explains the limitation of our brain to keep track of our commitments,
hence the need to build a second brain, which is a trusted system
that does it for us,
presents the properties of such a system,
easily available and pleasant to use, otherwise, our brain will resist using
it. By itself, this property shows that there is no one size fits all system
but each person should build per own system,
allowing to capture what comes to our mind, so that our brain stops thinking
about it and we have a clear mind,
The method does not make things easy, but gives a way to show you your
commitments so that you can more easily make intuitive judgements about what you
are doing and should be doing.
I don’t tell people they should put things at horizon 3, but I say if you got
them, then you need to identify them, because they are pulling they are pushing
you anyway so you need to make those conscious so that you don’t break
agreements with yourself.
You don’t have to have a vision, unless of course you do.
This is the ground floor – the huge volume of actions and information you
currently have to do and to organize, including emails, calls, memos, errands,
stuff to read, stuff to file, things to talk to staff about, etc. If you got no
further input in your life, this would likely take you 300-500 hours to
finish. Just getting a complete and current inventory of the next actions
required at this level is quite a feat.
This is the inventory of your projects – all the things that you have
commitments to finish, that take more than one action step to complete. These
“open loops” are what create most of your actions. These projects include
anything from “look into having a birthday party for Susan” to “buy Acme Brick
Co.” Most people have between 30 and 100 of these. If you were to fully and
accurately define this list, it would undoubtedly generate many more and
different actions than you currently have identified.
What’s your job? Driving the
creation of a lot of your projects are the four to seven major areas of
responsibility that you at least implicitly are going to be held accountable to
have done well, at the end of some time period, by yourself if not by someone
else (e.g. boss.) With a clear and current evaluation of what those areas or
responsibility are, and what you are (and are not) doing about them, there are
likely new projects to be created, and old ones to be eliminated.
Where is your job going? What will the role you’re in right now be looking like
12-18 months from now, based on your goals and on the directions of the changes
at that level? We’ve met very few people who are doing only what they were hired
to do. These days, job descriptions are moving targets. You may be personally
changing what you’re doing, given personal goals; and the job itself may need to
look different, given the shifting nature of the work at the departmental or
divisional level. Getting this level clear always creates some new projects and
actions.
The goals and direction of the larger entity within which you operate heavily
influence your job and your professional direction. Where is your company going
to be, one to three years from now? How will that be affecting the scope and
scale of your job, your department, and your division? What external factors
(like technology) are influencing the changes? How is the definition and
relationship with your customers going to be changing, etc.? Thinking at this
level invariably surfaces some projects that need to be defined, and new action
steps to move them forward.
What is the work you are here to do on the planet, with your life? This is the
ultimate bigger picture discussion. Is this the job you want? Is this the
lifestyle you want? Are you operating within the context of your real values,
etc.? From an organizational perspective, this is the Purpose and Vision
discussion. Why does it exist? No matter how organized you may get, if you are
not spending enough time with your family, your health, your spiritual
life, etc., you will still have “incompletes” to deal with, make decisions
about, and have projects and actions about, to get completely clear.
A quote from David Allen (gtd) to say how sometimes doing mundane things help
the brain process the projects in the background and having quick wins provides
you a boost of energy that increase your motivation about the other projects.
When you walk into your kitchen and your kitchen is out of control. So what’s
the first thing you do?
You start gathering everything probably not where it belongs, right? It’s the
food on the table, it’s the dirty cups that got here or whatever. You gather
them all together and ask where they go. What is this mean?
Is this food, it should go in the fridge. And then you decide what it means. That is a dirty cup? No it’s a clean cup.
Then you put dirty cups where dirty cups go and clean cups where clean cups go.
you step back and look at the whole gestalt and say
now that the time to cook
Sounds dumb and silly, but this is the five stages you go through.
The book makes it clear that planning techniques are out of the scope of the
technique. The purpose of the technique is for you to feel confident not doing
what you are not doing. Thank to the gtd, you can realize that you don’t feel
confident not doing a planning and can look for planning techniques, that’s
all.
If you feel confident not doing what you are not doing and afterwards have
regrets that you did not do that, you should look for techniques to handle
procrastination. But as far as I can tell, the book never claimed to help
with that.
gtd has a heavy process,
gtd focuses on the how, not on the why,
gtd is not another list based organization method
The method is very open about what your system should look like, as long as it
follows some principles. I did not see anywhere a necessity of using lists.
I think that people believe that because most of the routines of gtd are about
processing subsets of your actions. And the most obvious way to process a set of
element is to look at them one by one (hence making a list out of them).
But, be intellectually honest, what productivity system would not ask you
to process the actions? I don’t think sensible to believe that the system will
be productive by itself and your brain is required at some point to process the
elements. And because our brain can do only one think at a time, in all systems
of all methods, I expect to see formation of lists to feed your brain.
This is fully compliant with my values. I guess this is why I like doing gtd so
much.
someday/maybe
Someday/Maybe. For anything on that list, you have made no commitment to do
it. The only commitment is to review the list regularly to see if you want to
delete or activate any item.
