Get Everything Done

Hi Folks,

I still very much like the DIT approach, but am still struggling some. My biggest problem with my work in academia is the constant new input on a daily basis. Yes, a lot can be defaulted to tomorrow, but a lot of what I do cannot. Mark, I know you have said a lot of this is an organizational problem, and perhaps it is -- but I cannot change my environment in a major research university -- let along my multiple NIH grants and service commitments. Many times things come in and I really do have to handle them the same day. So I enter these in on my closed list at the bottom, but it gets depressing when I see how many can accumulate. I did not feel that sense of uneasyness when I did GTD. My posistion really is almost 24/7 and I do not see an ending of the day in a normal sense.

I guess I am really missing something, Mark and others, and could use some advice. Surely there are folks out there like me stuggling with this.

Thanks,
-David

No system will solve your problem. At some point no matter how efficient any system makes your work production, you will reach your physical capacity to do more work, running out of either time or energy. At this point you can suffer burn out. I think you are missing something at a higher level, which are you need to say no to something(s). Either commitments or at a minimum the time in which you have to meet them. But realistically, if you do not reduce commitments you will just feel the frustration later.

Not to bag on GTD, but I sometimes felt the capturing process gave a false sense of peace, realizing that captured is not done. You have a good list of what needs to get done, but that does not actually get it done.

Good Luck

Hi Gerry,

I am sure you are correct for the most part -- I simply have too many commitments. I do realize that, but the part that is still very difficult is the constant input with many things that end up having to be done on this day and cannot be defaulted to tomorrow. Perhaps that entirely is an organizational problem and part of academia that I am just going to have to deal with in some manner. Are there others out there with this problem? Mark, as always, I would appreciate any additional advice you could give.

Thanks,
-David

David,
I can relate to your situation. I work in marketing, but also a sales position, where I am expected to handle calls and do bids for customers urgently. This involves me dropping whatever I am doing to place my focus on the new input.

With DIT especially, I have had success in how a closed lists provides a structure for my day. In addition to the structure, I have had to build barriers for myself- since I know I can distract easily (I have ADD). Although initially it caused anxiety, I have finally seen value in letting input build up in their places (Voicemail, Email, etc). With the knowledge that I will address each of them when I get to them.

David, is there anything preventing you from letting input build up while you get through your task lists?

Hi David,

I would echo Gerry's sentiments in that the GTD System might help ease anxiety as more inputs are captured. Some of the problems I had with GTD was that 1) Next Actions quickly bacame 'Urgent' as they would often be at the mercy of requests of an immediate nature and therefore would not tend to get dealt with untill becoming a 'crisis'. 2) An ever growing Next Actions List feels demoralising in that the list gets longer every day rather than shorter. And the big one for me is that 3) with GTD I firmly believe it allowed me to be totally unrealistic about what I could manage in terms of what I'd commited to do to the person making the request. I'm sure you've worked out all this for yourself already.

In practical terms, some of the payoffs in using DIT for me have been that 1) Colleagues and Customers know how I work and they trust me when I tell them that I will do the task 'tommorow'. 2) I have become more assertive in telling my seniors that I have got enough work on at the moment and any extra work will have to wait untill I can deal with it properly. 3) I am in a better position to monitor my workload and I am now able to make a clearer connection between feeling relaxed or stressed, depending on my work load.
4) The bottom line is that my ability to manage my stress levels/mental health is more important than me agreeing with my seniors that I can take more and more work on and still be expected to do it just as quick! It just doesn't add up. I suppose the obvious question is *when* are you going to get around to doing these new daily inputs? (unless you have people to delegate to)

In terms of practical suggestions I would advise you to continue reinforcing the idea to yourself and your colleagues that you work on three levels of urgency in a systematic way. Another suggestion might be to schedule a time daily as a 'clinic' or 'drop in' for the people who need immediate answers - this could be scheduled into your task diary. This will give the people 'who cannot wait' to have a same day response.

I hope this helps. I have appreciated the opportunity to verbalise my thoughts on DIT.

Hi Folks,

I want to thank everyone that has been so thoughtful in replying. All of your points are vey well taken. I guess I was just whining as I have had a terrible week. I really am embracing DIT as I do believe it is the best system I have ever encountered. As much as I have complained on this forum, I should restate again that I have never achieved the level of productivity as I have since I have embraced DIT. And so...I will continue to work on the organizational problems I have to reduce so many due-today things. Mark, as always, you hit everything head-on and your advice is excellent.

As for the culture here, most of my colleagues are in the same boat with 65+ hour weeks being all too common. But many are now asking me how I am so productive and on top of things. I am spreading the word in this culture about DIT!

Best to all....and thanks again,

-David

Hi Mark,

This is excellent!! I literally laughed at loud as I was reading it! I can see myself so much in that article. Ah, Academia....

Thanks for providing this link to me.

Best regards,
-David

David,

In your first post in this thread you wrote: "I did not feel that sense of uneasiness when I did GTD."

