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 Quadruple Your Productivity and Enjoy a Little Life Mar 09, 2010
Why You Should Read It: Time is the only real scarce resource. We are all battling for more of it. The only way to have more is to spend it wisely.
Review:
I just finished Getting Things Done. I know. I'm a little late to the game. It was a quick read and I loved the premise. There were no doubt some clear productivity "ah-ha's" as I read. I have spent a lot of time learning and developing my own productivity system over the years and I'm excited to implement a few more of Allan's nuggets. Most of the things he mentions are not totally novel but the package he puts them in catches an eye.
Top 6 Ways to Quadruple Productivity and Have a Little More Time to Enjoy Life:
1. "What is the next task that will get me toward my desired outcome?" This is the biggest point Allen drives home. Always ask this question upon completion of a meeting or task. This alone will put your productivity through the roof. Let this be the last time that you leave the site of a goal, plan or meeting without a clearly defined and scheduled next action item to make it a reality.
2. Plan Your Week. Spend at least a half hour or an hour at the beginning (or end) of each week taking stock of what you accomplished the prior week, what you didn't accomplish, what you learned and what your desired outcomes are for the week to come. Many people dive right into the week with no plan of what they want their week to look like. And then get frustrated when nothing gets done. Be intentional and get committed. Things will start to happen. Spend an hour sharpening the saw to makes the week's cutting all the easier. I have been doing this every week for years.
3. Schedule It. Things do not get done unless you schedule them. By definition in order for a task to be completed it must physically occupy some portion of your life. Lists have become so arbitrary. They get longer and longer and are rarely prioritized, leaving you overwhelmed when everything doesn't get checked off. Also, the average person drastically under estimates how long something will take (at least we're optimistic). This causes them to put 27 hours worth of work on one day's list. Reserving time on your calendar forces you to be honest with yourself and get completed only what is reasonable in the time you have available. Proper expectations are a huge part of getting things done.
4. Schedule A Buffer. We have now come to grips with the fact that everything takes longer than expected. Now except the fact that things always come up that we didn't plan. They take time and sometimes they have to happen right away. Schedule buffer time for these. I literally block off an hour or two each day that simply says "buffer time". It almost always gets filled up with something urgent and unexpected and when it doesn't, I have an hour of my life back-an amazing feeling. That's when it's time to get outside and have some fun (or do whatever you like to do with spare time-other than check email).
5. Give Yourself Strict and Short Deadlines. This is not contradictory to Schedule It. Yes, things take longer than expected, and they also will take up as much time as you have available. We call this Parkinson's Law. The time required to complete a project is directly proportional to the time you have available. In other words, if you have time to waste, you will waste it. You have a day to study for an exam. It takes a day. You have two weeks to study. It takes two weeks. Give yourself enough time to complete a task but not a moment more. Set these limits up in advance.
6. Don't Check Email First Thing in the Morning. If you haven't heard this before, you have not been listening. This is huge. No matter what you're doing, email will immediately throw you off and suck the time and energy out of your life. Get your most important things done in the first 2-3 hours of the day. Then check some email and a little Facebook. I know I do not need to convince you on merit of this. I just need to break you from your addiction.
7. Do Your Most Import Things First. This goes with the above. First thing in the morning (after a good workout and breakfast), since I already have a plan for the week, I know what's most important for the day. So I dive into those 2-3 tasks first. Often before even opening my computer or connecting to the internet, and definitely before checking email. You will feel mountains better about the rest of the day with your major items behind you. Then there's plenty of time to waste away on email.
8. Get a Good System to Keep Track of Your Life. Everyone does things differently and no system will be perfect for all of us. But there are some amazing tools out there for free or almost free to get you started. Whatever the cost, if it gets you organized and motivates you to get things done, it's worth the investment. I use a combination of the Tony Robbins Time of Your Life Planning System, 7 Habits and 4-Hour Work Week in conjunction with my iCal, Google Calendar, Things and Evernote, all synced to my iPhone for what I feel has become my own little work of art. Can't forget a good clean work space of your own and maybe some physical file cabinets either. It took a while for me to get the right system in place and its always changing, but it's empowering once you get it. Find some sexy productivity toys and have some fun.
These steps are easy and any one of them alone will dramatically transform the way you go about your moments, days, weeks and life. Take advantage of them and let me know what you do with all your free time!
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What have you found most useful to manage your life and create time for the things you really care about. Share them with us in the comments.
~Reading for Your Success
Other books and resources you might enjoy:
Parkinson's Law- an article
Things- Task management app for iPhone and Mac. I just started using it and love it. Designed perfectly for Getting Things Done
4-Hour Work Week
7 Habits of Highly Effective People
How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life
The Art of Time(less)
 Roadmap for productivity... Feb 27, 2010
David Allen has provided a very clear strategy for effectively managing ones busy, multi-faceted existence. I thought that this book would be useful in helping me organize my business projects. I've come to realize that it provided useful tools for managing all of my ideas about "things" I wanted to "get done" while integrating all of my goals personal and professional, current and foretasted. I have recommended it to many people.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Simple Steps to Stress-Free Productivity Feb 19, 2010
The book this week was Getting Things Done The Art of Stress Free Productivity by David Allen. A great book about how to... well... get things done. Personally, I believe two big portions of professional conduct are organization and producing results. This book will teach you how to change your lifestyle and get enormous results in each of those areas.
