GettingThings Done. The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

In the last two chapters, I have covered the basic models of how to stay maximally productive and in control, with minimal effort, at the two most basic levels of our life and work: the actions we take and the projects we enter into that generate many of those actions.

You need no new skills to increase your productivity-just a new set of behaviors about when and where to apply them.

The fundamentals remain true—you must be responsible for collecting all your open loops, applying a front-end thought process to each of them, and managing the results with organization, review, and action.

For all those situations that you have any level-of commitment to complete, there is a natural planning process that goes on to get you from here to there. Leveraging that five-phase model can often make the evolution easier, faster, and more productive.

These models are simple to understand and easy to implement. Applying them creates remarkable results. You need essentially no new skills—you already know how to write things down, clarify outcomes, decide next actions, put things into categories, review it all, and make intuitive choices. Right now you have the ability to focus on successful results, brainstorm, organize your thinking, and get moving on your next steps.

But just knowing how to do all of those things does not produce results. Merely having the ability to be highly productive, relaxed, and in control doesn't make you that way. If you're like most people, you can use a coach—someone to walk you step by step through the experience and provide some guideposts and handy tricks along the way, until your new operational style is elegantly embedded.

You'll find that in part 2.

Part 2. Practicing Stress-Free Productivity

4. Getting Started: Setting Up the Time, Space, and Tools

IN PART 2 we'll move from a conceptual framework and limited application of workflow mastery to full-scale implementation and best practices. Going through this program often gives people a level of relaxed control they may never have experienced before, but it usually requires the catalyst of step-by-step procedures to get there. To that end, I'll provide a logical sequence of things to do, to make it as easy as possible for you to get on board and glean the most value from these techniques. 

Implementation—Whether Ail-Out or Casual—Is a Lot About "Tricks"

If you're not sure you're committed to an all-out implementation of these methods, let me assure you that a lot of the value people get from this material is good "tricks." Sometimes just one good trick can make it worthwhile to range through this information: I've had people tell me, for example, that the best thing they got from my two-day seminar was advice on setting up and using a tickler file. Tricks are for the not-so-smart, not-so-conscious part of us. To a great degree, the highest-performing people I know are those who have installed the best tricks in their lives. I know that's true of me. The smart part of us sets up things for us to do that the not-so-smart part responds to almost automatically, creating behavior that produces high-performance results. We trick our-selves into doing what we ought to be doing.

It is easier to act yourself into a better way of feeling than to feel yourself into a better way of action.

— O. H. Mowrer

For instance, if you're a semiregular exerciser like me, you probably have your own little tricks to get you to exercise. My best trick is costume—the clothing I put on or take off. If I put on exercise gear, I'll start to feel like exercising; if I don't, I'm very likely to feel like doing something else. Let's look at an example of a real productivity trick. You've probably taken work home that you had to bring back the next day, right? It was mission-critical that you not forget it the next morning. So where did you put it the night before? Did you put it in front of the door, or on your keys, so you'd be sure to take it with you? For this you got a higher education? What a sophisticated piece of self-management technology you've installed in your life! But actually that's just what it is. The smart part of you the night before knows that the not-so-smart part of you first thing in the morning may barely be conscious. "What's this in front of the door!? Oh, that's right, I've got to take this with me!" What a class act. But really, it is. It's a trick I call Put It in Front of the Door. For our purposes the "door" is going to be the door of your mind, not your house. But it's the same idea.