Getting Things Done - Organize, Clarify
Summary:
Use your digital list in which you’re capturing all your tasks. A paper notebook to capture things that show up outside your computer, and just at the end of each workday, transfer those things into your master list. Give every minute of your workday a job. Time block planning is where you actually block out time on a piece of paper. And may be planning out your week and planning out your quarters. What’s your shopping list for that?…
Transcript:
Speaker 2
it be a word document or gogle drive document, you can just keep these things in list with categories. Or you can use something like work floe, work floe dot com, which is basically just an on line indented list, but it’s really useful. And then have with you at all times some sort of analogue paper note book with which you can capture things tha come up when you’re not near your computer. That’s the one two punch your master online list of things, break it up into categories. Two, a paper notebook that you keep with you to capture things that show up outside your computer, and just at the end of each workday, transfer those things into your master list. A right second step of re starting, or starting from scratch, or productivity journey, clarify. So this means you have to look at all the stuff that’s sitting here in your list, and you need to organize it and make sense of it. What’s its status, what’s urgent, what’s not? And then use this to figure out, o caseo, what do i need to be doing in the days ahead? Ow both capture and clarified. These are corps david allan getting things done terminology. So, you know, reading his book, anything’s done, will give you more on this. But let’s ju’st keep this high level here a what’s your shopping list here? Just use your digital list in which you’re capturing all your tasks. That’s a great place, at first to organize it. You can label things, you can move things between categories, backburn or waiting to hear back. Need to work on this week. This needs to be elaborated, right? That’s a category i use sometimes that this is not really a well thought through collection of tasks yet. Is just a stake in the ground. To use another david allen term, that says, hey, i got to do something about the tree in our front yard. And i don’t yet know what that means. So i just need to revisit this and elaborate it when i get a chance. Right? Finally, control. This is where you actually control your time. What time do i have available to day? What do i want to do during these various time slots to day? Give every minute of your workday a job. The right way to do this is time block planning, where you actually block out time on a piece of paper. Here’s what i’m doing. From nine to ten, i draw a box around that time and label it. Hereswhat i’m doing from ten to ten thirty and so on. Any plain, spiral bound notebook will work for this. I’m actually looking at my desk right now, where i have my red and or black and red note book rather. I’ve enjoyed using those. Some people just use standard grid note books. Some people just do this on a legal pad and then rip out the page when the day is over. I will give you a little hint, publish. And i are actually working on, let’s say, a a planner product that i’ve designed that will solve a lot of these problems for you. For that in the fall. I will talk more about this plan er project as we get closer, but so when you get there, i’ll have a tool for you that’ll help. But for now, any notebook will work. And then finally, a part of control is also stepping up one scale. And may be planning out your week and planning out your quarters. What’s your shopping list for that? The very easiest thing to do is just to email yourself your weekly plan, or write it up in a text file and print it and keep it with the notebook in which you do your time block planning. All right. So travis, there you go. Very concrete. Here’s what you need to re start your journey. You ned to start capturing use an online list for it, in a paper notebook you bring with you. You need to clarify and organize all this work. Just do that by moving and re labelling things in the digital list. O need to control your time. Do this with a time block plan that you doin any note book. And have a weekly plan just printed out andd paper clipped to that note book or sitting there in your email n box, where you’ll see it every day. You do those things, that’s going to be night and day, travis, you’re going to feel like you suddenly have control over all the things on your plate. And they go back to sydney’s question from earlier. Once you have control over everything on your plate, you’ve captured it. You clarify at your control in your time. You
Speaker 1
can now see he way too much. Is this not tractable? (Time 0:22:58)
Getting Things Done - Organize, Clarify
Summary:
