Tools for Thought

By now, the concept of batching is familiar to nearly everyone who reads productivity books and blogs. Usually batching is illustrated with a specific repetitive process, like checking email. By checking email fewer times each day in the most infrequent intervals possible (this might be once a day for some, every two hours for others). [...]

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One of the overlooked advantages of using context lists to organize your next actions is the stark feedback they provide. It’s easy to see which contexts you’re good at working through, and which ones are getting less attention. When I had a day job, I was always very good at getting next actions at work [...]

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How do you know that what you’re doing right now is absolutely the best thing that you could be doing right now? Where does what you’re doing now fit in the scheme of things? What is the point of it? Whether or not there’s an absolute answer, most of us have experienced the sense of [...]

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In Reversing the Multitasking Impulse, I focused on multitasking as a problem. Multitasking isn’t inherently counterproductive, but its applications are limited. A strategic approach to multitasking can take advantage of the applications that fall within those limits. Multitasking is commonly perceived as doing two or more things at the same time. More precisely, it involves [...]

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Productivity bashing as a meme is getting boring. Having dabbled in it myself, I know whereof I speak. It’s not uncommon for bloggers to experience an identity crisis after writing extensively on the same topic for months, but that’s no reason to indulge in self-immolation. A more adaptive response is fuller self-examination. The word “productivity” [...]

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Yesterday I talked about the importance of closing open loops. For the greatest peace of mind, it’s important to track all incomplete cycles of action, not just your own. Regardless of how much of your project you delegate, you’re the one who has to live with the results, so if someone else drops the ball, [...]

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On her Abundance Blog, Marelisa Fabrega wrote great post on How to Make Decisions. The article is a virtual toolbox of methods to pick from when faced with a dilemma. I enjoyed it overall, but it opened with a statement reflecting a popular sentiment, especially among activists, that I subtly disagree with: If you have [...]

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In Merlin Mann’s Productive Talk interview series with David Allen, one of the most discussed segments was David’s dismissal of the need to link next actions to projects. He argued that if action and project lists are being reviewed regularly, there’s no need to nest action items underneath project headings to reaffirm their relationships. I [...]

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Work is a cycle of thinking and doing. When we want to bring about something new in the world, we spend some time thinking about what needs to be done, then spend some time doing it. Some ways of thinking and doing are more efficient and less stressful than others. One way is to batch [...]

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GTD is more of an internal, cognitive process of clarification than a regimen of making lists to create gratuitous obligations. If an action list doesn’t accurately reflect the user’s intentionality, it needs to be pared down or built up until it does. If the written list is incomplete, some potentially important items are left in [...]

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