Coursework for Financial Reporting of 2011 Final

Financial Reporting 1 Coursework

Significance of the coursework

This coursework contributes 50% of the marks available for the double module, Financial Reporting 1 & 2 (MAC-3-BFR/PFR). For ACCA students seeking exemption from Paper F7, this coursework contributes 30% of the overall marks available for the module.

Specific instruction relating to the coursework

Please do not exceed the word limit for this coursework.

The report should include the following:

Title/cover showing your name, student number, module reference number, the name of the module and the date submitted to the School Office.
Contents page
Main body of your work
References & bibliography (using the Harvard style of referencing)
Appendices, as appropriate.

It is not necessary to bind your coursework but it should be placed in a folder (not the type with the holes down the side!)

The attention of every student is drawn to the warning in the course guide on late submission of coursework, extenuating circumstances and plagiarism.  For guidance on copyright and referencing see below.

Guidance on referencing
(Supplied by Academic Misconduct Officer)

Correct referencing is an academic skill that you will be assessed on.

Correct referencing demonstrates that you have read appropriately on the subject, shows that you are acknowledging the sources you have used (that you are not trying to cheat) and provide information on useful sources of information to your reader.

Doing it correctly demonstrates professionalism.  Doing it incorrectly will lead to reduced marks and possibly to disciplinary action, which includes the possibility of having your studies terminated.

I do see cases where the student has clearly deliberately attempted to cheat. These are dealt with very firmly. However, most cases I see are where students have either referenced poorly or not bothered with referencing at all. Otherwise good work often fails in these circumstances.

Guidance on referencing itself is available from the resources listed at the end of this sheet.  If you have any concerns about your referencing ask for help before submitting.
Checking your referencing
You are required to upload your coursework to the Financial Reporting Blackboard site (FR BB site): 11/12 Financial Reporting MAC-3-BFR . Use this site for checking your work for matching text. This will reveal where you have not fully referenced. You will need to reference correctly or remove the matching text from your final submission. The matching source given by the check may not be the one that you used. Make sure you use the Library Help sheets to guide you on correct referencing (style: Harvard).
When you submit your coursework you must submit a copy of the latest matching Turnitin report. So long as your work has been uploaded to the FR BB site there is no need to submit a further electronic copy on disc with your printed coursework.
The version to submit is the ‘Show highest matches first’ version (the one with numbers in the boxes) as this is the easiest for you to check your work.  When you look at your report (use the ‘Show highest matches first’ version) you will see that there is a list of sources on the right that match (numbers in boxes) to the highlighted text on the left.
Remember, the point of this exercise is not to remove all matching text, but to make sure that it is properly referenced.

If you have a match of 1% or less, this will almost certainly be because of coincidence.  We are not concerned about matches of 1% or less. You do not have to do anything about these.

You need to look at all matches of 2% and above.  Where there is such material that is matching you must ensure it is referenced or remove it from your work.

Points to note:
The source given in Turnitin may not be the source you used. Reference where you got the material.

If it is a quote make sure you have used quotation marks and give the page number from the source in your reference too.

If you have rewritten somebody’s words (this is called paraphrasing) you must reference the source. You may see this in your report as bits of matching text in a paragraph.

If the match given is to another student (either at LSBU or another University), you have probably both used material from a textbook. Make sure you have referenced the material correctly to the textbook you have used.

If it matches to another student because you have worked together you are almost certainly going to have to remove it. In an individual coursework this would be seen as academic misconduct, in a group coursework it may be appropriate, but check your submission requirements.

If you have used material from a source and the Turnitin check does not show it you still must reference it. Thousands of new sources are added to Turnitin every day.

You can find online help-sheets by using the following link:
http://www.lisa.lbs.ac.uk/002_bcim/business/general/helpsheets_bm.htm

In particular you should look at:
HS4 Plagiarism
HS30 How to do your Referencing (1): an introduction to the Harvard
System (Printed Sources)
HS31 How to do your Referencing (3) Web Sites, Electronic Journals and the Internet
Further help is available on all academic matters from the ‘Academic Assistant’ at http://www.blc.lsbu.ac.uk/aa/aa/
BA (Hons) Accounting & Finance/ BA (Hons) Professional Accountancy,
BA(Hons) Accounting & ACCA Professional Accountancy Course

Coursework for Financial Reporting
Date Issued Out: 11 October 2011
Date Due In: 13 December 2011

Download the latest annual report and accounts (and Interim report, if applicable) for the company assigned to you by the Unit Co-ordinator.  Submit this download, on a CD Rom, as Appendix A to your report.

