Tag Archives: productivity

Covey/Hobbs Vs GTD – a War not Worth Waging.

18 Sunday Feb 2018

Posted by in General, Time Management

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Some of you will have no idea what that title means, so that’s as good a reason as any to READ THIS BLOG, is it not? 😊

The title refers to what may, on first glance, be conflicting time management methodologies. GTD is ‘Getting Things Done’, explained in the excellent book of the same name by David Allen. (Make sure you buy the 21st Century update.)

GTD is a list-based system. (Now it gets complicated.) The idea is to collect all your unfinished business, including ‘projects’ which Allen defines as anything that requires more than one step to complete. Having done that, you go through the list and complete all 2-minute jobs. Then you are left with a list of things which you can (usually) only do in a certain place, at a certain time, with a certain person, etc. For example, some of the things may be tasks you can only do ‘At Computer’ so they would then be listed on a list entitled ‘At Computer’. Or ‘At Shops’ for shopping, or ‘In London’, and so on. Time- and day-specific tasks – and ONLY those – go on a calendar (diary page). The lists should have on them only ‘next actions’, the things you have to do next to get the projects done.

That really is an idiot’s guide, and Allen’s system has a lot of thought/psychology and method behind it which this little blog can’t cover.

The Covey/Hobbs system is values/mission-based, and further sub-categorised into Roles. Your mission dictates your activities, which are carried out through the roles you perform in life. For example, I am a trainer, investigator, driving coach, speakers club president, company director unconnected to those other roles, and family bod. You create your goals in role-context, then plan execution of bits of your goals into your planner as priorities. (I’ve explained this before and it’s explained fully in my FREE BOOK.)

Zealots in either case would argue for their preferred option. GTD-philes would argue that lists equate to freedom while Covey/Hobbs is restrictive. Covey/Hobbs would argue their way supports a sense of meaning and peace, while GTD is ‘just’ about productivity, and productivity is not as important as meaning. Deeper analysis would identify further objections to the opposing philosophy, and more supporting evidence for the preferred way. Who has time?

I have a different outlook. I think the GTD Way of collecting all your incompletes, doing the resulting 2-minute jobs and planning the others is an excellent way to get control, while the Covey/Hobbs method is an excellent way of keeping control once you have got it.

My evidence?

People have asked me how I manage so many responsibilities (job, home, family, IAM, IPI, Cardiff Speakers Club,) and my answer is that I can do this because of my mastery of the Covey/Hobbs method, but if I was to take on those responsibilities all at once I would start with GTD until I got things compartmentalised.

I feel this way because both GTD and Covey/Hobbs promote

  • planning at the start of a week,
  • scheduling the things that can or could be done at a particular time (your priorities, which can include your personal priorities),
  • then making lists of the things that need to be done but which have no appointed time.

Both require knowing the end result in advance and deciding what to do about it next. Overthinking it may identify one as requiring ‘task-to-objective’ thinking while the other would be seen as having an ‘objective-to-task’ perspective but in all practicality, they end up being the same process, which is asking “What I gotta do to get what I wanna get?” and then planning to do that action, somewhere.

GTD would have you put them on separate lists, whereas Covey/Hobbs would have you actually plan them into a day. Both philosophies advocate carrying the system with you. GTD would say separate lists obviate re-writing that which is not done, while the alternative is to rewrite unfinished tasks in the next day’s list. (Which takes seconds, or even less if you’re a digi-planner. Oh, the time saved……)

And that, lorries and gelatines, is the only difference. Which is hardly a difference over which one should declare war.

As always, my advice would be to master your preferred method and leave the other well alone, because there is a tendency to try and do both at the same time and when you do that your head gets cluttered – which defeats the objective of either style.

Pick one. Master it. And reap the rewards.

 

Oh, and unlike all those GTD examples of people who get an e-mail a minute (and I have never, ever met one), I get about 10 a day. Makes life a tad easier.

Attendance is optional, productivity is not.

20 Wednesday Dec 2017

Posted by in Discipline, General, Time Management, Uncategorized

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Larry Winget, American motivator-with-attitude, says in the introduction to his book, “It’s Called Work for a Reason!”,

“Bye honey, I’m off to work!”

