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August 30, 2008
Are you smarter than a kindergartener?
If you know anything about practicing GTD you know that a part of the process involves creating various lists for yourself so that you can easily add to, review, and retrieve information about all of the commitments you've made in your world. In his book, Getting Things Done, David Allen recommends creating various action lists, a "waiting for" list and a project list.
Here's a simple but useful trick that I often share with my clients: When you're in the midst of processing your inbox, defining your actions and projects, pretend that you're writing them for a kindergartener. In other words define them so clearly that a 5-year-old could understand what you mean. Include all the meaning you need to include so that later on - a week or a month later - you don't have to spend any mental energy decoding your own list.
This may seem like overkill to some. But you'd be surprised how many clients I've seen add actions to their lists like "draft memo for meeting" only to be completely befuddled a few days later when they have to try to remember "what meeting? what memo?" as they review that task among a list of 60 other similarly-worded actions.
I've also seen another form of this lack of clarity occur when a client assumes that, in service of efficiency, they should only define an action using keywords without context or action verbs. For instance, "Memo - department meeting - code 902." This, of course, can be equally befuddling later on when reviewing the list.
This omission of clarity happens because in the moment of processing your stuff it can seem totally obvious what the next action is, so the temptation of leaving out meaningful context or explanation is quite strong, especially if you're moving quickly. Just remember that you're not that smart. You can't remember everything. In a way, that's the point of GTD: get it out of your head into your trusted system.
So, for instance, that vague "memo" action above might be better articulated as "draft policy memo for Aug 1st staff meeting," and might further include a few keywords in the notes area of the task (in Outlook, for example) to remind you about topics that you want to include in that memo.
Remember, the reason you keep lists is to capture your thinking so that you don't have to think so much later. Just slow down a little bit while you're processing so that you can speed up when you're reviewing and choosing things to do from your lists.
Posted by mdolan at August 30, 2008 10:24 AM
Comments
I love the "kindergartener" instruction and your explanation of the reasons for it. It is similar to guidance a mentor gave me 15 years ago when I was managing consulting projects. He said that when I talk with execs and ask them to do things, "Give them very specific to do lists, and don't get intimidated by their titles. They need this specificity and they'll thank you for it later." The message your are giving to clients is the same: don't get so impressed by your smarts and position that you forget the value of simplicity when you're trying to accomplish something. Give yourself a break. Make it easy.
Posted by: Amiel Handelsman at September 10, 2008 11:17 AM
Very good tip - I mean, the terms you put it. I `m sure I will remember to write as "clearly that a 5-year-old could understand" what I mean.
Posted by: Silvia at October 2, 2008 04:20 PM
