How to get things done

Making it All Work: Winning at the Game of Work and the Business of Life authored by David Allen talks of self-management, the key to which is in knowing how to handle our capacity to think, feel, understand, and reason out. It involves two major elements, the way we exercise control and our ability to develop perspectives. Allen defines control as the facility to choose between different alternatives, while perspective refers to our aptitude to discern which of the available options is the best one to choose.

Control and perspective are perceptibly interwoven and Allen aptly explains it with these examples. You are a victim if you have little control or perspective, and a “micro manager” if you have lots of control but with little perspective. And conversely, if you have lots of perspective but little control you are a visionary “crazy maker,” and a “commander” if you have lots of perspective and lots of control. Allen underscores that there are advantages and disadvantages to each state, but he says it’s always better to aim for improvement on how you exert control and develop perspective in your life. If you are able to do that, assuming the commander role and attaining peak productivity will be easier.

Allen identifies five distinct areas where you can get more control over your situation — capturing, clarifying, organizing, reflecting and engaging.

• Capture and document the things that you are struggling with. This includes the littlest task to the biggest project you need to deal with all the time. Capture and jot down information you want to remember, your dreams, the things you want to do and your future plans. In capturing, what is important is that you are able to transfer what crosses your mind onto paper. This clears your brain from the need to store and recall all the things, people, events, cues and details you need to recall. Keeping a journal will be helpful in storing all these as they may come in handy later on.

• Clarify and clean up your list. After the capturing process, go through each item and determine which entries on the list you have to act on immediately, and which ones you can phase in or put off. As you do this, continue to write down other new ideas that come your way. And just like the earlier entries, you can just dump them down and deal with them at the right time.

• Organize to have control. Organizing doesn’t mean you have to go through a complicated routine as you might imagine it to be. In fact, it’s simply making sure you can find what you need to find when you need it. Key here is knowing where your stuff is and being able to make it conveniently available if and when required. The activity may be basic but it reminds you never to unfasten your grip or control over everything.

• Reflect to deflect failure. Reflecting is spending ample time to make sure things haven’t fallen by the wayside or through the cracks. It is ensuring that you’re actually staying on track with your projects — big or small — and that your data storage and management hasn’t fallen apart. The reason why reflecting is important is pretty simple — the time lost when your system isn’t working is far greater than the time spent making sure everything is still working fine. This means you have to review, review and review every step of the way.

• Engage both heart and mind. When you capture, clarify, organize and reflect, it is clear that you’re not doing all this in a vacuum. The truth is, you engage and affect other people as you perform all that, and as the series of actions moves, you should consider the impact you create when you reflect on the choices you’re making. A key part of the engagement process is putting to heart the true core values of your life. Is your family really the center of your life, or do you value your career above all else? There is no easy and automatic answer to this question. It’s all up to you to supply the murmurs of your heart and the dictates of your mind.

Perspective helps you clearly distinguish the essential from the non-essential. It makes you manage the elements of control you have over your time with more effectiveness and efficiency. Allen lists five elements that can facilitate the route to getting into the right perspective in any given situation, at any given time.

• What is your next step? In other words, if you’re sitting in your office ready to do something, what exactly are you going to do? Some of the time, this choice is very easy – you’ll merely engage whatever fire needs to be put out at the moment – but at other times, the choice is profound. Will you work on that PowerPoint presentation or go on a relaxing activity with colleagues? The choice becomes much less clear very quickly, and that’s why it pays to have a higher view on how things should be.

• What projects should you give immediate action? Projects are defined as collections of completely separated actions that produce an outcome and can be completed within a short period of time. For example, your car’s repair might be a project, or attending your son’s basketball game. Usually, the projects you have on your long to-do list all require immediate action. But in truth, it really depends on the relative importance of the project. How you define the relative importance of the actions you have to take relies on your own “of the moment” perspective.

• What facets of your life need to be protected? Two things come into play here — focus and responsibility. What are your areas of focus? And what distinct part of your list takes clear priority over others? To many, it’s “family first”; to others, it’s work. To assist you in seeing the value of reflecting on this question carefully, understand your areas of responsibility in life and recognize how they rank and relate to one another. That way you are able to automatically implement projects and tasks according to their importance or urgency.

• What do you want to achieve with your life? Assess what you have accomplished in the last 10 or 20 years of your life. Was it too much or too little? Was it extraordinary or commonplace? Are you going to make your mark in the world or you will just exit from your earthly existence sans the applause and admiration of a multitude of people? And as you do an honest self-evaluation, determine, on a parallel basis, the changes you want to make and the goals you want to accomplish.

• What and how much else can you achieve? This is a paraphrase of the oft-repeated question, what do you want written as your epitaph. This calls for a definition of beyond-your-life goals, purpose and principles that will put you in a place where you actually want to be.

Make things work by getting things done. You will surely shoot to the top. –Bong R. Osorio (The Philippine Star)

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E-mail bongosorio@yahoo.com or bong_osorio@abs-cbn.com for questions, questions or suggestions. Thank you for communicating. Making It All Work is available at National Book Store.