Assemble the chairs in a circle. Gather people together. I can now stand up and say “My name is Rich, and I’ve fallen off the GTD wagon“. There. That feels better. A little bit at least.
Maybe I should explain. I have not lost my faith. Nor found another productivity mistress. I have simply found myself no longer keeping my lists up to date, no longer capturing every last thought, and no longer checking my system to see what to do next. I thought it would be interesting and beneficial for me to have a look at why my system has broken down, what effect this has had, and finally what I am planning on doing to rectify the situation.
What Went Wrong?
Counter-intuitively it wasn’t a busy time that was my un-doing. I had a couple of weeks where my main focus was one item, and consequentially this was the only thing on my @Next Actions list. With no need to add anything, and no need to check anything, I got out of that habit. A few weeks later things got very busy with a number of varied project kicking off, and as I was out of said habit I ploughed into them without properly using my system.
So what happened?
As the oracle did promise – I no longer trust my trusted system. Some of the things I need to do are in the system, but the biggest impact has been on the collection front. I am lazy with capture and process. My ninja-style scribble down/e-mail across/dictation system seems to have adopted a more laissez-faire approach. If it had a Gaelic shrug it would be complete.
So the issue is one of process – because I am not capturing things in a timely and proactive manner, my system is not fully up-to-date or reliable. Because it is neither of these things, I no longer use the system to drive what I am doing. This then becomes self-fulfilling – if I am not driving what I am doing using the system, I have even less motivation to capture things in a timely and proactive manner. That made sense in my head. Either way, the result is chaos.
David Allen’s karate-borrowed phrase “mind like water” is interesting as it is at its most obvious in its absence. I feel like I have a ‘mind like mud’. Or maybe honey – there is some flow and even some glow, but don’t bother trying t run through it. As I do one thing, I am constantly churning over the other things I have to do – slowing the current action, and encumbering creativity. My focus has waned too – which is impressive considering the frighteningly short attention span I have at the best of times. I embark on a task then realise there is something more pressing – during which I remember something else.
And what to do?
I don’t actually have to do anything. This is probably how the majority of people spend the majority of their time – before throwing in the added complications of my perilous attention span and stress from my unhealthy need for order.
But I know I can have better. More importantly I know I can be better. I know I have a tried and tested system and process that works well and enables me to more efficient, more productive, and more creative – its just that I am not using it properly at the moment.
My focus, my one true aim, now has to be on capturing every thing I think of, and processing the hell out of it until it is in my system. If I keep pushing everything, no matter how small, into this pot, my subconscious will learn once again to trust the idiosyncratic collection of technology and paper I call GTD.
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