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More about Getting Things Done

I find myself constantly looking at my working practices and therefore finding encouragement from many of the sites I read concerning the problems experienced by many "knowledge workers" or "web workers". I think there is a degree of crossover between what they do day in and day out, and what I do for much of the time. I think I'm therefore going to add a category of post to this blog to allow me to group all these ideas together. Not sure whether to call it +GTD, but in the end I've plumped for iMinister.

I was struck yesterday by watching Merlin Mann's presentation at Google titled Zero Inbox. The basic premise (and I know its something I experience) is that procrastination is a symptom of information overload and the only real solution is a disciplined regime of actioning emails regularly (assuming email is the most common form of incoming information).

links for 2007-07-26

• zero inbox email
  (tags: gtd)

A helpful thing from Google

I currently don't have too many complicated negotiations with couples concerning whether where they live complies with the necessary residency requirements for getting married, but I sometimes get asked directions.

This took me about 20 minutes using Google maps - an online map with an overlayed picture of the Parish boundaries with locations of Churches and Schools. They even provide a dinky URL so that this map can be made public and linked to from Parish websites etc.

Getting things done (again)

I periodically try to look at the things I ought to be doing and the practices I employ so as to be more effective (as opposed to efficient).

I am not sure whether the following is a function of personality type, or more global than that. For the records the last time I did a Myers-Briggs I was mildly i, although my gut feeling is that I am a lot less i than the majority of Anglican Clergy. Whether my slight introversion is the reason why I need a degree of recovery time from the extrovert things (up in front of the public moments like leading worship or opening the Fete etc) or whether we all need to switch off the public persona for a bit I am not qualified to say. But this is one of the biggest factors I come up against repeatedly; I could theoretically do more (there are gaps in the diary) but these gaps are so randomly spaced that they serve no purpose whatsoever in allowing me to slow down, reflect, think, read, pray, plan etc. What typically happens therefore is a day is going along reasonably well but the spaces in between gradually fill up with me clamouring for some space and (especially when I'm tired) resenting the next appointment.

This space is no good when its left for weekends (my children have to have some of me then) and it serves little purpose in an evening (although again family time is rare but vital), which means during the day in the middle of the week. I have gone through my autumn diary and crossed through days where I need to be able to do the background stuff which I need as a person and as a Priest. I am not sure how well this will work because of the pressure of funerals, School Governors and all the other events which drop in at too short notice on random days.

Getting (lots of) things done

I am still thinking through my working practices and offer some Work-in-progress ideas...

Meetings are important because they are a prime face to face encounter, and yet we either treat them with disdain ("tut, more meetings!") or we undervalue them. I think we undervalue structured meetings in several ways;

• we try to cram in too much work (because we don't want too many meetings) so the few meetings we have are seen as a huge burden
• we undervalue the informal meetings - this is something we are trying to do more of here, especially the "let's have no specific agenda other than issues on our minds and sit around the kitchen table with some wine" type of meeting
• we under-prepare both in terms of getting the content right, but also under-prepare ourselves. Only once can I recall actually having the time and space to get ready for an evening meeting by sitting down for 20 minutes with my eyes closed (those who criticise meetings as badly led would probably also criticise the idea that the Vicar is having a quick nap when the Vicar should be doing something)
• we fail to post-process from these meetings; that is we tend not to allow space afterwards to talk to people (we're too busy trying to put trestle tables away because its so late) or to go through our notes and properly identify our next actions. This is a killer, because the next meeting of this group then suffers! The next morning is too late because the new day is full of business of its own.

The first casualty of overwork is creativity. When one starts in a new place there is a huge amount to do, and all the good will and the getting to know people is vital, but eventually one will arrive in overdraft in ones personality and spiritual bank account. The easiest thing to dump overboard in order to prevent the ship from going under is time spent being creative. Therefore its easier to read the set words from the book, or to repeat the formulae from last time and so forth.

The second casualty of overwork is settling for too little as being sufficient. I notice in myself as the pressure builds and time becomes short that I downscale my expectations, and hand in hand with this is often a moving of the target from the macro to the micro. Thus we comfort ourselves that the few who were present at something were enough or individual need obscures the large-scale need of the whole body. Certainly we have to live in a tension of supporting individuals, but when I hear my fellow Clergy telling me how their Churches are going purely in terms of individuals needs (as opposed to problems caused by individuals) then I worry about the big picture demanding too much effort and therefore being sidelined.

