The long awaited follow-up to Getting Things Done has a name. It is called Making It All Work: Winning at the Game of Work and the Business of Life. GTD Times says the book will apply GTD in a much broader way, covering work and life. This seems very fitting given how productivity has evolved in recent times. Clearly he’s been reading a lot of blogs!
With productivity and what it means to people now that the traditional perspective of just being able to do more is waning, I’m currently seeking all your feelings on the subject. If you haven’t already, please leave a comment sharing your thoughts.
Ok, a gaming related link for here, if you are not interested in computer games and playstations I apologize. Recently I bought Bioshock for the PC only to find it has very specific requirements to run it. I was pretty annoyed to say the least. To avoid this happening again in the future, I’ve come across a cool site that scans your system specs to see if it will run particular games. Very useful.
Self help books are big business and when you catch the bug you can end up buying entire shelves of them. A lot of these self help writers cunningly propose you actually buy as many as you can to help with your personal growth. Cunning! However it’s not actually necessary as Shanel Yang gives five ways of trimming down the books you buy so you only get the ones you can actually use for your own personal needs.
There are enough bloggers (including yours truly) who write about personal productivity but what is it really all about? Last week I came across the alternative productivity manifesto at The Growing Life which introduced some very interesting ideas. One of those was how productivity is an industrial era economics term. How come then, are we applying it to ourselves? What can we really learn from our ratio of output per hour?
It’s all the rage nowadays for businesses to push productivity at their employees (for instance, some of the top companies in the world have hired David Allen to showcase his ideas) but where is the ultimate benefit? For businesses that is pretty obvious (money, money, money!) but for everyone else? Last time I checked burnout and fatigue were bad things to be avoided.
Productivity applied to workers is meant to be all about doing more with less… less wasted time, less stress, less hassle. However it’s becoming increasingly apparent that being pushed/pushing ourselves like machines is neither gratifying or likely to make us happy. The focus is now increasingly shifting towards working smarter, simplifying our workload and being efficient with our time but businesses won’t give you pay rises for that. Something isn’t quite right here. Share your thoughts in the comments. I look forward to your thoughts on this.
Customer service is an increasingly big issue for people nowadays, with many companies getting shot down for not being able to provide even the basics. The focus is so much on money, profit and keeping shareholders happy. With such vast company structures, the people who run things are so far removed from their customers that showing loyalty to businesses no longer means anything. In fact it can cause us to lose out on better service and better deals. Below are the three big reasons why you shouldn’t give companies your loyalty. You won’t get any back.
They just want your money
Businesses need your money to survive and nothing will change that. They don’t put on special offers for your benefit. They don’t provide bonus cards out of the kindness of their hearts. It’s all about pulling more money from your wallet. That discount sale they have isn’t about helping you to save money it’s about subtly encouraging you to buy all their crap you wouldn’t get the rest of the time. Even when a business put some of their precious profits into fancy features, extra training and new store makeovers it’s still ultimately to make more money. “Ooh! New store layout, must go in and have a look… wow, sparkly things!”
You are merely a statistic
With such huge, long reaching internal structures in companies nowadays, you are so far removed from the people who run the company. The top people don’t climb the mountain due to their excellent customer focus, they show how great they are great at fiddling with charts and financial tables. You are nothing more than a statistic. CEO’s and shareholders love statistics and that’s as cold and calculating as it sounds. How can you make helpful policies and initiatives when you never come face to face with your customers?
You lose out on better deals elsewhere
This is where business loyalty will really bite you in the ass. So many companies have a nasty habit of focusing on pulling in new customers, while keeping existing clients comes in a distant second. It’s all about those stats again. Increased market share looks great at shareholder meetings. As a result other companies will do a lot to ensnare you. Likewise, if you threaten to leave they will go out of their way to keep you. If you do nothing, you will be ignored or lose out as other companies offer more competitive deals.
This video was entered into an AARP video contest and is one of the smartest, most encouraging videos I’ve seen in a long time. Be sure to watch all of it to get the full message. It will surely give you something to think about.
