Notes from The Personal Productivity Show #021 with Jason Womack (a GTD coach)

I just finished listening to The Personal Productivity Show #021 - Jason Womack, which is an interesting and far-ranging interview with my friend Jason Womack, one of David Allen's GTD seminar presenters and coaches. The direct link is here.

Following are some notes I took while listening, for those who are interested.

Background: Jason was a high school teacher, was mentored by someone from David Allen's company, learned that he was loosing time, energy, and focus because he couldn't find "what you need, when you need it." He says these words became his "holy grail:"

• Time: he never had enough of it. job was never done
  
• Energy: always high energy, but couldn't do 12 hour workdays forever
  
• Focus: bright, shiny, pretty: he'll look at (distraction)

He attended Allen's MAP seminar (Managing Actions and Projects - the seminar that preceded GTD), which Jason considers the first sustainable way to manage time. Regarding what's special about GTD, He says "we teach what we need to learn the most," i.e., he really needs it ("you should see my hotel room"). He says it's the first system that could keep up with as fast as his mind goes - multiple projects, much going on in parallel - books, magazines, chatting, business cards. Because he's so active, within a few days he'll end up with 10-20 articles to read, 2-4 cards, 1 book chapter, etc. Before, his desires didn't match the time available, not due to a lack of time, or too much to do, but he didn't have a match between his agreements with what he actually produced - what he calls the "matching intention with attention" dilemma.

Des mentions his thinking on the fallacy of time management - see his comments on Now ... is GTD really about time management? - a response to my article Is GTD the "Extreme Programming" of Time Management?. His point: time can't be managed - we all have only 1440 minutes/day, and that's it. We can only manage our own actions.

Jason gives some tips for managing email distraction, which is a problem because it's available any time of day, and can make us feel productive when we're really just being busy. First, try keeping your laptop closed 10 more minutes when impulse comes to check email, and use that time to process a stack, read an article, etc. Another tip: In a wireless environment turn off the antenna (not whole day, of course). Here he quotes his teacher who always said "Experiment! Be a scientist" - which I take to mean experiment on yourself, something I enjoy doing. (You may be interested in my post A geek "gets" networking: The strange magic of connecting with others in which I describe my goal of connecting with at least three new people a week.)

Regarding the crucial GTD Weekly Review, Jason explains a common confusion: People often identify an area needing attention (mostly because it's supposed to be a "weekly review, not monthly weekly review") then want to "just email real quick," which ends up distracting them for hours. Instead he suggests making a deal with yourself: During review, don't open file, folder or any possible distraction - just literally scan what needs your attention.

On the topic of note-taking tools, Jason gives a little more detail on his "one notebook" (see his post Just how important?). His main point is use the right tool at the right time. For example, that's why he uses a PDA looking up directions to hotel, good restaurants, etc, but uses paper to record meeting notes (the PDA slows him down). The connection to GTD: Each of the five workflow phases (collect, process, organize, review, do) requires tools that are radically different.

He mentions a Wall Street Journal article (I couldn't find it) that documents that the average office worker is interrupted 250 times/day by the outside world. Additionally, they have 50,000 thoughts/day, but the kicker is almost all of them are about the SAME FEW THINGS.

Jason talks about other tools he uses when out: a) his note-taker wallet (which covers 90% of his life), and b) his iRiver MP3 player with built-in recorder (for running, biking, or swimming). Before exercising, he first does a mind sweep (to keep things out of his head), then at about the five mile mark starts recording exactly what he's thinking. He says he often doesn't recognize what he's been saying when he gets back - an unconscious part comes out!

Toward the end I like his finishing comments about how he and Jodi (his partner) think about when good things happen, e.g., when they're pleasantly surprised, or have a good day: They say "That's like us." In other words, they make these good things normal/expected, which is a kind of positive visualization (a combination of intention plus action). He claims this happens more as one gets deeper into GTD (where unconscious attention goes).

In all, great stuff. Jason's depth of understanding of GTD, along with broader insights, is always a treat. His blog is In The Life.

When inputs exceed your workflow system's capacity

I recently received an email from a friend [1] who knows of my adoption (and deep appreciation) of David Allen's Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology. It read, in part:

Subject: me trying to get organized!

I will try to catch up with your emails this weekend. So much good stuff happening, and obviously I can't handle it all.

This email was interesting because, unlike many people, she realizes she needs help (and as they say, awareness is required before action). I told her:

...when a person has a lot going on, things that slow you down start standing out, I think. Then the choices become: a) slow down to match organizational capacity, b) improve organizational system to match workflow, or c) keep old organizational system and new flow, which results in chaos.

