You probably use a to do list to stay organised.

Simple handwritten lists work well for many people. Others use one of the hundreds of online or off-line productivity applications.

Millions of knowledge workers swear by more complicated organisational systems such as David Allen's Getting Things Done.

Leo Babauta at Zen Habits suggests you kill your to do list.  He has a point. Babauta says lists suck up your time and drain motivation. I agree.

But I don't agree with Babauta's alternative. This has nothing to do with his use of the passionate cliché.

Babauta suggests you focus on one important thing. This doesn't work for my work as a freelance writer. It probably won't work for most knowledge workers.

My approach uses a short-term to do list. I write what I hope to do over the next few hours, maybe one whole day.

Nothing more. No long-term lists. No someday-maybe lists. No @home, @office nonsense.

If you think you'll forget things Babauta says you should make a reminder note, but don't use it as a to do list. This also makes sense to me. I put my reminders on my calendar.

I find reminders, a short-term list and a calendar are all I need to stay on top of organisation.

An article in CIO magazine about Peter Drucker – who first coined the term knowledge worker.  It isn't a soft piece. In The comeback Charlatan David James is critical writing;

He talks about knowledge as the organisation's vital "resource". It is not a resource (resources are inanimate; knowledge is an act of animate humans).

Likewise, his use of the economics-derived term "productivity" is doubtful. It is not how much knowledge is "produced" but how well it is applied.

In an interview with BRW, Drucker dismissed these concerns, saying that "eventually, we will have to work out the proper methodology for both defining and measuring knowledge, work and the knowledge worker".

The comeback Charlatan

Software is a work in progress.

Just as you’ve mastered an application and found ways to work around its quirks, an upgrade fixes the problems.

Developers add new features; introducing new quirks and new workarounds. And just to complicate matters there are regular security updates and patches.

Desktop PC applications evolve at a breakneck speed but web-based applications change at an even faster rate. The main difference between the two types of software is that you can easily choose not to update a PC application you’ve fine-tuned to perfection; with web-based software you are force marched to the updated version. This is good.

One of my favourite productivity applications updated last night. When I launched Remember the Milk this morning it told me I was now looking at the Smart Add edition.

In simple terms, Remember the Milk is an on-line to-do list manager. That’s like describing Microsoft Excel as a calculator.

Smart Add allows you to enter new to-do list items in plain English. It's similar to the way you can enter information on Google Calendar. But the software removes any doubts you may have about the exact meaning of your entries. This comes into its own when you use the program from a mobile device. There's a full explanation of how Smart Add works at the Remember the Milk blog.

Because it is online, the software allows you to integrate your to-do list items with maps, pictures, digital calendars, personal information managers, mobile phones and just about everything else that’s web-enabled.

You also share lists with colleagues and slice or dice the information to meet your ever-changing needs.

The basic version of Australian-developed application remains free, but there’s now a US$25 pro version which comes with priority support and the ability to synch to mobile devices including the Apple iPhone and iPod touch, Blackberry and Windows Mobile devices. You also get priority support – though I've only needed to contact support once in the three years or so I've used Remember the Milk – and I had the answer I needed within hours.

Remember the Milk now integrates with Gmail, Google Calendars and Twitter. You can also install a iGoogle Remember the Milk gadget if you use Google's home page. There's a list of official and third party add-ons at the Remember the Milk site. I use I Forgot the Milk as a Windows 7 gadget on my desktop and notebook.

Mark Shead at Productivity 501 writes:

The Hawthorne effect refers to some studies that were done on how training impacts employees’ productivity at work. The studies found that sending someone to training produces employees that work harder. The funny part about it is that you still get the productivity increase even if the training doesn’t teach them how to be better at their jobs. Sending someone to training helps them feel like they are important, like the company is investing in them and they are valuable. Because of this, they work harder.

Shead says the original tests were to do with changing light levels. You can read Shead’s story at Hawthorne Effect : Productivity501.

Wikipedia's entry on the Hawthorne effect is also worth reading.

There’s also a good definition at Donald Clark’s site: The Hawthorne effect.

Clark writes:

The Hawthorne effect – an increase in worker productivity produced by the psychological stimulus of being singled out and made to feel important.

Clarke links The Hawthorne effect to work done by Frederick Taylor who invented industrial psychology.

My common sense management experience says you should pay attention to workers as a matter of course.

Sadly this isn’t obvious to everyone and it certainly wasn’t back in the 1920s and 1930s when these ideas were fresh. My view is if you see the Hawthorne effect at your workplace, take it as a sign you aren’t managing correctly.

See also: Taylor’s scientific management doesn’t apply to knowledge work.

