adamquiney.com

It’s hard to be human.

It’s difficult to fully expose who we are, and to be comfortable putting that person out there, regardless of any judgment that may result from it.

We all know that other people may judge us, but how often do you devote thought to the fact that you are probably also judging yourself every time you expose vulnerability?

Getting comfortable with who we are includes accepting and indeed, loving, all of our emotions and feelings, including the negative ones.

The fact that you feel negative at the moment does not make you a negative person.  The fact that right now, you feel angry and resentful, does not make you an angry, resentful person.

It has been years since I’ve cried openly.  It’s not because I don’t feel overwhelmed with emotion at times (in fact, I do, often).  Rather, it’s that as soon as I begin to feel that way, I clamp down and assert control over how I am feeling.

Why?

To protect myself.  To prevent myself from experiencing emotions that I judge weak, or negative, or unhelpful.  To ensure that I am a positive person, and not a negative one.

I currently feel overwhelmed, some despair, and at times, like I’m throwing life away.  That doesn’t mean that I’m in over my head, suffering depression, or a failure.  It just means that I too experience emotions like overwhelm and fear.

I am working to embrace these emotions as part of who I am, and to share them more openly.  I invite you to do the same.

It’s hard to be human – but it’s worth it.

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They say that one of the most important things in swimming is learning to breathe correctly.  In a sport that is ultimately based on streamlining and moving yourself as efficiently as possible, the extra drag that is created every time you take a breath can be the difference between winning and losing a close race.

However, if you don’t take breaths often enough, you won’t be feeding your muscles and body the oxygen that it requires to be as efficient as possible, in which case you may be as streamlined as possible, but your engine won’t be functioning efficiently.  (Or you’ll just drown and die.  And also lose the race.)

(It’s a metaphor)

When technology first started to improve our efficiency, it allowed us to shift our focus to spending more time in leisure and with friends and family (formerly only the privilege of royalty).  However, as time has progressed, our focus has slowly drifted away from the notion of technology enabling us to do less, to enabling us to take on ever-increasing amounts of work.

These days, the increasing emphasis placed upon productivity is reaching epidemic levels.  This is in part due to the fact that productivity and efficiency have become ingrained in the fabric of the modern working world.  Operating at the subconscious level, most of us aren’t even aware of how much pressure we put on ourselves to produce.

I am by no means suggesting that being productive and efficient are bad things, all else considered equal.  But when an emphasis and priority are placed on these two concepts to the exclusion or detriment of the rest of our lives, things start to fall apart.  You need look no further than places like Japan’s working culture and our more demanding professional careers like lawyers and doctors to see that efficiency and productivity without balance are detrimental in the long run.  (see my friend Michi’s blog for an insider’s perspective on Japanese working culture).

Recognizing the importance of balance is one thing, but understanding how to actually affect changes in your life that allow for it is another altogether.  Many of us get caught up in feedback loops that lead to a lack of balance simply because we don’t know any better.  All we know is that working hard got us to where we are, so presumably working even harder will take us even further.

But we know that this approach is fallacious in swimming, and so too is it in life.  So what should you do?  Simple:

Stop.  Breathe.  Repeat.

Literally.  Just breathe.  Don’t think about what to do next.  Don’t think about what you aren’t doing while you’re taking time out to breathe.  Don’t think about your deadlines, or what you need to do next, or where you’re going to be tomorrow.

Just breathe.  Physically.

Put down what you’re doing, close your laptop, put your phone on vibrate, and just breathe for five minutes.

It’s not a huge commitment – but it is a commitment.  Five minutes may feel like eternity to you if you’re not used to taking time out from your own productivity.  Commit to those five minutes (set a timer if you need to), and turn your focus toward breathing.

You need to make sure that you’re kicking and stroking with your arms as you swim, but you also need to actively increase your drag (temporarily) so that you can take the time to provide your body with the nourishment that it requires.

Practicing What I Preach

I’ve got a lot on my plate right now.  It’s easy to tangled up by all of the strings pulling at me, and if I’m not careful, I can find myself with days that are booked up from 9 in the morning to 9 at night.  This does not leave much time for reflection or relaxation, let alone spending time with my wife.

I find it especially challenging to maintain balance when I have multiple projects or commitments demanding my time, as they are not always willing to play nice, and the only commonality between them is myself.  This kind of situation makes breathing that much more important.

When things are really busy, it’s all I can do to try to follow my own advice.  Bring up my head and breathe.  Take a look around, see what the rest of the world is doing, and get a handle on what I’m currently undertaking.

The reason that granting yourself moments of breathing and clarity is so valuable is that when our heads are down, we’re unable to get a feel for what we actually have on the go.  Our attention is focused on the immediate task at hand.  Every intrusion feels overwhelming and like a whole new emergency requiring our attention, regardless of what the distraction may be (Eg, e-mail, a new piece of reading, a meeting request, a phone call, etc.).  All we can tell is that it is not what we are currently focused on, it is another thing to be added to our plate, and good grief, don’t we have enough stuff on our plate already?

Lift your head up and breathe

Find time to pull yourself up from what you are currently focused on and assess what you’ve got on the go.  What are the things that are currently demanding your attention?  What are your immediate priorities?  What do you need to do, but can be left until later?  (If you’re having trouble figuring it out, a braindump may be a good way to go).

I generally find that most people prefer not to seek the answers to the questions I’ve asked above — they’re worried that knowing will only add to their stress.  The reality is that there are few things that generate as much fear and anxiety as the unknown.  If you know what the demands on your time are, you can at least take active steps to prioritize what needs to be done, and alert the appropriate people if a deadline is going to slip.

Awareness will free you from the burden of knowing only that you have an undefined number of other things you need to do.  (This is a common concept in GTD, and much of the methodology is based around addressing the open loops that are tugging at your mind, thereby freeing it up to focus).

You’ll be amazed at the relief and clarity that can be brought by the simple action of taking ten minutes out to assess where you stand and what needs to be done.  I can attest that I am regularly surprised whenever I conduct this exercise, generally discovering that I actually have a lot less that needs to be dealt with immediately than it felt like I did ten minutes ago.

Above all, try to remember that the way that you feel about the demands on your time does not necessarily reflect reality.

The larger context

In the larger context, making the time to take a deep breath is analogous to making time to perform weekly reviews, or setting aside time during your day to meditate.  Both of these activities simply represent other ways to pull your head up and assess where you stand and where you’re going.

If these suggestions sound simple, that’s good.  Life doesn’t need to be as complicated as we make it.  Taking steps to simplify your life may be exactly what you need.

TLDR

As always, here’s the summary of the keypoints:

• While taking time to stop what you’re doing may cost a little in the short term, it will benefit you greatly in the long
  • (Remember, it doesn’t matter how fast you’re swimming if you’re dead)
• The unknown will generate more stress than anything else.  Taking stock of where you are and what demands are on your time will give you clarity and relax you
• Learning the skill of retreating to centre yourself (this is what we’ve been talking about) will continue to serve you as you get better at it
  • Meditation, weekly reviews, and other techniques are all just different implementations of this simple concept

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School started proper again yesterday, and that means that the makeup of my days will change radically from that of the previous four months.  Although I’m writing today, the frequency of my posts will decrease drastically once work really gets underway.

