Memorable quotes
Almost every project could be done better, and an infinite quantity of information is now available that could make that happen.
We (1) collect things that command our attention; (2) process what they mean and what to do about them; and (3) organize the results, which we (4) review as options for what we choose to (5) do
All of your open loops (i.e. , projects), active project plans, and “Next Actions,” “Agendas,” “Waiting For,” and even “Someday/ Maybe” lists should be reviewed once a week
The affairs of life embrace a multitude of interests, and he who reasons in any one of them, without consulting the rest, is a visionary unsuited to control the business of the world.—James Fenimore Cooper
The Weekly Review is the time to
Gather and process all your “stuff. ”
Review your system.
Update your lists.
Get clean, clear, current, and complete
What do you do the last week before you their agreements leave on a big trip? You clean up, close up, clarify, and with themselves renegotiate all your agreements with yourself and and others. I just suggest that you do this weekly instead weekly instead of yearly.
50,000+ feet: Life
40,000 feet: Three- to five-year vision
30,000 feet: One- to two-year goals
20,000 feet: Areas of responsibility
10,000 feet: Current projects
Runway: Current actions
Runway: Current Actions
This is the accumulated list of all the actions you need to take—all the phone calls you have to make, the e-mails you have to respond to, the errands you’ve got to run, and the agendas you want to communicate to your boss and your spouse. You’d probably have three hundred to five hundred hours’ worth of these things to do if you stopped the world right now and got no more input from yourself or anyone else.10,000 Feet: Current Projects
Creating many of the actions that you currently have in front of you are the thirty to one hundred projects on your plate. These are the relatively short-term outcomes you want to achieve, such as setting up a home computer, organizing a sales conference, moving to a new headquarters, and getting a dentist,20,000 Feet: Areas of Responsibility
You create or accept most of your projects because of your responsibilities, which for most people can be defined in ten to fifteen categories. These are the key areas within which you want to achieve results and maintain standards. Your job may entail at least implicit commitments for things like strategic planning, administrative support, staff development, market research, customer service, or asset management. And your personal life has an equal number of such focus arenas: health, family, finances, home environment, spirituality, recreation, etc. . Listing and reviewing these responsibilities gives a more comprehensive framework for evaluating your inventory of projects.30,000 Feet: One- to Two-Year Goals
What you want to be experiencing in the various areas of your life and work one to two years from now will add another dimension to defining your work. Often meeting the goals and objectives of your job will require a shift in emphasis of your job focus, with new areas of responsibility emerging. At this horizon personally, too, there probably are things you’d like to accomplish or have in place, which could add importance to certain aspects of your life and diminish others.40,000 Feet: Three- to Five-Year Vision
Projecting three to five years into the future generates thinking about bigger categories: organization strategies, environmental trends, career and lifetransition circumstances. Internal factors include longer-term career, family, and financial goals and considerations. Outerworld issues could involve changes affecting your job and organization, such as technology, globalization, market trends. competition. competition. Decisions at this altitude could easily change what your work might look like on many levels.50, 000+ Feet Life
This is the “big picture” view. Why does your company exist? Why do you exist? The primary purpose for anything provides the core definition of what its “work” really is. It is the ultimate job description. All the goals, visions, objectives, projects, and actions derive from this, and lead toward this.Have you clarified the primary purpose of the project and communicated it to everyone who ought to know it? And have you agreed on the standards and behaviors you’ll need to adhere to to make it successful? Have you envisioned wild Have you envisioned success and considered success lately?
