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Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen

Welcome to Getting Things Done

Anxiety is caused by a lack of control, organization, preparation, and action. —David Kekich

Healthy skepticism is often the best way to glean the value of what’s being presented—challenge it; prove it wrong, if you can. That creates engagement, which is the key to understanding.

Chapter 1 : A New Practice for a New Reality

The methods I present here are all based on three key objectives:

  1. capturing all the things that might need to get done or have usefulness for you—now, later, someday, big, little, or in between—in a logical and trusted system outside your head and off your mind;
  2. directing yourself to make front-end decisions about all of the “inputs” you let into your life so that you will always have a workable inventory of “next actions” that you can implement or renegotiate in the moment; and
  3. curating and coordinating all of that content, utilizing the recognition of the multiple levels of commitments with yourself and others you will have at play, at any point in time.

The Basic Requirements for Managing Commitments

Managing commitments well requires the implementation of some basic activities and behaviors: -

  • First of all, if it’s on your mind, your mind isn’t clear. Anything you consider unfinished in any way must be captured in a trusted system outside your mind, or what I call a collection tool, that you know you’ll come back to regularly and sort through.
  • Second, you must clarify exactly what your commitment is and decide what you have to do, if anything, to make progress toward fulfilling it.
  • Third, once you’ve decided on all the actions you need to take, you must keep reminders of them organized in a system you review regularly.

The Major Change : Getting it all out of your Head

I try to make intuitive choices based on my options, instead of trying to think about what those options are. I need to have thought about all of that already and captured the results in a trusted way. I don’t want to waste time thinking about things more than once. That’s an inefficient use of creative energy and a source of frustration and stress

And you can’t fudge this thinking. Your mind will keep working on anything that’s still in that undecided state. But that kind of recursive spinning in your mind has now been proven to reduce your capacity to think and perform, and there’s a limit to how much unresolved stuff it can contain before it blows a fuse.

The short-term-memory part of your mind—the part that tends to hold all of the incomplete, undecided, and unorganized stuff—functions much like RAM (random-access memory) on a computer. Your conscious mind, like the computer screen, is a focusing tool, not a storage place. You can think about only two or three things at once. But the incomplete items are still being stored in the short-term-memory space. And as with RAM, there’s limited capacity; there’s only so much stuff you can store in there and still have that part of your brain function at a high level. Most people walk around with their RAM bursting at the seams. They’re constantly distracted, their focus disturbed and performance diminished by their own internal mental overload. Recent research in the cognitive sciences has now validated this conclusion. Studies have demonstrated that our mental processes are hampered by the burden put on the mind to keep track of things we’re committed to finish, without a trusted plan or system in place to handle them.

Chapter 2 : Getting Control Of Your Life : The five steps of mastering workflow

  1. capture what has our attention;
  2. clarify what each item means and what to do about it;
  3. organize the results, which presents the options we
  4. reflect on, which we then choose to
  5. engage with.

Most people have major weaknesses in their (1) capture process. Most of their commitments to do something are still in their head. The number of coulds, shoulds, might-want-tos, and ought-tos they generate in their minds are way out beyond what they have recorded anywhere else.

Many have collected lots of things but haven’t (2) clarified exactly what they represent or decided what action, if any, to take about them. Random lists strewn everywhere, meeting notes, vague to-dos on Post-its on their refrigerator or computer screens or in their Tasks function in a digital tool—all lie not acted on and numbing to the psyche in their effect. Those lists alone often create more stress than they relieve.

Others make good decisions about stuff in the moment but lose the value of that thinking because they don’t efficiently (3) organize the results. They determined they should talk to their boss about something, but a reminder of that lies only in the dark recesses of their mind, unavailable in the appropriate context, in a trusted format, when they could use it.

Still others have good systems but don’t (4) reflect on the contents consistently enough to keep them functional. They may have lists, plans, and various checklists available to them (created by capturing, clarifying, and organizing), but they don’t keep them current or access them to their advantage. Many people don’t look ahead at their own calendars consistently enough to stay current about upcoming events and deadlines, and they consequently become victims of last-minute craziness.

Finally, if any one of these previous links is weak, what someone is likely to choose to (5) engage in at any point in time may not be the best option. Most decisions for action and focus are driven by the latest and loudest inputs, and are based on hope instead of trust. People have a constant nagging sense that they’re not working on what they should be, that they “don’t have time” for potentially critical activities, and that they’re missing out on the timeless sense of meaningful doing that is the essence of stress-free productivity.

