DIY Planner - Psychology - Comments

This is great!! I was

Anonymous — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 22:08:41 -0400

This is great!! I was amazed, but it's hard to find anything on the web on breaking down projects.

Oh my goodness. Someone

Jess — Tue, 27 May 2008 13:17:30 -0400

Oh my goodness.

Someone please call the waaaaaaaaaambulance for Big Ol Red.

And while you're at it, call the cops to hunt down the crazed person who held a gun to his head and made him read the article all the way through to the end.

Honestly.

Can't you just be grateful that someone thought to share a tip that might make completing your next project a little bit easier?

Even if you can't be grateful, please don't waste the time of the hard working people who run this site with your petty complaints.

Stepwise Refinement

reepicheep — Thu, 22 May 2008 20:56:01 -0400

In Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), there is a concept called chunking. In chunking, a person takes information and either breaks it down into manageable parts (i.e. focusing on the details, or breaking down the information into smaller pieces so that it makes sense in relation to the big picture), or takes a detail and asks questions to fill in the big picture around that detail.

As a computing scientist I do this sort of thing all the time and did so for many years before NLP was even a twinkle in the eye of those who think it is a good idea. I look back to the late 1960s/early 1970s and the work of computing scientists like Edsger Dijkstra, Niklas Wirth, Tony Hoare, Don Knuth, Ole Dahl, Michael Jackson, and many others who devised various methods that we computing scientists now called stepwise refinement.

Also as a computing scientist writing programming language compilers and run-time libraries I'm well used to chunking (or in the parlance of the 1959! Algol-x report thunking) by putting information on the run-time call stack.

Now as a sign language interpreter I use chunking to over-come the limitations of my short-term memory (mine's only about four or five items deep rather than the average six or seven deep). Collecting related information together into chunks. Don't need NLP to do this; so suggest that this is a NLP technique is gross misrepresentation.

Using NLP across disciplines

Imagineyourreality — Thu, 22 May 2008 19:01:19 -0400

I used the NLP concept of chunking and applied it to a project. How I used it might not fit the strict definition of how it's used in NLP, but then again the point of NLP is to create flexibility in thought and communication. IMO, using the concept of chunking in a project still works and is just an application of the concept in a different medium than it might normally be used.

Taylor

The Creative Health and Wealth coach
Stop settling for less and start Really Living your Life
Contact me for a half hour consultation at http://www.imagineyourreality.com/scheduling.html

Hmm... The more I search on

brontide — Wed, 21 May 2008 18:24:53 -0400

Hmm...

The more I search on NLP the more my "psycho-babble" and "pseudo-science" meter goes off. Everyone seems linked to things like hypnotherapy, "breakthrough" weight loss, and motivational speaking.

If it works for you then great.

The thing to remember about

elf_man — Wed, 21 May 2008 17:35:07 -0400

The thing to remember about NLP is that it can be effective, but you have to actually use it instead of just addicting yourself to seminars. Unfortunately, peak experiences are a problem with any of these things. Although it occurs to me that GTD has some of the same problems, when people constantly rework their system instead of actually using it. Hehe.

Immediate halt

reepicheep — Wed, 21 May 2008 17:21:08 -0400

I didn't notice the topic assignment for this article; the recent posts page is where I start. However, I stopped two words in at NLP ... no waste of my time. But reading your comment was useful and not a waste.

Nicely done, and a good

Metropolitan — Wed, 21 May 2008 16:49:00 -0400

Nicely done, and a good reminder to reduce the scope of things. I work in software testing, and breaking projects down into little pieces is pretty much the only way to get them done!

Neat, I had never looked

brontide — Wed, 21 May 2008 14:55:35 -0400

Neat, I had never looked into NLP before and it's got some very good ideals. The only issue is that it has no relation to the topic that you posted about.

"In Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), there is a concept called chunking.": Chunking in NLP is about communications, not organizing projects. Chunking is about identifying the granularity of the person you are communicating with and then altering your response.

http://www.nlptraining.com/index.asp?fuseaction=showarticle&...