Oh, bull! You aren’t going to work at all. You are going to the place that isn’t home, where you have to dress a little better than you do around the house. You are going to a place that is full of other people who also just lied to their significant others. You are all liars – you AND those people you say you work with. You say you are co-workers, when the truth is you’re only co-goers.”

I admit I chuckled a bit at that. I am in an envious position where I can manage my workload and, getting it done quickly with (slightly imperfect) time management expertise, I have more down time than most. I try to do an excellent job, but am most challenged when I, like you, are trying to do an excellent job when another expectation-of-an-excellent-job rolls up, closely followed by more. It’s hardly surprising that we want a quiet 10 minutes to prepare for more work.

But Larry does have a point. We are paid to do more than turn up, we are (as my first employer actually told us on an induction course) to put in a good hard day and go home pleasantly tired. Unfortunately, the world has changed and that is now harder to do.

I’m not talking about back-breaking manual labour, even though that is ever-so-slightly less back-breaking than even it was.

The world has changed in that our ability to focus on ‘work’ has been severely compromised by our inability to focus properly on anything! Mobile phones pinging, bleeping, ringing or just being in view mean we MUST check them several times an hour – even if only to see why we HAVEN’T heard a ping or a bleep or a ring. Downtime also excuses a quick Facebook/Instagram/Snapchat/WhatsApp session, doesn’t it?

Perhaps this is why we are now providing courses on ‘How to manage millennials’, a concept that confirms surrender to the ‘me’ generation, rather than suggesting, firmly but politely, that they are being paid to benefit the employer, they CAN be replaced if they don’t work hard enough, and the sun does NOT shine out of their baby-smooth bottoms.

You are paid to work, to produce.

Now, a slight counter-proposition, too. If you are not paid ‘just to be there’ as I suggest, then IF your productivity is good/excellent, IF your standards are high, and IF you can be seen to be a worker, THEN liberties can be given and taken.  I recall an amusing story about a CEO who wanted a manager to have a word with an employee who turned up at 8AM, but went home at 12 noon and played golf all afternoon. After some enquiry, the manager told the CEO, “He’s the most productive employee you have! Get him to teach everyone else how to do that and we’ll be rolling in it!”

Work is measured by RESULTS, not merely PRESENCE. But if you can produce the first through maximising the use of the latter without burning out, your job will be safe. Wherever you work.

 

Where HAS the year gone?

08 Sunday Jan 2017

Posted by in Time Management

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In a blink of an eye, just over 1/52nd of 2017 has passed by, and we’re already back into the post-holiday routine. Suddenly and unexpectedly, the work that built up while we were in the pre-holidays procrastination period has hit us broadside on – all the stuff people put off ‘because it’s Christmas’ still needs to be done, but now it needs to be done alongside all the new work that has arisen as it always does, and always will.

How much of the stress we associate with the amount of work we have to do is wholly the result of our unwillingness to manage our time – or more accurately, ourselves? I’d argue that one of the major factors in our workload woes is our own resistance to doing things at the appropriate time, in the appropriate way, and to the appropriate standard. To a large extent, all three of those factors are within our Circle of Influence, but many of us – the time-strugglers – are unwilling to buy the book, do the course or just take the time to learn how to manage ourselves and our time to best effect. And it is in ‘post-break’ moments that this situation becomes more stark.

One big mistake is putting off the unrelished 5-minute-but-really-important task. Maybe a telephone call, maybe writing a letter or filling out a form. It’ll be a tedious, hateful job that should take 5 minutes, but because it’s tedious and hateful we keep putting it off. Then it suddenly becomes urgent, or worse it doesn’t get done until it’s too late, and we suffer the stress that urgency or potential disciplinary proceedings that ensue.

And it was all our own fault.

You can’t manage time, but you can maximise the time you have, and one simple strategy is to Do It Now! The time management experts all agree – a short task needs to be done as it arises (wherever possible), because doing so opens up available time for the more important stuff to be done properly. It clears space in your head, and it is an inoculation against the stress caused by procrastination.

Of course, Do It Now is not the cure for all time management ills, but I can state two things from my experience of applying the time management methods repeated in my book Effective Time and Life Management, available from Amazon Kindle HERE.

First, doing the quick things now keeps a desk and a brain clean, tidy, and available for creative thinking, planning and execution. Second, having created that time through applying the Do It Now philosophy and by creating and executing on properly scheduled priorities, life is less stressful and much more productive. Not just in work, but where leisure time becomes available because the work is done. And by planning that as well, life can be great.

