The “3S” Approach: The Lost Art of the GTD Weekly Review
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Happy first birthday Refocuser! Check out the “best of” page for some fun posts after reading this.
So much has been written about the Weekly Review as a part of David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) system that it feels sort of ridiculous to even entertain writing about it. I pride myself in making this blog different – not just another GTD/life hacks wannabe poser blog thing – but at the same time, a lot of the best practices in productivity fit under the GTD umbrella. So there will be times I feel compelled to write about GTD in all its glory. This is one of those times.
If you’re new to GTD, this post really isn’t the best place to start as it’s only covering a small piece of what GTD is all about. You should dive in and read the official book. If you’re the type of person who can’t stay on top of the most important things in your life, you won’t be sorry.
First a few words about GTD. GTD isn’t a panacea by any means. It’s just a framework for “thinking about thinking”. It’s updated software for your brain that will help you make sense of all the inputs and outputs in your life. It’s also a set of habits that for some people can be hard to get into, because they require a change in behavior. But hey, it’s ultimately just “advanced common sense” as David Allen puts it, so there’s really no excuse for not giving it a shot if you feel you need it.
The funny thing about GTD is that people tend to get so fixated on the “how” and not on the “why” of the system. Whether you use post-it notes, Microsoft Outlook, a Moleskine notebook, or your pet hamster to track your work isn’t the important thing – the system is adaptable and should be used in the way that works best for you. In other words, the implementation details aren’t what matter, but the way the system is used at the macro level does.
In a lot of ways this reminds me of Bruce Lee’s unique approach to fighting, Jeet Kune Do. Stay with me for a second; other than just being three-letter acronyms, JKD is actually quite similar to GTD. One of Lee’s most famous quotes about JKD is:
I don’t believe in different ways of fighting now, I mean, unless human beings have 3 arms and 3 legs – then we will have a different way of fighting. But basically we all have two arms and two legs so that is why I believe there should be only one way of fighting and that is no way.
In other words, there’s a reason why the best fighters in the world learn to throw a jab and execute a choke the same way. While there are subtle differences in their own personal styles, and certain techniques that work best for some people, they’re still fighting using the same basic systems. Chokes may be executed a little differently from person to person, but there’s a “right” way to choke that everyone starts with.
GTD is the same way. There are differences in people’s approach to GTD, but the foundational physics of the system are the same. Show me a super-productive person and I can point out how that person is implementing GTD – even if they don’t know it. It may not look exactly like the next person’s GTD (just like fighting) but the core pieces are almost always there. And if they aren’t, well, there are likely improvements to be made!
How to Beat Procrastination One Step at a Time!
“Every year, hundreds of New Yorkers congregate on Tax Day at the 24-hour post office at 34th and 8th Avenue, polishing off their 1040s, filling out their registered mail slips, and sealing their envelopes. The lines snake up and down the cavernous interior of the building and most of the people are more tired than anxious. (With the exception of the few still filling out their forms.)”
Photo and description by Amit Gupta.
Last weekend I had the unenviable (yet unfortunately inevitable) task of getting our 2009 taxes prepared. I stopped actually doing our taxes about 10 years ago, but that doesn’t mean I’m completely off the hook here. There’s still just as much preparation involved to make sure everything is tracked and reported, and that my accountant has all the information he needs in order to file.
There are far worse things in the world, I know. But I definitely don’t look forward to this time of year. In fact, it’s probably the most postponed thing on my to-do list.
Let’s see… I could play with my daughter or sit in my home office surrounded by arcane forms. We could go for a walk down by the waterfront as a family or I could scan and shred documents instead. My wife and I could watch an episode of Friday Night Lights or read in bed… or I could sit at a computer adding up real estate taxes and 1099/W-2 forms. You get the picture.
I decided to take a different approach this year. Instead of dreading and postponing the project from week to week, I’d learn from it. I knew I didn’t want to do this, but I knew I had to. So I decided to use it as a sort of test for overcoming procrastination – how would I get myself to move forward despite knowing it wouldn’t be any fun? At the very least, I could write up my experience on Refocuser and see if the process helps others.
Protect Your Time: 8 Ways to Stay Focused on Important Stuff
Happy Monday! If you value your time – and who doesn’t – you need to be be protecting it at all costs. It’s far too easy to spend hours each day doing things that don’t end up resulting in personal or professional gain. You pick your head up at the end of the workday just to realize that out of all the things you got done, none of them were particularly meaningful.
This happens to everyone… at least once!