As someone who started their working life in the Northern Hemisphere, one of the hardest adjustments to make is that because Christmas coincides with summer, antipodeans take all their holiday in one big helping.

Or at least they did until the late 1980s.

When I first arrived in Wellington, New Zealand I found the summer break hard to cope with. In those days the city  closed down between Christmas Eve and Waitangi day (February 6).

For six weeks it was nigh on impossible to buy a cooked lunch, get one’s teeth fixed or car repaired.

Trains and buses ran reduced timetables. It was even harder to get anyone to make a business decision. Woe betide anyone who didn’t get their budgets signed-off before December 24^th.

Australia less sleepy

Australia, at least Sydney and Melbourne, weren’t so comprehensively sleepy over summer, but you’d still have difficulty getting in touch with people between Christmas and Australia day. I suspect regional Australia was as shuttered as New Zealand.

Although the politicians somehow still manage to score extended summer breaks, these days Wellington and Auckland start buzzing (albeit at a slightly reduced pace) a few days after Christmas while Sydney and Melbourne barely pause at all. I know from experience bosses pressure many employees, particularly in retail jobs, to work longer hours at this time of year.

Close down

Yet even now many companies and departments close down for two or three weeks. Some newspapers stop publishing, TV channels run reduced schedules and some businesses offer reduced services. It is not the four, five or six-week shut down enjoyed by earlier generations, but there’s a distinct feeling the city is depopulated and the resorts are crowded.

Most Northern Europeans take no more than a week or so around Christmas.

In England, people generally work until December 24^th and are back at their desks by January 2^nd, or maybe the next day if the public holiday falls on a weekend. Scots get an extra day’s holiday for Hogmanay.

Public holidays

Poms typically get a couple of weeks off in their summer along with a healthy swag of public holidays (Bank Holidays) throughout the year. Generally they have enough leave days left over to take a third small break. The French still take a month in mid-year. During August Parisians leave town en masse as invading hoards of plaid-clad American tourists invade.

The British work roughly as many days as Australians and, thanks to recent law changes, New Zealanders. Other Northern European countries work fewer days. Interestingly these other nations tend to have higher worker productivity rates.

In my view, the antipodean habit of having one long annual break over Christmas is not as useful or as productive as the Northern European tradition of taking a short mid-Winter Christmas break and a relatively short summer break. I also suspect the one long Christmas break is easier lost to a demanding job than the two breaks enjoyed by Europeans.

Speaking from a personal, and not a researched point of view, the good thing about Europe’s two or three break system is it enables one to keep fresher. I’ve found that working 11 months then resting for one month is harder than working a few months en bloc and taking shorter breaks. This is particularly true if your work involves creative thinking – and let’s face it, most Knowledge Workers need to think creatively.

A mid-winter holiday

I’d like to see New Zealand embrace Matariki, the Maori winter solstice, as a short mid-winter holiday. It would also be a good excuse for an extra public holiday – New Zealanders go for too long without a break at that time of year. I’m sure Australia can think up a suitable excuse for a similar festival.

With all the talk of 24 times 7 operations, Knowledge Workers are finding it increasingly hard to take any leave at all. That’s  not wise. It hurts your effectiveness. You might not get away from your desk for a whole fortnight at once, but you should try to escape for two or three weeklong breaks during the course of the year. You’ll be more productive for it.

In Why Productivity is Bunk Charlie Gilkey zeros in on the problem with productivity:

… people spend hours and hours finding new ways to be quicker at things they don’t need to be doing in the first place.

Gilkey has more in this vein. On his about page Gilkey writes his blog is:

… for recovering productivity junkies who have had enough of Getting Things Done and want to start getting things done.

I suspect Gilkey is only part way into the recovery process, there's a lot of material elsewhere in his blog looking suspiciously like productivity tips.

Three views:

How to Measure Knowledge Worker Productivity

Jon Miller says knowledge workers might be more productive if they laughed more.

Are Intellectual Knowledge workers eventually prone to Alzheimer's?

A wake up call. It says knowledge work makes you fat and at the same time there's a link between obesity and neuro-degeneration.

To Learn Lists – What My Grandfather Taught Me

Developing To Learn Lists sounds like a great idea. Bill Brantley  got it from Benjamin Franklin via his own grandfather. Write a list of things you want to know, then go and study them. Like the ideas it is extremely simple. To Learn Lists have been all over the Internet in recent weeks, this post has the ring of authenticity even if it isn't the original source.

An enlightened accountant's take on how to measure knowledge worker output. Tim focuses on results and doesn't worry about how work is completed.

If only more accountants could understand this – they should, after all, bean counters are knowledge workers themselves.