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On Concentration and Effectiveness

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From The Effective Executive:

If there is any one “secret” of effectiveness, it is concentration. Effective executives do first things first and they do one thing at a time.

The need to concentrate is grounded both in the nature of the executive job and in the nature of man. …

The more an executive focuses on upward contribution, the more will he require fairly big continuous chunks of time. The more he switches from being busy to achieving results, the more will he shift to sustained efforts — efforts which require a fairly big quantum of time to bear fruit. Yet to get even that half-day or those two weeks of really productive time requires self-discipline and an iron determination to say “No.” …

But concentration is dictated by the fact that most of us find it hard enough to do well even one thing at a time, let alone two. Mankind is indeed capable of doing an amazingly wide diversity of things; humanity is a “multipurpose tool.” But the way to apply productively mankind’s great range is to bring to bear a large number of individual capabilities on one task. …

Concentration is necessary precisely because the executive faces so many tasks clamoring to be done. For doing one thing at a time means doing it fast. The more one can concentrate time, effort, and resources, the greater the number and diversity of tasks one can actually perform.

Why Some People Spend So Much Time Fiddling With Their GTD Categories

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Many productivity bloggers, including Merlin Mann at the very helpful 43 Folders, have noted that many people seem to waste a lot of time fiddling with their GTD categories.

Sometimes the words against this can get pretty harsh. And I grant, it can be a waste of time.

But what we really need to do is step back and ask: why does this happen? Why do so many people feel a need to rework their GTD categories?

I think this is a symptom that the GTD process is not completely ironed out. There are snags in it. People intuitively feel this, and hence are motivated to get them ironed out. But they can’t really figure out how to get this kink out, so they are stuck endlessly changing their categories — and even software — in the quest for the solution.

If the GTD context categories were fully in sync with the way our minds want to work, people wouldn’t be wasting time fiddling with their contexts or changing software. The fact that they are shows that more progress needs to be made.

Filed Under: GTD

How GTD Can Help Keep Your Basement From Flooding

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Last Thursday or so, we had about four inches of rain. I was in my basement Friday morning and didn’t notice anything. On Saturday morning, however, I went down there to get something, only to find that the carpet was saturated with water. It turns out that our sump pump had failed, creating a big mess.

Could GTD have helped keep this from happening? Well, it provides a critical tool I’m going to use to help keep this from happening again.

Before this happened, I never gave much thought to the life expectancy of a sump pump. And our sump pump gave out earlier than would have been expected, anyway. But the reality is, every sump pump will eventually fail. The thing is, you don’t want to wait for it to fail to find out, because that means a basement full of water.

So it makes sense to replace your sump pump on a regular basis. For me, there’s a big insight right there: If you have a sump pump, you need to have it on your agenda to replace that sump pump when it starts to get old. That’s a simple concept, but it had simply never occurred to me before.

But how do you remember to do that? That’s the challenge. You could just trust your brain to somehow randomly bring it to mind every few years or so that it’s time to change your sump pump.

But I don’t really want my sump pump to take up even that much thought. I don’t want to have to program it into my head to pause every few years and say to myself, “is my sump pump getting to old?” I’d rather automate everything I can. It’s also less likely that I’ll totally blank it out since, after all, 7 years is a long time. And the consequences of forgetting can be large.

Enter the tickler file (or “action calendar,” which I call it because I keep it electronically). An action calendar is simply a list of repeating tasks that you keep in your task management software (whether Outlook, OmniFocus, Things, Remember the Milk, or whatever). You set each task to repeat at whatever interval you need. Every day or week (depending on how many tasks you have in there), you review it to see what needs to be taken care of.

In my action calendar I’m just going to create a repeating task for every 7 years to replace my sump pump. That way, before the pump gets to the point of failure (unless it breaks before it’s time — which is entirely possible!), it will be replaced. And I don’t have to think about it otherwise, because the reminder will come up automatically when it’s time.

Here’s the interesting thing: There are all sorts of things like this you need to keep track of as an adult, and they occur on both short-term and very long-term intervals. Things like: refill the salt in the water softener, change the furnace filter, change smoke detector batteries, keep up with the kids’ immunizations, renew your tetanus shot (every 10 years), renew your passport (every 10 years), and so forth.

I used to think that there was some big mystery to remembering these things. That you just had to trust that they would come to mind at the right time. But there is no mystery to it. If you have a tickler file (action calendar), remembering when you need to change the furnace filter or update your tetanus shot or change your sump pump simply becomes a matter of creating a repeating task. That gets it off your mind, and you can trust that you’ll see it when you need to.

