Approaching work is a game, and one that’s fun to play, as long as we know

1. the purpose,
   
2. the boundaries,
   
3. the contents, and
   
4. the rules.
   

When any of those parameters are unclear, we develop unnecessary stress and are ineffective.

a bullet-proof, trusted process is in place which you know you can apply whenever needed to clarify and align your thinking and resources – no matter what’s going on – it’s much easier to experience a heightened sense of freedom and spontaneity

we need to be more practical, efficient, and effective in much of the rest of our day-to-day experience, incorporating business’s best practices into many of the activities that we label as “personal.”

The paradox is that when the mechanics of our day-to-day lives are not handled in an effectively engineered fashion, our ability to actually be personal is diminished.

“What’s next?” by people enthusiastically implementing its practices, my answer was simply, “Read Getting Things Done again!”

is not intended to supplant or change any of the information in Getting Things Done; rather, it builds on its principles and applies them to even greater effect.

You need to feel you have a grip on things and are directing
them appropriately. You need to have enough of a sense of
command of a situation to be able to think constructively beyond
survival, and then, when you can think about what you’re doing, you
need to feel like there is direction and meaning to your focus and
investment of resources.

You don’t have to commit to some major “system implementation” to find great merit in understanding a particular technique from any one of the sections.
The whole is greater than the sum of the parts,
many people will resist utilizing any of these methods if they believe they are all necessarily tied together.

people who have embraced the GTD model seem to fall into three basic categories:

1. Those who think they got it, but didn’t really get it.
   
2. Those who got some of it and realize they didn’t really apply it like they should.
   
3. Those who really got it, and really implemented it to an “advanced” level.
   

Simply having
the device available is an “assumed affirmation”—it tees up a part of
your awareness to be more focused on potential value.

You are
“acting as if” there might be value, and that, in and of itself, will likely
serve as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

You could never know enough to know,
in the moment, that what you are doing in the moment is the perfect
thing to do. In this world there is no magic formula that can be
trusted to eliminate all doubt, nor will there ever be. But there are
very real and practical things we can do that can minimize those
risks and maximize our willingness and capability to engage.

First of all, the concepts work, in an understandable and logical
way.
Second, they are easily implemented, by anyone, at any time,
with common tools everyone has.
Third, the problems that GTD addresses, and the awareness of
them, continue to grow steadily and globally.
Fourth, the model corresponds to something deeper and more
intuitive that resonates in the human psyche at many levels.

I sought to
discover self-management techniques that worked and then
examined why they worked.

believed that if I could identify the
principles that underlay the effectiveness of a particular technique, I
could then apply those principles in an infinite number of ways with
any number of techniques and methods

The nature of computing is to make
things easier, faster, more powerful, and more coherent—in other
words, to help get more done with less effort. Maximize output with
minimum input is the essence of both productivity improvement and
GTD principles, so it would seem natural that people attracted to the
world of computers would gravitate to ideas that line up with those
interests.

there are no leaks, no bugs, and no ambiguous or
overlooked elements in the prescriptions of GTD. The model gives
you the formula about what to do with anything and everything you
might encounter in daily life—how to accept, evaluate, integrate,
organize, and reassess it accordingly.

Because what I teach is actually not a
system but a systematic approach, it can be adapted to take
advantage of many of the features of software applications that
have seldom been used before.

Perhaps the best way to understand why GTD works so effectively
is to think, design-wise, about the elimination of drag.

The individuals who hire our coaches to work with
them on improving work flow are

typically already the top producers,
most effective leaders, and most efficient people. Why?

It is this
group that is characteristically most aware of the negative
consequences of system hindrance and drag.

You don’t have to buy any special product or learn any new skills to
begin to “do GTD” instantly. Virtually everything in the process
involves familiar behaviors that are both simple and rooted in basic
common sense. The only specific requirements are something to
write with, a mind that works sufficiently, and a place that can hold
the lists you create.

A key reason for the continuing growth of GTD is that its
techniques are based on fundamental, universal human principles—

huge numbers of people are increasingly
experiencing greater amounts of stress, a sense of loss of control,
and an inability to focus sufficiently. In response to that situation, a
recognition of the need for regaining our equilibrium is growing
worldwide.

Ultimately what we desire is more freedom, not more work. At the
same time we want to be capable of dealing with surprise, which is
occurring more frequently than ever before.

What we have, in short,
is a desperate need to learn how to manage—not information but
rather what things mean and how they all relate to each other.

“What is it that’s new, David, in the world of
technology, communication, and information that’s causing so much
stress?”

simple—“Nothing’s new except how
frequently everything is new.”

Change always produces some form of stress, for our entire world
is designed to maintain stasis.

even the most positive changes often create significant pressures
and pains. They require the recalibration of relationships and self-
images, and force the upheaval of familiar structures and patterns.

If, on the other
hand, you are not up to that task, you’ll feel like you’re drowning in a
sea of confusion and shifting commitments of focus.

time management and information
management.

You
can’t really manage time; time just is. What you can manage is
yourself— your focus and your actions. Time is what creates the
awareness of constraint, which then forces the real issue, which
involves where and when you allocate your resources. When you
are fully and optimally self-managed, time actually disappears.
You’re just engaged. There’s no sense of lack, conflict, or imbalance
in your experience.

the data of nature are
fundamentally self-evident:

A piece of datum like an e-mail, however, is a lot
more obtuse, as it involves opening it, reading it, interpreting and
evaluating it, and integrating all these subtle inputs and variables into
a coherent whole.

People were once thought to be either
wired to be creative and innovative, or not. Wrong. There actually is
an innovation process. If someone follows the appropriate
prescription of behaviors, he or she will experience an enhanced
output of creative and innovative ideas and solutions.

Not surprisingly, there is an analogous process for getting things
done—a process that GTD defined.

GTD
approaches the world in much the same way that art, psychology,
and spirituality have: as a framework to understand and experience
new levels and depths of truth and reality.

We typically don’t interact with our world in a preconceived, linear,
logical, top-down manner. We certainly are capable of doing that
kind of thinking and analyzing, but we are usually forced to confront
a somewhat different reality, one in which things happen that don’t fit
into clear and rational categories.

We do seem, in a very broad sense, to have a drive, an impulse,
something very basic that motivates and guides us, from the inside
out. But for most people, most of the time, that drive does not offer
a very conscious and objective plan. If you review your life, you may
discover that you indeed have had some sort of direction all along,
but it probably wasn’t clear-cut and obvious as you were moving
down the path.

What was true, certainly, is that you were engaged in a constant
stream of experiences—a vast majority of which were unplanned
and unexpected. But you quickly made meaning out of those
experiences, that is, you created a relationship to their content.
Somehow all along there was a connection between your own
internal blueprint and what you encountered in the world.

Assuming that we seek improvements in how we do what we do,
then choosing tools and techniques that start with, incorporate, and
support this vision of our lives makes for the most productive course
of action. GTD deals equally with an incorporation of all the inputs
from external sources, and a sensitivity to and recognition of any
and all internal directions and impulses. And it doesn’t demand that
you have any of it figured out when you begin. We relate with our
world by accepting, clarifying, sorting, reflecting, and engaging; GTD
simply recognizes that underlying formula for the human experience,
makes it more conscious, and allows you to leverage that
awareness in increasingly dynamic ways.

We all have enough to
do—we’ve all committed to way more than fifteen of us could
possibly finish or fulfill.

The assumptions of this model are that
you’re already endowed with all the creativity, motivation, inspiration,
and intelligence that you’ll ever need. You simply need to sharpen
your ability to recognize what exists, at deeper and more expanded
levels, eliminate whatever obstacles prevent their fullest expression,
and supply yourself with the tools to be able to capture, form, and
express your gifts more fully in the world.

GTD has universal appeal
because there is no agenda it tries to promote, other than providing
the best and easiest ways to return a sense of control and
perspective to your life, in case you’ve slipped behind in either of
them.

GTD has a certain sophistication in providing a context that always
seems to give you a map that can reveal what lies ahead of
wherever you are. Again, remember that it is not a system, but a
systematic approach. Systems will always have a limited life span

as form follows function, the desired results will continually
change, in quality and quantity, and the systems to achieve them
must accordingly be undone and redone.

An approach, however, if it
is the right one, will be adaptable and flexible over time, able to
support new and expanded content.

Everything, and nothing, is sacred.

GTD is also notable for its subtlety because, as simple as it is, it
often touches into very delicate areas of your involvements and
interests.

If, for
instance, you are bold enough to “collect” an issue like “dad and
hospice?” in your in-basket, mature enough to decide an outcome,
and forthright enough to choose a next action to take toward that
outcome, you will have applied GTD successfully and probably
accessed levels in your consciousness that are almost unfathomable
in their sensitivity and complexity.

stages: 1
Collect
Process
Organize
Review
Do

the most effective way to
gather, think about, organize, and manage the inventory of all the
“stuff ” that we feel we should, want, or need to do something about
in our daily lives.

Our mind naturally advances through a five-stage process to take
an intention into reality, no matter how large or small the event: 2

Purpose and principles
Vision
Brainstorming
Organizing
Next actions

We develop an intention, or purpose, and our thinking and
behaviors toward it are shaped by our values. We next create a
vision about what that purpose, fulfilled, would be like. Then, to
relieve the pressure that the still-unreal vision creates vis-à-vis
current reality, we automatically start generating potentially relevant
ideas about how to achieve it (brainstorming). We’ll then sort those
ideas into components, sequences, and priorities (organizing), which
then gives us a focus for what to actually do (next actions) to start to
make them happen.

