These are my notes from a one-day workshop I took in December 2008, courtesy of Sun Microsystems. Many of the suggestions noted here have proved useful in my day-to-day work. Perhaps they will be useful for you as well.
In the workshop “Getting Things Done: Mastering Workflow,” instructor Chris McIntyre began by asking attendees two questions:
- How productive are you, on a scale from 1 to 10, with 1 as unproductive and 10 as a productive fireball?
- If you rated yourself at less than 10, what keeps you from doing better?
Surprisingly enough, almost everyone in the room of 20 people rated him- or herself at 7: quite productive, but with room for improvement.
Using the David Allen Company‘s approach, Chris introduced us to some new definitions and concepts.
First, he defined the term work as “anything that needs to be different than it is now.”
Second, he included in that definition things that most of us usually classify as belonging more in the personal category, not work: picking up milk on the way home, calling the dentist for an appointment, and so on.
He classified all of us in the room (all Sun employees) as “knowledge workers,” to use Peter Drucker‘s phrase, not the “makers and movers” (or industrial workers) of previous decades. For a knowledge worker, 80 percent of the job is undefined. You get a directive, then figure out the process: You analyze the parts of the task, define its starting and ending points, and produce.
Knowledge workers also use tools that allow them to move fluidly between work and home, sometimes blurring the lines. Anyone who’s checked that work email account one last time 10 minutes before going to bed and then spent an hour at the computer dealing with it knows about this.
The David Allen company has come up with a five-step process to help knowledge workers get things done (GTD):
- Collect
- Process
- Organize
- Review
- Do
Collect the to-do or tasks list not in your mind but in some physical place, whether on your paper planner or computer. According to studies, Chris told us, the human mind can hold only 7 items in short-term memory. Typically, when we try to hold any more in there, something else drops out. (“Oops, I forgot to buy milk.”) Even if you pride yourself on your memory, “If it’s in your mind, it’s in the wrong place.”
Chris suggested you get an inbox, a physical box or folder that goes on your desk. Put into it your mail, your grocery list, anything that is occupying mental space and needs to be dealt with. Too many of us just stack things up and then look at the stack only later in a panic. Create a single place to collect the paper that comes in.
Every 24 to 48 hours, process whatever is in the inbox. File the pieces of paper; pay the bills; send off your expense report; put your used event tickets in the scrapbook or the recycling bin. Deal with the incoming stuff on a regular basis. Stop creating stacks of paper on top of stacks, then panicking when you need to find something in a hurry. As Chris put it, “The best practice is to do it when it shows up. The worst practice is to do it when it blows up.” You become addicted to crises and consider yourself productive only when you respond to a crisis. This is exhausting and leads to burnout.
People collect their information in multiple ways, so choose what’s best for you: a physical inbox or folder, paper journals or pads, electronic notes, voicemail, email, dictation tools, jott.com. Whatever you use, go through and deal with the incoming stuff within 48 hours. Read the email all the way through if needed, respond if needed, then delete. Decide what you need to do with your paper note, do what you need to do with the task, and recycle the note. And so on.
The aim is to get the inbox to empty every 24 to 48 hours.
As you work in the coming week, notice when you get to feeling productive. Note what you did to get there, and try to repeat that series of steps. You’ll likely find that you’re at your most productive when you’re relaxing into your work, doing what you know best how to do.
Ask yourself these questions as you process a given project:
- What is the desired outcome of the project? What does done look like?
- What is the next action that I can take to get just one step closer to done?
Chris defines the term project as anything that takes more than one step. If the project is having a dental checkup, step 1 might be to call for an appointment, step 2 to get to the dentist’s office. If the project is to create a new software application, step 1 may be meeting with the client or manager to figure out the endpoint.
Chris’s point is that in many cases, we need to figure out only one next action. We don’t have to plot out every step of the project before we dive in and get something done. We waste a lot of time freaking ourselves out about all that we cannot get done because someone else owns the next step or is causing a delay. Just work on taking the one step with the part of the project that you can control.
Once you have the answers to those two questions — What is the desired outcome? What is the next action that I can take? — put the answers in a system you trust, whether that’s on your computer or in your planner. Follow this two-step process over and over with every project: Decide and move.
Chris recommended the Mozilla Firefox add-on Lightning as a great way for people in an email-rich company culture to organize tasks. Lightning adds customizable Calendar and Tasks windows to the Mozilla Thunderbird email client.
The Lightning calendar function allows you to track three things: time-specific actions (“meet w/ Gordon at 5″), day-specific actions (“review presentation on Thurs.”), and day-specific information (holiday, colleague’s birthday). The Tasks function allows you to track the tasks that you need to get done, due date and time, and status.
Chris showed us the categories he uses to track his tasks:
- Agendas: agendas for upcoming meetings
- Anywhere (remote): clerical tasks that he can do anywhere (make lists, type up notes, etc.)
- Computer: research to do online
- Errands: anything that requires going to another space
- Home: to-do list for home or personal tasks
- Office: work for David Allen company and clients
- Waiting for: project in process, his next step waiting for someone else to complete theirs
Not too surprisingly, the “Waiting for” category had the most items under it.
I’ve started to use these tools and am finding them useful. For instance, Lightning has an electronic nag feature that tells me how many hours I have left to get something done and then how far behind I am with it. If you’re like me and need that kind of nudge, this can be very useful.
For email management, Chris suggested first using the 2-minute rule: If you can take care of any email in 2 minutes, process the 2-minute mails first.
Next, sort emails by date, by subject, or by sender. He’s created 2 folders in his inbox, Action and Waiting for, and he drops any emails that he needs to hold on to into those categories. He also has a Reference or Archive folder, in which he files any nonactionable mails that he’ll need to keep track of, typically ones he’s CC’d on. He freely uses the Delete key.
Read an email, process it, and delete it if there’s nothing actionable in it for you. Decide and move on.
If you like keeping paper files, he suggested the following categories for folders:
- Inbox: process every 24 to 48 hours
- To Home
- To Office
- Bills
- To Be Filed
- Action Support: for example, receipts for which you’re going to file an expense report
- Read and Review: articles, presentations, etc. to read later
To get the most out of this system, you have to monitor how it’s working for you and make sure to keep up with it. If you fall behind, you’re likely to go back to old habits and stress out your short-term memory. The system only works if you continue to use it, and that requires taking time to regroup and readjust. The David Allen folks recommend that you do a weekly review at a time that’s convenient, perhaps Fridays after lunch.
In the review, ask yourself:
- What do you look at in all this and when?
- What do you need to do, how often, to ensure that this works as a consistent system, freeing you up to think and manage at a higher level?
Use the processes outlined here to get things done. They work only if you keep up with them.
Parting Words
Here are a few nuggets of wisdom I picked up:
- 2-minute rule: If you can respond to someone and get a task done in 2 minutes, do it right away.
- If you’re saying yes to every project on the job, you’re probably saying no to something at home.
- Procrastination takes a lot of mental energy and diminishes the limited time you already have. Decide whether to do the task or not. Focus on the desired outcome and decide the one next action needed.
You can find more details about this process in the book Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, by David Allen.
Tags: How to, Reading by GD
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