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entries for 2002/6/21

michal's unified theory of effectiveness

Today's a good day. I'm back in control of my work inbox, I got up at 7:00 after a good night's sleep, and I've made some real progress on my nameserver program. I wouldn't say I'm caught up, but I'm out of the realm of things that I have to do and back into the realm of things that I want to do.
 
Most of the things I want to get done are pretty big projects. Reading Getting Things Done again has helped me start thinking about those projects in terms of next actions, and I feel like I can pretty much move forward on any of them.
 
So the question is, what to choose? I want to make sure that whatever I do, I maintain control of the "have-to" list, so some part of my day has to be spent on dealing with my inbox. Aside from that, I've got a lot of freedom, and it's easy to just flounder - either bouncing from project to project or just not doing anything constructive at all.
 
David Allen says to pick the most useful thing to do in any particular moment. Never put something on your calendar unless it absolutely has to be done that day.
 
But I almost never have anything that has to be done on a particular day. I always have things that have to be done immediately, and I often have things that have to be done by a certain date, but that's about it. I just don't have a lot of meetings and appointments and commitments. David Allen does, and I'm sure the kinds of people that he works with do, but I don't. They're dealing with small pockets of time between commitments, and I'm dealing with lots of small commitments (usually emails to answer) and a whole lot of unstructured time.
 
Getting Things Done is about being efficient. I think it's one of the most practical and empowering books I've ever read. And, I've found that when I do what it tells me I fairly quickly get back to this point of being in control of the little things and freeing up a lot of time to use as I'd like. And then, usually, I wind up getting engrossed in something and forget to manage the little things, and the next thing I know, I'm still awake at four A.M. and my inbox is overflowing with mail that's 30-something hours old.
 
I need to get control of my free time, and my want-to stuff. That's a different skill with a different teacher. Who? Well, maybe Stephen Covey. Covey would rather we spend as little time as possible dealing with the "have-to" stuff (which he calls Quadrant I, or urgent/important) and spend as much time as possible on the "want-to" stuff (important/not urgent)... Maybe I ought to take another look at The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People again.
 
See, when you start getting into the less urgent, more important stuff, it's harder to decide what to do. Actually it's easy to just do whatever you want, on or off the list, but using your free time in a way that creates the most value in your life is a little bit trickier.
 
I mean, right now, I could be working on my stock trading bot idea. Or I could spend another hour on the DNS manager. Or duckbill (my billing system). Or I could call one of my friends. Or I could think about my marketing plan. Or I could answer the emails that have shown up in my inbox since this morning. Or I could take a break and read a book. Or I could do any number of things. Right now, I'm chosing to type this post, but as soon as I'm done, I'll have to face the choice again.
 
David Allen would say to make that choice in the moment based on context, time available, energy available, and priority. Actually, he has another model where you evaluate your priorities from the runway level all the way up to 50,000 feet - but his book is about the lowest levels: actiona and projects. He points out that there are already tons of books to help people deal with the upper level, so he doesn't go into it.
 
Which brings me back to 7 Habits. Covey's book is very good at "top down" thinking. Where Allen says "get control of your 'stuff' so you can free your mind to deal with the bigger picture", Covey says "efficiency is doing things right, but effectiveness is doing the right things." (Am I repeating myself here? Sorry. I'm just trying to organize these thoughts in my mind)
 
Covey's Habit #2 is to "begin with the end in mind". In other words, the "right thing to do" depends on where you're headed, and if you don't know where you're headed, you can't make a useful decision. Which is why he talks about mission statements and goals and principles.
 
No matter what goals you have, the only thing between where you are and where you want to be is a series of events. If you figure out what those events are, and if you make them happen, then you will reach the goal.
 
The trouble is, I have a lot of goals, and I've never really sat down and thought about having everything. Not that I'd ever run out of goals, of course, but I've never been successful in taking a vision of where I want to be (physically, emotionally, financially, and socially) at some point in the future and connecting it all the way back to the present. Usually I make each goal separate, and work it back separately, and wind up with a bunch of stuff to do, that I don't know how to manage or prioritize, and pretty soon the whole thing comes crashing down and I'm back to living in the moment with no clear direction.
 
Actually, now that I think about it, I have a good tool for this. Eli Goldratt gave it to me in Its Not Luck. It's the transition tree. You can see an example [here]. Working those trees out helped me to clarify my situation, figure out where I wanted to go, and what I'd have to do to get there. I just didn't have enough personal power to follow through at the time. I kept getting caught up in the moment because I didn't break the high level transition tree down into monthly, weekly, and daily goals. And I didn't really have control of the "have-to" stuff that was coming into my life, either. And often I made priorities of things that were really just my "fun" goals for the moment, and not really a major direction I wanted to move in. (Some goals are okay to flake on, because they're just for fun. Why make them part of your life direction?)
 
I bet that if, today, I worked out a current reality tree, a future reality tree, and a transition tree, I'd have a clear direction to go in, and I could break it down into tasks. And then it's really a matter of setting aside specific times to commit to working on those tasks.
 
Covey provides a tool for that - his weekly planning system. I've found it somewhat helpful in the past, but I usually get derailed because my "have-to" stuff gets out of control, and I was was never very specific about next actions. But I've learned how to handle both those things now, so if I knew what needed to go on the weekly plan, I bet I could set aside at least ten hours a week to work on specific "want-to" stuff that would move me along the transition tree. If I schedule those "big rocks" throughout the week, then I can work the little stuff around them, and still have time to do spend on whatever I want.
 
Sorry if I'm rambling here, but I'm just not naturally a very goal-oriented person. It's hard for me. My mind likes solving problems (an away-from strategy) more than it likes setting goals (a moving-towards strategy), and yet I know that I could get a whole lot more out of life if I mastered both sides. So I'm problem-solving my goal setting skills. :)
 
Anyway, here's a working draft of a grand unified theory of effectiveness: And that's it. The whole spectrum, from my inbox to my purpose in life. Finally it all fits together. :)