The key to good time management is to protect your time from the unimportant in order to focus on the important. It’s really that simple. But in practice, it can be difficult. Because it sometimes means being a jerk. Or at least coming across like one to people who enjoy time-wasting activities because it’s the only way they know how to work.
We have a word at Microsoft we use when our time is wasted: randomize. I was randomized by him. Please don’t randomize me. This meeting is going to be randomizing, we can do this over email. What a randomization! I’m not exactly sure where it came from – likely from the comparison of wasting time to a random number generator – but the basic idea is that if something is randomizing, it’s to be avoided at all costs. I suppose it’s nicer than saying “you’re wasting my precious time”, especially for people who don’t know what the word means in context.
Don’t be randomized!
The single biggest time-waster in the corporate world is the all-too-prevalent meeting. Most meetings are 50 minutes of people hearing themselves speak and 10 minutes of useful dialog or conversation. You may not be able to avoid them completely, but you can sure as hell try. More important stuff happens outside of meetings than in them.
As you may have read in My Day: The Way I Work, Rest, and Play, my workday can easily be filled from 9-6 if I’m not careful. This certainly isn’t unique to my situation; it applies to lots of people. Many people end up using evenings and weekends to “catch up” instead of for much-needed downtime. Not fun.
Worse, they’ve convinced themselves that their job is to go to meetings. I don’t know anyone whose job is just to attend meetings – or just read email for that matter – no matter what role they’re in… and for those who think it’s their job, my guess is that they’re filled with guilt because their contributions are severely limited. They’re not actually doing anything. Also not fun.
No matter what you do, you want to maximize your contribution. You want to spend more time creating and producing than consuming. You want great output. You want to be someone who pushes the boulder another foot up the hill each and every day. You don’t want to run in-place like the people around you! Unless you’re a full-time hole puncher with 30 years of experience, you have something unique and significant to contribute. Useless meetings take away from that. If they’re not wasting your time directly, they’re still breaking up valuable opportunities to find flow in your work. Meetings aren’t where you’ll make your mark.
My Day: The Way I Work, Rest, and Play
The other day I read a great article in Inc. about the workday of Paul English, the founder of Kayak. I love to read pieces like this that give me insight into the “best practices” of others, because I always learn a thing or two about managing my own life. My favorite part of the article was when Paul said “we work really hard for 40 to 45 hours a week.” Very few entrepreneurs can say (or do… or even admit to) that.
I thought it would be fun to write about “how I work” as well, and expand on it a little to include play. It’s a question I get asked a lot as a manager at Microsoft, and it certainly fits within my goal to make Refocuser more personal this year. Instead of just writing generic “how to” articles and checklists of stuff, every once in a while I’ll dig into something a little closer to home. This started in November with My Happiness Interview and continues here with this post.
I aspire to wake up at the same time each day, around 6:30am. The exact time is dependent on whether or not my daughter has a cold (like she does now) which makes it a little earlier – or later if she had me up during the night. I recently bought a wake-up lamp for Seattle winters which has made waking up much easier for me. I’ve always been a night person. But gradual increases in light coupled with soft chirping bird sounds is a much more pleasant way to rise than jumping out of bed from the sounds of a beeping alarm clock.
After showering, getting dressed, and quickly making the bed, I meditate in a quiet, dark room for 15 minutes. If I did this as soon as I woke up, I’d probably just fall right back asleep. This is time I need to start the day; getting myself into the right frame of mind. Once the 15 minutes are up, I prepare my daughter’s breakfast along with my own, which is usually a bowl of Kashi GOLEAN cereal with fresh blueberries and 32oz of water. I use breakfast time to quickly catch-up on email, Twitter, and RSS feeds. I try to power through my work inbox from the night before to bounce at zero before the day officially begins. Once we’re finished with breakfast, I spend some time playing with my daughter before she leaves for school. I always let her choose the activity.
My drive to work takes about a half hour, not including a stop at the local coffee shop for a short cappuccino. I know everyone who works there at this point, and it’s fun to see them everyday. They know more about me than a lot of the people I work with everyday. I use my car as a rolling classroom for both ends of my commute. Depending on my mood, I listen to either audiobooks or podcasts, and on rare occasion, some music if I want to relax my mind. Spoken word audio has really helped me to enjoy things I used to try to avoid… like shopping.
Just Do Something! 6 Ways to Unblock Yourself & Get Moving
Ed. note: The subtle irony of this post is that this is how I start just about everything on this site: I debate internally about how to get started. I write the first paragraph a few times, I go get a refill on my drink, I check Twitter three times. I struggle with the point of the post itself. I put it off until tomorrow, and then the next day. And then… I wise up and just write something.
