How do you measure personal productivity?

Metrics (what a researcher client of mine calls indicators) for quantifying personal productivity improvements is a topic I started tracking when I got into the field. Having some kind of measure is important if you want to determine whether your presumably improved changes have actually helped. As I quoted in What's Your Feed Reading Speed? (attributed to Peter Drucker [1]):

If you can't measure it, you can't manage it.

That's why when Jason Echols over at Black Belt Productivity asked me chime in on the issue, I jumped at the opportunity. For him it came up in a comment on their post Sharing Notetaking Secrets:

Hi! My name is Mayra. I work as a Black Belt in a Mexican company. I want to know the best way to measure the performance of a BB. I mean, Which metrics are the most appropriate way to prove that a BB is reaching his/her objectives in the company (# of protects, savings, etc)? Thanks for your help!

So, following are a few thoughts on measuring personal productivity; please share yours.

What is a metric?

I'm sure my mathematics and sciences expert readers can address the this rigorously, but here's a definition that made sense to me. From Performance management glossary:

Metric (also called measure): Term used in commercial organisations to describe a standard used to communicate progress on a particular aspect of the business. Measures typically are quantitative in nature, conveyed in numbers, dollars, percentages, etc. (e.g., $ of revenue, headcount number, % increase, survey rating average, etc.) though they may be describing either quantitative (e.g., sales made) or qualitative (e.g., employee motivation) information.

In Value-Based Fees (VBF), Alan Weiss puts metrics in a central role during the proposal process. His definition (he calls them "measures"): "Those objective or subjective (anecdotal) criteria that will indicate progress and, eventually, completion for client and consultant." I found useful Weiss's list of three types of metrics:

• Short-term measures. These would include weekly sales reports, monthly attrition reports, customer feedback forms, etc.
  
• Long-term measures. These would include departmental goals achieved, executive behavior change, changes in public image, etc.
  
• Client-specific measures. Virtually all clients will have some measures unique to their particular culture and business. These might include additional business sold by a call center, reduction in repetitive repair calls by an appliance company, renewed policies by an insurance firm, etc.
  

Do we need to measure productivity?

That said, there is a need to measure. For example, when promoting any productivity method it is helpful to have numbers showing typical results, with the thought being they're be more compelling than stories. Obtaining these is easier for larger firms with many clients and consultants. Some of those I'm familiar with are Sally McGhee, Kerry Gleeson, Chris Crouch, and The Paper Tiger.

However, even Sally McGhee (whose measures are integral to her process) admits that defining metrics may not be necessary for all personal objectives. My story is an example of that. When I adopted David Allen's Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology three or four years ago I noticed huge improvements in my life (you can find my litany in many posts). As a result I ended up leaving a wonderful job, switching careers, and starting my own productivity practice (see Commitment Time!, which Pam was kind enough to write about in I live for these emails). Did I measure number of emails in my inbox, number of projects completed, time spent in meetings, etc? Not at all! Instead, I felt at a deep level how much my perspective of how I look at my world (work and life) had shifted. In other words, I experienced the improvements on a qualitative (rather than quantitative) level.

(Interestingly, this one area in which I argue that GTD "cheats" by skipping. See 10 GTD "holes".)

What do you think? Are metrics necessary? In what cases?

Possible to measure?

If we take the "important to measure" perspective, what should we measure? When I spoke with Kerry he pointed out there's no easy answer to white collar measurement. As a huge fan of Koch's book The 80/20 Principle, I believe in getting the most important work done with the least amount of effort. As Laura Stack points out in Leave the Office Earlier, it's not about seat time (quantity), its about quality of work accomplished.

I liked this thought from Don't Measure My Productivity By Looking Over My Shoulder

...measure my work by its quality, not quantity. But hey, sure, if you're going to measure quantity, embrace the fact that we 21st century workers simply don't do the 9-to-5 that well. Let us decide where to place those 40 hours.

We should also consider goals: Are the objectives of the organization being better met after the techniques have been adopted? This implies the needs of the organization might beed to be taken into account. McGhee is also strong on this. Related is the article Increasing the Productivity of Office Staff, which states

In measuring office work, volume measures are seldom sufficient on their own. Output measures must also take into account the quality of the output, its timeliness, and cost. The effectiveness of the outputs is what matters, rather than the efficiency with which they were produced. For this reason the choice of productivity measures must be related to the purpose and objectives of the department and organization, and the needs of customers.

