Tools for Thought

I’ve added a new section for updates from microborg Twitter in the sidebar. Yes, resistance is futile. If you’re interested, click on its heading to follow me, or just click here.

And now for a few favorite dispatches from elsewhere in the blogosphere this week.

Simple Manifesto: Break Free from the Tyranny of the Clock. A different perspective from mine on our society’s organization around “clockhood.” Bergson used to call this post-clockhood experience “duration.” As I’ve written earlier, I think timers used strategically can release our attention from the passage of time to focus on the priority of our choosing. But Leo is great at getting us to question our assumptions. (Zen Habits)

Easy Ways to Go Green with Your Computer. An Earth Day installment for reducing your PCs energy footprint. There are great tips here for formatting pages before printing to minimize ink and paper waste. I especially love the suggestion for setting µTorrent to auto-shutdown the computer when downloads are complete. (Lifehacker)

Fireside Chat: Google and Tim Ferriss: In this video, Tim spends nearly a quarter of his infamous workweek shooting the breeze with the elves at Google UK. He stresses the intelligent use of data — relevant data — in making decisions, the difference between busyness and productivity, and the need to plan leisure activities in advance to avoid choosing work over boredom. (Tim Ferriss)

Email Insanity & the 0.001 Challenge. Another disquisition from the Over-300-Email-a-Day set. How would you write your email differently (or would you?) if you were one of a thousand correspondents in your recipient’s inbox? I’d probably add a footer linking to Merlin’s terrific Inbox Zero series. (43 Folders)

Could You Go Without Your Computer for a Day? I’m looking forward to May 3, when participants in Shutdown Day unplug for 24 hours. PDAs and cell phones are frowned upon, but note strictly prohibited. (Web Worker Daily)

To bring a project to closure, we need not only to keep track of our own actions, but those of others. Legacy To Do lists are not designed to track external dependencies. We need a language to identify all components of a project, not just the proactive.

Whenever a project requires information or a delegated action from others, put it on a list called Waiting For.

An example of a short Waiting For list would be:

• Michael 7/21: Gantt for store remodel
• Laura 7/20: artwork for client presentation
• Amazon.com 7/20: Andrei Roublev Criterion DVD
• Frank’s Auto 7/19: status on transmission replacement

Each item contains the person or organization from which you need a deliverable, the date when the action was delegated or when the information was requested, and the action or information itself. Other information potentially helpful to include are due dates, phone numbers or email addresses of the parties involved. If you have an electronic organizer, you can paste sections of pertinent emails or information from relevant websites into the note field of the corresponding line item on your list.

The Waiting For list needs to be reviewed as regularly as other context lists — at least once a day in your daily review, but as often as you need to ensure that your projects aren’t being orphaned by the inaction of others. If you’re responsible for the project, you’re as responsible for the component actions of the project you delegate to others as your own actions.

Avoid keeping a mental account of what others need to bring to the project. A busy office culture frequently makes every attempt to stop and think seem frivolous, and it’s tempting to take the shortcut of assuming that others will do (or remember accurately, if at all) what you ask of them. If it’s important enough to be done, it’s important enough to write down and track.

Having a Waiting For list is essential for identifying dependencies that need to be resolved before you can take further action on a project. Finalizing the budget for a remodel requires Michael to present a plan that includes a timeline with estimates on labor and materials. The client presentation can’t be rehearsed until the PowerPoint file is finished, requiring artwork from Laura.

Once you get in the habit of having a current list for every incompletion, it becomes much easier to identify potential problems before they become actual.

Gina Trapani (along with co-editor Adam Pash) of Lifehacker has been profound influence on my workflow since the blog’s inception in 2005. Launched about a year after Danny O’Brien codified the “life hack” concept based on geeks’ propensity for process optimization, Lifehacker has been an unending stream of tips for small tweaks in tools and behaviors to get things done “smarter, faster, better.”

The stream of great hacks can lead to flash flooding. Retaining the cream content in a blog as prolific as Lifehacker (typically two dozen posts a day) and triaging the less relevant requires black belt productivity in itself. More than just catching up with the latest moves in knowledge work athletics, readers need to step back and look at the few principles behind the many hacks.

