Three Sure-Fire Productivity Tactics From David Allen
1 Keep a notepad with you at all times. “The best ideas show up in the weirdest places. Not only that, you don’t know what the best ideas are. You just have ideas, and only over time will they emerge as good ones or bad ones. You have to have the raw data to begin with.”
2 Make a decision. “A lot of people take notes, and then they just spread them all over God and creation and it doesn’t help either. You’ve got to process those so you can throw them away, but the only way you can throw them away is once you’ve gleaned what’s actual, what’s not, what’s referenced, what do I need to keep, what’s trash to get rid of. I know this sounds mundane, but it’s down in the mundaneness where the action really happens on this. As a matter of fact, if you don’t get the mundane, you’re screwed.”
Road to Knowhere Mindjet (formerly known as MindManager) is a mind-mapping program that offers what David Allen describes as ‘kind of a map of my maps.’
3 Conduct a weekly review. “You better have a one- to two-hour block [every week] where you are not answering emails over the phone and not dealing with anything else, but you’re actually stepping back and managing the forest instead of hugging the trees. Which basically means, get your maps current. Step back and take a look at the 45 projects you have, take a look at your calendar for the next two months, take a look at all the stuff you need to. Take a look at the right maps and orient yourself so that you’re not just driven by the latest and loudest. And that’s the biggest tactic and behavior that’s most lacking and most needed right now.”
Input something? What? That’s where all the stress and the anxiety is. People have these com- mitments, but they don’t realize the thinking that’s required and the organization that’s required to be able to get that stuff to shut up in their head and to get back on to cruise control. That’s what I’ve figured out, is what that algorithm is.
Has your own approach to these questions changed or evolved as your company has grown and as your own professional responsibilities have increased? It’s only been simplified. You know, it all sounds self-evident when we talk about it now. It wasn’t 20 years ago. It took me 25 years to figure out what I needed to figure out. It didn’t change it — it’s always been true. I mean, the principles I talk about are as old as dirt. You keep something in your head, it’s going to stress you and bankrupt your creative energy. You can’t fight that. That’s been true forever. What’s changed is for me to understand better
ways to explain it, to let the world know there’s a whole lot better place to operate from. It’s about understanding there are three primary principles, and if you understand them and how they function and operate, you can design your own systems and you can keep your head focused and clear.
PCMA.ORG Number one is, you’ve got to keep stuff out of
your head and you’ve got to capture potentially meaningful stuff in trusted buckets. Write it down, stick it somewhere in your in-basket. Call your answering machine, leave yourself a message. Whatever you do, get it out of your head and get it out in front of you. And then, sooner than later, empty those buckets by going through each of those potentially meaningful things and decide, very specifically, what does it mean? What does “babysitter” mean? What does “Mom” mean? What does “budget” mean? What’s “bank” mean? And that means you’ve got to define outcomes desired and action steps required. Step two is clarification of real, specific need. I
know it needs something, but what specifically am I committed to about it, and how would I move for- ward on it? That’s what defining your work really is. And stage three is to make sure you have appro-
priate maps of the results of all of that. You know, show me all the projects I’m getting ready to finish in the next 12 months. [If ] you don’t have that, there’s no way you’re going to walk around with a clear head. Show me a map of all the things I have to do before noon tomorrow.