hoose one project that is new or stuck or that could simply use some improvement. Think of your purpose. Think of what a successful outcome would look like: where would you be physically, financially, in terms of reputation, or whatever? Brainstorm potential steps. Organize your ideas. Decide on the next actions. Are you any clearer about where you want to go and how to get there
Paper-holding trays (at least three) • A stack of plain letter-size paper • A pen/pencil •Post-its (3X3s) • Paper clips •Binder clips • A stapler and staples • Scotch tape. Rubber bands • An automatic labeler • File folders • A calendar •Wastebasket/recycling bins
Professional Projects started, not completed Projects that need to be started Commitments/promises to others Boss/partners Colleagues Subordinates Other people in organization “Outside” people Customers Other organizations Professionals Communications to make/get , Evaluations/reviews Proposals Articles Promotional materials Manuals/instructions Rewrites and edits Meetings that need to be set/requested Who needs to know about what decisions? Significant read/review Financial Internal/External Initiate or respond to: Phone calls Voice-mail E-mail Pages Faxes Letters Memos Other writing to finish/submit Reports Statistics Budgets
Forecasts/projections P&Ls Balance sheet Credit line Planning/organizing Formal planning (goals, targets, objectives) Current projects (next stages) Upcoming projects 114
Business/marketing plans Organizational initiatives Upcoming events Meetings Presentations Organizational structuring Changes in facilities Installation of new systems/equipment Travel Supplies Office/site Office organization , Furniture Decorations Waiting for… Information Banks Receivables Payables Petty cash Administration Legal issues Insurance Personnel Policies/procedures Customers Internal External Marketing Promotion Sales Customer service Systems Phones Computers Office equipment Other equipment Utilities Filing Storage Inventories Delegated tasks/projects Completions critical to projects Replies to: Letters Memos Calls Proposals Requisitions Reimbursements Petty cash Insurance Ordered items Items being repaired Tickets Decisions of others Professional development Training/seminars Things to learn Things to look up Skills to practice/learn especially re: computers Tape/video training Resumes Outside education Research— need to find out about… Professional wardrobe 115
Personal Projects started, not completed Projects that need to be started Commitments/promises to others Spouse Children Family Friends Professionals Borrowed items R&D— things to do Places to go People to meet/invite Local attractions Administration Financial Projects: other organizations Service Civic Volunteer Communications to make/get Family Friends Professional Initiate or respond to: Phone calls Letters Cards Upcoming events Special occasions Birthdays Anniversaries Weddings Graduations Holidays . Travel Weekend trips Vacations Social events Cultural events Sporting events Bills Banks Investments Loans Taxes Insurance Legal affairs Filing Waiting for… Mail order Repair Reimbursements Loaned items Medical data RSVPs Home/household Landlords Property ownership Legal Real estate Zoning Taxes Builders/contractors Heating/air-conditioning Plumbing Electricity Roofing Landscape 116
Driveway Walls/floors/ceilings Decoration Furniture Utilities Appliances Lightbulbs/wiring Kitchen things Washer/dryer/vacuum Areas to organize/clean Computers Software Hardware Connections CD-ROM E-mail/Internet TV VCR Music/CDs/tapes Cameras/film Phones Answering machine Sports equipment Closets/clothes Garage/storage Vehicle repair/maintenance Tools Luggage Pets Health care Doctors Dentists Specialists Hobbies Books/records/tapes/disks Errands Hardware store Drugstore Market Bank Cleaner Stationer Community Neighborhood Schools Local government Civic issues The “In” Inventory If your head is empty of everything, personally and professionally, then your in-basket is probably quite full, and likely spilling over. In addition to the paper-based and physical items in your inbasket, your inventory of “in” should include any resident voicemails and all the e-mails that are currently staged in the “in” area of your communication software. It should also include any items 117
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A “Projects” list • Project support material • Calendared actions and information • “Next Actions” lists • A “Waiting For” list • Reference material • A “Someday/Maybe” list The Importance of Hard Edges It’s critical that all of these categories be kept pristinely distinct from one another. They each represent a discrete type of agreement we make with ourselves, and if they lose their edges and begin to blend, much of the value of organizing will be lost. If you put reference materials in the same pile as categories must things you still want to read, for example, you’ll go visually, numb to the stack. If you put items on your “Next , and Actions” lists that really need to go on the calendar, because they have to occur on specific days, then you won’t trust your calendar and you’ll continually have to reassess your action lists. If you have a project that you’re not going to be doing anything about for some time, it must go onto your “Someday/Maybe” list so you can relate to the “Projects” list with the rigorous action-generating focus it needs. And if something you’re “Waiting For” is included on one of your action lists, you’ll continually get bogged down by nonproductive rethinking. All You Really Need Is Lists and Folders Once you know what you need to keep track of (covered in the previous chapter, on Processing), all you really need is lists and The be kept physicallypsychologically separate140
The Most Common Categories of Action Reminders You’ll probably find that at least a few of the following common list headings for next actions will make sense for you: • “Calls” • “At Computer” •”Errand’s” • “Office Actions” or “At Office” (miscellaneous) • “At Home” • “Agendas” (for people and meetings) • “Read/Review