It does not take much strength to do things, but it requires a great deal of strength to decide what to do. - Elbert Hubbard

Do It, Delegate It, or Defer It Once you’ve decided on the next action, you have three options:

  1. Do it. If an action will take less than two minutes, it should be done at the moment it is defined.
  2. Delegate it. If the action will take longer than two minutes, ask yourself, Am I the right person to do this? If the answer is no, delegate it to the appropriate entity.
  3. Defer it, If the action will take longer than two minutes, and you are the right person to do it, you will have to defer acting on it until later and track it on one or more “Next Actions” lists.

Critical Success Factor: The Weekly Review

The Weekly Review is the time to

  • Gather and process all your stuff.
  • Review your system.
  • Update your lists.
  • Get clean, clear, current, and complete.

Most people feel best about their work the week before they go on vacation, but it’s not because of the vacation itself. What do you do the last week before you leave on a big trip? You clean up, close up, clarify, organize, and renegotiate all your agreements with yourself and others. You do this so you can relax and be present on the beach, on the golf course, or on the slopes, with nothing else on your mind. I suggest you do this weekly instead of yearly, so you can bring this kind of “being present” to your everyday life.

The Four-Criteria Model for Choosing Actions in the Moment

At that moment there are four criteria you can apply, in this order: context, time available, energy available, and priority.

Context You are always constrained by what you have the capability to do at this time. A few actions can be done anywhere (such as drafting ideas about a project with pen and paper), but most require a specific location (at home, at your office) or having some productivity tool at hand, such as a phone or a computer. These are the first factors that limit your choices about what you can do in the moment.

There is always more to do than you can do, and you can do only one thing at a time. The key is to feel as good about what you’re not doing as about what you are doing at that moment.

Time Available When do you have to do something else? Having a meeting in five minutes would prevent doing any actions that require more time.

Energy Available How much energy do you have? Some actions you have to do require a reservoir of fresh, creative mental energy. Others need more physical horsepower. Some need very little of either.

Priority Given your context, time, and energy available, what action remaining of your options will give you the highest payoff? You’re in your office with a phone and a computer, you have an hour, and your energy is 7.3 on a scale of 10. Should you call the client back, work on the proposal, process your e-mails, or check in with your spouse to see how his or her day is going?

This is where you need to access your intuition and begin to rely on your judgment call in the moment.

The Threefold Model for Identifying Daily Work

When you’re getting things done, or “working” in the universal sense, there are three different kinds of activities you can be engaged in:

  • Doing predefined work
  • Doing work as it shows up
  • Defining your work

Doing Predefined Work When you’re doing predefined work, you’re working from your Next Actions lists and calendar—completing tasks that you have previously determined need to be done, or managing your workflow. You’re making the calls you need to make, drafting ideas you want to brainstorm, attending meetings, or preparing a list of things to talk to your attorney about.

Doing Work as It Shows Up Often things come up ad hoc—unsuspected, unforeseen—that you either have to or choose to engage in as they occur. For example, your partner walks into your office and wants to have a conversation about the new product launch, so you talk to her instead of doing all the other things you could be doing. Every day brings surprises—unplanned-for things that just show up—and you’ll need to expend at least some time and energy on many of them. When you follow these leads, you’re deciding by default that these things are more important than anything else you have to do at those times.

Defining Your Work Defining your work entails clearing up your in-tray, your digital messages, and your meeting notes, and breaking down new projects into actionable steps. As you process your inputs, you’ll no doubt be taking care of some less-than-two-minute actions and tossing and filing numerous things (another version of doing work as it shows up). A good portion of this activity will consist of identifying things that need to get done sometime, but not right away. You’ll be adding to all of your lists as you go along.

The Six-Level Model for Reviewing Your Own Work

Priorities should drive your choices, but most models for determining them are not reliable tools for much of our real work activity. In order to know what your priorities are, you have to know what your work is. And there are at least six different perspectives from which to define that. To use an appropriate analogy, the conversation has a lot do with the horizon, or distance of perception. Looking out from a building, you will notice different things from different floors.

  • Horizon 5: Purpose and principles
  • Horizon 4: Vision Horizon 3: Goals
  • Horizon 2: Areas of focus and accountabilities
  • Horizon 1: Current projects Ground: Current actions

Chapter 3 : Getting Projects Creatively Under Way : The Five Phases of Project Planning

You’ve got to think about the big things while you’re doing small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction. - Alvin Toffler

If you’re waiting to have a good idea before you have any ideas, you won’t have many.

Purpose

It never hurts to ask the why question. Almost anything you’re currently doing can be enhanced and even galvanized by more scrutiny at this top level of focus. Why are you going to your next meeting? What’s the purpose of your task?

admit it: this is nothing but advanced common sense. To know and to be clear about the purpose of any activity are prime directives for appropriate focus, creative development, and cooperation. But it’s common sense that’s not commonly practiced, simply because it’s so easy for us to create things, get caught up in the form of what we’ve created, and let our connection with our real and primary intentions slip. I know, based upon thousands of hours spent in many offices with many sophisticated people, that the why question cannot be ignored.