The next day you revised that evaluation.

I mention this not to harp on your change of mind. The point is that one of the things that I find so attractive about Mark's approach is his repeated insistence that there is no holy writ here. If there is someone who feels worse when they do DIT than they do when they don't do DIT, I would advice them, without hesitation, to stop doing DIT.

Pragmatism rules. Which means, if it works, it's good. Mark is a model for this. He's constantly fiddling with his system and experimenting with violating all his carefully outlined principles. Please understand, I am not advocating constant fiddling. I don't do that. But I am grateful that Mark sacrifices himself as a guinea pig on my behalf.

I don't think that DIT can work miracles. "All" it does is make you incredibly more productive. Amazing, yes. Miraculous, no.

moises

Hi Moises,

Yes, I realize that I said that about GTD. As I said, I am just having a terrible week. I really do believe -- in fact, I have data of my own to support my contention -- that I have been much more productive using DIT. The "not feeling the sense of uneasiness with GTD" was actuallly the fact that I had no true measure of how overcommitted I really was. So...thanks for your comments and support -- I still contend that DIT is THE BEST time management system -- and I have tried so many.

-David

Hi David

I would also suggest reading "The Myth of Multitasking" by Dave Crenshaw that I think was recommended in a different thread on this forum. While much of the content wasn't particularly applicable to my situation (it is very focused on a 'business' environment) I think its basic premise is valuable.

I've taken some aspects of it and am finding them useful and thought you might also find something helpful within its pages. It's available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk

Also I think something Mark mentions now and again is also very good - if you have too much work to do then how are you currently deciding what does and doesn't get done? Sometimes we continue to do things and go to particular meetings, etc. that possibly we have no need to. It is too easy to carry on doing things because we've always done them but a periodic reassessment can be very helpful.

Good luck and remember you can always quit!! Just kidding, but then again if something is actually giving you more trouble than it's worth sometimes it's a good exercise to think the unthinkable - it can be very liberating to realise that we actually have more choice in life than we normally believe we do. We don't necessarily have to carry out all the choices but just recognising we're choosing a situation by continuing to stay can help us see it in a new light.

Kindest regards

Hannah

David,

Your point that you "had no true measure of how overcommitted" you really were is spot on! And it is truly paradoxical.

Those of us who do GTD always mention that we face these lengthy, daunting lists. One might think that these lists would give us a very clear sense of how overcommitted we actually are. But if your lists were like mine, most of the items had deadlines of "as soon as possible." So the fact was that even though I reviewed the lists weekly, I tolerated making very little progress on most of the items.

Now that I make daily, closed, DIT lists, I see that I actually have even more work than I realized I had with GTD alone. But rather than feel too overwhelmed to do them, I have much greater motivation to knuckle down and crank through the list.

In an out-of-print audio program, David Allen used to say that doing GTD was like working off a punch list in a factory. All the thinking was done once a week, when the list was created and the rest of the week he merely executed that which was conceived during the Weekly Review. That was an exaggeration, of course, but it was an alluring model of how GTD could function.

I find that with DIT I come much closer to approximating that GTD vision of cranking out widgets. I make my daily list and then I crank it out. There are random events that intervene daily, but I see that my time is precious and there are still a significant number of items on my DIT list that remain undone. I don't relax until they're done.

With GTD, the urgency wasn't there because the lists were always open. The lists would never be completed; the goal was always just out of reach.

So, I am sympathetic with your October 2 and your October 3 assessments. There is a kind of uneasiness that accompanies DIT that is not present in GTD. It is the uneasiness that comes with knowing that you will be leaving the office at 5:30 PM and there are still some significant items that are undone. With GTD, that uneasiness wasn't there, because there are always undone items on the list with new ones being added all the time. With GTD it's easier to have another conversation with a coworker or get sidetracked by some other random accident.

Everyone likes to quote Covey about distinguishing the urgent and the important. What I think is so great about DIT is that it lights a fire under me; it provides me the motivation to conceive of and to experience the important as urgent. As Mark says in the DIT book, when we are doing the work that is most important, we are often leaving our comfort zone. That's another way of saying that we are uneasy. When I add DIT to GTD I spend a lot more time feeling uneasy. And that's a good thing. Because short-term unease leads to long-term ease, and short-term ease leads to long-term unease. David Allen quotes in both his books the apothegm: "Sweat in peace or you'll bleed in war." My experience has mirrored yours: I am more likely to sweat in peace when I add DIT to GTD than when I do GTD alone.

moises

The problem I have with the punchlist concept is that the weekly review is a point in time before a bunch of new stuff comes into your life. You need the flexibility to add the new tasks you need into your life on a more frequent basis. I keep coming back to Mark's idea, that when you are overwhelmed the place to look is at the commitment level, this is where you can prune things that will ultimately free time up.

Gerry
http://simpletimemanagement.blogspot.com/