I made the decision to take on a fair number of items this term, including:

• Continue to be a good husband (yes, continue);
• Continue to do well in school;
• Devote a non-trivial amount of time to an application I’m working on with some colleagues; and
• Teach weekly dance classes with my friend Jesse at a studio we’re renting in town

All of these items require substantial amounts of my time, and inconsistently to boot (meaning that I won’t get to choose when one of these items will need more attention – there will be peaks and troughs for all of them).  I believe that I’ve got the skills and ability to meet all four of these goals while maintaining my own sanity.  However, it will require planning to ensure that I’m ready when the storms start to strike.

This is a pretty short post, but if you’d like to jump to the summary, you can do so here.

A new way of looking at my available productivity

Because of these competing demands, it’s very important that I figure out the best way to maximize my productivity.  If I waste my opportunity to be productive, things will start to get backed up, and I’ll quickly find myself with too many things to do and not enough time to do them in.  Something will necessarily fall by the wayside (and if I’m being honest, I suspect it will be item #1 – it’s often easiest to let things slide with the person around which we’re the most comfortable).

Rather than try to plan everything down to the hour, I took a new approach to scheduling my productivity this term.  To start, here are my assumptions:

• I can achieve what I’m setting out to do.

This is the most important assumption because it’s the starting point for everything else.  If I don’t believe this, then I should return to my list above and remove one of the items.  (If you don’t get this, ask yourself why you are planning to try and accomplish something that you don’t actually believe you are capable of achieving?)

• I was apathetic the previous term and often felt myself wasting time playing video games instead of studying.

While I found the feeling of apathy generated stress, my grades did not suffer and I exceeded the standards I had set for myself.  This suggests to me that I had additional spare time that could be put to better uses.

• I don’t want to spend any time this term feeling bored.

That is an indication to me that I currently have too much spare time.  Relaxing and just cooling out is one thing, but sitting around literally feeling bored is off the books.  If I find myself feeling this way, I should be looking to engage myself with a different pursuit.

• I can be more efficient if I’m able to divide my time across multiple tasks.

Like most of us (all of us?), I experience diminishing returns the longer I spend working on any one particular task.  If I can divide my time across a number of tasks related to the different projects I’ve set out for myself above, I should be able to avoid the fall off that results from working on only one task for too long.

• I have, roughly, between 3 and 5 good bouts of productivity in a day.

On really good days, I can get my process started first thing in the morning, and also find a second wind after the post-lunch tiredness.  On a bad day, I can’t seem to get the gears turning until 11AM, take a break for lunch, and only just manage to accomplish things by the time 5PM rolls around.

• My bouts of productivity cannot easily be divided up into “clean” blocks of time.

Just like I don’t know what kind of day I will have until I find myself at the end of it (or mid-way through at least), I don’t know beforehand how long I will be able to stay in my flow for, nor how long it will take to read a particular set of readings.

Creating a workable system

So, with the above assumptions in mind, I set aside a couple of hours on the weekend to devise the system by which I would plan out my time and stay on track this term.  That system is based on the concept of productivity units (PUs from here on in).  PUs are what I call the blocks of productive work that I am talking about above in items 5 and 6.

Based on my assumption in #6, I don’t think that it’s a worthwhile exercise to try and map a PU to a specific amount of time.  In fact, it’s clear that I don’t usually think that’s possible.

Taking my range from item #5, I estimate that on any given day, I can probably accomplish about 4 PU worth of work in any given day, with no other demands on my time.

What does this actually mean?

So, what does it actually mean to accomplish one PU worth of work, if you can’t map the block reliably to an amount of time?

Here are some examples of what I would consider a PU worth of work:

• Complete a set of readings for one of my classes
• Spend some time writing out a few pages of a paper
• Sit down and clear out my inbox, processing everything there and responding to any necessary e-mail
• Spend some time working on my development team’s wiki, organizing everything and ensuring that all of our recent thoughts have been captured and stored somewhere for later reference
• Attend one class

It is important to understand that these are the benchmarks I have drawn for myself.  Based on what you see above, you could probably estimate that one of my PUs probably roughly translates to 1 to 2 hours worth of work.  This is reasonable.  However, this will not always be the case, and there are times when it will take two PUs to finish a set of readings, or only half of my available energy to complete something.

The important part of my system is that it is adaptive, flexible, and dynamic, as these are all characteristics that I wish to imbue in the work that I do.  If my system does not embody the same traits that I myself wish to, there’s going to be conflict (which generally leads to the system being discarded and returning to old ways).

Your mileage may vary – you may find that you prefer to work in smaller chunks, but fit more of them into a day.  Whatever works for you is what you should do.  For me, this provides a clean and lightweight way in which I can rapidly estimate how much work I can accomplish each day.

This approach also provides me with a metric by which I can determine whether or not I should really be feeling upset that I’m not being maximally productive.  Let me explain.

I have no classes on Tuesday, which means that this is a wide-open day.  However, I have no shortage of work, and so ideally, I’d like to get 4 PUs in on Tuesday.  If I’ve finished one PUs worth of work, it’s currently 3PM, and I’m sitting on the couch playing video games, things probably aren’t going too well.  I should be kicking myself back into work.  But, if I find myself in the same situation, having completed 3 PUs worth of work, I’m actually doing pretty good.

Why is this distinction meaningful to draw – isn’t this pretty obvious and intuitive?

No – it isn’t.

These kind of separations are always obvious to us when we’re external to them, having them explained to us or reading about them on someone’s blog.  It’s easy to divide everything into bright clean lines when you don’t have anything at stake and you’re not in the middle of all of the chaos and demands placed on your time.  However, when you do find yourself in the middle of everything that’s when you will most need to be able to determine if the way you are feeling is due to something legitimate or simply a pressure external to yourself that actually doesn’t matter.

Thinking in these terms provides a quick “escape ladder” that can be used if I need to pull my head up from the mess and figure out if the way I’m feeling is really something that requires my concern.

The honest truth is that sometimes you’re going to feel guilty for taking some much needed time to recharge.  It doesn’t matter that that is the best thing you could do – your psychology will play games with you and tell you that you could not possibly take the time off from working on that paper!

Dividing my time up into these kind of chunks is a convenient way for me to check the way I’m feeling and determine if I really need to get the gears turning again, or can relax knowing that the break I’m taking is well-deserved (and will actually make me more efficient on the whole).

The view from my desk

Here’s the example that I’ve created, to provide you with some context.  My class schedule roughly looks like this:

• Monday: 3 classes
• Tuesday: 0 classes
• Wednesday: 2 classes
• Thursday: 1 class
• Friday: 1 class

On Monday, I also run a dance jam down at Centenniel Square in Victoria, which eats up a decent chunk of time.  In short, I don’t have any additional PUs available for Monday.

