A big fan of the GTD (Getting Things Done) methodology, and having parsed Stephen Coveys 7 Habits and taken a cursory glance at his 8th ‘habit’, I decided it would be useful to condense this overwhelming raft of information, into ‘Brisons 3 highly efficient habits’:
- Work on every item only once.
- Plan to simplify.
- Use the famous four Ds: 1) delete it, 2) delegate it, 3) do it, or 4) defer it.
It would be nice to write a book and make lots of money, but here it is – and for free! It might not seem like much, but there are many folk who think they do these things but really, don’t.
For example, how often do you pick something up, think, then put it down again and move onto another item?
I see this happening everyday in offices – with all the interruptions, focus gets lost and work postponed: which means it has to be completed later. Some years ago now, I subscribed to the notion that if you can do something in less than 2 minutes, then do it now.
I was staggered at how much I achieved following this simple rule.
So many quick tasks are ‘deferred’ – to do later, when they could really be completed on-the-spot. This has two impacts – you get a piece of work completed and it isn’t adding to a pile of small tasks waiting to be done later. Fab!
Planning should be done everyday, some like to plan in the morning, others the night before – either way, the planning process is critical to functioning efficiently. It’s fantastic to arrive in the office, nice and early, knowing you only have to quickly glance over a plan you created the night before.
Even better is to plan to simplify
Tasks can sometimes appear huge, immovable objects that refuse to ever get done. I have found over the years that nearly everything can be simplified – cut down to size and therefore managed more effectively – so I now regularly ask the question “can this task or process be simplified?”
This follows Einsteins principal of making everything as simple as possible, but not simpler and ‘if you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough’. Perfect analogies, I thought.
The four D’s which really need no explanation, work in conjunction with point 1) – do everything only once.
This then, is really “Brisons 2”:
- Plan to simplify.
- Delete, delegate, do or defer – but only once.
And it works like a charm!
Thanks for the reminders. I haven’t read Getting Things Done yet, but also am a fan of Covey.
I often think about touching things twice and still leave them undone.
The other thing is when you empty your pockets, your briefcase, etc., it usually doesn’t take more than another 30 seconds to put it away.