Given the usefulness of this type of list, your system should allow you to add “Agendas” ad hoc, as needed, quickly and simply. For example, inserting a page for a person or a meeting within an “Agenda” section in a loose-leaf notebook planner takes only seconds
recommend that you create one folder for any longer-thantwo-minute e-mails that you need to act on (again, you should be able to dispatch many messages right off the bat by following the two-minute rule
Next you can create a folder titled “@WAITING FOR,” which will show up in the same place as the “@ACTION” folder. Then, as you receive e-mails that indicate that someone is going to do something that you care about tracking, you can drag them over into the “@WAITING FOR” file
Make an Inventory of Your Creative Imaginings What are the things you really might want to do someday if you have the time, money, and inclination? Write them on your have “Someday/ Maybe” list. Typical categories include: • Things to get or build for your home • Hobbies to take up168
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Skills to learn •Creative expressions to explore •Clothes and accessories to buy • Toys (gear!) to acquire • Trips to take • Organizations to join • Service projects to contribute to • Things to see and do
In any case, this is another great reason to have an organizing system that makes it easy to capture things that may add value and variety and interest to your life—without clogging your mind and work space with undecided, unfinished business. The Danger of “Hold and Review” Files and Piles Many people have created some sort of “Hold and Review” pile or file (or whole drawer) that vaguely fits within the category of “Someday/Maybe. ” They tell themselves, “When I have time, I may like to get to this,” and a “Hold and Review” file seems a convenient place to put it. I personally don’t recommend this particular kind of subsystem, because in virtually every case I have come across, the client “held” but didn’t “review,” and there was numbness and resistance about the stack. The value of “someday/ maybe” disappears if you don’t put your conscious awareness back on it with some consistency.Also, there’s a big difference between something that’s managed well, as a “Someday/Maybe” list, and something that’s just a catchall bucket for “stuff. ” Usually much of that stuff needs to be tossed, some of it needs to go into “Read/Review,” some needs to be filed as reference, some belongs on the calendar or in a tickler file (see page 173) for review in a month or perhaps at the beginning of the next quarter, and some actually has next actions on it. Many times, after appropriately processing someone’s “Hold and Review” drawer or file, I’ve discovered there was nothing left in it!170
Here are a few of the myriad things you should consider inserting: • Triggers for activating projects • Events you might want to participate in • Decision catalysts
First, Clarify Inherent Projects and Actions For much of this kind of “stuff,” there is still a project and/or an action that needs to be defined.”Exercise more regularly” really translates for many people into “Set up regular exercise program” (project) and “Call Sally for suggestions about personal trainers” (real action step). In such cases, inherent projects and actions still need to be clarified and organized into a personal system. But there are some things that don’t quite fit into that category176
It might include: • Career goals • Service • Family • Relationships • Community • Health and energy • Financial resources • Creative expression
Travel Checklist (everything to take on or do before a trip) •Weekly Review (everything to review and/or update on a weekly basis) •Training Program Components (all the things to handle when putting on an event, front to back) •Clients •Conference Checklist (everything to handle when putting on a conference) •Focus Areas (key life roles and responsibilities) •Key People in My Life/Work (relationships to assess regularly for completion and opportunity development) •Organization Chart (key people and areas of output to manage and maintain) •Personal Development (things to evaluate regularly to ensure personal balance and progress)
If you have a list of calls you must make, for example, the minute that list is not totally current with all the calls you need to make, your brain will not trust the system, and it won’t get relief from its lower-level mental tasks. It will have to take back the job of remembering, processing, and reminding, which, as you should know by now, it doesn’t do very effectively
What Is the Weekly Review? Very simply, the Weekly Review is whatever you need to do to get your head empty again. It’s going through the five phases of workflow management—collecting, processing, organizing, and reviewing all your outstanding involvements—until you can honestly say, “I absolutely know right now everything I’m not doing but could be doing if I decided to. ” From a nitty-gritty, practical standpoint, here is the drill that can get you there: Loose Papers Pull out all miscellaneous scraps of paper, business cards, receipts, and so on that have crept into the crevices of your desk, clothing, and accessories. Put it all into your in-basket for processing. Process Your Notes Review any journal entries, meeting notes, or miscellaneous notes scribbled on notebook paper. List action items, projects, waiting-fors, calendar events, and someday/ maybes, as appropriate. File any reference notes and materials. Stage your “Read/Renew” material. Be ruthless with yourself, 185