Tuesday is wide open, and so I can aim for my maximal goal: 4 PUs.  The plan going forward will be to divide this time between reading/studying and the necessary time required for me to continue PMing the project I’m working on.  I have my time loosely divided in half between the two, but I can be flexible and if needed, I can devote all 4 separate PUs to studying (though I would rather not, as that will increase the diminishing returns that I experience).

Wednesday I have two classes, which means I have about 2 PUs remaining.  Likewise, Thursday and Friday each have one class, so I have 3 PUs for both of those days.  Just at a glance, this way of looking at my spare time gives me a rough idea of how much time I will have available to devote to the demands on my time.

If things get panicky or packed in tight, I may need to adjust my schedule, or attempt to squeeze an extra PU out of my day.  While this may be possible for brief bursts of time, I’m skeptical that that would be a sustainable practice.  Being productive for 10 of my 16 waking hours, on an extended basis, intuitively feels like I would be pushing the limits of my mental, emotional and physical health, not to mention my marriage.

Rehash

That’s all I’ve got for today.  In general, writing a blog post is probably about 1 or 2 PUs worth of work.  It requires writing (a task unto itself), then polishing and editing before publishing.  I’ve finished three sessions worth of reading, and completing this entry makes a total of four PUs.  That means that I can now devote the rest of my day to relaxing and pursuing hobbies that are less intensive, and ignore any guilt that may pop up from time to time trying to tell me I should actually be working harder.  Not only should I not be working harder, I’m not convinced that my yield would be worth the extra effort.

Here’s the summary of what we’ve covered:

• To maximize your productivity, break your time up so that you can focus your energy on multiple things throughout the day;
• Breaking your time up into productive units, or PUs, can provide a convenient way to get a loose handle on what you can realistically accomplish in any given day;
• Your PUs may be different than mine, and that’s fine – do what works for you;
• If you’re feeling lazy or like you should be doing more work, check in to see what you’ve accomplished in terms of your PUs, and ground the way you feel based on that.  Sometimes you need to kick your ass back into gear.  Sometimes, you need to relax.  Both of these things will be equally hard to accomplish at different times;
• A system doesn’t need to schedule or track every last available minute you have for it to work for you; and
• Check in with yourself from time to time to see if the way that you’re feeling is a reaction to your circumstances, or something external (eg, unrealistic societal pressure that you can or should be productive for every single minute that you’re at work).

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Well, I’ve finished my last day at work.  As a result of the fact that I’ve cleaned up all of my loose ends, I’m left with very little to do today – that will no doubt be a completely different story from my life a month from now.  

The timeline for my last day was:

Last day of work:

8:00 Last day arriving at work

8:10 Pour last cup of coffee

8:30 Login and go through morning routine last time

9:30 Fill out timesheets for the last time ever

9:45 Last scrum at Refractions

10:00 Last coffee with Graham at work

1:15 Last JV lunch (while working at Refractions) downtown with Bay

3:30 Sent out goodbye e-mails to co-workers

3:45 Deleted archived e-mails from my computer

4:00 So long Refractions

While cleaning up my desk this week, I came across two of my logbooks that I had maintained when I first started.

I originally started maintaining a logbook when, during my first review, Paul Ramsey (the former president of Refractions, and someone for who I have a great deal of respect) mentioned that he noticed I worked better under pressure and when there was a lot on my plate.  He recognized that that he too operated in this manner as well, but that something to work on would be to track what I was working on and to try and maintain a more consistent pace.

The logbook was my first attempt to do this, and really, my first attempt to begin any kind of system.  About three years back, I realized that although I was now twenty-seven years old (thirty now!), with both a high-school and a university education, no one had ever taught me any kind of system for managing my tasks (really, for managing my life, both at work and at home).  Before I even made this realization though, I knew that I wanted to pursue Paul’s advice.

The logbook was the first attempt to accomplish this.  Looking through the book is a bit nostalgic: projects that I’ve long since forgotten, and that have long since died.  Attempts at organization that I now recognize as convoluted and problematic.  Lists of TODO items that remain unchecked to this day (did these ever actually get done?).  Even with all of these flaws, I still recognize the value that these first attempts brought me.  They provided me with a starting point.  They set me down a path, and gave me a base from which I could start evolving my own system.  You can never go for a run if you don’t take that first step, and that’s exactly what this book was.

I scanned in some representative pages from each month, along with an appendix that I had created at the back, so that you can see how I started progressing along the path towards a full-fledged system like GTD, and get a feel for the missteps that it’s okay to make as you attempt to get yourself organized (if you choose to).  Let’s repeat that one more time – it’s okay to make mistakes.  Take that first step!

The first two images are simply scans from the month of January and February.  Although the domain and context of what I was working on isn’t relevant, you can see from the way I was taking notes that there was still much to be desired.

The first scan shows an action item at the bottom, but with nothing to differentiate it from the rest of my notes.  How would I know at a glance that this is something that I have to act upon, versus something that I can just use as reference for later on?  What about the state of this action item?  Did I ever actually complete this task?  Did I just neglect to complete this?  Did it simply stop being necessary?  There’s no way to tell what happened here.  While I’m sure that I did in fact complete this item, you can see that it is important to create ways in your system that allow you to determine the answer to these questions quickly and at a glance.  Otherwise we’re just taking up valuable mental cycles that could be devote to more valuable tasks.

Unfortunately, I only realized now that I scanned in the wrong pages from my appendix, so I no longer retain the code I used to mark up the pages.  The main colour used were blue and green.  Blue items indicated discussions I had with co-workers, while green items indicated useful information or knowledge to reference back to later.  Orange  indicated important TODO items.  Whenever I had a page where I had created one of these items, I would colour the top or bottom corner (or both if I had multiple items on a page), allowing me to quickly determine if I had something that needed to be referenced on a given page.

This system quickly got out of hand, as it is impractical to flip through pages of a book trying to find the correct coloured corner that corresponds to a piece of information I need.  There is no ability to categorize a given piece of reference information, as it sits forever on a page in the book.  I have no folder that I can put the information in, and no ability to search through the book, other than sequentially flipping through each page.  Obviously this system left a lot to be desired, but it was a starting point.

Once I started PMing projects, I moved away from a static book and to a system that was more focused on the GTD approach to managing tasks, using looseleaf paper, and folders to organize it.

That’s the end of my time spent PMing.  Onwards to new challenges!

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On Friday of last week, I handed in my notice to let my employers know that I would be leaving the company in one month’s time.  This action is a milestone indicative of plans that have been underway for over a year.

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Project management is an interesting discipline to work in.  It’s natural for people, over time, to gravitate upwards and towards roles that involve management.  Gaining a deep knowledge of a given domain, and the ability to perceive how it will be affected over the long-term is naturally an important trait to possess when managing people that work within that domain.  However, this alone is not enough to be an effective manager (although, too often, it’s the only qualification that is considered).

• Why do we have a technical architect and a business analyst if the project manager is capable of all this?
• Why are these other people being pulled into meetings with the project manager if they are not needed?
• Is the fact that the project manager doesn’t let the rest of the members of his team volunteer information an indication that they are incompetent?

