Productive Living: Your mind has better things to do - by David Allen

YOUR MIND HAS BETTER THINGS TO DO

My systems are set up and maintained with a standard of thinking as little as possible.

It looks to the casual observer just the opposite. The perception is often something like, "You have so many lists! Isn't it confusing and a lot of work to remember where to put things and to maintain all that?" They think their mind has better things to do.

That might be true, if I had arbitrarily created all that at one time. But it didn't happen that way.

It took years of experimentation to discover that putting anything but what 

had 

to happen on a daily calendar caused me to have to think about the page every time I looked at it ("What has to happen today? What could possibly slide to tomorrow?") I used to have all my at-computer actions on one "At Computer" list. After many weeks of sitting on a plane and having to decipher which ones I could do and which ones I couldn't (because they required an online connection), I spun out a separate "Online" action list, which I didn't have to bother with on a plane, and which removed the mental static from the "At Computer" list.

Scanning an email and leaving it in "In" because it's not as important as other emails at the moment creates double reading, double thinking, and double decision-making (not to mention the nagging it creates in the psyche in the meantime.)

My mind has better things to do.

"Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do."

-Goethe

Posted via email from Curt Beavers