When ones definition of "what is work" is so nebulous, how do you know when you are not working? This, for me, is the biggy. At one level this is not a problem; if I read a book normally some idea will spark, or a story or item will be suitable for recycling in teaching - this for me is one of the joys of this role. At another level it can be what damages health, family relationships and Churches. I don't sit and calculate the number of hours I work each week (it would probably depress me) but I know how little space I have for family, let alone old friends or hobbies. In my old working pattern I could bring the laptop and mobile home at weekends and do the tidying up or preparatory work for the Monday to Friday's business. Now, in sharp contrast, I have no bookend time (as I've heard it referred to), no space in which to wind down by knocking a few items to-dos off the list, processing my inbox of items and think.

Good working practices can only get us so far. It certainly helps to have an elegantly simple way of listing the things needing to be sorted out, but (in my experience at least) being efficient can only carve out a certain bit of extra time. Most of what we are doing is spiritual, although I wonder how much a strong spiritual platform from which we can work is actually down to good efficient routines as well (regularly reading the Bible in a disciplined way - "what is it saying", not "what would I like it to say") and a rhythm of prayer which is not simply based on how I am feeling today.

Simple is best

I have been spending some time trying to catch up on the bitty stuff which so quickly clogs up the system.

I have been listening to some more stuff by Merlin Mann about applying the principles of Getting Things Done. This is a practical routine for sorting your actions and breaking big things down into manageable chunks. Its certainly not rocket science.

If you want to learn more about GTD then there is the original book...

"Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-free Productivity" (David Allen)

I have tried a couple of software applications which manage a complex-as-you-like series of to do lists and allows the items to be viewed in their project setting, or in their context (that is, in GTD-speak, the environment in which the action will be done). Several problems arise for me, though. I actually have very few contexts, basically I'm working at home, or I'm out and about. Breaking things down more finely into artificial contexts might give the required shortness of a list of actions needing to be done (that feels good) but over-complicates the whole shebang.

If you speak Mac language then I have used Quicksilver to create a key trigger to open a project within Textmate containing a series of .txt files (todo, completed, notes etc), and Quicksilver allows me to append stuff to one or more of these files straight from the keyboard without having to touch a mouse or jump from one program to another. Nice and simple. I have a header ("Inbox") at the bottom of my to-do list which means when I append (that is add onto the bottom) the incoming is placed in the Inbox waiting for me to then at a later point sort it into whatever section (for the clerically minded I use a one or two letter abbreviation based on whether the to do is one of my parishes, for the Benefice, Deanery or other things I potter around at). This seems to be working nice and slickly - minimum clutter.

I have removed the to do stuff from my calendar (too much like clutter and having them on the side of my calendar didn't actually increase my opportunity to complete the tasks) and having the stuff now in .txt format means I can bluetooth it as a note onto my mobile if I know I'm going to be out and about for a while. I found the previous system where I could totally synchronise with my phone, calendar and to do list too clunky (stuff added on the phone had to be tidied up too much in iCal and elsewhere) so the old mini-Moleskin book has made a much-overdue reappearance.

Lesson for the day: complicated looks nice, but sooner or later simple is better. Complicated is a big improvement, however, than no system at all.

Looking to industry (part ii)

For the first time in...actually the first time EVER my Inbox (the place where incoming work emails land) is empty. I have spent valuable time this afternoon processing all the mails which have been lying there for however long and acting on them, moving them to a stage where I can read and ponder certain relevant content, put actions in my to do list, amend my diary etc.

I guess this is a roundabout way of saying that if you are sitting there tapping the desk waiting for a response to an email from me then I've missed it.

Looking to industry

I've said before on many occasions I'm sure that I have little sympathy with the view that the Church should run itself more like industry, but I have been valuing cases where I can learn how to do the business end (paperwork, admin, to do lists and diaries) of ministry (for it is a vital part - without it the rest will not work).

Here's a quote I heard today on a podcast which encouraged me...

"A successful executive is one who solves more problems than he (sic) causes"

...I hope it makes you feel better too.

All to often Churches operate on the basis that a certain number of people can behave however they wish, and the core of laity plus the Clergy have to tip toe around them "in case they leave" or whatever drastic threat (actually disguised insecurities in themselves I'm convinced) is held Damocles-like. This leaves the leadership as the only ones who have to live with the negative impacts of their decisions (everybody else is allowed to be forgiven).

So I am aiming to be a successful minister by solving more problems than I cause. If I can periodically inspire or lead acts of worship which allow people to respond to the awe of God then so much the better.