New Summary of GTD

Last month, I summarized David Allen's Google Talk explaining the ideas from his book, Getting Things Done. The talk motivated me to read the book. Here is my somewhat more in-depth summary of GTD.

Work and play are famously believed to be in tension with one another. David Allen says they don’t have to be.

You can keep up on your personal life, handle everything you need to handle, and you can do it without falling behind at work, losing sleep, or becoming more stressed. Allen’s method isn’t based on sheer willpower – it’s a system that breeds efficiency and relaxed productivity, making you get more done in the same amount of time, while keeping your cool.

As Allen puts it, “There is a way to get a grip on it all, stay relaxed, and get meaningful things done with minimal effort, across the whole spectrum of your life and work. You can experience what the martial artists call a ‘mind like water’ and top athletes refer to as the ‘zone,’ within the complex world in which you're engaged”.

How does the surface of a pond react to the drop of a pebble? Perfectly appropriately. A pond doesn’t overreact or underreact. Ripples form according to the mass of the pebble and the force of the drop. Nothing else.

In karate, students are trained to emulate the pond in this way. Stay relaxed, stay balanced, apply techniques, and don’t overreact or underreact. Allen carries this metaphor over to self-management. People are constantly giving either more or less attention to things than they deserve: whether it’s their boss’s comments or the growing pile of dishes in the sink. Be like the pond. Still like water. Neither overreacting or underreacting. Respond perfectly appropriately.

Think back to the last time you were highly productive. Were you stressing out or did you feel in control?

While you were reading this summary, your mind probably wandered, at least once, to something else, maybe something that you need to get done later or that’s been bothering you for a while. During the time that you had these thoughts, did you make any progress on them? Probably not. If something’s on your mind then you probably aren’t making any progress on it and, by definition, your mind isn’t clear.

If nothing else, these distractions are wastes of time and attention. An organizational system that takes these tasks off our minds is the first step toward greater focus and productivity. Items stay on your mind because (1) you haven’t thought of the next action you can take to handle that item, (2) you are unsure about the intended outcome you’re seeking, or (3) you haven’t put reminders of the action and outcome in a place where you’ll see them at the right time.

TIP: The first lesson to learn from GTD is to write things down, even when you don’t feel like you need to. If your brain had a brain, “it would remind you of the things you needed to do only when you could do something about them”. But you’re on your own with a piece of equipment that remembers you need milk when you’re in the shower but not when you’re in the grocery store. So get things on paper. I recommend using an app like Evernote to send yourself reminders at specific times (e.g. when you know you’ll be home).

Work of the past used to be clear-cut and physical. Fields needed ploughing and crops needed harvesting. Nowadays, most jobs are much more ambiguous. The organizational tools of the past (calendars, to-do lists, and ABC prioritization) don’t map perfectly onto contemporary jobs where employees are buried in email, must interact with other departments, pick up the slack of their coworkers, etc.

We need new tools that are better suited for modern day jobs and people.

It’s typical of motivational speakers and gurus to preach “the big picture:” the self-reflexive clarification of fundamental goals and values. Finding meaning and order in life. Allen instead preaches the little picture: next actions and outcomes. He’s not outlining a philosophy of How To Live A Meaningful Life – he’s looking at what works for getting things done.

Almost everyone feels as if they have too much on their plate and not enough time to do it all. This is because they don’t have a proper system for managing their “open loops”. Taking mental notes and then doing what comes to mind is not a system. It’s letting life happen to you. What works is taking charge of the commitments you need to get done. They range from household chores, to things you want to buy, to places you need to tidy, to emails you need to check, to people you agreed to meet. Anything you intend or intended to do that hasn’t been accomplished yet is an open loop.

