READY FOR ANYTHING
52 Productivity Principles For Work & Life
Ready for Anything: 52 Productivity Principles for Work and Life – the second book of David Allen, famous productivity guru.
The universal problem of today's world of work--too much to do--is the very thing Allen aims to help you handle. His tack is this: you can do more and be more productive if you relax and use his methods. His methods are all about doing the objective things, like making lists and cleaning up the small stuff, that clear your mind to be relaxed, creative, and free of stress.
This is an excellent self-development program, one that is up-to-the-minute in its use of metaphors like "mental RAM" and "open loops" and others drawn from our computer/network age. It speaks to the most contemporary issues in managing tasks, projects and energy. It draws on the best ideas of various traditions but is not merely a rehash of them. It sparkles with solid insights. It's worth listening to over and over.
Here you’ll find two parts of review. Each of them describes one major area of productivity, according to Ready For Everything.
The First Major Area of Productive Behavior: Completion
1. Clean up your current projects before starting new ones
To create energy and clarity for a new project, go through and mentally clear the decks first by:
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Completing all the projects you’re half-way through.
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Processing everything in your in-basket.
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Answering or purging all your mail and e-mail.
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Clearing your desk and workspace.
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Working through your stack of material you must read.
The more things you can get completed, the clearer you’ll be able to think about your new project. Clearing the decks also energizes you, and creates a feeling of accomplishment. That’s important to have at the start of a new project.
You should also arm yourself with a tool for capturing new ideas. This needs to be something you’ll always have with you to capture new ideas the moment they occur to you. Configure it to suit your needs – a pocket notebook, three-by-five cards, miniature recorder – whatever works in with your preferences.
2. Get into the habit of writing everything down
Too many people have jumbled thinking. To avoid this, do a “mind dump” – that is, write down everything that pops into your head, regardless of how important or how irrelevant that thought is. You can then take the material from your mind dump and evaluate it logically, deciding on some priorities. If you try and do this mentally, all you’ll end up creating is confusion. Instead, capture ideas by writing them down and then work through them, deciding what’s actionable and what’s not.
3. Make better choices by tracking your commitments
Until you know what you’ve already committed to doing, it will be impossible to agree to take on any new projects. By deliberately and consciously tracking your present commitments, you’ll also become more selective about any undertakings you give to other people.
What you want to do is hit the right balance between controls and constraints. That is, you want to be able to concentrate on what’s important without having so many systems in place that your thinking becomes stifled. One way to achieve this is to create some simple daily processes for taking care of the important details of your life and career. With a thorough process in place, you deal with the important elements with a high level of awareness and attention.
4. To achieve your goals, know your current realities
Before you can set meaningful priorities for the future, you have to take inventory of where you are at present. Find the answers to six key questions to do that:
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What are your current daily tasks?
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What are the projects you are now working on?
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What specifically are your current areas of responsibility?
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What changes do you anticipate happening in the next year?
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What’s the big picture of changes over the next few years?
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What do you see as your purpose for living?
Once you make a thorough inventory of all your present commitments, you then have a more accurate perspective on how much time and energy can be committed to new projects that will move you towards your goals.
5. Visualize positive results and act constructively
To achieve more with your life:
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Get things on paper – because if you try and remember everything, you’ll get muddled and confused.
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Make decisions when things show up – not when you’ve delayed deciding so long they become problems.
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Organize reminders – so you follow through and complete the projects you start rather than abandoning them.
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Keep your system current – so you can trust it completely rather than being out of date. That frees your intuition to help prompt you in what you should be doing.
6. Avoid conflicting commitments
Your mind is constantly tracking and reviewing all your commitments – big and small, professional and personal. Having too many open projects at any one time creates frustration and anxiety, impeding constructive actions. Therefore, to avoid this, spend time and energy clearing up all the “loose ends” before embarking on a major project. You’ll be able to focus on what’s needed to succeed far more effectively if you don’t have open loops nagging at the back of your mind.
7. Inventory all your open projects on paper
Never try and track all your open loops mentally. That will only cause confusion and stress. Instead:
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Make a list of all your open projects (probably 30 -100).
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Write down the next step for each project.
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Update your list regularly so it is current and applicable.
Don’t worry if you don’t actually do anything on a project – that’s fine because it’s your conscious choice rather than the result of circumstance. Once you’ve specified what actions are required to move forward with each project, then you can start on the efficiency game of finding ways to get them all done.
8. Generate more energy by closing open loops
The more of your current projects you can complete, the more energized you’ll feel. Therefore, don’t worry about setting priorities. Get some projects finished each and every day. Clear out the mental clutter of unfulfilled commitments and you’ll be amazed at how great you feel.
9. If it’s on your mind, it won’t be getting done
Whenever something “bugs” you, take that as an indicator that you need to:
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Do something that will progress the project; or
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Decide what your next action should be; or
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Put in place a reminder you’ll notice to act in the future.
Don’t even attempt to keep all your self-commitments in your head. All that will produce is jumbled thinking or stress, neither of which are helpful. Instead, get into the habit of writing things down. Save your mental energy for bigger and better things. If you get into the habit of doing all your planning on paper rather than in your mind, you’ll be using your energy where it can produce the greatest benefits. Be smart about what you choose to think about, because that will have a large number of flow-on benefits and advantages.
10. For creative thinking, you have to make space
Instead of saying to other people or yourself: “You know, if I didn’t have so many responsibilities, I could be very creative”, you need to take more control. The key is:
Write everything down.
Think about it all, not just what you get to.
Decide what needs to be done about all your projects.
Manage all your options in a consistent external system.
As you do this, you’ll find the experience highly liberating. The release of the pressure of trying to remember everything will create a surge of self-esteem that will cut through the fog and allow you to achieve much more. Once you get started, it then becomes a matter of being consistent as you work the system.
11. Set up your life for expansion, not contraction
Do whatever it takes to make it worth your while, personally and professionally, to generate new business. That may mean raising your prices so you’re genuinely enthused when a new customer comes along. If you don’t do this, you will subconsciously resent new business, which is not helpful. Simplify your business systems, create the capacity for expansion, clear your mind and then go to work developing new ideas that will allow you to serve more people better than before. That way, you’ll welcome new opportunities, not shun them.
12. Periodically review where you’re heading
To think less about what you should be doing and thereby create more time for actually achieving, run regular reviews of the key elements of your life:
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Every week, review all your open projects and write down a suitable next step for each.
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Every month or two, go over your life and career and check the right projects are getting the right amount of attention.
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Every year, formulate a plan for where you want to be by the end of the next year.
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Every few years, sit down with other key people and think about your life’s direction and your lifestyle needs.
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Every so often, stop and reconnect with what your personal grand purpose of life is.
13. Be the master of your work, not its slave
By accurately categorizing and tracking everything you need to get done, you’ll have the confidence to think more about what really should be done. In other words, writing lists of actions to take is exceptionally useful because it helps you be more efficient, but effectiveness requires that you do the right things. Sometimes the right thing to do will not be something that’s on your lists, but because you’ve taken the time and thought to develop lists, you can feel confident that nothing important is being overlooked.
In essence, the system works but not always in ways that you have planned. When you reach the stage where you process 100-percent of your requirements into a good system, you can then pay attention to what really counts without distraction. The true payoff will be that you’ll get the right things done, not necessarily that you’ll do everything on your lists.
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