Use your digital list in which you’re capturing all your tasks. A paper notebook to capture things that show up outside your computer, and just at the end of each workday, transfer those things into your master list. Give every minute of your workday a job. Time block planning is where you actually block out time on a piece of paper. And may be planning out your week and planning out your quarters. What’s your shopping list for that?…
Transcript:
Speaker 2
it be a word document or gogle drive document, you can just keep these things in list with categories. Or you can use something like work floe, work floe dot com, which is basically just an on line indented list, but it’s really useful. And then have with you at all times some sort of analogue paper note book with which you can capture things tha come up when you’re not near your computer. That’s the one two punch your master online list of things, break it up into categories. Two, a paper notebook that you keep with you to capture things that show up outside your computer, and just at the end of each workday, transfer those things into your master list. A right second step of re starting, or starting from scratch, or productivity journey, clarify. So this means you have to look at all the stuff that’s sitting here in your list, and you need to organize it and make sense of it. What’s its status, what’s urgent, what’s not? And then use this to figure out, o caseo, what do i need to be doing in the days ahead? Ow both capture and clarified. These are corps david allan getting things done terminology. So, you know, reading his book, anything’s done, will give you more on this. But let’s ju’st keep this high level here a what’s your shopping list here? Just use your digital list in which you’re capturing all your tasks. That’s a great place, at first to organize it. You can label things, you can move things between categories, backburn or waiting to hear back. Need to work on this week. This needs to be elaborated, right? That’s a category i use sometimes that this is not really a well thought through collection of tasks yet. Is just a stake in the ground. To use another david allen term, that says, hey, i got to do something about the tree in our front yard. And i don’t yet know what that means. So i just need to revisit this and elaborate it when i get a chance. Right? Finally, control. This is where you actually control your time. What time do i have available to day? What do i want to do during these various time slots to day? Give every minute of your workday a job. The right way to do this is time block planning, where you actually block out time on a piece of paper. Here’s what i’m doing. From nine to ten, i draw a box around that time and label it. Hereswhat i’m doing from ten to ten thirty and so on. Any plain, spiral bound notebook will work for this. I’m actually looking at my desk right now, where i have my red and or black and red note book rather. I’ve enjoyed using those. Some people just use standard grid note books. Some people just do this on a legal pad and then rip out the page when the day is over. I will give you a little hint, publish. And i are actually working on, let’s say, a a planner product that i’ve designed that will solve a lot of these problems for you. For that in the fall. I will talk more about this plan er project as we get closer, but so when you get there, i’ll have a tool for you that’ll help. But for now, any notebook will work. And then finally, a part of control is also stepping up one scale. And may be planning out your week and planning out your quarters. What’s your shopping list for that? The very easiest thing to do is just to email yourself your weekly plan, or write it up in a text file and print it and keep it with the notebook in which you do your time block planning. All right. So travis, there you go. Very concrete. Here’s what you need to re start your journey. You ned to start capturing use an online list for it, in a paper notebook you bring with you. You need to clarify and organize all this work. Just do that by moving and re labelling things in the digital list. O need to control your time. Do this with a time block plan that you doin any note book. And have a weekly plan just printed out andd paper clipped to that note book or sitting there in your email n box, where you’ll see it every day. You do those things, that’s going to be night and day, travis, you’re going to feel like you suddenly have control over all the things on your plate. And they go back to sydney’s question from earlier. Once you have control over everything on your plate, you’ve captured it. You clarify at your control in your time. You
Speaker 1
can now see he way too much. Is this not tractable? (Time 0:22:58)
How Do You Track Your Health Metrics?
Summary:
A terra shares her system for remembering to track both health metrics and deep work hours daily. She says people tend to catastrophize how much people are thinking about us and our habits, and how muchthey’re going to care if we change some of our habits. A terra: If you have your act together, people aren’t going too closely marn to your habits....
