GTD + 4HWW = Productivity Perfection
Posted by Jered | Filed under 4HWW, Featured, GTD
Michael and I had a funny conversation about a David Allen / Timothy Ferriss Celebrity Productivity Deathmatch. Allen has the wisdom and years of martial arts training, while Ferriss has the youthful stamina and the secrets to putting on massive amounts of muscle quickly, but I wouldn’t care to wager on the physical fight. I want to talk about their systems duke-ing it out.
I have read both David Allen’s Getting Things Done
Getting Things Done
By keeping lists of the next physical actions for each project, one is able to have a complete picture of what needs to be done. By sorting these actions into contexts, one can always find an action to do in the appropriate settings.
Getting items from an inbox to these lists and projects is broken down into whether the action can be done immediately, deferred to a “tickler file”, or added to a project. This process is developed into a quick and efficient one, allowing data to be quickly added to the lists.
Regular review and renegotiation of commitments are critical to the Getting Things Done system and should be done weekly.
Synopsis: Writing things down, keeps them off your mind.
4 Hour Work Week
Retirement, in the traditional sense, is a lie and life should be spent in a series of “mini retirements,” using self employment and outsourcing to reduce the amount of time and energy expended in generating wealth to support the “mini retirements.”
A low information diet and ruthless application of the Pareto principle (the 80/20 principle) are required to reduce the inputs in one’s life, because with their application it is easier to get more work done when one has to.
Synopsis: The application of the Pareto principle and outsourcing to everything will free up time, letting you take mini retirements.
The Challenge
Getting these two seemingly disparate systems to play well together.
Thoughts
I think that GTD and 4HWW are completely compatible. Getting Things Done is the strategic and tactical while the 4 Hour Work Week is the undercurrent or theming of the process.
Creating a stress free life is attainable by the application of getting thoughts out of your head an on to paper, into a trusted system, which can include outsourcing, and then relaxing on a “mini-retirement.” This flies in the face of most management principles that go along the lines: “When someone is able to relax, give them more work, they can obviously handle it.”
The catch is, you aren’t working less, you are working more efficiently and why shouldn’t you benefit from that?
Tim Ferriss’ goal is have the reader be self employed and while that is a tempting idea, it is not always possible, that doesn’t mean that one shouldn’t take a “mini-retirement” every once in a while. Save up the leave, work out teleworking with your boss, it is possible to attaint the 4 Hour Work Week ethos without having to be self-employed (thusly responsible for your own health insurance, etc.).
Being stress free on your “mini-retirements” is going to be important, no one wants to be stressed when they are supposed to be relaxing, sailing around the world, etc. That is where the “Someday / Maybe” list comes in handy, writing down future “mini-retirements” or keeping a list of postcards that need to be sent.
Ferriss’ reducing input in one’s life is very similar to David Allen’s reducing the inboxes and in-buckets. Going on a media diet for a week or two can be very liberating, reducing one more source of stress. Everyone has stressed out a little bit out the TiVo getting full or missing your most favorite TV show. The way that the two methods are very intertwined is the concept of “mind like water”. A David Allen catchphrase which is the 4HWW realization. Take all of the things that normally make your day rocky, like dealing with angry clients, or fulfilling orders, and outsource them. This allows you to deal with the real issues through the application of the Pareto principle, which should make your life much easier over all.
Why shouldn’t people who are “Getting Things Done” also be able to enjoy a “4 Hour Work Week”? Followers of GTD generally know where all of their projects are, what they have to do next and where the rest of their commitments lie. If a knowledge worker is using GTD (that is the prime category for people who use GTD), most their work will focus around a computer and a phone. Both of those devices are portable and as long as there is a solid cellular network in your “mini-retirement” destination, it would be possible to do work should the need arise. And while I don’t advocate taking work on a vacation, much less a “mini-retirement”, the idea is not to let the fact that some of us can not escape the 9 to 5 from letting us experience Ferriss’ vision.
With keeping “mini-retirements” as a goal, application of the Pareto principle and reducing the number of inputs one has, Ferriss creates a great set of frameworks for the average person to work in. Allen’s Getting Things Done provides a tactical approach with strategic thinking to keep those frameworks in mind. All in all, I would say Getting Things Done and the 4 Hour Work Week are two compatible philosophies / systems.
Tags: 4 Hour Work Week, 4HWW, David Allen, Getting Things Done, GTD, Tim Ferriss
Craphacks and the paradox of choice
Posted by Michael | Filed under Choice, Craphack
On the looooong drive to work this morning I was contemplating ways to filter out the craphacks” or the lifehacks that make grand promises of greater efficiency and productivity, but in the end are (sometimes exceedingly complex) practices that add yet another layer of management into our already complicated lives.