“Management” by definition is the allocation of limited
resources, which requires making good choices—in other words,
prioritizing.

Purpose and principles
• Vision
• Goals
• Areas of responsibility
• Projects
• Actions

everything I have uncovered and
taught touches on some aspect of increasing control and
perspective—no matter where, with whom, or under what
circumstances.

GTD is primarily about focus—
eliminating the things that distract it and giving you tools that
facilitate your ability to direct that focus toward what you need, on
the way you need it, and on when you need to do it.

Similarly, if you’ve lost track of your commitments at all the
various horizons on which you operate, regaining those perspectives
will be critical to have the most appropriate focus.

Hence the second
prime area for mastery: creating the right reflective activities for
reviewing and renewing what has your attention at multiple horizons.

All of this comes together in physical action: what you decide to do
at any given point in time. Physical actions are the end result of the
five stages of gaining control, as well as the final operational
expression of all the levels of life and work in which you are
engaged.

“emotional intelligence,”

the ability to monitor and manage feelings
has a direct correlation to personal effectiveness and professional
results.

mental intelligence! We need to
fully understand, manage, and enhance our thinking process. It’s not
that people don’t have the capability to think; they just don’t do so,
or they don’t think as effectively as they could, because their mental
plumbing is clogged.

control of your thinking process will
have more weight in such situations. How we feel certainly will affect
how we think, but the opposite case is more often true. Defining
“thinking” in its broadest sense to include any kind of focus and
imagery held in the mind, in addition to the cognitive process of logic
and rational judgment, means that your feelings will typically be
more driven by the thoughts you hold than the other way around.

thinking is what happens when intelligence marries
intentions—I’m using my mind,

to make distinctions and decisions about and toward something.

If
you have ever changed your mind, there is obviously some part of
you that transcends it and is capable of creative and consciously
focused thinking. The mind is a great servant, but a terrible master.

Your mind will remind you of all kinds of things when you can do
nothing about them, and merely thinking about your concerns does
not at all equate to making any progress on them. More often than
not, it seems that people are having thoughts, though not really
thinking about what they’re thinking about—at least not in an
effective way that resolves, advances, or manages the content.

None of us was born thinking, “What’s true here? What are we trying
to accomplish? What’s the next action? Who’s doing it?”

inefficiencies that result from the psychic noise,

sufficient breathing room for the reflective, creative process that
some are savvy enough to recognize as strategically important for
their knowledge workers.

One of the great benefits of GTD is in providing guidance to
discern the difference between creative thinking and ineffective
concern,

eliminate the negative aspect
while opening the gates for

the positive one

“mind like
water”—an

Power = Concentration
Concentrated energy creates the most bang and has the biggest
resulting impact. If you can’t concentrate, it’s impossible to maximize
your effectiveness

Concentration = Elimination of Distraction

We can probably
as easily let our own thoughts run down miscellaneous random
pathways as have them knocked off course by others.

Distraction = Mismanaged Commitments

where
your focus went was to keep a commitment you have—something
you feel you need or want to finish or handle.

has not been
sufficiently managed.

decisions unmade and/or reminders
untracked

Genuinely disruptive distractions occur when your attention is
taken by something,

something you’d rather not have to
be thinking about at that particular moment.

Your Mind Cannot Manage Commitments Well

When you encounter the dead ones, when the electricity goes out!
This is not smart. If your brain had any innate intelligence
whatsoever, it would only bother you about batteries when you
passed the right-sized live ones in a store!

If your mind actually had a mind,
you wouldn’t need a system.

The most obvious priorities in
your mental stacks tend to be whatever is latest (most recent input)
and loudest (most emotionally charged content).

Until There’s a Better System, the Mind Can’t Let Go
In its normal operation your conscious mind lets go of everything but
what you’re focused on at the moment. The less-than-conscious
part hangs on to everything that has not been recorded in some
external system.

You can fool others, but never your own head. It
knows for certain whether or not you have written something down
that you need to do, and whether you can be trusted to look at it at
the right time.

either of those factors is missing, it will hang on
tight.

How to Relieve the Pressure of Broken Self-agreements

you must
know that:
• You have captured, clarified, and organized your
commitments, at all horizons, and
• You will consciously engage with them as often as you
need to.

why has almost everyone done the calendar thing, but almost
no one has moved everything else in their life into a similar zone,

First, the data that is entered onto a calendar has already been
thought through and determined; it’s been translated down to the
physical action level.

Second, you know
where those kinds of actions need to be parked (calendar), and it’s a
familiar and available tool.

And third, if you lose track of calendar
actions and commitments, you will encounter obvious and rapid
negative feedback from people you consider important. If you make
appointments with yourself and don’t keep them, it’s one thing;

The data to track is not clear; there is no familiar or
standard system yet to track it; and the feedback from something
slipping through the cracks is often not immediately obvious and

painful.

if you don’t do that brainstorming, there’s no instant
negative result.

Finish Your Thinking

they leave nothing else to be
determined or decided.

most of the
commitments people have still need decisions to be made about
them.

have not yet advanced to the “runway” with real,
physical, visible actions defined for them.

The problem with this kind of “stuff ” is that when it pops into your
mind, it may seem potentially so amorphous, complex, or
ambiguous that you stop thinking about it right there.

You’re afraid
that there’s too much to consider, and you don’t have the time or
energy to do so at the moment.

you don’t need to understand, solve, or completely plan these
things to get them out of your head. “Finish your thinking” simply
means to decide what the next physical thing to do is to move them
forward from where they are.

You need to
think about your stuff more than you think, but not as much as
you’re afraid you might.

when I
have the time and energy to do, I don’t have the time and energy to
think about what to do—that needs to already be done.

Perspective Is Your Most Valuable Asset

te

be in confident control if you have
the right perspective.

Perspective is key, but it is a very slippery
commodity. It can be lost in an instant.

GTD principles and methods are designed to maximize your ability
to maintain perspective and get it back when you lose it.

dependence on a concrete process about some often un-concrete
“stuff” to disentangle our psyche from all the things that can get
wrapped up around it

The Need for an Extended Mind

If we can keep our focus to a single task, we’re cool.

The problem
arises when there are not clear and clean edges between two or
more problems we are trying to think about.

The calendar is perhaps the most obvious demonstration of a self-
developed system for extending the mind,

trusting that signs on the freeway

our clocks and watches

gauges on our car’s dashboard will let us know when to get gas

the fundamental principle governing all
of them still holds true—if you can decide what, specifically,
something means to you and what you intend to do about it, if
anything; if you can use a placeholder as a reminder of what you
need to attend to; and if you can trust that you have the habit to
engage with the system appropriately; there is no reason for any
outstanding commitments to plague your consciousness.

people don’t seem to be able to
automatically figure out how to handle the many more ambiguous
and complex data we must deal with in an efficient and effective
fashion. That’s why models for achieving control and perspective, as
commonsense as they may seem on first encounter, need to be
understood and practiced;

From time to time you will experience yourself either feeling out of
control or lacking direction—or both. If you didn’t, you’d probably be
stale.

you will realize you are somehow and to
some degree “off ”—and you need to get back “on.”

In the simplest terms, there are only two things

get organized and get focused. And doing
those in either order is fine—you can get things together and then
decide what’s important, or set your priorities and get organized
toward that.

reaching and maintaining that balance is a lot easier said
than done.

“get organized” should be re-
conceived to “get control,” for which getting organized is only a part
of the solution—and not the first one,

“set
priorities” needs to be amplified to “clarify our objectives at the
appropriate horizon,” which will entail much more thought than
simply formulating a strategic plan.

the method can’t get any
simpler than what you will read here. Chances are likely, if it does, it
won’t work. And if it’s more complex, it’s probably overkill, and will
also fail.

a system has just
enough structure to facilitate expansion and freedom but not too
much to constrain it.

If I’m not using or needing or
wanting a map, five things are true:

1. I know where I am.
   
2. I know where I want to go.
   
3. I know how to get from where I am to where I want to
   

go.

1. I haven’t run into a detour or unforeseen change in the
   

route.

1. I’m aware of all the possible interesting, cool, creative
   

options available on my route.

Anytime at least one of those factors is absent, I want to get my
hands on a map.

Feeling lost is a consistent knowledge-worker phenomenon. When
you have to think and constantly rethink precisely to know what to
do, given the slippery changing nature of work today, it is incredibly
easy to lose your way.

Loss of control and perspective is the natural price you will pay for
being creative and productive. The trick is not how to prevent this
happening, but how to shorten the time you stay in an unsettled
state.

The potential double meaning of “making it all work”

What if we considered everything we did
as “work” instead of restricting that term to what we do for money or
to what we do that’s hard?

What if relaxing while on the beach was
viewed as much as “work” as digging a posthole or drafting a
proposal?

The definition of work I will use in this book is quite universal:
anything you want to get done that’s not done yet.

It is interesting that the word work often has a pejorative spin, as
in “That’s not fun, that’s work.”

getting to the state in which we can trust
that what we’re doing at any point in time is what we think we should
be doing.

we want to get even beyond that to simply doing
what we’re doing, with our full attention and energy, and operating
from a sense of clarity and self-trust.

Most of us live
in a world in which we’re not even sure what all our options are,
much less which one would serve us best.

