Real Time Management
Tom Gilbert, in his book “Engineering Human Performance,” asserts that the purpose of performance improvement should be to generate leisure. It could be argued that this is the purpose of time management as well.
Unfortunately, the reality is that, because we exist in a competitive enviroment, any time that is freed up by performance improvement (or good time management) rarely ends up being available for leisure. (There is a lot of truth to the cliche that the reward for getting more work done is getting more work to do. Our neighbor used to say that all he got for working his fingers to the bone was bony fingers!) GTD (or any system) won’t change the way the planet operates.
Is there a way to win at this game? Here is the problem. I have always thought of my complete set of “things to do” as being broken into the following three categories.
1. Things I have to do
2. Things I ought to do
3. Things I want to do
My frustration comes when the things I have to do crowd out everything else. When I analyze it, I believe the ideal internal state is reached when you completely eliminate category 1. And, I don’t think I am alone. Consider what people say/do when they have enough money to make virtually any choice a feasible alternative. They hire assistants (to do the crud), they have things delivered (to avoid errands), they quit their jobs (to avoid selling their time), etc…all of which eliminates or minimizes category #1.
The GTD method is great for making sure you don’t miss anything in category #1 but it actually seems that, by being more rigorous, you actually find more category #1 stuff to do!! (Technically, that’s probably wrong…but it feels that way.)
Since most of us will never become completely free of category #1, the key to getting to #2 and #3 stuff can only be to find ways to at least minimize category #1 tasks. Either by doing them faster or by eliminating them entirely, either through delegation or discontinuance. In process improvement terms, category #1 tasks are essentially non-value-added tasks. (They are a little different–they do need to be done–they just don’t provide much of a sense of accomplishment or meaning.) Next post we will look at ways of minimizing or eliminating category 1, stuff you have to do.
Filed under: Pete's Blog
