The big problem is that your mind keeps reminding you of things when you can’t do anything about them. It has no sense of past or future. That means that as soon as you tell yourself that you need to do something, and store it in your RAM, there’s a part of you that thinks you should be doing that something all the time. Everything you’ve told yourself you ought to do, it thinks you should be doing right now. Frankly, as soon as you have two things to do stored in your RAM, you’ve generated personal failure, because you can’t do them both at the same time. This produces an all-pervasive stress factor whose source can’t be pin-pointed.
It is hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head.
—Sally Kempton
Most people have been in some version of this mental stress state so consistently, for so long, that they don’t even know they’re in it. Like gravity, it’s ever-present—so much so that those who experience it usually aren’t even aware of the pressure. The only time most of them will realize how much tension they’ve been under is when they get rid of it and notice how different they feel.
Can you get rid of that kind of stress? You bet. The rest of this book will explain how.
2
Getting Control of Your Life: The Five Stages of Mastering Workflow
THE CORE PROCESS I teach for mastering the art of relaxed and controlled knowledge work is a five-stage method for managing workflow. No matter what the setting, there are five discrete stages that we go through as we deal with our work. We (1) collect things that command our attention; (2) process what they mean and what to do about them; and (3) organize the results, which we (4) review as options for what we choose to (5) do. This constitutes the management of the “horizontal” aspect of our lives—incorporating everything that has our attention at any time.
The knowledge
that we consider
knowledge proves
itself in action.
What we now
mean by
knowledge is
information in
action,
information
focused on results.
—Peter F. Drucker
The method is straightforward enough in principle, and it is generally how we all go about our work in any case, but in my experience most people can stand significantly to improve their handling of each one of the five stages. The quality of our workflow management is only as good as the weakest link in this five-phase chain, so all the links must be integrated together and supported with consistent standards. Most people have major leaks in their collection process. Many have collected things but haven’t processed or decided what action to take about them. Others make good decisions about “stuff” in the moment but lose the value of that thinking because they don’t efficiently organize the results. Still others have good systems but don’t review them consistently enough to keep them functional. Finally, if any one of these links is weak, what someone is likely to choose to do at any point in time may not be the best option.
The dynamics of these five stages need to be understood, and good techniques and tools implemented to facilitate their functioning at an optimal level. I have found it very helpful, if not essential, to separate these stages as I move through my day. There are times when I want only to collect input and not decide what to do with it yet. At other times I may just want to process my notes from a meeting. Or I may have just returned from a big trip and need to distribute and organize what I collected and processed on the road. Then there are times when I want to review the whole inventory of my work, or some portion of it. And obviously a lot of my time is spent merely doing something that I need to get done.
I have discovered that one of the major reasons many people haven’t had a lot of success with “getting organized” is simply that they have tried to do all five phases at one time. Most, when they sit down to “make a list,” are trying to collect the “most important things” in some order that reflects priorities and sequences, without setting out many (or any) real actions to take. But if you don’t decide what needs to be done about your secretary’s birthday, because it’s “not that important” right now, that open loop will take up energy and prevent you from having a totally effective, clear focus on what is important.
This chapter explains the five phases in detail. Chapters 4 through 8 provide a step-by-step program for implementing an airtight system for each phase, with lots of examples and best practices.
Collect
It’s important to know what needs to be collected and how to collect it most effectively so you can process it appropriately. In order for your mind to let go of the lower-level task of trying to hang on to everything, you have to know that you have truly captured everything that might represent something you have to do, and that at some point in the near future you will process and review all of it.
Gathering 100 Percent of the “Incompletes”
In order to eliminate “holes in the bucket,” you need to collect and gather together placeholders for or representations of all the things you consider incomplete in your world—that is, anything personal or professional, big or little, of urgent or minor importance, that you think ought to be different than it currently is and that you have any level of internal commitment to changing.
Many of the things you have to do are being collected for you as you read this. Mail is coming into your mailbox, memos are being routed to your in-basket, e-mail is being funneled into your computer, and messages are accumulating on your voice-mail. But at the same time, you’ve been “collecting” things in your environment and in your psyche that don’t belong where they are, the way they are, for all eternity. Even though it may not be as obviously “in your face” as your e-mail, this “stuff” still requires some kind of resolution—a loop to be closed, something to be done. Strategy ideas loitering on a legal pad in a stack on your credenza, “dead” gadgets in your desk drawers that need to be fixed or thrown away, and out-of-date magazines on your coffee table all fall into this category of “stuff.”
