A Note About Balance

Here is an email I got today from David Allen, who thinks deeply about Getting Things Done. See davidco.com

He says this:

[Balance is tough enough when you are aware of all your goals, values, projects, and commitments. But it’s impossible if you don’t revisit the whole game consistently.

"The affairs of life embrace a multitude of interests, and he who reasons in any one of them, without consulting the rest, is a visionary unsuited to control the business of the world." – James Fenimore Cooper]

So this reminds us to spend an hour or two each week--I do it on Friday or Saturday mornings usually--reviewing all of our projects.

This time is not spent DOING the projects. It is spent going over the project list, adding to or subtracting from the list, of what is important and what needs to get done in the short term, medium term, and long term. It is spent thinking about the discrete parts of the project and what are the Next Steps.

Keep a notepad, virtual or otherwise, close by. Your mind will remind of things undone. You can also keep a list of the items you can do in two minutes or less. And you can schedule a time to tackle a batch of those. It can be SO SATISFYING to complete quickly some of those tasks. Set a timer. See if you can finish some of them in two minutes. You will become more aware of what can be done quickly and what cannot. You will see how you may or may not misjudge time.

In the end, you will get more accomplished of what you want to accomplish.

If you have other ideas about how to get things done, share them with comments here, in class or with your small group.

BH