When people pick c) - the default - they fail to get the work done, which then causes less work to come in, and eventually results in a), but in a less proactive way.

And this problem isn't limited to knowledge workers, either. For example, we have a great contractor who specializes in restoring Victorian houses. For a while he was quite responsive to us, but as he became more widely known (and hired his own employees), his capacity clearly couldn't keep up with the demand, and his response time went to hell. We eventually had to do a "drive by" to get his attention (we know where he lives!)

What's interesting to me about GTD is that I've seen it scale as I continue "juggling more balls" - I'm meeting more people [2], sending and tracking more email, and generally asking my system to take on significantly more. So far, it's been great. But it does take work (Allen says it's "simple, but not easy"). Is there a limit? Sure - there must come a point where you need help just managing the inputs, and maybe that's when you start hiring help.

However, I think folks who have a flexible system like Allen's can change their lives in a more graceful fashion, i.e., as needed, instead of simply allowing the degenerate case I mentioned above. Instead, they can make conscious choices - stop taking on new work (at least temporarily), shuttle new work to others, renegotiation existing work, etc.

What do you think? Have you seen your system's capacity exceeded? If so, what did you do to manage?


Notes

First, I've been trying to find Allen's writings on the topic, but all I could find were the following principles from Ready for Anything: 52 Productivity Principles for Work and Life:

• 24: If you know what you're doing, efficiency is the only improvement opportunity.
  
• 30: Response ability improves viability.
  
• 31: Your system is only as good as its weakest link. (Also talked about in Genuine Curiosity: Cosmic nudging, where they refer to Goldratt's Theory of Constraints model for productivity and throughput.)
  
• 42 The better you get, the better you'd better get.

Second, this concept must be part of a general principle, but I don't know which. The closest I could find via my wikipedia search was Overflow and Carrying capacity. Interestingly, I also found Septic tank and Never-exceed_depth!


References

• [1] My friend is understandably overloaded - she's into a ton of fascinating work, including being asked to participate in the President's Challenge (part of the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports).
  
• [2] I've started networking in earnest, with a goal of connecting with at least three new people per week. You can read more about it in A geek "gets" networking: The strange magic of connecting with others.

On using Post-It notes for GTD projects, instead of lists

I recently found my GTD Projects list getting a little, well, stale, and decided to spruce it up. This was partly to add some excitement (and therefore attraction to the list - important for the Weekly Review), and partly to test different ways of organizing Allen's "buckets" that might appeal to people with less linear thinking styles. (I've started coaching people in GTD-like methodologies, and it's important for me to test their breadth.)

So in the spirit of self-experimentation, I've switched my projects from a tab in my paper planner to a full-size file folder (special color!) that contains small sticky notes, one per project. (Hey - Allen claims they're just lists, so why not play around?)

Thus far the results are positive: I'm able to more freely move projects around as priorities/deadlines change, and I do like looking at them better than a plain list. (And it treats projects a little more specially than my other GTD lists.) The appearance is similar to the photo shown in Tammy Cravit's article Introducing the Post-It Portable Workspace. Note that I don't place the stickies on separate pieces of paper, I just attach them right to the inside of the folder, and open it like a book to access them.


More on creative note use

More generally, I find using stickies for productivity an interesting topic, and the most useful book I've found so far is the aptly-named Rapid Problem Solving with Post-It Notes, by David Straker. This little book describes five key principles for problem-solving (Chunking, Problem patterns, Guiding decisions, The FOG (Facts/Opinions/Guesses) factor, and Note sessions), and then details six tools, two per problem pattern type: Lists (Post-up, Swap Sort), Trees (Top-down, Bottom-up), and Maps (Information, Action).

Here are a few other articles on using stickies for productivity:

• In the GTD forum thread The GTD Type, user CKH writes about doing GTD in a "right-brain-friendly manner," and addresses lists in particular:

  Why not use different colors of Post-Its for different @ tasks? @phone, @errands, @computer, @spouse, etc. could each be a dedicated color. Or not; whatever helps you out. Stick them into a 3-ring binder (the UCT) w/a separate page for each @.

• In Best Tool For the Job >> Two Great Uses for PostIt Notes, Marcus Vorwaller describes using stickies as both a task focus tool and a keeping tool.
  
• Bert Webb, in his Open Loops: Post-It Possibilities, suggests a variety of ways to use notes.