Task 1:

Based on the *financial statements, industry statistics, information obtained from **peer companies and other market and company information, prepare a financial statement analysis report.  Your report should include:

An executive summary of the company and its industry.

A detailed evaluation of the firm’s:
Operating return on equity
Cash generating ability, uses of cash and financial adaptability
Investor ratios

Your analysis should yield inferences for each of the three areas mentioned above. Marks will be awarded for report presentation and clarity.
40 marks
        Word limit: 1500 words
*If a group of companies use the consolidated financial statements
**Peer companies = competitors

Note: You may find the following databases useful in completing this coursework, available online through LSBU Library Services:
FAME
Proquest
Thomson One Banker

*If a group of companies use the consolidated financial statements
**Peer companies = competitors

Note: You may find the following databases useful in completing this coursework, available online through LBS Library Services:
FAME
Proquest
Thomson One Banker

Task 2
Recent high profile corporate collapses have been attributed to laxities in the regulatory framework of financial reporting. Predictably, some commentators and interest groups have called for more regulation. However, financial reporting is arguably one of the most heavily regulated areas of business activity.

Required
Critically discuss the arguments for and against the regulation of financial reporting. Cite relevant academic literature to support your answer.

Word limit: 2500 words
60  marks

Pricing the future: How we value derivatives

Our Weekly Read column features Fortune staffers' and contributors' takes on recently published books about the business world and beyond. We've invited the entire Fortune family -- from our writers and editors to our photo editors and designers -- to weigh in on books of their choosing based on their individual tastes or curiosities. In this installment, senior editor-at-large Geoff Colvin reviews Pricing the Future: Finance, Physics, and the 300-Year Journey to the Black-Scholes Equation, George G. Szpiro's account of how derivatives get priced.

FORTUNE -- Here's a test of whether Pricing the Future might appeal to you: Does the series 1.41, 1.73, 2 make your pulse race? If so, you're in for a treat, for reasons that will be explained. If not -- well, so long as you appreciate the monumental importance of the Black-Scholes option pricing formula, you could still find this story fascinating. Who would imagine that a financial equation could have a life story involving pollen, a forgotten French mathematician, Einstein, and multiple Nobel Prizes?

But then this is one heck of an equation. The Black-Scholes finding made possible the multi-trillion-dollar market in derivatives, the "weapons of financial mass destruction" that Warren Buffett warned of and that played a major role in our brush with financial Armageddon three years ago. The equation was at the foundation of our last previous system-wide crisis, sparked by Long Term Capital Management's collapse in 1998. It wouldn't be correct to say the formula caused those cataclysms, though -- it did not. It's the basis of the enormously beneficial market in put and call options used by farmers, airlines, and others to stabilize their businesses. It's enshrined in SEC rules as a tool companies can use in reporting the value of stock options paid to employees. It is the original ancestor, the Adam and Eve, of all the quants on Wall Street. Black-Scholes has shaped our economic lives, even if most people don't know it.

The formula, published in 1973, solves a problem that had been around for thousands of years and that people had been trying rigorously to solve for decades. The problem: What is an option worth? Owning the right (with no obligation) to buy or sell something at a stated price on a stated date in the future is obviously worth something, but how on earth can you decide how much? Without an answer -- or at least some idea of which factors count and which don't -- most people wouldn't have enough confidence to use options.

Finding the answer begins with understanding stock price movements, an inquiry that goes back much farther than you think, as author George G. Szpiro explains. A French investor named Jules Regnault published a remarkably insightful study of the markets in 1863. Using 37 years of data from the French bourse, he analyzed how stock prices deviated from their average over varying time periods. He found that when the period is doubled, the deviations increase by a factor of about 1.41; when tripled, by about 1.73; when quadrupled, by about 2.

This is where your heart rate increases or doesn't. It does if you realize that 1.41, 1.73, and 2 are the square roots of two, three, and four (and if you don't, Szpiro helpfully points it out). That is, the variations of stock prices increase by the square root of the time being examined. Regnault was thunderstruck. As he wrote, "The variations of the stock exchange are subject to mathematical laws!"

