Productivity in the Workplace (and at home): Conclusion

I was recently interviewed by the Juice on ways that I stay productive at work. I thought that I would write a short series on my particular methods of productivity. This is more of a description of how my system works, there will be very little technology mentioned. If there is interest, I could write a followup for the specific techniques that I use, however, I suspect that such information would be less useful to others than the general overview that follows in this series.

[flickr]photo:708857272(small)[/flickr]And people said, Let there be differences in the systems to divide the people; and let them be for priorities, and for urgency, and for energy, and forever confusing.
And let them be for bright and shiny and distract the people from using the systems themselves, and for coworkers, and for family members, and friends.
And let them be for to light the way to productivity, to give light to the people: and it was do.There are numerous productivity systems. They are described in different ways, they are based on different principles, and people can argue for decades over the relative merits of each.They are also all the same.

Every single productivity system out there works by making people focus on what they’re doing and take a proactive approach to managing their resources. They work by making things a bit simpler and a bit more straightforward. They work by giving people a chance to take control of their lives.

There are two important things to keep in mind.

1. Start. If you never start, you will never reap the benefits. If wait for the “perfect” time, or try to-do it in the “optimal” way, you will be nonproductive until you actually start.
2. Don’t spend too much time tweaking the system. The more time time you spend adjusting the system, the less time you are spending using the system. I suggest making a repeating reminder (every 6 months works for me) to review the system, and make the necessary adjustments to tune it.

The way I implement GTD is flawed. I know this.

• I spend too much time worrying about work piling up in my automated in-boxes (email and RSS) and check email MUCH too often.
• I’m not always good about inputting ideas into my system, so I carry too much in my brain.
• I over-commit each week, so I am always sliding work out into the future.
• I’m not always good about doing a COMPLETE weekly review
• When I get sick, the entire system falls apart because I don’t have the energy to maintain it.

That said, I am significantly more productive than I ever was in the past. I am also significantly more productive and responsive than most people in my company. So, from a measurement perspective, I am winning.

However, I have not won.

Like life’s ultimate purpose is the journey, not the destination, a productivity system is only effective when it is actively used. It’s not a thing that you can have, it is a thing that you do.

Start doing.

• Any questions? 

Productivity in the Workplace (and at home): Collection

I was recently interviewed by the Juice on ways that I stay productive at work. I thought that I would write a short series on my particular methods of productivity. This is more of a description of how my system works, there will be very little technology mentioned. If there is interest, I could write a followup for the specific techniques that I use, however, I suspect that such information would be less useful to others than the general overview that follows in this series.

[flickr]photo:3992081(small)[/flickr]And people said, let the world bring forth work, the clients yielding requests, the bosses yielding projects after their visions, whose success is in itself, upon life; and it was so.
And the system collected the work from the world, the requests from the clients, and the projects and visions from the bosses, and everyone saw that it was good.Most people start talking about GTD with this idea, but I held it for later because GTD is a cycle. As work flows, it has to flow somewhere. Most people put work in two places: their brains and their email box. Most people are also overly stressed and tend to not think ahead.How many emails do you have in your inbox? No, really Go count, I can wait.

I’m waiting.

…

OK, good. Want to know how many I have?

Zero.

I’m sure that right now, you’re thinking “how the heck is that possible?” It’s pretty simple. Every email represents an item of work. Work exists to be done. So, I went through my mailbox and read everything. I deleted what I didn’t need and processed what I did. That left a grand total of nothing left. Now, I just keep it there.

The same goes for my other in boxes. Here is how it works:

• Work email
• Home email
• Telephone
• RSS reader
• Physical in box
• Treo
• My brain

Those are the ONLY places that work can be. Four of those fill up automatically.

Email flows 24/7 and often requires something to be done other than just reading it. For me, about 60% of what comes in needs to be processed, not just deleted. This means that I either do the work right away or I make a to-do entry on my Treo and file or delete the email.

My telephone can ring at any time, but it doesn’t happen very often. When it does, I turn the call into a note on paper. Then, I either do the work, or convert the paper into a to-do item on my Treo.

