The Good News and The Bad News about Getting Organized

What does it really mean to get organized at work?  Let's break this down:

First, the bad news:

You actually have to deal with everything that shows up. You can't ignore anything (papers, emails, phone calls, tasks).

What happens when you ignore stuff?

• Work (literally) piles up
• You piss people off -- "Why didn't you respond to my email/phone call?"
• You lose people's trust -- "She never gets back to me, I'll ask someone else."
• You miss opportunities -- deadlines, events, meetings, etc. due to poor scheduling, but also the opportunities that flow from showing up in the world  focused and ready to go.

Now, the good news:

You don't have to DO everything. You just have to decide what needs to be done (and then do some of it).

Getting organized really means:

• Getting in touch with all the "incompletes" in your universe.
• Deciding what to do about each incomplete -- it could be "do it," but it could also be  "give it to someone else to do," "delete it," or "defer it until I have more time/information/resources."
• Capturing your "incompletes" in a system (calendar, online to-do list, pen and paper) you trust and like to use.
• Reviewing and repeating, on a regular basis, the three steps above.

This, at its essence, is how I understand Getting Things Done.  It's no magic bullet, but it's a great place to start.

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My GTD Second Year Review - What's Stuck?

A year ago, I wrote about my first full year applying the Getting Things Done methodology to my life and work.  For the uninitiated, GTD is a system created by David Allen for organizing all of the "stuff" that comes at you in life -- all the to-dos, projects, things other people owe you, etc. (The best entry point to GTD is to read the book.)  GTD was a revelation for me, helping me gain control of a lot of loose ends and allowing me to clear both desk space and head space as I left a longtime job and went back to school. So, a year later, has it stuck? In large part, yes.  While I'm less regimented/disciplined about the way I employ GTD these days, its principles are what guide the way I stay on top of everything going on in my life.  Here are a few of the ideas that have been most central to my implementation of GTD in the second year:

First things first, it's not about the technology. David Allen says this, but most of us have to figure it out on our own.  I, like my time management coaching clients, spent a good deal of time looking for the "right" technology to implement GTD.  Is it Remember The Milk or OmniFocus?  A simple list on my smartphone or a pen-and-paper list in a notebook? And should I be using Evernote?

My learning here is that there is no "best" technology for GTD - the best technology is the one that works for me.  Further, what is best for me may change, and that's okay.  There are weeks when I need to have everything on my phone so I can access it anywhere.  And there are weeks when I need to have a handwritten list staring up at me from my desk.  Both are okay, and I adjust for what will work for me at any given time.

Second, GTD is not about perfection. When I first started doing GTD, I wanted to do it perfectly: everything captured on the appropriate list, email inbox and desk inbox empty at the end of each and every day (no exceptions), a weekly review chiseled into my calendar.  What I've learned is that I don't have to do GTD perfectly for it to work for me.  I fall off the wagon for weeks at a time, start to feel the disarray that results, and then get back on.  GTD is a very forgiving system -- and once you learn the basics it is there to help you clean up however messy you've let your life become.

But it is about the principles. The basic GTD principles are what have continued to work for me over the two years.  Among them:

The 5 stages of workflow: Collect, Process, Organize, Review, Do. When things feel out of sorts, it's usually because I need to jump back in on one stage of this process.  If you are still thinking of the things on your plate as just "done" or "waiting to be done," the 5 stages of workflow will be an eye-opener. Chapter 2 of Getting Things Done, which explains the five stages, is something I return to again and again.

The inbox. Having ONE place where all incoming stuff lands -- my physical inbox in my home/office space and my email inbox in virtual space -- means that I always know where to put and where to find stuff I haven't dealt with yet.

The full capture. When I'm feeling an ambiguous sense of overwhelm, it's usually because I have stuff bouncing around my head that I have not yet captured on a list.  This will happen when I'm trying to focus on some big project but all the while feel a nagging sense of all of the other stuff that I need to attend to.  I've learned that when this happens I need to stop what I'm doing for 5 minutes and do a full capture -- or what D.A. calls a mindsweep -- of all the loose ends that are taking up space in my working memory. That list goes into my inbox for future processing, and I can go back to my project with a clearer head.

