Genuine Curiosity

Author Dwayne Melancon is always on the lookout for new things to learn. An ecclectic collection of postings on personal productivity, travel, good books, gadgets, leadership & management, and many other things.

 

Intend Your Way to Success

"Contrast that with Visions that grab ahold of you deep inside and don't let go until you reach the finish line. These are the Visions that change things."A lot is written, said, theorized, and declared about the most effective ways to get things done. This is due, in part, to the volume of things going on in our lives. Couple this with the endless ways we make ourselves feel bad because we aren't getting as many things done as you'd like, and frustration is inevitable.

Most of what I read about getting stuff done deals with Technique, Systems, and Tactics, with lots of Purpose and Balance sprinkled on. Goodness knows, I've tried various recipes - some work well, some don't, some work sometimes, some work always. They all have one thing in common - I can screw up any of them because I don't predictably play by the rules.

In my quest for the perfect system I've come to some conclusions, thanks to a number of cosmic nudges toward "Intention" over the last year. The nudges have helped me conclude that Intention is the key element that determines whether any of the other stuff works (sort of like the One Ring that rules them all, in the Lord of The Rings).

Turns out I was on a quest (or something like it) and didn't realize it. This post is quite a bit more philosophical (and a lot longer) than my usual curious musings here, but I have heard a different muse today. Here is my travelog.

Road signs

  • The gurus of productivity all have their own twist on creating a compelling Vision of the future. Stephen Covey tells us to "Begin with the end in mind," David Allen says "You won't know how to do it until you see yourself doing it."
  • My friend Gene Kim recommended "The Message of a Master" to me last year, which deals with "broadcasting" your desires (intentions, if you will) to the cosmos triggering the cosmos to respond with what you need. It's an unassuming little book, and I'd forgotten about it. I found it under the edge of my bed this weekend and it came crashing back.
  • Steve Pavlina's "Million Dollar Experiment" (I'm a participant) gathered a bunch of folks to "manifest" $1 million dollars through the power of Intention. I personally attribute thousands of dollars to this simple intention technique.
  • I saw a PBS special by Wayne Dyer, in which he goes through how to use the "Power of Intention" to change your life for the better. I was so intrigued, I donated enough money to Public Broadcasting to get his whole collection on the subject.

I started listening to the Wayne Dyer CD's this week, and a surprising thing happened. It was very "out there," new age sounding stuff (and I'm usually a roll-your-eyes-in-the-face-of-new-age-things kinda person). Then the connections started happening.

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Getting Things Done in the American Way

I took a flight on American Airlines this week, and there is a great article on Getting Things Done (GTD) in their in-flight magazine, American Way. Pick up a copy on your next flight or check it out online.

You'll find first-hand testimonials from some great GTD mentors like Mark Orchant (aka "ark Orchant" in the online version) and Michael Hyatt. This article is also a great way to give your unindoctrinated friends a great intro to GTD.

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GTD 2006.17: Unplanned Work is an oxymoron

In my day job I do a lot of work with IT organizations on best practices -- aka 'best known methods' -- and IT process improvement. I spend a lot of time working with various research bodies (such as Carnegie Mellon's Software Engineering Institute, the IT Process Institute, along with other industry bodies). Our goal is to determine and evangelize repeatable ways to improve IT efficiency and effectiveness.

For a while, my fellow researchers and I have been talking about "unplanned work" as the silent killer of IT efficiency. Unplanned work is also known as "firefighting," and it usually means you're being totally reactive to what happens to you and your organization.

In a conversation with a colleague of mine a few hours ago, he told me that unplanned work was eating him alive this week. I joked that there are actually two types of unplanned work:

Type 1: This is our traditional definition of reactive firefighting in which you have to deal with urgent stuff didn't expect.

Type 2: This is work that you've consciously added to your list, but you just don't have a plan.

I asked him how much of his unplanned work was self-inflicted -- type #2.

Over the past couple of hours, my mind has drifted back to that discussion and I realized it wasn't just a joke, and it applies to our own personal productivity. When I look at days in my life that have seemed chaotic and unproductive, or taken on a life of their own, I realize that one of these two kinds of unplanned work are often at the heart of my frustration.

And my fondness for procrastination just amplifies both of these. Procrastination is particularly "effective" on Type 2, because those are the situations in which I probably don't know what the next action really is.

After pondering (wallowing?) a bit more, I realized that David Allen's Getting Things Done (GTD) is effective because it tries to deal with both of these issues head-on. After all, the proper use of GTD combats firefighting by helping you systematically deal with (or renegotiate) the things that "show up" in your day. GTD also combats Type 2 by providing you with a system to ensure that you don't have a bunch of ambiguous, unplanned projects or next inactions sitting there on your action lists.

