Matthew Cornell

A few things got me thinking about why we try to be more productive. The first was a stimulating (and emotional) discussion of value, fees, and life purpose in my recent post A conversation with Laura Stack, the Productivity Pro. Toward the end a reader brings up the important of "Why?" The second thing was Laura Stack's post How to Be More Productive: Have you become more productive or just learned how? She's clearly given it some deep thought.

Finally, early on I wrote It's not about productivity..., and I'd like to revisit the idea. So what follows are a few "Is it all about..." thoughts. No answers here, just a some starter possibilities. Your thoughts on this are very welcome.

Time? I use the term "self management" in my work (instead of the traditional "time management") because there's a limited supply of it and it can't be saved, so how can you manage it? ("Saving time" doesn't make sense either.) However, our time is extremely precious (we've been allocated a fixed amount of it, though we don't know the number) so how we spend it is crucial. (Hmmm - maybe we should talk in terms of a time budget?)

My friend Pascal Venier called me on this a while back. His response to my post Is GTD the "Extreme Programming" of Time Management? is worth a look: Now ... is GTD really about time management?

Action? OK, so if it's not about time, how about action? A central tenet of Getting Things Done is managing action. "You can't do projects, only actions" is a key concept. This relates to the psychological stress of what Allen calls incompletes or open loops - your mind only relaxes when it trusts they're being tracked and dispatched, so that they feel as if they are complete.

But this leads to asking which actions are important. I believe strongly that getting on top of everything in our lives is a critical first step, but just because we have lots of lists doesn't mean we're living our lives like we want to.

Proactive vs. reactive? In the article Getting Things Done Guru David Allen and His Cult of Hyperefficiency (which my friend Bob Walsh did not like) the author says:

Scientology says that the static in our heads is caused by "engrams." In GTD the problem is stuff.

And stuff is an important piece of Allen's thinking - it's the start of much of what we need to take care of, including problems, ideas, and opportunities.

However, this seems to frame the issue in reactive terms - things coming at us. In The Instant Productivity Toolkit Len Merson talks about "being proactive in a reactive world." To him being proactive means:

meeting new challenges head-on, not procrastinating until they become crises. Being proactive means diving into your tasks knowing you are going to accomplish them well and on time. ... thinking "That's what I'm going to do *next*," not obsessing about a stack of folders on your desk and falling into despair over what you haven't done.

(You can find related thoughts here.)

Goals? That's getting there, but how do we know what to be proactive about? Goals! Yes, you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a blog post on goals. (Believe me - I have over 200 goal-related references). But knowing your goals can be difficult - that's why I wrote Where are you going? Use your actions and projects to reverse engineer your goals. The reason I do this work (coming at it bottom-up) is because it enables listening to ourselves, and getting at what's important. As I commented on Jason Womack's post What would you do if...?

It might come down to listening, which is based on the principle of Making Space: The little voice that tells us what we love, what we should do, is often so quiet that we can't hear it for the noise of our modern lives. That, combined with having many more choices these days than (say) 100 years ago, can get in the way of tuning in to what's authentic to ourselves.

Choices? Aha - choices! I wrote this response to Chris Brogan post:

Choice has (at least) two implications:

1) Self-responsibility: Making conscious choices about our lives removes the excuse to be passive and then complain about it. Example: Not having an important but difficult conversation, then complaining about a relationship.

Another example: When I'm teaching clients best practices, it's *empowering*, for some of them - too much so. (Not too many, thankfully; plunking down money tends to clarify commitment.) For example, if I get my act together, I can no longer claim it's out of my hands, or it's somebody else's fault - I explicitly take responsibility. This is not necessarily comfortable initially, and may be a big change for people.

2) Things *not* chosen, i.e., Mark Forster's "closed lists" (see Do It Tomorrow and Other Secrets of Time Management): Deciding to do something means you've decided *not* to do something else. For example, spending time watching TV or surfing the web means not spending time with my daughter and wife.

The vital few? So yes, we have choices, and they're important. But which of those deserve our time, action, and energy? Another dead cat (and a very important book in the field) is Richard Koch's The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Success by Achieving More with Less. This one blew away my scribble test - lots of ideas, many life-changing. (A big thanks to reader DM for giving me a copy.) He says overall,

keep in mind that a few things are always much more important than most things. Keep the vital few in the forefront of your brain. Keep reviewing whether you are spending more time and effort on the vital few rather than on the trivial many.

This has significant implications for productivity. Because inputs and outputs are non-linear, it's possible to spend a small amount of energy on some things that give proportionally much more back. It's the core idea behind The 4-Hour Workweek, it's big, and it applies to everything - work, life, and relationships.

Finishing up When it's (literally!) all said and done, I wonder if it's all about discovering and leading the life you want. Using our precious minutes, hours, and days doing what's important in our work and lives - for me, contributing, learning, improving myself, and loving.

What do you think?