The Growing Life has an alternative productivity manifesto which will really make you think about GTD, productivity, your job and how it all affects your life. The post says that since World War II productivity has doubled so we should be working twenty hour work weeks. Instead we’re working more than medieval peasants did. Scary.
Scientific research into procrastination continues. Study Hacks has a look at current research and what advice it can give students on how to overcome burnout and mental malaise. Combined with the formula for procrastination, that should give you a strong base for better focus.
Taking phone calls seems pretty simple right? However there are ten ways you should never answer the phone. I know a few people who ignore the phone when it rings. Very annoying. Do you ever make these mistakes?
I’ve somehow amassed a small collection of binder clips from work over the last few months. I’ve never used them but I still feel the need to keep them because they just look so useful. Thanks to Cranking Widgets I may finally be able to put those clips to good use!
On Monday when I discussed how you can simplify the actual practise of Getting Things Done, rather than focusing on a GTD lite approach that misses the point, one suggestion was to stop messing around looking for the latest clever program and hi tech solution. Instead pick up a pen and paper and get on with it! If you need any more persuasion here are my top seven suggestions.
It’s simple
What’s more simple than a basic biro pen and notepad from your local stationary store? A pencil perhaps? Really, this should be a no brainer.
It’s portable
Ok, sure. Maybe a iPhone, Blackberry and even a laptop is portable. You can travel from city to city with them fairly easily. But they simply don’t match up to paper solutions, which come in all sizes and can be folded, bent and even ripped up as required.
It’s cheap
No hi tech solution comes close in price. The gulf is so wide that you could even buy a good quality pen and a Moleskine and still have change spare for an holiday to Spain… maybe. Another plus is you won’t have to upgrade your notepad every other year to keep up with your techie friends.
It’s easy to use
I really don’t think you need to flick through a big, bulky manual before you can start putting pen to paper (well, I certainly hope not). Think of all the time you waste simply trying to research how to add an event to your electronic calendar. You could do it in seconds on a paper based one.
It’s quick
Assuming you’ve actually figured out how to use your PDA, you still have to move through a bunch of menus before you can add a simple note to your shopping list saying you need bananas. And that’s assuming you can type efficiently on the miniature keyboard.
Less chance of failure
Where do I begin? Imagine dropping that expensive laptop on the floor or have the battery of your fancy gizmo run out at a critical moment. Perhaps it crashes before you have chance to save anything. Or maybe it’s just so sunny there is too much glare on the screen. Compare all that to a paper solution. Oh no! The ink in my pen just ran out! Whatever will I do…
It’s a break from all that technology
The top reason I always give for not using hi tech solutions is that I spend so much time on a PC I don’t want to then have to use it to organize my day. Seriously, how often do you have to look at screens and monitors and keyboards everyday? Give your eyes (and brain) a break.
There are a lotofsimplifiedversions of Getting Things Done out there, in response to a large number of people who think it is complicated or difficult to get into. However, the problem is GTD is already a very streamlined system and as is the case with simplifying anything you have to make considerable trade-offs to achieve it. Before you start looking elsewhere for answers consider simplifying your actual usage of GTD. A lot of people make it more complicated than it needs to be.
Inboxes
Have just enough inboxes to capture all that stuff coming into your life. For instance, do you really need to have four or five email and voicemail inboxes? The more boxes you have the more spread out and confused it all becomes, and the harder it gets to process and review everything. How long before you start failing to empty them all consistently?
Contexts
When you only have a few dozen next actions it’s not necessary to split them up with a bunch of contexts. However, if you have hundreds of tasks to work on it’s exactly what you need. For instance, you don’t want to be working through a huge list looking for all the actions you can do while sat at the phone. Don’t be forced into breaking down everything into contexts for the sake of it, use them when they would actually be useful. If you only have a few phonecalls to make it’s not really necessary to distinguish them from the rest of your list with a @calls context.
Ubiquitous capture
Again, have as many tools to capture thoughts, notes and other stuff as you need and no more. It’s amazing how well one simple, small notepad can serve you when it comes to capturing ideas. Remember, when you get home or into your office you have to process everything you have taken down. If that’s a chore you won’t do it. A fancy personal organizer may look cool but if it takes forever to sort your way through it, it is failing at its purpose.