As soon as you attach a “should,” “need to,” or “ought to” to an item, it becomes an incomplete. Decisions you still need to make about whether or not you are going to do something, for example, are already incompletes. This includes all of your “I’m going to”s, where you’ve decided to do something but haven’t started moving on it yet. And it certainly includes all pending and in-progress items, as well as those things on which you’ve done everything you’re ever going to do except acknowledge that you’re finished with them.
In order to manage this inventory of open loops appropriately, you need to capture it into “containers” that hold items in abeyance until you have a few moments to decide what they are and what, if anything, you’re going to do about them. Then you must empty these containers regularly to ensure that they remain viable collection tools.
Basically, everything is already being collected, in the larger sense. If it’s not being directly managed in a trusted external system of yours, then it’s resident somewhere in your psyche. The fact that you haven’t put an item in your in-basket doesn’t mean you haven’t got it. But we’re talking here about making sure that everything you need is collected somewhere other than in your head.
The Collection Tools
There are several types of tools, both low- and high-tech, that can be used to collect your incompletes. The following can all serve as versions of an in-basket, capturing self-generated input as well as information coming from outside:
• Physical in-basket
• Paper-based note-taking devices
• Electronic note-taking devices
• Voice-recording devices
• E-mail
The Physical In-Basket
The standard plastic, wood, leather, or wire tray is the most common tool for collecting paper-based materials and anything else physical that needs some sort of processing: mail, magazines, memos, notes, phone slips, receipts—even flashlights with dead ba
tteries.
Writing Paper and Pads
Loose-leaf notebooks, spiral binders, and steno and legal pads all work fine for collecting random ideas, input, things to do, and so on. Whatever kind fits your taste and needs is fine.
Electronic Note-Taking
Computers can be used to type in notes for processing later. And as character-recognition technology advances, a parade of digital tools designed to capture data continues to be introduced. Handheld devices (personal digital assistants, or PDAs) and electronic legal pads can both be used to collect all kinds of input.
Auditory Capture
Available auditory devices include answering machines, voice-mail, and dictating equipment, such as digital or microcassette recorders. All of these can be useful for preserving an interim record of things you need to remember or deal with.
E-mail
If you’re wired to the rest of the world through e-mail, your software contains some sort of holding area for incoming messages and files, where they can be stored until they are viewed, read, and processed. Pagers and telephones can capture this kind of input as well.
Higher-Tech Devices
Now you can dictate into computers as well as hand-write into them. As more and more communication is morphed into digital and wireless formats, it will become easier to capture ideas (with a corresponding increase in the amount of data reaching us that we need to manage!).
“Computer!”
“Yes, David?”
“I need bread.”
“Yes, David.”
My needed grocery item has been collected. And as the organizing part of the action-management process is further digitized, “bread” will automatically be added to my electronic grocery list, and maybe even ordered and delivered.
Whether high-tech or low-tech, all of the tools described above serve as similar in-baskets, capturing potentially useful information, commitments, and agreements for action. You’re probably already using some version of most of them.
The Collection Success Factors
Unfortunately, merely having an in-basket doesn’t make it functional. Most people do have collection devices of some sort, but usually they’re more or less out of control. Let’s examine the three requirements to make the collection phase work:
1. | Every open loop must be in your collection system and out of your head.
2. | You must have as few collection buckets as you can get by with.
3. | You must empty them regularly.
Get It All Out of Your Head
If you’re still trying to keep track of too many things in your RAM, you likely won’t be motivated to use and empty your in-baskets with integrity. Most people are relatively careless about these tools because they know they don’t represent discrete, whole systems anyway: there’s an incomplete set of things in their in-basket and an incomplete set in their mind, and they’re not getting any payoff from either one, so their thinking goes. It’s like trying to play pin-ball on a machine that has big holes in the table, so the balls keep falling out: there’s little motivation to keep playing the game.
These collection tools should become part of your life-style. Keep them close by so no matter where you are you can collect a potentially valuable thought—think of them as being as indispensable as your toothbrush or your driver’s license or your glasses.