The Value of Thinking About Why

Here are just some of the benefits of asking why:

  • It defines success.
  • It creates decision-making criteria.
  • It aligns resources.
  • It motivates.
  • It clarifies focus.
  • It expands options.

In other words, if you don’t really know when you’ve met your purpose or when you’re off track, you don’t have a viable directive. The question, “How will I know when this is off purpose?” must have a clear answer.

Principles

Of equal value as prime criteria for driving and directing a project are the standards and values you hold. Although people seldom think about these consciously, they are always there. And if they are violated, the result will inevitably be unproductive distraction and stress.

A great way to think about what your principles are is to complete this sentence: “I would give others totally free rein to do this as long as they . . .” As long as they what? What policies, stated or unstated, will apply to your group’s activities? “As long as they stayed within budget”? “satisfied the client”? “ensured a healthy team”? “promoted a positive image”?

Whereas purpose provides the juice and the direction, principles define the parameters of action and the criteria for excellence of conduct.

Vision/Outcome

In order to most productively access the conscious and unconscious resources available to you, you must have a clear picture in your mind of what success would look, sound, and feel like. Purpose and principles furnish the impetus and the monitoring, but vision provides the actual blueprint of the final result. This is the what instead of the why. What will this project or situation really be like when it successfully appears in the world?

The Power of Focus

Imagination is more important than knowledge. - Albert Einstein

One of the most powerful life skills, and one of the most important to hone and develop for both professional and personal success, is creating clear outcomes. This is not as self-evident as it may sound. We need to constantly define (and redefine) what we’re trying to accomplish on many different levels, and consistently reallocate resources toward getting these tasks complete as effectively and efficiently as possible.

When I am able to get people to focus on a successful scenario of their project, they usually experience heightened enthusiasm and think of something unique and positive about it that didn’t occur to them before. “Wouldn’t it be great if . . .” is not a bad way to start thinking about a situation, at least for long

Brainstorming

The best way to get a good idea is to get lots of ideas. - Linus Pauling

Once you know what you want to happen and why, the how mechanism is brought into play. When you identify with some picture in your mind that is different from your current reality, you automatically start filling in the gaps, or brainstorming. Ideas begin to pop into your head in somewhat random order—little ones, big ones, not-so-good ones, good ones. This process usually goes on internally for most people about most things, and that’s often sufficient. For example, you think about what you want to say to your boss as you’re walking down the hall to speak to her. But there are many other instances when writing things down, or capturing them in some external way, can give a tremendous boost to productive output and thinking.

Capturing Your Ideas

Over the past several decades, a number of graphics-oriented brainstorming techniques have been introduced to help develop creative thinking about projects and topics. They’ve been been given names such as mind mapping, clustering, patterning, webbing, and fish boning. Although the authors of these various processes may portray them as being different from one another, for most of us end users the basic premise remains the same: give yourself permission to capture and express any idea, and then later on figure out how it fits in and what to do with it. If nothing else (and there is plenty of “else”), this practice adds to your efficiency—when you have the idea, you grab it, which means you won’t have to have the idea again.

The most popular of these concepts and techniques is called mind mapping, a name coined by Tony Buzan, a British researcher in brain functioning, to label this process of brainstorming ideas into a graphic format. In mind mapping, the core idea is presented in the center, with associated ideas growing out in a somewhat free-form fashion around it. For instance, if I found out that I had to move my office, I might think about computers, changing my business cards, all the connections I’d have to change, new furniture, moving the phones, purging and packing, and so on.

You could do this kind of mind mapping on Post-its that could be stuck on a whiteboard, or you could input ideas into a word processing program, outlining program, or one of the many mind-mapping software applications on the market.

Distributed Cognition

The great thing about external brainstorming is that in addition to capturing your original ideas, it can help generate many new ones that might not have occurred to you if you didn’t have a mechanism to hold your thoughts and continually reflect them back to you. It’s as if your mind were to say, “Look, I’m only going to give you as many ideas as you feel you can effectively use. If you’re not collecting them in some trusted way, I won’t give you that many. But if you’re actually doing something with the ideas—even if it’s just recording them for later evaluation—then here, have a bunch! And, oh wow! That reminds me of another one, and another,” etc.

Psychologists have now labeled this and similar processes “distributed cognition.” It’s getting things out of your head and into objective, reviewable formats—building an “extended mind.” But my English teacher in high school didn’t have to know about the theory to give me the key: “David,” he said, “you’re going to college, and you’re going to be writing papers. Write all your notes and quotes on separate three-by-five-inch cards. Then, when you get ready to organize your thinking, just spread them all out on the floor, see the natural structure that emerges, and figure out what’s missing. Mr. Edmundson was teaching me a major piece of the natural planning model!

