sitting upstairs vs sitting downstairs. I’ve always found myself more alert when there’s good lighting. Turns out the color of the lighting also matters: lightbulbs on the blue spectrum foster productivity, lightbulbs on the yellow spectrum foster creativity.Info from other sources I found useful:
4. Staying challenged with new material/hobbies/levels: As a child, I’ve been pretty lackadaisical about practicing, because I was required to. Now that I realized I actually want to play piano, I’m finding out that I need to make sure I’m working on something harder while recapping pieces I’ve become more fluent at. This keeps me challenged and wanting to keep practicing.
5. Recapping things to oneself instead of simply reading. Simply reading, underlining, and making notes from the book only gives one a sense of accomplishment. When I was studying for Organic Chem and Biochem, I was drawn to sitting in front of a blank note pad (interestingly, I even found that it had to be a certain size and placed horizontally), where I would recap what I had learned. I was particularly inspired by how this lady presented the information. It’s definitely something she learned well enough to explain so methodically. A delight to listen to.When studying for Immunology, I was drawn to making my own flashcards to test myself. And I wouldn’t be writing the flashcards out from the textbook, but from what I’d recalled I’d just read. After finishing a ‘set’ of flashcards, I would then refer to the textbook to make sure I’d gotten everything right. Usually by the time I’d prepared the flashcards, I only needed them for as refreshers when I felt I had gone foggy on the specifics. Writing out the flashcards on a notebook format was so slow though that I stopped doing it after a few chapters. Recently, I read about two online programs that let you create your own flashcards for free! Will have to try them out next time! ( brainscape.com & quizlet.com )

   Recently playing with duolingo, I’ve found myself gradually drawn to writing new vocab down, from memory, as I find my recall of new vocab slipping when I simply learn from the program (what I’ve heard people call the saturation point for new information). It’s a pretty awesome program btw. Which brings me to:

6. Not telling people about your big goals: You know as a kid you often get asked what your dream is? When you’re applying to programs? My parents have often found me “noncommittal” when I chose not to tell them about certain goals that I was actually working for. It appears my instincts were right. The more you tell people, the more gratified you feel about it in the moment and the less likely you will work towards your goals.So Imma gonna go shut up now. : )