Which is why it’s such a pleasure to have a distilled version of Lifehacker in book form. The first edition, Lifehacker: 88 Tech Tricks to Turbocharge Your Day, has been retitled in its brand new second edition to Upgrade Your Life: The Lifehacker Guide to Working Smarter, Faster, Better.

Lifehacker Reloaded

Upgrade Your Life is a guided toolbox of downloads, configurations and occasional pearls of wisdom. Reading a book version of the blog is almost a reintroduction to its ethos. Each chapter is an overarching principle for one aspect of streamlining workflow, and the best practices within the chapter are enumerated “hacks” — 116 of them between 11 chapters.

With any productivity blog or book, it’s best to approach it as a buffet, which is precisely what Gina encourages readers to do here: take what’s useful, and ignore the rest. Some of the tips are targeted towards Windows users, some are for Mac users; others are for fans of paper-based task management. The frequent Linux content on Lifehacker is conspicuously absent from Upgrade Your Life, which isn’t surprising, since this is clearly a mass market work.

Let’s take a look at some of the highlights from each chapter.

Chapter 1 — Control Your Email

The first edition began with the chapter, “Free up Mental RAM,” which appears retitled as a later chapter. The new Chapter 1 is Lifehacker’s most recurring theme: efficient email management. Regular Lifehacker readers will recognize much of the advice here, especially Hack #1: get your inbox to empty, and keep it that way. Once an email in your inbox is opened, it should either answered, deleted, archived, or transferred to short-term action folders.

Gina recommends a three-folder system: Archive for permanent storage, Follow-Up for messages with actions that go on your To Do list, and Hold for items requiring further input from the sender or others before it can be cleared. Instead of a Two Minute Rule, Gina recommends one minute: if the email can be answered in one minute or less, answer it; otherwise move it to Follow-Up and extract the action required for your To Do list.

Other hacks include tips for formatting readable subject lines, message bodies and reply quotes; deprioritizing CCed messages and “bacn,” consolidating multiple email accounts through Gmail — and my favorite, scripting boilerplate responses with the Quicktext extension for Thunderbird.

Chapter 2 — Organize Your Data

Gina makes the case for a six-subfolder Documents folder structure that she uses on her Mac, Linux and Windows machines: bak for backup, docs for active project documents, docs-archive, junkdrawer for temporary files (like podcasts and setup files), multimedia, and scripts for those who run executable scripts or shortcuts.

In addition to (or in spite of) the folder system, there’s a strong argument made for shifting from the file cabinet paradigm to embracing robust search tools like the Google Desktop, which integrates results from the web and your hard drive in a single thread. Other hacks in the chapter are for file encryption, consolidated password storage, and photo management. There are even a couple of old school hacks, like do-it-yourself paper planners and tips for effective filing.

Chapter 3 — Trick Yourself into Getting Done

This chapter is state-of-the-art task management, showing readers how to atomize unwieldy To Do lists into a smaller, more concrete set of instructions to self. “At any point during the workday,” Gina writes, “you are in one of two modes: thinking mode (that’s you with the Boss hat on) and action mode (that’s you with the Personal Assistant hat on).” The key is to think like an effective Boss who has to delegate to her assistant with clear instructions — using specific verbs in To Dos like “Phone” or “Email” rather than “Contact” or “Ask.”

Gina points out the danger in writing down To Dos that bundle more than one action — what she calls “multiaction tasks,” or what David Allen calls “projects” or “subprojects.” A multiaction task would be an instruction like “Clean office,” which can’t be done in one step. By focusing on the next action, “File papers on desk,” it becomes easier to move forward.

Like Julie Morgenstern and Tim Ferris, Gina recommends avoiding checking email in the morning, and instead setting up a “morning dash”: spending at least the first hour of each day dedicated to finishing the one most important task on your list. Another good hack, borrowed from Morgenstern, is the time map: a table or spreadsheet of a model day in which you shade in sections according to your ideal distribution of activity categories, which is then compared to a log of your actual distribution. Also included are timer hacks, automated activity logs, and advice for avoiding time sinks and overwork.

