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Archives for March 2009

GTD Agenda

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I’ve mentioned often that GTD is very good at the lower altitudes (projects and actions) but not as developed at the higher levels (goals and roles). Within the proliferation of online task management tools in the last couple of years, many of them also reflect this same strength at the lower levels, but less developed approach to the higher levels.

Recently an online service named GTD Agenda was pointed out to me. It is a productivity tool that was designed for implementing GTD with both the higher levels and lower levels in mind. So — after having this on my project list for far too long! — I’ve given it a quick spin to see how well it does.

As I talk about what I think it does well and what its gaps seem to be, this post might also give you a small window into the big picture of my own productivity approach.

[Read more…]

Where Does Work Come From? Some Unexpected Places

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I recently came across the outline of a presentation I did a few years ago and found these six principles that I listed as type of appendix at the end.

I don’t know exactly what to call them. They are definitely not comprehensive philosophy of work — far, far from it. They seem to focus on unexpected places where work comes from. I think I originally wrote them down after a particularly busy and frustrating week when new work just kept showing up, no matter how much I got done.

If I were to summarize their main point of these six insights, it would be: Don’t be fooled into thinking that the way to get all your work done is simply to do your work. That’s a necessary component, but it will not lead you to the sometimes very elusive sate of being all caught up.

I find these principles helpful to keep in mind. At some point, maybe it will be worthwhile to craft them into a more systematic article. Here they are:

  1. People create work. For example, even if you go on vacation in order to do no work, the maid still needs to come to make the bed, take out the trash, and clean the room each day.
  2. Work creates work.  Doing one task often triggers, leads to, uncovers, or requires another. And then another…
  3. Work takes work to manage.
  4. Greater efficiency does not necessarily mean less work, but rather usually means that more work will be attempted — which is greater in volume than the slice of time saved by the efficiency. This has been the case with increased energy efficiency through the twentieth century, and it is no different with increased time efficiency.
  5. The larger the number of dependencies among your tasks and in your life, the less lean you are and the more complicated your life is. Seek to minimize dependencies.
  6. You will never reach the end of your lists.

If It's Urgent, Ignore It

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That’s the title of an article I recently came across again in my files, from a couple years ago in Fast Company. Sure, that’s a bit of an overstatement, but it’s actually a pretty good principle.

Here’s what it says:

Smart organizations ignore the urgent and focus on the important.

Is it realistic to ignore the urgent, though? Well, here’s the problem: Focusing on the urgent just causes more urgent things to come up. The only way to really minimize the appearance of the urgent is to focus on the important:

Smart organizations understand that important issues are the ones to deal with. If you focus on the important stuff, the urgent will take care of itself.

Ignore the urgent so that you can do the important things that are necessary to make the urgent fires stop happening in the first place.

Read the whole thing.

The Truly Creative Do Not Just Generate Ideas — They Implement

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A very good point by Steven Furtick, via Zach Nielsen: 

Let’s define creative. Cause it seems like to me that the way we often use the term in church work today misses the point.

Some people fancy themselves as being “creative,” or ”creative-types,” because they have a lot of ideas. Cool. You have ideas.
So does my 3 year old.
That doesn’t make you creative.
An idea without implementation isn’t creation.
It’s imagination.

By definition, being creative requires that you create something.
True creative people don’t just dream it — they do it…or oversee the strategy to get it done.
True creativity results in a product. Not just an idea.

We’ve all met people who shy away from the hard work of action steps because they “don’t do the details.” They’re “more into the creative side of things.”
But as far as I can tell, the Chief Creator didn’t just think about light, stars, and human life…the proof of His creativity is the tangible detailed expression of His vision.

That’s what I appreciate so much about our creative team at Elevation.
They imagine — then they implement.
Otherwise, they know they’d just be playing make believe.
And we don’t give paychecks to big boys and girls for playing make believe.

What will you create today?
Don’t settle for conceptualization. Bring it into existence.

Simply having great ideas does not make you creative. By definition, being truly creative means you actually create something. So there are really two components of creativity. As a semi-motto of GTD that I’ve seen goes: “Make it up, make it happen.“

The Action-Priority Matrix

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Mindtools has a good overview of the Action-Priority Matrix.

The Action Priority Matrix is a simple diagramming technique that helps you choose which activities to prioritize (and which ones you should drop) if you want to make the most of your time and opportunities.

It’s useful because most of us have many more activities on our “wish lists” — whether these are bright ideas to pursue, exciting opportunities or interesting possibilities — than we have time available. By choosing activities intelligently, you can make the very most of your time and opportunities.

You unfortunately have to register to read the whole thing (What’s Not Best!), but you still get to see the four quadrants, which are:

  1. High impact, low effort: Quick wins
  2. Low impact, low effort: Fill-ins
  3. High impact, high effort: Major projects
  4. Low impact, high effort: Hard slogs (now called “thankless tasks” in the article, but I like “hard slogs” much better)

Where Social Networking is Going

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TechCrunchIT has a good Q&A on the social web with Google’s Kevin Marks. Right away, his comments on the first question are very significant:

Q: We keep hearing that “Google wants to make the web more social.” What does that mean?