The review. This, along with the full capture, is the other instant stress-reliever.  Knowing that I will regularly sit down and review everything on my plate - big and small, from the recent past to the near future - allows me to relax into the moment and not worry about things slipping through the cracks. David Allen preaches the virtue of the Weekly Review of everything on your plate  -- and yes, ideally the reviews are weekly -- but I've allowed my review schedule to be a bit more fluid and driven by my internal sense of when I need to step back.

For those of you just thinking about starting GTD or something like it, my advice would be to first adopt, then adapt.  Jump into it with both feet -- listen to the man when he says to use only fresh file folders and to use a label-maker.  But then, once you've gotten a hang of David Allen's way, make it your way.  Modify it to fit your needs, and don't worry that you're not doing it "right."  What's right is what works for you.

How have you made GTD your own?  Share your thoughts in the comments.

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Golden Guidelines for Working from Home

Note: Student of Change is now Do Your Best Work.  Welcome! For seven years I had a full time office job -- and then I had none.  In making the transition from office worker to full time student/part time consultant, I had to learn a new way of working. Gone were the opportunities for casual interaction with coworkers, the sense that others noticed whether or not I was busy, and the pre-defined work hours.   Full days stretched out in front of me, and it was up to me to fill them productively.

Working from home -- whether it's your full-time gig, a once-a-week thing or a special arrangement with your boss to get that report done -- requires adopting a new set of behaviors.  Of course, having increased flexibility and the option to see a friend, bake a cake or go to yoga in the middle of the day is one of the reasons we choose to work from home.  Still, I find it useful to keep these guidelines in mind to make sure that I'm on track and as productive as I want to be:

1. Get dressed in the morning. It really makes a difference.  Also: make your bed.
2. Protect your time from others. It can be tempting, especially at first, to set up a lot of lunch dates with friends across town - just because you can.  But with that lunch date goes half of your day.  Schedule social engagements during work time sparingly.
3. Protect your time from yourself. This is about setting boundaries between work and non-work.  Don't let household projects, non-work email or heaven forbid, TV, become procrastination devices.  On the flip-side, don't let work encroach on non-work relaxation & renewal.
4. Worst/best first. Two ways to approach this: get the worst thing you have to do all day out of the way first.  OR, start your day with the best thing you have to do -- usually the most creative and thus most energy-consuming but also energizing.  I vary my approach depending on what's on my plate.
5. Create colleagues.  Find at least one other person who is also a solo-worker and make a regular date to check in.  Gaining additional perspectives and support from others in your field is essential to your sanity and your growth.  And, your partner will appreciate not having to play the role of coworker at the end of his/her own long day.

Do you work from home?  What are your Golden Guidelines?

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Joan Rivers and Twyla Tharp, Organized Artists

I saw the hilarious and disturbing  Joan Rivers documentary this weekend. One of my favorite parts was seeing Joan's low-tech joke library. Take a look: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87yztkvEsIk

Joan is onto something.  Though artists have a reputation for being messy and spontaneous, many have organized workspaces because their art demands it.

Organization is in part about being prepared for the moment when insight strikes.  It's about creating the conditions for creativity to flourish, so that when you enter into creation mode, your physical world is set up to support you. Being organized also creates the mental order that many people need to be able to put aside mundane things and enter a creative head-space.

An organized workspace, for artists an non-artists alike, needn't mean office-standard manilla file folders and labelmakers.  In her book The Creative Habit, choreographer Twyla Tharp describes the  unconventional system she uses to support her creativity*:

Everyone has his or her own organizational system. Mine is a box, the kind you can buy at Office Depot for transferring files. I start every dance with a box. I write the project name on the box, and as the piece progresses I fill it up with every item that went into the making of the dance. This means notebooks, news clippings, CDs, videotapes of me working alone in my studio, videos of the dancers rehearsing, books and photographs and pieces of art that may have inspired me...

The box makes me feel organized, that I have my act together even when I don’t know where I’m going yet... Most important, though, the box means I never have to worry about forgetting. One of the biggest fears for a creative person is that some brilliant idea will get lost because you didn’t write it down and put it in a safe place. I don’t worry about that because I know where to find it. It’s all in the box….

