Keeping fresh and avoiding burn-out

I've been reading an interesting article in the Harvard Business Review - an interview with David Allen and Tony Schwarz. One particular answer from Schwarz regarding work and energy struck me:

"There’s a fundamental misunderstanding about how human beings operate at their best. Most of us mistakenly assume we’re meant to run like computers—at high speeds, continuously, for long periods of time, running multiple programs simultaneously. It’s just not true. Human beings are designed to be rhythmic. The heart pulses; muscles contract and relax. We’re at our best when we’re moving rhythmically between spending energy and renewing it."

This is an interesting concept and one that I have noticed in my own work, but haven't applied the lesson as diligently as perhaps I should. It is very easy to fall into the busy trap and think that you can't afford the time to take a break. But I often feel more energised and productive after a break.

The habit of pushing your body, telling yourself to get on with it and keep going, is one that is hard to break. It is also something that is embedded in many work cultures - if you are not seen to be at your desk, you are not working hard enough.

One way of including breaks, but still accomplishing something, could be to run errands. I work on a fairly large site and delivering or collecting items from others allows me to take a break from my computer and still tick a job off my list.

GTD on cruise control

David Allen writes an interesting article, in his recent Productive Living newsletter, about getting GTD on cruise control and staying there: http://www.davidco.com/newsletters/archive/0411.html

Persistence and practice is so important when trying to learn anything new, riding a bike, driving a car, implementing a new method of working. I always find it so surprising when colleagues don’t give themselves enough of a chance to learn these new methods in the same way that they might with, for example, learning to drive. It is fairly unusual to be able to learn to drive in just a few hours and then pass your test. Yet so many people expect the behaviours of GTD to stick really quickly and then become disillusioned with themselves when they don’t. Persistence is key, as well as acceptance that you can’t change things overnight. Some of the practices, such as the two-minute rule, can make an instant difference. But for the real “mind like water” experience, practicing, learning and refining your system to fit around your needs takes time and effort – and is well worth every moment.

I have been using GTD for nearly two years and would not yet consider my system to be on cruise control. However, I have had glimpses of the mind like water experience and the more comfortable I become with my processes, the closer I feel to gaining this more of the time. I can feel my persistence paying off every time my inbox is at zero and with every completed action.

Getting back into GTD – rebooting the system

Due to a long term illness, I have found myself having to almost restart my GTD system over the past couple of weeks, after nearly 3 months of inactivity. It has been a very interesting journey and one that has forced me to refine and simplify how I do things while I get back into my routine. The foundations of my system were still there, but much was out of date.

My biggest challenge was to tackle my email inbox, which had bulged to many hundreds of items during my absence: the 2-minute rule, a pen and paper and my @Action Support folder allowed me to deal with these without being frighteningly overwhelmed. Getting my inbox back to a manageable level really helped me to feel more in control and to have a better understanding of how much I could manage to take on as I slowly regained my feet.

Interestingly, I have found that I have stuck with pen and paper since that first day of sorting emails, rather than returning to the electronic system that I was running before I became ill. Returning to the basics, including to pen and paper, has simply felt more comfortable.

I was relieved to find that the habits I had developed hadn’t vanished due to lack of use and they were a lifeline for me in trying to get my work in order. “What is it? What’s the next action?” – this methodical approach gave me hope that the seemingly never-ending backlog of work could be managed. Thanks to GTD, when I was able to come back to work, I could set out my tasks meaningfully and trust my judgement regarding importance and urgency.

If you haven't felt able to engage with your system recently, don't beat yourself up about it. Take one step at a time and try to implement the areas that might make the biggest difference for you. My experience has taught me that a system can lie fallow for months and still be resurrected to help you get back to more productive ways.