Few people can hold their focus on a topic for more than a couple of minutes without some objective structure and tool or trigger to help them. Pick a big project you have going right now and just try to think of nothing else for more than thirty seconds. This is pretty hard to do unless you have a pen and paper in hand and use one of those “cognitive artifacts” as the anchor for your ideas. Then you can stay with it for hours. That’s why good thinking can happen while you’re working on a computer document about a project, mind mapping it on a notepad, doodling about it on a paper tablecloth, or just having a meeting about it with other people in a room that allows you to hold the context (a whiteboard with nice wet markers really helps there, too).

Brainstorming Keys

Go for Quantity, Not Quality Going for quantity keeps your thinking expansive. Often you won’t know what’s a good idea until you have it. And sometimes you’ll realize it’s a good idea, or the germ of one, only later on. You know how shopping at a big store with lots of options lets you feel comfortable about your choice? The same holds true for project thinking. The greater the volume of thoughts you have to work with, the better the context you can create for developing options and trusting your choices.

Organizing

If you’ve done a thorough job of emptying your head of all the things that came up in the brainstorming phase, you’ll notice that a natural organization is emerging. As my high school English teacher suggested, once you get all the ideas out of your head and in front of your eyes, you’ll automatically notice natural relationships and structure. This is what most people are referring to when they talk about organizing a project.

How much planning do you really need to do?

How Much Planning Do You Really Need to Do? How much of this planning model do you really need to flesh out, and to what degree of detail? The simple answer is, as much as you need to get the project off your mind.

In general, the reason things are on your mind is that the outcome and action step(s) have not been appropriately defined, and/or reminders of them have not been put in places where you can be trusted to look for them appropriately. Additionally, you may not have developed the details, perspectives, and solutions sufficiently to trust the efficacy of your blueprint.

Chapter 4 : Getting Started : Setting Up the Time , Space, and Tools

If you’re not sure you’re committed to an all-out implementation of these methods, let me assure you that much of the value people get from this material is good tricks. Sometimes just one good trick can make it worthwhile to range through this information: I’ve had people tell me, for example, that the best thing they got from our seminars was simply the two-minute rule. Tricks are for the not-so-smart, not-so-conscious part of us. To a great degree, the highest-performing people I know are those who have installed the best tricks in their lives. I know that’s true of me.

For instance, if you’re a semi-regular exerciser like I am, you probably have your own little tricks to get yourself to exercise. My best trick is costume—the clothing I put on or take off. If I put on exercise gear, I’ll start to feel like exercising; if I don’t I’m very likely to feel like doing something else.

If you take out a clean sheet of paper right now, along with your favorite writing instrument, and for three minutes focus solely on the most awesome project on your mind, I guarantee you’ll have at least one “Oh, yeah, I need to consider ______.” Then capture what shows up in your head on the piece of paper and put it where you might actually use the idea or information. You won’t be one ounce smarter than you were ten minutes ago, but you’ll have added value to your work and life.

The big secret to efficient creative and productive thinking and action is to put the right things in your focus at the right time.

If You Go to an Office, You’ll Still Need a Space at Home

Don’t skimp on workspace at home. As you’ll discover through this process, it’s critical that you have at least a satellite home system identical to the one in your office. Many people I’ve worked with have been somewhat embarrassed by the degree of chaos that reigns in their homes, in contrast to their offices at work;

Tools You'll Need

Plain Paper

You’ll use plain paper for the initial collection process. Believe it or not, putting one thought on one full-size sheet of paper can have enormous value. Most people will wind up processing their notes into some sort of list organizer, but by having initial thoughts separated into discrete placeholders (versus on one amorphous list), it makes it easier to wrestle it to closure later, in the processing and organizing steps. In any case, it’s important to have plenty of letter-size writing paper or tablets around to make capturing ad hoc input easy.

Calendar

Although you may not need a calendar just to collect your incomplete items, you’ll certainly come up with actions that need to be put there, nonetheless. As I noted earlier, the calendar should be used not to hold action lists but to track the “hard landscape” of things that have to get done on a specific day or at a specific time.

Most professionals these days already have some sort of working calendar system in place, ranging from loose-leaf organizers to mobile devices to shared enterprise software applications.

The calendar has often been the central tool that people rely on to be “organized.” It’s certainly a critical component in managing particular kinds of data and reminders of the commitments and information that relate to specific times and days. There are many reminders and some data that you will want a calendar for, but you won’t be stopping there: your calendar will need to be integrated with a much more comprehensive system that will emerge as you apply this method.