Peter Drucker

“knowledge work,” the
toughest task is actually defining what your work is.

Making It All Work is about the work you have to do to know the
work you have to do when the work you have to do doesn’t tell you
the work you have to do.

there is an inherent fallacy in affirming that “life”
and “work” are mutually exclusive spheres.

when you
are “in your zone”—when time has disappeared and you’re simply
“on” with whatever you’re doing—there is no distinction in your
psyche at that moment between “work” and “personal.”

Nor is there any sense of
overwhelm or lingering doubt about what you’re doing.

You’re usually only aware of balance when
you don’t have it.

The two keys ingredients for making it all work are:
Control
Perspective

But the
two activities remain very connected, in that without an organized
kitchen, it will be very challenging to stay focused on the dinner

itself; likewise, an insufficient focus on the recipes, the various
components of the dinner event itself, and the plan for deploying
them will allow the situation to quickly get out of control again.

There are five stages to achieving control and six Horizons of
Focus that lead to the gaining of perspective.

Because they are so interdependent, your productivity will only be as
good as the weakest link in that chain.

A matrix constructed on the axes of control and perspective

Perspective
↑

Control

these labels are best used as warnings for a course correction, when you drift as a result of your exploration and forward motion.

syndromes—Responder,
Implementer, and Visionary.

VICTIM/RESPONDER

describes a person (or a
situation) who has little control and little perspective. In its most
negative expression, it characterizes a Victim—someone who is
helpless, at the mercy of outside forces.

you are effectively in a storm—somewhere between a mild squall
and a major hurricane—operating in a crisis mode.

you are simply dealing with
only the latest and loudest.

letting the not-yet-critical stuff
mount up in heaps, dealing exclusively with the tasks you have to do
in the moment.

the bigger the pile of unprocessed stuff,
the more difficult it will be to navigate clearly and efficiently through
it, and the more likely something will turn into a crisis from neglect.

In its milder and perhaps more insidious form, and when
experienced over an extended period of time, this diminished sense
of control and perspective can give rise to a kind of numbness, out
of sheer emotional self-protection.

On the Positive Side

Being out of control and out of focus is not inherently a bad thing. In

No matter how much your life and work are up to par, you will
have to face at least momentary “leaks” in systems that will have to
be reengineered to allow you to return to an even keel.

the
more energetic and creative your endeavors are, the more likely that

a larger portion of your time and energies will be invested in doing
catch-up.

we may be in one quadrant about some issue and in a totally
different one for others.

Whether I face this challenge as Victim or
Responder will depend on whether I’m actively engaged in getting
myself back to my zone, having integrated the new input and
recalibrated my psyche accordingly.

MICROMANAGER/IMPLEMENTER

If as a rule you operate with a high control factor but lack
perspective

you will likely place an inordinate emphasis on structure,
process, and system—the characteristic traits of a Micromanager.

tendency to overorganize, trying to maintain more
control than is really necessary to get where you’re going. Form, in
other words, will overtake function.

proverbial bean-counter, the
financial guy who, if he wields too much power, strangles a company
by cutting off investment in innovation, design, and research.

Publicly traded
companies always risk long-term growth and survival when they are
too focused on controlling their stock price by managing only toward
the next quarterly earnings report.

Another typical example of this
sort of thinking is the person who, instead of having nothing well
organized, has nothing, well organized!

This perspective often creates the ironic situation of being too
controlled actually meaning being out of control.

How much is “enough” structure is a tricky question.

Day-
Timer featured dated pages with fifteen-minute increments because
it was designed by an attorney who needed a good way to track
fifteen-minute chunks of billable time.

The “ABC” priority-coding
system became popular as a way to train a workforce that was
being introduced to discretionary time.

Daily To-do lists made sense
when the world moved slowly enough to ensure that they could
remain valid all day, and your environment was quiet enough for
people to be able to pay attention to them.

Even the raft of sophisticated software designers who have
attempted to create the “latest and greatest” GTD implementation
applications have often overshot the bounds of real-life functionality.
Most of them missed the mark by requiring too much mental effort
to make life fit into their supplied forms.

On the Positive Side

We do have to have some degree of structure, and we must
constantly be able to “fill in the blanks,” that is, execute.

to get anything done, we must ultimately “complete the form” by
arranging physical assets as needed.

The very process of taking
actions requires some predetermination and design.

Realistically, a majority of our days are
actually spent doing things that either we or someone else has laid
out for us to accomplish.

There are also times when your energies should primarily be
focused on processes and systems—on

When you’re in the structure and fulfillment mode, you can’t also
be in the visioning and outcome-thinking frame of mind.

If you really operate professionally at the
most sophisticated level, you may be able to quickly refer to your
company’s values in your mind while you’re chatting with a problem
employee. And if you’re really tuned in and lined up with your life,
you may manage to keep your long-term vision for a retirement
lifestyle in mind while you’re fixing the coffee grinder.

in
reality we all lose some degree of perspective every time we act or
engage ourselves in anything, at any level. When you focus in, you
filter out: that is the very nature of our consciousness.

The key here is maintaining the capability to unhook from and/or
change the form or structure that’s guiding you, as soon as it has
served its purpose. Knowing when to refocus from another
viewpoint, and when to sacrifice a system that has begun to
constrain expansion and expression, is a sign of mastership.

CRAZY MAKER/VISIONARY

they have too many
ideas in proportion to the amount getting done, they take on too
many commitments vis-à-vis available resources, and they make
everyone around them nuts by random and uncontrolled directives.

In its extreme form this is the totally self-distracted state, with an
inability to hold a focus for any appropriate length of time—the

In its milder form it is expressed as
overcommitment: your psychic bank account is overdrawn, and you
have made more agreements with yourself and others than you
have the ability to keep.

This can range from promising too much to
too many people to simply allowing yourself to collect far more to
read on your coffee table (and all over your house) than you could
ever possibly finish.

getting distracted by and
attracted to the most glittering and glamorous thing in front of me,
especially if it’s “warm and fresh”—whether

On the Positive Side

Of course we can never really stop visioning.

we
are always imaging outcomes and goals.

There are also times when, in order to stay on course for yourself,
you will simply need to unhook from organization and execution and
get a little crazy,

CAPTAIN AND COMMANDER

energies and
focus directed by an internal rather than an external source. This is
the state of flow, of being in your zone,

committed to a course and prepared to make the slightest
corrections that may be required.

there is no sense of overwhelm, no
distinction between personal and professional, no dilemma of a life/
work balance. You are doing in a state of being, and can simply be in
an active and dynamic way.

This state doesn’t seem to be dependent on the content
or substance of what you are doing, nor even if you particularly like
doing it.

That doesn’t mean you can gain access to this positive
experience by just doing anything

The secret lies not
so much in what you’re doing, but in how you are engaged with what
you’re doing.

the optimal way to be engaged is to learn to walk
the thin line between function and form, vision and implementation,
stretch and structure.

Many Visionary/Crazy Maker types are deathly afraid of and
resistant to any form of “getting organized” because they equate it
with their opposite quadrant—the Micromanager.

Implementer/Micromanager types are
likewise repelled by any invitation to “make it up” and create their
ideal scenarios, without sufficient evidence to support the possibility
of actually achieving it.

They’re afraid they’ll be thrown into the

maelstrom of the Crazy Maker, endangering the stability of
everything and everyone around them.

not, however, a zero-sum or either-or situation, though
many people act as if it is. There is no freedom without discipline, no
vision without a form, no structure without a function.

On the Negative Side

It would appear that there’s no downside to being in this quadrant,
for there’s nowhere further to go in terms of managing yourself. That
would be true, if this were a simple, one-dimensional model.

these quadrants can be highly situation-
dependent as well as multilayered.

you can
get into a rhythm and pattern that’s working, and potentially be
ignoring something you should be doing to keep it going that way.

What future crisis do you need to be preventing? What new vision
should you be developing and evaluating to keep you fresh? What
new structures and processes might you be researching now to
handle the increased flow that will result from your success?

Theoretically, if you are Captain and Commander, you’ll also be
paying attention to those preventive maintenance and development
responsibilities . . . and on at least a subtle level you can’t really be
fully in your zone if some part of you is aware of those needs and
they’re not being addressed.

The Matrix Is Relative, Situational, and Fluid

you may have certain areas and projects under
control, but not others.

Your profile could also vary by horizon.

you can also move from one
quadrant to another very quickly within one particular universe.

The first step in improving what’s going on
is acceptance of what is going on.

Paying Attention to What Has Your Attention

what usually most needs your attention is what
most has your attention.

Things are on your mind because you are consciously putting your
focus on them or because your attention is being grabbed.

In the
latter case your thinking is being pulled toward something that in
some way needs your engagement,

greater control or perspective to release its
hold

If you don’t pay attention to what has your attention, it will take
more of your attention than it deserves.

not to consider them
distractions but rather to handle them as a ringing phone—a call
coming from a situation. If it goes unanswered, it will continue to call.
If you do pick it up, however, and then deal with the incoming
message sufficiently, it doesn’t need to call again.

everything is equally important. Everything, that is, that
grabs your attention.

Ignoring it
is an option, but not a good one. If it will go away in time, put it away
now. If it won’t, get it into your system

you will be prevented from
moving into Captain and Commander mode whenever you don’t pay
attention to what has your attention.

It doesn’t mean that everything
hooking your focus is equal in substance and potential meaning.