In fact they're subject to a law that's far more important than Regnault knew. Stock prices are only one example of random zigzag movement that puzzled scientists for decades before and after Regnault. It's known as Brownian motion, after the Scottish botanist who observed through a microscope that grains of pollen in water seem to vibrate. So does rock dust, charcoal, and all kinds of other stuff. What's going on?

Physicists, chemists, mathematicians, and others kept coming up with the same result: The distance these lurching particles travel from their starting point, on average, varies by the square root of the time examined. Einstein proposed that if matter is made of atoms -- only a hypothesis when he wrote in 1905 -- then particles in fluid are being battered by molecular motion and should follow the square-root-of-time law, which he had never heard of; he derived it on his own. Researchers later confirmed that it worked not just with particles but also with albatrosses flying randomly around looking for food and with mosquitoes flying randomly around spreading malaria.

What had any of this to do with option pricing? Five years before Einstein, in 1900, a French math student named Louis Bachelier had written his PhD thesis on the stock market. He had independently derived -- guess what -- the square-root-of-time law. Then he went a step beyond by using it in a rigorous mathematical analysis of options. He didn't get all the way to the formula, but he established the crucial link between option prices and Brownian motion. His thesis was given high marks -- and then forgotten for over 50 years.

Paul Samuelson, while a star professor at MIT, discovered it and realized its importance. He began thinking about how to value options. It was a natural subject for three brilliant researchers drawn to MIT in part by Samuelson's eminence. To compress the story drastically, Fischer Black, Myron Scholes, and Robert C. Merton attacked the problem off and on for years, and finally cracked it. Black and Scholes published the result -- one of the most important papers in the history of finance -- in May 1973.

The formula is groundbreaking because it's utterly counterintuitive. In valuing an option to buy a stock, for example, the expected performance of the stock is irrelevant. So is the purchaser's degree of risk aversion. But the stock's volatility makes a big difference. The financial world was forever changed.

For their achievement, Merton and Scholes won the Nobel Prize in economics in 1997; Black would have won also if he hadn't died (throat cancer) two years earlier. The well-known epilogue is that by then Merton and Scholes had become co-founders of Long Term Capital Management, which collapsed spectacularly the following year. But as noted, that was the fault not of the equation but rather of its unwise application.

There's much more to the story -- I haven't mentioned artillery shells, the sealed letter, or Marie Curie -- and it's engagingly told. It sometimes wanders down blind alleys, but they're interesting alleys.

Besides, you wouldn't read this book to make money. It has absolutely no practical value; if you're thinking it might help you get rich, forget it. But if you understand the importance of Black-Scholes, then this "story of genius and discovery," as Pricing the Future's cover accurately describes it, may grip you -- even if you don't get palpitations from square roots.

「Yanzi's Time」UNEXPURGATED with STEFANIE SUN

A journalist interview visit from Today Music to Stefanie Sun by Christopher Toh
Published at 1:36 pm, November 7, 2011
It’s been a long time since we spoke to Stefanie Sun. So we decided to do so again. 
Unfortunately, her busy schedule meant that we couldn’t have any face time with each other. But hopefully at this Saturday’s Singapore Hit Awards we can. Still, she took a little time off to answer our questions via email. And here they are…
How do you feel about leading the nominations list for this year’s Singapore Hit Awards? Did you expect it? 
I feel very lucky that the judges still think of me as relevant in this fickle industry. I did not not expect it, I just do not think or calculate when my next win will be.

So what’s it like being married? Is it everything you expected it to be?
I had previously believed that marriage is, as they say, just a piece of paper. But once you make that commitment, it does alters your life in little ways. The most important and significant change is probably that you don’t have to deal with yourself all on your own anymore. It’s a good thing. 
Many people called your album a comeback, but are you really heading back in a big way?
Am I heading back in a big way? I don’t know how to answer that! Hmm, an album is always a big thing in my life. It’s like a stamp with a date on it that marks certain benchmarks in my life. It is a big thing for me that’s for sure. It eats me up and feeds me all at the same time. So the answer to that is, I’m not really heading for a new big crown on my head. I just want to be substantial and honest. For now.
The response to the album was astounding, did you expect that, having been away from the recording scene? 
When the album was released I really did not know what to expect, 4 years did seem like a pretty long haul. But I feel humbled by the response, there seems to be so much space to be whatever you want to be.
When will you do a full-scale gig in Singapore again?