Allen offers a five-step system for workflow mastery:

1. Collecting
2. Processing
3. Organizing
4. Reviewing
5. Doing

The process begins with the collection of all your commitments. Go through your calendar, your files, the papers lying around your house, etc. Gather up all your to-do lists, write down all your appointments and things that need to be bought, moved, or handled in any way. Once these commitments are all one in place, you have the beginning of a system that you can trust. If your system is incomplete, your brain won’t trust it. But if you know that all your commitments are in one folder, you’ll never need to look for them anywhere other than in that folder. Open loops won’t weigh on your mind so much once you know exactly where they’re filed and when you’ll get to them.

Once you’ve collected all your commitments into one place, it’s time to process them. There is a specific process for sorting open loops.

If something can be done in less than 2 minutes, do it now. If it can’t, ask yourself if you’re the right person for this job and consider delegating it. If you are the right person, defer it. Schedule a specific time for it to get done. Make a note on your calendar. Treat your calendar as sacred and resist the impulse to postpone actions once you’ve reached the date marked for them on your calendar.

Allen also suggests a folder for reference materials, as well as a Someday/Maybe file for things that you might want to accomplish one day but that aren’t pressing.

Reminders will be useless if they aren’t seen at the right time and place. For easy reviewing, place tasks in a calendar, “Next Actions” list, “Projects” folder, and/or a “Waiting For” list (for tasks that require something else to happen before you can take your next action).

Group your next actions into bunches that can be completed successively. So your “Calls” list should include all the phone calls you need to make. Once you’re in phone mode, you might as well stay there. And “Errands” should include all the things you need to do once you’re out. Other suggested list headings are “At Computer,” “At Office,” “At Home,” “Agendas,” and “Read/Review.”

Non-actionable items can be stored in a “tickler file.” The tickler file holds physical reminders that you want to see on specific dates – like a three-dimensional calendar. Imagine a folder containing documents filed for different dates. Basically, it’s the same idea as sending emails to your future self except that it utilizes physical documents.

And whatever needs to be trashed, trash. You probably have a lot of junk hanging around that clutters up your workspace. Throw out everything except supplies, equipment, decorations, and reference material.

When it comes to selecting next actions in the moment, consider four criteria:

Context – Where are you and what tools do you have at your disposal?

Time – How much time do you have available?

Energy – Which actions do you have the required energy level to deal with?

Priority – What is the most important and urgent remaining action for me to take?

The doing phase is self-explanatory on its surface: get things done. Remember to work smarter, not harder. It often takes a lot of time and effort to close loops. But that doesn’t mean maximizing your time and effort spent is the best way to speed the process up. Formalizing your decision process with a planning model can help you generate action steps with minimal effort in just a few minutes.

THE FIVE PHASES OF PROJECT PLANNING:

To accomplish virtually any task, your mind has to go through 5 steps:

1. Defining purpose and principles - what you want to do and why
2. Outcome visioning – envision what it’s going to be like and what you’ll get out of it
3. Brainstorming – asking yourself questions about when, where, how, to go about it
4. Organizing – sort your brainstormed ideas and questions into a prioritized list
5. Identifying next actions – go through a list of actions according to your priorities

You identify a need, imagine a way to fill it, generate ideas about how to fill this need in the optimal way, sort these ideas into a structure, and then use that structure to guide actions that turn your ideas into real outcomes. Allen calls this the naturalistic planning model. The planning stage isn’t done until every action step has been outlined except for those that cannot be determined until some other event occurs.

It’s rare for people to actually go through all these steps in an organized way. In real life, meetings often start with the question: “What’s a good idea for this?” Allen only recommends asking this question 80% of the way through your planning process.

People aren’t good at planning ahead. In elementary school, kids learn to write an outline for their reports. But often, the students write the report and then base the outline on what’s already written. This inability or unwillingness to structure ideas lasts into adulthood.

When shit hits the fan, the natural planning model gets done in reverse. In an emergency, people find ways to get the work done. Then when they realize there’s a problem, they try to get organized. This leads to an unproductive brainstorming session. Which may lead to an introspective clarification of what they’re really trying to get done and what purpose it serves. No matter what, you’re going to have to go through the five steps to realize your goal, so you might as well get it done in advance in a structured, safe way.