It does mean that you must responsibly unload and identify
all the vectors that are pulling on the situation and the psyche in
order to be able to address substance and meaning most effectively.

resist the whole process and feel even guiltier than you did to begin
with.

if you’re not sure where to start, start with what is. Get it on
the table.

“Okay, so what’s true right now?”

As
opposed to putting forward a starting point at some idealized place
of “priorities” or “strategy” or “values,” which from one point of view
would be where you “should” start, we suggest that you begin with
where you are.

If you don’t deal with those effectively, they will undermine your
recognition of the bigger stuff or at least diminish your ability to
focus on them clearly.

The fundamental principle is identifying
what’s true, now—the information that is potentially relevant in the
context in which you’re focused.

This process involves isolating in some conscious, objective way
what has the attention of a person, a group, or a situation.

about
acknowledging what is pulling or pushing on it.

everything I categorize as important to collect
already has been—it’s just been gathered up into some place in the
psyche instead of being kept available for objective review and
analysis

The first thing to do, when you are feeling in any way out of sorts,
is to clear the air by grabbing hold of whatever is pulling on your
focus.

if it’s on your mind, write it down or record it
somehow in a concrete way.

It doesn’t matter how you capture these
thoughts, as long as you get them out of your head and have them
all in some way easily accessible for review.

The same process should be adopted by teams and other
relevant groups of people, though the data will need to be collected
in a form that can be shared by all members.

you
identify anything in life or work that you think might need to be
different or considered for whatever reason and create at least a
crude placeholder for it in one delimited location.

Many projects are self-evident, and if you did a mind sweep, you
probably identified many of them immediately:

But there are in fact usually many more topics on
someone’s mind at this level than he would normally capture when
he thought about “projects,”

The biggest culprits that elude objective capture at this level are
the subjects that you consider “problems,” which you have yet to
recognize as projects.

Few people
are ready and willing initially to acknowledge all of those kinds of
distractions and identify them as situations to complete or resolve.

This next horizon usually contains numerous concerns that are
lurking in the psyche somewhere,

if you think about your job description at a high level, you’ll
probably come up with several “hats” you wear—you’re probably
responsible for several areas, not just one.

Expanding that view across your entire life, you can isolate areas
of interest and responsibility that you have some commitment to
maintain at least implicitly at some internalized level or standard—

things bouncing around in your mind
about what you need or want to be accomplishing in the future.

Personally, there might be some things that really need to happen
by a certain deadline in the next few months or within a couple of
years, and those often don’t show up in your mind until you focus on
the particular topic they concern.

Concerns that have your attention at this level are not always
previous commitments that you need to take stock of.

aspirations and inspirations that you may
have not paid a lot of mind to, because of so many other distractions
in your daily life.

You may also have areas in your life about
which you have been thinking you should set some goals—like

Even if such goals haven’t been clearly articulated, the

question of setting them already has a piece of your psyche
attached.

success—things to grab out of your
head can range from major and obvious issues and opportunities to
those of a much more nuanced nature.

This is the arena of major, defining matters of your life experience. If
you have a solid sense that you are fulfilling your purpose and that
what you value as truly important has its appropriate place in your
life, there’s nothing you need to collect from or attend to about this
horizon,

But if there is a
matter that is not clear or aligned, it will be difficult for you to attain
the “mind like water” state,

if you are bothered by the fact that your key talents
and gifts are not really being recognized and utilized—by yourself
and by others—that concern will gnaw at some part of your mind

until and unless you create an appropriate set of actions

if some disruption
in your world is causing you discomfort because it is disturbing to
your principles, you won’t be able to have a totally clear head until
that is addressed.

the more sensitive and deeply rooted these areas
are, the more powerful and positive the payoff will be if they are
captured and dealt with in the same systematic manner as “buy cat
food.”

Many people are resistant to capturing and dealing with these
more in-depth areas because they tend to want to have the answers
before they’re willing to acknowledge that they have the questions.

they want to know their life purpose before they
recognize that they don’t know precisely what it is.

well—they want to know how to
achieve or finish something before they admit that there’s something
to achieve or finish.

The key is simply to become familiar and
comfortable with the idea that it’s not necessary to know anything in
its fullness in order to get control of it.

What’s important is knowing
the next step to take to make progress toward that clarity.

Many times my projects involve “looking into” something. I don’t
know what I’ll find out, or whether I’ll decide to do anything with it
once I do obtain more information, but I am now engaging, and it
must be in my system in order to get it off my mind.

This is not to say that you must know what your life purpose is, or
even that you should necessarily have one.

You can still feel
absolutely clear

you—as long as that no-thoughts-or-cares-about-it judgment is a
genuine one.

if you do ponder those kinds of questions or concerns,
they are grist for the mill. When in doubt, write it down. Put it in your
in-basket. Trust that there is going to be great value in moving this
kind of content into your systematic processing. You can always
dismiss it later,

because it’s not a matter you can do anything about;

at least put
the question or thought on hold until at some point in the future you
can revisit it properly.

Often the incomplete
energies and loose edges of our lives are manifested only when we
are willing to drop back into a more reflective mode and take note of
what seems to want to express itself only through a more stream-of-
consciousness modality.

One is a kind of ad hoc running diary of events to
record various aspects of my current situation in my workaday
world; the other is more inner and spiritually focused.

mundane journaling I use for much the same purpose as I do
“unloading” to my wife at the end of the day, recounting the events—
usually the good stuff and the challenging stuff—that are still in
some way on my mind.

The journal is just a way I can do that by
myself.

for my more
reflective writing I use a fountain pen and an elegant leather-bound
personal journal.

for me that approach
helps me dig a little deeper and encourages me to be a little more
self-disclosing.

spiritual teachings is the
power of pure observation—that the simple act of noticing what’s
going on, with as much neutrality and objectivity as possible, is the
first key to inner freedom.

more indirect process than the other capturing activities,
writing in a journal or diary is a great example of this first and critical
stage of getting back “on” in case things have slipped.

If your focus on any project or situation seems scattered and
disjointed,

the ideal solution
to get your thinking under control is to brainstorm.

Now, we’re all generally brainstorming much of the time—we’re
pointing our focus at some object and generating all kinds of
associated ideas about and around

specific technique of recording random thoughts about
something outside the mind in a concrete, viewable fashion.

Essentially, brainstorming is mind-sweeping on
a particular theme,

If you have a useful idea,
leaving it in your head causes a part of your internal computer to try
to keep track of it. That then diminishes to some degree your mind’s
ability to process other thoughts

Another of the ways to achieve immediate payoffs from this
confront-what’s-true phase is to clean up.

saying—“When in doubt,
clean a drawer”—a

Though the sense of losing control in this area
can be rather unobtrusive and creep up on you only slowly over
time, a clean-up is one of the more obvious ways that you can feel a
quick surge of the Captain and Commander energy.

What’s important here is that you do have
some standard, no matter what it is, so that when things begin to
sneak in that don’t really belong where they are,

you’ll have a way of assessing the
situation.

Instead of maneuvering in an environment with freedom
and clarity, when disorder takes over you start to avoid it.

These spaces are
now controlling you, since what you resist sticks to you.

we accumulate all kinds of things that are functional when we obtain
them, but they lose that functionality over time. When they reach
that state, though, they don’t throw themselves away.

Crap self-
generates but it doesn’t self-destruct.

Mind-sweeping, brainstorming, and cleaning up all can easily be
applied in collaborative situations.

The resulting
content and how we experience it is different from what it would
have been had we simply combined our individual captures. There is
apparently a “collaborative psychic RAM” space,

healing effect that seems to be magnified
when two or more are involved together in that clearing process.

Capturing and objectifying what’s true,

is a simple but often profound technique to acquire
and practice. If you ignore those potential distractions, as slight as
they might seem,

store them on some shelf in your
mind, you do so at the peril of losing some measure of control of
your world.

know that viewed in the light of the many more “important” things
going on in the daily lives of most people, an activity like

simply organizing,

may seem like the last thing in the world that should ever be
a priority. How much difference could that possibly make, in the
larger scheme of things?

You may think that those minor
infringements of clear space are not generating significant stress.
But my point is, if it feels so gratifying when you actually do bring up
the rear guard by capturing those subtle tugs on your psyche, what
were you feeling before?

this sort of organizational thinking could be
construed as obsessive, and the line indeed between keeping things
optimally clear and in present time and being inappropriately
distracted by incompletion may be a subtle one.

you can start to lose control
if you try to maintain too much control.

Keeping things clean and
organized becomes a disorder only when it prevents you from
paying attention to more serious incompletions and distractions.

Usually that sort of out-of-balance syndrome is an
overcompensation for the lack of control in more significant areas.

because you will probably never have everything
captured, defined, and categorized completely, you will need to pick
your battles.

I only turn my attention to getting it
back to a state of equilibrium when the number of important tools or
supplies that I can’t find causes my frustration level to rise to a
certain critical point.

it’s almost never totally pristine.

My objective here is not to judge the failure to capture things that
have part of our psyche as either right or wrong—it’s simply to point
out that those distractions do affect our energy.

People experience great relief, individually and in a group context,
in simply knowing that all the puzzle pieces are on the table.

if
we ever discovered that even a single piece was lost or missing

it undermined the winability of the activity and therefore the
fun of the game.

it was the first time
in his life that he realized he didn’t have to do them all at once, that
he could only do one thing at a time, and that he could actually
permit himself to not do anything on that list if, in the moment, it
wasn’t appropriate.