processing all notes and thoughts relative to interactions, projects, new initiatives, and input that have come your way since your last download, and purging those not needed. Previous Calendar Data Review past calendar dates in detail for remaining action items, reference information, and so on, and transfer that data into the active system. Be able to archive your last week’s calendar with nothing left uncaptured. Upcoming Calendar Look at future calendar events (long- and short-term). Capture actions about arrangements and preparations for any upcoming events. Empty Your Head Put in writing (in appropriate categories) any new projects, action items, waiting-fors, someday/maybes, and so forth that you haven’t yet captured. Review “Projects” (and Larger Outcome) Lists Evaluate the status of projects, goals, and outcomes one by one, ensuring that at least one current kick-start action for each is in your system. Review “Next Actions”Lists Mark off completed actions. Review for reminders of further action steps to capture. Review “Waiting For” List Record appropriate actions for any needed follow-up. Check off received items. Review Any Relevant Checklists Is there anything you haven’t done that you need to do? Review “Someday/Maybe” List Check for any projects that may have become active and transfer them to “Projects. ” Delete items no longer of interest186
Review “Pending” and Support Files Browse through all workin-progress support material to trigger new actions, completions, and waiting-fors. Be Creative and Courageous Are there any new, wonderful, harebrained, creative, thought-provoking, risk-taking ideas you can add to your system? “Point of view” This review process is common sense, but few is that qulntessentially of us do it as well as we could, and that means as human regularly as we should to keep a clear mind and a solution to information sense of relaxed control. overload, an The Right Time and Place for the Review intuitive process of The Weekly Review is so critical that it behooves you reducing things to an essential to establish good habits, environments, and tools to relevant and support it. Once your comfort zone has been established manageable for the kind of relaxed control that Getting minimum…. In Things Done is all about, you won’t have to worry too a world of much about making yourself do your review—you’ll hyperabundant have to to get back to your personal standards again. content, point of Until then, do whatever you need to, once a view will become week, to trick yourself into backing away from the the scarcest of daily grind for a couple of hours—not to zone out, resources.but to rise up at least to “10,000 feet” and catch up. —PaulIf you have the luxury of an office or work space that can be somewhat isolated from the people and interactions of the day, and if you have anything resembling a typical Mondayto-Friday workweek, I recommend that you block out two hours early every Friday afternoon for the review. Three factors make this an ideal time: • The events of the week are likely to be still fresh enough for you to be able to do a complete postmortem (“Oh, yeah, I need to make sure I get back to her about…”) . 187
When you (invariably) uncover actions that require reaching people at work, you’ll still have time to do that before they leave for the weekend. • It’s great to clear your psychic decks so you can go into the weekend ready for refreshment and recreation, with nothing on your mind
What are your key goals and objectives in your work? What should you have in place a year or three aware of putting forth the years from now? How is your career going? Is this the effort to exert selfguided life-style that is most fulfilling to you? Are you doing integrated what you really want or need to do, from a deeper thinking … then and longer-term perspective? you’re giving in to The explicit focus of this book is not at those laziness and no “30,000-” to “50,000+-foot” levels. Urging you to longer control your operate from a higher perspective is, however, its life.implicit purpose—to assist you in making your total —David Kekich
Remember that you make your action choices based on the following four criteria, in order: 1 | Context 2 | Time available 3 | Energy available 4 | Priority
Most people, however, have major improvements to make in how they clarify, manage, and renegotiate their total inventory of projects and actions. If you let yourself get caught up in the urgencies of the moment, without feeling comfortable about what you’re not dealing with, the result is frustration and anxiety. Too often the stress and lowered effectiveness are blamed on the “surprises. ” If you know what you’re doing, and what you’re not doing, surprises are just another opportunity to be creative and excel
The six levels of work as we saw in chapter 2 (pages 51-53) may be thought of in terms of altitude: • 50,000+feet: Life • 40,000 feet: Three- to five-year visions • 30,000 feet: One- to two-year goals • 20,000 feet: Areas of responsibility • 10,000 feet: Current projects • Runway: Current actions
The phone call you need to make (action) is about the deal you’re working on (project), which would increase sales (responsibility). This particular deal would give you the opportunity to move up in the sales force (job goal) because of the new market your company wants to penetrate (organization vision). And that would get you closer to the way you want to discover your work be living, both financially and professionally (life). Or, from the other direction, you’ve decided your heart to give that you want to be your own boss and unlock some of yourself to it.—your unique assets and talents in a particular area that resonates with you (life). So you create a business for yourself (vision), with some short-term key operational objectives (job goal). That gives you some critical roles you need to fulfill to get it rolling (responsibility), with some immediate outcomes to achieve (projects). On each of those projects you’ll have things you need to do, as soon as you can do them (next actions)
These are all open loops in your psyche, though often it takes deeper and more introspective processes to identify the bigger goals and subtler inclinations. There is magic in being in the present in your life.