Notice that this process requires no new skills. You already have the ability and tools to go through all five steps on your own.

Allen: “You can try it for yourself right now if you like. Choose one project that is new or stuck or that could simply use some improvement. Think of your purpose. Think of what a successful outcome would look like: where would you be physically, financially, in terms of reputation, or whatever? Brainstorm potential steps. Organize your ideas. Decide on the next actions. Are you any clearer about where you want to go and how to get there?”

TIP: Allen gives an example of his own trick for getting himself to exercise: costume. Putting on exercise clothes makes him feel like exercising. If he doesn’t put the clothes on, he’ll feel like doing something else. Another example is putting something in front of the door, or attaching it to your keys, if it’s something that you need to remember to take with you. These are very simple actions you can take that will let your System 2 win the tug of war with your System 1.

When most people go through Allen’s comprehensive collecting process, they describe themselves as “exhausted”, “overwhelmed”, or “fatigued”. Yet upon completion, they use words like “relieved” or “in control”. How does it work that the same task creates such opposite emotions? Is organization enjoyable or exhausting?

First, Allen asks us to locate the source of the negativity. He says that the negative emotions associated with his organization process come from the collection of broken commitments. The “in” basket fills up with tasks you committed to but never actually got done. This is damaging to your self-trust. You want to be able to trust yourself to do the tasks you’ve laid out for yourself.

When you hold commitments only in “psychic RAM", you’ll probably dedicate either too much or too little attention to them. When you remember something you need to do and write it down, it feels good. But when you trust yourself and your system enough that you believe everything you need to worry about is written down where it needs to be then it will feel even better. You’ll no longer have to spend time thinking of your commitments (reminding yourself about them) instead of thinking about them.

Another source of negativity is imagination. When we contemplate doing our taxes, we imagine scenarios of how grueling a process it is and how confused and frustrated we’ll end up. The solution to our own creativity is to intelligently dumb things down by focusing on the next action. “Doing taxes” is difficult but specific actions are easily completed. You’ll get much more of a boost of positive energy at the thought of sitting down for an action you’re confident you can accomplish.

TIP: Every week, do a Weekly Review. Go through the five phases of workflow management, organize your loose papers, process your notes, check the upcoming dates on your calendar, review your files and folders, and empty your head.

Allen uses the metaphor of altitudes to describe the various levels at which one can think about goals.

50,000 feet: Life

40,000 feet: 3-5 years

30,000 feet: 1-2 years

20,000 feet: Areas of responsibility

10,000 feet: Current projects

Runway: Next actions

At each of these levels, you have open loops that need to be closed. Allen suggests starting from the bottom up, at the level of next actions. Figuring out your higher level goals and values won’t necessarily lead to concrete next actions you could take to approach those long-term goals. Next time you end a meeting, ask: “What’s the next action?”

Open-minded Disbelief

Over New Years, my sister accused myself and another sister of being "close-minded" for not believing in astrology. It stood out to me that defining "close-minded" as "not believing in something" is pretty crazy. For one thing, nobody believes in everything so the accusation is hypocritical. Secondly, beliefs usually (if not always) imply disbeliefs. If you believe it to be cold outside, that means you don't believe it to be hot. But thirdly, I disagree with the commonly implied association between "open-mindedness" and belief.

Being open- or close-minded is one thing. Believing or not believing is a completely separate thing. I'm not sure open-mindedness is even correlated with belief.

I think there are some statements that are so clearly false that it requires close-mindedness to continue to believe them. In the case of astrology, an open-minded person would consider the available evidence, come up with arguments for why astrology is likely true or false, and search for a model of the world where it's being true makes sense. Given that there is nothing approaching good evidence, good reasoning, or a model of the world where astrology makes sense, in order to still believe that astrology is true, you need to be actively closing your mind to the alternative possibility. I think an open-minded person would struggle to believe in astrology because they would be open to impartially weighing the evidence and various arguments to figure out what's really true. An open-minded consideration such as this can only lead to the conclusion that astrology is false.