Forget “Just Do It”… the procrastination-defeating rallying cry of this new decade is “Just Do Something!”
Procrastination is a funny word. It’s a long, strange sounding expression that strikes fear and a knowing empathy in the hearts of people around the world. Putting things off until a later date, even important things, is what humans are best at. You have to assume that even our biggest accomplishments and creations as a species came with equally large bouts of “I’ll just do it later” sentiments.
Could the Egyptian pyramids really have been completed without an architect taking one look at the enormity of his day’s work and saying “tomorrow… I’ll do it tomorrow”? I doubt it.
Assumptions that we can “just do it”, or that we’re supposed to get things right on the first try don’t help us. In fact, I’ve found that the reason so many people can’t get past their own thinking relates to a misunderstanding about the people around them. People frequently overestimate the talent, dedication, and circumstances of others while underestimating their own. They actually believe that the people who have been able to “do it”, did it without the same level of internal battles of procrastination that they themselves have. That these people either got lucky or got it right on the first try. And of course, that they don’t have the same ability to do so as these more capable people – that they’re either too lazy, stupid, or just aren’t in the right place or right time.
Making Your Choices in 2010
A few weeks ago, Jack Kinsella asked me to write something short for his blog about 2010; my “highest productivity message” of sorts. Jack collected this piece along with seven others and posted it here:
Since I wanted to cross-post the snippet here for my readers, I waited a few weeks before doing so… since technically, I wrote this for Jack’s blog:
If I were to pick my most important message for 2010, it would boil down to one word which can set a tone for the year ahead: CHOICE. There’s a big difference between people who CHOOSE what they want their life to be about and people who let others – or their circumstances – decide for them. This “power of choice” is something each of us have – it’s part of our human nature – yet so few people make their own choices about who they want to be, how they want to contribute to the world, or what things matter most to them.
Many times this apathy is related to fear, lack of information, or ingrained limiting beliefs about their potential. Lack of information leads to fear of the unknown, which in turn leads to a victim mentality and an inability to see yourself for the person you could be… and so the cycle continues. The end result is someone who never chooses to take ACTION and instead justifies inaction through statements and behaviors motivated by fear (usually fear of humiliation). The key is to get out of that dangerous spiral by taking control of the fear and gathering as much information on the thing you’re most frightened of. People who LEARN and have experience with something are rarely afraid of it, and once they realize that the worst possible outcome isn’t that bad at all, light bulbs go off about what’s POSSIBLE for them.
That’s how you start to make choices and change your life one bit at a time. We all have the ability to influence the world around us and how we perceive our place within it. It starts with CHOOSING to do so (and a little work!)… so make 2010 the year you start making your own choices.
Check out the rest of the messages on Jack’s blog if you’re curious about what others chose as their 2010 message. Many of these names were new to me, though I’ve since started following them to see what else they write about!
Hack Your Memory: 3 Basic Tricks to Remember Anything
A few years ago my wife and I went on a two-week trek through Italy. Our final stop was Positano, a sleepy coastal town on the Amalfi Coast, and we read voraciously in the sun for days. It was fantastic. It was during this time that I read Mind Performance Hacks by Ron Hale-Evans (the picture is proof – that’s my 2006 self on a deck in Positano, with my then new glasses and a glass of Italian wine, reading this book. Skip to the bottom of this post to see one reason why it was so much fun to read there!)
The book in general was a fascinating read – I took lots of notes in my Moleskine (which have since made their way into Evernote along with everything else). The biggest takeaway I had, and something I’ve referred back to time and time again at work and play, relates to ways to improve short-term memory. I’ve used some of these “hacks” during games with family where memory is the limiting factor. I’ve surprised myself more than once with just how easily I’m able to remember things just by converting them to the visual representations described below.
Memory is critically important in everyday life, yet we’re outsourcing our memory to search engines, Wikipedia, and other tools on a daily basis. For most of human history, people have been exercising brain power out of sheer necessity. We didn’t have digital to-do lists and access to all the world’s information on our smartphones; if we wanted to speak intelligently about a subject, for the most part, we had to store that information in our brains (the horror!)
We’ve since gotten lazy. And that’s OK for most things, but it means that when our memory is needed, it’s not always ready. We haven’t trained ourselves to be able to recall things at-will, and that ultimately has an impact on our lives (where was I going with this again? I can’t remember).
If you find yourself struggling to remember things – and if you feel this is impacting your life in a negative way – there are some things you can do to work around it. With just a little bit of practice, you can improve your chances of remembering your landlord’s last name, your girlfriend’s phone number, or your credit card’s 4-digit PIN.
