We received this email from Paul, about his journey from chaos to productivity with GTD:

GTD has transformed (and I do mean transformed) my life.  From chaos and stress two years ago, I have found peace and order today, mainly as a result of implementing GTD across my life.

It occurred to me recently when watching one of David’s talks where he explained that we are all trying to operate in a digital world with a stone-age brain, that there are a lot of parallels between physical and mental exercise. We need both in this world we have created that evolution has not prepared us for.  In the face of this challenge it’s as though GTD and mindfulness are to the mind as cardio and weights are to the body.

Thank you for all you guys do.

Best wishes,

Paul

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You can’t fool your mind.  It’s an expert on your current personal management system, and it knows whether you can be trusted to look at what you need to at the appropriate time.  It knows if you’ve decided what the next action should be. And it knows if there is a reminder of that action placed somewhere you will actually look, when you could possibly take that action. If you have not done any of that, your mind won’t let it go. It can’t. It will endlessly keep trying to remind you of what to remember. The mind is a loyal and dedicated servant, but it needs to be given the jobs it does well–not the ones that it mismanages.

- David Allen (from Ready for Anything)

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Your brain is a great place to have ideas, but a terrible place to manage them. -David Allen

A key principle within GTD is creating a system external to your mind–if you want the system to be seamless.  In fact, there’s a good chance if you’re trying to hold more than about 7 things in your mind at once, you’re dropping things all the time.  And guess what?  Your brain doesn’t care if what you dropped was important or not important, urgent or not urgent, about buying bread on the way home from work or solving world hunger.   If you’re trying to balance more than 7 things in there at any given time, something’s gonna drop. [Read more →]

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In our recent Productive Living newsletter, David Allen talks about “Toning up your thinking muscles.”  Here’s a letter from Frederick Ross, a graduate fellow at The Rockefeller University who shared his perspective on the brain as a muscle.

I’m something between a theoretical physicist, mathematician, and theoretical biologist by profession, so I’ve had to be on very intimate terms with my thinking apparatus for many years.

The conscious, symbol manipulating part of our brain is very much like  a muscle.  It burns massive amounts of energy to use, it’s kind of puny for its purpose (just like human musculature — in comparison, someone once got a chimpanzee to lift a barbell, and kept adding weight…until the chimp got bored at tossed it across the room with no effort when there was 600lbs on it).  [Read more →]

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A Community Contribution by Michael Gorsline

My experience is that GTD asks us to do a lot of of writing. It encourages us to write as we brainstorm, even on a cocktail napkin if necessary. It suggests we identify next actions in writing, and it even recommends we carry around something to capture thoughts and To Do ideas (next actions & projects) with everywhere we go. If we’re going to do all this writing it might be worth reflecting a moment on why it’s so worthwhile to do.

The Limit

There’s a reason we have blackboards in classrooms, white boards in conference rooms and why I will go to great lengths to make sure I have a white board in any consulting room where I do coaching or therapy. You’ve likely heard of the famous 7 plus or minus 2  chunks of information that we’re able to hold in working memory at any one time. Because of the upper-limit to our cognitive capacities, our speaking and auditory capabilities top out at roughly one thread at a time. That’s it. One. That one thread can move more or less quickly, but we can’t speak in several parallel threads at once. We also can’t listen accurately to several conversations at once. We can switch back and forth among them rapidly and catch the gist of them, but it is rapid switching rather than really doing more that one at a time. Our limited working memory also sets the boundaries of the complexity of thoughts that we can hold in mind. That is unless we cheat a bit. Here are two major ways we can cheat and feel good about it:

Parallel Processing

Here is where the writing comes in. Writing acts as extra-somatic memory—memory that resides outside the body. Let’s say I have a client that is trying to figure out what might be causing her child’s tantrums. So I ask her to tell me about a specific instance, which is where we usually start. As she tells me about the tantrum I begin sketching out a diagram of what she’s describing up on the whiteboard. It might start out with the phrase “Zoo Tantrum” in the middle, circled. As she cites possible contributing factors, several lines begin jutting out, each with a another phrase, such as “overstimulated”; “low on food”; “feeling jealous” about what his sibling ordered for lunch that he wished he’d ordered; and even reasons like the child having a “temperament” that makes him more prone to irritability in stressful circumstances.

With the diagram on the board, my client is able to shuttle back and forth from each of those ideas to represent all of them mentally, sometimes side by side, sometimes one after another, creating a sort of parallel processing—representing several ideas virtually at once. Or at least quickly enough that they can all be juggled in rapid succession to make comparisons that it would not be possible to make nearly as quickly if we were limited only to talking about those same ideas. My clients often find looking at a diagram of their problem so compelling that they jump out of their seat, needing no invitation, and start adding to the diagram. It is almost as if they can’t stay seated because the power of the ideas being generated is just too much to merely talk about. So writing things down has an effect that is a lot like adding a giant chunk of RAM to your computer, and very inexpensive RAM at that, which enables a powerful kind of parallel processing.