Figuring Good Out - December Master Post

A month ago I announced the start of the new EA blogging carnival, Figuring Good Out. The topic for the first month was "blind spots" in the EA movement. We received a pretty good 6 submissions. Hopefully, this number grows next month.

I wrote that "wasting" money and time is sometimes just you investing in yourself.

Ben Kuhn wrote about the need to, when identifying your comparative advantage, make sure you are comparing yourself to the right class of people.

Ruthie Buyers challenged the assumptions behind the popular EA idea that volunteering your time for a good cause is generally less effective than doing more of your day job.

Peter Hurford wrote a guide on how to run an effective fundraiser, something few EAs would consider their forté.

Jess Whittlestone advised us to consider the perspectives on effective altruism we don't hear.

Finally, Dale asks us to think of how our beliefs impact our other beliefs.

Reductionist Treaties

Some disagreements aren't disagreements at all but are illusions of tone and emphasis. Rhys Southan writes a blog called Let Them Eat Meat that rebuttals the arguments for ethical veganism. An ex-vegan himself, he believes that factory farming is really, really horrible and that people should instead feed from lower-exploitation methods of meat production. I think Rhys's position is more closely aligned with veganism than it is with the status quo. But I wouldn't pick up on that from a passive reading of his blog, which is really heavily focused on refuting ethical veganism.

I think these disagreements often come from expectations that others are tribal about their beliefs. If I'm a vegan and someone disagrees with me, I'd go straight to assuming that they see no ethical problems with eating meat. It's an all or nothing way of thinking - either they're with me or against me.

When it comes to complicated subjects where there are many possible defensible positions, all or nothing thinking brews a lot of tension between people whose opinions are pretty similar. It can be hard to tell who your allies are because people rarely break their views down into sub-views, allowing their opponents to identify exactly which sub-views they agree and disagree on. I imagine resolving this problem by clearly stating your sub-views, along with your broader view. In the end, your opinion should look something like a treaty.

So in the case of contemporary debates on the effects of religion, where there's a lot of hostility between people that probably agree on most relevant sub-views, I would offer a treaty of exactly what I accept and reject. My opponent would then be able to pinpoint which parts of my treaty are the points of disagreement and need to be compromised.

My Atheism-Religion Treaty:

• None of the world's religions are literally true and none of their holy books are factual.
• Religion is not needed for people to act morally.
• The current rate of religion in the world is too high and we should hope for rates of religion to lower over time.
• Religious ideas currently have too much power in politics and we should hope for this power to lessen over time.
• An atheist should be able to get elected as president of the United States.
• Supernatural claims require extraordinary evidence.
• Religion should not be taught in science textbooks or classrooms.
• When religious claims clash with scientific claims, we should side with science.
• Religion is sometimes a motivating force for positive actions and it is sometimes a motivating force for negative actions.
• We shouldn't be too hard on religious people - it isn't a good persuasion tactic anyway.
• Holding religious views doesn't make you stupid or immoral. 

I think if Sam Harris, Johnathan Haidt, and Reza Aslan outlined their views like this, instead of signalling themselves as either enemies or friends of religion, they would find that they only disagree on one or two sub-views.

Capping Shakespeare at 99

What's Shakespeare good for anyway? Why don't we just get rid of all his work and move on?

Well, it turns out, for plenty of reasons.

For one thing, people like Shakespeare's work. Millions of people get enjoyment from his plays.

Secondly, his plays have the ability to change audiences for the better. Studies show that reading literature can increase empathy and tolerance and improve social skills and theory-of-mind.

Thirdly, literature can allow audiences to change in their own way. This sort of change is likely net positive.

Fourthly, Shakespeare's plays are important cultural artifacts that say a lot about the society that produced them.

Fifthly, the production of Shakespeare's plays creates jobs.

Sixthly, now that Shakespeare is so influential and talked about, reading his work will let you see how he influenced other writers. Plus, you'll finally be able to get all the references.

