Productivity is not always a linear thing, and in today’s knowledge economy, lists and deliberate plans aren’t always what get things done.
A classic example is what I am doing right now. Usually as I work on projects and process my email throughout the week, I put key documents on my desktop when I don’t have the time to file them in the right spot immediately. Then, once a day or ever few days, I process those files just like I process my inbox, identifying any actions they might imply and putting them where they need to go. (Basically, it’s like processing your inbox because it is an inbox.)
Right now I’m processing my desktop from the files that collected there this week. One of the files on there had my notes from Catalyst Atlanta (here are the notes I’ve posted so far). I’ve had it on my list for a while to finish posting them, but have had some other projects I’ve needed to get done.
When I came to that file while processing my desktop tonight, though, it felt easiest to just finish posting the rest of the notes, rather than put them in their project file and rely on my list to remember to get the rest of them posted.
And that’s the semi-arbitrary nature of work today in our knowledge economy. There are so many things I get done simply by setting out to process my inbox, or email, or in this case my desktop, and I think that’s probably true for most of us. Seemingly mundane actions, that aren’t even very well defined (“process desktop”? — what a broad term that can take you down a thousand different paths), often result in getting some important things done.
You’d think that the best productivity results from highly detailed, deliberate plans. And, there is definitely a place for that. But a lot of our productivity also results from more cursory, spontaneous things. That’s in part because of the way email and computers are set up — you have these inboxes and desktops that aren’t good at natively organizing their content into natural groupings. As a result, a lot of things get done more randomly.
And, as long as you don’t do everything randomly, allowing that to happen is actually one of the subtle tactics for maximizing your productivity. When something is before you that you have the energy to do, just do it.