As someone who works in a very non-traditional environment, I am interested in conversations about what I call the work life flow. Mitch Joel calls it the work life blend. I like the concept of the blend: you work when work needs to be done, but you don’t work all the time because there are other things to do that are important as well. But whether you call it a flow or a blend, it’s easier to achieve if you don’t have to be in an office for a set number of hours. Once you put me at a desk from 8 to 5, you separate work from life.

I’m also really interested in how other people work: what kinds of routines have they established them help them manage the flow or blend or whatever you want to call it besides balance? I had a vague idea that there were “productivity methods” out there but I am not very good at following methods. Heck, I still do paper and pencil to do lists*. Most people end up doing some kind of hybrid method and I like the Pomodoro method of working with focus and then taking breaks. It’s actually kind of how I work anyway.

I tend to be a little cynical about methods…you spend more time organizing than doing. I do practice the live frog method although I have not read the book, only seen it on airport bookshelves. And, I’m thinking about writing the “graduate student” approach to productivity that I practiced: the fact is that everything on the list has to be done by a certain deadline at the end of the semester, but there wasn’t any rule that they couldn’t be turned in early. So, when there’s work to do, I generally work on it at least a little bit every day. When I see a chunk of time, I do a chunk of work. The goal is to complete the work rather than meet the deadline. It may be that it fits with the nature of the work I do, taking on projects with finite beginnings and endings rather than a more open ended king of employment.

Right now, my big productivity challenge is to figure out a routine that includes more “quadrant two” time (OK, I’m a Covey fan) when I can read and share.

And it occurred to me that this lifehacker.com article about productivity apps has the same lesson that educators are learning; it’s not about the technology. You can buy a million productivity apps but at some point, you have to just do the work not simply plan to do it.

*I have tried hard to transfer to a digital to do list. But I like being able to “curl up” with my to do list and I have an affinity for Moleskin. It’s part of my method.