on having fully functional systems (part 2): use the right tool for the right purpose or perish

part 1 of this post is over here: why having a fully functioning system is critical to stress-free productivity.

this post details the three most critical pieces of technology in my personal system. although my system has evolved over time and consists of more protocols than tools, without these tools, i’d be rubble. and by rubble i just mean less productive and more stressed.

the reason i’d be rubble is because of two lessons that’s david allen shared with the world in getting things done.

1. the brain is for having ideas, not holding them. in fact, the brain is designed to keep about four meaningful pieces of information simultaneously. so the more you can externalize things, the better.
2. when you use the wrong tool for the wrong purpose, you become desensitized to it. many people experience this constantly. it’s what happens when you start glazing over tasks on your todo list or start ignoring things on your calendar (more on that below).

allen suggests that the solution to this problem is to use the right tool for the right purpose and only for that purpose. this meant changing a lot of bad habits i’d built up over time, but now that i have, my life will never be the same.

so, here’s the rundown (largely inspired by allen’s writing, but with some evolutions of my own).

tools

• ​your calendar is only for things that need to be done at a certain time; often meetings and certain types of chores.
• your calendar is not your todo list.
• your email is only for communicating with people
• your email is not your to do list.
• your to do list is a place (usually consisting of multiple lists) where you are able to store all your tasks, ideally sorted into useful categories. those categories can be by priority (urgency and importance), by location you need to be in to do the task (office, home, summer house), or any other divisions that are meaningful for you.
• your to do list is not your calendar.

the reason to have all these tools sorted out as such is that (1) it allows you to know exactly where to go for what activity or information and (2) it saves you time by keeping you focused.

common pitfalls/situations that occur when people misuse one or more of these systems:​

going into your email to respond to one thing, snapping back to reality an hour later, and wondering what happened to all your time. this experience is often a symptom of not having a sufficient workflow from your email to your todo list. in my system, when an email takes more than two minutes to answer, it often means i need to get a task onto my todo list and respond to the email later.

you start ignoring things on your calendar. this is usually a symptom of starting to use your calendar as a todo list. as with the other things, the worse case scenario here is that you become so numb to your calendar that it ceases to be a useful tool.

there are specific strategies to avoid these problems, but identifying that you have one or more of these problems is a good start.

creating is a mixture of hard work and inspiration

one of the latest on being episodes is an interview with elizabeth gilbert. creating came up and she shared an insight that resonates with how i have seen and experienced creativity. rather than creativity being fully mastered by the creator or fully a gift of inspiration, it’s actually probably a mixture of both.

on the one hand, some creators take all the credit for their brilliance. these are the “i worked hard for years and years and that explains my skill and amazingness.” on the other hand are the vessel creatives. their line of thinking is “i’m just a vessel. i wait for inspiration and then i act on it when it comes.”

to gilbert (and me), neither feels totally right. she believes that the world’s best creators inhabit a place in between these two theories. it’s not completely up to you when inspiration comes, but you can prepare and be ready for it when it hits.

this makes a ton of sense to me and lines up with lots of my own experiences. she gives many examples of other artists over history who have verbalized this middle-ground and i’ve heard many as well. basically the trick is show up and work every day so that when a brilliant idea or song or painting or design fix or whatever hits, you have exactly the right tools and processes in place to make it come to life.

and to wrap things up, here are two relevant quotes that i can’t find the sources for, so i’ll just paraphrase for now:

• “luck happens to everyone, but some of us are more ready than others to seize and capitalize on it.”
• “good things happen to those who work hard.”

ps - i think this is a great piece of good news. this thinking takes being a “creative” out of the realm of exclusivity. everyone already can be (or already is) a creative; we just don’t yet have human systems to recognize and capitalize on that.

pps - i think this thinking has a strong parallel in the free will vs predestination conversation. whether talking philosophy, creativity, or spiritually, i think  it’s a both in all these cases. maybe all those sacred texts aren’t divine because they’re literally the word of God, but because they were written by people who were dedicated and wrote down the good stuff when it came through. hm!

balancing your personal system week to week

at this point, i have a fairly elaborate personal system. it consists of a bunch of practices and principles that help me live my best life (lol). it helps me make decisions about what to do at any given moment, minimizes my stress, maximizes my social life, and also keeps me on track with my big picture life goals.

now, if we lived in a world where everything was predictable, i could plan out my weeks and months totally in advance. however, reality doesn’t work that way because change is the only constant. over time, i’ve had to learn how to balance my systems from week to week.

if i’m honest, that learning process caused much gnashing of teeth. i hate surprises and i really hate feeling out of control (i’m getting better about the control thing). now that i’ve come to terms with reality, though, i have figured out how to readjust my system when things change.