I could see if you wish to consider the work you do on a project as part of a "conversation"; in that respect you need to make sure you chunk your time in a way that will be compatible with the project that you have. In your case a newsletter is a "small chunk" conversation, while something more generic like writing a book would be a "large chunk" conversation that needs to be lead down the path to "small chunks" so the time would initially have to be scheduled in larger blocks before it could be chunked down to smaller and smaller blocks.

It sounds more like you are engaging in something more akin to Gantt charting than NLP though.

Cheers,
Eric

Implied use for analog/digial

innowen — Wed, 21 May 2008 04:43:01 -0400

I am sorry this article "wasted" your time. Not all articles located in one particular category may appease your appetite for that category.

I felt it belonged in this category because to me, chunking implies that you need to write down your thoughts in an organized fashion. We use the Analog/Digital posts to highlight techniques/systems, products, or thoughts that relate to the category. Analog is a paper-based or thought-based activity, while digital implies the use of computers or hand-held systems. Chunking out a project, can be done using analog (paper) or digital (programs like Madcap Flare or LifeBalance).

In technical writing, which is my profession, we use chunking (also known as leveraging or single-sourcing) to build manuals. I've designed manuals by taking small chunks of text, like a description or a single topic, and writing out what the text is down on an index card. These index cards get stacked up and broken into phases, so that when I go to write a particular iteration of the manual, I enter the text (or expand upon that subject) into an application, like Madcap Flare, that gets used to create and publish the manual.

/innowen

Chunking

Big Ol' Red — Wed, 21 May 2008 04:08:09 -0400

Why is this article located in analog/digital? I didn't see anything in it related to Analog/Digital. I wasted my time reading it, because it had nothing whatever to do with the subject group in which it is found. It has nothing to do with what I was looking for when I clicked on the category "analog/digital".

Time constraints, tough to find 40 minutes a day for anything

CathMac — Tue, 20 May 2008 15:11:42 -0400

Wikeh2004,
Great article from Time magazine. I was particularly struck by these comments:

“One recent study found evidence that the daily practice of meditation (for 40 minutes) thickened the parts of the brain's cerebral cortex responsible for decision making, attention and memory.”
…
The forms of meditation Lazar and other scientists are studying involve focusing on an image or sound or on one's breathing. Though deceptively simple, the practice seems to exercise the parts of the brain that help us pay attention.
…
Another benefit for employers: meditation seems to help regulate emotions, which in turn helps people get along. "One of the most important domains meditation acts upon is emotional intelligence—a set of skills far more consequential for life success than cognitive intelligence,"

The problem is that although the cerebral cortex measurements for people meditating for just 40 minutes a day compares favorably to Tibetan monks who spend inordinant amounts of time meditating, the average person just don't have that kind of time. Which is too bad because, as the article points out, this could have implications for staying sharp as you get older since this part of the brain thins with age.

However, perhaps this article will motivate me to try and carve out some time for meditating. I think there are benefits even with short bursts of meditation but it makes sense that longer stretches would be better, certainly for building concentration.

I have the same problem trying to find the time to excercise. I do wonder if it's possible to meditate while doing something repetitive and mindless like using a stationary bicycle.

~Cath

Here's another article on meditation as an aid to productivity..

wikeh2004 — Tue, 20 May 2008 03:37:57 -0400

Not sure if this will work, but here goes.

www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1147167,00.html

-----------------------
"The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once." Albert Einstein and Buckaroo Banzai

Great post!

David Jarvi — Mon, 19 May 2008 17:05:27 -0400

I loved your post. I'm looking to get into action on a morning ritual.

I'm curious what your thoughts are on integrating things like Bible, Koran, or just really great books into the whole process.

My Goal is a powerful spi-'ritual' including day planner/'scriptures'/meditation&prayer

re: the brain

Imagineyourreality — Thu, 8 May 2008 20:49:11 -0400

I usually incorporate the symbols into my planner, where I know I will see them. So if you carry a planner with a calendar that can be helpful.