This is the third and final post in a short series revolving around the concept of “What you put in at one end is what comes out at the other”.  The other two posts can be found:

here on Relationships and Spirituality, and

here on Leadership.

Today I want to focus on productivity.

 Picture by Alt1040

If we accept the premise that, from a spiritual point of view, what we have in our heart is shown in how we behave.  And that from a leadership bent, that an organisational culture follows what the leaders feed it by way of their actions, not words, then how does this relate to productivity?

Simple really.

What we put into our system, whatever that system is, affects greatly the productivity that can come out of it.

Here’s an example of what I mean…

I’m a big fan of “Getting Things Done” (GTD) by David Allen and I use eProductivity for Lotus Notes as my tool for reaching GTD nirvana.

There are 5 Phases to GTD.

1. Collect everything from all your capture tools (In-box, email, pads, post-it notes, short term memory) and get it in one place.

2. Process all of these items one at a time, focusing only on the one you’re looking at at the time.

3. Organise the results of your processing into your trusted system, which will include Calendar, To do list (Projects, Next Actions), Waiting for and Tickler lists.

4. Review these on a regular basis (daily,weekly etc depending on the type of item), and

5. Make choices on what really can be done, when, where, importance etc and actually Do it.

At first glance this looks like you’d be spending an awful lot of time adding items to a list instead of doing them.  This could even possibly include re-typing stuff that’s already there.

So if you approach it like that and put everything into your trusted system what’s going to come out the other end is pure bedlam, overload and certainly not what you were looking for.

The key to making sure that becoming more productive comes out the other end lies in step 2. (Processing).  This is where you actually decide what goes in.  Remember you are what you eat and the same applies to your productivity system.

David Allen goes to great pains to emphasise that you should collect all your inputs, every single one.  But he then emphasises even more the need to make sure they don’t all end up in your system!  Here’s how.

Let’s say the first thing you pick up from your collected file is a note you jotted down after meeting a friend.  You pretty much need to ask yourself one question.

Is it actionable? (Can you actually do anything with it?)

• If not, either throw it out (Dump it), put it in a reference file or put it in a someday/maybe file.

• If it is, simply do it if it’ll take less than 2 minutes.  Otherwise you’re simply wasting time adding it to a list!

• If more than 2 minutes then either delegate it or put it in your trusted system (defer).

This simple question will eliminate all the rubbish from your system.  No longer will your action lists be clogged with things that aren’t really actions.  How many times have you looked at your to-do list and been disheartened because there are items that simply haven’t moved?  Or because your list is just way too long?

Follow these very simple steps – Stop feeding your system something it can’t digest.  It’ll only become constipated and that’ll definitely slow down your productivity!

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