Chapter 4 — Clear Your Mind

Originally titled “Free up Mental RAM,” this chapter stresses the importance of getting thoughts out of your head and into some outboard memory system, whether paper or electronic. The brain’s short-term memory makes a poor storage space for holding dozens of implicit commitments like “I need to get my tires rotated” or “We’re having dinner with Angela on Friday(?)”. The mind has to constantly issue itself reminders of these internal agreements, leading to persistent stress and distraction.

Most of hacks consist of electronic tools and techniques, like keeping action lists in text files, updating your Google Calendar via email, setting up a personal wiki, emailing reference photos from your cell phone to Flickr, and a detailed look at Remember the Milk.

The RTM entry was the first of many times I read and learned something in the book that I glossed over whenever it was mentioned on the blog. I’ve ignored the online list manager Remember the Milk because I was convinced that I had to keep my lists in the cloud. In fact, RTM is Google Gears enabled, meaning that lists can be stored offline if desired.

Since notetaking is still faster and more fluid on paper for most people, there are a couple of hacks on better notetaking and creating customized note paper.

Chapter 5 — Firewall Your Attention

As the author’s most famous catchphrase, “Firewall Your Attention” shrewdly frames concentration as the art of removing distractions, or making them inconvenient to access, instead of relying on discipline. Leechblock is one such distraction filter: a Firefox extension that blocks designated websites at set times, adding a layer of security settings that make unblocking difficult. If that’s not enough, Gina gives instructions on how to edit your hosts directory to give a “Server Not Found” error message when you point your browser to whatever sites you’ve added to hosts.

Other hacks include clearing icons from the desktop, setting up multiple desktops, shutting down your email client when not in use, and even tips on how to organize your house into a distraction-free environment.

Chapter 6 — Streamline Common Tasks

Lifehacker readers will be familiar with most of these hacks, but they bear repeating. The keyboard hacks covered here are Windows and Firefox shortcut keys, utilities for customized keyboard launching (Launchy on Windows, Quicksilver on Mac), and utitilies for creating hotstrings (Texter on Windows, TextExpander on the Mac). Hotstrings allow you to create custom abbreviations that replace themselves with larger strings of text, like “TFI” for “Thank you for your interest.” This is a must-apply hack.

Non-keyboard hacks include information resources available via text messaging, batch photo resizing, more GCal tips, and a look at the clever Qipit web service that allow you to email snapshots of whiteboards and printed pages for automatic scanning to PDF.

Chapter 7 — Automate Repetitive Tasks

Most of these hacks are for routine computer management — things we all know we should do, like backing up our hard drive, but are too boring to get around to. These types of tasks are terrific candidates for automation. Freeware strategies for backing up to an external drive are detailed for Windows (SyncBack) and Mac (using Leopard’s native Time Machine utility), as well as web-based service solutions like Mozy. If you’ve organized your document folders as recommended in Chapter 2, Gina’s “Janitor” VB script cleans out the junkdrawer folder at scheduled intervals. And there are a couple of tips for putting Windows’ “Scheduled Tasks” function to good use.

Also included are ways to automate the downloading of multiple files and the emailing of backup files. There’s also a cool VB script for logging individual entries of some metric, like your weight for the day, which automatically updates a spreadsheet.

Chapter 8 — Get Your Data to Go

It’s amazing how many options we have to work at different sites. We can store huge files on a flash drive, run applications on a flash drive, create and share documents with online office suites, access web apps via text message, install virtual private networks or control PCs remotely through VNC. All of these options are addressed in detail.

One of the coolest additions to the book’s second edition is Mojopac, a free “PC on a stick” utility that lets your run a copy of your PC’s Windows or Linux image directly off of an external drive, such as an iPod or a USB flash drive. The various Twitter SMS “bots” were news to me. Through Twitter you can send text message updates to your Remember the Milk task manager, or retrieve a particular list. There’s a timer bot to send reminders to yourself, one for logging expenses, and another for logging gas mileage. Apparently you can do more with Twitter than let the world know you’re getting a burrito.

Chapter 9 — Master the Web

A potpourri of skills, extensions, bookmarklets and other resources for getting the most from your browser and the internet. The chapter has a great guide to Google search operators — terms that modify and filter searches. Most of it’s old news to power users, but I found a couple of operators that I didn’t already know, like adding a tilde before a keyword to include its synonyms in the search (~PDA).