And it could save you a lot of hassle, also.

Filed Under: GTD

Here's an Example of Efficiency Destroying Effectiveness

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Following up on a post yesterday which made the point that too much of a concern for efficiency can undermine effectiveness, here is a tragic example where efficiency destroyed effectiveness.

Apparently there are some “lost tapes” which preserve the highest-quality raw feed from the moon landing in July 1969. Recently there were rumors that the tapes may have been found. But when NASA recently released some restored footage of the landing, the lost tapes were not among them.

Turns out that the tapes with this footage were most likely erased. Why? From an article on the moon landings on Fox News:

The original videos beamed to earth were stored on giant reels of tapes that each contained 15 minutes of video, along with 13 other channels of live data from the moon.

In the 1970s and 1980s, NASA had a shortage of the tapes and erased about 200,000 and reused them. That’s apparently what happened to the famous moon landing footage.

So in an effort to conserve tapes, the clearest footage of one of the most significant cultural achievements in history was accidentally erased.

Clearly the tapes were not erased on purpose. But that’s the damage often wreaked by the mindset of over-efficiency (even when justified by apparently significant factors, such as a shortage of tapes in this case): mistakes get made and critical, important things are often sacrificed in the charge.

The Common Denominator of Success

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From Stephen Covey and Rebecca Merrill’s book First Things First:

The common denominator of success is not hard work, astute human relations, or luck, although all are important. It is putting first things first.

Great news. Except that that among all the things they listed (and all the other things they could have listed), that’s the hardest to do.

Is it Ever Wasteful to Save Money?

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Even though we are in the midst of a recession, I’m going to have to say yes.

Last month I bought some neat-looking letter holders from IKEA to maybe serve as our new in boxes upstairs. However, my wife graciously pointed out to me that they simply will not go with our decor.

So I put it on my errands list to return them. One month later, they are still there. I think I am going to have to delete the errand throw away the bins.

IKEA is about 24 miles away from our house. Not too far, but returning them will be an investment of at least an hour round trip, plus an additional 15 minutes of lost time on each side. I think the total cost for the bins was about $12.

If I had other things to do over at IKEA or the Mall of America, it would make sense to group this with those other things, thus making the trip worth it.

But at this point I don’t have other things that will take me to the area. I would argue that making a special trip — taking 1.5 hours out of my life (plus gas) in order to get that $12 back — would actually be the wasteful thing.

Time is scarce, and the true cost of that trip is in the things I wouldn’t be able to do with that 1.5 hours instead. I can think of a whole host of more valuable things to do than spend 1.5 hours to save $12. I’m not saying that $12 is inconsequential; I’m saying that returning them would take away from things of even greater consequence, which are worth more than $12.

More than this, there is simply the sheer complexity of life. It will simplify my life to stop having to pay attention to whether I have a reason to head over to IKEA. That’s worth $12 to me as well. In an age where we are pulled in so many directions, a major guiding principle needs to be: minimize complexity.

So, into the trash can these in boxes will go. Actually, for those who were slightly horrified that I suggested throwing them away, what I’ll actually do is put them into our “to give” box, so that they’ll end up at the local Goodwill.

But I mention the possibility of throwing them away to underscore the importance of minimizing the complexity of life. Reducing complexity in your life is more important than a $12 physical good.

Anyway, they’re off to Goodwill. And next time, I won’t make this mistake. Always learning…

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.

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.

Short Call-Outs from Getting Things Done

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Sprinkled throughout Getting Things Done are short call-outs with useful quotes from people and short summaries of insight from the section. These are an easy-to-overlook but very useful feature of the book.

I thought it might be helpful to list some of these call-outs from chapter 3, “Getting Projects Creatively Under Control.”

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

The goal is to get projects and situations off your mind, but not to lose any potentially useful ideas.

The most experienced planner in the world is your brain.

Have you envisioned wild success lately?

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

Outlines were easy, as long as you wrote the report first.

When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. — Will Rogers

Don’t just do something. Stand there. — Rochelle Myer

Fanaticism consists of redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim. —  George Santayana

People love to win. If you’re not totally clear about the purpose of what you’re doing, you have no chance of winning.

Celebrate any progress. Don’t wait to get perfect. — Ann McGee Cooper

Often the only way to make a hard decision is to come back to the purpose.

If you’re not sure why you’re doing something, you can never do enough of it.

Imagination is more important than knowledge. — Albert Einstein

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

A good way to find out what something might be is to uncover all the things it’s probably not.

Plans get you into things but you’ve got to work your way out. — Will Rogers