What do you think? Is it possible to create useful measures of white collar work? Is the organizational context important? Crucial?

A survey of measures

That said, there are things related to individual productivity we can readily measure. I've collected a bunch of assessments, but they mostly boil down to a small number of areas. For example the articleDo You Know The Real Productivity Problem? lists "the top six challenges to productivity and performance" in this order:

• Unnecessary Interruptions and Distractions
  
• Poor Planning and Scheduling
  
• Unclear Priorities
  
• Excessive Paperwork and E-Document
  
• Ineffective Meetings
  
• Ineffective Delegation
  

When I asked Sally McGhee about this, she said they measure simple things, and are creating more and more advanced levels of metrics. She gave a few examples of the simple ones, including:

• how much email is in your inbox now and then six weeks after you have done the program,
  
• how much email is in your inbox and how much time do you spend processing email,
  
• how much time do you spend doing activities towards your objectives versus doing activities that do not support your objectives, and
  
• how much time do you spend working at home versus how much time do you want to reduce that.
  

Gleeson lists:

• how much time do you spend on your email,
  
• how much time do you spend looking for things,
  
• how much time do you spend in meetings, and
  
• how much time is consumed with interruptions.
  

However, beware measuring the wrong thing. From the software realm, a classic example is measuring lines of code. Wikipedia lists some disadvantages, with a main point is that numbers don't reflect effectiveness (writing the right code) and quality (some people can accomplish a lot more with less code). Freakonomics has some great examples that highlight the problem with incentives. One that comes to mind is airline flights being on time. With that incentive it's possible to rig the system to always be on time, say by defining "on time" to be much longer.

You can find a bit more on this in Productivity - Steps in measuring and increasing productivity, Increased productivity through incentives.

Pre- and post-tests

As far as using these kinds of metrics, pre- and post-tests are common. The best short article I could find was here. The approach is straightforward: Give the test before starting and compare to re-testing when done. Any of the examples given above would work. Some of the results McGhee shared: Reduce inbox by 75%, save 50 minutes/day finding & filing, 15% less time/wk in meetings, reduce interruptions by 60%, reduce time spent processing email 1 hr/day.

Comments from educators on the efficacy of these would be very helpful.

Consulting as teaching

Another dimension I've thought about is what's reasonable to measure. As an educator (with little formal experience) I've realized there's only so much I can control, which is especially relevant with regard to habit changes. That's why I always support clients rigorously for at least 30 days. Thus, any metrics that measure productivity have to take this into account. For example, I'm very comfortable guaranteeing a consult will finish with empty inboxes (paper, voice, email), the knowledge of how to handle any kind of incoming, how to break down projects, and generally how the system works. I can't guarantee it will stick over time; that depends very much on the individual, how motivated she is, and the match between her personal style of work and the method.

Thoughts?

You make the call

Ultimately, I suspect what's best is letting the person wanting productivity improvements herself decide the most appropriate metrics. This would be in the context of her goals, and those of the organization. Using one of the assessments above might be a good starting place, and would stimulate discussion and reflection. Regarding the mix of qualitative and quantitative measures, I think they'd come out during a frank discussion of objectives and challenges. Interestingly, Weiss says "the higher level your bar the more you can afford subjective measures in their metrics."

As I wrote in my Academic Productivity answers, I think the idea behind productivity is to do the most important work, with the least amount of effort, so we can spend more time doing what we love. (And yes, loving your work is wonderful.) With that in mind, we should put measurement in its proper place - as a tool for gauging whether the changes we make are effective.

References

• [1] This quote is often attributed to Peter Drucker, but a bit of digging indicates it's not that clear. Searching for the phrase - and the original "If you can measure it, you can mange it" - yields some surprises. For example, A Hacker's Guide to Project Management credits it to Tom DeMarco, who starts with it in his book Controlling Software Projects: Management, Measurement, and Estimates.
  
