one of the biggest lessons i learned from david allen’s getting things done (gtd) is about how the human brain handles information and responsibilities.
for better or worse, our brains are designed to help us not forget things. i forget the exact terminology he used for this phenomenon, but almost everyone has experienced it. your brain helping you not forget looks like this: you get an email that requires a response. however, you can’t respond right now because you’re headed into a three hour meeting. you focus on the meeting and then later, on your drive home, you have the “oh shit! i forgot to respond to that email!” moment.
when a task that requires action enters your conscious task processing and doesn’t finish, your subconscious brain holds onto it. this is important because if we could never move things back and forth between these levels of consciousness, we would never get anything done. however, just because a task isn’t in your conscious mind, doesn’t mean it’s not taking up energy. in fact, your brain uses a small amount of energy for each subconscious task it holds onto.
so one not-so-great implication of this great thing your brain does to help you out is use more energy when you have lots of unprocessed tasks.
the other implication of this is that your brain is strategic about when it pushes things back into your conscious mind. basically, your subconscious waits until you are unfocused and seizes the opportunity to interject with one of the many things you need to be doing. many people experience this in the shower or in transit (driving, walking, biking). it can also happen when you settle down to take on a large, important task (starting that big report, taking on a big design task, etc).
the trouble with this is that this prompting totally wrecks your ability to focus on the task at hand. it undermines your ability to get into flow and that can destroy your productivity.
ok, so those are all the negative consequences of not handling tasks in the moment. but, of course, we can’t respond to everything the moment it enters our consciousness. if we did, we’d forever be responding to urgent things and non-urgent but important things would never get done (and the implications of THAT are dire).
so what’s the solution? you need to placate your subconscious brain such that it lets go of unprocessed tasks. this, in turn, allows you just to use your conscious brain to focus on what’s at hand.
how do you do it? by having/building good personal systems to handle those thoughts. mine systems (heavily influenced by gtd methodology) consists of a comprehensive task management system (which is really just several todo lists), a calendar system, email addresses, and specific protocols about how those three things interact.
i think i’ll take the next few days to explain the different parts of my system and how it all works together. for now, though, i’m WAY over time.
as i’ve been learning about how to manage my own workflow, i’ve slowly been developing a theory about work. the hypothesis: my maximum work load capacity should be determined by the amount of heavy-thinking time i can carve out for myself.
as i have optimized and tested out my limits, i’ve noticed a few patterns.
one: i feel (and believe i am) most productive when i have multiple meaningful projects moving, but not too many. when i don’t have enough going, i seek out ways to fill my time. and then sometimes, without having noticed it happen, i will have put myself into “too busy” land. this makes me feel stressed and undermines my ability to move forward on my projects at the right speed (either the speed the projects need to move at or the speed as determined by other external factors).
three: when i have too much going, the need for manager time is too high. collaboration requires coordinated timelines for deliverables and also the need for meetings. if each project requires some baseline of maker time + manager time, my frustration point seems to pop up when i have to do so much coordination that it interrupts my ability to make (via maker time).
ok so some parts of that are redundant i realize, but whatever. i’m going to try and watch my schedule to see if i can test out this hypothesis with myself. ​
caveat: if i’m being honest, i live in a very particular socioeconomic bubble. most of the people i know are knowledge workers. i don’t think this work capacity hypothesis can ever apply to everyone. i can already imagine that it doesn’t apply to any of my friends who farm, cook, or teach physical fitness. this way of balancing a work load might also be highly undesirable for some people. every theory has its limits (and this one is very much still under construction).
somewhere at the intersection of lean product development and systems thinking is one of my favorite ideas: never make the same mistake twice.
the lean side of that table is continuous learning. the systems thinking side is how you ensure the mistake doesn’t happen again. systems thinkers observe surrounding contexts and create structures that prevent known issues from arising again (see 14 habits of systems thinkers).
i genuinely believe one of the most significant parts of my personal system is this idea. as with most everything i do, it takes a small amount of energy each time it comes up, but over time, it creates massive gains.
a recent (somewhat simple, but still real) example: this past weekend i was in nyc and i lost one of my micron pen’s. i freaking love my micron pens and i try really hard to minimize my consumption of them by not losing them. last year, i made it through the year having used less than a single box (12 pens). so it’s a big moment when i lose one. i thought to myself, how can i make sure this doesn’t happen again?
the next day my friend, nate, had a little leather pen case out on the kitchen island we were standing at. i asked where he got it from, he said he made it and i could have it if i wanted because he could just make another one. i immediately thought, “i don’t actually need this little pen holder, but having it will help me not lose this pen again.”
in theory, not losing pens over time will save me money, frustration, and keep me from contributing to overproduction.
“human beings are works in progress that mistaken think we’re not.”
almost all people are able to say “wow! who i was ten years ago is so different now than who i am today.” despite our ability to do that, most of us are unable to recognize that who we are today is different from who we’ll be in another ten years.
to me, this has several implications on things i think about a lot.
1. in line with jungle’s #5to9 thinking, it makes the idea of “a career” seem totally nonsensical. if we are going to be different ten years down the road, it definitely doesn’t make sense to plan for a static career trajectory.
2. it also lends credence to our belief that the ability to describe “what you do for a living” is becoming increasingly irrelevant. what any individual does from one project to the next could be totally different. of course, that doesn’t obfuscate the need to specialize and optimize, but i do think it means one could play multiple roles on different projects over time.Â
you could even develop several different areas of expertise to keep things from getting boring. in a post-(industrial)-work world, that also allows people to set themselves apart by combining different specializations (ex: designer a does ux, ui, and color theory whereas design b does ux, web design, and web development).
3. in work and non-work contexts, it makes long-range life planning largely irrelevant. some things won’t change, like the need for food, shelter, and companionship. but other things, like housing needs and resource needs, are very likely to shift. my friend alex taylor said today that this explains the mid-life crisis. and then i thought, it also explains the quarter-life crisis, the crisis of turning 30, and every other life crisis. it’s not that people made bad decisions at the outset; it’s just that they changed and didn’t anticipate that they would.
there’s more, but i’m already over time!
two relevant quotes and a video (thanks to jason spicer for the video):
“The notion of security is based on the feeling there is something within us which is permanent, something which endures through all the days and changes of life. We are struggling to make sure of the permanence, continuity, and sfety of this enduring core, this center and soul of our being which we call “I.” For this we think to be the real man—the thinking of our thoughts, the feeling of our feelings, and the knower of our knowledge. We do not actually understand that there is no security until we realize that this “I” does not exist. —alan watts, the wisdom of insecurity
i’ve realized that doing one thing per night has lots of pretty great side effects. well, they’re not all side effects exactly, but whatever. you’ll get the point.
building my no muscle
in order to only do one thing per night, i have to say no to a lot of invitations. i have lots of strong feelings about why saying no is so important and they’re all at play here. sometimes the no’s are to specific events at specific times; other times they no’s are just to keep things off my plate. either way, limiting my schedule really requires that i say no often and practice makes perfect, right?
my spending has gone way down*
doing fewer things means spending less money. i’ve found that now i actually don’t feel bad at all about dropping money on hanging out with people. i know i’m not ever going to overspend because i know i have a limited number of engagements at which to spend money.
and doing cheap things when you do things also helps to reduce spending even more. i love going on walks for many reasons (which you can check out here) or just bringing my own snacks/drinks.
so, doing one thing per night has been a really great practice. and the more i do it, the more beneficial it becomes.
so dope.
* my friend caroline used to run these workshops on enough and i think i want to write about them soon because the findings from them are super relevant here.
