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As to methods there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble. —Ralph Waldo Emerson
Anxiety is caused by a lack of control, organization, preparation, and action. —David Kekich
There has been a missing piece in our culture of knowledge work: a system with a coherent set of behaviors and tools that functions effectively at the level at which work really happens.
Your ability to generate power is directly proportional to your ability to relax.
Today pick
Anything that causes you to overreact or underreact can control you, and often does. Responding inappropriately to your e-mail, your thoughts about what you need to do, your children, or your boss will lead to less effective results than you’d like. Most people give either more or less attention to things than they deserve, simply because they don’t operate with a mind like water.
most stress they experience comes from inappropriately managed commitments they make or accept.
You’ve probably made many more agreements with yourself than you realize, and every single one of them—big or little—is being tracked by a less-than-conscious part of you. These are the “incompletes,” or “open loops,” which I define as anything pulling at your attention that doesn’t belong where it is, the way it is.
Anything that does not belong where it is, the way it is, is an “open loop,” which will be pulling on your attention if it’s not appropriately managed.
Anything you consider unfinished in any way must be captured in a trusted system outside your mind, or what I call a collection tool, that you know you’ll come back to regularly and sort through.
you must clarify exactly what your commitment is and decide what you have to do, if anything, to make progress toward fulfilling it. Third, once you’ve decided on all the actions you need to take, you must keep reminders of them organized in a system you review regularly.
describe, in a single written sentence, your intended successful outcome for this problem or situation.
very next physical action required to move the situation forward.
Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.
thinking. Not a lot; just enough to solidify your commitment about a discrete pressure or opportunity and the resources required dealing with it.
“stuff”: anything you have allowed into your psychological or physical world that doesn’t belong where it is, but for which you haven’t yet determined what, exactly, it means to you, with the desired outcome and the next action step.
Things rarely get stuck because of lack of time. They get stuck because what “doing” would look like, and where it happens, hasn’t been decided.
the real problem is a lack of clarity and definition about what a project really is, and what associated next-action steps are required.
Getting things done requires two basic components: defining (1) what “done” means (outcome) and (2) what “doing” looks like (action).
You need to control commitments, projects, and actions in two ways—horizontally and vertically. Horizontal control maintains coherence across all the activities in which you are involved.
Vertical control, in contrast, manages thinking, development, and coordination of individual topics and projects.
The goal for managing horizontally and vertically is the same: to get things off your mind and get them done.
We (1) capture what has our attention; (2) clarify what each item means and what to do about it; (3) organize the results, which presents the options we (4) reflect on, which we then choose to (5) engage with.
(1) capture process. Most of their commitments to do something are still in their head.
(2) clarified exactly what they represent or decided what action, if any, to take about them.
Others make good decisions about stuff in the moment but lose the value of that thinking because they don’t efficiently (3) organize the results.
(4) reflect on the contents consistently enough to keep them functional.
any one of these previous links is weak, what someone is likely to choose to (5) engage in at any point in time may not be the best option.
The final success factor for capturing should be obvious: if you don’t empty and process the stuff you’ve collected, your tools aren’t serving any function other than the storage of amorphous material.
I define a project as any desired result that can be accomplished within a year that requires more than one action step.
You don’t actually do a project; you can only do action steps related to it.
The list of projects is the compilation of finish lines we put before us to keep our next actions moving on all tracks appropriately.
Reminders of actions you need to take fall into two categories: those about things that have to happen on a specific day or time, and those about things that just need to get done as soon as possible.
Someday/Maybe It can be useful and inspiring to maintain an ongoing list of things you might want to do at some point but not now. This is the “parking lot” for projects that would be impossible to move on at present but that you don’t want to forget about entirely. You’d like to be reminded of the possibility at regular intervals.
You’ll probably have some other types of information that are similar to Someday/Maybe but that probably need a review only when you have an urge to engage in a particular kind of activity.
The most important thing to remember here is that reference should be exactly that—information that can be easily referred to when required. Reference systems generally take two forms: (1) topic- and area-specific storage, and (2) general-reference files.
The item you’ll probably review most frequently is your calendar,
Review whatever lists, overviews, and orientation maps you need to, as often as you need to, to get their contents off your mind. After checking your calendar, you’ll most often turn to your Next Action lists.
Projects, Waiting For, and Someday/Maybe lists need to be reviewed only as often as you think they have to be in order to stop you from wondering about them.
All of your Projects, active project plans, and Next Actions, Agendas, Waiting For, and even Someday/Maybe lists should be reviewed once a week.
The Weekly Review is the time to: Gather and process all your stuff. Review your system. Update your lists. Get clean, clear, current, and complete.
the more complete the system is, the more you’ll trust it. And the more you trust it, the more complete you’ll be motivated to keep it. The Weekly Review is a master key to maintaining that standard.
that moment there are four criteria you can apply, in this order: context, time available, energy available, and priority.
Context
A few actions can be done anywhere (such as drafting ideas about a project with pen and paper), but most require a specific location (at home, at your office) or having some productivity tool at hand, such as a phone or a computer.
There is always more to do than you can do, and you can do only one thing at a time. The key is to feel as good about what you’re not doing as about what you are doing at that moment. Time Available
Energy Available
Priority
Doing Predefined Work
working from your Next Actions lists and calendar—completing tasks that you have previously determined need to be done, or managing your workflow.
Doing Work as It Shows Up Often things come up ad hoc—unsuspected, unforeseen—that you either have to or choose to engage in as they occur.