regardless of what your system looks like, the most important thing to keeping it balanced when change happens is to be aware of the impact of the change. then you can look through your commitments (to yourself and to others) and take an appropriate amount off your plate.

so for example, this week a dear friend is visiting from london. given that he only visits a few times a year, i know i want to prioritize seeing him while he’s here. as a course of action, last week, i rescheduled several meetings so that i’d be the most free to see him. doing that takes energy, but i’ve repeatedly found that the pre-emptive energy use is much less stressful and will likely make my week more enjoyable because i can be much more flexible while not feeling the anxiety of blowing people off.

this same practice of rearranging commitments can of course happen after the change has occurred if you couldn’t see it coming. but the most you can predict these types of changes, the less stress you’ll feel.

and like david allen says, people often feel bad about their productivity not because they’re not doing enough, but because they don’t keep promises with themselves. it’s totally okay to renegotiate agreements with yourself (“i really wanted to work out”, “i promised i was gonna cook dinner this week”, “i was gonna file my taxes yesterday”). letting go is valuable. really valuable.

and one cool thing is that over time i’ve found that the more established my personal system becomes, the less things are able to surprise me. and the less things surprise me, the most i’m able to keep commitments to myself and to others. but that’s for another post i think.

self-driven change is hard: be forgiving of yourself

i had this thought yesterday while writing some specific tips to help make personal systems change.

change is hard. pretty much always. changing yourself might be one of the hardest types of change there is. and in every change process i’ve ever been a part of or observed, there has always been some amount of failure.

last year i committed to a personal meditation practice. 10 minutes a day. that’s all i wanted to do. when i looked back at my 2015 data (which i was collecting through reporter at the time), i had meditated about 250 days. so there were clearly days that i didn’t keep my own promise.

but whenever i would miss a day, it was really important to be forgiving to myself and then keep trying. there are lots of reasons for being forgiving to yourself, most of which i think are good. the reason i’m forgiving to myself is because i know that it takes time to change habits. but i’ve also seen that if i just keep trying, the change eventually does stick. this year (2016), not only have i missed just two days of morning meditation, but i’ve also added on a morning writing practice. my success rate with the writing (107/246) is lower than the meditation (244/246), but i know that if i keep it up, next year my stats will improve.

so yeah. failure is a part of the process. be forgiving of yourself. keep pushing. it’ll happen.

ps -  i think the reason i’m so passionate about personal change is that i really believe that that’s where the revolution starts. i’m constantly seeking ways to change myself and now i’m increasingly interested in supporting others to do the same.

building your personal system, brick by brick

a few weeks ago i wrote a two-post series on learning through your life: how to make the most of the startup that is your life and why running your life like a startup will help you get where you want to go faster. this is sort of a spin-off of those two pieces that was inspired by a coaching session with my friend, katherine.

the main message is this: it takes a long time to build a good personal system and it happens piece by piece.  

the lesson is most clearly demonstrated with a story. i know my own better than any other so i’ll start there. this isn’t the whole thing, but it’s some of the important lessons:

experiment 1: sometimes i feel socially burnt out. how do i remedy that?
[do several weeks of experimentation with varied number of social meetings per week (2 one week, 10 the next, 5 the next, etc.) and observe my well-being]
lesson 1: do no more than two social meetings per day, absolutely no more than one per evening, and no more than five per week.

experiment 2: lesson 1 means i don’t see my close friends enough. how do i fix that?
[talk with several close friends and discuss how to see each other regularly]
lesson 2: close friends don’t count as social meetings (lesson 1). schedule standing, bi-weekly sessions (dinner, walks, tea, virtual chats, etc.) with close friends. regularity helps a lot.

experiment 3: i spend too much money on food. how can i spend less money on food?
[insert several weeks of experimentation with making food, buying meals, fasting, etc.]
lesson 3: cook three dinner meals over the weekend. eat one. save the other two. eat dinners i prepared over the weekend on evenings that don’t have standing friend dates or other social meetings.

experiment 4… etc. etc.

as i write this, i realize i haven’t ever written down all my experiments, but there are a lot of them. and, as with all things of this nature, the point isn’t the lessons; the point is that everyone needs to experiment and figure out what works for them. gretchen rubin said in her interview on design matters that no technique or strategy works for everyone, but everyone has something that works for them. the trick is to figure out what that is.

frankly, one’s personal system will never be perfect because things are always changing. change can happen in your life phase, in work, in your location (residence, city, country, region), in the culture, in technology, and on and on. and still, the value gained from having a functional personal system is limitless. i’m constantly tweaking my system and i think it’s getting better and better.

brick by brick will your personal system be built and no one’s gonna build it if you don’t. so why not start building now?