New blog first post first reflection...

I don't know if you are like me when it comes to being more productive, effective, organised, focussed, happy whatever...

But if you are you will have read the books...attended the seminars..read the blogs..got the tools..got inspired

and then...

Reality bites, you get back to work, office. home wherever and whatever you left comes back to turn the good intention to mush (or equivalent).

I have looked at and tried so many approaches GTD, Covey, Mark Foster DIT. I have bought gadgets, worksheets, planners, moleskines (by the bucketful), books (shelf loads).

OK they've had some benefit..I'm not totally disorganised, I don't miss appointments but there's something missing. I have this feeling of being busy, very busy - cross loads of things off whatever is the 'list de jour'. But it still feels like pushing water up hill...

I have my own hypothesis for me..maybe this resonates with others...It goes like this - I feel bad, get stressed about stuff or rahter not doing stuff quickly enough, because I get a distorted view of the reality of what I'm doing. David Allen calls being 'down in the weeds' - stuff gets added to the list, emails fly around, I respond, I schedule tasks/meetings, cross items off, put more on...etc etc.

The problem is my reality is 'in the weeds' so my response to every situation is more 'weeding'. I have lost sight of the landscaping to continue the analogy on.

I can end up deceiving myself that I'm productive but I'm not, not really. The reality of so called knowledge work is that situations change, they change a lot and they change frequently. Therefore any systemic approach will have flaws. More accurately my running of the systems is flawed because I fail to regularly check my perspective. I know that GTD has the concept of the Weekly Review - but my learning is that even that may be too infrequent. I have wondered about adding a step to my lists, not when I capture but when I process.

My challenge for the day is to checkin with the actions and ask myself "Is this actually the most effective action that will produce the best result?"

Since most of my actions are captured on the run the risk is to process directly from the capture,e.g. Set up meeting to discuss commercial opportunities...the default action is the set up a meeting, prepare an agenda, hold the meeting, follow up with minutes etc..lots of stuff. But what I' proposing to do for my self is to stop and recheck the reality of this action and regain perspective

i.e.

• check it's a good use of my time or should someone else lead,
• check it's still important if not ditch it and I mean ditch it don't let it linger around by deferring because it will only bite you later.
• Is a meeting the right action to deliver the greatest value, again the default action may generate more work and possibly more non-value added activity

May seem like a lot of steps but my hypothesis is that regular checkins will save me time and effort and avoid me entering into a chain of work and activity that could be done better, in less time with better results.

I'll let you know how I get on.

Also I have avidly read a few books recently, I'm a hug book fan, I will list my favs here and also note some key takeouts.