First off, I want to apologize for the length of this post. I’m covering a number of issues so it ran a little (ok a lot) long.
Second, I just wanted to say that reading this group’s posts has really helped me. It has introduced me to things like the Pomodoro technique and the unschedule scheduling concept. It has also given me the incentive to actually read Allen’s “GTD” book and Forster’s “Do It Tomorrow”. Previously, I had only read the “cliff notes” reviews of those concepts. Hey Lisa, your post really struck a bone with me. I too have problems figuring out what to work on and used to cherry pick the easy stuff. I thought I would share what I did to help with that. First off, I agree with Forster on the concept of Freedom and Limits. You would think that having a “home job” that lets you do anything you want at anytime you want would really help you be productive. But I think Forster is right and the opposite is true. Setting limits of what you work on and when is what helps you be more productive. My recommendation to you is to create an unschedule for your “default” activities. Then you can try to do certain types of work at certain times. So having multiple lists keeps the “cherry pickin easy stuff” off of your current list and helps you focus on what you really want to accomplish. As for GTD’s location contexts, I agree with you that for us little people they don’t always help. If you read or remember reading his book, most of his “client” examples were upper level managers who probably travel a lot. If you aren’t in situations where you only have certain resources but not others available then you don’t need to have separate contexts. Allen’s example in his book was if you only have a computer at work then you don’t need an @computer and a separate @office context. Here is where I digress from GTD and came up with my own contexts. GTD says that you pick your next action on the following order: Contexts Time Available Energy Available Priority He doesn’t really “flesh out” energy the way he does contexts. To me Energy is really important. Forster and Allen talk about the differences between a planned action and a reactive one. Forster goes farther and talks about the rational productive mind and the irrational reactive mind. A lot of time managers talk about how you should group similar work together because it is hard to “switch gears” between the types of work you do. So what I did to replace location contexts is to have “Mental Energy and types of work“ contexts. I then unschedule my day based on these contexts, using the early parts of the day for the more mentally taxing contexts and later in the day for the less mentally taxing ones. Here are my task contexts From most to least taxing: 1 – Productive 2 – Reactive 3 – Processing 4 – Routine 5 – Physical 6 – Free Productive tasks are things you are trying to accomplish. For me that is generally my projects. This is a closed list. I use the MLO feature to Hide-In-ToDo anything lower than my top four projects. I mostly use a rational prioritization of importance and Due Dates for this list. To me this requires the most mental energy to accomplish so I try to schedule it first. Reactive are responses to people. This is my support work and responses to email requests, etc. This is an open list that I prioritize and use Due dates but I also organize on when the task was created/modified. Having separate lists allow you to use different filters. Since this one involves people I use “how long ago the request was made” as part of my prioritization. To me reactive work requires a whole different mental approach and once I am in that mode it is hard for me to go back to being productive. If I can batch this stuff together it really helps. Processing is for processing information. This is reading, filling out forms, maintaining contact lists, etc. I’m not really dealing with people at this point so it is less mentally taxing and more “busy work.” I added Routine here because I found a lot of “checklist” style stuff was partly processing and partly physical kind of work. I tend to create “do in order” checklists and then have an available ToDo view to actually check off these tasks. Anyway, routine is where I batch scanning email, checking voicemail and generally “collect” my tasks. I’ve found there is very little ordering done here except for things with Due dates and routines that show up at certain times of the day. Physical are things that generally don’t require mental thought. I have much more physical stuff for home where housekeeping and yard work stuff, as examples, get assigned. Last is “Free Time” where I add hobbies and the like. For some reason I don’t seem to be as drained mentally when I am playing as when I am working. :) If you can come up with similar groups of work it does three things for you. One, it allows you to focus on what you are doing. Two, it allows you to batch things and stay in the same kind of mental framework to accomplish those tasks. And three it keeps you from “cherry pickin” the easier stuff when you need to do the more important tasks. Anyway, this really helped me, so I thought I would share. Again, sorry for it being so long… On Jan 8, 3:44 pm, Lisa Stroyan <[email protected]> wrote: > At 04:12 PM 1/7/2010, you wrote: > > >All of these methodologies have in common the idea that the user knows > >instinctively what task he should do next, regardless of what's on top > >of the To-Do list. > > Perhaps I'm the exception, but this is part of where I get stuck, and > I would love any thoughts you all have! (I try to follow GTD as > well). I find myself scanning my lists, but not for the task I > *should* do next, but for the one that is easiest to pick off and get > the sense of accomplishment from completing. That is why I need to > use Flags to mark the most important things of the day. I tend to > avoid them, otherwise...they feel too hard. > > Part of the issue is that I have a very varied lists of tasks, and > not a lot of structure imposed externally and lots of context > switching. I'm a homeschooling mom with an at-home business on the > side. I used to operate a lot on stress, but burned myself out. So, > I'm careful not to have many tasks that scream at me "you have to do > this right now!!" or leave them on my list very long. > > Another contributing issue is that most of my contexts are > artificial. I spend most of my productive/task time in my house, > with my laptop within reach, as well as my internet-connected phone > which goes everywhere I go. So @Computer, @Home, @Calls, all really > blend together. (And most everything is "@Computer" these days). > > Any thoughts? > > Lisa > > ---------- > Lisa Stroyan, mailto:[email protected]
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