What do you think? I'd like to hear from any other closet sticky notes users, or anyone using non-traditional tools for GTD.

The thrill of witnessing an "Aha!"

As part of my self-planned "Master's Degree in Personal Productivity," I've been doing pro bono coaching with a variety of people. In order to test who the various systems might (or might not) apply to, I'm trying to work with people who have different learning and thinking styles. I've coached a number of people with "left" brain styles (e.g., science graduate students, a web design CEO, and a sales/marketing consultant), but one of my current clients is much more of a right brain type - less linear, more holistic, "creative," etc. (I don't like the words I've used - I think how we label people seriously belies the complexity of minds - but I hope you get the idea.)

While working with my client (a personal creativity coach, and a great musician) I had the privilege of witnessing a couple of genuine Aha! moments. The one I remember best (and which literally gave me shivers), happened when we were processing one of his many notes from memo books spread throughout his house. This particular one had to do with ideas around his upcoming birthday, which is a significant one for him. We already had an entry for the birthday on his Projects List (it involved more than one concrete next action - see David Allen's Workflow diagram), but he wasn't sure where to put ideas. I suggested he make a folder for the birthday, and store the note there. He stopped, looked around, and I could see that this really connected. He said something like "Wow - I can have a folder for my birthday... I'm important enough for a folder..." It was surprisingly touching!

Now, many of the people I know would have trouble understanding either a) why someone wouldn't think of this on his own (i.e., putting the note in its own folder), or b) why it would be such a big deal. However, this kind of organizing doesn't come naturally to everyone - if it did, Allen's book wouldn't be a best seller! We're not born knowing things like the importance of writing things down to keep them out of our heads, keeping things in folders in a simple A-Z filing system, etc. and it's rewarding to see someone feel it in his bones. Besides - how often do we experience a moment like this, i.e, seeing someone's brain change with our help? It's really amazing.

Is GTD the "Extreme Programming" of Time Management?

A few years ago I introduced our research lab to Extreme Programming (XP), a somewhat controversial software methodology with some surprising practices. This has worked out great, and as I continue my GTD exploration I've noticed some parallels between it and XP, which I wanted to share.

Most of these observations stem from considering the "extreme" aspect of XP - pushing software engineering best practices to their logical limits (turning the knobs to 11, if you will). For example, if code reviews (the practice of going over a program line-by-line) are a good idea, then do them continuously (Pair Programming). I think David Allen has done something similar in Time Management. Here are a few examples:

• If it's good to write things down, then write everything down, and work to keep it 100% out of your head all the time (GTD's Collection phase).
  
• Instead of reviewing your work and life during major life transitions (e.g., promotion, move, pre-vacation), review it all every week (Allen's Weekly Review).
  
• If "divide and conquer" helps us make progress on problems and prevent procrastination, then break every problem/project into its smallest atomic moving parts (Allen's Next Actions lists).
  
• If occasional free-form idea capture sessions are useful (say during crises or "creative" periods), then do them at least once a week (Allen's Mind Sweep).
  
• If eliminating the urgent is a good idea (Covey's Quadrant II - Important but Not Urgent), then completely do a way with A/B/C priorities, assume everything is important, and work opportunistically (Allen's four criteria model).
  
• If learning to say no helps manage commitments, then keep an up-to-date list of every single commitment in your life, review it regularly, and keep it in mind when considering new ones (GTD's projects list). Also, be flexible and renegotiate commitments as needed (Allen's Someday/Maybe list).
  
• If planning your work is good, then plan all the time, i.e., every time you have discretionary time (GTD's daily review).
  
• If clutter is posponed decisions, then collect everything into a small number of collection points, and make decisions about inputs when they enter your life (GTD's zero base).
  
• If we often have "odds and ends" time, then always be ready to get something done during that time (Allen's portable Read/Review folder, and his @Anywhere context).

Some other XP/GTD parallels:

• XP asks "What's the simplest thing that could possibly work?" GTD asks "What's the next action?" and "What's the successful outcome?"
  
• XP says to Refactor Mercilessly. GTD allows continuous tweaking of your implementation (not always good!)
  
• XP's Test Driven Development turns code testing on its head - instead of writing correctness test after the code is done, write them first, allowing them to drive the code based on your goals. This is akin to GTD's outcome focus approach, which also protects us from doing too much by start with the definition of (wild) success, and using that to determine when a project is done.

Can you think of other parallels? I'm sure I've missed some. Cheers!