I’ve read The Power of Less by Leo Babauta twice now. It really cuts to the point of simplicity and the impact on productivity it can cause. Dropping a simplicity nuke into your life/business could have a big impact.

The crux of the book is identify the essential and eliminate the rest. The idea being that you are essentially knocking off the most important things first on your list and so on. Many people and organisations run with dozens of projects, tasks or work in parallel. Babauta argues for a more serial approach which I agree with. In many ways this is very similar to using Pareto’s principal to help you decide what to work on next in your projects or life that will cause the biggest impact for the smallest use of available resource. This approach also allows you to operate in a state of flow and actively tries to remove the interruption tax that causes much of the poor productivity you can see in office environments.

Image credit: Smemon

Walking to work I noticed in the DJ’s Xmas display a coffee machine (right side of photo). So this is my official hint to my wife Emma that I’d love a new coffee machine for Xmas. My old one is getting very tired and making very disturbing noises.

One of the things I get to do on trips is think about decisions I need to make. It’s easiest away from home. Having four kids and a busy life causes a huge amount of unclear head chatter in my thinking. Some quiet time to think is scarce.

Thinking results in good choices, and that is the key to business. A friend reminded me of this recently, and as he said it I new it but like many things, even the important stuff, it was tucked way under a sheet in the back of my mental attic of ideas.

In business it’s not funding, team size, location, or any of these factors. They are influencers but not the dominent cause of success. It’s about making the right choices. Understanding that choices are options in the literal financial market sense of the word is an important distinction you can make. A choice is a “right” that you own. So making a choice is “exercising” an option you own and it will have a payoff good or bad, just like options do. Good choices ends with good results, so investing time in thinking before making them is worthwhile.

In what seems to be an accidental tradition in the Lehmann family we took our 4th newborn child to a Wallabies v All Blacks Bledisloe on Friday night. He slept through the whole event.

I always love going to these games. I’m a wallabies fan obviously, but of all the international teams, I admire the All Blacks team the most. I love the Harka, the type of game they play, they are simply a brilliant team.

Recently our company Saasu did a deal with an NZ company called Acclipse and just like my experience dealing with Kiwi’s at Deutsche, same applies here. Acclipse is full of really good people. NZ really does produce quality.

I have a very hectic 2 weeks ahead of me. So I scheduled 20 minutes of me time at the park over the road from my office. This is the view from just below my chin watching the early bird autonomous robots on their way to work.

In a world full of variety, knowledge and potential it’s so easy to operate tomorrow how you did today, yesterday and many days before that. For most of us less than 1% of our lives is truly spontaneous or new. Life can become an inevitable future, what I call an IF. So I try to break my IF by making changes, self expressing and exploring a different way of living and working.

The picture left is one of my attempts to break my IF last year. Something a little crazy. I don’t normally go four wheel driving because I don’t like the environmental impact it has despite owning a 4WD vehicle. It was something spontaneous, a tangent from my normal life and I never regretted it. It was actually brilliant experience with some great people that asked me along (Thanks Mike and Doug).

• Automation is more than machines doing work for you. It’s about MACHINES and HUMANS following RULES religiously.
• Keeping multiple todo lists is very bad. That would then be a list of lists = FAIL. One work list and one personal list is plenty.
• Coincidental results are when you shift your approach to a task in such a way that it causes other tasks to be completed or progressed.
• Relying on memory = FAIL. Write down enough that you can act on. Do you write down phone numbers and later look at them in mystery?
• A few big theme based spreadsheets with more tabs trumps lots of single tab spreadsheets.
• Search your email to find emails don’t file them. Mind shift » Search is in effect treating every piece of text in an email as a folder/label.
• I need one many of these (pictured)

Wikipedia describes Flow as,

the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity.

It’s difficult to achieve this state but if you can it is an amazing feeling. I find flow requires comfort, awakeness, music, enjoyment of the task at hand. It can also come of the back of a series of epiphanies that lead into excited state of flow for extended periods of time.

Personally I’ve found myself in that state just by laying in bed and brainstorming to music, also in sporting situations when I have been surfing or sailing. Even working (if you like your job like me) it happens but is usually cut short by an environment that tends to destroy the state.

What breaks flow is distraction or fatigue. People also break flow, particularly those that suck energy from an environment with negative speech, behaviour and presence. I also think age can play a part if you let age dull your self expression, learning, health and creativity.

The state of flow probably isn’t very observable because it’s so internalized but a few classic representations of it by the movie industry are the character Neo in the Matrix, Bud fox at the height of his career in the Wall Street and more recently when Sam Worthington masters the skills of natural law of the Na’vi people in Avatar.

I think it’s worth the effort pushing for the state of flow if you can. It takes effort but it is possible with mental training and setting the right conditions for it to occur.

Photo by alaskaent

In summary the trip is a flight into Melaleuca via TasAir and a walk 83km east coming out at Cockle Creek. The trip took us 6 days but you do need to allow 8 days. Bad weather can prevent you crossing the Ironbound Range and river crossings may not be possible if in flood.

It is a remote walk and there is a wide variety of terrain experience. The walk has three superb climbs. The first easy climb is into the Red Point Hills and the second was a difficult, windy, cold one over the Ironbound Range. The final climb is up to the top of the South Cape Range. I created the following elevation chart to highlight the climbs.

There are no roads, fire trails, huts or human infrastructure other than timbered sections of the track and the odd pit toilet to protect the ecosystem. So you are on your own other than the odd bush walker. There’s plenty of drinking water in creeks and streams. All seem to contain frogs, yabbies and fish. Some creeks flow red due to tea tree.

If you plan to do the walk then permits from TasAir flight departure or from Cockle Creek National Parks Office are $30. Take a map, compass, fuel stove (no fires allowed), first aid, an EPIRB and cold/wet gear.

The fauna is evident everywhere. You are certain to see at a minimum yabbies, freshwater fish, frogs, wallabies and many bird species. If you are lucky you may see the very rare Orange Bellied Parrot. There’s an incredible diversity of flora such as the Isophysis tasmanica orchid which we saw when crossing the Ironbound Range. If you like those strange looking plants in Dr Zeus books then you’ll love the Pandani and Scoparia up in the ranges.

I highly recommend reading King of the Wilderness the Deny King biography by Christobel Mattingley. Launceston Field Naturalists Club’s Guide to Flowers & Plants of Tasmania is also an excellent resource if you want to get the most out of the flora experience. Matt Downunder wrote a good post about preparing for a 10 day hike in south west Tasmania.

I’ve posted our Tasmania South Coast Track photo set at my flickr account