Transcript:
Speaker 1
They just want something off their plate and
Speaker 2
know that it didn’t fall on the ground somewhere. S thats
Speaker 1
us. What i advise to people, i think we tend to catastrophize how much people are thinking about us and our habits, and how muchthey’re going to care if we change some of our habits. And for the most part, people don’t care. If you have your act together, people aren’t going too closely marn to your habits. They don’t want to know what you’re doing. So i would say, jeff a, the way to reset their expectations just to reset how you work, and you should be fine. Wright, terra says, what is your system for remembering to track both health metrics and deep work hours daily? To the fact that i track these two things is something i mentioned in an earlier episode. That’s what she is referencing. A terra goes on, i intend to track these, but i struggle to remember. Also, would you mind sharing some of the health habits you track? Thank
Speaker 2
you. Well,
Speaker 1
teer, the way i do it is the last thing before i go do before i go to bed at night. That’s mucha simper habit to remember is just, i have a notebook. I use the the moleskin weekly planner style note book, and i keep it by my desk in my study ands. Just i do it when i’m, literally, when i’m turning out the lights. So i coud really, i have a a great cue. I’m coming to my study to turn off my lights, i go over, i take out that notebook, and i write down my metricks. That’swhy i don’t forget, right? It’s a habit that’s tied to something cued to something i do every day. What do i track a lot of dfferent things. I have codes for each of the metricks i track just a letter so i can, i can record the metrics really quickly. So deep work hours is one thinks i track. The way i literally write that down is d w, then a colon, and then hash tallies. As i mention the recent episode i the last few months, i’ve broken out, i’ve two hash tallies. The top one is for writing, the
Speaker 2
bottom one is for c s. Thinking, for
Speaker 1
various reasons, i’ve been break those two things out. What do i track for my health? I track whether or not i stuck with my food huristics, the huristics with which i guide how i eat. And i’d literally just have a symbol i write if i did, now, if i, if i almost did, but kana had n exception, i put atilda above the symbol, and then i’ll maybe jot down a note below all i almost but i ate, you know, whatever, a bunch of goldfish, which
Speaker 2
is not something ab normally due, you
Speaker 1
know, for snack, or something like that. I track how many steps i took. I have a great analogue pedometer. It runs on a watch. Battery. It resets to count every night at midnight. You just put it in your pocket in the morning and it counts steps. No apple watch needed, no phone needed, no une harvesting my data. I love single purpose pieces of technology that work very well. How many steps? So i write that down. And then also i write down that i do my base line exercise. So every single day i do thirty poll ups, thirty push ups and fifty it’s a combination ofa various types of dip type thing, dips, anda,
Speaker 2
inverted and facing forward. Details don’t matter, i but
Speaker 1
i do thos every single day. It’s not a body building routine. This is not a i want really big muscles routine. It’s instead my theory that our human body evolve to expect to occasionally, but on a regular basis, have to really use its major muscle groups in a very intense fashion. And it seems to me, if we don’t do that, if you’re sedentary every single day, certain things turn off. Certain things t start to atrophy. Look, i don’t have particular science to talk about here. It’s just a instinctual theory of mine. But i’ve always found that i just think my systems run better if every single day there is an intense moment where your major muscel groups are working incredibly intensely, like when you’re doing a pull up, for example, right i write e x. That means i did my base line fitness for the day. Now, if i did a work out in addition to the base line, i write e x plus. So that’s the system. That’s basic to what i track. I track it every day. I recommend tracking your key metrics, because, as i wrote about in my very first book, in two thousand and five, how to win at college, my very firs book, one of the pieces of advice in that book is, if your mind knows that your behavior for the day on key activities is going to be tracked, it’s much more likely to actually summon the motivation to do it. You’re going to do the poll ups, because you know that if you don’t, at the end of the day, when you’re turning off the lights in your studies, you’re not t be able to right e x in your note book. That sounds trivial it’s not. Psychology is weird. It makes a big difference. So find a certain time in your day to track these metrics. Definitely track metrics terra. It’s something that i have sworn by. Are i less do? One more technology question. Geoffrey asks, when starting out blogging, what’s the best way to find readers, especially if you are not using social medium? Well, first of all, even if you were using social media, it’s not going to get you readers for your blog. What’s goin to get your readers for your blog is having a blog that is so good it can’t be ignored, but you’re offering something that’s really valuable to people, based on perhaps your unique experience or a unique point of view, that you have something that people find inspiring or authoritative or really interesting. That’s credibly hard, by the way. It’s incredably hard. It’s why, like, most magazines fail. It’s why most online content ventures fail. It’s like why most blogs fail, and most social meet accounts have very few followers, and most podcasters are never listened to. I mean, it’s really hard to produce content that people really want to hear at a high level. But if you do that, if you’re so good, you can’t be ignored, people find you. Audiences find you. Yethers. There’s little things you can do. There’ll be opportunities to come across your plate, you know that this person wants to interview you, or someone is spreading the word on their own network. I basically say, i wouldn’t sweat that so much. What i would sweat is, is there something i can say that is going to be super compelling? Right? That’s what you should be thinking about. And that could take a lot of work to home that voice and figure out your message. Steve martin famously said, you should just be so good they can’t ignore you. If you do that, good things will come. I think that is the case with content. You cannot short circuit or jump start that process by tweeding every day. At some point you have to be producing something that people want to consume. Let’s try something new here. Les, try a lightning round. (Time 0:36:17)