RSS is another technology that’s old news except to novices — majority of computer users. It’s good to see a clear explanation of what it is for those who might be afraid to ask. Even many people who familiar with RSS still unaware how the ability to access or create dynamic feeds.

Other hacks in this largish chapter include instructions on installing Firefox extensions, recommended extensions, favorite bookmarklets, finding reusable media in the digital commons, clearing your browser history, and porting your Firefox configuration to copies on other computers.

Chapter 10 — Hone Your Computer Survival Skills

If you can spell Lifehacker, you’ve probably been conscripted by friends and family as tech support. What sounds like a dull read is actually an interesting and informative chapter on the basic maintenance skills and software utilities we should all have. Most of the content is targeted to Windows users, since Windows is usually the target of attacks.

It discusses all of the basic enemies of good computer health, like malware, spyware, viruses, browser hijacking, startup folder bloatware — and gives solutions for them. I threw most of the mentioned utilities on a flash drive, and now feel ready to diagnose and repair anyone’s computer the next time it throws a fit. File merging, system restoration, data recovery, thorough file deletion and proper filewalling round things out.

Chapter 11 — Manage Multiple Computers

Most of the discussion here is for sharing resources over a network. Non-admins will be surprised at how easy some of the hacks are, like setting up shared folders in Windows and Macs computers and exchanging files between the two platforms. Microsoft’s SyncToy and FolderShare get mention for synchronizing folders between computers, so that the two folders have the latest file image. Other shared resources discussed include browser bookmarks, printers, a single operating in a dual-monitor setup, and a single keyboard and mouse between two computers.

Finally, Gina gives instructions for sharing an Intel Mac’s hard drive with OS X and Windows using Boot Camp. This was the only weak spot in the book for me, since anyone marginally interested in a dual-boot Mac would have probably made installing Windows and Boot Camp a priority long before picking up this book. But I suppose it does technically qualify as a hack, and not a trivial one.

Should you Upgrade?

I don’t have to deliberate on this one — yes, even if you have a copy of the first edition. Not only has the technology changed between editions, but the thematic organization of the book is noticeably more streamlined. If you’ve never read Lifehacker in book form, you might be surprised at how much easier it is to digest without being on the lookout for the next post, or clicking on every interesting link.

Repetitive tasks are usually not high-priority ones, but they still need to be done. The fact that they need to be done doesn’t mean they need to be done the moment they have your attention. Let them accumulate, handling them at optimally infrequent intervals, between which you spend the bulk of your time focusing on higher-impact tasks.

Instead of making a commute for each new errand, write all errands on your @Errands context list (after deciding that it really require a physical trip instead of, say, a phone call), and aim to batch the completion of all errands in a single loop between home and work. Instead of making numerous non-emergency calls throughout the day, set specific times to place and return phone calls.

For knowledge workers, email will be the single most repetitive task that can benefit from batching. A common recommendation is for two email sessions per day: 11:00 am and 4:00 pm, for example. Another is for once every hour. Response requirements will naturally depend on your job — batching is a non-starter for financial traders — but few jobs actually require the persistent availability that’s usually assumed.

Fine tune your email batching by starting with once an hour, then gradually increase the length between sessions. Some people will find that even once a day is enough.

Escape the inbox. Focus primarily on output. Turn off email notifications and decide to let email collect in sufficient quantity to justify processing the entire inbox in one sitting. Checking email at arbitrary times leads to a habit of looking for emergencies, which you’ll inevitably find as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Most of us our have at least some inefficient people in our lives who impose manufactured emergencies on us in order to make themselves feel important. A protocol of answering email at regular intervals helps put you in control of the information flow, thinking instead of reacting.

Action is experiential. The more we experience doing, the less effort we realize it takes. The more we imagine doing, the more effort it appears to take. We need a way to externalize our thinking, a tool to bypass our mental process. Fortunately, there’s a time-tested way to jump start any daunting task:

Set a timer for 10 minutes. Attend to the task without interruption until the timer goes off.