Wastebasket/Recycling Bins

If you’re like most people, when you implement this process you’re going to toss a lot more stuff than you expect, so get ready to create a good bit of trash. Some executives I have coached have found it extremely useful to arrange for a large trash bin to be parked immediately outside their offices the day we work together!

Do you need an Organizer?

When considering whether to get and use any organizing tool, and if so, which one, keep in mind that all you really need to do is manage lists. You’ve got to be able to create a list on the run and review it easily and as regularly as you need to. Once you know what to put on the lists and how to use them, the medium really doesn’t matter. Just go for simplicity, speed, and fun.

Success Factors for Filing

I strongly suggest that you maintain a personal, at-hand filing system—both physical and digital. It should take you less than one minute to pick something up out of your in-tray or print it from e-mail, decide it needs no next action but has some potential future value, and finish storing it in a trusted system. The same is true for scanning and storing documents or copying and pasting information in the computer. You may have a preponderance of digital over paper-based reference material (or vice versa), but without a streamlined system for both, you will resist keeping potentially valuable information, or what you do keep will accumulate in inappropriate places. If it takes longer than a minute to file something in an easily retrievable format, you’ll likely stack it or stuff it somewhere instead. Besides being fast, the system needs to be fun and easy, current and complete. Otherwise you’ll unconsciously resist emptying your in-tray because you know there’s likely to be something in there that ought to get filed, and you won’t even want to look at the papers or your clogged e-mail. Take heart: I’ve seen people go from resisting to actually enjoying sorting through their piles and digital world once their personal filing system is set up and humming.

Chapter 5 : Capturing : Corralling your "Stuff"

Chapter 6 : Clarifying : Getting "In" to Empty

Emergency Scanning Is Not Clarifying

Most people get to their in-tray or their e-mail and look for the most urgent, most fun, easiest, or most interesting stuff to deal with first. “Emergency scanning” is fine and necessary sometimes (I do it regularly, too). Maybe you’ve just come back from an off-site meeting and have to be on a long conference call in fifteen minutes. So you check to make sure there are no land mines about to explode and to see if your client has e-mailed back to you OK’ing the big proposal.

But that’s not processing your in-tray; it’s emergency scanning. When you’re in processing mode, you must get into the habit of starting at one end and just cranking through items one at a time, in order. As soon as you break that rule and process only what you feel like processing, in whatever order, you’ll invariably begin to leave things unprocessed. Then you will no longer have a functioning funnel, and it will back up all over your desk and office and e-mail “in” repositories. Many people live in this emergency-scanning mode, always distracted by what’s coming into “in,” and not feeling comfortable if they’re not constantly skimming the contents on their computer or mobile devices. Were they to trust “in” would be totally dealt with every day or two, they wouldn’t be so driven by this need for incessant checking.

One Item at a Time

You may find you have a tendency, while processing your in-tray, to pick something up, not know exactly what you want to do about it, and then let your eyes wander to another item farther down the stack and get engaged with it. That item may be more attractive to you because you know right away what to do with it—and you don’t feel like thinking about what’s in your hand. This is dangerous territory. What’s in your hand is likely to land on a “hmph” stack on the side of your desk because you become distracted by something easier, more important, or more interesting below it.

Most people also want to take a whole stack of things out of the in-tray at once, put it right in front of them, and try to crank through it all, immediately. Although I empathize with the desire to deal with a big chunk, I constantly remind people to put back everything but the one item on top. The focus on just one thing forces the requisite attention and decision making to get through all your stuff. And if you get interrupted (which is likely), you won’t have countless parts of “in” scattered around outside the tray and out of control again.

Nothing Goes Back into "In"

There’s a one-way path out of “in.” This is actually what was meant by the old admonition to “handle things once,” though handling things just once is in fact a bad idea. If you did that, you’d never have a list, because you would finish everything as soon as you saw it. You’d also be highly ineffective and inefficient, since most things you deal with are not to be acted upon the first time you become aware of them. Where the advice does hold is in eliminating the bad habit of continually picking things up out of “in,” not deciding what they mean or what you’re going to do about them, and then just leaving them there. A better admonition would be,

“The first time you pick something up from your in-tray, decide what to do about it and where it goes. Never put it back in ‘in.’”

The cognitive scientists have now proven the reality of “decision fatigue”—that every decision you make, little or big, diminishes a limited amount of your brain power. Deciding to “not decide” about an e-mail or anything else is another one of those decisions, which drains your psychological fuel tank.

