Fall of the GTD Bandwagon? Do a “Mind Sweep”

May 28, 2012

In GTD the vital first stage is Collection. Whenever we loose steam in our GTD flow, I feel like the most powerful collection exercise is what David Allen calls “the mind-sweep.”  Whenever I feel “out of control” with everything going on in my life, I try to step back and do a mind-sweep to regain control.

The idea behind the mind-sweep is to identify and gather everything that is making claims on your attention or is likely to affect the larger areas of responsibility in your life – everything that’s quietly burning cycles, stealing focus, and whittling away at your attention – so that you can then decide what (if anything) must be done about each of those things. David says “put your attention on what has your attention.”

If it’s not being directly managed in a trusted external system, then it’s resident somewhere in your psyche and that is a bad thing. The point is you need to make sure that everything you need is collected somewhere other than in your head. So, just as you learned Collection as the first step in implementing GTD (and to subsequently maintain your system), it’s precisely the place to start when you’re trying to properly get back into it.

By doing a mind-sweep you’ll discover your head is flooded with stuff that you aren’t or haven’t been doing anything about. Not coincidentally, this is almost always stuff that represents some kind of incompletion, functional fuzziness, or procrastination on your part.

The Mind-Sweep

If you are just starting GTD (as opposed to falling off the bandwagon) then you need to do an Initial Capture like I described in a blog post here otherwise, you need to do a mind-sweep to get back on the bandwagon. It is really simple.  Start with a single sheet of printer paper and a pencil, set a timer for 10 minutes, and just begin scraping every conceivable anxiety and “open loop” from the corners of your brain.

Begin with the hopelessly-behind project that’s making you insane right now, then proceed methodically through every flash of thought that makes you cringe, groan, pause, ponder, or exclaim; these are the runaway background processes that are responsible for subconscious stress and you need them out.  Think about it like brainstorming. Don’t judge the items or think about them in any way, just get them on paper. Remember, this is your opportunity to convert the fuel for subconscious stress into items that can later be made actionable (or deferred or delegated or killed etc). But you can’t do anything about it until it’s been captured and evaluated in your trusted system.

For the sweep to really do its best work, you must call upon extraordinary willpower to stay in collection mode. Remember the day you finally “got” how GTD worked by firewalling your planning time (Weekly Review) from your doing (Processing) time? Same idea here. No straying or switching back and forth between the two. Remember, your brain is smarter than you, and it can’t be tricked into thinking that things are taken care of when they actually aren’t. I would even suggest eliminating use of the two-minute rule during your mid-sweep.

Now that your 10 minutes is up, look at the list and process it.  Most of the items on it will be projects of some sort. Get them into your trusted system and you will immediately feel the joy of getting them out of your head – guaranteed.

Filed under Capture

The difference between a Project and a Next Action

May 20, 2012 2 Comments

Many people who are new to GTD struggle to understand the difference between a Project and a Next Action. Next actions seem to be pretty straightforward for most people but projects really seem to blow their minds. This is especially true in information technology because projects are typically associated with big, complex, tasks and projects in GTD can be much smaller.

Let’s start with the easy one – the next action. It’s so all about the next action. In my journey with GTD, my best takeaway has been the idea of the next action. Learning to identify the absolute next physical action that will keep a project moving has been a godsend to the way I think about, plan, and execute my work. When things get hectic, it’s affirming to know that all I need to do is one, single thing—the next thing—to get closer to completion.

Turning “to-dos” into a list of atomic activities has benefits that go beyond gains in productivity and “effectiveness.” You can also lower stress and start to reclaim control of runaway projects just by looking in front of your nose. Any time I start to feel swept away by work, I try to see whether I’ve accurately identified the things I can do right now (as well as everything else I don’t need to do right now) to bring that project one step closer to completion.

For me, the next action has been the linchpin for making Getting Things Done work. Full stop. Now on to the more difficult GTD concept – the Project. In GTD, Projects are nothing more than multi-task commitments to a desirable outcome that has more than one physical action that can be described in a way that I know exactly when it is “done.”

A project can be as “small” as a two step project with a discernible completion. For example, many people might put “get mom a Mother’s Day gift” on their Next Action list when it really should be on their Projects List. There are several implied tasks in “get mom a Mother’s Day gift” – what should I get her? What size is she? Does she already have what I am thinking about? Do I need to call or email her to see what she wants? Once I decide what to get her where should I buy it? Should I ship it to her or deliver it myself? Should I have it wrapped or wrap it myself? Etc.

So, I would put “Get mom a Mother’s Day” gift on my Projects list and “call mom to she what she wants” on my Next Action list. Then when I was scanning my Next Actions list I would have a simple task that could easily be completed that will move me one step closer to completing my project. Once I called her and found out she wanted a specific book, I would put “buy The Pillars of the Earth on Amazon” on my Next Action list. Once I completed this I would delete the Project because it was completed.

While this might seem like a silly example, it illustrates a common mistake people make. Putting “get mom a Mother’s Day gift” on your Next Action list makes that list a mixture of discrete next actions and multi-step actions that dilutes the power of the Next Action list. It is really a project and it should sit on my Project List right next to a “big” project like “implement a new HR system.”

It’s something to which I’ve made some kind of commitment—either a public commitment to others or even just a mental obligation I’ve made with myself. This is something in the world that I agree deserves my time and attention to the exclusion of other things. I love the idea that, at the heart of it, a project is really just an agreement on what I want to be true. Then I break it down into next actions. I’m here, and I want to be there, so what steps do I need to be take to move things further in that direction?

But, the component of personal commitment is my favorite lesson from GTD project planning. It means I’ve knowingly agreed to let this thing become an acceptable interruption in my life. It means that other things might have to wait because of this, and that’s okay. Maybe most importantly though, commitment is the glue that binds my daily activities to my “higher altitudes”—it’s how I can make sure my values and my priorities in life are reflected in what I do every day.

Filed under Next Action, Project

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