None of these implications are attractive or co-operative.  One of the most important things I’ve learned over time managing projects is that it’s okay for me to tell a client that I don’t have the answer to their question.  I can’t answer that question, but my Senior Developer can and I can check in with them and get that answer. Better yet, if they’re there with me, I can turn the question directly over to them.

There’s an important distinction here between a good and a bad project manager.  A good project manager will rely on his team for their opinions and advice. A bad project manager will rely on his team for scapegoating and passing off blame for poor results.  Don’t let yourself fall into the second category.  Those in the know are aware that poor results from a team are generally the result of poor management by the project manager.

The project manager that understands the values of humility and confidence is able to accept that they are not the expert on everything, and listen to a question without taking it personally.  Is this a valid question?  Have I actually accounted for this? Listen, consider what is being asked, discuss with your team as appropriate and respond.

By allowing yourself the benefit of being an imperfect human being, you will find that you are much more open to opportunities to learn and to improve the project that you are working on.

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A brief interlude from the ongoing blog about the dance classes I’m taking.  This entry is about the latest attempt I’ve made at creating a system that works at home.

• Create a new terminal window
• Fiddle with the settings to get it to look the way I want
• Save the settings for that terminal window, and think up a name for it
• Determine whether or not I want this container to open whenever I turn on my machine
• Create a new document to edit within that terminal window
• Finally start writing

Even if you don’t know what any of these steps actually means, you can see that I’ve got at least five steps before I actually start capturing a new idea.  This is a sure sign of a bad system.  How on earth could a system like this possibly be efficient?

Well, it wasn’t.  Although I really like the geekiness of hacking directly in terminal windows, and taking advantage of OS X’s awesome eye-candy, it just wasn’t working.  Like any good GTD practitioner, I tweaked this system for a while, trying to get things to work for me.  Over time, however, I noticed that I was simply using my system less and less.  This is a sure sign that it is time to make the decision to create a different system (or give up all together, but you’ll never progress if you do that).

Bay had started using the Mac application, Stickies, on her computer to keep track of a todo list on her machine (a big step for her), and this seemed like a good place to start from.  With a little fiddling, I came up with the new system that you see below:

Some elaboration on what you’re seeing here:

Todo List

The main four windows that are visible are the windows which contain the bulk of my thoughts, writing, and todo items.  The leftmost sticky has my todo list.  This contains all of the items that I plan to do shortly.  I’ve organized the todo list into some loose categories: Chores, E-mail, Phone, and Blog.  Above these four headers are anything that doesn’t fit into any of these categories.  Right now you can see that one of my items is to review my todo lists from Google Bookmarks, and Evernote, two other applications that I use.  I will go into more detail on these applications later.  Beneath there, I have three chores that I need to do, and nothing else at the moment.

Having these four main categories (and the implied miscellaneous category above them) is a convenient way of breaking things down into subsets that I can easily choose to burn through when I have a few minutes.  Whenever I’m at a loss for something to do, the first place I go to is this page and look through the items.  Am I in the mood to write e
-mails?  Perfect, I can burn through all of these items quickly.

Having these loose categories makes it easy to quickly determine a group of tasks that I can take on and complete, and is a good way of reducing passive barriers to getting things done (and hey, that’s what this is all about right?)

Purchases

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As of late, the subject of intelligence has been at the forefront of my mind.  Intelligence has always been something that I have great admiration and respect for, and something that I seek out in anyone that I intend to enter any kind of relationship with.  Friendships, employment, project teams, and most importantly, my spouse – all of these relationships are far more rewarding when they are shared with other intelligent people.  (Did you catch the backdoor brag there?  Of course you did, you’re probably intelligent too.)

However, intelligence has many forms, and the more I work, contemplate, and talk about it with friends, the more apparent it seems to me that we generally focus too much attention to only one of those forms.

What is intelligence?

Intelligence has many forms, but, at least in North America, we are generally raised to consider only one narrow aspect of it – the ability to do well on standardized tests.  It’s unfortunate that it is necessary to determine some way to measure the progress and success of certain students as they move through school, and the main way by which our society has evolved to do this is by giving them material to learn, and then testing their ability to regurgitate this information without applying a lot of thought to it.

I refer to these kinds of tests as narrow in focus because they typically only measure and reward a student’s ability to read, memorize and repeat information that they are presented with.  In more formalized systems of learning, such as math, it is possible to test not only their ability to repeat information, but also their ability to apply that knowledge in different manners, depending on the situation.

The many faces of Intelligence

As I’ve suggested, intelligence can appear in many forms.  Below are just a few of them.

Standard Intelligence

This is intelligence as we typically think about it, and hence the name used.  I’m not implying that intelligence of this nature is common – I believe it’s considered, to some extent, to be distributed along a bell curve. The ability to take in new knowledge, parse it, and comprehend it. The ability to understand how to apply that knowledge to what we already know, as well as new situations and scenarios as they arise.  Some people refer to this form of intelligence as book-smarts, as these people are typically able to do quite well on tests.

This form of intelligence is generally well-measured (or at least as well as we can hope from standardized testing) and valued (though not as highly as I think it should be).  This is also the form of intelligence that is typically decried as being elitist, whatever that is supposed to mean.

Since standard intelligence is already a fairly well-understood quantity, I won’t spend too much time on it.  Hopefully you, as the manager, are able to recognize this type of intelligence when it appears, and utilize it well.

Wisdom

Wisdom is, in my opinion, a more abstract type of intelligence.  It isn’t as easy to define as our standard form of intelligence, but perhaps that is just my own lack of articulation.

Wisdom is the ability to apply our own experience to that which we observe around us, and the future.  It is the ability to act with foresight, based on what we have observed and experienced in the past, and to make decisions that will affect ourselves positively in the long term.

Some of the common terms used to describe some who is wise include: common sense, thoughtful, and able to think long-term.  These terms all typically apply to people that are able to make intelligent decisions that are informed and require thinking more abstractly than simpler decisions. The wiser the individual, the more likely I have found that they are able to conceptualize ideas and concepts over the long-term, and across a broader spectrum of individuals.  In many ways, wisdom represents your capacity to apply knowledge that you hold.  The wiser you are, the better able you are to apply your knowledge to a multitude of people and situations.

Wisdom and standard intelligence are not necessarily mutually inclusive, nor mutually exclusive.  We have all met the tech-guru, able to tell you with annoying accuracy what the first hundred digits of Pi are, but is unable to understand why something he said would offend half of the people you work with.  This individual is capable of acquiring a large amount of knowledge, but can only apply it within his own narrow spectrum of experience.  Contrary to that, I have a friend that is not able to rapidly pick up new and complicated concepts, but he can apply the knowledge that he does acquire to many different situations and concepts outside of his own breadth of experience thus far in life.

Wisdom is a valuable concept in management, allowing you to apply what has happened in the past to what may occur in the future.  A manager with wisdom will be able to apply their own experience to that which their team members are currently dealing with, and aid them in this manner.