As different as their systems (and their art forms) are, Joan and Twyla's methods are fundamentally similar.  When they are ready to create, neither the comedian nor the choreographer wants to spend time searching for things -- they want to be able to quickly access what they need and get down to creating what they want to create.  Both feel grounded knowing that their creative works-in-progress have a safe home outside of their heads.  That's one sign of a working system - it makes you feel better.

No matter what form it takes, a good organizational system supports you to do your best work by allowing you to put your brain power where you want and need it to be. For some people that system will be a cardboard box of ideas, and for others a card catalog of naughty jokes.

Do you have an unconventional organizational system?  If you're an artist, how do you organize your workspace?

*With thanks to Merlin Mann for introducing me to this passage.

Make a List. Your Brain Will Thank You.

Lists can literally take things off your mind. Image from www.brainexplorer.org

Last month with my birthday approaching, I sat down and made a list.  Not a list of gifts I wanted, but a list of ways I would like to spend my day:

have coffee and an almond croissant

meditate

go to a museum

take a nap

walk around the city

bake something

Though my birthday has passed (I had a great day, and did do a number of things on that list) I've kept the list posted up near my desk.  It serves as a reminder of things that make me happy. I feel happy just looking at it.

Lists can be a vehicle for satisfaction and even joy; they can facilitate focus, relief, and clarity.  (Lists can also stress you out, more on that, and the cardinal rule of list-keeping, later.)  Crossing things off a list is one of life's simple pleasures.

Ever notice how putting something on a list can take it "off your mind"?   There's a neurological basis for this effect.   As David Rock explains in his book Your Brain At Work, the prefrontal cortex (PFC) -- the part of the brain engaged in conscious thought, interaction, and decision-making -- has very limited resources.

Try to hold too many things in your conscious mind at once, and your PFC will become overloaded.  You'll inevitably drop some things and lose track of others.  Thoughts you've already had but failed to do anything about will pop back up at the most inconvenient times.

But externalize those thoughts by making lists, and you will essentially expand your mind. By taking thoughts out of rotation in your PFC and putting them on a list, you will free up precious brain space to have new ideas and make decisions about existing ones.   This is what productivity-guru David Allen means when he says, "your mind is for having ideas, not holding them."

I asked my friends what kinds of lists they keep, and their answers spanned from the mundane (groceries, chores) to the sublime (inspirational ideas, big wishes).  Their lists express both the the need to simply keep moving, and the desire to keep life moving forward.

Here are just some of the lists kept by a handful of my friends:

bike trips

songs I like

business ideas

people to care for in my congregation

thank you notes to write

groceries to buy (staples/specific meals)

bills to pay

chores (as authored by the list-owner's partner)

wish lists for big ideas

things to pack for trips

great movies  I've seen

short-term goals

long-term goals

people I've been meaning to hang out with

master project list

places I want to visit

things I  want to learn

birthdays

inspiring ideas

things to look forward to

I keep the core Getting Things Done lists: Next Actions, Projects, Waiting For, Someday/Maybe.   I keep store-specific shopping lists and lists of blog post ideas. I've always kept a list of activities that make me happy (much like my birthday list).

I was inspired by blogger Jennifer Ketcham to keep not only this happy list (she calls it a "Hooray" list) but also to keep an "Uh-Oh"list.  Jennifer's "Uh-Oh" list enumerates the signs that she is slipping into a rut; it includes things like letting dishes pile up, watching too many Law & Orders in a row, and letting voicemail go unchecked.  When she notices these things happening, she does what she needs to do to prevent herself from slipping further into this undesired state.

The cardinal rule of list maintenance is this:  Review Often, and Let Things Go. As much joy as lists can bring, when they get stale they will fill you with dread.  Who wants to look at a list of things you once committed to doing but now no longer have the time/resources/desire to do?  Ugh.  If you wanted to learn Spanish a year ago but no longer care to, take "buy Spanish instructional books" off of your daily to-do list.  Move it to a Someday/Maybe list, or erase it altogether.

If your lists feel "heavy" to you -- if there are parts of your lists your eyes skip over or your mind tries to avoid -- this is a good sign that it's time to review your commitments.  Either do it, schedule it to be done, or take it off the list.

What kinds of lists do you keep?  How do you keep your lists fresh and relevant?

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