Get Everything Done

Maybe those of us who tinker with time-management systems are the kind of people who tend to tinker,in general, with process improvement, systems development, and so on.

Let's take a poll: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/PQ8MTJZ

(Originally started on this thread: http://markforster.squarespace.com/forum/post/2320870#post2321043 )

Seven responses already, and we're already seeing a trend, I think.

Can we get some more responses? :-)

We have 18 responses so far -- I'd like to get over 20 before I publish the results. LAST CALL!

Here's the link again:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/PQ8MTJZ

OK, we have 27 responses.

25 people answered "YES" to the question "Do you frequently try new time management techniques and/systems?"

Of these, more than 60% of respondents answered they are involved in "development" work of some kind, while only 28% / 22% respectively answered they are involved in "execution" or "KTBR" work.

YES results shown on a chart here (25 of 27 responders):
http://www.dropbox.com/s/luhksnnjr5jnfw7/Type%20of%20Work%20-%20people%20who%20answered%20YES.png

NO results shown on a chart here (only 2 responders):
http://www.dropbox.com/s/c35rb9ganz0t5f8/Type%20of%20Work%20-%20people%20who%20answered%20NO.png


So it does seem that people who spend time with their time-management systems tend to spend a lot of time working on development work and process improvement work in general.

Which is perhaps a data point that could run counter to the argument that people who spend time with time management systems are simply people who tend to tinker with time management as a form of procrastination.

This may help explain why my wife is very productive but doesn't spend any time at all thinking about time management systems, workflow organization, etc., but is still manages to accomplish a huge amount of meaningful work every day. She uses a few useful and reliable tools: an overall schedule for the household, a calendar with some appointments, and the occasional ad-hoc list of reminders or list of priority projects scribbled on paper stuck on the refrigerator with a magnet. That's about it. If any of these things are misplaced, it can be annoying but isn't threatening to the overall organization of the home and can be quickly re-created or re-started.

On the other hand, I am always thinking how to standardize and improve the processes of my work and life, even things like cleaning out the car, washing the dishes, establishing a habitual morning routine that minimizes extraneous movement and doesn't leave anything to thought, etc. I also like to make sure things follow a well-thought-out organization and plan, and am sometimes paralyzed when I can't identify clear patterns, organization, etc., in the situation right in front of me.

My wife is very different - she just jumps right into her work, and pushes forward till it's done, without giving much thought (if any) to turning it into a system.

This affects even how we go about learning languages, for instance. My wife pretty easily starts picking up new words, imitating gestures, intonation, and expressions, and can start communication quickly. I can't do that at all -- I need a framework to hang it all on. I find myself resisting even hearing the sounds till I have at least a minimal framework (a little bit of grammar, for example) with which to interpret the experience of a new language. Without that framework, I feel lost and can't make progress.

Each approach has its tradeoffs. For regularly repeated processes that tend to be time-consuming, my approach has long-term benefits of efficiency and order -- but my approach is much worse when it comes to just getting started, especially on ad-hoc tasks that don't easily succumb to being systematized. My wife's approach is just the opposite.

Having been married for a while now, I've come to value my wife's approach very highly, and to learn to temper my own approach with a dash of her straightforward sensibility. It's helped me to be more effective. But more importantly, it's helped me to see when it makes more sense just to DO SOMETHING rather than circle around the thing, plotting my overall strategy. That just doesn't make sense when the task at hand is "get the kids into the car so we can get to the appointment when we are already 10 minutes late"! It might make sense later to think how to organize the recurring bottlenecks in that overall process (making sure the shoes near the door are organized so it's easy for everyone to find their own shoes and not searching everywhere for missing pairs, etc.). But it's not the time to start thinking about that when we're trying to get out the door!

Anyway... I think it does boil down to a difference of "system orientation" vs "action orientation", learning what one's own orientation is, understand its strengths and weaknesses, and tempering one's tendencies so one applies a system when it makes sense and simply takes action without trying to systematize it when the situation calls for straightforward, immediate action.

I think this has a lot of implications for effectively managing oneself, one's workflow, and one's time. Perhaps we need these systems a lot less than most of us here think we do.

LOL!