Creative Intelligence

Creative intelligence is arguably the least tangible type of intelligence, and may very well just be creativity in the general sense.  Nevertheless, in my experience, the ability to think creatively, and apply it to the problems at hand, is a skill I place a premium on.

Creative thinkers are typically able to think outside of the box and come up with innovative solutions.  Additionally, these kinds of people will see areas where innovation and creativity can be applied to the existing business and production lines.  The drawback to creative thinkers is that they can exist so far outside of the box that their suggestions and feedback may not be realistic.

Creative intelligence, as I choose to describe it, exists within the overlap of intelligence and creativity.  The ability to know and understand your existing boundaries, see solutions that lay beyond that and that are unrestricted by those boundaries, but also to understand how they can integrate and fit within your existing goals, practices and workflows.

Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence seems to be gaining better recognition as of late, being recognized as an important part to human resource and management resources.  Emotional intelligence is occasionally referred to as empathy, or sensitivity.

An individual that is emotionally intelligent will be able to understand the impacts that given actions may have on members of your organization, and how different people will perceive a given action.  Emotionally intelligent people are capable of taking themselves out of their own headspace, and looking at things from another person’s perspective.

Empathy is a very important skill for a successful manager.  Being able to understand what someone in your group really means when they make a statement, and how a given mandate or request from you is going to be perceived, allows you to proactively make decisions that will facilitate change and lubricate the potentially complex social dynamics that are inherent to any group.  Remember my post about optics?  Well, emotionally intelligent people are the ones that will best be able to understand and explain this factor to you.

Likewise, people working in human resources need to be able to understand how their company’s policies and actions will affect and be perceived by employees.  Effective emotional intelligence will also enable your HR departments to ensure that new employees are hired with personalities that will not just fit in with the existing dynamic, but also synergize and enable further progression and growth.

The need for balance

In order to maintain a successful organization, and a positive, efficient group dynamic, a team, as well as a company on the whole, needs to ensure that a delicate balance of the above types of intelligence is fostered and cultivated.

A company composed of people that only possess book smarts will have a tendency to alienate important stakeholders, both inside and outside of the company.  Employees (arguably the most important stakeholder for any project) will be alienated by company policies and decisions that appear to have been made without any consideration given to how it affects the employees, and clients will be alienated by poor communication and the way that information is radiated outwards from the company.

On the other side of things, a company dominated by emotionally intelligent people, but without enough resources thinking about the bottom-line and efficiently achieving objectives will become inefficient, spending too much time considering how every decision will affect every stakeholder, leading to inefficiency in executing your objectives and plans.

How do I get me some of this?

As I mentioned above, it’s usually fairly easy to determine the level of standard intelligence someone is when hiring them, especially if they are coming straight out of school.   Due to the testable nature of this type of intelligence, their school transcripts will give you at least some kind of an indication of what they are capable of. Unfortunately, the other types of intelligence are a little more elusive, and there are no convenient ways to ascertain just how much of a capacity a given individual has for these ways of thinking.

The easiest approach is if you already have someone within your organization that possesses these characteristics.  Bring them to the interview, and they will likely be able to determine whether or not a given candidate has the chops.  Barring this option, you can try to use some scenario-based questions to determine these qualifies.

As a last result, you can attempt to hire someone (such as myself) to consult for you and seek out these specific skills.  While this approach will not garner you the benefit of having someone able to determine how well someone will fit into the social dynamics of your office, it can help you pinpoint specific skill-sets that you want to bring on board (if you take this route, you should have the consult meet with the candidate at some point, but making sure to interview them with your own team as well).

The importance of honesty

Knowledge is a great thing, but before it’s even possible to put any of the above to use, it’s important to take an honest, reflective look at both yourself, and your company, in order to determine exactly what it is that you are working with.  Many of us have difficulty in turning our view inwards and asking ourselves, which, if any, of the above forms of intelligence we possess, and which we are lacking.  If a company cannot honestly perform this type of reflection, barring good fortune, it will likely end up with an imbalance, and the inevitable inefficiencies that flow from that state.

Turn your sights inwards, and look for the places that are lacking, and treat these as opportunities to improve.  A good company should always be striving for improvement, and places that have a known hole to be filled represent low-hanging fruit; areas that you are lacking in and are cognizant of are much easier to resolve than those that lie outside of your current scope (obviously).  Treat these opportunities for what they are: a chance for continued growth and improvement.

In conclusion, I’m finding it quite enjoyable to write about the things that, up to this point, I’ve just considered intuitive.  However, I’m always on the lookout for new ideas or subject matter to write about.  If you or anyone else have any suggestions for further discussion, please leave me feedback in the form of a comment.

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I was recently asked for advice pertaining to change management:

I am on a committee at work to try and figure out some ideas to make things better/easier/more enjoyable for employees when the company makes some sort of change.  Such as when everyone at the company needs to learn a new procedure or piece of software or company rule.

This is a tricky question, because it’s so general.  Every situation will have its own quirks, details, and difficulties that add to the complexity involved in affecting the change positively.  On a tangent, Davin and I got talking about the process through with Telus and BCTel (the two main phone companies associated with Alberta and British Columbia, respectively) went through the process of merging about a decade back, and what a debacle the entire affair turned out to be.  This kind of change is obviously on a scale large enough that it requires a plan specifically suited towards its success and various intricacies, and is out-of-scope for what I’ll be talking about today.

What I’m going to aim to do is describe some of the things that we are seeking to do whenever we look to affect change in the processes and methodologies that the people we work with use on a daily basis.  I plan to cover:

• Why attempts to affect change are resisted
• Aiding the acceptance of change
• Things we should avoid

Background

As a preface to this, I do not have any formal training or background in change management.  I do however have experience with this subject.  While working for the University of Victoria, I was part of a group of three co-op students and one supervisor that were designing and implementing a completely new system of information management that was to be used by all of the different co-op programs at UVic.  Going through the process of training, migrating old data, designing an interface that made sense to people, and subsequently migrating those people from an old (and arguably rickety) system to the new one, all provided me with a lot of valuable experience.

On top of that, I have managed a large number of projects and application deployments that have required middle-tier and end-users to change over to new ways of accomplishing old tasks, new workflows, etc.  Coming on to a new project and managing it, or even just having a new person join my team that I haven’t worked with before are both situations where I need people to make changes to their habits.  I don’t know anything about how previous employees were managed on other projects, but it’s quite likely that things were done slightly differently than the way I do.

Lastly, I’m just the kind of guy that enjoys doing analysis.  I think about this kind of stuff often, and I like to analyze my own routines and attempt to change myself for the positive, and determine how and why I am succeeding or failing at any given point in time.

Change FAIL

Many attempts to introduce change into existing workflows and processes fail. Before we can determine what to do correctly, we need to understand how it is that we are doing it incorrectly.

A lot of changes occur with the following workflow:

1. Management discusses a perceived problem
2. Management determines the way to solve the problem, and the required changes
3. The required changes are passed down to employees via memo that says something cheerful like “Exciting changes are coming to company X!”
4. Employees read the memo and notice that the changes are not exciting
5. Employees feel annoyed at management for introducing inefficient/annoying changes

There are a number of problems here.