One of the most significant advantages of acquiring the capture
habit is the help it provides in dealing with interruptions.

A majority of
the organizational environments I have seen have the interrupt-itis
disease, which tends to go along with meeting-itis,

one of the main reasons people are so bothered
by interruptions is that they lack good capturing skills and tools.

where you leave off. In the hectic world of work you will often have

Taking notes while you’re engaged in tasks can serve a
tremendously valuable function in enabling you to keep track of
where you leave off.

when you are on the phone, have pen in hand and
jot notes about the call. You may simply throw the notes away when
you hang up because nothing came out of the conversation you
need to act upon.

If you accept the idea that externalizing what has your attention is a
worthwhile pursuit, then it’s constructive to ensure that you have the
right gear and some good procedures to best take advantage of the
principle.

keeping them in the mind is such an ingrained habit that we
need all the help we can get to switch that pattern. Our minds have
a seductive way of convincing us that what we’re thinking about,
while we’re thinking it, is so clear and obvious that we’ll never forget
it and will have easy access to it exactly when we need it.

you need to apply “mental intelligence,” realizing that you
are actually much smarter than your mind, and so you must manage
what it is accepting and creating.

recognizes the mind’s limitations and leads you to utilize the
equipment you need to accept and work within them.

Collection tools are likely different from those you would use to
organize.

when you
are grabbing thoughts on the fly you don’t want to be constrained by
structure.

It is not a mark of senility, but rather of sophistication, that the
older you get, the more often the good ideas you get don’t happen
where they will ultimately be used.

You’ll be buying bread at the
store when you think of something that you need to bring up at the
staff meeting; when you’re in a staff meeting, you’ll remember that
you need bread.

the more senior you are in your job, the more your good
ideas about your work won’t actually happen at work.

You will not
likely, in the heat of battle of day-to-day activities, have the capability
to be open to the creative, out-of-the-box thinking

the more constantly available your capturing device, the more
it will get used, the greater the flow of thoughts and ideas you will
allow yourself, and the easier it will be to create value whenever and
wherever you happen to be.

It’s a good idea to keep notepads and pens wherever you have a
telephone, and wherever you’re likely to need to remind yourself
about anything, such as in your workshop, on your boat, or in your
car (while you’re waiting, not driving!).

Anytime I find myself situated
somewhere for longer than fifteen minutes, and there’s a flat writing
surface available, I will take out a legal pad and pen.

if I feel any resistance to writing something down, simply
because I just don’t have the tools handy, I won’t do it. Better to
make capturing as easy as possible, before you need it.

whiteboards are great tools to have in meeting rooms,
for group brainstorms and planning sessions.

A useful technique is to have a digital camera handy, so that at
the end of a good data-collection or organizing session, someone
can take a picture of the board and e-mail it to the group

No Bad Ideas
Too often people are hesitant to express themselves due to their
fear of judgment or punishment for having an idea that is “wrong,”
stupid, or inappropriate.

On the
personal side, if you resist acknowledging and capturing incomplete
and unhandled items of your own because of your own self-
judgments, you’ll remain in a somewhat psychically constipated
state. You must be willing to admit what you don’t yet feel is under
control before you can deal with it positively.

Overcapture
There’s more than you think in what you think. If you are willing to
step into the very unfamiliar space (for most people) of identifying
and looking at virtually everything that is on your mind, by writing it
down somewhere that you (and potentially others) can see, you’ll be
amazed and inspired by what that process triggers. You’ll take the
conversation to a deeper level, and will see details and creative
additions to the topic you won’t have seen before.

Stream of Consciousness

there’s no end to the value that can
be generated by permission granted to the psyche to express itself,
and range freely, ad infinitum.

No Commitment
The recognition that idea generation is not the same as making
decisions about goals and plans is a critical element

Personally, before
you’re willing to stretch out and express thoughts in areas that are
still unformed and unfamiliar, you must be able to trust that you will
not suffer a negative consequence for having a bad idea.

feel confident that you have a context that gives you the freedom to
ramble,

without a responsibility to commit to or defend them.

“Well, another way to look at this is . . .”

Capturing as a Lifestyle Factor
Writing things down takes intention and some effort, so it has to
become a routine that is followed consistently.

Many
executives like to think of themselves as above such menial tasks as
taking notes, which makes it relatively easy to slip into the “I don’t
need to write it down” mode.

It’s an interesting paradox that people seem to want to keep
things in their head as a way to maintain control of them, not
realizing that such behavior only creates the opposite result.

your mind is not designed to be simultaneously focusing on
more than one topic, and that happens when the input is kept
internal.

If you aren’t yet at the point of clarity, then make that your first goal.
It’s a big waste of time to go through life being unclear about what you
want. Most people wallow way too long in the state of “I don’t know
what to do.” They wait for some external force to provide them with
clarity, never realizing that clarity is self-created. The universe is waiting
on you, not the other way around, and it’s going to keep waiting
until you finally make up your mind. Waiting for clarity is like being
a sculptor starting at a piece of marble, waiting for the statue within
to cast off the unneeded pieces. Do not wait for clarity to spontaneously
materialize—grab a chisel and get busy!
—Steve Pavlina

“knowledge work athletics”—a

Clarifying stage, you get the opportunity to focus
your attention on what has your attention, so it will stop expending
energy inappropriately.

GTD is fundamentally much

more about mind management than about time management.

Without this crucial stage of thinking and decision-making, making
trusted choices about what to do at any moment in time is nigh
impossible.

as with much of my material, the
goal is to make conscious what is typically instinctive.

What we do
instinctively is for the most part not done as well as it could be if we
approached it with more awareness.

When the productive thinking
process is applied with focus and intention, it creates much more
value. It is also a behavior that you can practice, acquire as a habit,
and then do with great facility.

still seem to resist this all-important
decision-making stage

they are avoiding the determination of meaning.

“Meaning” in this context refers to the relative meaning of the things
we engage with. Is it a subject you care about, and if so, how
exactly do you frame your relationship to it?

“organizer as therapist,” citing
anecdotal evidence of how people had begun to express their
vulnerabilities and core life issues when confronted with how to deal
with the things that they had accumulated around them.

Usually things
remain disorganized when people don’t confront their meaning.

To
actually decide what you’re going to do with or about something
demands that you deal with how you relate to its content, your
agreements about it, and how it fits into the rest of your world.

It is the inventory of things
impinging on our awareness that are still, to some degree, out of
focus.

it is easy for the more subtle
commitments we have at the higher horizons of our life to fade into
the background and continue to gnaw at us.

Problems that haven’t
been turned into projects and actions; dreams and inspirations that
haven’t been acknowledged as consciously as they should be;
changing situations in life and work that haven’t yet been consciously
identified—these represent “stuff

It is a matter of determining the specific meaning of a particular
item for you, and then moving it to the appropriate place for things
that share that meaning

In the first phase
of capturing, a best practice is to avoid doing analysis and decision-
making, so you don’t constrain the gathering process.

But the
second phase is where you put on your self-consulting hat and
determine how to relate to what you’ve identified.

there’s the part that has ideas and
the part that decides what to do about them.

The Visionary part of you operates best with few constraints—it

The in-basket, as a
capturing function, is the perfect tool for this part of your personality.

Don’t hold back—there’s potential gold in there
somewhere!

Don’t worry—
someone else will deal with it!

In fact, that “someone else” who will take the handoffs is a very
different person—namely you, in operation mode!

The stumbling block shows up when you force the Visionary to
make considered decisions and choices or when you demand that
the Implementer expand his thinking and be creative. Both
modalities will short-circuit when faced with those relatively unnatural
acts.

To really gain control, an individual must have an
unfettered ability to maintain a flow of creative thinking and then
have a trusted way to assess and manage the resultant inputs and
outputs.

If you want to
attain what many call the “holy grail of GTD”—having all your in-
basket zones at zero—you must become adept at this part of the
model.

After we accept the information about what’s going on (capture),
we then create a relationship with it.

this is the
essential thinking that has to be applied to the physical inputs we
allow, plus the random ideas, thoughts, and perspectives that show
up when we approach a problem, project, or situation. Some of
those inputs and thoughts will be more useful than others, some will
need to be reassessed later, and some will be irrelevant after all.

We tend to automatically notice things in our world that some part
of our psyche has programmed us to regard as meaningful.

Once a potentially meaningful
item gets into our world, however, it is seldom as clear on first

encounter as it needs to be, to create closure with it internally. We

in order to relieve
the pressure that is created by the bombardment of recognized
“stuff ”—clarifying, organizing, and reviewing it.

most people want to move on to “organize”
before they extract exactly what needs to be organized.

“What is it? What do you think you should do with it?”

As obvious and commonsense as that last question probably
sounds to you, you might be surprised how much unclarified stuff
like this is lying around the desks, homes, and minds of some of the
most sophisticated people and companies in the world.

It’s a
process you know how to do—in fact, you’re doing it all the time.
The practice simply needs to be applied more consciously, more
consistently, and sooner than it typically is.

you just need to decide whether something is actionable
or not, and then determine the outcomes and actions required for
those things you’ve committed to move on; for those that don’t have
an action tied to them, decide what’s trash, what’s to be reviewed
later, and what’s to be classified as reference.

There are two possible answers here—“yes” and “no.” “Maybe” is
actually “no, but the item might require action later,”

you are clarifying meaning at this moment in time

People often avoid making this distinction and allow rather large
quantities of things to accumulate in blended stacks.

