The Three-Fold Nature of Work
July 25th, 2008Categories | Best Practices | David Allen | Direct From David | Features
Editor’s Note: I’ve been working with Julie Ireland, one of David’s GTD Coaches and the other day she had me read this article that David wrote on the Three Fold Nature of Work. I found it so interesting and relevant that I wanted to share it with the readers of GTDtimes. Some of you may have seen this already but regardless, it is worth reading again; a thirty second investment that can pay big dividends when you put these concepts into action in your daily life.
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Why do people complain that there’s no time to get work done?
Many times clients express frustration that they “can’t get any of their work done” because of the overwhelming
amount of interruptions, email, and other input that show up during the course of a normal day. If you are ever in that frustrated state, it might help to understand the three-fold nature of what constitutes your “work.”
Why do people complain that there’s no time to get work done?
Many times clients express frustration that they “can’t get any of their work done” because of the overwhelming
amount of interruptions, email, and other input that show up during the course of a normal day. If you are ever in
that frustrated state, it might help to understand the three-fold nature of what constitutes your “work.”
You are doing three things when you work:
(1) Doing pre-defined work.
This is what you would be doing all day if you got no input or interruptions of any sort.You would probably be working off the inventory of actions and projects that you came in with – work that you have already determined needs doing. The phone calls you need to make, the documents you need to draft, the ideas you need to outline on the project, etc.
(2) Doing work as it appears.
The phone rings, you take the call, and spend twenty minutes talking to a customer or a business colleague. Your boss calls a half hour meeting to update you on a new development and get your input on it. You are doing the work as it shows up to be done. You are actually defining your work rapidly in this case, and choosing to do the new stuff instead of any of the pre-determined activity.
(3) Defining work to be done.
This is processing your in-basket, your email, your meeting notes, etc. –taking in input and making decisions about what needs to be done about it. You may do some quick actions as you define them, and you will probably be adding some more to your inventory of defined work. So what? (All this is common sense.) Well, I have noticed that many people act as if (2) is some sort of burden to endure, and (3) is some irrelevant activity aside from their work. I don’t get it. It’s all the work. Some is done when it
appears, and some is done when you choose to do it instead of what’s showing up. And processing input is required to trust the inventory of pre-defined work.
How much of which kind of work to do when is the eternal dance of the workday. You can’t really do more than one of them at a time, though you can get really fast with processing work while you’re on hold on the phone, and waiting for meetings to start. There may be interruptions that are allowed that are not functional or valuable, but
managing those is just tactical to your definition of your job. It’s an eternal challenge of allocating limited resources (management) – it’s not an inherent problem.
Get used to it.
What lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do.
- Aristotle
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Obviously a huge fan of GTD and an ardent follower for the last 18 months (extending it out across many of the other senior managers in the company I run as well)
The bit that I’ve always struggled with is the mental ’strength’ required to optimally do the ‘eternal dance’ of the work day. I use the word optimal because, yes, the work does all have to be done. GTD offers up keen advice on how to prioritise according to time, energy etc. However, when you’re in the thick of it, the siren call of (2) is huge unless you put wax in your ears/ strap yourself to the mast of your ship Odysseus-style.
Lacking a ship’s mast, I have found Mark Forster’s Do It Tomorrow system a solution for me to (2). Unless it’s urgent, it’s done tomorrow.
So each day has a concentrated chunk of pre-defined catch-up from the prior day (the calls/ the quick meetings/ the mails) and the rest of the day is then (1) and (3) territory.
Yes, seniority helps in running your day like this. But when you experience the benefits of working in this way, I agree that you realise it’s not an inherent problem.
This touches every aspect of GTD. Really an interesting read. Another article you might consider reading here
Sometimes things happen when they should. Like the opportunity to this article; I’ve read it before, and for whatever reason, it was over my head. It is only recently that I have really understood the nature of defining my work. It didn’t even register until I had some on the phone coaching with Meg. Even then, it slipped by me. I still had little respect for it as a part of working. Perhaps I had some contempt for it because I find defining work to be fun. I like categorizing thing, mindmapping things, figuring out problems. In defining work I get to do those activities that seem relatively easy, and that I enjoy. Therefore I thought of the process as play time, not as work time. I loved rereading this now, thanks for publishing it again.
Lynn
I had read the article, infact even conducted sessions on it to train my staff, but I still got value from it when reading it again. Thanks indeed for posting it again.