Poor transparency

The visibility of this entire process is completely opaque to the employees, right up until the very end.  They have no way of knowing what led to the development of these new procedures, why these new procedures are being instated, and least of all that they were even being considered in the first place.  A memo at the end of a pipeline is a bad way to communicate upcoming changes to your staff.

Optics

(these are different, though similar to, transparency)

What about the optics of this process?  Well, there are none.  As far as the staff can tell, this is a completely arbitrary change that has just been passed down from high up on the mountain.  Some people may be in love with the feeling of power that being able to make unquestionable judgements like this provides them, but these people do not make good supervisors.  There are exceptions to every rule, but people generally like to be included in processes that affect them.  There is zero inclusion in the process I’ve outlined above.

No vested interest in success

Is there anything in the process that I have outlined above that would cause employees to be vested in the success of this new change?  I can’t see anything.  Some of you may argue that, “If they don’t follow this new procedure, they will get fired!”.  While this may be true, the only thing this approach to introducing change will motivate your employees to do is accept it enough to not lose their jobs.  We’re not looking to have people perform “good enough”.  We’re looking to introduce change that will make people better and more efficient.  We don’t want to be “good enough” managers, we want to be awesome.

Successful Change

So, now that we’re armed with the knowledge of what makes introducing change a failure, we can construct some steps that will hopefully ensure our success.

Be transparent

Employing transparency is important to the success of most changes.  No one appreciates the feeling that they are pawns just waiting for the next arbitrary decision to be foisted upon them from some mysterious being high above.

People are creatures of habit.  We don’t like having our daily routines change, and we’ve evolved to resist changes like this so that we can create efficient routines that work for us. The greater the amount of lead-in time that you can provide people with, the better they are going to be able to adapt to that change.

There is obviously a balance here.  Telling someone that in five years, you’re going to change the system they are learning is a bit too far off for anyone to realistically work towards.  However, doing this initially, and then maintaining transparency throughout the development process is an excellent way to keep people abreast of what is going on, and help them adapt their mindset to the changes that are in the hopper.

Transparency allows you to ensure that employees are able to adapt along with the system, and keeps things in the forefront of their minds.  Many people shy away from transparency because they feel that letting people see into the decision-making process will cause them further aggravation.  You can determine how much transparency you want to provide employees, but opacity is never desirable.  If you’re worried that they’re not going to like hearing about the changes that are being planned, think of how much worse they’ll take them if the first time they hear about them is from a memo telling them that they have to change next week.

Consider the optics

Okay, so what do I mean by optics, if not transparency?  Optics are the way that your actions are perceived by those around you.  Whenever any of us undertake an action, we have
complete knowledge (or at least, in theory we do) of why we are taking that action.  When you are on the management team that is planning, designing, implementing, and rolling out a new change in policy, you have full view of the entire process from start to end.  You understand why the policy needed to be created, you are aware of the decisions that went into creating this new policy, and you are aware of why the policy is being rolled out at a specific date.

(Incidentally, I’m using the term policy here, but this applies to anything that will affect changes in other people’s workflow and routines)

Your employees, however, do not have perfect knowledge of your process.  Depending on how transparent you have been, and how much lead-in time you have provided them of the upcoming changes, they may have either a rough idea of why and how this policy has come into being, to no idea whatsoever.

Good optics are one of the main reasons to try to be as transparent in your management as possible.  If people can see that you are willing to make visible everything that you do, the optics associated with that are that you are:

1. Being up front and honest
2. Have nothing to hide
3. See them as equals and worthy of understanding what goes on behind the scenes

This last point bears further elaboration.  Even if your employees aren’t your equals, it is best to make them feel as though they are, for the sake of optics in situations like these.

When rolling out new decisions and changes, always be sure to consider the optics, honestly, from the perspective of those that do not have access to the amount of knowledge that you do.  If this sounds easy, let me assure you, it isn’t.  It requires people with a good deal of empathy (a very important quality in a manager) to be able to understand how other people think and feel in a given situation.

Get people to vest interest in the success of a change

In my opinion, this last point is by far the most important.  When you are asking people to make changes to their workflows and habits, you are asking them to put in effort that they wouldn’t otherwise have to do.  If you aren’t willing to consider this aspect, then you are going to find yourself with a staff that aren’t willing to take on the burden of new changes.

It is my own experience that the best way to get people onboard with new changes, and to invest in a decision, is to include them in it.  Nothing fosters a sense of personal value in the success of something like collaboration does.

When you get people to collaborate with you on something, it is no longer only you that stands to benefit from the success of that finished product.  The success is shared by all of those that have collaborated.

Ask for feedback, even if you don’t intend to do anything with it.  Share the core problem that you are attempting to address with people, and find out if they have any thoughts on it.  Is it even really a problem for them?  Have they considered solutions to that problem before?

There are so many reasons to take this approach, but I will outline just a few (this post is already turning out longer than I intended):

You may learn something you hadn’t considered

Two heads are almost always better than one, and it is this principle that you can look towards as one of the many benefits to soliciting other people for feedback.  Learning the right way to request feedback is a skill in and of itself, and I generally wouldn’t recommend taking an approach like holding a company meeting and asking people to shout out any feedback they have (although this can work in some situations as well).  What’s the worst thing that can happen?  You may get some ideas that you had already thought about or won’t end up using.

People want to be listened to, and to feel important

Simply asking people what they think about something is one of the best ways to make them feel like you care about what they have to say.  We all want to believe that we are intelligent, creative, and have good ideas.  Even if that doesn’t hold true for all of us (and certainly for any of us all of the time), it is still nice to feel this way.

A lot of the time, people just want to feel that they’ve been heard.  In my experience managing projects, I would say that a significant amount of suggestions, ideas, and feedback are more about people wanting to feel like they’ve been listened to, rather than to have their ideas actually implemented.

Make your employees feel important by soliciting them for ideas, and listening to them.  And please, be earnest when you listen to them.  Don’t just nod your head rapidly, counting the seconds until they shut up.  Be genuine in your interest.

It doesn’t require a lot of effort

The above two items should be sufficient enough to follow this advice, but if you’re still hesitant, do it simply because it doesn’t need to require a lot of effort.  You don’t need to go and shake hands with every employee and spend thirty minutes talking to them; sending out an e-mail to everyone explaining what you’re doing and requesting feedback can be enough.

An example

Once again, in order to stay in the realm of the concrete and implementable, let’s take an example.

Let’s say the company you are on the management team, and you have noticed that there is a large amount of garbage being thrown out at the end of each day.  You pay a fee for the volume of garbage that is carted away each day, and hey, you want to be a greener company too (that’s pretty vogue these days right?).