The basic idea is this: for thousands of years, our ancestors spent a lot more time processing spatial data than they did with numbers. The difference in the size or color of a predator or plant made a big difference in terms of survival, but remembering sets of numbers or a list of Starbucks drinks to buy for friends didn’t. So most of these hacks rely on your brain’s ability to remember a short static list of things (“pegs”) to start from, and clear images to go along with them that you “burn” into your mind.
Great Books I Read In 2009
Every year I work to increase my reading output by figuring out unique ways to squeeze more books into my schedule. It isn’t always easy, but I do view reading as a priority given the clear benefits (and joy) of learning and growing as an individual. Americans in general are reading less every year; the last stat I saw said less than 40% of the population read at least one book last year. Yikes! Each year it seems as if our reading behavior becomes more fleeting; more geared towards the mindset of impatience in a world filled with 140 character ramblings.
The hardest part about sitting down to read a book these days is that there are so many other things competing for your attention, almost tricking you into believing you’re actually reading. As an example, on a typical day, I could read 350 Facebook status updates, 75 Twitter updates, 250 emails, and 75 blog posts. The first two types of “reading” are completely passive – days go by before I learn anything interesting about myself (or others for that matter). The last one, blogs, are far more useful in that many times full ideas are presented in a clear, coherent manner. Most of the bloggers I follow have unique and interesting things to say, and I value the time I spend reading their work (and if I don’t, I don’t follow them).
But blogging is still what I’d consider “short-form” in that most blog entries are fewer than 5,000 words. While still far more than the 140 characters of Twitter, they aren’t (usually) long enough to form a complete “story” about a topic. They don’t always go into any reasonable depth on the research they cite, and many times they don’t do their own research like published authors do. You just can’t always learn as much as you can from a well-written book. Most importantly, you can’t get lost in a blog entry. It’s awfully hard to find any sense of flow while reading a 2,600 word blog post. And I value flow.
So I read books. I appreciate the depth.
Refocuser in 2009: Year in Review
The year is coming to a close in just a few hours, so now feels like a good time to wrap-up with an end of the year post! Posts like this can help serve as a restart, just like the 1st of the year does for many people. It’s also fun to use this opportunity to talk about interesting stats… and re-introduce some of the forgotten posts from the past year in a single place. If you’re in a hurry, this one entry will give you links to every post on the site so far (below). It’s a great way to catch up on things you may have missed!
This year, Refocuser’s first in existence, has been a great one. After an entire decade of thinking about starting a site like this, I up and decided to just do it one day in early 2009. A few weeks later, the site soft-launched – and thanks to all the great tools out there like Twitter search, people started to find it within a few minutes!
Writing here really has been a lot more rewarding than I thought it would be. To get emails, comments, and – in the case of family and friends – phone calls to discuss some of the topics on this blog is the primary reason I wanted to start it to begin with, so that’s been a lot of fun. The site has also given me an outlet to crystallize my thoughts and processes into something (hopefully somewhat) understandable, and to connect with new people who are interested in similar topics. And then there’s the added benefit of writing practice. What a blast!
12 Goals: Tools You Can Use
Before starting here, you might first want to read the introduction, Step 1, Step 2, & Step 3.
Twelve Goals (or 12 Goals) is a goal-setting program for beginners. If you’ve never set goals before – or if you’ve tried and failed – Twelve Goals can help get you unstuck and on path to achievement. There’s nothing magical or mystical about this process at all. In fact, it’s downright boring and overly practical; you aren’t going to find any talk about magnetism, psychic powers, or the law of attraction. What you’ll find is a systematic way to look at your personal goals over the course of a year, along with some step-by-step advice and accompanying tools to help you achieve them.
Twelve Goals is still very much a work in progress. My hope is that the program will adapt and evolve over the course of 2010 based on feedback from you! If you ever forget how to find these posts, they will be available at www.12goals.com (or www.twelvegoals.com).
Now that you’ve made your way through the details of the Twelve Goals program, it’s time to get serious by employing the use of some tools. These tools are meant solely to supplement your plan, not to replace or define it. In order to get the most out of these tools, you have to have your vision, your monthly goals, and your habits & tasks ready to execute throughout the year. These tools are only as good as your plan is. Far too many people in situations like this get more carried away with the tools themselves, tweaking every setting imaginable, instead of focusing on the thing that matters: the plan itself.
So before going further, please do spend the time to make sure your plan is as complete as you can make it.
