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Reflection on keeping an Action Log for a month May 27, 2008

Posted by Andy Roberts in : Action Log, Action Research , 1 comment so far

This is the fourth post in a series of Action Research posts, following on from
1) 2008/04/27 First Person Action Research
2) 2008/04/29 Keeping an Action Log for 1st Person Research
(also 11 comments on the above link)
3) 2008/05/12 Action Log Examples

Reflecting on the process of Action Logging

Having meticulously kept up my Action Log for one month now, it’s time for me to reflect on the process and the implications for my practice as a self-motivated online worker.

Some thoughts about the Action Log in practice have been burbling away, somewhat informally near the front of mind in the past week, especially since writing up the examples. So now it’s time to use one of the reflective models to scaffold a deliberate piece of reflective writing and discovery. I’ll turn to the Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle model based on the simple diagram below:

Gibbs Reflective Cycle Model for Reflection

Description - what happened

I took to Action Logging quite readily, keeping up the short daily notes from 16th April until 15th May and have continued since. There is only one day off without any actions at all recorded, a deliberate day off. Apart from that the number of actions recorded varies between 1 and about ten, but of course the size of the actions varies enormously. Most if not all of the records are still meaningful, so a working log of all the various additions and adjustments made is now available to me, each tied to an exact date. After two weeks, I started dividing the days up into AM and PM, sometimes adding EV for evening. I very rarely had to go back and fill in a previous day’s log, but regularly use the browser history now, to check back over the past half a day or so to refresh my memory of where I’ve been and what I’ve done.

Feelings - what did I think and feel about it

I felt good about it. Satisfaction that I was indeed getting things done, and not just whiling away time browsing and checking. Sometimes it would still feel that the only things to show were quite small things, but better than nothing. A little bit of wonder that I seemed to have come up with an idea that was really taking me forward through instilling the beginnings of a good habit of self discipline. Later on some self doubt began to emerge, as I began to suspect that I might be letting myself off from some larger tasks by making do with having achieved some small ones. A slight sense of waste that I might be expending energy on accumulating valuable data without having any formal plan for getting around to actually using it.

Evaluation - What’s good and bad

What’s good

What’s Bad

Analysis - What sense can I make of it

Keeping an action log is giving me a sense of reassurance at least, and quite possibly that very act is making sure that at least a minimal number of concrete positive are taken each day that go out into the world and stand a chance of having an effect. Almost certainly. Once logged, however, nothing else is happening to them at present. It’s got nothing to do with testing and tracking, but perhaps something to do with probing, pushing, and building.

I think it’s also quite healthy to have a sense that there also need to be some checks and balances to makes sure that some longer term goals and bigger tasks are being addressed. That’s fine. At this stage, the greatest achievement is to find something that seems to be working and largely stick to it.

Conclusion - what else could I have done

That’s a hard question, which is a good thing in some ways, or am I failing to spot something that’s missing? Maybe I should have recorded some reflections on the process as I went along, so I would have more to chew on now.

Action Plan - What will I do differently next time?

Mostly I think I shall declare this first cycle of my 1st person Action Research a productive one, and aim to introduce modifications only gradually. Steady as she goes.

I’ve always insisted that the Action Log method is not a complete package, it’s just a useful tool for use in a situation that might already be a bit out of hand. It’s almost an emergency remedy, a blunt instrument of rescue. Once the patient is stabilised, we can then start to introduce solid food and gentle exercise.

This has to be in the form of some kind of planning or task list, but still keeping the main focus on the actions getting done and logged, avoiding the tyranny of being surrounded by lists of things not done. I’m starting to imagine a supplementary system which is like a kind of ‘lucky dip’ of additional tasks that could be done, nice ones, interesting but necessary ones, without any deadline. The lucky dip will sit somewhere a bit more at arms length, and every so often when I think of something appropriate I might add it in. The lucky dip shouldn’t grow in size to more than about 50 tasks, and they should be things of a size that the whole lot could be cleared in a month if it was decided to concentrate just on them, but that isn’t the plan. The plan is that every now and then when I come to a juncture in my activities, I might decide to go the lucky dip and pick a task to do straight away. That will then give me something to put on my action log for the day.