Only your presence is required. If you can fill the 10 minutes with constant output, so much the better. If most of the time is spent doing nothing but thinking about how to start, that’s fine — you were doing that anyway. The objective is not production, per se, but disrupting inertia. The only rule is that you have to be where the action is for 10 minutes, and do either absolutely nothing else, or do nothing at all.

Once the timer has goes off, you have two options: take a break, or set the timer for another uninterrupted session with a length of your choosing. You’ll find, more often than not, that you’ll want to continue. Whether you choose another 10 minutes, 30 minutes or 3 hours, you’re committed to doing nothing else, so choose the session length wisely. Don’t bite off more than you can chew. When the new session is over, take a break or do another session, repeating the process as often as necessary or desired.

The initial 10 minute length is arbitrary, and can be adjusted. If even 10 minutes makes you anxious, set the timer for five. But be sure to use a timer. Don’t keep time in your head, which is as inefficient as a professional musician practicing scales without a metronome. Tracking time in your head while trying to focus on a task is like running a resource-intensive background application. Your attention inevitably has to break away from your primary task to refocus on time orientation.

One important exception to single tasking, here or in any context: Keep a collection tool like a notepad close by at all times. If a thought unrelated to your committed task enters your head, write it down, then return to the task. Writing it down is not an interruption. You’re writing down and diverting the interruption.

Paperwork should not be used as a reminder of what to do with it. Once the project and next actions associated with a document have been identified and placed on their corresponding lists, the best practice is to keep the document out of sight until it’s actually needed. Like books in a library, documents should be retrieved on an as-needed basis, and filed away when not in use. Reserve the surface of your desk for your one current task, and immediately file away unrelated materials.

When determining what to do next, refer to your calendar and next actions list, not your paperwork. Paperwork associated with an action or project should be filed away in a labelled project support file.

For example, if the project is purchasing a new car, any printed specifications, quotes and other materials can be collected in a file labelled “Car Research,” then stored in your A-to-Z general reference filing system. The paperwork never gets a chance to mix with other paperwork on your desk, since it and the paperwork for all of your other projects reside in your file cabinet. When you need ask the sales representative a question, you can pull out the project support folder and have your information at hand when you need to refer to it, then put it away at the end of the conversation. The reference material is never in your way, physically or mentally, when you need focus on other tasks.

By keeping project and action support material in labelled folders, and keeping discretionary reading (wiki printouts, interesting web articles, etc.) in a separate Read/Review folder, your brain will trust that if you need paperwork that’s related to an active project, all you have to do is think of the name of the project, and you’ll know where to find it. Discretionary reading does not need to be methodically indexed. Let its current relevance and your interest be your guide.

Active Folders

Some files need to be retrieved throughout the day, making repeat reaches to the file cabinet inconvenient. For those few files, keep them in a tray on your desk underneath your intray. Be sure to retire them to the file cabinet when they no longer need to be close at hand. Your desk should be a workspace, not a storage bin. Your Read/Review folder should also have a tray of its own.

Labelling Tips

Use typeset labels. Using a typeset labeler to label your files instead of doing so by hand is somewhat slower on the front end, but greatly streamlines the retrieval process — especially when you see a cabinet of entirely typeset-labelled files. Since each file is created once but retrieved many times, making it as easy as possible to scan and locate the file is worth the additional setup time. Keep the labeller as a permanent fixture on your desk, close at hand, to keep setup time to a minimum. Be sure to have a least one replacement cartridge on deck at all times, otherwise you may wind up a day’s worth of unlabelled files. If labelling is not fast and convenient, you probably won’t do it.

To make folders reusable, apply clear tape to the tabs. As mentioned in Pattern #6: General Reference Files, we want to the tab on the folder itself, not a plastic tab that attaches to a folder hanger. If you put clear tape on the folder tab, any typeset labels you stick on will come off without much effort, allowing you to reuse them. If you’re setting up a new filing system, you may want to spend the extra time putting clear tape on all of your folders. This will save many trips to the office supply store, not to mention money.

For frequently used project folders, add a duplicate label at the bottom edge. For the tray that holds your frequently retrieved folders, insert the folders with their spines facing you, so that you’re not looking at the tops of an unidentifiable bundle of papers. If the files are given a label toward their spine, you won’t waste time shuffling through papers to find the right set.