The Action Step Needs to Be the Absolute Next Physical Thing to Do

Remember that these are physical, visible activities. Many people think they’ve determined the next action when they get it down to “set meeting.” But that’s not the next action, because it’s not descriptive of physical behavior. How do you set a meeting? Well, it could be with a phone call or an e-mail, but to whom? Decide. If you don’t decide now, you’ll still have to decide at some other point, and what this process is designed to do is actually get you to finish the thinking exercise about this item. If you haven’t identified the next physical action required to kick-start it, there will be a psychological gap every time you think about it even vaguely. You’ll tend to resist noticing it, which leads to procrastination.

When you get to a phone or to your computer, you want to have all your thinking completed so you can use the tools you have and the location you’re in to more easily get things done, having already defined what there is to do.

Once You Decide What the Action Step Is

You have three options once you decide what the next action really is:

  • Do it (if the action takes less than two minutes).
  • Delegate it (if you’re not the most appropriate person to do the action).
  • Defer it into your organization system as an option for work to do later.

Do It

If the next action can be done in two minutes or less, do it when you first pick the item up. If the e-mail requires just a thirty-second reading and then a quick yes/no/other response back to the sender, do it now. If you can browse the catalog in just a minute or two to see if there might be anything of interest in it, browse away, and then toss it, route it, or reference it as required. If the next action on something is to leave a quick message on someone’s voice mail, make the call now.

Even if the item is not a high-priority one, do it now if you’re ever going to do it at all. The rationale for the two-minute rule is that it’s more or less the point where it starts taking longer to store and track an item than to deal with it the first time it’s in your hands—in other words, it’s the efficiency cutoff. If the thing’s not important enough to be done, throw it away. If it is, and if you’re going to do it sometime, the efficiency factor should come into play.

Delegate It

If the next action is going to take longer than two minutes, ask yourself, “Am I the best person to be doing it?” If not, hand it off to the appropriate party, in a systematic format.

Defer It

It’s likely that most of the next actions you determine for things in “in” will be yours to do and will take longer than two minutes to complete. A call you need to make to a customer; an e-mail to your team that you need to spend a little time thinking about and drafting; a gift you need to buy for your brother at the sporting goods store; a software application you need to download from the Web and try out; a conversation you must have with your life partner about the school you’re thinking of sending your daughter to—all of these fit that description.

Chapter 7 : Organizing : Setting Up the Right Buckets

I must Create a System or be enslav’d by another Man’s. —William Blake

Chapter 8 : Reflecting : Keeping it All Fresh and Functional

The Power of the Weekly Review

Many of us seem to have it in our natures to consistently entangle ourselves in more than we have the ability to handle. We book ourselves in back-to-back meetings all day, go to after-hours events that generate ideas and commitments we need to deal with, and get embroiled in engagements and projects that have the potential to spin our creative intelligence into cosmic orbits.

That whirlwind of activity is precisely what makes the Weekly Review so valuable. It builds in some capturing, reevaluation, and reprocessing time to keep you in balance. There is simply no way to do this necessary regrouping while you’re trying to get everyday work done.

The Weekly Review will also sharpen your intuitive focus on your important projects as you deal with the flood of new input and potential distractions coming at you the rest of the week. You’re going to have to learn to say no—faster, and to more things—in order to stay afloat and comfortable. Having some dedicated time in which to at least get up to the project level of thinking goes a long way toward making that easier.

Every now and then go away and have a little relaxation. To remain constantly at work will diminish your judgment. Go some distance away, because work will be in perspective and a lack of harmony is more readily seen. —Leonardo da Vinci

The “Bigger Picture” Reviews

Yes, at some point you must clarify the larger outcomes, the long-term goals, the visions and principles that ultimately drive, test, and prioritize your decisions.

What are your key goals and objectives in your work? What should you have in place a year or three years from now? How is your career going? Is this the lifestyle that is most fulfilling to you? Are you doing what you really want or need to do, from a deeper and longer-term perspective?

Over the years I have discovered, through my own experience as well as being intimately involved with scores of people in their day-to-day worlds, that getting ultimately grounded and in control of the mundane aspects of life produces a rich field of natural inspiration about our higher-level stuff. It is because of our deeper drives and inclinations that we have embroiled ourselves in the complexities and commitments that often create confusion and the sense of being overwhelmed. You felt a profound need to have children; now you’ve got them, and each one is a major business to manage for at least two decades. You’ve felt impelled to be creative and produce recognized (and monetized) value in the world; so you’ve built a business or committed to a lofty professional career, and you’re now buried in many more things than you feel you can handle. More goals may not be necessary for you now—you need comfort with the ones you’ve already put in motion, and the confidence that you can execute elegantly on any new ones.

