What has your attention?
On July 8, it was our pleasure to host David Allen for a webinar entitled, “The Strategic Value of Personal Productivity.” Along with our moderator, Howard Morgan, we were excited by the presentation and discussion.
As a primer, we read David’s article “Time Management – What’s the Real Issue?” and took the Getting Things Done IQ test, which gave us a sense of where people are at, mentally, with regards to daily affairs by providing a visual and narrative understanding of where we stand along the axises of control and perspective.
In David’s own words, his presentation was a seminar in Advanced Common Sense. Of course, common sense is neither very common nor always obvious; and David’s observations and insights were frequently eye-opening and extremely helpful.
Essentially, David articulated the mechanics of how we get busy, what we typically do to manage our work and lives, and how to employ better strategies to improve our productivity, creativity and openness to opportunity – something he called, “the freedom to make a mess.” The best practices he discussed work not only for individuals but at the organizational level, too.
David likened the ideal state of mind to the experience of being an advanced martial arts practitioner. You cannot be prepared for every crisis or surprise in life, but if you have a clear mind – a mind like water – then you can react quickly and appropriately to new events.
People with no control or perspective feel like victims. But that’s a negative word for a state everyone finds themselves in at least several times a day. When we’re in victim state, we’re essentially being responsive to everything that happens. Sometimes, David said, we’re just being responsive to our previous Great Ideas. (That’s the kind of insight into the human condition that makes David’s work so thoughtful.)
A victim’s instinct is to gain control. And to do so we are inclined to become micro-managers. But that mode is too structured to allow much flexibility or creativity.
Organizations stuck in micro-management mode are usually inclined to bring a visionary. But a visionary without control is a “Crazy-maker” – someone who causes others to scramble in their wake and take care of details.
When you have the appropriate amount of control and perspective, you are, what David calls, a Master and Commander – someone who has their eye on the horizon, their hand on the helm, and has a gut-feel sensitivity for what needs more immediate and personal attention.
So how do we get there? David’s long-term research has distilled the issues of control and perspective to their simplest requirements, and he outlined them for us.
There are five stages of control. First, we Identify current reality; then we Clarify “stuff” into categories; then we Organize those categories into appropriate levels of urgency; Reflect on what needs to be done to manage them; and Engage with them in a timely and appropriate way.
As David noted, most people and organizations start with Organize and don’t develop a system for what to do with the “stuff” that bombards them. He also explained that “Stuff” is not bad – but it needs to be captured and clarified to be organized and managed.
Next, David explained how perspective works, and he offered a hierarchy of focus. It starts with Purpose and Principles, through which people and organizations determine what’s important for them to focus on; next comes Vision which is the 5-year horizon that matters to them; followed by Goals which are typically achievable within a year. Responsibilities must also be taken into account – and these are activities that help us maintain, ranging from keeping on track of the merger, to watching our health or checking account balance. Next we have Projects which are things we need to finish to achieve goals and vision; and in support of projects are “Actions” or the tasks we must perform to accomplish projects.
None of this is easy. David noted that the typical executive has 40 to 100 projects on the go, and each of us has about 100 to 200 actions they need to accomplish all the time. The challenge is determining what is important to take on, while recognizing that it’s difficult to ignore anything. Nevertheless, the more control and focus you can achieve, the more productive and creative you can be.
David left us with a final message: Start paying attention to what has your attention. If you don’t, those things will start occupying more of you than they deserve.
Howard Morgan fielded a lively Q&A session at the end of David’s presentation. Over the coming months, we’ll post excerpts from that discussion on our site.
We invite you to download a copy of the session handouts and watch the webinar by clicking below. Afterward, let us know how you are doing in keeping up with your own control and perspective by using the discussion section below. Or drop us a note to describe other challenges you are facing and we’ll look for answers together.
Click the Slide Above to Launch the Presentation Presenter: David Allen Moderator: Howard Morgan Date: July 8, 2009 Duration: 01:27:51 Summary: In this 90-minute webinar, David Allen will describe the strategies, tools and specific behaviors that dramatically upgrade individual and organizational productivity. In particular, he will focus on:
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