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suggest, however, that the value of smartphones and the like is for the execution of the results of thinking—not
for generating creative thought.* For that I want more space, not less.
is productive to have accessible formats into which project thinking can be captured.
A good general-reference filing system, right at hand and easy to use, is not only critical to manage the general workflow process, but highly functional for project thinking as well.
As soon as you return from that first meeting with your initial notes about a topic that has just emerged on the horizon, create a file and store them in it right away (after you have gleaned any next actions, of course).
paper-based materials allow us to be reminded of information, relationships, and perspectives more readily than what we can see at any one time on a computer screen. I personally know of many digitally savvy people who have returned to using paper planners and notebooks because they found them easier to use to coordinate their own thinking and reminders. Many times I will print documents related to a person, project, or topic, which I then hold in a physical file folder to use in a meeting or for my own writing and research. Though much of that paper will be recycled and the updated
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Most professionals are familiar with word processing programs, spreadsheets, and presentation programs, any of which might be the optimal way to structure project plans or portions thereof, especially once the purpose, vision, and brainstorming phases have been handled.
The two types of software that tend to be more useful for informal planning and brainstorming are mind-mapping and outlining applications.
Another option for brainstorming is an outlining program, which allows the creation of headings and subheadings, in limited or expanded detail.
On the high end of the spectrum is complex project-management software.
On the lowest end of the digital project-management scale is jotting ideas in the Notes section of a Task item that lists one of your projects, or using generic note-generating and organizing software, creating a note for a project with its associated thoughts.
Make sure you create comfort with the applications, so you can focus more on your project thinking than on the software.
It will also behoove you to do regular reviews and updating of this content, wherever it is, and keep it current with consistent purging and reorganizing.
computer is a bit of a b...
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it becomes easier to keep everything and then lose a coordinated orientation of your active stuff.
give yourself a block of time, ideally between one and three hours, to handle as much of the vertical thinking about each project as you can.
Clear the deck, create a context, and do some creative project thinking. You’ll then be way ahead of most people.
Let our advance worrying become our advance thinking and planning. —Winston Churchill
The key is to get comfortable with having and using your ideas.
Demonstrating integrity in managing internal and external agreements optimizes all of your relationships.
When people with whom you interact notice that without fail you receive, process, and organize in an airtight manner the exchanges and agreements they have with you, they begin to trust you in a unique way. More significantly, you incorporate a level of self-confidence in your engagement with your world that money cannot buy. Such is the power of capturing placeholders for anything that is incomplete or unprocessed in your life.
The sense of anxiety and guilt doesn’t come from having too much to do; it’s the automatic result of breaking agreements with yourself.
But what are all those things in your in-tray? Agreements you’ve made or at least implicitly accepted with yourself—things you somehow have told yourself you should deal with in some way. Your negative feelings are simply the result of breaking those agreements—they’re the symptoms of disintegrated self-trust.
Don’t make the agreement. Complete the agreement. Renegotiate the agreement.
If you didn’t care so much about things being up to a certain level—your parenting, your school system, your team’s morale, the software code—you’d have fewer things to do or have attention on.*
you’ll think twice about making commitments internally that you don’t really need or want to make.
You actually love to do things, as long as you get the feeling that you’ve completed something. If you’ve begun to take less-than-two-minute actions as they surface in your life, I’m sure you can attest to the psychological benefit.
Out of the strain of the doing, into the peace of the done. —Julia Louise Woodruff
You’d feel so good about finishing all your stuff you’d likely take on bigger, more ambitious things to do.
Right again—give you more things to do! It’s the irony of professional development—the better you get, the better you’d better get.
But instead of simply not showing up, what had I better do, to maintain the integrity of the relationship? Correct—call and change the agreement. A renegotiated agreement is not a broken one.
It is the act of forgiveness that opens up the only possible way to think creatively about the future at all. —Father Desmond Wilson
it’s impossible to renegotiate agreements with yourself that you can’t remember you made!
That means that as soon as you tell yourself that you should do something, if you file it only in your short-term memory, that part of you thinks you should be doing it all the time. And that means that as soon as you’ve given yourself two things to do, and filed them only in your head, you’ve created instant and automatic stress and failure, because you can’t do them both at once, and that (apparently significant) part of your psyche will continue to hold you accountable.
That means it must be captured, clarified, and reviewed objectively and regularly in full conscious awareness so that you can put it where it belongs in your self-management arena. If that doesn’t happen, it will actually take up a lot more of your internal energy than it deserves.
When will you know how much you have left in your head to capture? Only when there’s nothing left.
How will you know when there’s nothing left? When nothing else shows up as a reminder in your mind.
When the only thing on your mind is the only thing on your mind, you’ll be “present,” in your “zone,” with no distinction between work and play.
I suggest that you use your mind to think about things, rather than think of them. You want to be adding value as you think about projects and situations, not creating stress by simply reminding yourself they exist and you need to do something about them.
Any intact system will ultimately be only as good as its weakest link, and often that Achilles’ heel is a key person’s dulled responsiveness to communications in the system.
Organizations must create a culture in which it is acceptable that everyone has more to do than he or she can do, and in which it is sage to renegotiate agreements about what everyone is not doing.
The critical issue will be to facilitate a constant renegotiation process with all involved, so they feel OK about what they’re not doing. That’s real knowledge work, at a more sophisticated level. But there’s little hope of getting there without having bulletproof capture systems in play.
There’s a great difference, however, between making that decision when things show up and doing it when they blow up.
Doing a straightforward, clear-cut task that has a beginning and an end balances out the complexity-without-end that often vexes the rest of my life. Sacred simplicity. —Robert Fulghum
Creating the Option of Doing How could something so simple be so powerful—“What’s the next action?” To help answer that question, I invite you to revisit for a moment your mind-sweep list (see page 115)—or at least to think about all the projects that are probably sitting around in your head.
The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small, manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one. —Mark Twain
Defining what real doing looks like on the most basic level and organizing placeholder reminders that we can trust are master keys to productivity enhancement and creating a relaxed inner environment.
Bright people have the capability of freaking out faster and more dramatically than anyone else.
Ceasing negative imaging will always cause your energy to increase.
No matter how big and tough a problem may be, get rid of confusion by taking one little step toward solution. Do something. —George F. Nordenholt
