Category Archive for: ‘gtd’
Structure and productivity
A while ago I was listening to and older podcast with David Allen where he made a very interesting observation. Very often we are building a very complex structures to support our productivity by adding layers of tags, applications et. In effect we tie ourselves up and put more pressure on maintaining this system. It becomes a drag.
Something that’s opposite should be true. A good productivity system should be light and flexible allowing to fit it into changing events and requirements.
Continuing with this thought focus on keeping your system just right and fit for a purpose. It’s very easy to spend few hours organizing everything in your system. Adding locations, tags, links, making sure everything is clearly laid out. But is such approach sustainable on daily basis? Probably not.
When you look at how people get organized more often than not everything they have is halfway done. They had some free time so they decided to organise something they meant to do a long time ago. They put up a very nice looking structure of A-Z folders, marked with different colours and labels. After a while only half of the documents are done this way, the demands of the work took over and there is no longer a time to maintain this structure.
The same will happen with tasks. You can go full on with various application and fill every possible text box, tag, notes and links so then you can dice and slice actions, projects the way you want. After initial hurray stage this structure weighs your down and becomes a drag.
It becomes apparent that filling all the boxes and setting up all the tags and folders is too time consuming. You could do it when you had extra free time but it can’t be sustained in normal day when things are flying at speed of light.
Perhaps this is one of the reasons why a short lists of tasks is so effective. It’s simple, easy and serves as a great reference point.
To conclude the tools you use should support you enough to let you maintain the control of the day and be flexible to allow you to adjust to changing priorities.
photo by zigazou76
Productivity a video series
I’ve been going through some of my archives and I stumbled upon couple very interesting videos about personal productivity, GTD, self management. So I decided to share some of the best finds in this up coming series.
When I watched those videos initially there was always something worth picking up and implementing. Sometimes it was a small bit other times it was drastic and complete change to the way I’ve been working. Either way it was always worth spending sometime on it.
I’m starting with a classic. It’s David Allen talking to Google employees in 2007. Although it’s four years old I still find it useful. Enjoy.
If you can’t see the video here is the link to original YouTube source.
What to do?
Sometimes it’s nice to be told what to do. Some people prefer that and choose jobs and professions where there is fixed amount of work and it’s clearly what needs to happen when and how.
These type of jobs are becoming less and less available and popular as we choose freedom of and action.
As knowledge work expands there is no longer a simple system to decide what’s next. At any moment you can do a multiple things. All almost equally important and time pressing. Factory module of working you start with 1 the move to 2 and so on is no longer applicable. It’s your choice to decide what needs to be done, whether it’s task A or B.
You need to know what’s important, what’s more valuable, what are the time limits to get the job done.
There are couple ways of how to decide what to do next.
First you can go with your gut feeling. Look at the items on your list and just pick one that’s most attractive. It’s is your decision to figure out what’s most attractive is, maybe it’s the easiest one, maybe it’s the most mentally challenging etc.
If you want more structured approach you can try GTD 4 criteria model for deciding your work. This model focuses on analysing tasks from four perspectives which in turn should tell you what is the task you realistically can do.
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context – defines a place or tools necessary to complete a task. If your are running errands your focus will be on shopping list, if you are sitting next to a phone then you can review your @calls list. Consequently if you are in a plane or commuting there is no point look at your @office list because you’re not there.
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time – every once days are combination of meetings, conference calls and discretionary time. Deciding on the next action you need to look at the time available before next scheduled event. There is no point in starting a task that will take you a hour to complete if all you have is just a twenty minutes.
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energy – through out the day we go through a cycle of high and low brain activity, the events of the day will also impact your ability to concentrate and perform. As result there is only so much you can effectively do in one day with out proper re-charge. At times you might be totally drained out of energy after a long day off meetings so you will not be willing to look at anything more than low value, easy tasks just to finish the day.
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priority – the remaining criterion used when assessing the choice of the next actions is priority. It comes last on the list as it’s depends on the other current context your in and available time and energy. This is very relative and subjective category. The key question is given all the goals, projects, responsibilities what is the one thing which accomplished will make you feel good about the day.
There are multiple ways of incorporating these criteria into your productivity system. One way to do it is to define some generic time and energy slots and apply them to your tasks. If you use application like Remember the Milk or similar one you can tag your tasks by adding expected duration like 15min, 30min, required energy high ,low, context and priority etc.
A simpler way is do the assessment just as you go through your list.
Next time when you’re stuck and not sure what to do check how much time do you have what’s your context and energy level and pick a task that you can complete.
Do you have any system helping you decide your next action? I would love to hear about it.