  However, going back a bit, the book Measuring the Value of Information Technology says it was Lord Kelvin who originated it:

  It was the scientist Lord Kelvin who said, "When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely in your thoughts advanced to the stage of science." Later, this statement was abbreviated to "if you can measure it, you can manage it," and "if you cannot measure it, you cannot manage it."

  BUT, even further back the authors of Geography Matters! state "The Renaissance astronomer Rhaticus suggested that if you can measure something, then you have some control over it." Wikipedia has more at Rheticus.
  

Tool update: Matt goes digital! Plus a few Mac productivity lessons

Since switching to Macintosh I've been trying out tools for GTD, playing with productivity tools, and generally being very pleased with the move from Windows. In addition, I decided to switch from my paper-based action management system to a digital one, and wanted to share with you results from both. I'd love to hear your Mac tips and tricks for productivity too.

Tools I switched to

In no particular order:

• Contacts: I entered my ~1,000 contacts into the built-in Address Book program. Creating and editing using this program is painful [1], but well worth it: Address Book + Spotlight = fast. command-space, type a few letters, down-arrow (if necessary), hit return, ta da. Also, because Address Book is the inter-application standard for contacts, every program uses it for synchronization, so no other choice, really [2].
  
• Calendar: I switched from a paper calendar to iCal, which went rather smoothly. iCal has importantly limitations, but, like Address Book, is usable. And again, it's the standard for inter-app communication of events.
  
• Lists: Hand-in-hand with the calendar switch was my move from paper lists to electronic ones. Rapid list creation, search, and completion is central to the work I teach, so this tool choice was harder than the previous ones. Because the Mac attracts creative programmers (why is that?) there's a huge number of GTD-compatible programs available. I won't go into detail, but I found them either too complex or too limited. For me, Things showed the most promise. I'll give it another look after its release. As a result, I decided on a vanilla implementation using iCal's To Do feature, and the "one calendar per list" approach (i.e., creating separate calendars for actions, projects, etc.) Works well with some tweaks and add-ons [3], and led to a sweet little happy accident [4]. Same note re: iCal being the standard for task interoperability.
  
• Portability/PDA: What good is a digital implementation without an expensive and fragile tool to take with you? Since Address Book and iCal are standards for synchronization, I had some flexibility. Sadly, unless you use an iPhone [5], you need to buy a third party program called The Missing Sync. In my case I bought a used HP iPAQ h4155 Pocket PC, which syncs, but in a "I'm not sure if it worked this time" way. Not great. Unfortunately, Palm sync support is at least as poor. Still, from a former paper guy, the two killer features are alarms, and all my contacts.
  

Other Mac productivity goodies

In addition to the "bread and butter" tools above, I found other great work enhancers, including:

• Spotlight: Like Apple's initial "you have to buy a Mac for one feature" hit (desktop publishing) I'd have to say Spotlight almost justifies buying a Mac by itself. It has fundamentally changed how I use my computer - launching apps, finding files, and looking up contacts, events, and to do items. Apple absolutely hit this one out of the ballpark. And almost every program you buy integrates with the Spotlight database. Extremely powerful.
  
• Quicksilver: Quicksilver is a Spotlight-like program that lets you operate on data (files, contacts, events, etc) in a contextual Noun Verb manner. For example, to send a file you'd invoke Quicksilver (control-option-command-space on my Mac), search for the file ala Spotlight, and select an action, such as "Email to..." There's a lot of potential here, but be forewarned: This tool is complex to set up and really get your head around. That said, there is one killer app that I couldn't live without: a very fast iCal front-end to events and to dos. More below [6].
  
• TextExpander: After trying the major text expansion tools I found TextExpander to be the best for me. (I just use it simply for abbreviations - nothing fancy.) Does the job and works like you'd expect out of the box.
  
• Screen sharing: If your mother uses computers, buy her a Mac. Why? In addition to "simple and works," iChat's built-in screen sharing is a tech support dream come true. Yes the same feature is available for PCs, but this is zero set-up, and easy to use. Plus, it makes for some great April Fools Day pranks. (Video chat's another argument for mom.)
  