Freeing up RAM, by Using Your Hard Drive for Storage

The next piece is more widely known, but still well worth looking our attention. Our 3 x 5 notecard, the GTD Outlook plugin by Netcentrics, or the note we take on our phone, all function as extra-somatic memory in a another important way. This sort of memory is a bit more like computer storage, such as your hard drive on your PC, or the storage space on your mp3 player. David Allen has made the following metaphor a centerpiece of GTD: Offload information from your mental RAM so that it is freed up for other tasks like creativity and flexible thinking. That notepad or hipster PDA you’ve got in your purse is functioning as a hard drive. If you get the info out of your RAM and onto your hard drive, you don’t have to keep using up your valuable, much less available RAM space, your working memory, to keep the ideas represented. So if writing to enhance thinking was like artificially extending (remember we’re cheating here) your RAM capacity—how much brute RAM you have to work with; this storage idea is more like making sure not to clutter whatever capacity of RAM you have in the first place with information that could easily be kept somewhere else.

Well why can’t we just jot things down once we get home or just do so every once in a while? That is the brilliance of GTD’s admonition to practice “ubiquitous capture”, always having some way to record those thoughts immediately, by the bedside, in the car, at the grocery store. One of the first authors whose work I fell in love with used to practice exactly this skill of ubiquitous capture. John Steinbeck used to carry a small notepad with him everywhere he went, and furiously jotted down notes in all kinds of circumstances. He had even been known to interrupt a romantic interlude, yes, that’s what I mean, to jot down a thought or image that he didn’t want to lose. Now I don’t think you have to make ubiquitous capture quite that ubiquitous, but the sheer dedication that Steinbeck had to capturing valuable thoughts, I think, makes a memorable example. I’m sure his lover at the time found it memorable too. This is also a reminder that being really smart doesn’t obviate having to write things down. Brilliant people like Steinbeck know the value of cheating, and it actually enabled his brilliance to flower as it did.

So all those little ideas that you’ve got zipping around like so many gnats add up and clog up your RAM. Of course the actual functioning of the brain is more complex than our RAM analogy. The miscellaneous To Dos and responsibilities aren’t just taking up RAM, they actually require using up additional cognitive resources, for instance executive function, which Oliver Starr previously posted about, to shift our attention around like a spotlight onto what we’re trying to keep track of. But for our purposes, offloading those ideas and images immediately leaves you with only the single idea, “check my ‘trusted system’” to keep track of, rather than the myriad details we would have buzzing around otherwise.

Finally it is worth giving a nod to how much writing has affected the lot of humankind. Most of the conveniences we have today would not be around if it weren’t for this special bit of extra-somatic memory, which science, much of art, and so many of our greatest achievements rest upon—and which we usually take for granted. And now that we’ve got access to this ability to cheat, not just with pen and ink, but with an array of digital devices as well; when we choose not to write it down, voice note it, etc we’re choosing to toss away a giant chunk of our exceedingly valuable RAM. So next time you do a little paper and pencil brainstorming, send yourself an email, or draw a diagram so you can understand something better; take a second to remember what those little tools are doing for you. That extra RAM is there for the taking. Grab extra RAM more often. It’s darn close to free.

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This came in from one of our contributors, Dr. Lynn O’Connor.

I’m one of those unfortunate people who loves trying out new software for my GTD system. So far, I’ve always gone back to the online, tried and true, Vitalist (www.vitalist.com ) for contexts/next action lists (projects too if needed).  But that hasn’t stopped me from doing that experimenting or “tweaking” as some optimists call the time I waste fooling around with new organization/GTD programs. I’ve made this lame excuse: “Every time I enter my next action data into a new program it allows me to review everything in greater detail than I do in a weekly review.” That was as far as I got in explaining my sneaky kind of procrastination behavior. It began to feel even shameful to wile away a whole afternoon exploring some new program.

I felt a lot better about my “try new software”  habit when I read a report from the latest issue of Neuron, as described in New Scientist. In an experiment, researchers demonstrated that our love of adventure and novel objects, is based upon our hard wiring, we could say on our basic nature.  It seems that every time we explore, investigate, try out or learn something new, the reward center of our brain starts firing, much as it would if we were expecting to win a lottery, a card game, a horse race  or any kind of competition. My guess is trying out new GTD software is yet another way I flood my restless brain with dopamine.

This fact about how we’re naturally wired is long known in business and advertising. It’s why companies may put out a product with absolutely no changes, except for the packaging. People buy the new, even if it is more expensive and less convenient. We all fall for something novel. So now, maybe I can get off my case about trying out every new GTD program.

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Just came across this announcement from O’Reilly Media for a book I imagine will be of interest to quite a few GTDtimes readers: “Your Brain: the Missing Manual“.

