Faith Venture

“Getting Things Done,” by David Allen swept through the ranks of knowledge workers twenty-some years ago. I actually have four of his books staring at me from my bookshelf. GTD, practitioners were called “GTD-ers”. 

People thought they would increase productivity exponentially (for the math challenged, that means by a lot).

They missed some of the points. The most important perhaps was clearing your mind. You need to cultivate a “mind like water,” that is, a mind that restores itself to tranquility soon after a random agitation. It’s what happens when you throw a pebble into a still pond.

You clear your mind by capturing your thoughts in a trusted place. This habit clears your mind—it no longer needs to keep it in random access memory.

Similarly, I just listened to executive coach and author Jerry Colonna talk about writing on his latest book during his annual two-month sabbatical (yes, he has taken a sabbatical that long for 20 years). He talked about productivity influencers instructing us to write 1,000 words/day. He was frustrated. Stressed. Then thought—I’m putting this stress on myself. Why don’t I get out of the way? Don’t stress. Get up. Write some. Go out and hike in the wilderness.

Maybe we have committee work. Or deadlines. Or wallboard repairs in the garage (oops, that’s mine).

Maybe we quit stressing about it. Write what needs to be done. Tackle these items serially. Don’t stress. When there’s an opportune time, work on it.

Cal Newport, author and computer science professor who wrote Deep Work, calls this slow productivity. I say develop workflows and just plug away at things without stressing over them.

Get out of your own way. Do what’s important. Rinse and repeat.

I try to stay on the positive side of looking for ways to live a meaningful life. Sometimes I let my observations of human behavior lead in a more cynical direction, but that’s just me.

Rather than an illustration from the Bible I picked up an idea from an interesting English writer—Oliver Burkeman who writes The Imperfectionist blog and wrote the influential book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals.

Let’s say you go to a nice restaurant. They show you to a table. You and your guest are seated. They hand you an elegantly printed menu. You look over all the options presented and choose. Perhaps you choose an appetizer to start dinner. Then you choose a salad, an entre, and a dessert. Perhaps a bottle of wine to complement the meal.

Now, let’s change the venue. You are at your desk. You need to decide what to do next. You look at your to do list. You know, that list that never stops growing thanks to email and Slack and other computerized incoming enemies.

Do you just take the top item? Do it? Check it off? Then look at the next thing?

Do you look at the list and panic at its size?

How about your email? You read about “inbox zero” but know that it is an unachievable vision of heaven.

Burkeman suggests looking at these things like a menu. Ah, I’m presented with a fine list of options. Which shall I work on now? I will select this one first as an appetizer. Later I’ll select the entre.

Thank you, Oliver. Somehow I feel a little better about the whole productivity thing.