Node Glue

Right now, I am procrastinating by blogging about an article that I just read about procrastination. Paul Graham read my mail on this one. Thanks to David Allen for the link.

There are three variants of procrastination, depending on what you do instead of working on something: you could work on (a) nothing, (b) something less important, or (c) something more important. That last type, I’d argue, is good procrastination.

That’s the “absent-minded professor,” who forgets to shave, or eat, or even perhaps look where he’s going while he’s thinking about some interesting question. His mind is absent from the everyday world because it’s hard at work in another.

Errands kill me, and I often feel guilt for not doing them (ironically, I did 6 errands this morning on my day off–extremely rare behavior).

Inspiration can’t be scheduled. If I have to “sneak away” from my normal work to do something inspired, I’ll do it! I admit it! I prefer being driven by inspiration than by duty. There. I said it.

Read the article.

My mind has continued to stew on the thought of GTD as a system tailored to handle the many details of life. This isn’t a new thought, just a freshly resurfaced one, in light of the blog conversations I’ve read elsewhere recently. And as chance would have it, I found myself in session called Reverse Engineering Your Life presented by Mark Driscoll at the Acts 29 Boot Camp yesterday where he urged us to “think Macro before Micro.” Layer on top of that increased understanding I’ve gained from my most recent attempt at securing the Holy Grail of GTD systems, ResultsManager, and poof! It hit me…

The stuff that I use GTD to help me track is stuff that I’ve committed to (micro). But the only things I let myself commit to (when I’m being disciplined, of course), are the things that fit into my grid of Roles, Goals, Priorities, Values, Principles, Mission, Vision, and whatever other Capital Letter Noun Coveyism you can think of (macro).

So for me, that’s how the two work together. I don’t just fill my GTD buckets with stuff to do, random actions to take. I commit to actions and initiatives that are in line with my personal mission. And I “prioritize” them according to periodic review. Of course, in strict GTD parlance, there isn’t really such a thing as a “priority”. But there is such a thing as a “someday/maybe”, or an “incubate”. So some of the things on my lists, I’ve decided to commit to. Others, I’ve written down to capture the idea, get it out of my mind and written down, but they are effectively treated as low priority, as someday/maybe or incubate items.

To summarize, it’s the Macro grid that decides which actions even belong on the list, and then whether it’s a commited action or a someday/maybe action. But GTD helps me to think through how to get traction on those things I’ve commited to, and how to maintain momentum with them until they are Done.

Ran across this post at Mad Professor, and some commentary from 43Folders. The observation is that David Allen’s Getting Things Done system is about managing the daily actions, not the lofty goals. Interesting timing for me to run across these comments because I was just discussing this idea with a friend over a beer yesterday.

I’ve read some other personal productivity systems that put more emphasis on the big picture. And I’m a big picture guy. I firmly believe that the actions we take should be tied to our values, and we should have an end in mind, a sense of purpose. I’ve found that once that heart and internal motivation is set right, I have to look elsewhere to actually do something about whatever I’ve decided is important to me. And that’s where GTD (Getting Things Done) comes in.

True, GTD is more like a bottom up approach. It may seem counterintuitive to think that the way to accomplish your big picture agenda is to be diligent about handling life’s little details. But after about 2.5 years of using and refining my GTD practices, I can say from experience that it’s true despite being counterintuitive. GTD helps me to systematically collect all the random bits of stuff bumping around in my mind, and all the hallway commitments made, and then getting them out of my mind until the right time to do something about them. The net effect is that my mind is free to think at a higher level without the anxiety that I’m missing something, therefore, I have more energy to devote to considering the big picture of why I’m doing this and where it should all be going.

So the pearl that brings me back to GTD again and again, and which I share with everyone I coach in GTD, is the idea that your mind is a valuable resource. Use it for creative thinking, not remembering (or forgetting). If you don’t have a trusted system for storing and sorting your stuff, your mind will keep reminding you every 2 minutes of that “thing” you’re supposed to do. Let your trusted system do the reminding. Free your brain to do the real work, the creative work.

The second pearl that I love to share is the David Allen quote (paraphrased): “you have to think about your work more than you are right now, but not as much as you’re afraid you’ll have to.”

Transverality is cool. I love these sort of connections between nature, mind, and philosophy.

Favorite quote from the article, actually a parenthesis…

contrary to popular belief, birds often sing without the goal of attracting a mate or establishing a territory

Put that in your Darwinian pipe and smoke it!

Glanced across this article on the nature of concepts this morning. I don’t have much to say on it, except to say, “whoa! People are thinking about this stuff!” I’ve often wondered about the relationship between concepts, “problematization”, and integrating experiences.

If nothing else, gaining a new term, problematization, from this article helps me think about my own thinking more clearly. And when pressed, I expect it will help me explain my thinking to someone else more clearly. So that’s worth reading the article all by itself.

Every wonder why you’re so curious to hear the dirt on somebody else? There’s a proverb that says “The words of a gossip are like choice morsels; they go down to a man’s inmost parts.” We love those juicy morsels.

When posting about sticky messages, I couldn’t help but reflect on the human nature behind the success of urban legends. And it occurred to me that the human impulse that makes urban legends viral is similar to the impulse that makes gossip viral.

Hmm…

Did you know the great wall of China is the only man made structure that can be seen from space? Gotcha!

This is an urban legend that we’ve probably all heard. These things spread like a virus. If only we could get true, helpful, meaningful messages to spread so effectively… What if we could bottle the energy of the urban legend and use it to charge the messages we want to send?

I recently watched a DVD of a Stanford prof lecturing on this subject: How to Make Your Ideas Stick: 7 Lessons from Urban Legends. Helped me think more intentionally about crafting sticky messages. Still working out the implications, but I think this is moving me in the right direction.