Reflective process

For the sake of completion it’s customary to reflect on the reflective process itself so without disappearing up my own whatsit, I’d like to record that I’ve noticed that while this piece of reflective writing has not gone into any really deep reflection, it has spontaneously produced a very clearly defined action for my second cycle - implementing the “Lucky Dip” list.

Addendum: Using Twitter for the Action Log

This paragraph doesn’t really belong here but I postponed it once already.

I suggested a private space online, a text document or a physical notepad. Another alternative which Bill observed is the idea of using a twitter account. I can see how that might work, especially for people who can take advantage of mobile access to send in some action records while on the move somewhere. There are some disadvantages as well, such as the clunky interface for accessing archives but I suppose you could always pull in the RSS feed and archive it yourself. The main point would be to set up a separate twitter account solely to log the actions, and not expect it to attract and retain followers, or even try.

Action Log examples May 12, 2008

Posted by Andy Roberts in : Action Log, Action Research , 3comments

This is the third in a series of articles exploring the Action Log concept for 1st person research. The first article began to explain the practice of first person action research, and the second introduced the idea of keeping an Action Log.

In the comments, Shelley asked for a real example of an Action Log and Bill Anderson has provided one already, which we discussed there. He also sent me his second day’s log which I can publish and discuss here, together with an example from my own. First let me repeat how I described the type of actions to put down and the purpose of the log.

The simple idea is to jot down on at least a daily basis, a list of the actions taken. By actions, I mean visible external steps which are intended to have a positive effect, to add to a movement in the desired direction.

The purpose of an Action Log is:

Two Action Log Examples

So this is Bill’s Log for Tuesday, May 6, 2008

  1. Replaced air filter
  2. Tried to replace light bulb - need professional help.
  3. Contacted AD about his blog error about me.
  4. Contacted TB about TCDL presentation req’ts.
  5. Commented on JM’s FB wall.
  6. Contacted UIUC info sys prof about ASIS&T07 session on training curators of digital science resources.
  7. Phone call with DH.
  8. Note to AD about his blog.
  9. Memtester run on pandora (2x).
  10. Voted in city election.
  11. Minimal HD cleanup.
  12. Sent class times to ML R-L.

My comments

This is a great example of an action log, with minimal description of discrete tasks accomplished. My first reaction was to question #2 , which could be about decision making rather than action taking but if you think about it the act of trying to replace the light bulb has been done and it’s moved Bill forward towards solving the problem. The other one is the phone call at #7. If the action was to make a call to DH that needed doing for a specific reason then fair enough. But If it was just to receive a call and pass some time discussing this and that, then this is just accounting for time spent rather than logging actions.

Andy’s Log for three days

Comments

These entries are fairly typical, representing a number of small tasks and one or two larger ones. The descriptions are not very helpful sometimes, for exaple ” tweaks to LT posts” doesn’t help me remember what the tweaks were, but at least I know I was doing something useful, hopefully. “Worked on draft” is a giveaway, so I’ve caught myself out justifying time and recording an action prematurely. Not until the draft is published does it become an action of the type I am interested in, although I suppose I felt I’d made some good progress towards publishing.

General Points:

Not a timesheet.

Action Log is Not a timesheet

We are not trying to account for our time, in fact the actions which I log only represent about a quarter of the time I spend working online. The rest is research, interaction, reading, learning, and taking actions behind the scenes that may precipitate effective actions later on, but at this stage don’t yet count.

Not the Total Solution.

The Action Log isn’t a “Total Solution”, it doesn’t account for reflection, prioritising, decision making or lots of other essential tasks. It’s only intended to address one aspect of the personal workflow, not the whole thing.

In the next post in this series I shall reflect on the possible impact and implications from keeping the Action Log and also discuss briefly the idea of using twitter.