Whenever
actionable and nonactionable items are parked in the same location,
a numbness develops in the psyche regarding the whole lot.

pile—it affects our total energy and clarity.

E-mails that require a response or an action are held in the same
file as those that need only to be referenced or deleted.

(a) the accumulation of unprocessed

inputs, and (b) groups of two or more that allow meetings to end
without responsibly identifying action items and commitments that
may have been generated and who owns them.

When someone begins to
sensitize herself to the pressure of indecisions about things lurking

and when a company begins to model
and expect responsible closure on its interactions, in terms of what
now needs to be moved on by whom, it can mark the onset of a
brave new world.

Ambiguity is a monster that can still take up
residence and lurk in the sharpest, most productive places and
among the most sophisticated people.

to be honest in the first capturing phase, and
aware enough to write down

whether there was something that could possibly be
done about that situation,

being dependent for your positive experience not on the world’s
circumstances, but on how you are engaged with those
circumstances.

it’s all in how you think about it,
which defines how you approach it.

What’s my desired outcome? What am I committed to
accomplishing or finishing about this?
• What’s the next action? What’s the next thing I need to do
to move toward that goal?

What does “done” mean? What does
“doing” look like, and where does it happen?

transform vague “stuff ”
into real projects you can actually manage.

having and holding an intention toward what you desire, or what you
want to become true.

you need to know where you’re going in
order to get there most effectively.

Training yourself to overcome the need to “have it all together”
before you define what you’re really seeking to finish or accomplish

Before you try to figure out how to solve a problem

it’s wise to put a stake in the ground for yourself,

It’s common to resist making that commitment clarification
until you actually decide

at that moment, your desired outcome is to have the
situation reach its optimal closure, either way. More often than not, if
you haven’t decided exactly how you’re going to handle the problem,
you’ll be procrastinating about the whole thing.

your consciousness can focus simply on moving toward
resolution rather than having a situation all figured out, you’ll tend to
point your thinking toward specifics—“Oh,

If your consciousness can focus simply on moving toward
resolution rather than having a situation all figured out, you’ll tend to
point your thinking toward specifics—“Oh,

It is much easier to progress when such
steps have been determined.

Most people tend to wait until they’ve already done
enough research to make a decision, before they’re willing even to
admit they’ve been engaged in a project. The truth is, the project
exists as soon as you have a commitment to make the decision.

Another common outcome set that people are prone to resist is
what I consider “process” projects—the outcomes of having a
procedure or system in place to handle whatever negative event
keeps occurring.

each

one of these items could be considered an “area of focus”—what

what’s really got their
attention is a more ambitious scheme they’d like to set up or
accomplish about these areas, apart from just having a reminder to
maintain them.

It’s almost impossible to motivate yourself or anyone else to play a
game in which you’re not aware of a concrete goal line.

That goal
can be a very big and long-range one or a very short-term one, and
as long as you can measure where you stand in relationship to it (it’s
there and you’re here), you have the game defined.

That knowledge
leaves you much clearer about how much energy and how many
resources you need to win. When the end result is vague, it’s hard
to maneuver to get wind in your sails.

The other equally important component for getting and maintaining
clarity and control is defining your relationship to the world in terms
of concrete physical actions to take.

Half of the secret to achieving clarity in any situation
is asking, “What are we trying to do here?” The other half, and at
least as critical, is, “What’s the next action?”

Having to grapple
with defining the next action,

means plugging into concrete
reality and requires a specific investment of time and energy and a
reallocation of resources,

everyone involved in agreement about the
subsequent actions that need to be taken, and who’s going to be
responsible for them? If that consensus exists, there is no need for

further capturing, clarifying, organizing, or reviewing; there is no
need to discuss or examine desired outcomes.

That’s not
to imply that the resulting actions will inevitably be the right ones—it
just means that positive engagement has been maximized in this
particular situation, for all involved.

all success comes back to action.

It’s Meaningless

things you no longer
need, or didn’t need in the first place—junk

anything in your environment that has no reason to be there, or to
exist at all.

As mundane as this particular category may seem, it can often
touch many deeper and more sensitive issues.

There is no right or
wrong answer to that question—only an answer. If you avoid making
a decision, they will have you, not you them.

those who have learned to say “no” more
easily to the various things that present themselves into their world
seem to have a much more comfortable time making all kinds of
decisions that are important

It’s to Hold On, Until a Later Time
Of course, it’s fine to decide not to decide.

whether a possible action or project is one that should be moved
on—now, if possible—or whether it can simply be started at a later
date, or perhaps not moved on at all.

“someday/maybe”

“fantasy” category—like

more “realistic” side,

Nothing in this category
has a specific next action attached to it—that’s a defining
characteristic.

None of the someday/maybe’s include any commitment
to moving forward at this point in time.

continually coming up with new, creative
ideas that might add value

he thought that if he had an idea, he
ought to be moving on it. Because he had to turn down his idea-
generating engine to prevent overwhelm, he felt stale.

As soon as
he realized that he could give himself permission to have a parking
lot for possible projects to pursue, without having to allocate
resources to them (i.e, he created a Someday/Maybe list just for
those kinds of thoughts), his brain jumped into high gear again

propensity for most people in our culture to seriously
overcommit, at least in their mind.

Because few individuals are
willing to capture and objectively lay out the full inventory of their
commitments, they can temporarily get away with holding an
unrealistic set of agreements with themselves without having to
confront their full implications.

when they get to the point of responsibly tracking their
projects and actions, and the feeling of shame or exhaustion or
defeat at having so many “incompletions” in their life and work is
more than they can handle emotionally.

a major key to
progress is in reminding folks that the someday/maybe category
needs to be established or refreshed, and utilized.

whether there is really any chance at all that they can get to
those actions soon. If not, the projects should be moved to a holding
tank, so the clients can constrain their focus to a more manageable
set of possibilities.

the main reason they are hesitant to
do that is because they don’t feel confident that they’ll deal
responsibly with what’s been deposited in the tank.

holistic nature of the model
for control—these stages can’t really manifest optimally in isolation,
but must work together.

You won’t allow yourself to relax about a
commitment unless you know you’ll be reviewing and engaging with
it appropriately. And if you’re afraid of moving it off a list of active to-
dos because you’re aware that it needs to be available for
consideration with some frequency and the active To-do list is the
only one you really pay attention to, you’ll keep that “maybe”
commitment on that list with all the others. Lacking a trusted
organization system you review thoroughly and regularly, including a
separate list of what you have “on hold,” forces you to leave
everything on active lists, which then become so overwhelming that
you don’t really pay attention to their contents anyway.

It’s Reference

does not
involve action, but has value as information—now or in the future.

Should I hang
on to this or not? I have two recommendations: (a) when in doubt,
throw it out, and (b) when in doubt, keep it.

most of the pain in this
area is again a function of the lack of clarity of meaning.

As soon as you do determine what’s
reference, what’s trash, what you need to move on, and what’s
actually okay to not yet decide about, you can collect as much as
you care to, and it won’t be disturbing to your clarity of focus. It’s not
about volume—it’s about coherence in your relationship to what it is.

we hardly need to think
about them when things are obvious and easy. We carry out these
practices automatically and rather unconsciously when things are
flowing and relatively habitual and simple.

But when the world throws
us for a loop, and when the familiar flow of habitual engagement is
disturbed, even such simple procedures as capturing and clarifying
not only come to a halt but are often resisted and ignored.

You need to learn what you do well when it’s
easy to do well, and apply the behaviors discussed in this chapter
when you respond to the things that pressure you.

Appropriate focus creates momentum and decision-making
criteria. But that focus does not always happen on its own. The
more you have trained yourself to integrate that kind of meaning-
clarifying thought process

the
more you will experience being on the winning side

For the first twenty-five years of my life, I wanted freedom. For the
next twenty-five years, I wanted order. For the next twenty-five years,
I realized that order is freedom.
—Winston Churchill

rever we find orderly, stable systems in Nature, we find that they are hierarchically
structured, for the simple reason that without such structuring of complex systems into
sub-assemblies, there could be no order and stability—except the order of a dead
universe filled with a uniformly distributed gas.
—Arthur Koestler

Given the vast changes in speed, volume, and ambiguity of what
grabs our attention these days, we face an increasing need to have
an “extended mind” that can truly relieve the pressure from our
psyche and free it up for more valuable work.

Not that you should necessarily do so—at that
moment you might have higher priorities, given where you are and
what you’re up to. But without being organized, you wouldn’t even
have those options.

a key
mistake that has been almost universally made is the belief that
“getting organized” is one event.

If you’re expected to know what to do with
something before you give yourself permission to capture it, you’ll
resist the whole game.

If you are supposed to sort things before you
have determined their specific meaning, you’re operating contrary to
how your brain functions. And if you have to set priorities and make
decisions, without taking into consideration the context of everything
that has your attention, you’ll be stepping onto a slippery slope.

Being
organized simply means that where things are suits what they mean
to you.

This is not a judgment—it’s a simple
description of reality.

“organized” is a totally self-defined
concept, with stable and rigorous definition for each individual.

No
one else can determine meaning for anyone else,

This sort of effort may seem like nit-picking—a messy purse or a
crowded desk drawer is hardly the source of great turbulence

no matter how organized, in the truest sense, you
might get, there will always be some portion of your universe that is
out of synch with changing realities.

it may never be a high
enough priority for you to achieve the perfect state of efficiency in
your own systems.

is that to the degree that you
can match up the proper category of item to the appropriately
designated location, you will experience a greater ease, flow, and
efficiency.

