Contexts in GTD

GTD is all about focus and clean mind. Contexts are there to help you stay focused when you work through your "DO" list. Here's how.

Any place, any time vs. Exact place, exact time

There are a few types of activity that can be performed in any place, any time, with any tools equally well. Like, "Think about ideas for my GF's birthday present". You can think pretty much everywhere: at the office, in your car, at the restaurant etc.
There are much more other tasks that you can only perform when you are in a certain place, time or seeing certain people. "Replace a lightbulb in the garage". You can only do that when you're in your garage. Or, "Take a photo of a sunrise". Obviously, you cannot do that in the afternoon. "Reply to Joe's email". You'll need a PC or a mobile device to do that. You got the point.

Meet contexts

Now, each of this conditions is called a context. You got a context-free task? Fine, you'll be able to complete it wherever you are. Need to talk to your mom who lives 150 miles away? Well, you would want to place it into "Phone" context. Need to buy more file folders? A good candidate for a "Department store" context.
Frankly, the "context-free" example of thinking about present for GF is best done in a "sheet of paper" context as it's more a brainstorming and requires capturing your thoughts on paper.

Now, if you would try working on all these tasks without paying attention to context, you'd be lost. "Replace a lightbulb"? OK, I go outside to my garage. "Call Kate"? Let's go to my computer. "Buy milk"? Oh, need to drive to the grocery... As you can see, this way you'd not be quite productive.

So how it works?

How this works in terms of GTD? When you process your inbox, you assign a context to each task. Afterwards, when you're in a certain context, you pull out the list of tasks you have for that context and work on these tasks. Keep working as soon as you remain within the suitable context.
When it's time to switch to another context, you're now in a good position to start working on that context tasks. Easy enough. All it takes is to assign context to your tasks as you process them.

That's it. Hope that helps.

3 simple tips to improve your ToDo list

Everyone keeps ToDo lists. That's an efficient and proven way to do a number of things and keep track of them.
Although it may seem simple enough there are some areas that you might want to know to improve your efficiency with ToDo list.

Tips for efficient planning:

Write down your tasks using actionable and deliverable words
Try to avoid non-deliverable verbs: "think". Use actionable ones: "Do", "Make", "Create". This way when you complete an item from ToDo list you will have something "Done", "Made", "Created", so you will have some concrete deliverable.

Bad examples:

• Think about the domain name for a site
• Think whether to use a free controls library for your web site

Good examples:

• Search an article of choosing domain name, and read it
• Write down 5 alternatives for domain name
• Write down pro's and con's of using free web control

Don't write what you can't do, write what you can do!
Write down concrete, physical actions that you can do right away. Use a set of little actions that will move you towards your goal, instead of big items that can't be done right away. This way you can pick item and do.

Bad example:

• Do diploma

Good example:

• Write the list of topics for diploma

Be concrete: use details, numbers, dates
Using details in ToDo list will make you more concrete, and achieve what you exactly want, when completing an item in ToDo list. It is in the humans nature to pay less effort or time for achieving a goal, so if you don't put concrete details when writing down an item you are in a danger of doing less than you initially planned. Providing details will make you do exactly what you wanted.

Bad example:

• Make a list of options

Good example:

• Write at least 5 options

How I ruined a conversation

A good planning is still incomplete without the proper execution. That's why in this planning & self-organization blog we want to cover some adjacent topics like productivity, motivation and communication. In this article we try to make your communication productive and goal-oriented.

A few days ago I posted a brief article about who really wins in an argument. My point was, most people think of winning as defeating their opponent, while in fact you can only win if you listen to your opponent and learn or create something new.

You know what? I had no choice but to prove that myself. Yesterday I have spectacularly ruined a conversation with a colleague.

As a background, our company has a prospective client that wants to build a web application and considers using our services. The client asked for a proposal for this upcoming project. So I met with a colleague, Ivan, to discuss the web application and prepare the proposal.

Just to make it clear, I am more a business person and Ivan is more a technical guy. That's why we needed to share our perspectives and then prepare both technical and business parts of the proposal.

As we started our meeting, it turned out Ivan had probably been busy and had no time to read the specs carefully. Well, I took the lead and briefly went through all the features adding my comments here and there.

OK, now we were on the same page. We started picturing what the application would look like but Ivan acted somewhat passive so once again I took the paper sheet and drew a quick diagram of how the app should work. I was quite proud of my job so far, and Ivan seemed to agree with me again and didn't comment much.

After we discussed the general approach and had agreement on that, we started thinking of gaps we had and writing down questions we needed to get answers for. And once again Ivan seemed comfortable with the list of questions I created.

We were done. Great!

Okay, we shook hands and I went back to my workplace. I was thinking what a great conversation that was: I had lots of time to speak, I was in charge, and Ivan agreed with all my ideas!