SOON. (In relation to light years!)
Having been in the industry for over a decade, what would you say is the biggest life lesson you’ve learnt?
All these years in this industry, I very often am faced with decisions that seemed difficult because “it’s not befitting of a first rate artiste”, ”it doesn’t pay well” or “nobody else is doing that” etc. You let yourself be saddled with issues that might seem important but are often vanity issues in disguise. I try to take myself out of this idiotic equation and ask myself what I want to do. So stay true to yourself. That’s the best advice I know.
And now your life has changed in oh, so many ways, but is there some part of your life you’d like to redo? 
The Momentis a point in my life that comes to my head sometimes. I wouldn’t know how to redo THAT. It was hellish. So no thanks, no need to redo, just move on already!
What’s the best thing about being Stefanie now? She can do whatever she wants.
And apart from answering these silly questions, is there a worst thing about being Stefanie now? She can do whatever she wants. (You have no idea.)

If there’s one word that can describe 2011 for you, what would it be? Complete.
SHA 2011 happens Nov 12, 7.30pm at Singapore Indoor Stadium. Tickets at S$138, S$88 and S$21 from SISTIC.

My heartbeat：Echoes In My Head

Composing is all about making decisions, You have a hundred different ways to get there, but you have to choose one. With twelve notes of every possible octave on every instrument, all the chord combinations of every mode, and all the varieties of rhythm and tempo to choose from, there may be thousands of ways. But imagine if the composer's palette included every sound in the natural world: a slamming door, waves lapping, or feet padding across a floor?


It's been a year and I don't know how many months now
Sitting here looking at the photos of what used to be
Our memories, you used to be
The motivation of my life
I don't know how, it just doesn't make any sense to me
B'cause lately baby I have you appearing in my dreams
I thought I was over it
But I guess it's still deep inside of me
They say I'm a heartbreaker
But the fact is I'm actually heartbroken
I tell myself every day every night, one day I'll find the pieces to my broken heart


Forget about the memories
Forget about the times you said you love me
Maybe in time you'll disappear from my mind
I'm sick of tossing and turning at night
With these echoes in my head
With these echoes in my head
Forget about the times we shared
How much I cared
I gotta get around these echoes in my head


Its been a while since the last time that weve seen each other 
Got me thinking bout that time when we were together 
You used to make me laugh, with a silly act 
With your funny voice and that small koala nose of yours
I guess good things werent meant to last 
Because you were by my side 
But now its just all in the past 
All the things that stood between us 
Was more than just love and trust 
I guess youd agree were better off how we are now
But when you tell me all the terrible things 
That are happening in your life 
Something feels weird and its hurting me deep inside 
And it cuts me like a knife


You dont deserve all the things youre going through 
And the more you cry, the more Im dying deep down inside 
Its killing my heartbeat, heartbeat, heartbeat, heartbeat 
Its killing my heartbeat, heartbeat, heartbeat, heartbeat


Embrace your dreams. If you want to be a hero, you need to have dreams.
Victory favours you, but you must grab hold of your destiny and command it.
The measure of a man is what he does with power.
Who we are is but a stepping stone to what we can become...