My RSS Reader fills up constantly, but the vast majority off the items are to be read and not responded to. So, several times a day, I look at the headlines and read what’s important and mark the rest read. Sometimes I defer an item to be read later.

Two of these fill up manually.

My physical in box is the home for paper-based items, usually magazines. When I have time, I grab a magazine and read it. Then I either file or toss it.

My Treo holds all my to-dos. It’s where my tasks live when they need to be done, but not right now.

Lastly, my brain holds some information about what I need to-do when. This is a big NO in GTD. The idea in GTD is to empty your brain of what needs to be done, so it can focus on doing. However, for me, no matter what I do, I can’t get everything out. It’s just not possible. I aim to get most of what I need into my system, and I just accept that the rest will stay stuck in my brain. It’s just how my brain works.

• Do you know how your employees organize their work?
• Are you confident that your requests won’t get lost in someone’s email box?

Productivity in the Workplace (and at home): The Weekly Review

I was recently interviewed by the Juice on ways that I stay productive at work. I thought that I would write a short series on my particular methods of productivity. This is more of a description of how my system works, there will be very little technology mentioned. If there is interest, I could write a followup for the specific techniques that I use, however, I suspect that such information would be less useful to others than the general overview that follows in this series.

[flickr]photo:279594916(small)[/flickr]And someone said, Let the tasks within the system be gathered together unto one place, and let the structure appear: and it was so.
And people called the linked tasks Projects; and the gathering together of hopes and dreams called they Goals: and saw that it was good.This step is key. This is also the hardest one to do. The idea here is that most of GTD covers TACTICAL productivity. This is great. It allows you to prioritize on the fly, and make sure that work flows through you as you sit in a zen-like state doing-doing-doing. It’s also a great way to make sure that all you ever do is, well, do. There is nothing in there that allows you to consider whether you are doing what you really should be doing.The weekly review is the STRATEGIC part of the system. Once a week, I go through my entire system and check my progress. I check my collection points (more on these later) for work that needs to be done. I look at tasks (individual work items) and re-schedule them as needed. I look at my projects (collections of tasks), and decide which ones I care enough about to work on in the following week. I then look at my goals and decide how well I am doing.

I track my projects and goals in a wiki, so that it is accessible wherever I am. In theory, I should be able to-do this on my Treo, but it just didn’t work for me that way. I’d love to be able to keep my project lists with me wherever I go, but they just get too complex with task decencies and external resource dependencies. Since I’m online most of the time, I find this to a reasonable compromise. I may not be ideally productive, but I wasn’t using the ideal system anyway because it was too hard to use.

Also, I split my review into different parts. This, I suspect, is different from the standard GTD implementation. My work week starts on Sunday, which I think of as my “focus / reboot day”. This is the time when I work on servers if they need preventative maintenance. Then, I focus on my tasks, my projects, and my life.

I start by looking at my email out box, my time tracking, and my checked-off to-do items. I use this data to write my boss a weekly status report. I cover what I did in the last week, and highlight anything that I think he needs to know. This gives me three big benefits:

• My boss knows what I’m up to, as there are often weeks where we do not communicate directly at all.
• I get the information on a weekly basis of what I did that was important. This helps me update my resume when needed.
• I get a sense of closure on the week, and I enter into the planning phase with a sense of accomplishment (usually).

The next phase is to look at the next week. I go through my to-do items and re-schedule the following week with things that I intend to do. I look at everything sitting in my collection points and deal with any filing that I may have put off and generally clean things up. I then go to my wiki and scroll through every project that I have listed as active, and adjust status in the wiki AND create to-do items on my Treo as needed. I then add a section to my report covering what I hope to accomplish in the next week. Then I send it to my boss (and myself).

Lastly, I go through my goals section and evaluate how I am doing at achieving my overall goals. This forces me to realize my personal flaws and try to come up with a way to deal with them. I also get a chance to pat myself on the back if I’m doing well.

For example, I am quite good at modifying my diet and am eating much healthier than I was. However, I am LOUSY at maintaining an exercise program. Too bad you can’t outsource things like that.