This book was incredibly detailed. I would be shocked if someone told me they couldn't get results after reading this because some of the baby-steps the author uses are almost excruciating. But to be fair, that is what it takes with some people to install life changing behavior. Now let's talk about a couple concepts from this book you can implement in your life to make you a better, more professional, and overall, a more promotable individual.
The BIG idea from this book is simple. Write 'stuff' down. Somehow, find a way to transcribe ideas to a device. This device can be a notepad, a cell phone notebook, a PDA, etc. (I have started using a memo pad, you can buy a set of three at Target for $1.97) This idea is so incredibly helpful, yet, I have been battling it for some time. It could be because I was stubborn or that I thought I could do without it. But regardless the reason, I was dead wrong. The brain cannot remember everything you need and at the same time release the information when it is needed. For those of you familiar with computers... The brain processes ideas a computer uses RAM, it's temporary storage. As amazing as the human mind is, it's kind of dumb, as the author points out... when you are at the store looking at the battery section you don't think of the flashlight you have a home with dead batteries. You know that the batteries have been dead, but your mind just doesn't use that memory when it's most effective for you to have it. Your brain will shoot out ideas all day long... "I need to take my dry cleaning"... "I need to get buns at the store"... "I need to take that package to the post office." Those ideas come into your RAM and unless you focus on them until they are done, they will leave you. You can conjure up that idea again, but the time to conjure takes time and depending on the task... unnecessary stress. If you immediately transcribe all the ideas you have as soon as they come in you won't be using up brain space for that task anymore, and you won't have a delay in you day trying to come up with the idea again. It is much more valuable to be thinking about different things than it is to think of different things. Use the power of your brain to make your action plan most effective instead of just sitting around thinking about things to do. It doesn't even matter what the idea is, if you transcribe it you will review it later and weed out the useless. The important part is that all ideas that come in are going out of your brain and onto something reviewable.
I started transcribing ideas earlier this week and have had tremendous results. I can't put an accurate percentage on my increased efficiency. But if I were to ballpark it, I would say I am around 60% more efficient. I know... pretty impressive.
The next step is to review. Weekly you should do a review of your notes and weed out information. If it is something that is not actionable then you can either: discard it, save it for a reference, or but it in a someday/maybe file. If it is actionable then you need to come up with an action plan. Your idea to get your car tuned up becomes actionable by breaking it down. You'll need to look for different mechanics' rates, make a decision, and make an appointment. When things are broken down you have a clear, concise road map. In addition to your weekly review, you will be referring to your transcription device very regularly. As soon as one task gets done you should have another task on there to work on. The time reviewing won't be extensive, just a few seconds here and a few there and maybe 15 to 30 minutes to create action plans for your larger projects. The author defines a project as anything that has more than one step to completion.
When your plan is actionable you have a few solutions for getting it done. Do it, Delegate it, or Defer it. I think each of those is pretty obvious so I am not going to Dr. Seuss this for you. But I will show you a work flow diagram that is used frequently in the book. It should give the big picture of what I'm talking about.
The other part of being stress-free while establishing your new lifestyle to know your limits. Your work flow is like a credit card. If you don't know the balance or limit of a credit card it is easier to be irresponsible. With your work flow you should now know your balance because you should have everything you need to do written down, but your limit is something you will have to decide for yourself. If your plate if full then you need to feel comfortable saying "No" to a new task asked of you. Overloading yourself will cause you to be less productive in the long term because it will weigh you down. But again, this is variable, everybody is going to have a different limit and as you become more effective you will increase your ability to do new task and in essence raise your limit.
There is a lot more to this book than what I have explained here. It goes far more in depth and gives a lot more neat tips on organization and effectively sorting your 'stuff.' I think this book is great for most executives that have information coming and going more than most people out there. Having an effective way to deal with all that information flow help in enormous ways. Lastly, don't be stubborn like me, write things down and review them regularly. You increased efficiency is sure to turn some heads! If you have any questions on the book don't hesitate to ask. I would be more than happy to help anyone that wants it.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Life changing -- if you're ready Feb 13, 2010
If you implement even some of the methods in this book, your life will change for the better. It's very important, however, to be mentally prepared to take massive action and make structural changes BEFORE you start to read. I put off reading this book for over a year, and only dove in when I knew I was ready for a change. If you're in the frame of mind for a massive overhaul of your work and life organizational systems, this book is the perfect place to start. If you're not, you'll likely skim this book, think the author has great ideas, but fail to execute.
The message that resonated most to me was that we free up our creative energy by controlling the smaller details that overwhelm us.
Excellent book Feb 11, 2010
The book gives specific, doable ideas about how to increase productivity in a systematic way. I read it before moving into a new office and was able to use its ideas to set up my new space in a much more efficient way.
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