Scott Porad, CTO of the Cheezburger Network (yes, the people behind the I Can Has Cheezburger? phenomenon), has a terrific post at his blog about lessons he learned from raking pine cones with his 7-year-old son. As he notes, he didn’t plan on this turning into a lesson—much less, one about productivity—but that’s what happened.
Porad describes how his son “basically just was just moving the cones around, sloshing them to-and-fro.” He needed coaching. So Porad broke the task down into components, with an emphasis on coming up with a plan, viewing your “little successes,” and focusing on progress.
As Porad says:
The lesson here is obvious: focus on your success and progress, instead of the mountain ahead. In the software or web development world, this means actually keeping a list somewhere of all the things that have been accomplished.
Porad says that’s what his team does, with “an entire wall devoted to listing out all the things we’ve achieved.”
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