Thebackground of the 《My heartbeats》from YLAMPRODUCTIONS：


01. AmbitionWritten for Joyce Hon's Fashion Show at Parsons, New York. A very powerful track full of ambition. Perfect for the first track of my debut album. 
02. Class of 2007Released in the year 2007. Written to my fellow Class of 2007 members. This song will remind us of the good days. 7Station, Barn2, Basketball. I still don't understand how I came up with sipping' apple juice, chillin in 7-11. somebody tell me loll 
03. Life, Love, and FaithAn instrumental and chorus written for my first collabo rapper Tonghill. He found me through myspace one day and asked whether it's cool to work together. OF COURSE! It's my honour to have you on my first album and I look forward in more collabos with you. As the title says, 3 verses, Life, Love, and Faith. 
04. Eric Rage (Skit)Tribute to my good friend Dai Dan. For those that remember the night of the recording, It will always stay in my memory. funny ass shit. 
05. FarawayA song dedicated to those who are currently going through a long distance relationship. He/She might not be able to be there right next to you, but love has no boundaries. Keep each other by the heart and STAY STRONG! 
06. Laughing Compilation (Skit)Tribute to my J friends. Miss ya'll and all the good times. For those who are down, depressed, stressed etc. listen to this track and remind yourself how good it is to laugh. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!! WOOHOOOO!!! LOL! 
07. Waking Up On A Good DayWell! this song is actually dedicated to MYSELF! hahahahha it used to be my alarm ringtone. Gotta remind myself of how beautiful this world is. if i spend most of my time in bed sleeping…i'd miss the chance in experiencing alotta awesome stuff. let's all wake up to a good day!!! 
08. Echoes In My HeadHave ya'll ever had the feeling when you think you've gotten over something, but it still haunts you every now and then? 
09. My HeartbeatOne of ma very first masterpieces since I moved to Australia. This song is about when shit happens in life, to yourself, friends, our loved ones, and sometimes you feel there's nothing you can do about it. This is to You-Know-Who-You-Are. GET OVER IT! LOL! 
10. Love AviationThis is dedicated to another You-Know-Who-You-Are. The song describes a situation when you've set a target or destination, you go for it and things just don't turn out the way you expected it to. Stuck in confusion and don't know where to go. If that's you, keep your head up because there's always a way out. I SALUTE YOU! *You-Know-Who-You-Are also tells me to write "to whore and whore lovers alike" 
11. Shine TonightDedicated to all those hardcore clubbers that pretty much live in front of the bar. Listen to the lyrics. Doesn't it sound like an awesome night?! hahahaha. 
12. I Can't Stop Thinkin of YouEchoes In My Head's sister song. My first ever song sung in mandarin. Was it actually a mistake? or was it just meant to be? 
13. Sang Yeon (Skit)Just got my new Blackberry Bold. Playing around with bbm and I receive this. LOL! Tribute to my korean brother. 
14. Only If I Ever Had The Chance (Demo)This song is dedicated to Gem Tang 邓紫棋. I love her. 'nuff said. 
15. To Gem (Demo)One the oldest songs from my vault of songs. She is talented, a music phenomenon, fun, cheerful, hilarious, cute, pretty, beautiful…i can go for the whole day. 
16. Slow Dancing Under The Moonlight X My Heartbeat (Acoutic Live) (feat. Kenny)Props to Kenny Eu for his awesome guitar skills. Only if my guitar skills were as good as you i'd be ruling the world rite now. i know…practise makes perfect. Slow Dancing Under The Moonlight is a song I wrote to perform at my school's Composer's Showcase night. One of the few love songs that i've written compared to all the stupid sad songs i've composed. My Heartbeat Acoustic was just TOO fast. but HEY! who cares we were drunk. *note that i sang "I guess you'd A-BEE we're better off how we are now" lol 
17. Set Them Free (Demo) (Bonus Track)A song I wrote for the Unicef Young Envoys Performance back in 2006. Another old song from the YLAMPRODUCTIONS archives. Proper produced version released in the next few months. Stay Tuned. 
18. Superstar Boy (Demo) (Bonus Track)Recorded this through my laptop mic back in 2007. Before I said to myself…you are the worst rapper alive. 
19. You Are An Angel (Demo) (Bonus Track)Another laptop production from 2007. Cool Edit Pro 2.0 / Adobe Audition 3, the very first music production softwares i ever used. Playing around with the panning functions. Music production is awesome. 

A Day Without Distraction: Lessons Learned from 12 Hrs of Forced Focus

Here are the rules: All work must be done in blocks of at least 30 minutes. If I start editing a paper, for example, I have to spend at least 30 minutes editing. If I need to complete a small task, like handing in a form, I have to spend at least 30 minutes doing small tasks. Crucially, checking email and looking up information online count as small tasks. If I need to check my inbox or grab a quick stat from the web, I have to spend at least 30 minutes dedicated to similarly small diversions.

I followed these rules for one full work day. This post describes why I did it and what I learned.

Continuous Partial Attention

The motivation for my experiment should sound familiar. Over the past half-decade, researchers have been sounding the alarm on the dangers of multitasking. Gloria Mark, for example, a professor at the University of California at Irvine, found that the technology workers she studied would make it, on average, only 11 minutes into a project before being distracted. It then took 25 minutes to return to the task post-distraction.

For some jobs, where responsiveness is crucial, this work style might be necessary. But as an academic, I'm a to-do list creative -- to keep my job, I have to keep up with logistical tasks, but to advance, I need long bouts of focus on hard problems. For a to-do list creative, ignoring the small stuff isn't an option, but living in a state ofcontinuous partial attention (to steal a phrase from Linda Stone) won't cut it either.

