Peter's Blog

When I talk about personal productivity with people often objections are brought up. In the conversation people reject to become personally more productive, as if it would mean they need to do even more work while they already feel overloaded. Also they feel a system or methodology to stay personally more productive to be a lot of work. These appears to be a common misunderstandings. Personal productivity is not about doing more work, but about doing your work in a more effective manner. The result in the end of the day is that you will be more in control and have gained some time while feeling good or at least better about the work done. The little extra effort you might need to put into it in the beginning is being rewarded with more control and some time savings at the end of the day. That additional time is then available to spend on the fun side of life, unless you really love your work so much that you want to spent it there too.

Following the Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology and wanting to do it all the way might look like huge mountain to climb. Maybe it is indeed a huge effort, after all it basically is for most people a behavior change and that will take time. However starting to become personally more productive can already be accomplished while initially implementing a couple of steps. For stuff in the IN basket the GTD workflow starts with the question if it is actionable. If No then file it for reference, delete it or incubate it for possible later action. If Yes then define the next action. I would add one step in between and ask yourself another question first: Is it for me? In many cases, especially in corporate environments, when email comes in you might be on cc, however the cc function may very well be the most miss-used function in email programs. So think about it, is it really for you? If No then delete it right away, if Yes then go on to the next question: is it actionable? and take the appropriate steps after that question.

Starting to implement these simple steps will already easily help people to clear their email in-box. It quickly feels good and based on the positive effects you might even want to take the next step in enhancing your personal productivity!