Mac productivity tips

Finally, here are a few tips I've collected. Some are found elsewhere, but in case they're new to you:

• Global: F11: Your single-key "get focused" tool. Hides all windows and shows just the desktop. Great if you're on the phone and want to work on the project in front of you, or avoid EMV (E-Mail Voice - see Overly Wired? There's a Word for It, from CrazyBusy). Related: option-command-h (hide others). More shortcuts here.
  
• Global: command-shift-/: This is a very cool UI trick, and allows you to search menu items without knowing which menu they're located in. Hit the shortcut, type part of a menu item, down-arrow to it, and hit return. Bonus: Slick animation + you can see the direct keyboard shortcut for next time.
  
• Firefox: command-return in find mode: This took forever to find: When in find mode (command-f), command-return toggles the "Highlight all" button.
  

References

• [1] I find Address Book usable but frustrating, esp. for creating and editing. I ranted a bit about it here.
  
• [2] I looked at Entourage 2008, but found far too many enough issues to decide against it, in spite of a strong integrated feature set.
  
• [3] iCal lacks a list-based "control center" that shows today's events + To Dos. I worked around this using Dashboard and two widgets: iCal Events and DoBeDo ToDo. Side-by-side they give me an interim solution. For rapid entry, see the Quicksliver section above.
  
• [4] When I printed my to dos I accidentally got them in random order. After a short "crud" moment I realized this was good: It made me look at each one fresh, a kind of "enforced" daily review. A keeper!
  
• [5] I'll no doubt get one, but not until a) they support Verizon (best service in my area), and b) they get To Do lists (!), something everybody's speculating about.
  
• [6] I searched pretty hard for a smart command-line front end to creating events and to dos - rapid capture is crucial to maintaining focus, and keeping lists up-to-date. The closest I've found is Quicksilver's iCal support. To create an event 1) invoke QS (control-option-command-space on my machine), 2) type "." to enter text mode, 3) type the to do or even text in compliant format (e.g., "tue 2pm call matt"), 4) type tab, 5) type "ev" or "to" to get to get "Create iCal Event" or "Create iCal To Do", and 6) type return. Not bad, and a big improvement over using the mouse in iCal. More at How To: Add a new iCal event from Quicksilver.
  

Is life is a series of ... wows? A selection of "made me think" ideas

While I'm reading, learning, and trying to perform radical self-development (sounds nasty), I noticed I've been tagging ideas and quotes that made me say wow! One of my longer term goals with my consulting practice is to a) leave customers with a "wow, that was great" feeling, and b) eventually be a source of these myself (hey - think audacious). More generally, I want to leave myself receptive to experiencing these little revelations. It's like creating luck - put yourself in environments that facilitate exposure to it, then be observant.

In that spirit I'd like to share a few with you. If you have any favorites of your own, please share them.

• Tim Ferriss has some great quotes in The 4-Hour Workweek, including:

  A person's success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have.

  Genius is only a superior power of seeing.

  Doing less meaningless work so that you can focus on things of greater personal importance is not laziness. This is hard for most to accept because our culture tends to reward personal sacrifice instead of personal productivity.

  
  
• In Getting Organized, Chris Crouch says this about clutter:

  The bottom line on the relationship between clutter and productivity: 1) the key to improving productivity is improving concentration. 2) the key to improving concentration is minimizing distractions. 3) clutter is distracting.

  
  
• Randy Pausch reprising his &Last Lecture&, we learn how to apologize: 1) Say you're sorry. 2) Take responsibility. 3) Ask "How do I make it right?" Sadly, we usually skip the last step.
  
• Kiva - Loans that change lives: Great sounding idea. Don't know anything about them...
  
• In her great book Beyond Buzz, Lois Kelly encourages us to "Attract interest, create understanding, build trust." Very nice.
  
• Jan Jasper, in her book Take Back Your Time, shares a thought attributed to economist Juliet Schor: Smarter machines and better-educated people bring more options and higher expectations. However, this also leads to our being rich in things, but poor in time.
  
• Mark Hurst popularized an insight about email that's very surprising. In Bit Literacy, he says email volume isn't the appropriate measure of email load; it's how many are in the inbox, the message count. This is why his solution to email overload is empty the inbox at least once a day.
  
