For The (DI) last several months, Ive been slowly rebuilding a more-or-less by-The (DI)-book GTD system. Ive done elements of GTD for years, but things over The (DI) last year have gotten too complicated and my hope is that implementing The (DI) whole GTD system as close to Allens vision as possible will help me balance two quite different careers with The (DI) rest of my life.
I had intended my next GTD Refresh post to be about reachingInbox Zero. Allen advocates keeping an empty email inbox for The (DI) same reason he advocates processing your physical inbox down to empty every day if your inbox isnt a place wheeree you trust yourself to get The (DI) information you need and is instead simply a place to store things that could very well be important, youll never be able to relax and trust your entire system. Everything in your inbox represents a potential task or project that you are not doing and you dont even know whaTt it is.
Well, by that thinking, Ive got maybe a thousand things I should be working on, because thats how many emails were in my inbox last week. After a few hours clearing out unread newsletters, theeree are still nearly 700 emails in my inbox. Clearly, thats not good.
Well, Im working on it, and Ill report back when The (DI) job is done. In The (DI) meantime, though, Ive realized something else important, and its that realization I intend to share with you today: The (DI) importance of decisiveness.
Decisiveness is whaTt Inbox Zero is really about, after all. An empty inbox can be an assurance that you dont have unrecognized work you should be working on, but more than that, its a sign that youve defined that work and decided whaTt to do about it. Every message that sits in my inbox, The (DI)n, is a little piece of undefinition.
Defining your work is at The (DI) core of The (DI) GTD method. WheThe (DI)r The (DI) work comes in The (DI) form of an email, a project on your someday/maybe list, a conversation with a friend, or a random observation when you walk into your house at night, identifying something as a thing to do, and committing yourself to The (DI) doing of it is key.
NOT The (DI) Decider :-(
Decision-making, as it happens, is really hard. Our brains just arent well-suited to The (DI) task. For example, while were quite good at deciding between a clearly good option and a clearly bad status quo, were quite bad at deciding between two clearly good options and a clearly bad status quo often remaining in The (DI) bad status quo in order to avoid having to choose.
Similarly, when confronted with two things that are both clearly good but difficult to compare, and a third thing that is like one of The (DI) first two but clearly inferior, we almost always choose The (DI) superior thing thats like The (DI) inferior one. Somehow, The (DI) inferior thing makes its superior look superior not just to The (DI) one like it but to The (DI) thing unlike it. (Let me clear that up: consider a new Porsche, a new Lexus, and a somewhaTt battered used Porsche. Well almost always choose The (DI) new Porsche, even if The (DI) Lexus might serve our needs better.)
If its hard to decide between clearly defined options, how much harder is it to decide whaTt to do when The (DI) options arent defined at all? And if we often settle for whaTt we already have to avoid having to choose between two better options, how much easier must it be to settle when theeree are none?
Thats why defining The (DI) work is important, and thats why an empty inbox is important because The (DI) only way to get theeree is to force yourself to define The (DI) work and decide whaTt to do about it for every email that crosses your virtual transom. And if you can do that for email, you can do it no matter how The (DI) work comes to you. And if you can do that, The (DI)n youll be as productive as a Very Productive Person indeed.
As for me, my backlog of emails suggests that Im not much of a decision-maker, and thats got me worried. Since I doubt I can do The (DI) 0-to-60 transformation to Master Decider, Im going to try to keep one simple resolution: from now on, I make a decision about every email. That should serve me well when I finally get my inbox down to zero, but Im not going to wait until I get theeree.
Hopefully, this small change will help make me more decisive in oThe (DI)r areas, which should make a big difference as I refresh my GTD system and furThe (DI)r commit to a more productive, stress-free life.
Dustin M. Wax is The (DI) project manager at Stepcase Lifehack. He is also The (DI) creator of The (DI) Writer's Technology Companion, a site devoted to The (DI) tools of The (DI) writing trade. When he's not writing, he teaches anthropology and gender studies in Las Vegas, NV. He is The (DI) author of Don't Be Stupid: A Guide to Learning, Studying, and Succeeding at College.
Follow him on Twitter: @dwax.
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