In this second part of our two-part series this week of ProductivityCast, we look at the ideas behind the book by one of our regular contributors, Francis Wade. Perfect Time-Based Productivity (2nd Ed.) is for the person who has already begun their productivity journey. It focuses mostly on task management and we talk about the ways we can gain greater insight into the way each person manages his/her tasks in order to find the best areas of improvement.

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In this Cast

Ray Sidney-Smith

Augusto Pinaud

Art Gelwicks

Francis Wade

Show Notes | Perfect Time-Based Productivity

Resources we mention, including links to them, will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context.

Getting Things Done by David Allen

SkedPal

Kaizen

Stickk

Perfect Time-Based Productivity: How to rescue your peace of mind as time demands increase (Second Edition) by Francis Wade (Amazon)

Perfect Time-Based Productivity – A unique way to protect your peace of mind as time demands increase (book website)

Fixed versus growth mindset - Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck, PhD

Discussion of Mindset at Productivity Book Group

Howard Gardner, multiple intelligences and education – infed.org

Multiple intelligences

The Age-by-Age Guide to Teaching Kids Time Management

Zwift

Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning by Peter C. Brown, et al.

Make It Stick - Productivity Book Group

Change management

Evernote

OneNote

Notion.so

Productive Failure in Learning the Concept of Variance 

The 12 Important Life Skills I Wish I'd Learned In School 

Last Chance U

Micro-goal setting

Raw Text Transcript | Perfect Time-based Productivity, Part Two

Raw, unedited and machine-produced text transcript so there may be substantial errors, but you can search for specific points in the episode to jump to, or to reference back to at a later date and time, by keywords or key phrases. The time coding is mm:ss (e.g., 0:04 starts at 4 seconds into the cast’s audio).

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Voiceover Artist 0:00 Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling productive life, then you've come to the right place productivity cast, the weekly show about all things productivity. Here, your host Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17

And Welcome back, everybody to productivity cast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity, I'm Ray Sidney Smith.

Augusto Pinaud 0:24 I am Augusto Pinaud.

Francis Wade 0:26I'm Francis Wade.

Art Gelwicks 0:27 And I'm Art Gelwicks.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:23Welcome, gentlemen and welcome to our listeners to this second part in our conversation we're having around the book, Perfect Time-Based Productivity, the second edition by our very own Francis Wade, I'm going to pass it over to you, Francis to tell us where we left off kind of a recap of our last episode. And and then where we left off in the conversation, and what we're going to be talking about in this week's episode.

Francis Wade 0:49Well, last time we talked about the fact that today's learner or today's young person, let's put it that way. People who are younger than we are, are left to their own devices. develop their own productivity system which they do they start doing somewhere in the teens and unlike us authors with gray hair they have very few signposts very few very little guidance especially with respect to the the smartphones that they're using. And with less guidance it means that the systems they self develop end up having some gaps when they get into their let's say their late teens and early 20s this stuff development business is true for everyone but but for the today's user today's learner today's person entering the point is there's less signposts and less guidance than there has been in the past and or hypothesis was that as a result, they need a way to evaluate themselves which is what they do anyway, when they take a training program or pick up a book is that they go through a period of self reflection to see okay, where am I with respect to what this book or this person or this training is recommending and we had just gotten to the point where I shared a an evaluation I had done in under the guise of playing a game. So I shared the fact that a couple months ago, I picked up a esport called Swift, which is basically a bicycling training program online, which you attach a trainer to Bluetooth transmitter, it transmits the signal to your laptop, which then transmits the signal to the game which links you up to races and rides with hundreds, thousands of people all over the world. So you're essentially pedaling on your bicycle on a train against some resistance. And you're watching people go by you and you're catching up with groups, but it's all happening on the screen in front of you. And it's feels extremely real, as I shared the last time and it's, it, of course, makes you very, very fit and the proof of the pudding has been my own writing. So I've gotten measurably fitter since playing this game two months ago and The guys on guys who I ride with in my club are telling me that Yeah, looking much stronger and I feel a lot stronger yesterday I rode had a six hour ride and had no problem doing it. And so the thing is working, it started with a just kind of a lack because I didn't know where it would go. But the programmers have found a way to give me an experience that translates into real time fitness on the road, you know, where I where I do the man riding, I guess. And the idea, which is I guess, the one that is just an example of is that there's a way there are ways to use software to either evaluate or and or to train and or to gamify and or to give someone this immersive kind of experience. That's not just about having fun, like a typical game might be but actually results in a real skill. You know, I think of flight simulator, and what it goes for would be pilot It actually does build a real skill. So that's where we left off is what role does the digital world play in developing real skills, I guess we're going to tie it back to productivity skills. And then

Raymond Sidney-Smith 4:12what Francis is talking about is right in line with a lot of the game design discussion that we've had in past episodes, but I think it's really important to circle back to this on occasion, which is to recognize the importance of certain types of components of game design, that that really engage us all in the learning process. And really, let's let's remove game design and just say good learning is built on some fundamentals. One is what's considered, basically, lateral thinking, and we've talked about Dr. Edward de Bono's work here with six thinking hats and that kind of thing, but in essence, interlaced learning, in my perspective is very akin to lateral thinking. Which is the idea of taking multiple, that's actually wrong. So scratch that. So I like both of these concepts. So I like the idea of interlacing your learning. And what that means is that in in when you're trying to learn you are taking different parts of the subject and learning them out of out of order. And the idea is, is that if it's easy, your brain automatically stops learning if it's difficult your brain attempts to rise to the occasion. Challenge is what makes us motivated challenge is what makes us learn human human civilizations. Humans as a as a species, we are, thankfully, who we are because of our ability to face adversity. And it seems as though that's also the way we best grow. That's how how we were best, you know, able to go from where we are to where we want to be. We embrace challenge and I think frequently what people want to do is find the path of least resistance. But when it comes to learning, it doesn't actually work that way. And so what what we want to do is we want to be able to have challenge. And that means don't try to learn things in order, don't go from Part A to part B, Part C, yes, you won't understand Part C, or part f as well, until you circle back around to the material. But the science clearly bears out that when we learn out of order, we actually learn we understand it better. We also have to make mistakes and get immediate feedback. If you learn something and you don't make a mistake in the process of learning that thing is you will learn it less you will actually retain it less than if you actually learn it, make a mistake along the way, get corrected quickly and then come to the end. You will actually have learned it better. You will retain it better, you'll comprehend it better. There's this better learning experience by virtue of you going ahead and having made mistakes and Again, that that tertiary part is actually immediate feedback. So as you're learning, you need to be tested, you need to be, you know, you need to, in some way, shape or form, you need to be able to show that you have actually learned it. And that forces you, it's kind of like accountability, generally, it's the idea that you have to be held accountable. And that that very nature of being tested in some way, shape or form forces the accountability. So from my perspective, I think that these are, these are game design principles. These are also learning design principles, whether that's pedagogy or andragogy. This is how we best teach....