Information overload is the stress of infinite opportunity. In a world of bottomless information resources, the need to ruthlessly gatekeep our information intake is absolute.

Working online is a walk through a minefield of time sinks disguised as quick lookups. One of the best reality checks against getting drawn into interesting articles is applying the Two Minute Rule: “Will this take longer than two minutes to read?” If the answer is yes, read it now if it’s appropriate (as adults, we know when and what to read at work).

If the answer is no, print the article and put it in a folder labelled Read/Review. Use any odd windows of time during the day to read these items. If a meeting starts late, if you’re on a train, if you’re stuck in a long line, chip away at your Read/Review folder.

Use the Read/Review folder for any paper-based discretionary reading — not just printouts of online articles, but memos, magazine clippings, or any other materials that fit. The Read/Review folder is for discretionary reading, not for active projects. Project support material should be put in appropriately labelled project folders, which will be addressed later. Content in Read/Review is unsorted and unprioritized.

There are other, possibly more ecological, ways of collecting Read/Review material. You can bookmark articles, email them to yourself, or archive them if they arrived as RSS feeds. But a physical folder has a few advantages:

• It can be read through anywhere, particularly offline
• Paper immediately gives you a sense of how much volume you’ve committed yourself to reading, encouraging you to eliminate the nonessential
• It corrals papers that didn’t originate online, preventing them from spreading out over every surface in the home and office
• Separate placeholders for discretionary reading and project support material prevents perceiving all paperwork as a single mass that can’t be easily prioritized
• Keeping articles off of your Next Actions keeps your lists manageably short

Read/Review can work in combination with a tickler file if you’d like to manage the total amount of reading that goes into your folder each day. Instead of filing an articles directly in Read/Review, you can distribute articles across future dates in the tickler file — one article each day, for example.

Some tasks are better put off until higher-priority tasks are completed. If you’re working on a sales report, and suddenly think about researching a new car you’d like to buy, it’s best to put “Research car purchase” on your project list or “Look up Prius on ConsumerReports.com” on your @Computer list, and handle it later. The time and attention it would take away from finishing the sales report would make it counterproductive to do now.

But if an action is very short, it’s more efficient to do at once than add to a list. The Two Minute Rule is a guideline to keep your lists free of minutiae. The rule is simple:

If an action takes less than two minutes, do it now, even if it’s a low-priority item.

There’s simply no point in putting it off. Since a next action that’s not being done in the moment would otherwise need to be written down to stay out of your head, you need to think about whether or not it’s more efficient to add it to a next action list, or to get it done once and for all. At two minutes or less, it would take longer to write an action down, review it later, and check it off than it would be to just do it in the first place.

There’s another advantage to applying the Two Minute Rule. By consciously asking yourself, “Will this take more than two minutes?”, you’re less likely to become engrossed to relatively short actions aren’t short enough to prevent becoming digressions. Is that “quick lookup” on Wikipedia really a two minute action? Reading the article might take a few more minutes than expected. It might be more strategic to look up the article, print it, put it in a Read/Review folder, and read it when you have more time and attention to devote. The Two Minute Rule is a guard against serial digression — “rabbit trails.”

One frequent reservation about the Two Minute Rule is that a person risks spending all day on small items, never getting to the larger, more important ones. The first question that needs to be asked about any action is: Does this need to be done it all? If the answer is yes, the only alternatives are to do it now, or write it down for doing later. The more items you see on your list, the more likely you are to resist looking at the list, even if half the items on it could be done in 30 minutes combined.

Second, the number of items that actually take less than two minutes is much smaller in reality than it is intellectually when you apply the rule for each action as it comes up. The whole idea of spending “all day” doing two minute actions is based on assumption, not putting the rule into practice.

Third, just because an action is short doesn’t make it unimportant. Not taking one minute to approve a purchase order can hold up a very large project. It’s not uncommon for sizable project to get held up for hours or days simply because someone shoved the paperwork involved to one side, and didn’t look to see that all that was required on it was a signature. I once took over a job processing orders in 10 minutes that the previous employee kept piled for an average of four days.