You will have to decide for yourself to what degree that experience
of frictionless functioning is worth the invested effort needed to
achieve it.

Can you be too organized? Not in the pristine sense of how I
define the word. If things aren’t where they should be, and
accessible as you need them, you’re simply not organized enough.

If
you have created structural systems that are unduly complicated
and that cause you to have difficulty in accessing what’s required,
when it’s required, you are also disorganized.

you try to get organized before you have defined meaning
sufficiently, you will be frustrated in the effort.

Most To-do lists, organizing trays and boxes, and even “action” file
folders

reflect a similar lack of clear categorical
distinctions. Although they were introduced with all the best
intentions for “getting organized,” they are functioning as little more
than receptacles for rearranging incomplete piles of unclear stuff.

without a good underlying model for how and
why to contain and separate what stuff, and for what purpose,

clueless as to what they really
need.

the more mundane the level you’re trying to organize, the more
complex your system must be to manage it well.

keeping track of your commitments at the higher elevations is
relatively straightforward and simple, as they involve much less
content and input, less frequently, and they require less frequent
review and access.

keeping up with
all the specific details on your projects and all the actions that
support all your other commitments can be quite a challenge.

Many people seem to assume that because items like phone calls,
errands, and tasks for their assistant are so simple, obvious, and
relatively mundane, they only need an equally simple and mundane
system to manage them.

On the contrary, because of the
associated volume of commitments at the action level and the speed
with which they change, the tools required to keep up with them all
demand a bit more sophistication than simply a calendar and a To-
do list.

they do have to be
sufficiently complex to allow for a total inventory and for the ability to
view discrete portions appropriately.

GTD model as a “sophisticated approach for
sophisticated people about very mundane stuff.”

thinking and tracking the
results of that thinking are fundamentally related.

to be “organized” involves first determining
what things mean to you, and then parking those items in a category
where those things belong.

From time to time you will need a broad set of reminders to keep
you focused at various horizons.

lists
and other representations of their contents that you can view and
review to maintain a steady and specific direction, keep motivated,
and maintain appropriate standards.

maintaining control, you will have to find
the right balance between making too few distinctions in your system
and too many.

Once they get a taste of the GTD model and are motivated to get
effectively organized, people tend to want to overcategorize their
lists.

they don’t really trust
themselves to engage with the contents of their system as regularly
and conscientiously as they should.

Once they begin to have the
confidence that they will be looking at everything in their system and
on their lists as often as needed in an appropriately reflective mode,
they usually let go of the angst of having to have everything so
rigorously “automated.”

Once you’re clear about the purpose of your life or your company,
even though it is self-evident to you, it might be useful to have a
written version that you can review on some regular basis.

Company principles and values are most often maintained as a list,
which is featured on wall plaques, posters, Web pages, or anywhere
else

On the individual level, a list of personal affirmations or a written
personal “credo” would be ideal.

long-term
success images and goals?

As you drop to this more operational horizon, your structure may
need a little more detail,

a dozen or more objectives
could still be rather easily maintained as a list

I’m not talking here about the behaviors of
creating, reviewing, and engaging productively with these lists—
that’s a very important topic for a later chapter.

the aspects of our work and life
that could be considered the contents of a “high-level maintenance”
checklist.

the structure that you need to maintain this particular
inventory is going to have to be capable of accommodating a greater
quantity of data.

At any given time most people have between thirty
and a hundred projects to keep track of (given my definition of
multiple-step outcomes you’re committed to finishing within a year).

Because projects should be reviewed at least weekly, the purpose
of managing this ten-thousand-feet horizon of outcomes on a single
list is simply to give you a convenient overview of all of your

commitments, such that you can easily identify gaps in action or
momentum for any of them.

there are situations
in which it might be functional to maintain a “key things I’m expecting
others to be doing” list. This would be particularly true in the case of
a senior executive who has several key direct reporting staff to
whom major projects have been delegated.

calendared actions, those to do as soon as you can,
and the actions you’re waiting for other people to take.

A core aspect of successful GTD implementation is having a total-
life action list as the foundation of hour-by-hour decision-making,

instead of a simple daily To-do list that often reflects only the latest
and loudest demands.

life
changes quickly, with new and random inputs forcing you to rethink
your priorities constantly, and very often you will be in a situation
with constraints of context, time, and energy.

Even in this mode you
can still be highly productive if you have all your options for actions
easily accessible to you.

you
can still be highly productive if you have all your options for actions
easily accessible to you. To be able to work that effectively, though,
you need to have a good system for tracking and reviewing discrete
action reminders.

when you
become aware of how many such reminders you have to keep tabs
on, it can easily seem a daunting organizational task.

subcategories

allowing you to focus only on what you
need to see, when you most need or want to see it.

charts
your next actions specific to particular days and times, and therefore
provides critical pinpoints around which you’ll manage most of the
rest of your work.

The calendar should represent

the “hard
landscape” for your day—the mostly stationary events and
information around which you must negotiate everything else.

what I pay attention to first, as I start and then proceed through the
day; and it is usually open and available to me for most of that time.

The calendar is the best place for three things—appointments,
day-specific things to do, and information I need or want to be aware
of on that day.

“everything I definitely need to know and do today.”

Appointments are self-evident,

Day-specific tasks are also firm reminders, but
they are relevant for an entire day, not a particular time—for

“all-day event”

These two types of activities—appointments and other to-dos that
have to be handled that day—should be the first things you take
note of each morning to let you know how much discretionary time
you have for other things, if any.

The third type of entry on your calendar should be any information
that you might need or want to be aware of on that day—notices of
events taking place that might be meaningful, due dates or start
dates, support data for appointments, and so forth.

use the all-day event spaces for this information as well,
or attach notes to the appointments.

Your calendar should contain only those three items—
appointments, day-specific actions, and information.

If you add entries such as what you’d like to get done on a
given day, you’ll have to keep rethinking your schedule, wondering
what’s real and what’s not.

If you include less than the three key
elements, your mind will constantly be trying to fill in the gaps.

The vast majority of the actions you have to take don’t actually have
to be done on one specific day. They should be done as soon as you
can get to them.

making a commitment to complete them on a
specifically calendared day will more than likely be artificial, given
how often circumstances change.

Work from these next-action lists
whenever your calendar lets you know you have some discretionary
time. This category of action is sorted based on the context needed
to complete the action.

A Call

contains all the telephone calls that you need to make, which can be
done from any phone, anywhere.

This list holds all the actions that require a computer to accomplish:

This is the list of any actions that require being physically in your
office to perform,

This list contains actions you need to do at or around your home—

This list contains actions that can be done anywhere,

This category tracks the actions to be taken when you are “out and
about”—picking

This section contains further subsets of actions that required being
in real-time conversation with one or more people,

Many people have several of these lists, one dedicated to each of
the key individuals with whom they interact and one for each
upcoming meeting.

It is useful to gather things you need to read in one location, to
remind you of outstanding commitments in this area as well as to
provide an easily accessible inventory of this material when time
becomes available for skimming and scanning information,

It holds reminders of
anything and everything that you are waiting for from another
source, which includes all the projects you’ve delegated to others,
anything you’ve ordered that hasn’t arrived, any lent items, anything
you’re waiting to have confirmed by your boss or prospective clients.

Often the next action on an item committed to finish is actually not
yours to do—it’s in someone else’s court. Your responsibility is to
track who’s got it, confirm when they got it, and check its status as
appropriate.

once you grasp the principle of setting up categories
based on what things mean to you, you should feel free to introduce
your own variations to these themes.

understand that these action categories (or any others) are
not “necessary” per se or set in stone in some inflexible
methodology. They exist only to reflect the most efficient, systematic
way to structure the components of whatever you need to manage.
Based on what a given item means to you, determine how and
where you can best park the placeholder for it.

“Brain-dead.” There are times when his mental
functioning is not firing on all cylinders, and yet he’d like to stay
productive and engaged. The best thing for him in those periods is
to have specific tasks easily at hand that require minimal mental
horsepower.

If you work out of two offices, you might find it useful to have both
an “At office A” and “At office B” list. If you’re like me and fly at lot,
you can try separating your “At computer” group from your “At
broadband access” group.

You might also find it helpful to compress some of these lists into
fewer ones, especially if you find the use of so many categories
unfamiliar and confusing.

among the many things that have crossed your
mind and landed in your in-basket, there are actions, projects, and
ideas that you don’t actually want to move on or even decide about
immediately. They need to be put on a “back burner” for some
designated period, to be considered again later.

two subcategories: items
that you need to review with some regularity and those that need to
surface only on a specific day in the future.

A Someday/Maybe list is an ideal place to hold these kinds of
reminders—especially if you are reviewing that list on a regular
basis.

“weekly review,” in which you scan all of your
potentially relevant lists once a week,

This Someday/Maybe list can include a wide range of projects and
topics.

you’ll have a significant number of things
that fall under the heading “long-range fantasy.”

On the
more practical end of the spectrum would be projects that may have
been on your active Projects list for a number of weeks,

Most people have quite a few subcategories under the someday/
maybe heading—books they might like to read, dishes they’d like to
cook, restaurants they want to try, places they’d like to visit, classes
they’d like to take.

“Next
Time in . . .” for interesting things I hear about that I might want to
experience when I’m in a particular region or city and “Topics I Might
Want to Write About.”