Tools
Speaking of fancy tools, clever software, Moleskines and Filofaxes may be great and it can be fun to play around with them but it causes more complications than results. Though I may upset a lot of hi-fi fans here, to really simplify things make what tools you use not an issue. Go right to the basics and get a notepad and pen.
Weekly review
The weekly review is largely regarded as the bedrock of the GTD system and rightly so. With so many different lists and the emphasis on getting stuff out of your head, it’s critical all that data is kept up to date. While any simplified GTD system would be foolish not to have a regular review in it, the actual approach to it can be greatly simplified depending on what else you simplify (for example, streamlining the someday/maybe list means it’s easier to review). Rather than having a complicated review once a week break it down and do each part throughout the week. Review your projects on Monday, your next actions on Tuesday, your inboxes on Wednesday, and so on.
Someday/maybe
The idea of having so many incompletes on a list for weeks or even months on end is unappealing. So much of GTD involves processing stuff yet that’s not really the case with those items you put on a someday/maybe list. It may be part of a weekly review but because the items on it tend to be non-urgent it’s usually the first thing to get neglected. Break the list down like you would contexts and next actions, so that you have seperate lists for music you would like to buy, films you would like to watch, etc. Then when you review it be brutal and honest about whether you really want to act on it or not.
Tickler file David Allen suggests the 43 folders approach to a tickler file which can be really extreme for many of us. Depending on how much input you get trim back the amount of folders. You don’t necessarily have to have separate compartments for every single day of the year. There are many alternative systems you can use to get regular reminders of dates too, such as a calendar or diary. The tickler file is just a way to remind you of future events, don’t treat it as anything bigger than that.
Good month for Organize IT. All stats continue to grow and it’s great to see you all leaving comments, subscribing to the RSS feed, talking to me on Twitter, etc. The community is growing! Remember, you can now contact me on LinkedIn and Facebook too. I look forward to hearing from you. Thanks for the support.
The BBC is taking a look at how the internet has a potentially bleak future. The internet is such an integral part of my life nowadays. I’m on it everyday. I have this blog, I watch TV, listen to music, buy and sell, research and read… I could go on. It’s important that we don’t take the internet for granted.
We are all familiar with financial budgets, but what about time budgets? Litemind has a good writeup describing how you can implement one. This approach gives you an objective way of assessing your life balance, and sounds much more practical to do than a time audit. Personally I try to pace myself as much as possible, mixing leisure with work as I go along. Ever tried a time budget? What were your experiences?
Dumb Little Man has a ten point guide on how you can drop pounds and years off yourself. Normally I wouldn’t pay much attention to such posts but I liked this one for it’s practical and realistic advice. Start drinking green tea? Wow, I can do that right now. Cut out the white flour? That’s an easy habit to start developing. It’s not all about going to the gym every week, it’s also about your lifestyle.
I like theories and formulas when it comes to the topics I write about, hence my formula for productivity and my procrastination guide. Productive Flourishing has a very intriguing theory of productivity that covers the time management loop alongside the principles of effective time management systems. Definitely worth an in-depth look. I’m going to see how my weekly planner stands up to it.
On Monday I talked about how we can cut back on the amount of food that we waste. The simplest way to do that is to just not have as much on your plate. We often prepare more food than we can actually eat, and it got me thinking about other areas of life where the same situation applies. When I clean my teeth, do I really need to put that much toothpaste on my brush? A pea sized amount has turned out to be quite sufficient. When I wash my hands do I really need to use that much hand wash? I’ve found because it foams up so well it goes a long way.
Below are a few examples you can consider. This isn’t about cutting these things out of your life, it’s about being consciously aware of how you use them so that you can be as efficient as possible. That way you will save on money and waste, important issues in these increasingly hard times. Just packing your shopping in bags a bit better can save on recycling, printing paper on a draft setting can make ink last longer and wearing clothes an extra day saves on washing costs.