The wrong approach

The management team considers the problem, determines a solution, and then three weeks later, sends out the following memo:

GREETINGS PEONS, 

Because Megacorp pays for the garbage removed from the premises based on the volume disposed, we will be instituting a new policy to allow only smaller (1L) garbage cans in cubicles, starting next Monday

The right approach

The management team considers the problem, and sends out an e-mail:

Hello Staff,

Because Megacorp pays for the garbage removed from the premises based on the volume disposed, and in an effort to continue our company’s drive towards a greener approach, we are considering new policies to cut down on the amount of waste generated on a daily basis.  We are interested in any and all feedback, so if you have any, please send it to lordborak@megacorp.com.

Thanks!

I am obviously hamming it up a little bit here, but we can already see that this approach is much more transparent (the employees are finding out about this new policy change far before anything is actually implemented), has much better optics (the change doesn’t seem to be only for the company’s selfish motive of paying less for garbage disposal), and is encouraging staff participation and collaboration.  (Even better would be having a contest for the best suggestion, but rewarding innovation is a topic for another post).

An update could be provided part way through the process:

Hello Staff,

Thank you to everyone for your excellent suggestions.  After consideration and review, as well as considering the feasibility of each of them, the management team have decided that the best way to proceed is to reduce the size of garbage cans in each cubicle to a 1L container.  If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to send them to lordborak@megacor
p.com

Have an awesomely great day!

Later on, the policy could be introduced with an e-mail like:

Hello Staff,

As e-mailed previously, the new garbage can policy is being rolled out next Monday.  Thank you to everyone for your cooperation, and speaking up about your concerns.  We appreciate everyone making the effort to help Megacorp cut down on waste, and to drive towards our shared goal of “living greener”

And once again, there is an opportunity to turn this policy change into something fun if you want to provide some kind of incentives.  On that note, if I get any comments requesting it, I will post about some of the positives and dangers of providing employee incentives and rewards for things like this.

It doesn’t look like much, but I think that when we hold them side by side, we can really see the differences.  The better approach provides excellent transparency to the employees.  It’s not giving them a view into the entire process, but it’s certainly making clear to them the intent, and the path that is being followed to reach the desired goal.  Not only that, but the optics of the second approach are superior, and definitely encourage a sense of participation and mutual achievement between the employees and the management team.

The end result didn’t require that much additional effort from the management team, but I guarantee you that the changes will be received much better.

The key to all of this really comes down to empathy.  When you are making changes, remove yourself from your own headspace, and consider how these changes will be received by other people.  Don’t let yourself fall into the trap of thinking of your staff as employees, or drones, or any other label that you find convenient.  They are people, just like you and I. Treat them as such.

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I managed to get to the bottom of my relatively large inbox at work for the first time in a while, and so I found myself with a little bit of downtime. Rather than waste the time perusing Google Reader (Great web-app, excellent productivity destroyer!), I figured I would instead devote some time towards writing about the Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology.

This entry actually stems from a presentation I decided to give at work. Since I’m the only project manager at work, I hoped that it would be interesting for co-workers to see how I go about managing the large volume of tasks that constantly filter across my desk.

There are already a lot of websites out there by various gurus of productivity (some self-proclaimed, others widely recognized as such), but most of those delve right in to the details and discuss ways to optimize the system to suit your own needs. I don’t care – I want to write about this subject, and I think I’m pretty decent at articulating concepts, so here’s hoping that this post provides some benefit to some people that are not intimately familiar with the subject matter.

Before I begin, I will state for the record that I am not a GTD guru, self-proclaimed or otherwise. I am simply taking this opportunity to provide my own insight into the subject.

What is GTD?

Let’s start at the top. GTD is, at its core, a time-management methodology. It is a way of dealing with the myriad of distractions that bombard us on a daily basis, and handling all of the various tasks and todo items that crop up as a result.

Who can use GTD?

This is hardly ground-breaking, but the people that will benefit the most from GTD are those that experience the things I’ve mentioned above frequently. People in management positions will typically be bombarded with e-mails, phone calls, etc. on a fairly constant basis throughout the day. The more focused your task at work is, the less likely you are to need to implement a new system in order to stay organized and get everything on your plate finished.

That being said, I feel that GTD can benefit everyone to some extent. Although I use it the most at my day job, I find plenty of the principles apply on a daily basis at home.

The principles

At its core, GTD is built on some fairly simple principles (note: simple does not equate to easy).

The principles, at least, the ones that I make use of, are:

• Two-minute rule
• Zeroing your inbox
• The paper system and the 43 folders (the tickler)

I’ll explain each of these items in turn.

The two-minute rule

The core of the two-minute rule can be summarized as follows: If a task takes two minutes of less to complete, you should do it, right now. Simple right? I take this concept one step further, and say that every item that pops up can be dealt with, to some extent, within two minutes. In this context, dealt with does not necessarily mean you can complete the task. It just means that you can either complete it, or file it away, or make a note of next steps, or break it down, etc.

This sounds so very simple in theory, but in practice it takes disicipline to limit yourself to two minutes of interaction for a given distraction when you’re in the middle of focusing on something else. Don’t worry – we’ve got some other tricks up our sleeve to help.

If there is one thing that everyone should take away from GTD, it is this rule. In my mind, everything else about GTD flows from this one single principle. I feel that implementing and sticking with a two-minute rule is the best way to ensure that you avoid procrastinating, and … get things done. You may find that it is difficult initially to make this happen, as you don’t have a system set up to enable this. I’ll talk more about this shortly, and follow-up this post with another one detailing how I maintain a similar system at home.

Zeroing your inbox

The next concept is that of zeroing your inbox. The goal here is that you complete each day with an empty inbox. No straggling e-mails, no tasks that you probably could deal with now, but should instead pick up on later.

This is the concept that most people find the most difficult. Many people where I work like to use their inboxes as a task list, or a holding place for things they have not yet had a chance to work on. This is a bad habit, as it creates mental clutter, and generates additional overhead when you need to focus. A blank inbox provides many benefits, but the most significant one for myself is the ability to immediately determine whether or not I have dealt with a new distraction (if it’s in my inbox, I haven’t).

In addition to my e-mail inbox(es), I use a physical inbox for my paper system. This must be zero’d out at the end of the day as well. No cheating!

Okay, so what do you do with all this e-mail that you’re supposed to be removing from your inbox? That’s where the paper system comes into place.

The paper system

The paper system is how I keep track of my tasks to be completed. To me, one of the benefits of the paper system is that having an action item or a task attached to something tangible provides it with more weight, and allows me to physically deal with an item when I have completed it (believe me, it feels great tearing up an action item once you’ve completed it). On that note, I have found that it is generally not appreciated when you touchdown-spike the crumpled up piece of paper off of your co-workers forehead. Still, it’s pretty fun.

The idea is to have only one task per piece of paper. Your system may vary, but my paper system has three components: the tickler (more on this shortly), the physical inbox, and the physical waitbox.

The physical inbox is the place where I store all tasks that I intend to complete before the end of the day. “But where do these tasks come from?”, you ask. I will tell you.

Every incoming e-mail, every phone or face-to-face conversation, and every set of meetings that I attend get broken down into tasks. Remember our two-minute rule. As soon as a distraction comes up, determine what the next steps and action items are. Ideally, you want one action item per piece of paper. These action items are then sorted into the tickler, or placed at the bottom of your inbox. Each task should contain the action to be completed, along with any necessary context (does it relate to an e-mail? Print off the e-mail, and write the individual task underneath that). Ideally, you want to be able to pick up the piece of paper, and without any further effort, be able to act upon the item.