• In her book Selling to Big Companies, Jill Konrath tells us insightful questions have a bigger impact on [my] sales success than any other sales behavior. Plan them ahead of time for maximum impact. In general, I'm completely enamored of the idea of asking great questions, and being genuinely interested in the answers. As a geek, it's the germ of the single best tip to being comfortable (and popular!) in social situations: Come with good questions, ask people about themselves, then listen. If you ask the right question, you can release almost anyone's joy when you get them to talk about what they love. Very cool.
  
• Howard Schultz, in Pour your heart into it quotes Helen Keller from her book The Open Door:

  Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.

  
  
• I recently had a "wow" moment around my own productivity practice, this one around the surprising power of "I don't have to think about this right now." I was emptying my paper inbox, looking at a complex piece of mail, and started to get drawn in (unhappily). But I was able to catch it, track it for follow-up, and set it aside and move on. Felt great! (And that's one reason I teach this stuff. It really helps.)
  
• Stephen Downes' post Things You Really Need to Learn was a wonderful eye-opener. He lists what we need to know to be successful, including:
  • How to predict consequences
    
  • How to read
    
  • How to distinguish truth from fiction
    
  • How to empathize
    
  • How to be creative
    
  • How to communicate clearly
    
  • How to Learn
    
  • How to stay healthy
    
  • How to value yourself
    
  • How to live meaningfully
  
  
• I can always depend on Mark Forster to give us some good insights. Here are a couple from Do It Tomorrow (paraphrasing here):

  We generally judge the difficulty of a proposed action by how much we are resisting it, rather than by how much skill or technical expertise it will take. For example, doing your tax returns.

  Remember, it is structure that produces behavior, not the other way around.

  That has some deep implications around personal productivity...
  
• One of my university clients shared with me Robert Boice's book The New Faculty Member. His assessment of the role of tacit knowledge in successful self-management really hit home:

  ... much critical information about professorial success is tacit knowledge ... usually untaught but critical to thriving ... We are apparently unaccustomed to studying or teaching the practical intelligence that contributes to success and happiness in academic careers.

  
  
• Finally, Richard Koch's terrific 80/20 Principle is a source of many perspective changes (beyond the central idea of focusing on the vital few - the super-productive minority, rather than the trivial many - the majority). Here a few that blew me away:

  Belief in progress has to be an act of faith. Progress is a duty.

  To be strategic is to concentrate on what is important, on those few objectives that can give us a comparative advantage, on what is important to us rather than others; and to plan and execute the resulting plan with determination and steadfastness.

  Achievement is driven by insight and selective action. The still small voice of calm has a bigger place in our lives than we acknowledge. Insight comes when we are feeling relaxed and good about ourselves. Insight requires time and time, despite conventional wisdom, is there in abundance.

  
  

10 GTD "holes" (and how to plug them)

Since starting my study of the field of personal productivity (first GTD-related post: August 2005 - Actually Getting Things Done With Getting Things Done! Surprises And Learnings From My Implementation), I've been thinking about where the holes are in Allen's GTD and other modern systems [1]. I like the idea that there's a lot to learn in these interstitial spaces, no matter the object of study - for example art (in his book A Whole New Mind, Daniel Pink talks about seeing negative spaces [2]), social networks (seek opportunities to put yourself into structural holes - via Scott Allen [3]), and scientific discovery (Mendeleev and the periodic table, for example [4]).

Following are a few of the limitations I've noticed for GTD in particular. I wanted to share them with you and ask your thoughts on its shortcomings, and how to fix or work around them. In no special order:

Hard to sustain

One of the biggest challenges to people adopting new and better habits is getting them to stick. For a personal productivity practice (and I do mean practice, as in learning an instrument or studying yoga), we always face plateaus and fall off the wagon. This is nothing new - in my study of the field, this is a fundamental human limitation, so it's not fair to blame a particular author or method. That said, we need to structure work such that staying on the path (and getting back on it) is as easy as possible. In that sense, GTD is hard; there are many essential habits (the system is rather rigorous, after all), and lends itself to being brittle (see below).

For some ideas on how to deal with this, I'll point you to your own wisdom: Reader Question: Getting Personal Productivity Changes To Stick?