With email, it’s critical do decide whether or not a message can be answered or addressed in two minutes or less. Email accumulates too quickly to simply gaze at each message without making a decision about it. Decide now if an email can be trashed, archived, addressed or answered in two minutes. If not, immediately identify the outcome and next action required, and place them on your project/next actions list.

“Do it now!” is often good advice, but depending on what needs to be done, now is not necessarily the most strategic action choice. Many times we prioritize our reactions to information based on how recently it entered our world, or how much emotional charge it carries. Acting on any intention the moment it occurs may even be a form of procrastination when priorities are taken into account. We want to do better than react to latest-and-loudest.

A task can be done, delegated or deferred. Since we can only do one thing at a time, but often think of more things faster than we can act on them, the discipline of collecting and processing any thought other than the one thing we’re actively doing is the master key to maintaining focus. Trying to keep one thing in mind while working on another inevitably compromises one of the two. Attention is diverted from the active task in the effort to hold the unrelated information in short-term memory — “mental RAM.”

There’s no way to do everything at once. There’s no way to do even more than one thing at once. What’s usually called multitasking is actually rapid switching between single tasks. Juggling rote tasks doesn’t consume mental RAM, but as soon as one task requires concentration, it becomes essential to eliminate secondary tasks to prevent the overhead of regrouping.

As soon as a new thought occurs that’s not immediately actionable or applicable to what you’re currently doing, write it down. Then process what you’ve collected by deciding if there’s any action required on it, and if so, identify the successful outcome and the next action. Otherwise, decide if it’s just a thought you can scrap or stage for review at a later date.

There are four placeholders, or “buckets” for deferring work in a trusted task management system:

• A Next Actions list for tasks with no time dependencies
• A calendar for hard landscape items that are time dependent
• A Someday/Maybe list, if it’s a potential project with no commitment on, except for evaluating in a Weekly Review
• A tickler file for items to review at a later date, but not during a Weekly Review

Anyone implementing a thorough GTD system will review next actions, the calendar and the Someday/Maybe list at least once a week during a scheduled self-consulting session called a Weekly Review, which will be discussed later in this series. The tickler file defers an item until a specific date, at which time it goes into the intray for processing.

Determining the appropriate placeholder for each processed item, as well as filing non-actionable reference material, is know as the organizing phase, following the collecting and processing phases.

A calendar serves two purposes:

• It shows what times are committed
• It implies by omission what times are available

The first one is obvious. The second one contains a subtle corollary: A calendar is not a To Do list. The quickest way to erode the authority of a calendar is to fill it with tasks that may or may not get done that day. Use a calendar for planning, not goal setting.

Tasks fall into two categories of time commitments: hard landscape and discretionary time. In landscaping, “hard” features like patios and fences are non-negotiable fixtures, unlike plants and rocks that can be moved to accommodate shifting design priorities. In a task management system, a calendar is most effectively used for fixed activities like meetings, deliveries and scheduled performances. The whitespace on the calendar is used for working off of Next Actions lists.

Three main types of entries go on the calendar:

• Appointments
• Commitments to and from others
• Optional events or information specific to a day and time

Look at the calendar not just for things to do, but for intervals of discretionary time to complete the highest priority next actions that can be done in that time in your current context. The calendar and action lists work together. One is not a substitute for the other.

Optional events are time-dependent events like a concert, seminar or television show. They’re not “hard landscape” in the sense that they have to be addressed, but that they happen on a specific day and time that makes the opportunity lost afterward.

Some items are specific to a day, but not necessarily to a particular time. Things like filing taxes or shipping an order need to happen by the end of the day or the workday, any time within the day is fine. Day-specific items can be entered as “All Day” or “No Time” events on your electronic calendar. On paper calendars that organize the day in hourly line items, place day-specific entries in the “To Do” sidebars to avoid binding them to a certain hour. Take care of the calendar entries before next action items.

Items that are time-specific, of course, go on the calendar at their appropriate time. The advantage of taking the hard landscape approach is that you keep as much clutter as possible off of the calendar, so that when you look at it, you’re sure that the entries for that day are the ones that actually need to get done, and not just “shoulds.”