Chapter 9 : Engaging : Making the Best action Choices

The Four-Criteria Model for Choosing Actions in the Moment

Remember that you make your action choices based on the following four criteria, in order:

  • Context
  • Time available
  • Energy available
  • Priority

Chapter 10 : Getting Projects Under Control

Random Project Thinking

Don’t lose any ideas about projects that could potentially be useful. Many times you’ll think of something you don’t want to forget when you’re in a place that has nothing to do with the project.

Thinking Tools

Luck affects everything. Let your hook always be cast; in the stream where you least expect it there will be fish. —Ovid

One of the great secrets to getting ideas and increasing your productivity is utilizing the function-follows-form phenomenon—great tools can trigger good thinking.

(I’ve come up with some of my most productive thoughts when simply exploring a new software application that created an interesting or fun way to generate and capture data.) If you aren’t writing anything down, or inputting into a digital device, it’s extremely difficult to stay focused on anything for more than a few minutes, especially if you’re by yourself. But when you utilize physical tools to keep your thinking anchored and saved, you can stay engaged constructively for hours.

Writing Instruments

Function often follows form. Give yourself a context for capturing thoughts, and thoughts will occur that you don’t yet know you have.

Keep good writing tools around all the time so you never have any unconscious resistance to thinking due to not having anything to capture it with. If I don’t have something to write with or text or type into, I know I’m not as comfortable letting myself think progressively about projects and situations. Conversely, I have done some great thinking and planning at times just because I wanted to use my great-feeling, smooth-writing fountain or gel pen! You may not be inspired by cool gear like I am, but if you are, do yourself a favor and invest in quality writing tools. I also suggest that you keep nice pens at each of the stations where you’re likely to want to take notes—at your desk(s), in the kitchen, in your briefcases, satchels, purses, and backpacks

Paper and Pads

Where is your closest writing pad? Keep it closer.

In addition to writing tools, you should always have their functional equivalent—pads of paper—close at hand. Perforated paper is preferable to solid notebooks, because you want to be able to tear off pages with ideas and notes and toss them into your in-tray until you get a chance to process them.

Easels and Whiteboards

How do I know what I think, until I hear what I say? —E. M. Forster

If you have room for them, whiteboards and/or easel pads are very functional thinking tools to use from time to time. They give you plenty of space on which to jot down ideas, and it can be useful to keep them up in front of you for a while, as you incubate on a topic. Whiteboards are great to have on a wall in your office and in meeting rooms, and the bigger the better. Some companies have designed whole internal walls as erasable writing surfaces, fostering brainstorming and ad hoc visual communications. If you have children, I recommend that you install one in their bedrooms (I wish I had grown up with the encouragement to have as many ideas as I could!). Be sure to keep plenty of fresh markers on hand—nothing stifles creative thinking faster than dry and useless writing tools.

Thinking in Your Digital Tools

Many times I like to think on my laptop (and, less frequently, on my tablet), within my word processing, mind-mapping, outlining, presentation, or spreadsheet programs. There are so many things I might want to do later on with my thinking, and it feels terrific to already have it in some digital form for later editing, and cutting and pasting into various other applications. Once I’ve booted up and the screen is ready in front of me, I find that thinking just automatically starts to happen. This is another good reason to ensure that your typing and keyboard skills are sufficient to make engaging with the computer at least easy, if not downright fun.

Paper Versus Digital

For those who have become increasingly digitally oriented, it is tempting to try to eliminate paper altogether. Theoretically that shouldn’t be a problem, with all the digital note-taking, scanning, and character-recognition tools available. In practice, however, paper still provides high value for most of us. Handwritten note taking is not going away, for multiple reasons, not the least of which is the universality of the tools and the range of graphic representations available. We tend to think differently when we express with different equipment, and many people find that writing and drawing by hand unwraps a broader palette of ideas.

Software Tools

there are multiple kinds of digital tools that can be extremely useful. Most professionals are familiar with word processing programs, spreadsheets, and presentation programs, any of which might be the optimal way to structure project plans or portions thereof, especially once the purpose, vision, and brainstorming phases have been handled.

personally use a digital mind-mapping tool for most all of my projects as a way both to do focused brainstorming and to capture random thoughts about the projects as they show up ad hoc. In most cases the final mind map itself is sufficient organization for me to feel comfortable that I have the project under control.

Chapter 11 : The power of capturing Habits

The Source of the Negative Feelings

Agreements you’ve made or at least implicitly accepted with yourself—things you somehow have told yourself you should deal with in some way. Your negative feelings are simply the result of breaking those agreements—they’re the symptoms of disintegrated self-trust. If you tell yourself to draft a strategic plan, when you don’t do it, you feel bad. Tell yourself to get organized, and if you fail to, welcome to guilt and frustration. Resolve to spend more time with your kids and then don’t—voila! anxious and overwhelmed.