Then, I’m ready for my weekly work influx to start.

• How often to you get status reports?  How often should you?
• What’s it worth to you to know what your employees think are important?
  
• Would you like the chance to correct priorities before an employee runs down a rabbit trail.

Productivity in the Workplace (and at home): But which work?

I was recently interviewed by the Juice on ways that I stay productive at work. I thought that I would write a short series on my particular methods of productivity. This is more of a description of how my system works, there will be very little technology mentioned. If there is interest, I could write a followup for the specific techniques that I use, however, I suspect that such information would be less useful to others than the general overview that follows in this series.

[flickr]photo:224775465(small)[/flickr]And someone said, Let there be a system in the midst of the chaos, and let it divide the tasks from the tasks.
And someone made the system, and divided the tasks which were similar from the tasks which were not: and it was so.
And the system was called a scheduler. And time management was born.Another idea in GTD is that of a tickler file. Basically, if there is something that you do not need to-do now, but you will need to-do eventually, you put it into a time-based system so that you are reminded when it’s time. This is where terms like “43 folders” come in. However, since I had a Treo, I implemented it electronically.

I use DateBook 6 to track my items. It synchronizes with my work calendar, and pulls to-do items into the calendar view. Thus, if I need to defer a task to the future, I create the task, go into its properties, and move it to a specific date in the future. The fact that I can set to-do items to repeat means that the OPERATIONS side of getting things done is pretty easy. Once I vacuum the house, I check off the task and it automatically re-schedules itself one week into the future. Once I change the furnace filter, the task reschedules itself for 3 months later.

Similarly, if I need to follow up with someone, I go out to the day that I want to-do that and add a to-do instructing me to follow up with someone. Luckily, in DateBook 6, I can link to the person’s phone/email contact in my Treo, so it’s very easy to-do this.

Also, if I miss a task, it appears on the next day’s task list.

This can be bad.

I recently had a long-term medical issue that weakened me for months (I’m better now). BOY did the work pile up during that time. I kept rescheduling the same tasks into the future again and again.

I needed something to make sure that I could look at the big picture often enough that the work I was doing didn’t build up to unmanageable levels.

• While the specific technology used is fairly unimportant, it can matter if it’s consistent across an organization.
• Are you synchronizing work between your groupware system and employee’s PDAs?

Productivity in the Workplace (and at home): Doing the work

I was recently interviewed by the Juice on ways that I stay productive at work. I thought that I would write a short series on my particular methods of productivity. This is more of a description of how my system works, there will be very little technology mentioned. If there is interest, I could write a followup for the specific techniques that I use, however, I suspect that such information would be less useful to others than the general overview that follows in this series.

[flickr]photo:173246876(small)[/flickr]And people called the emergency work “do it” and the non-emergency work “defer it”. And priorities were the first system.One of the huge things that came out of GTD for me, was the idea that, if something needed to be done and took less than two minutes, just do it right away. This is the so called “two minute rule”. The power behind the idea is that it keeps the little piddly stuff from building up and distracting you with a huge pile of stress from un-done work.This works well, and is hugely important in reducing turnaround time. However, I have found that the negative here is that it can get you so focused on “cranking widgets” that you never get to the long-term work.  See, the idea is balance. In the GTD system, you are to collect incoming work and then prioritize as you go, balancing what needs to be done against it’s urgency, your available resources, and your energy levels. David Allen uses a system of “contexts“, where you store your task items on different lists depending on the resources needed to-do the task. This makes perfect sense as you might have to-do certain things in different places.

Most of what I do is online.

Thus, contexts don’t work for me. I wound up with a handful of tasks that I needed to-do at home (vacuum, wash the cats, cook, etc), and everything else was in a “do anywhere” context. I wound up prioritizing by energy level. If I had the energy to-do a task, I’d do that one. The flaw here is that I tended to-do the easy tasks first, which left with less energy with which to tackle the more important and more complex tasks. I needed to get priorities back into the system.

• Do you know where your employees work?
• Do they work differently in different places?
• Do they work differently at different times?