Long time, no write, but I have a philisophical reason (excuse)

Indeed, it has been a few months since my last post. A few months I may have apologised for this, but more recently I have been realising this is simply a facet of my personality.

I have come to categorise myself as a “burster”, which I should define before someone gets the wrong idea (which is not hard). I tend to do things in solid bursts – but my head down and try to ignore everything else. At first I thought it was simply a procrastination technique because it seemed to occur most often leading up to an  undesirable deadline. But I have since realise that I do it in many positive ways too – it was simply that stress seems to make me more focused (just not always on the most important task). So I am realising that the key is prioritisation – make sure that I burst on the most important tasks first.

This is actually how I started to realise the benefits. For example I was talking to a client and we decided to attempt something quite novel – unfortunately it was for an expo starting in a couple of weeks. But the rest of my calendar was quite flexible, so I dove in head first, and we emerged on time and on target. the client was astounded at what we had managed to acheive in that short time.

The more I become aware of it and talk to people about it, the more I become aware it bursting can be very beneficial. I classic example is email – I often go a quite a while  without checking my email when I am deeply immersed in something else. I am now hearing more about the “crackberry” syndrome and how many people can’t resist checking their email when they get a new email alert. Combine this with the research that shows that even a very short interruption can retard productivity on the primary task by 10 to 20 minutes and you really start to appreciate bursting.

I have also noticed productivity advisors and sites like www.43folders.com reccommend similar techniques. But the keys are to burst on the highest priority task, to ‘come up for air’ occassionally, and if there are ‘rapid response’ tasks that need to be done, realise that you are not likely to do them well yourself, and therefore, to manage that (by delegation etc).
So I now I should live up to my self-inflicted reputation and add quite a few posts in the next few days. Wee will see 🙂

Oh, and to give this post an educational bend, I have a couple of thoughts.

Firstly, I think school classrooms can be teriible places for bursters. I remember being constantly interupted and distracted at school and being frustrated at not getting much done by the end of the class (having said that, my grades didn’t seem to suffer).

Secondly, it would have been immensely valuable to have been taught some of this stuff in school so that I did not have to discover it the hard way a decade later – certainly more valuable than some of the memorising we had to do which can now be accessed online (with more accuracy) in a matter of seconds. I guess falls into the camp of “don’t just learn, but learn to learn”, which they figured out a long time ago in  “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime”. Not to be mistaken with “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you get rid of him on weekends” 🙂