Everything on the web is more interesting when it takes place with friends. Today’s social networking sites are the online contexts where you and your friends go to be social, and the time we spend on them shows the attraction.

But the model of going to a single website to interact with other people is changing. In the future, we expect everything on the web will become more social, augmenting the many things you already do on the web. Whether you’re shopping, deciding what to read, or researching a topic, knowing what your friends, or family, or the people you respect think about that product, book, or source of information is a vital part of the web.

I call this the “social cloud,” meaning that “social” will be integrated with the web so that you don’t think about it anymore. Charlene Li calls this same idea “social networks become like air.” The web itself is like this — following links seems like second nature to us because we know a URL can take us anywhere. Social isn’t there yet, but that’s the highest level goal of the OpenSocial project — to make interacting with people a natural part of how we use the web.

Read the whole thing.

A Few Quick Examples on How to Make Your Tickler File Electronic

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A “tickler file” is part of the standard GTD approach; most productivity folks also recommend having one. It allows you to “mail” actions and items to yourself in the future.

I have an “electronic tickler.” Instead of doing 43 physical folders (one for each day of the month, plus one for each month) and doing this manually, I just have a specific action list in my productivity system called “Action Calendar.” I keep my tickler items on that electronic list.

Here’s how that works. Every item on that list has a due date. “Due date” there really means “do on.” I check that list every day (well, most days) and the items with that day’s date are things that need to be done or brought to my attention on that day. I ignore everything in the future. The point of this list is that you don’t need to think about anything in it until the day it comes up.

This is a great way to keep track of repeating tasks that need to be done on a certain day. For example: changing your furnace filter every month or so. I have that as a monthly repeating item in my action calendar (probably every 6-weeks, actually, but you get the point). When it comes up, I change it. During all other times, I don’t need to think about it.

Another instance is processing notes you capture in your “capture tool.” You don’t want to just capture action items and other stuff you need to process, and then just leave it to your brain to remember to do it. I have a repeating task in my action calendar to process my notes.

An action calendar also works well for single items that come your way, and which you have to do at a certain time and cannot do until them. For example, when we moved and started our new trash service here, the company sent us two coupons for two free months. The problem is that you can only use them in two (future) months which they designated.

We received the coupons in November or something. The months they were to be used in were February and March. So, I created action calendar items for the first Saturdays in February and March that said “return [name of garbage company]’s billing coupon for free month.”

As you can see in this example, there was along with this a physical item to keep — the coupon I had to send in. Hence, I do keep one physical file for tickler items. I call it “pending.” It’s actually for more than just physical tickler items. It’s for any paper-based support material I need to keep which pertains to non-project actions. Paper-based support material for my electronic tickler fits in here great.

I thought to write this post because the action calendar item to send this in for March just came up. So I grabbed the coupon out of my pending file and sent it in. (Now I’m writing this post.)

Now, someone would say, “Paper is old-fashioned. That company shouldn’t have sent you actual paper coupons to send in.” Well, sure, but the fact is that they did. You have to be able to deal with the fact that not everything is going to be electronic.

I find this balance — keeping my tickler items electronically, but then when necessary keeping any physical support material in a single (rather than 43) physical folder that the electronic item then points me to — very useful.

I do also have other physical files beyond this one “pending” physical file, because the reality is that you do have paper to deal with. But that is for a set of upcoming posts (as soon as I can!).

Things Will Be Left Undone; Therefore…

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You cannot get everything done. Things will be left undone.

Therefore, be intentional about that. If things are going to be left undone, be sure that it is the right things that are left undone.

How do you do that? It’s one of the reasons you should have a list of goals, projects, and actions that represent a complete inventory of your work. By seeing everything that you have to do, you can identify more easily — in light of the big picture — what to delegate and what to just plain get rid of.

If You Finished Just One Project A Day…

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Project completion often comes in waves: 3 projects completed one day, 0 for the next two, then 1 more completed, and so forth. (I’m speaking of projects here in the GTD sense of multi-step but non-routine outcomes, rather than the more traditional sense of “fairly large initiatives that produce a unique service, product, or result.”)

It’s probably unavoidable that project completion will always come in waves to some extent. But in the midst of this, it’s easy to forget that if you consistently completed just one project per day, that would really add up. It would mean:

  • 5 projects completed per week
  • 20 projects completed per month
  • 240 projects completed per year

Many of those projects would be small 1-3 hour things. But in the midst of that mix would also be several very large projects as well.

If your project list seems long and you sometimes struggle to identify what is best to do next, it can be helpful to remember this: Pick one project each day that you can complete, and get it done. Then pick another somewhat larger project, and do a decent chunk of it.

Even if you feel like this is small progress, over time this will really add up. After even 10 days, you’ll probably feel that you are actually moving along at a pretty good clip.

Last of all: It may be risk to say this in the event that there are people out there clearing out 1,000 GTD-defined projects per year, but in my opinion, anyone who can consistently complete 240 projects a year just might be a productivity super star. (Assuming that those projects are the right things to be working on!)