Minimize the Number of Collection Buckets
You should have as many in-baskets as you need and as few as you can get by with. You need this function to be available to you in every context, since things you’ll want to capture may show up almost anywhere. If you have too many collection zones, however, you won’t be able to process them easily or consistently.
An excess of collection buckets is seldom a problem on the high-tech end; the real improvement opportunity for most people is on the low-tech side, primarily in the areas of note-taking and physical in-basket collection. Written notes need to be corralled and processed instead of left lying embedded in stacks, notebooks, and drawers. Paper materials need to be funneled into physical in-baskets instead of being scattered over myriad piles in all the available corners of your world.
Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are the most active.
—Leonardo da Vinci
Implementing standard tools for capturing ideas and input will become more and more critical as your life and work become more sophisticated. As you proceed in your career, for instance, you’ll probably notice that your best ideas about work will not come to you at work. The ability to leverage that thinking with good collection devices that are always at hand is key to increased productivity.
Empty the Buckets Regularly
The final success factor for collecting should be obvious: if you don’t empty and process the “stuff” you’ve collected, your buckets aren’t serving any function other than the storage of amorphous material. Emptying the bucket does not mean that you have to finish what’s in your voice-mail, e-mail, or in-basket; it just means you have to take it out of the container, decide what it is and what should be done with it, and, if it’s still unfinished, organize it into your system. You don’t put it back into “in”! Not emptying your in-basket is like having garbage cans that nobody ever dumps—you just have to keep buying new ones to hold all your trash.
In order for you to get “in” to empty, your total action-management system must be in place. Too much “stuff” is left piled in in-baskets because of a lack of effective systems “downstream” from there. It often seems easier to leave things in “in” when you know you have to do something about them but can’t do it right then. The in-basket, especially for paper and e-mail, is the best that many people can do in terms of organization—at least they know that somewhere in there is a reminder of something they still have to do. Unfortunately, that safety net is lost when the piles get out of control or the inventory of e-mails gets too extensive to be viewed on one screen.
When you master the next phase and know how to process your incompletes easily and rapidly, “in” can return to its original function. Let’s move on to how to get those in-baskets and e-mail systems empty without necessarily having to do the work now.
Process
Teaching them the item-by-item thinking required to get their collection buckets empty is perhaps the most critical improvement I have made for virtually all the people I’ve worked with. When the head of a major department in a global corporation had finished processing all her open items with me, she sat back in awe and told me that though she had been able to relax about what meetings to go to thanks to her trust in her calendar, she had never felt that same relief about all the many other aspects of her job, which we had just clarified together. The actions and information she needed to be reminded of were now identified and entrusted to a concrete system.
What do you need to ask yourself (and answer) about each e-mail, voice-mail, memo, or self-generated idea that comes your way? This is the component of action management that forms the basis for your personal organization. Many people try to “get organized” but make the mistake of doing it with incomplete batches of “stuff.” You can’t organize what’s incoming—you can only collect it and process it. Instead, you organize the actions you’ll need to take based on the decisions you’ve made about what needs to be done. The whole deal—both the processing and organizing phases—is captured in the center “trunk” of the decision-tree model shown here.
WORKFLOW DIAGRAM—PROCESSING
In later chapters, I’ll coach you in significant detail through each element of the process. For now, though, I suggest you select a to-do list or a pile of papers from your in-basket and assess a few items as we take an overview.
What Is It?
This is not a dumb question. We’ve talked about “stuff.” And we’ve talked about collection buckets. But we haven’t discussed what stuff is and what to do about it. For example, many of the items that tend to leak out of our personal organizing systems are amorphous forms
that we receive from the government or from our company—do we actually need to do something about them? And what about that e-mail from human resources, letting us know that blah-blah about the blah-blah is now the policy of blah-blah? I’ve unearthed piles of messages in stacks and desk drawers that were tossed there because the client didn’t take just a few seconds to figure out what in fact the communication or document was really about. Which is why the next decision is critical.
Is It Actionable?
There are two possible answers for this: YES and NO.
No Action Required If the answer is NO, there are three possibilities:
1. | It’s trash, no longer needed.
2. | No action is needed now, but something might need to be done later (incubate).
3. | The item is potentially useful information that might be needed for something later (reference).
These three categories can themselves be managed; we’ll get into that in a later chapter. For now, suffice it to say that you need a trash basket and