Filing

I have been really struggling over the past few months with implementing GTD at home. I keep trying to make it work as well as it does in my work office, but somehow I never quite manage to get far enough to make it as comfortable as it needs to be to keep the habit going. Then yesterday I realised that some of my resistance to this was due to my inadequate filing system at home. I think the realisation may have been building since I listened to the "Digging out from the backlog" series on GTD Connect. The drag that this lack of effectiveness had on my implementation only became crystal clear when I finally got round to doing something about it!
These are the basic changes I made yesterday:

• Changed to an alphabetical filing system (why on earth was it not like this before?!)
• Allowed myself to file one piece of paper in one folder and label it, if that was the best place to file it
• Made some proper decisions about some of the stuff in the “filing” pile

It is very difficult to explain how much the pressure lifted when I had finally got rid of that horrible filing pile and I appreciate more than ever the importance that David Allen places on the ease of filing. If you have to add it to a pile because you don’t want to have the bother of filing it, you need to change your filing system.
Here’s to no more filing piles!

Interruptions and a very long weekly review

I set out to do my weekly review last Friday at 10am (as usual for most weeks). The review normally takes just over an hour, depending on how busy my inboxes have become and whether I have been able to triage during the week. Little did I know that my review would not be as straightforward as I had hoped at the start. Five hours later, at 3.10pm, I finally managed to finish the review!
It felt like the whole world was trying to distract me from completing my review and getting clean and current. I had interruption, followed by interruption and all were the important "drop everything and sort it out now" kind of problems. But despite these, I still managed to complete my review, although considerably later than planned. Each time I had an interruption, I would put a placeholder in my inbox and knew that I could come back to it after I had dealt with the person or phone call.
My job rarely has such a flurry of urgent activity for such a length of time as it did that day. However, I do have at lot of interruptions throughout the day. Through my implementation of GTD, some of these have been reduced and handled better to allow me not to lose concentration on the task at hand. I have been able to manage the expectations of those that I work for and consequently handle my work considerably better, rather than always dealing with the "latest and loudest." My first question when asked to do something is "when do you need this to be done by?" - this knowledge ensures that I can prioritise it fairly with the other work on my lists.
Interruptions will always be a part of work, but GTD allows me to take control when they happen, rather than allowing them to control me.

Back on the Wagon

Many GTDers will have heard David Allen talking about falling off the GTD wagon, and most importantly, getting back on again. In the past month or so I would say that I was teetering on the brink of this wagon, barely able to keep a hold on my system and working in reactive mode.
But today I did my weekly review and felt my workload come back under my control. The review is a strange beast - so easy to put to one side and think that it is not as important as all of the other tasks on that list! But it really and truly is the bedrock of the system that keeps all tasks in perspective. Without it (as I have recently experienced), a 'mind like water' is impossible and the weight of the workload starts to wear you down.
Having done my review today, I feel uplifted and more free than I have for a number of weeks.

Making the most of your energy

Yesterday I was incredibly productive and managed to clear over 20 items from my list in a surprisingly short space of time. I found myself in “flow” with my work, taking small task after small task and getting it done, then satisfyingly crossing it off from my list. This has not happened for some time, as my head has been occupied with personal matters that I found hard to dismiss.

In the evening I looked back on what I had achieved with a sense of relief that my @Office list has decreased in size, and a sense of satisfaction. 20 items sounds like a lot, but I had a very large number of 5-10minute tasks that had shot my list up in size. I was lucky enough to feel an energy burst and be able to channel it to clear the list by nearly a third.

Had I tried to do this last week when my energy was very low it would have been impossible. My GTD system gave me a purpose and direction for my heightened energy state. Last week my system reassured me that nothing was urgent enough to be forced into doing it with little or no energy.

I love the fact that GTD addresses the issue of energy and does not expect you to be on top form every minute of every day. David Allen’s four-criteria model of context, time available, energy available, then priority takes account of the human factor and is sympathetic to our energy levels ahead of priority. Although there will be some days where despite energy levels, hard work has to be done, GTD helps me to get the maximum done that I can with the energy that I have. By using the weekly review, I try not to let deadlines creep up on me to the extent that I have no choice but to do them at low energy times.