Photo by: Jason McHuff
Key Lists
If you’re into productivity you most likely have a list, probably there is more than one list. You may have action lists, things to do at some point, lists of ideas for holidays, books, movies, music. But with setting up dozens and dozens of list it comes a cost of maintaining them, keeping up to date and relevant.
At some point you realise that there is only a handful of list that you use always.
For me there are three lists like that:
- @projects – to keep a record of my open projects.
- @actions – to stay on top of my task and to-do.
- @waiting – to keep track of things I should receive or people to get back to me.
There are times when I consider dividing these lists and expanding in subset but that never works out very well.
Focusing on keeping these lists in check provides me with biggest payoff so making any changes is like fixing something that’s not broken.
Do you have any key list? Are there any that you can’t live with out?
photo Flickr by Al Abut
GTD Jargon Buster
Getting started with implementing GTD may be a complex thing. There are many phrases and terms to understand and to wrap your head around.
I’ve collected a list of most important GTD terms and included a little description. Hope you will find it useful in your GTD journey.
4 criteria model of work – in order to decide what to do next, GTD proposes a four criteria which should assist in making the most appropriate decision. These include following elements: context- your location, time – available/required to complete the action, energy – required/available to complete the item, priority – importance of the item.
5 stages of workflow – this is a core of the GTD system. To deal with any work, ideas, projects which you have to do Allen proposes a series of steps which will help you get more organized. There are five stages of this process starting with, collecting, processing, followed by organising, review and finished with doing. Each step is a discrete element which assist in maintaining better focus and clarity.
Areas of focus – include some key personal and professional areas for which are responsible for on on-going basis. These areas form a core of your duties. This is designed as reminder to make sure that you’ve captured necessary actions and projects so you can stay on top of your responsibilities.
Context – generally refers to a place where the action can be completed. This could include actual locations like: at shop, at library, at office or an area like at desk, at online, at couch. The number of contexts will vary from person to person and generally should strike a balance between granularity and ease of reference.
Mental RAM – it’s the short term memory of your brain. Your brain has a limited capacity to store information in that space. The more incomplete items you keep in your RAM the more difficult it’s to maintain focus and concentration.
Mind sweep – is a simple exercise which allows you to clear your head. Anytime you can’t focus and you seem to be bombarded with countless of things take piece of paper and jot down all the things you want to deal with.
Natural planning model – designed to help bring more control and clarity into projects. It’s based on the a five stage process which aims at clarifying the purpose and principles, visioning how would the wild success look like, jotting all ideas about the project through brainstorming, organizing those ideas into sequences and slots and finally identifying next actions.
Next action – is a next physical activity that can be completed as part of a project or a stand alone task. The key element is that it starts with a verb like read, write, call etc.
Project – is any endeavour that takes more than one step to complete. Category of projects can encapsulate things from buying new printer to creating a new division in a company. The main premise for such wide interpretation of project is that this way you will track any item that needs to be finished.
Project support materials – a category of documents which have been collected as part of a project. This can incorporate things like project notes, system documentation, drawings, results of brainstorming sessions, budget calculations, presentations, correspondence, magazines etc.
Ubiquitous capture – an ability to capture ideas, information, thoughts in any place you’re. The aim is to limit the time between the occurrence of the idea and writing it down so that one can continue with the task at hand and keep the head clear.
Someday/maybe – this list is parking lot for any ideas, projects, actions that are not active but you don’t want to loose a track of those. There will be things you’re not sure about or things you would like to do at some later date. Perhaps you have some ideas for gifts for next Christmas. Someday/Maybe list is for all those items.
Trigger list – a list which should assist you in completing a thorough mind sweep. It includes reminders of different areas of your life that you may need to look. Rather than posing specific questions it’s simply a list of phases and words that could spark a thought about something you should look at. It most useful when you’re head is full of chaos and it’s difficult to find a starting point and start clearing it.
Tickler file – it’s a set of 43 folders where you store items which you need to look at or retrieve at some point in the future. It’s a place for all the items you don’t need know but will require later. 12 folders represent each month and 31 folders refer to each day in the current month. The usual content of ticker file includes tickets for upcoming events, bills to pay, leaflets etc.
Weekly review – one of the crucial elements of successful GTD system. Weekly review aims at re-evaluating your situation, it’s a time designed to make sure your system is current and up to date. Weekly review focuses on empting your head, checking your priorities for next week, looking at projects and actions, considering some of the someday items.
Waiting for – a list designed to track all the items where you’re expecting something to be done by someone else. It can be a letter from insurance company, a response to an email you’ve sent, an item to be returned by a friend.