Not enough help with doing

Of course when it all comes down to it, we need to do the work we've so carefully collected and distilled. The question is whether GTD provides enough guidance on how to make progress. Just look around the productivity blogosphere and you'll find every tip imaginable around how to get ourselves to work (esp. procrastination [5]), including:

• Time blocking/mapping [6]
  
• Covey's importance/urgency matrix
  
• Worst first
  
• Easiest first
  
• Reward yourself
  
• "Dashes" (e.g., (10+2)*5)
  
• 80-20
  
• Current initiative (see Do It Tomorrow)
  
• Swiss cheese
  
• ...

You can argue that having a master list of tasks isn't meant to answer the "How," just the "What." But still - it's clearly an area any self-management system should address.

Any favorites you've found helpful?

One big list too overwhelming

Depending on the job, GTD's master task list can have hundreds of items on it. Even grouping them into people/places/things needed to do them (i.e., "contexts") leaves dozens of to-dos per list. One could argue that every one of those items is the result of a "yes" we've said, but it's still overwhelming, and can lead to paralysis.

So how do we fix this? One practice I've found helpful is to create a daily plan. You can get details in Are Daily To-do Lists And GTD Compatible?, but the gist is to create a temporary list of work you'd like to accomplish today (tomorrow, if you're planning the night before), then use that to focus during the onslaught. The trap is switching over to the temporary list, and letting the master flounder.

Another approach is to use a more limited time horizon for what we put on the lists, i.e., how far out we're looking when we promise ourselves we'll take action. It's up to you, but think in terms of months, say 60 days. Of course you still need to track the stuff you know is coming up, say by keeping a "not doing" list.

Finally, distributing tasks into your calendar will manage overwhelm. The only work you see is what's on your calendar for today. There's still a big list, but it's watered down over time. There are some serious pitfalls to doing it this way, though, including "copying forward" work you didn't get to, which focuses on what you didn't get done.

Anyone doing any of these?

Too brittle

A client came up with "brittle" to describe how catastrophic falling out of practice can be with systems like GTD. Sometimes one whirlwind week is all it takes to unravel the thing, which is a huge limitation. So: What contributes to brittleness? I see two factors: A workload that hovers around your "maximum" setting, and an excessive stream of incoming items. The first factor means you have no buffer for work to grow and shrink. You are oversaturated. (Sadly, unlike a supersaturated solution, adding heat will not allow putting more in.) Sadly, trying to do more is a common "solution" we come up with to managing ourselves, along with sleeping less, exercising less, and spending more time at the lab.

The second factor (too much incoming) also shortens your buffer. If the volume is equal to or exceeds your ability to empty it, you'll fall behind. A good test: How long does it take to empty your inboxes on Monday morning? If you say 1/2 a day, is that too much?

I'd love to know your thoughts on this one.

Too complex

A common complaint about Allen's work is that it's just too complicated. There are two aspects of this: His overall phases that frame our work (see my What A Difference A Framework Can Make), and his diagram for deciding and emptying our inboxes. Now, since many of my clients [7] are from scientific and engineering fields, adopting such a strong, process-oriented scheme is a natural fit. But the critique is valid - I think it's one of those "it's so simple now that I've practiced it for two years" things.

To simplify the framework, any ideas? Here are a few variations:

• Capture, Plan, Act - From an OmniFocus demo movie.
  
• Think, Do, Enjoy - From SuMMy's comment on Extreme GTD: How Low Can You Go (or: Can We 80-20 GTD?):

  I agree everyone needs their own system my perspective is different though- there is a base of knowledge that people should start with and build on it using the pieces needed for themselves. The key is start with basic building blocks: Think (goals/planning/long term thinking), Do (processing rules), Enjoy (missing from gtd, it gives motivation and meaning to what needs to be done).

To simplify the deciding and emptying steps, there's a bunch of approaches, all with the same idea - make decisions about each item in order, then move it into the appropriate tracking bins. For example:

• FAT: File, Act, Toss - Found in books like Jan Jasper's Take Back Your Time: How to Regain Control of Work, Information, and Technology and Barbara Hemphill's Taming the Paper Tiger at Home.
  