If this is getting confusing, don’t worry, I’ll have an example soon.

What about the waitbox? The waitbox contains any items that I am ready to act upon, but are delayed waiting on something. Whatever it is that I am waiting on, the anticipation is that that thing will be resolved today. If it is not, I file the item in the tickler.

A good habit is to check your waitbox each time you come back from a break, which should be roughly three times a day (morning, lunch, and afternoon). If you’re not taking regular breaks, then you should also consider doing yourself, and your back, that favour (I’m not advocating long breaks, but give yourself a ten minute walk. It’s not good to sit for too long).

When reviewing items in the waitbox, ask yourself the following:

• Can I act upon this now?

If so, either do it now, or put it in your inbox

• Am I still waiting for something, and will that thing be done before the end of the day?

If so, file it back in the waitbox

• Am I still waiting for something, and will that thing not be done before the end of the day?

If so, file it in the tickler for an appropriate date

Okay, enough teasing about the tickler. Let’s talk about that.

The 43 folders (or, the tickler)

The tickler is composed of two different sets of accordion folders. The first one is your monthly tickler, and has slots labelled from January to December. The second one is your daily tickler, and has slots labelled from 1 to 31, for days of the month.

The tickler serves two purposes. First, it is a place to file away anything that you are not yet ready to deal with, but will need to acknowledge at some point further down the road. Did an item come up that requires talking to someone on vacation? File the action item in the tickler for the day that they return. Secondly, the tickler is a system you can trust to remind yourself when you need to act on an item.

I use the word trust in the previous paragraph because this is an integral part of a successful time management system. If you can’t trust the system that you are using, you will inevitably waste time going back and forth trying to confirm to yourself that you have in fact not let something slip through the cracks, and now we’re right back to where we started. You’ll probably spend some time doing this initially, but we want to minimize the initial part of that learning curve, not integrate it into the system itself.

How does the tickler remind you of items you need to act upon? Simple. At the start of each day, you pull out all of the items filed in your tickler for that day and move them to your inbox. At the start of each month, you pull all of the items filed for that month out of the monthly tickler, and determine whether you can deal with them now, later on today, or later on in the month. File them in the physical inbox, waitbox, or daily tickler accordingly.

At the end of your day, if you have any items left over in your inbox, sort through them and determine, realistically, when you will next be able to deal with them, and place them in the tickler, accordingly.

How about an example?

I feel like this has been pretty dense so far. Hopefully any example can keep us on top of things. Let’s say I get the following e-mail:

Hi Adam,

I am no longer able to pick up orders from our application, as I should be able to. Also, could you send me an update on the Budget?

Thanks,

Jorge Mexidando

So, how would I break this out? As I see it, there are two main tasks here:

1. Forward along e-mail to one of my developers, and ask them to look into it.

This is a task that will certainly take me less than two minutes, so I will do it immediately.

2. Respond to Jorge’s e-mail

This task is not something I can do immediately, as the next step is to update the budget. I will print out this e-mail, write on it that the next step is “Update Budget”, and then file it in my tickler, as I do not have enough time today to complete this task.

For the record, I don’t actually have any clients named Jorge Mexidando. I wish I did though, because that is an awesome name, and I would probably call them by their full name at every opportunity.

What will it do for me?

Okay, so that’s that. What exactly will GTD do for you? Well it will actually do a couple of things for you:

• Reduce mental clutter and overhead
• Minimize your overhead so that you can actually focus on doing stuff
• Allow you to multitask efficiently

When I presented this information at work, a co-worker asked a very pertinent question: “What about situations where you forward along an e-mail to your co-workers, and then they never respond?”. There will always be situations like this. When your team is very busy, you will have to take on additional overhead and put a reminder in your tickler to follow-up on your question.

More important than that though is the fact that using GTD to clear out tasks as efficiently as possible will free your mind to keep things like this in mind. No system is perfect, but the more you are able to keep outside of your mind and put into a system that you trust, the better equipped you will be to handle situations like the one my co-worker mentioned.

What won’t GTD do for you?

Well, it won’t stop you from procrastinating, and it won’t prevent you from being lazy. GTD is simply a system for making yourself more efficient at doing work. If you are still prone to procrastinating, GTD will actually make this easier for you, as you can simply repeatedly re-file items back into your tickler.

Most important of all, GTD won’t solve all of your problems. There’s no such thing as a silver bullet, and that maxim remains true in time-management just as much as any other domain. While GTD will minimize the amount of time that you lose to mental overhead, it will not make you a superman, able to handle more tasks than you are capable of. If you’ve got too much work, the only solution is to remove some of that work from your plate.

So, where do you go from here?

Most important of all, follow the rule that “If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it”. If you have a system that is currently working for you, or you are able to manage your existing tasks without wasting time, you probably don’t need GTD. I don’t recommend changing over to a new system unless you feel that you will have a use for it.

If you think you would like to give GTD a shot, try and determine how well this system will integrate with the way you currently manage your tasks. If your current system is drastically different, you will need to look for ways to start moving in this direction. I’m an advocate of gradual changes that stick over drastic ones that feel great at first and then get discarded after two weeks, so look for ways to start integrating GTD principles into your routine that will stick. The easiest place to start is probably working towards emptying out your inbox. This is a fairly simple task, and seeing an inbox with no e-mails will give you a huge sense of accomplishment, and the motivation to keep making changes.

It’s also a good idea to get into the habit of determining what action items and next steps arise out of incoming e-mails and requests. This is a good way to look at all new items that pop up on your plate, and will help you trim away the fat and focus on the essentials.

Above all, be fluid in your approach. If you like some of the principles of GTD, but don’t think that all of them will work for you, then try to adapt as much as possible. I’m a big fan of agilility in all things that we try to do. Adopt what you can, evaluate where you stand after a few weeks, and then adjust your approach as needed. Don’t view any stumble as an outright failure – it is simply an opportunity to adapt your approach and then move forward again.

Adapting a new system is something that will take time and some effort initially. One pertinent question I saw asked online was “How will I know when it’s time to stop tweaking my system?”. You will be able to tell that it is time when you have integrated it into your daily routine. When you no longer need to think about what to do with a new piece of information, or find yourself worrying whether or not you’ve properly filed something, you’ve probably reached a point where you can now just use your system.

Above all, remember that GTD is a system that exists only to enable you to get things done. If you find that you are spending more time trying to make GTD work than you are actually completing tasks, that’s a good indication that you need to tweak your system. I can’t guarantee that GTD will work for you, but it’s done great things for me, and I notice that it is starting to bleed more and more into my home life as I take on more personal projects and add items to my todo list.

I’ve been posting desktop screenshots for a while now, but the next post I will make related to the subject of GTD will detail how these shots actually help my productivity at home. If there are any questions or thoughts, please speak up and post them in the comments.

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