Working from the Bottom Up In order to create productive alignment in your life, you could quite reasonably start with a clarification from the top down. Decide why you’re on the planet. Figure out what kind of life and You’re never lacking work and life-style would best allow you to fulfill that in opportunities to contract. What kind of job and personal relationships clarify your would support that direction? What priorities at any key things would level. Pay attention you need to put in place and make happen right now, and what could you do to which horizon is physically as soon as possible, to kick-start each of those? calling youIn truth, you can approach your priorities from any level, at any time. I always have something that I could do constructively to enhance my awareness and focus on each level. I’m never lacking in more visions to elaborate, goals to reassess, projects to identify or create, or actions to decide on. The trick is to learn to pay attention to the ones you need to at the appropriate time, to keep you and your systems in balance. Because everything will ultimately be driven by the priorities of the level above it, any formulation of your priorities would obviously most efficiently begin at the top. For example, if you spend time prioritizing your work and then later discover that it’s not the work you think you ought to be doing, you may have “wasted” time and energy that could have been better spent defin
The first thing to do is make sure your action lists are complete, which in itself can be quite a task. Those who focus on gathering and objectifying all of those items discover that there are many they’ve forgotten, misplaced, or just not recognized. Aside from your calendar, if you don’t have at least fifty next actions and waiting-fors, including all the agendas for people and meetings, I would be skeptical about whether you really had all of them.
At the topmost level of thinking, you’ll need to ask some of the ultimate questions. Why does your company exist? Why do you exist? What is the core DNA of your existence, personally and/or organizationally, that drives your choices. This is the “big picture” stuff with which hundreds of books and gurus and models are devoted to helping you grapple. “Why?”: this is the great question with which we all struggle. You can have all the other levels of your life and work shipshape, defined, and organized to a T. Still, if you’re the slightest bit off course in terms of what at the deepest level you want or are called to be doing, you’re going to be uncomfortable.
If the negative feelings come from broken agreements, you have three options for dealing with them and eliminating the negative consequences:
• Don’t make the agreement.
• Complete the agreement.
• Renegotiate the agreement
It’s the catch-22 of professional development: the better you get, the better you’d better get
If you want to shut that voice up, you have three options for dealing with your agreement with yourself:
1 | Lower your standards about your garage (you may have done that already). “So I have a crappy garage . .. who cares?”
2 | Keep the agreement—clean the garage.
3 | At least put “Clean garage” on a “Someday/Maybe” list. Then, when you review that list weekly and you see that item, you can tell yourself, “Not this week.” The next time you walk by your garage, you won’t hear a thing internally, other than “Ha! Not this week”.
The daily behaviors that define the things that are incomplete and the moves that are needed to complete them must change. Getting things going of your own accord, before you’re forced to by external pressure and internal stress, builds a firm foundation of self-worth that will spread into every aspect of your life. You are the captain of your own ship; the more you act from that perspective, the better things will go for you
Asking “What’s the next action?” undermines the victim mentality. It presupposes that there is a possibility of change, and that there is something you can do to make it happen. That is the assumed affirmation in the behavior. And these kinds of “assumed affirmations” often work more fundamentally to build a positive self-image than can repeating “I am a powerful, effective person, making things happen in my life!” a thousand times
When you start to make things happen, you really begin to believe that you can make things happen. And that makes things happen.
We often work with clients who are willing to acknowledge the real things of their lives at this level as “incompletes”—to write them down, define real projects about them, and ensure that next actions are decided on—until the finish line is crossed. That is real productivity, perhaps in its most awesome manifestation.
As an expert in whole-brain learning and good friend of mine, Steven Snyder, put it, “There are only two problems in life:
(1) you know what you want, and you don’t know how to get it; and/or
(2) you don’t know what you want. ” If that’s true (and I think it is) then there are only two solutions:
• Make it up.
• Make it happen
Being comfortable with challenging the purpose of anything you may be doing is healthy and mature. Being able to “make up” visions and images of success, before the methods are clear, is a phenomenal trait to strengthen.
To have ideas, good or bad, and to express and capture all of them without judgments is critical for fully accessing creative intelligence. Honing multiple ideas and types of information into components, sequences, and priorities aimed toward a specific outcome is a necessary mental discipline. And deciding on and taking real next actions—actually moving on something in the physical world—are the essence of productivity.
What do we want to have happen in this meeting?” “What is the purpose of this form?” “What would the ideal person for this job be able to do?” “What do we want to accomplish with this software?” These and a multitude of other, similar questions are still sorely lacking in many quarters. There’s plenty of talk in the Big Meetings that sounds good, but learning to ask “Why are we doing this?” and “What will it look like when it’s done successfully?” and to apply the answers at the day-to-day operational level—that is what will create profound results.
Vision without a task is but a dream, a task without a vision is drudgery, a vision and a task is the hope of the world.—From a church.