The solution to this quandary is well-known by now: batching.

 

Check email only a small number of times per day! Work in big chunks without distraction!

Everyone has heard this suggestion. But almost no one follows it.

This is why I launched my experiment. I wanted to see what would happen if I forcedmyself to batch.

 

Ignoring the small stuff isn't an option, but living in a state of continuous partial attention won't cut it either.

 

 

A Day of Forced Batching

I have a doctors appointment scheduled for 10 a.m., so I decide to focus on a writing project from 8 to 10.

I feel the normal temptation to check my email while writing -- just in case -- but my rules forbid it. Even a glance at my inbox would trigger at least 30 minutes of similar small tasks.

When I arrive at my appointment at 10, I discover I had the wrong time. The appointment is not until 11.

My rules force me to think in blocks of 30 minutes or more, so I decide to spend from 10 to 10:30 contininuing work on my writing project at a nearby library. Then, from 10:30 to 11:00, I do my first small tasks block of the day. I have high hopes during this first small task block that I will efficiently knock off many items from my logistical backlog. Instead, I end up bogged down in my email inbox, trying to sort through who needs what and when.

After my appointment, I head home, go for a run, and make myself lunch.

It's now 1:30 and I'm in a tight spot. My goal for the afternoon is to continue work on an important research problem. To do so, I need to retrieve the latest draft of our write-up from my email. But this will require a small task block of at least 30 minutes, so I have to be careful about how and when I do this.

Even more tricky, I need to meet with my collaborator to help work through some kinks in the research problem. On a normal day, I might send him an email saying, "when can you meet?", and then just keep my inbox open until he responds. My rules, however, forbid this strategy (that is, unless I want to dedicate my entire afternoon to checking my inbox and similar small tasks).

I come up with the following solution:

I convert my commute from my apartment back to campus into a small task block. That is, I will retrieve the write-up draft and check my email right before I leave my apartment. I will think through my emails and how to respond while traveling. Then when I arrive at my office, I'll send off those replies and shut down the small task block.

 

I feel the normal temptation to check my email while writing - just in case - but my rules forbid it.

 

 

To handle my meeting dilemma, I send my collaborator an email that reads: "During the following times this afternoon I'll be working on this  project, if you happen to be free anytime in here, stop by my office,  otherwise tell me some times when we might meet tomorrow and I will get back to you at the end of the day to fix one."  I've now freed myself from needing to keep my inbox open during the afternoon.

From 2 to 5:30 I'm working on my research problem. The rules remove any possibility of distraction -- no matter how brief -- and this seems to improve my focus. "There's a real sense of momentum here," I write in my notes.

At 5:30, I decide to do one final small task block to shut down my day. I treat this like a challenge: how much can I squeeze into one 30-minute block? The time constraint provides a certain urgency to my actions usually lacking at 5:30 in the evening. I end up finishing my work emails for the day, answering some blog reader emails, paying the rent, approving a design concept, sending a message to a pair of old friends, planning the next day, and recording the notes from this experiment.

In the end, the momentum carries me past 6:00 and I end up finishing closer to 6:30. This is later than I normally like to work, but the day ends with a satisfying feeling of accomplishment.

Conclusions

I'll start with the negative aspects of this experiment:

Batching, as it turns out, is hard.

It requires that you plan ahead to make sure you have the material and information needed for focused blocks. It also requires careful communication. Answering emails, for example, is complicated when you need those emails to include all of the information needed for the next actions to be taken. (It's much easier to use email for informal back and forth dialogue.)  Because of this, tackling my inbox during the experiment was surprisingly draining.

In other words, batching requires more work than not batching. This is why, I now understand, most people are quick to abandon their good-natured attempts to enforce more focus in their day: once it becomes non-obvious how to continue, they toss the goal.

But then there are the positives:

Having a clear rule that forbids any distraction during focused work was freeing. I still felt drawn toward diversion, but knowing that acquiescence was not even a possibility reduced its urgency.

On the flip side, the percentage of time spent in a flow state was as large as I've experienced in recent memory. I ended up spending 2.5 hours focused on my writing project and 3.5 hours focused on my research paper. That's six hours, in one day, of focused work with zero interruptions; not even one quick glance at email.

 

Having a clear rule that forbids anydistraction during focused work was freeing.

