This week let’s deal with some small things that don’t individual merit letters.
1) I don’t like writing too much about myself in these letters. Possibly that wasn’t obvious! But it’s so. All the same, item 1 in the first draft of this letter was a long report about some writing I did over the weekend.
Why did I do that? It got the letter started, by letting me write something easy, and write what was at the front of the mind. And once it had done that, it could be deleted. This is what they call "kindling." It’s kinda like morning pages. Some people do it for its own sake. Others of us do it as a warmup.
2) Do you know who David Allen is? He’s the Getting Things Done guy. He’s very popular with nerdy geeky types. The GTD System is a completely rational method for organizing your work and your head. I like it very much as an idea. I haven’t adopted it wholesale but I do like his way of thinking and do use some of his ideas.
He’s been on my mind lately because of one thing he says. When you are going through your in-tray and organizing projects into various new trays, if you find something that you can simply take care of in two minutes you should go ahead and take care of it.
Well, yes, of course. That made sense in the old days – from the dawn of history up to around 1996. But when you’re online, it’s just another way of falling back into the trap, isn’t it? Answering a two-minute email means emailing. A quick item of research means exposing yourself to the temptation of all sorts of other research. If you can handle it, go ahead. But on my desk it’s dangerous.
Oddly enough, David’s productivity newsletter just arrived here this week, six months after the last one, and with a thorough apology for the delay. A great example to the rest of us, because nobody is perfect, but the best of us will at least acknowledge his/her areas for improvement.
3) There are all kinds of time management systems. Different ways suit different people – a thing they don’t tell you when you are spending hundreds on some patented method or other designed to save your life. So far in these letters, we’ve only talked about the Unschedule. Here’s just one more idea, briefly: don’t keep a schedule. Do what you please. It will result in more productivity than anything else (your results may vary). I suppose it depends on how you define productivity. The book on this is A Perfect Mess by Abrahamson and Freedman, and one factoid from it is that Governor Schwarzenegger doesn’t keep an appointments schedule – just does what he feels like, apparently. Hmmm. It’s good to question accepted principles such as “everyone should keep a to-do list.” But I don’t know about jumping all the way to the other end of the spectrum.
4) I still like Sandy. She’s still on probation here, but I just love being able to do what I told you about – to get a thing completely out of my inbox and off my mind, but still feel completely sure it will come back to me in a few days. It’s so lightening. If you haven’t played with her, I still recommend thinking about it. That's four "still"s, five now, in one paragraph. What more encouragement do you want?
Something you can try today: Relax, make life easy when you can. You're allowed to do that, because it leads to productivity in the long run. Specifically: when you’re not ready to start the task you've set yourself, instead of trying to, just write anything you like ("Today for breakfast...") and trust that it will steer itself around to what you should be saying.
David
David Jung McGarva
+1 (818) 707 1871
Write me: david at todayiwrite dot com
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