Question: Once you’re aware of the possibilities of being “indestructible” by having the intention to do the best thing in a given moment (Chapter 19 of Ready for Anything), how do you manage the newfound fear that, if you’re not intending the best thing in a given moment, you’re missing out on potential gain? Which makes you feel like you “have to” do the best thing all the time?

David Allen’s answer: Why would that question be on your mind? Simple answer: because some part of you thinks or assumes that there are other things you would/could/should be aware of, have done, or be doing, that you’re not. How do you clean that up? Get the complete list of the “other things” and take a look. If you’ve truly captured, clarified, and organized all of that, and stepped back from an appropriate horizon and taken a look, and still feel bad about not knowing what to do, then you’re probably familiar with that kind of feeling, and you’ll tend to slip into that familiar territory, no matter what your situation. Once you can no longer blame some unknown thing—OMG, what am I not doing?—you’ll get the opportunity to address some more subtle stuff, if you care to. Lightening up, with a sense of humor, is the hallmark of productivity maturity!

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Peter Drucker said that “most of the tasks of the executive require, for minimum effectiveness, a fairly large quantum of time.” That’s from the Know Thy Time chaper in The Effective Executive, published almost half a century ago.

Sure, every knowledge worker could benefit from having large blocks of time for doing pre-defined work. But the practical reality is that most workers have schedules that are more fragmented than what Drucker might have imagined.  When he wrote that book, the workers he was addressing didn’t have cell phones and laptops. They didn’t use air travel for mass transit they way workers do today. They didn’t have Skype meetings with overseas clients outside the 9-5 workday.

GTD to the rescue! If you’ve organized your next actions into contexts that work for you, you’ll find that you can take advantage of small chunks of time to plow through lots of tasks. By organizing with your busy schedule in mind, you’ll be able to use those few minutes here and there to get things done that you would need to get done anyway, at some time. This is not to say you can neglect to schedule those large blocks of time for doing executive tasks. Just be smart by planning for how you’ll use the small windows of time as well.

What can you do with 15 minutes, before your meeting at 11:30?

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A report from the McKinsey Global Institute says that interaction workers spend 28% of their work week reading and answering email.  Your response may be, “No way—only 28%?”  Or you may say, “Wow, that seems like a lot.”

The study suggests that using social technologies could improve productivity significantly.  But companies will realize that benefit only after they’ve changed their structure, processes, and culture.  That’s quite a challenge, since social technologies are considered by many to reduce, rather than enhance, productivity. But times and technologies are changing rapidly. The productivity uses of new technologies are not always apparent in the first few years.

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Perhaps you’ve been hearing about the Higgs boson and asking, “How does particle physics relate to GTD?” Here’s your answer—a blog post at Next Action Associates, called “Productivity and the Space-Time Continuum.”

Recognising the effectiveness of GTD, and applying it, hardly requires a degree in quantum physics. However, borrowing a page from that discipline makes for an interesting analogy. The principle of a “space-time continuum” has helped physicists to understand that space and time are far more interrelated than originally thought.

Representing space and time as a continuum, rather than separate elements, has helped explain phenomena that are very small, very large and very fast in ways that are more compatible with the “normal” scopes and scales with which we are familiar. In this way, thinking about space and time as linked has helped physicists to create a more elegant and encompassing model of reality.

What I am discovering in close quarters is that space management and time management are likewise not separate disciplines in the realm of productivity, but rather that they too represent a continuum. GTD addresses this continuum directly and well.

You can read other blog posts and find out more about Next Action Associates here.

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