 

 

At the same time, the careful pre-planning required to satisfy my batching rules increased the efficiency of my small task completion. Even though I dedicated 6 hours in one 10 hour work day to uninterrupted focus, another 1.5 hours to exercise and eating, and another 1 hour to a doctors appointment, I still managed to accomplish an impressive collection of logistical tasks both urgent and non-urgent.

My bottom line:

To do batching right requires the type of strict rules I deployed in my experiment. These rules, as I discovered, will absolutely make your day more difficult. There's no avoiding the reality that there will be times when you have to take convoluted action to solve a problem that could so easily be handled with just a quick bounce over to your inbox.

This is a pain in the ass.

At the same time, however, if you survive the annonyance, there's also no avoiding the reality that your work will be of a much higher quality.

Ultimately, this is the batching trade-off: inconvenience in your daily workflow in exchange for an increased quality of your work.

From my experience writing about productivity, most people will abandon a tactic as soon as it makes their life more difficult. My experience with batching, however, leads me to question whether we need to rethink where we place our emphasis.

 

--

What's Your Take?

Have you experimented with forced focus? How did it go?

The Medium Isn’t The Message, People Are.

We are living in an attention economy. As economist Herbert Simon wrote in 1971: “In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients.” The problem is, many of us haven’t yet decided what our attention is worth.

Can just anyone lay claim to your valuable attention? In theory, you would probably say NO. At the same time, if I asked if you’re drowning in messages – emails, twitter DMs, Facebook messages, etc, etc – you would probably say YES.

Somewhere there is a disconnect. Even as we throw up our hands in disgust and declare that it’s all too much, another week brings along a new tool or service that we feel compelled to try. We’re anxious about not having enough attention, yet we continue to eagerly embrace new ways to squander it.

 

Can just anyone lay claim to your valuable attention?

 

 

So how can we find a way to manage this massive communications influx, given that the attention problem is only going to get worse – not better – as new channels come online?

It can actually be quite simple if we can train ourselves ignore the channels, focusing instead on the people we communicate with.

Try dividing the people you communicate with into spheres, like this:

Sphere 1: Core people.
Your essential or core sphere of people are those that you must communicate with. It will always be a very short list. They could be: spouses, children, doctors, or your boss. In other words, they’re life and death people. They will not be clients, no matter how important the client is. Clients come and go, but the core people will not. You should always block time to communicate with them and respond to them – even if it is only to let them know that you are very busy and can only talk briefly or in a short time from now.

Sphere 2: Important people.
The next sphere outside your core is your list of important people. They can be clients, family, close friends, suppliers – anyone you have important dependencies on. After you take care of your core people, you talk to them. Sometime these are the people easiest to overlook, often at their and your own expense.

Sphere 3: People who make life interesting.
Outside the above spheres are contacts that you are independent of, but provide value and meaning to your life. It is good to communicate with them, but not at the expense of core or important people. They could be colleagues who you are working with directly on your current projects, or people in your neighborhood, or teachers in the school that your kids go to. Even the people you buy coffee from every day or the bus driver you see on the way home will fit into this group. You will find people tend to move in and out of this sphere: the teacher who doesn’t teach your child this year will teach them next year, and the colleague you see from time to time may end up joining you on your next project.

Sphere 4: “Nice to have” but not necessary people.
Finally, there is the sphere of people you will communicate with who provide a little value. With social media, there are more and more people who fall into this category. It can be enjoyable spending time exchanging views and information with people in this sphere. They can almost feel like friends. However, if you find you are spending any more time communicating with them than the folks in first three spheres, you need to change things – at least until you feel that you have a grip on the volume of communication you have to deal with.

 

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Sit down with a piece of paper and draw concentric circles with these four spheres, with “core people” at the center and “nice to haves” in the outer ring. Then, start populating them with the people in your life. You’ll also want to tag each person with the estimated amount of time you spend communicating with them. If you find you are spending more time with the people in the outer spheres and less with the people in the inner spheres, you’ll know you need to re-prioritize how you communicate.

Finally, draw a small circle in the very center. This is the amount of time you spend with yourself – be it thinking, relaxing, learning, or what have you. If you find you spend little, if any time, time there, you might want to consider re-prioritizing there, too.

 

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How Do You Do It?

 

How do you prioritize your responses?

 

Have you experimented with prioritizing around your relationships?