• FAITH: File, Act, In-coming, Toss, Hand-off - From Monica Ricci's Organize Your Office In No Time
  
• TRAF - Toss, Refer, Act, File - See my How To Process Stuff - A Comparison Of TRAF, The "Four Ds", And GTD's Workflow Diagram

In addition to my own exercise in simplifying GTD (see Extreme GTD: How Low Can You Go (or: Can We 80-20 GTD?), you might enjoy Gina's thoughts on whittling down essentials: Practicing Simplified GTD and Email: Empty Your Inbox with the Trusted Trio.

No time use analysis

Almost every book I've read on time management and personal productivity starts with an analysis of how we use our time, often called a Time Log (see, for example, Jasper's book and Laura Stack's Leave the Office Earlier). However, does David Allen cheat by skipping this step? His perspective seems to be one of presenting a solid approach in detail, and assuming it's generally applicable to all kinds of work. It's also related to his bottom-up approach (see below). Peter Drucker in particular emphasizes this (e.g., "If you can't measure it, you can't manage it" - see What's Your Feed Reading Speed?).

The basic idea is to track for a representative number of days how you spend your time, analyze where the opportunities for improvement are, then adjust accordingly. That's why Mission Control's workshops (for example) start with this (see A GTD-er's Perspective On Mission Control's "Productivity And Accomplishment").

Variations on this problem: No interruption analysis. To do it, simply track for each interruption: Who interrupted, What was it about, Value of the interruption, and the Duration. Optional: Time of day.

Thoughts?

No built-in balance

This is a big one: GTD has no built-in self-correction of work added vs. work performed. It enables analyzing and correcting imbalances, but doesn't address directly the fact that we can't add work without managing the consequences. It's like eating: You want cake every day? Then expect your weight and health to be impacted. Mark Forster's book Do It Tomorrow and Other Secrets of Time Management has a strong component around this: closed lists, lists that can't grow without removing something. Interestingly, a calendar is an example - hence the "schedule everything" alternate to to-do lists. A secondary problem is feeling overwhelmed by large lists (see below).

Related: When Inputs Exceed Your Workflow System's Capacity, What GTD And Weight Watchers Have In Common

Not goal-driven

Here's another common complaint: Allen starts "bottom-up," i.e., getting on top of our day-to-day workload before we consider higher-level aspects of our lives. This is in opposition to approaches that are goal-driven: Start with the important aspects of your life, then drill down through vision, goals, and projects to (finally) actions. The reasoning here is (to use Stephen Covey's analogy [8]) it makes no sense to climb a ladder if it's leaning against the wrong wall.

For me, starting top-down didn't work. I needed the "free your mind" piece before I started thinking about purpose. (And boy did it work - see Commitment Time! (Taking The Big Leap).) Interestingly, one thing that comes up in my interview series with top productivity experts is that the top-down/bottom-up issue is not all or nothing. Both components are important, and there's often a cycle or spiral that emphasizes work on one then the other over time.

The potential problem is this can lead to a disconnect between tasks (actions) and goals (purpose/motivation) - it's an important dimension besides actionable. For one possible solution, see Where Are You Going? Use Your Actions And Projects To Reverse Engineer Your Goals.

How do you connect goals with action?

No built in planning/task estimation

Central to many work schemes is the notion of using estimation and measurement to inform action choice and project planning. In You Need to Get to Work!, Julie Morgenstern says the most important skill is answering the question "How long will it take?" and then learning to "accurately and honestly estimate it in advance." Without this, it's very difficult to plan methodically - which is unneccesarily stressful. As Mark Forster says in One Thing at a Time:

Don't completely erase the old estimated completion dates when you revise them. That way you keep a record of how many changes you have needed to make. Examining that record can tell you a lot about your workload and the way you are tackling it.

Interestingly, in the Extreme Programming methodology [9], tracking how long work takes is essential to adjusting course. After all, how can one predict how long adding a feature will take if you have no measure of past performance to go on?

Two resources you might like: In To Do Doing Done, Snead and Wycoff share different ways to estimate, including asking someone else how long it took, or using more formal equations. And Jose has a nice little discussion at Bias and Accuracy in Estimates of Task Duration using Academic Tasks.