What about you? Do you find yourself dealing with lots of unplanned work these days? Might be time for a refresher on the basics of Getting Things Done.

Related posts:

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It ain't like brushing your teeth

Well, I've fallen off the wagon again with my Getting Things Done routine. My inbox is up to around 400 messages, I feel a bit "stuck" on a few projects, and that's not good.

Rituals

I love David's GTD methods and philosophy, but I have a recurring issue with drifting away from my good habits. A few months back, I went to one of David's GTD|The Roadmap seminars, and he talked about how we needed to develop new habits for GTD so they'd become automatic, like brushing your teeth. His story went something like this:

When you're born, you don't know anything about brushing your teeth - you didn't even have teeth. Then, when you had teeth, your parents made you go brush them every day. You may have complained, but they reminded you and you did it every day. Then one day, without realizing it, you did it without being told or asked. You'd developed a new habit!

How often do you need to be reminded to brush your teeth? Probably not very often. As an adult, if you go too long without brushing your teeth, the "scuzz factor" kicks in and the sense of urgency to go brush your teeth increases. And then you brush your teeth and the scuzz factor is gone.

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Outlook and GTD - Filing and Archiving Tips

Now that you are processing your email instead of nesting on it, you’ll need to consider a sustainable strategy for archiving and storage of your message.  You also need to figure out how you’ll find what you need (a common source of anxiety for those of us who are unaccustomed to filing).

Philosophy:

  • File everything you think you might need. 
  • Don’t be concerned about hanging on to something, as long as you have a good place to put it where you can get to it if you need it.  Disk space is more abundant than ever these days, and there are plenty of free, readily-available searching and indexing tools to help with retrieval (more about that later).
  • Don’t be afraid to delete things
    • I know I said you can file anything you want, but try to develop a more mercenary attitude about what you file.  Your tolerance for this, your personal document retention requirements, etc. may vary, but anything you delete is something you no longer have to take care of.
  • Name your folders something meaningful
    • You won’t always remember what you called the file, but you should be able to find it in a couple of tries (for example, info about General Motors will be under Inbox/Customers/General Motors or Inbox/Customers/GM in my system.
  • Decide on a naming convention when you save files to your hard drive
    • This will help you find things, and will help you purge things systematically.
      • For example, you may want to archive old, complete projects, things from a previous role in the company, and what not.
    • I have developed a habit of including the date within the name of lots of the files I create, particularly if they are things that are likely to be replaced by updated versions later on.  For example, if I receive or create a copy of a corporate presentation today, I will save the file as “2005 08 25 Corporate Presentation.ppt.”
      • This way, when I search for “corporate presentation” I can easily find the latest one.
      • This method allows me to find all files that start with “2005” so I can easily archive them to off-line storage and get them off my system when the appropriate time as passed.

Storage: setting up an archive strategy

In corporate environments, there is typically a limit to how much data you’re allowed to store on your company’s mail server.  That’s certainly true for me.

To make it easy for me to find things, I did the following (note that this is Outlook-specific, but similar concepts should apply with other email systems).

Create an archive file that is stored in My Documents

One of the issues I’ve had with Outlook is that it doesn’t put its archive files in the My Documents folder by default.  When I do system backups, I’d like to be able to back up My Documents and get as much of my user-specific data as possible, so I create an archive file that is stored within a “My Documents\Outlook Offline” folder. 

To create a new archive folder, use the File / New / Outlook Data File… command within Outlook, and navigate to a folder within your “My Documents” folder on your PC.  My current Archive folder is called “1ArchiveForGTD” but you can name it anything you want.

Next, from within Outlook, select Tools / Options, then click on the “Other” tab.  On the “Other” tab, click the AutoArchive button, and you’ll see something like the dialog below.  Archivedlg

As you may be able to see, I have changed my default AutoArchive settings so that my old messages are moved to this Archive file every 14 days, and I move items over 2 months old.

This creates a replica of my folder structure within the Archive folder so I can easily find items that have been archived.

So how do I find items?  I use a program called LookOut to index and search all of my mail folders, and have scheduled re-indexes daily so LookOut’s data stays current.  Similarly, you can use one of the many free desktop search products available now from Microsoft, Google, Yahoo!, and others.

Some other things I’ve learned along the way:

  • I don’t want things in my “context folders” like @Office, @computer – web, and other folders to be archived, so I excluded them from my scheduled autoarchive by right clicking on each of these folders and changed their AutoArchive setting to “Do not archive items in this folder.”
  • I don’t autoarchive my tasks or contacts – you can use the same approach to exclude them from the autoarchive process.

This is a very high level overview of my process – I’ll share some other tips in the future that may help with these actions, as well.

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