GettingThings Done. The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

Almost without exception, when I sit down to begin coaching people, even though they've blocked out time and committed significant money to utilize me as a resource for that time, they still have things they're going to have to do before we quit for the day, and they haven't arranged for them yet in their own systems. "Oh, yeah, I've got to call this client back sometime today," they'll say, or "I have to check in with my spouse to see if he's gotten the tickets for tonight." It bespeaks a certain lack of awareness and maturity in our culture, I think, that so many sophisticated people are ignoring those levels of responsibility to their own psyche, on an ongoing operational basis.

So have you handled all that? Good. Now it's time to gather representatives of all of your open loops into one place.

5. Collection: Corralling Your "Stuff"

IN CHAPTER 2 I described the basic procedures for collecting your work. This chapter will lead you in more detail through the process of getting all your incompletes, all your "stuff," into one place—into "in." That's the critical first step in getting to the state of "mind like water." Just gathering a few more things than you currently have will probably create a positive feeling for you. But if you can hang in there and really do the whole collection process, 100 percent, it will change your experience dramatically and give you an important new reference point for being on top of your work.

When I coach a client through this process, the collection phase usually takes between one and six hours, though it did take all of twenty hours with one person (finally I told him, "You get the idea"). It can take longer than you think if you are committed to a full-blown capture that will include everything at work and everywhere else. That means going through every storage area and every nook and cranny in every location, including cars, boats, and other homes, if you have them.

Be assured that if you give yourself at least a couple of hours to tackle this part, you can grab the major portion of things out-standing. And you can even capture the rest by creating relevant placeholding notes—for example, "Purge and process boat storage shed" and "Deal with hall closet."

In the real world, you probably won't be able to keep your stuff 100 percent collected all of the time. If you're like most people, you'll move too fast and be engaged in too many things during the course of a week to get all your ideas and commitments captured outside your head. But it should become an ideal standard that keeps you motivated to consistently "clean house" of all the things about your work and life that have your attention.

Ready, Set. . .

There are very practical reasons to gather everything before you start processing it:

1. it's helpful to have a sense of the volume of stuff you have to deal with;

2. it lets you know where the "end of the tunnel" is; and

3. when you're processing and organizing, you don't want to be distracted psychologically by an amorphous mass of stuff that might still be "somewhere." Once you have all the things that require your attention gathered in one place, you'll automatically be operating from a state of enhanced focus and control.

It can be daunting to capture into one location, at one time, all the things that don't belong where they are. It may even seem a little counterintuitive, because for the most part, most of that stuff was not, and is not, "that important"; that's why it's still lying around. It wasn't an urgent thing when it first showed up, and probably nothing's blown up yet because it hasn't been dealt with. It's the business card you put in your wallet of somebody you thought you might want to contact sometime. It's the little piece of techno-gear in the bottom desk drawer that you're missing a part for. It's the printer that you keep telling yourself you're going to move to a better location in your office. These are the kinds of things that nag at you but that you haven't decided either to deal with or to drop entirely from your list of open loops. But because you think there still could be something important in there, that "stuff" is controlling you and taking up more psychic energy than it deserves. Keep in mind, you can feel good about what you're not doing, only when you know what you're not doing.

So it's time to begin. Grab your in-basket and a half-inch stack of plain paper for your notes, and let's . . .

... Go!

Physical Gathering

The first activity is to search your physical environment for anything that doesn't belong where it is, the way it is, permanently, and put it into your in-basket. You'll be gathering things that are incomplete, things that have some decision about potential action tied to them. They all go into "in," so they'll be available for later processing.