One person I know created three
distinctions among these someday/maybes: a “not now but soon”
list, a “not now but later” one, and a “never now” group.

discrimination—there are so many
possibilities that constitute the range of “not now but still of interest,”
and so many other very immediate and actionable things that have
to be considered regularly, that it’s easy to go numb when
confronted with one big list of nonactionable projects.

if you don’t trust that you’ll really be rigorous
with yourself in reviewing every item on these lists with regularity,
you’ll wind up keeping so many tasks on your active lists that you’ll
find you’re overwhelmed.

These are admittedly subtle distinctions, which most people will
probably find way too granular to pay a lot of attention to.

having a well-oiled, refined personal system that can
capture and feed back tasks that have different levels of meaning
will become more and more critical for balance and control in an
increasingly complex and ambiguous world.

we clarify as demanding no
current action but that we want to rethink or start at a particular time
in the future.

you would park information
on a calendar or use a tickler

bring it back in front of you on a particular date.

You should determine precisely when you want to be reminded of
these projects again, and set up triggers accordingly in your system.

If I see something intriguing in a catalog, but can’t decide if it’s worth
getting, I usually park it in my tickler file

two

weeks in the future, as that’s about how long my impulse-buy energy
lasts.

If a major opportunity is presented to me that I’m ambivalent
about, I determine when I should reexamine my judgment and put
some appropriate reminder in the system. It could be two weeks or
two months—I just need to make a decision and park the trigger

As long as you
trust the process to deliver the reminder when it’s due, you’re set.

For many people there is a large volume of data that falls into the
category of support material—information that is relevant to
projects, themes, and topics that you will want to have available
when it comes time to take action on or think about them.

What contributes to a loss of control in this area is when
actionable items are stored, unprocessed, in the same place as
support material.

Support material needs

to remain purely adjunct data—not a reminder of action.

There is a fine line of distinction between support material and
reference material. In many cases, they are the same, and files can
be kept together in the same filing system.

if your support
materials on a project include your active plans, which themselves
should be reviewed regularly, you need another trigger to remind
you to look at them, such as a weekly assessment of the status of
all of your projects,

The specific plan review would be an
active process that would update and identify current actions to be
taken.

Often it makes sense to keep active project files in a more
accessible and obvious place than you keep the files of pure
reference material.

When the
project is finished, or moves into the background, I will return the
folder to my general reference filing cabinet.

“reference”—items that require no action but that you have decided
might be useful to have access to in the future.

Once you have determined that you
don’t have to make a commitment to do anything about information
you receive or generate but think there could be value in having
access to it, it should be placed into this category, and can simply be
stored so that it is quickly retrievable.

two most common issues

(a) people store actionable items with their reference
materials, or (b) the systems and logic for storage and retrieval are
dysfunctional.

The key strategies are (a) to ensure that actions
required on any of your reference materials are captured, clarified,
and organized where they belong

(b) to continually fine-tune both the content and structure of your
reference systems.

It may be helpful to recognize an informal distinction here between
“general” and “specialized” references.

In the latter case, storage
systems for information that is quite specific to work functions are
seldom a problem. Contract files, client files, accounting files, and
even recipes are specific enough to dictate their own structures that
make sense to the people who need that information.

deciding what to do with all the
collated ad hoc information that has potential value but is not easily
categorized or sorted into neat little buckets.

something is irrelevant, not needed, insignificant, or
meaningless, and it takes up any physical or psychic space, it’s
trash, so get rid of it.

avoidance of the
executive decisions that actually determine what’s to be classified as
trash and what’s not.

It’s all too easy to allow this to happen
because we’re either too busy or too uninterested in making
decisions in the moment about relevance.

This doesn’t mean that
you should be micromanaging to the extent of keeping everything
totally current and clean and organized.

GTD is not a moral judgment or a vote for seamless
and totally clear organization being more important than the creative
process and what it can produce.

trash, if left to pile up within our psychological or
physical environment, will create drag on the system, which can only
be relieved by moving it to where trash typically goes.

Most people, when confronted with the truth about what’s going
on in their life and work, will have some degree of guilt and remorse
about the quantity of deadwood they’ve allowed to accumulate in
and around their systems and spaces.

In order to begin creating a functional self-management
system for someone, a huge bulk of dross must first be removed.

For all your stored information it’s also critical that you establish a
procedure for consistent review and recalibration.

the meaning of things changes simply with the passage of
time.

so the
best practice of keeping all kinds of potentially useful data has to be
linked to the rigorous habit of regular reviewing, reassessing, and
purging where necessary.

it will begin to repel you instead of
inviting usage.

None of that may seem particularly mission-critical to you at the
moment.

when you break that code of keeping things in their
proper place, based upon what they are and what they mean to you,
the negative syndrome feeds on itself.

easier and easier
to get lax about deciding what you collect, and to just toss stuff into
your piles and “hunhhh” stacks.

Disorder can, without any conscious effort on your part, reduce
everything to the lowest common denominator.

If you’re not
conscientiously transforming it, through the clarifying and organizing
phases, it will overtake you.

The best cure is prevention, and the
best way to prevent that degradation of the effectiveness of your
extended mind is to keep the edges clean and the categories
discrete.

You’re not likely to throw a gum wrapper onto a clean lawn

or floor, but if several are already scattered there, it’s easy to accept
the implicit invitation to drop another.

It seems that in our culture there is a serious propensity for
creating but not for cleaning up.

it
represents the basic distinctions of meaning that are sufficient to
stay on top of a complex life and work experience, but clear-cut
enough to be intuitively functional, on the run, for anyone.

As soon as you
attempt to simplify them, you almost inevitably blend one or more of
these very specific categories and start to generate
counterproductive confusion.

equipment that will
store reminders and materials in intact areas that maintain the
integrity of the type of contents you need to keep distinct.

Learn to pause . . . or nothing worthwhile will catch up to you.
—Doug King

Extreme busyness, whether at school or college, kirk or market, is a symptom of
deficient vitality.
—Robert Louis Stevenson

If you worry about everything, then you don’t have to worry about anything.
—anonymous

once you have externalized your inventory of commitments
and interests into a structure for your extended mind, it will only
provide its benefit of ongoing freedom and productive engagement
with the multiple aspects of your life if it receives proper care and
feeding. You have to engage with it—and

with sufficient focus to absorb the information in a way
consistent with what the data mean to you.

Reviewing your system serves two distinct but equally critical
purposes: (a) to update its contents and (b) to provide trusted
perspective.

they
almost invariably take place together.

The process of reviewing the
agendas you’ve been collecting

is likely to trigger more content to add to them or at
least provide an update on their accuracy and completeness.

Doing
so also automatically increases your trust that your interactions
regarding the material will be more coherent and inclusive of
everything that’s relevant.

To maintain control, you must review the data
of your system and refresh it to match current realities.

Invariably, the world comes at us faster than we can keep up with its
details. By the very nature of work, when you are doing one task
you’re not thinking about others—nor should you.

You may be
capturing along the way, but you won’t be clarifying and organizing
everything as it happens.

we may be caught up on one level but
lag behind in our thinking and structures on another.

There are times when, during my own weekly review, I mark off
quite a number of actions from my lists that I’ve finished in the last
few days but not yet had the time to eliminate, much less figure out
what I need to do next about them.

Because projects are likely to change their meaning over time,
your system also needs to reflect that fact. What was an active
project last week may now have turned into a “someday” one, given
all the new demands that have arisen since then.

Meetings on your
calendar that you committed to last month may now need to be
renegotiated

An
action on your Computer list to draft a proposal may,

need to be moved as a “have-to” to
Monday’s calendar.

Overlooking such mundane but often critical
catch-ups for yourself, due to failure to review your system contents,
can throw you quickly into the Victim quadrant along with a load of
stress.

the other
equally important aspect of reflection is its obvious benefit for
enhancing perspective.

the two dynamics of control and perspective sit
closely together.

If you are feeling driven by the latest and loudest
and have the feeling you’re becoming overwhelmed by details, it is
always healthy to stop, take a breath, and rise to survey the
situation from a more elevated viewpoint.

That, of course, is easier
to do when you can capture, clarify, and organize what’s around
you,

at some point if you don’t stand back and assess what
you’re doing and not doing from a broader perspective, you’ll keep
sliding out of control.

Usually the longer the horizon, the longer the time interval you can
allow yourself between reviews to stay comfortable.

extending and parking
your thinking in these more objective and reviewable formats
primarily enables you to reflect on and maintain perspective about
anything and everything you’re doing, as efficiently as possible,
whenever necessary.

you can only feel
good about what you’re not doing when you know what you’re not
doing.

there’s no way you can truly know what you’re not doing
without a consistent renegotiation with yourself.

your mind’s phenomenal ability to integrate and
associate information must be used as the glue that holds your
external system together.

An interesting dance takes place in the interplay between using
your system to unjumble your thinking and then using your thinking
to coordinate your system.

you can’t think about relationships
between items when you’re thinking about the items themselves,

which is why during a brainstorming session you must write down
the ideas.

your mind should be used to think about
your stuff, not of it.

It seems that no matter how hard we work, we always seem to be in
a continual process of bringing up the rear guard. The faster you are
moving and the more creative your output, the greater the demand
to apply a disciplined habit of review and reflection to prevent
outdated and irrelevant aspects of work and to keep life from
becoming a heavy anchor pulling back on your momentum.