From O’Reilly’s dexcription of the book:

Description
Your Brain: The Missing Manual is a practical look at how to get the most out of your brain — not just how the brain works, but how you can use it more effectively. What makes this book different than the average self-help guide is that it’s grounded in current neuroscience. You get a quick tour of several aspects of the brain, complete with useful advice you can apply to everyday situations.

And don’t miss the Gallery of Illustrations from Your Brain: The Missing Manual.

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A Community Contribution by Lynn O’Connor, Ph.D.

Research on intelligence is also finding psychological components to levels of performance. When children are taught that intelligence is fixed, heritable, and set for life, many of them back off and put little effort into academics. Only those who have already been labeled as “high IQ” are off to high performance. When however, intelligence is reformulated and children (or adults) are introduced to the idea that intelligence is expandable, and grows with effort, many not initially labeled high IQ come out of the woodwork and become high performers. We have been thinking incorrectly about the concept of IQ. Intelligence is expandable. We can improve performance if we understand that how we do on a task is a function of our effort. Carol Dweck from Stanford has been studying what is being called the “effort effect.” A great summary of her work is found in an article written by Marina Krakovsky.

When I read Dwecks work I began to think about organizing in the same way. I always thought being well organized was a function of genes, heritable, you either had it or you didn’t. I didn’t, and I thought it was hopeless, I would never be organized. Understanding expandable intelligence led me to reconsider my organizational problem, and that led me right to David Allen and GTD. I jumped on the GTD wagon, finally getting that like intelligence, the ability to be organized was a function of effort and experience. I’m a big believer in understanding and accepting our genetic limits, but our limits as members of our species make us far more changeable than we imagine. That’s a quality of being human, the ability to learn entirely new skills and adapt to new environments.

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A Community Contribution by  Jennifer George

My fellow procrastinators and I are well acquainted with the mental drama that goes on as we torture ourselves about that important task left undone. If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that the thing we’re not doing signifies all sorts of icky emotions and unconscious ideas about ourselves and our lives.

In our more lucid moments, we can see that there really is nothing fundamentally different about playing GTA IV versus writing that paper that’s due tomorrow. Both activities involve synthesizing information, making decisions, and moving our hands and eyes to make the right things happen on our computer screen.

The real difference between the two is what Buddhists call “attachment” — the clinging, coveting emotions and beliefs we have about ourselves and the world, including pride, fear, and desire. In more modern terms, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy describes our habitual maladaptive thoughts as “cognitive distortions.” Both schools argue that examining our existing thought patterns and developing new, productive ones can help us reduce suffering and build more useful behaviors.

It may not be enlightenment, but next time you’re not doing something you’re supposed to, think about the attachments, emotions, and thoughts that are getting in your way. Remember that they are illusory and temporary, and try to squirm out of their grasp for a while.

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Editor’s Note: We’ve had an incredible response to the request for contributor’s with a cognitive sciences background. Several notable individuals have very kinds offered to author posts that deal with questions of the brain that I believe are of great importance with respect to helping us understand why we do what we do, why GTD works where other systems fail, and how to get the most out of our own curious intellectual circuitry.

One such contributor, Jennifer George has authored the post below and will begin her contributions to GTDtimes with a series of posts based upon the ground-breaking book, Kluge, authored by Gary Marcus.

Jennifer George is a productivity geek and Web addict who writes the blog Lifemuncher. In the real world, she is a fundraiser for UCLA and a graduate student in clinical psychology at Capella University.
by Jennifer George – Community Contributor

Gary Marcus’s book, Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind, examines the strange collection of more or less ancient systems that makes up the modern human brain. As he explains in chapter one:

“Measured nucleotide by nucleotide, the human genome is 98.5 percent identical to that of the chimpanzee. This suggests that the vast majority of our genetic material evolved in the context of creatures who didn’t have language, didn’t have culture, and didn’t reason deliberately. This means that the characteristics we hold most dear, the features that most distinctly define us as human beings — language, culture, explicit thought, must have been built on a genetic bedrock originally adapted from very different purposes.”

The word Kluge is an engineering term, and means an inelegant solution that works, but not in the best way possible because of historical and/or environmental constraints. Since our brains evolved over millions of years, building on existing systems rather than scrapping them and starting fresh, we find ourselves with a brain that’s like a marvelous Rube Goldberg device, held together with duct tape and chewing gum. It’s great at things that helped us survive and reproduce on the African savannah, and not quite as good at things related to language and abstract thought, which evolved much more recently.

According to Marcus, the human brain is primarily interested in helping you survive – noticing predators and food sources and finding potential mates. Figuring out the next step on that computer program you’re writing? Evaluating whom to vote for for president? Not so much.

The book is a fascinating and humbling overview of the evolutionary forces that built the modern brain and the resulting strengths and weaknesses that constrain and influence the way we live. Much of what Marcus describes is directly relevant to GTD and productivity, and could give us insights on better ways to do things. In a series of posts, I will be examining his findings on and trying to apply them to the life of a modern office drone. Look for the first one, on memory, later this week.

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