Keeping an Action Log for 1st person research April 29, 2008

Posted by Andy Roberts in : Action Log, Action Research , 11comments

Keeping an Action Log

In my first post about First Person Action Research I mentioned the Action Log, and now I’m going to explain what I mean by that, and invite you to take the first action but first, here’s some context.

Goals

One of the most frequently occurring goals on 43things has always been “to stop wasting so much time on the internet” and one of the most talked about applications is the “Getting Things Done” ( GTD) system. This suggests that I’m certainly not alone in grappling with the problem of meaningful productivity amongst so much distraction and information overload.

Reflection

I reflected quite easily that I had succumbed to the common affliction of spending too much time monitoring data and checking statistics, at the expense of creating new content, networking with contacts and making improvements to websites. There is some convincing behaviourist theory about the addictive nature of checking inboxes etc when the reward or gratification is irregular or sporadic. People at computers, especially when tired or feeling low can act like rats in a cage who keep on tap-tapping on that button just because every once in a while a piece of cheese rolls down the tube, especially when we can’t predict when it will happen. I blame the evil scientists for setting up an environment like that!

Hiding the distractions

One drastic solution is to move the temptation further away. Get those shortcuts off the browser’s toolbar, remove applications from the dock or system tray. Make it harder to get to the addictive stuff. Now you might have already spotted the dilemma with that approach, which stems from the fact that the person doing the hiding is one and the same as the person doing the seeking!

Action Log

Arising from circumstance, I came up with the idea of starting an Action Log. The idea is simply that I would jot down on a daily basis, a list of the actions taken. I have it in my mind that by actions, I mean visible external steps which are intended to have a positive effect, to add to the movement in the direction I’m headed. Publishing a blog post, joining a forum and posting an introduction, tweaking a theme or plugin to improve usability, uploading a picture, publishing a video, leaving a useful comment somewhere, these are all considered to be actions in this context, whereas doing google searches, reading RSS feeds (without responding), learning and observing are not considered to be actions. Incidentally, taking the step of beginning an Action Log is the critical action for cycle one of my own action inquiry.

Dual Purpose

The purpose of the Action Log is twofold. One of the problems with monitoring web activity is that it’s a complex adaptive system which is often opaque in its mechanisms. You might get a gentle rise in traffic over a couple of weeks, followed by a perplexing sharp dip. Was it because of something I did yesterday, last week, or last month, something unknown external change or a random coincidence? When the subjective inputs are small and widely spread it’s very easy to lose track ( ie forget ) what exactly has been done and when. So having a diarised record in the form of an Action Log should at least improve the chances of being able to detect the weak signals of a reproducible relationship between cause and effect, when there is one.

Recording actions to improve

The second and probably more important purpose, is to act as an incentive to increase the number of actions taken, to begin to reverse the balance that had shifted too far in the direction of passivity. “What gets measured gets done” can be a harsh mantra, but this is a very soft implementation. It’s nothing like being forced to fill in a timesheet for example. And the great thing about it is that all you are doing is focussing on the little positive accomplishments that can be ticked off for each day. There’s no being beaten about the head with a long “To do list ” of things that still haven’t been done, just a simple record and celebration of those that have, so there’s a nod in the direction of appreciative enquiry.

The Action Log is not a learning Journal

For those already familiar with Action Research it’s important not to confuse the Action Log with a Learning Journal. This is not the place to document critical incidents, record insights and diarise about learning. The Action Log may well become an object for reflection later, but is not the place for lengthy narrative. It needs to be very easy to maintain, a matter of a few seconds really, just enough to jot down the small actions taken in a very few words. A record of concrete subjective interventions into the world, always action-orientated.

Where to keep the Action Log.

I keep my Action Log on an intranet wiki but you could use a text file, word document or a physical notepad. As long as it’s reasonably near to hand, dead easy to add to, and can’t get lost or deleted. A private area is necessary, you don’t want to be distracted by spending any time thinking about audience and publishing of this one. Just do it.

Action Log Checklist

Anything you don’t understand please leave questions in the comments and do let me know how you’re getting on with this after a few weeks or so.

Thanks for reading Andy Roberts articles about Action Log

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