This week I’ve been presenting at a client conference so I have not been writing any articles for a while. I’ve been too busy planning and presenting my security sessions during four long and interesting days. Ok, maybe I have done a little partying with my customers too. My customers never seem to get tired. They are a lot of fun. However, now I’m back again! I thought it would be fitting to talk about a trick that made me sit down and write this article tonight, even though I wanted to go to bed and sleep. It’s a trick that I picked up while reading a magazine at my dentist’s office a couple of weeks ago.

The article was about productivity tricks that famous people are using. Most of the article was useless, without much substance but ONE THING caught my interest. It was about Jerry Seinfeld. He shared a trick that he still uses today to get him motivated to write more material for his shows. It’s a simple and visible technique that will motivate you to get your stuff done. So what is it, you ask? Well, I call the technique “Fill the GAP” and it goes like this… Imagine a big calendar where each calendar day has one box. The goal is to fill the boxes by putting a simple check mark in the boxes, proving to yourself that you have dedicated time to your activities. Over time you will fill out more boxes, painting the calendar full of check boxes, which will keep you motivated because now you can visually review your progress. Soon enough you never want to have an empty check box, hence the term “Fill the GAP”. Every new check box means one less gap in your calendar. Jerry Seinfeld uses a big calendar pegged to a wall.

Since I travel all the time for work, I created a spreadsheet that does the same thing, since I can’t bring a wall-sizes calendar on the road. I named the spreadsheet Progress.XLS, and put it in a safe place on my hard drive. Then I created a shortcut to the spreadsheet on my windows taskbar and changed the icon to a nice looking yellow star. The star icon makes me visualize myself as a star performer every time I get to add another check box to my activities. The bottom line is to ensure that you stay focused on the activities you need to keep doing on a recurring basis. For me, examples of such activities are: research productivity tips, write TechPREE articles, working out, research stock investment techniques, read a book not related to technology, etc.

I am a visual person and I get much more excited about visual content than lines and more lines of text. I grasp complex topics much easier over clear and appealing illustration. Over the years being a technology consultant, I have learned first-hand that it is much easier to teach clients about technology using visual elements, than simply throwing a pages of boring manuals their way. It is also not about just the technology. It is about making a connection with the clients that will last for many years to come. They need to know that I am good at translating the information that they are paying for. I have a set of very visually appealing PowerPoint slides that use when presenting and teaching in seminars and in 1on1 sessions. Regardless of what my topics are, I always have my “power slide deck” with me in case I need to dig deeper into a complex technical topic. Sometimes I can talk for 30 minutes to the same slide and explain what takes a person a whole working day to grasp reading a manual.

Without further due, here is a screen capture of my personal progress spreadsheet. I have created macros that automatically checks what date it is and it marks the current day’s column in YELLOW. That way, you know where to put a check mark. All the entries in RED, have a check mark. You can add as many recurring activities that you wish in the spreadsheet. Just make sure that you insert a line between row 5 and 8 below as you want the new line to inherit the same macro code.

As you can see, I have just started this spreadsheet and I apparently need to work on my Working out activity. It still does not have any check marks. DOWNLOAD THE SPREADSHEET and start filling in your own gaps. Esbjorn

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