What do you think - is building in tracking and estimating something a productivity method should do?

No specific accommodation of personality types

Along with not doing an initial time analysis, Allen also doesn't do an assessment of personal work style. This is another common starting point in other time management books, and I wonder whether Allen is ignoring the problem, or whether there is no problem, i.e., GTD applies to everyone, and personality doesn't matter. The thought is that we all have different personality types (e.g., Myers-Briggs) and this should inform how we approach work. Someone who is more "divergent" may need a workspace very different from "convergent" types (vocabulary from Time Management for Unmanageable People). This information might also be useful in deciding a starting place. Here's a list from Morgenstern's Never Check E-Mail In the Morning: What's standing in your way? Is it you or is it them?

• You don't plan well.
  
• You lack confidence on some tasks.
  
• You are unable to prioritize.
  
• You're a perfectionist.
  
• You feel guilty saying no.
  
• You gravitate toward quick, easy tasks.
  
• You're poor at estimating how long things take.
  
• You're physically disorganized.
  
• You start many things, finish none.

What's your take on this? Is it important to account for personality? Or is it that these days it's not possible to sell a book that requires too much up-front quiz-taking and assessment, due to shorter attention spans?

References

• [1] Here are a few other systems, from my AP post answers to your academic productivity questions:

  Could you recommend other systems or methods besides GTD, or is GTD the best thing since sliced apple pie for academics? ... Mark Forster's Do It Tomorrow (my interview with Mark is here), Chris Crouch's Getting Organized (interview here), Sally McGhee's Take Back Your Life! (interview here), and Kerry Gleeson's The Personal Efficiency Program (interview here).

  
  
• [2] Pink describes negative spaces as "the part of the big picture we often overlook. So train your eyes to see it. When you take a walk or browse a store or page through a magazine, peer past what's prominent and examine what's between, beyond, and around it. Being aware of negative space will change how you look at your surroundings - and it will make the positive space snap into focus. It's also a way to be surprised."
  
• [3] Allen defines a structural hole as "the weak connection between two clusters of densely connected people" From Structural Holes: The Social Structure of Competition via The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors And Closing Deals Online.
  
• [4] From Dmitri Mendeleev's Wikipedia entry:

  Initially, Mendeleev was derided for there being gaps in the table. Ultimately though, he was vindicated when previously unknown elements (notably scandium, gallium and germanium) were discovered that filled in these holes and possessed properties (atomic weight, density, melting point, etc.) close to what Mendeleev predicted.[3]

  
  
• [5]Brian Tracy lists a number of them in Time Power, including:
  
  
  • think on paper
    
  • gather all the materials and work tools that you will need before you begin
    
  • do one small thing to get started
    
  • "salami slice" the task
    
  • practice the Swiss cheese technique
    
  • start from the outside and complete the smaller tasks first
    
  • start from the inside and complete the larger tasks first
    
  • do the task that causes you the most fear or anxiety
    
  • start your day with the most unpleasant task first
    
  • think about the negative consequences of not doing the job or completing the task
    
  • think about how you will benefit from doing the job or completing the task
    
  • set aside fifteen minutes during the day when you will work on your project
    
  • resist the tendency toward perfectionism
    
  • pick one area where procrastination is hurting you
    
  • develop a compulsion for closure
    
  • maintain a fast tempo
  
  
• [6] Julie Morgenstern popularized this term. See this newsletter article. From Organizing from the Inside Out:

  [a time map] allots specific spaces in your schedule for tending to the various core activities of your life. It serves as a foundation from which to work that forces you to keep your life in balance, giving you all the time you need to accomplish your goals.

  
  
• [7] As usual, I want to be very clear that I have no association with David Allen or his company. His work has been a big influence, but I continue to combine the best practices from many sources (which I share here) into my work.
  
• [8] You might enjoy Leo's: Exclusive Interview: Stephen Covey on His Morning Routine, Blogs, Technology, GTD and The Secret.
  
• [9]You can read a bit more on XP in Is GTD the "Extreme Programming" of Time Management? and Productivity for Programmers, #2: Efficient vs. Effective.