Buy a book – preferably mine but there are others listed on this site – and apply what is contained therein.

And don’t say you haven’t got time. Read a book one Saturday instead of going to the pub. You’ll probably spend less and will definitely learn something that can improve your lot 24/7.

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Go on – I very dare you. HERE.

Time to step up – and this time I mean ME.

10 Sunday Jul 2016

Posted by in Character and Competence, Discipline, Uncategorized

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I was reading Black Hole Focus by Dr Isaiah Hankel this week, having scanned it in bookshops and considered the content as ‘readable’. Truth is, it’s a bit Anthony Robbins so far, in that the ideas and methods reflect the Big Man’s methods and ideas. That’s not necessarily a negative criticism because if a method or philosophy works then any personal development book will have the same stuff in it. (Which is why I really must stop buying them….)

(BTW, in my defence there is a systematic structure to the philosophy of The Three Resolutions so it is a bit of a lot different.)

One of the concepts Hankel suggests we use is to ‘Name Your Purpose’, which resonates with me as a proponent of Personal Mission Statements. It’s about creating an identity for what you want to achieve, so that it becomes a little more real to you and to your subconscious.

As you know, the name I use for my long term mission statement is the Three Resolutions, but this week I began to seek an outcome which I also named, called the Mastery 55 Project.

In December I turn 55, and my poorly restrained human failings have led me to gain weight, a whole stone in 12 months. (Mainly over Christmas…..) I’ve also developed a less than frenetic work ethic, so even though I do all that is required of me there is a personal sense that I could be getting a lot more done, as mastery and expertise on the TV programme The West Wing is not necessarily a valuable life skill. And I am prone to impatience. (that sentence is quite long enough, dammit!)

Therefore, despite my preaching about character and integrity, I feel I am not walking my own talk. Hence the project, through which I intend to lose all my gained weight, recapture a higher level of physical fitness, increase my productivity, regain that sense of calm and just become ‘better’ by my 55th birthday.

I am tweeting through @mastery55project and a blog can be accessed through the above link, or here if you can’t go back that far. (See patience.)

The project has a its own name, but it does not replace my mission statement as much as it serves it in specific areas, particularly the self-discipline, First Resolution element.

We all, except the saints, veer off course occasionally. It’s how quickly we are willing to correct our course and get back on the right road.

And one method I am using to reinforce my intent is to review my own book, The Three Resolutions! The best way YOU can keep me honest is to read it and challenge me to live by it.

You are my accountability partners. Thank you.

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If it was up to me, Adam and Eve would’ve paved Eden over.

07 Saturday Feb 2015

Posted by in Character and Competence

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“What does it matter how much we do if what we’re doing isn’t what matters most?” Stephen R Covey

I have friends who are exceptionally productive and occasionally bemoan my own comparative laziness when it comes to hard work, but I am steeped in the philosophy of The 7 Habits and as a result know the difference between working hard, and working smart.

It’s an old cliché, in fairness, but clichés are profound wisdom in small packages. In other words, they hold great truths.

Take my garden. I bought my house off my in-laws. When they got it the back garden was flat, even lawn. By the time we bought it, it was a terraced garden, but not built by a craftsman. It was built by an enthusiastic amateur. I, an unenthusiastic non-gardener, then took it over, tried to even out the terracing and then spent the next 20 years with annual weed-hacking. Eventually, my mum paid for several tons of gravel, and my family, some friends and I flattened it enough to gravel it over completely. Job done.

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Other people love gardens and love gardening. They put hours and hours of effort and money into making them pretty.

So – am I lazy when it comes to gardening? No, I just don’t consider it important enough to spend my time on it. A garden is like a physical manifestation of a value statement. If you like gardening or consider it important to have a nice garden, you value it’s creation and maintenance.

I do work hard on a lot of other things that I value. Presentations, my Institute, driving and writing blogs. I find value in doing those things instead of digging and re-digging holes, watering flowers and mowing grass. (I wear the front lawn, it’s only 5 minutes to mow it all.)

So, kudos to the gardeners, they create beautiful vistas and I respect and marvel at their work.

But a complete waste of time ……. For me.