You clearly need to enjoy the benefits of going analog. Here are 3 tips we use all the time to get our projects done.

Original Photo by flickr user Dave77459

Kitchen Timers:

We’re serious. We like to set the timer for half hour or hour long sprints to help us focus on a task. It ticks, it dings, you’re done.  The timer works well for three reasons – the ticking makes a white noise that keeps you on task,  estimating how much time a task will take you helps you to manage it, and timing yourself means that you’re allowed to take breaks. In fact, breaks are enforced, because you have to take your hands off the keyboard to reset the thing.

Task Breaks:

A friend told me recently about a study that showed that humans are evolving to aggregate information better, courtesy of using computers. Unfortunately, we’re the unevolved ones – this generation of humans aggregates poorly. The answer? Take breaks and let yourself process.

The only rules for a break are: you cannot input on a break (so, you can’t read your book, you can’t listen to music) and you cannot output on a break (don’t make notes, don’t go on Facebook, don’t answer your emails).  The best breaks, the ones that will bring you back to your desk with your work processed, are the ones that get you moving. (And this makes sense when you consider that our brains evolved partly from being able to walk.)

However you do it, banish yourself from input/output tasks for ten minutes, and you’ll find yourself sifting through information and coming back to your work with better focus.

Sticky Note Questions

Make your own content filter. Pick three (max) questions that help you define your goals, write them on a sticky note, and keep it where you can see it. This lets you check if you’re spending your time on the right priorities. For example, a funding developer might have this on her sticky note:

a) Will this bring in money?

b) Will this bring in new donor prospects?

This keeps her from going too far off onto websites that probably won’t support either goal.

If you’re interested in doing further reading about productivity (and you’re not on a task break right now) Merlin Mann’s 43folders.com is the site for you. Among other great posts, you’ll find this one on the benefits of using paper (yes, he invented The Hipster PDA). You’ll also find a great digital tool for keeping yourself from wandering off-task; if you’re not a kitchen timer kind of person, you might be a Brain Dad kind of person.  Kim Klein has also written a bit about analog efficiency – the sticky note idea is featured in her book Fundraising for Social Change (2001, Chardon Press) and it’s good advice.

thank god for writers like Leslie Crutchfield. though it might be fun to fundraise the viking way.

Recently, I had a chance to hear Leslie Crutchfield speak – she’s the co-author of “Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits”

She and Heather McLeod-Grant spent four years studying a dozen high-impact nonprofits to “uncover their secrets to success.” Now, I usually shy away from these kinds of books (”The Seven Highly Effective Secrets of the Wealthy Barista!”) because generally this type of “business literature,” tends towards trite, well-trodden advice. Do your homework; pay attention to your donors; work smarter, not harder. Great ideas, but you’ve heard them before.

I’m happy to say that Ms. Crutchfield and her book are different. It’s a great read, and well worth your time. I’ll cherry-pick one example that has stuck with me.

A key finding from her research was that successful nonprofits tended to treat other nonprofits as allies, not competitors. They actively nurtured collaborative networks. In fact, Crutchfield points out, many successful nonprofits have been using an “open source” approach to knowledge building, long before the term was used by us social geeks.

For example, take the Exploratorium (http://www.exploratorium.edu/). Founded in 1969 by Frank Oppenheimer (brother of atomic bomb Oppenheimer), the Exploratorium was at the forefront of the “hands-on science museum” movement. Over time, the Exploratorium decided to spend a portion of their annual budget to train staff from other museums in their philosophy of “museum as an educational centre.” Exploratorium staff would open their books and show people how to do what they did. Today, the Exploratorium Network for Exhibit-Based Teaching continues work to develop the field as a whole: as their website states, “As partners, we all reap the benefits of over 499 years of experience in the field.”

In the commercial sector, you would try and patent your ideas, hide them from your competitors or, at best, franchise. Instead, the Exploratorium adopted a philosophy of growing the network, not just the organisation. By advancing the field, they advanced their own institution.

In the end, the advice from “Forces for Good” is to think like a movement. It doesn’t matter if you are a museum or an activist group – you are part of a larger movement, and it pays us all to advance collectively.

Or so says Leslie Crutchfield – do you agree? Are you a small non-profit, struggling to keep up with big NGO fundraising shops? Or is this kind of “share the love” thinking too idealistic?