But as I reviewed the notes, a scaring thought came to my mind: I didn't get any new information from that conversation. I was talking myself all the time, and Ivan barely said a few words.

How could I deem myself a winner if I received zero value from the conversation? Note that I didn't have the specific purpose to beat my opponent. Quite the opposite was true: I thought I was making him more comfortable.

I believe the conversation was a failure. I failed at creating the friendly atmosphere to let Ivan efficiently share his thoughts with me, and therefore I failed at achieving the most important goal: learning something new.

Now, just a few thoughts on what I can do next time to save the conversation:

• Before you start, create a friendly, relaxing atmosphere
• Say if you have something to say, but make sure to let others talk as well
• Listen to others actively: ask questions, paraphrase, support their point
• Remember that you can only learn by listening others

Good luck and no more ruined conversations!

Who wins in an argument?

When you are in the middle of a debate, what results do you want from the conversation? YOU WANT TO WIN! Quite natural, isn't it? You just want to outspeak your opponent and make him admit you are right.

Remember last time you talked to your wife about any controversial issue you both care about?Started as a simple notion of facts, that talk could quickly grow into a heated debate. Once emotions came in, you both had only one goal for this conversation: TO WIN. Again, this is quite natural to most of us. When we feel vulnerable or violated, we start attacking in response.

And what does it mean to the conversation? It means that it will lead to no result and you will have to start this same conversation again. Well, unless the other person now hates you and is never going to speak to you again.

So who won that argument? Of course you did! You yelled, scared and insulted your opponent, and now he took your side and admitted you won this fight. You dominated the conversation and forced your opponent to accept your opinion.

But thinking about the real goals for the conversation, NOBODY won it. What is the value if only one side had the chance to speak? Zero.

The conversation is a tool for 2 people to create something new. If nothing new has been created, the conversation was useless. You think you're a winner, but in fact you lost. Well, you both lost so it's a draw.

So the lesson is:

Who wins in an argument? NOT the one who talked more. But the one who listen carefully to the other guy.

What I Have Learned From GTD

Some time ago I have come across the classic book "Getting Things Done" written by David Allen.
The book was about time management and organization. It contains a practical approach for people who want to get the best from the time they have. The approach itself is rather comprehensive; it suggests organizing and tracking every little aspect of a person’s life. Whether you find this acceptable for you at the present moment or not, there are some useful practical advises in this book that would be helpful for everyone.

Below is the brief overview of the book, and what I have learned after reading it.

The idea of the book is that each person's life consists of many things, many projects going on in everyday life – work, hobbies, family life, vacations, purchases to make, deals to close and so on and so forth. For each life aspect there are some actions you would like to make to achieve the desired state of that aspect. "I need to plan our honeymoon", "Okay, when do we launch that new web site?" and so on. And unless you are a very well organized person, all of those things persist in your head and your subconsciousness thinks of them and worries more than of the thing you are doing at the present moment. Which means you can’t get 100% concentration on current problem, and you are much less productive than you could be.

What’s the solution for that problem? That is what you may find in David Allens book.
Here are the main points of the approaches, simplified:

1. To get the 100% concentration you should achieve a state of mind called "still like water", which means that your mind perception is at maximum, and it reacts to every thought or idea that comes in.
2. To achieve that state, you should organize yourself in a proper way, so you would know that you collect every thing in your life you should worry about, and that you are going tackle all that problems in an appropriate order. If you do that, your subconsciousness will have nothing to worry about, and will help you concentrating on a problem you are working on right now.
3. To do that you should: Collect: write down every aspect of your life you would like to work on. Organize: keep all the aspects in a place you have access to. For every aspect write down actions that will bring you closer to achieving the goal. Those actions have to be concrete and be doable right away (“Call John, ask the price for the house”). Make the list of those actions. Act: Do those concrete actions one by one, in the order they are written down.
   

What I have learned from the book is mostly practical tips that help me in better organizing of my activities:

• You can be much more organized and productive. You should give it a try and use the experience of smart people who tackle the time management and self organization problems.
• You can’t do a project. You can do actions that take the project closer to the completeness. When you do all simple doable actions your project will be done.
• You should write down everything you need to do.
• If an incoming action takes less than 2 minutes you should do it right away.
• You should set up the environment in a way that it would help you doing what you do.
• Take a large selection of paper sheets, notepads, pens, pencils, white boards, stickers, etc. so you know you have everything you need to collect, organize and store.
• Take out of sight everything that doesn’t belong to what you would be doing.
  

Conclusion. Personally I don’t use pure GTD all the time, however I have taken many simple and practical things from the approach on board. When I feel overwhelmed with problems and can’t concentrate on the task at hand – I know, that’s the moment I need to sit down, collate the goals and projects I have, and write down simple actions I need to do. I know: after I’ve completed my list I will be able to use 100% of my productivity.

Links.
The Book
The definition of Getting Things Done on the David Allens site