Unfortunately, this process of filtering isn’t easy. I contend that, in part, we are asking ourselves the wrong question. Most of us begin our search for simplicity by asking ourselves “Which lifehacks are right for me?” and quickly find ourselves drowning in the flood that quickly ensues.
Enter Barry Schwartz’s idea of “the paradox of choice
While growing up, I was troubled by the question of what I wanted to do with my life. Along the way, my Parents told me that it’s often easier to decide what I DON”T want to do, and in so doing, to narrow the field of options to something more manageable. This process also requires a deep understanding about myself, something that I am still figuring out.
In turn, couldn’t this same practice apply to filtering truly useful lifehacks from the sea of craphacks? What simple techniques and questions can we ask ourselves to systematically narrow the field of lifehack options based on what we know about ourselves?
Use a Probationary Tag to Firewall New Apps
Posted by Michael | Filed under Site
In the process of developing some management structure for all of my
technology tools, I’ve found it quite useful to keep a GMark tag (via
the Google Bookmarks extension in Firefox) named Probationary with
which I tag all of the new web apps and misc. stuff that I’m
evaluating, learning about, and generally not yet sure about how they
may fit into my personal and work productivity habits. Up until now,
I’ve tried to stay organized by tagging apps (most recently Mahalo)
along with every other similar app. After a while though, I had tags
with a dozen or so apps, most of which I’d forgotten about and never
used beyond the initial gee-whiz excitement.
With this new Probationary tagging system I have a firewall of sorts
to protect the tags for only those apps that I grant “access” past the
firewall. This also fits nicely with my previous post about the 3-Week
Tech Trial. All new apps will remain in this folder for 3-weeks until
such a decision can be made on the app’s viability. As a bonus, GMarks
keeps track of the Most Used bookmarks, so I can monitor this tag to
help make decisions on what to keep and what to delete. – Michael
The 3-Week Tech Trial
Posted by Michael | Filed under Site
There comes a time in life when one has to establish some structure and boundaries for adopting new technologies. In particular, those technologies that can be classified in the yet-another-social-network / Web 2.0 service. Same applies to hardware too. Now is the time for me.
I am instituting what I call the “3-Week Tech Trial” to which I will scrutinize all new technologies I choose (or am asked) to bring into my life, whether for work or for personal use. The general idea is that each new technology gets a 3-week probationary period, during which I will put forth an honest effort toward learning the technology and, in a process of “natural” selection, see if the new tech fits into my life habits and/or workflow. Most importantly, this includes the extent to which the technology compliments my life, adds something to improve my life, or simply makes my life a bit more fun. I’m at a point where I am fairly confident in understanding how I live and work, which makes embarking on this project a reasonable endeavor.
Before I begin though, I plan to compile a complete (or as complete as possible) listing of every technology (hardware and software) in my life that is above the level of being required for daily existence (i.e., a stove or refrigerator fits nicely into this category). On the surface this sounds daunting and somewhat overkill, but success of the 3-week trial necessitates having a firm understanding of where I currently stand, and then judicially applying the 80/20 rule to the list.
Certainly this rule is subject to revision as appropriate, but for now I’ll see how it goes and report regularly on my progress. Wish me luck… – Michael
Today’s task: culling the clutter
Posted by Michael | Filed under Site
Bolstered by the confidence instilled by a few cups of coffee, today seems to be a good day to cull some accumulated blogs, bookmarks, etc. from over the last few months.
For the blogs, Google Reader Trends is tremendously helpful, as it shows me at-a-glance what I’m reading and, more importantly, what I’m not. Normally I’m pretty good about keeping my subscriptions list to a minimum, but sometimes, such as recently, it gets away from me. According to me reading trends, I’m subscribed to 35 blogs. This is on my high end, which why I’ve chosen today to tend to my “garden o’ feeds.”
For percentage read, there’s a distinct cutoff at about 50%, with the next highest being 27%. Without mercy, I’m dropping all those from this point down — 25 blogs total. This list includes a few I used to follow when I had a PC, but now that I have a Mac, there’s not much point in keeping them. Some others were suggested as “must reads,” but they’re still at 0% read, so the choice is easy.
In terms of simplicity, this periodic culling helps keep me focused on keeping only what I actually read and find value in including as part of my daily blog reading. The rest I “liberate” from my subscription feeds; for as much as I may think “oh, I’ll read that someday” I know — and so does Google Reader — that I won’t and so I need to let go.
Now that the self-imposed pressure of trying to keep up with so many blogs is reduced, I can now focus more of my attention on the ones that remain.
Ahhh…time for another cup o’ joe…
-Michael