How Do You Prevent Broken Agreements with Yourself?

If the negative feelings come from broken agreements, you have three options for dealing with them and eliminating the negative consequences:

  • Don’t make the agreement.
  • Complete the agreement.
  • Renegotiate the agreement.

Don’t make the agreement.

One way to handle an incompletion in your world is to just say no!

Complete the Agreement

Of course, another way to get rid of the negative feelings about your stuff is to just finish it and be able to mark it off as done.

Renegotiate the Agreement

Suppose I’d told you I would meet you Thursday at four p.m., but after I made the appointment, my world changed. Now, given my new priorities, I decide I’m not going to meet you Thursday at four. But instead of simply not showing up, what had I better do, to maintain the integrity of the relationship? Correct—call and change the agreement. A renegotiated agreement is not a broken one.

Chapter 12 : The Power of the Next-Action Decision

The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small, manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one. —Mark Twain

Often even the simplest things are stuck because we haven’t made a final decision yet about the next action. People in my seminars often have things on their lists like “Get a tune-up for the car.” Is “Get a tune-up” a next action? Not unless you’re walking out to your car with wrench in hand, dressed to get greasy.

“So, what’s the next action?”

“Uh, I need to take the car to the garage. Oh, yeah, I need to find out if the garage can take it. I guess I need to call the garage and make the appointment.”

“Do you have the number?”

“Darn, no . . . I don’t have the name and number for the garage. Fred recommended that garage to me, and I don’t have that information. I knew something was missing in the equation.”

And that’s often what happens with so many things for so many people. We glance at the project, and some part of us thinks, “I don’t quite have all the pieces between here and there.” We know something is missing, but we’re not sure what it is, so we quit.

“So, what’s the next action?”

“I need to get the name and phone number. I guess I could get it from Fred.”

“How could you do that?”

“I can e-mail Fred!” So the next action really is “E-mail Fred for info re: the garage.” Did you notice how many steps had to be tracked back before we got to the real next action on this project? That’s typical. Most people have many things just like that on their lists and on their minds.

Intelligent Dumbing Down

In following up with people who have begun to implement this methodology, I’ve discovered that one of the subtler ways many of them fall off the wagon is in letting their action lists grow back into lists of tasks or subprojects instead of discrete next actions. They’re still ahead of most people because they’re actually writing things down, but they often find themselves stuck, and procrastinating, because they’ve allowed their action lists to harbor items like:

“Meeting with the banquet committee”

“Johnny’s birthday”

“Receptionist”

“Slide presentation”

You can only cure retail but you can prevent wholesale. —Brock Chisholm

In other words, things have morphed back into “stuff” instead of starting at the action level. There are no clear next actions here, and anyone keeping a list filled with items like this would send her brain into overload every time she looked at it.

Is this extra work? Is figuring out the next action on your commitments additional effort that you don’t need to expend? No, of course not. If you need to get your car tuned, for instance, you’re going to have to figure out that next action at some point anyway. The problem is that most people wait to do it until the next action is “Call the Auto Club for tow truck!”

Clarity

Too many discussions end with only a vague sense that people know what they have decided and are going to do. But without a clear conclusion that there is a next action, much less what it is and who’s got it, more often than not a lot of stuff gets left up in the air.

I am frequently asked to facilitate meetings. I’ve learned the hard way that no matter where we are in the conversation, twenty minutes before the agreed end time of the discussion I must force the question: “So what’s the next action here?” In my experience, there is usually twenty minutes’ worth of clarifying (and sometimes tough decisions) still required to come up with an answer.

Chapter 13 : The Power of Outcome Focusing

Chapter 14 : GTD and Cognitive Science

Flow Theory

One of the more popular concepts in this field, which has often been associated with GTD, has been the idea of “flow”—the state of optimal performance and engagement. Flow is what the athletes refer to as being “in the zone,” and it can be closely correlated with the idea of “mind like water,” which I introduced in the first chapter.

The flow experience is marked by various distinct components, several of which are already implemented by the GTD approach. To experience flow, it is necessary that your skills in a given task match the challenge at hand. If the challenge exceeds your requisite skill level, you will experience anxiety, and if your skills exceed the challenge, you will most likely feel bored during the activity. Flow is usually accompanied by complete concentration on the given task, and you typically feel in control and have clear goals in sight. Individuals in flow generally have an idea of what is coming next and receive immediate feedback throughout the task. They also experience a merging of action and awareness, during which they lose both their self-consciousness and their sense of time. They are usually intrinsically motivated, performing an activity for its own sake and not for an external reward. Those in flow often are performing at an optimal level and are completely absorbed in what they are doing. Once individuals have experienced flow, they are often compelled to repeat the activities that enabled them to experience it.*