Seventhly, Shakespeare had his own style and authorial voice. You won't get quite the same product from reading a different author or playwright.

Eighthly, reading Shakespeare's plays improves reading skills, which are very valuable.

Ninthly, reading Shakespeare can be a good stepping stone toward an interest in "intellectual" stuff.

These are all perfectly good reasons to support Shakespeare. They're also perfectly good reasons to support JK Rowling.

Then why does it sound wrong to put these two writers in the same sentence like that? Maybe each reason applies to both authors but they apply more to Shakespeare than they do to Rowling.

So Harry Potter teaches reading skills but Shakespeare's plays teach better reading skills? Harry Potter creates jobs but Shakespeare's plays create more jobs? Harry Potter has millions of fans but Shakepeare's plays have even more fans? Harry Potter is an important cultural artefact that says a lot about its environment but Shakespeare's plays are even more representative of their time? This doesn't sound very plausible to me. Maybe it's true for some of the nine reasons but some of the others are probably more true of Rowling's work than they are of Shakespeare's.

I think the reason why this comparison feels like blasphemy is that most people have another reason to support Shakespeare: Tenthly, he is a shining spiritual knight of creativity with god-given gifts of artistic splendidness.

Shakespeare has the "it" factor. His work is high in "artistic value," meaning his work has the properties that most people incorporate into their rubrics for evaluating artistic value. His work requires a high level of training and skill, it has proven to be timeless, it has high emotional impact, it contains profound ideas, there is high aesthetic value, and so on. These are the sorts of qualities people look for in a Great Godly True Artist.

But these judgments are (1) largely rooted in arbitrary facts of evolutionary biology, (2) largely affected by the idiosyncracies of your particular culture, (3) partly affected by your personal experiences, (4) partly affected by the context (lighting, mood, position, time of day) in which you experience the art, and (5) are virtually never made in any formal, coherent way but are instead blended together with a mix of intuitions and arguments.

We can definitely say that Shakespeare scores very well on traditional rubrics of artistic value, as well as any artist in history. But all that tells you is that lots of different kinds of people like his stuff. It doesn’t tell you about any kind of “real” value that transcends groupings of opinions. If we look at artists in terms of how much they offer the rest of us, the Tenth Reason starts to look pretty empty. Even if it was true that Shakespeare was orders of magnitude better than JK Rowling at each skill (which it isn’t), that still wouldn’t mean much in terms of what the two of them have to offer the rest of us.

If we look at art according to what it accomplishes in the world, the artists that entertain and inspire us most won’t necessarily be the artists that deserve the most praise. Just like how it feels better to donate to a specific face than to donate to a statistic. When you’re running on corrupted hardware, the outcomes that satisfy you aren’t necessarily the outcomes that should motivate you.

The reasons we use to trumpet great artists into angels are the same reasons we use to justify good-but-just-good artists existing at all. When we reduce artists’ skills and effects to their LCDs, there are no longer enough cracks to store the magical ingredients that make it seem like some artists are orders of magnitude more skillful than others. Even Shakespeare gets capped at 99 – at best.

The EA Sports Model of Artistic Talent

When I was a kid I loved to play EA Sports's NHL 2001 on Playstation. In the game, you could play hockey, make trades, set line combinations, draft talent, and do other fun stuff that I can't remember because it's no longer 2001.

Every player in the game had each of their skills rated from 1 to 99. So a really good player might have had a 90 shot, 88 speed, 95 stickhandling, and 85 body checking or whatever. Just think of it like a report card. But they would also have an overall rating that basically summed up their entire report card with their average.

Had Wayne Gretzky been in the game in his prime, he might have had a 97 or 98 overall rating. The worst players in the league had overall ratings in the low 60s. Anybody with an overall rating above 80 was a player you wanted on your team.

I think that we should think of artists in this way too.

I used to believe that some famous artists were basically many orders of magnitude more talented and brilliant than other famous artists. Comparing a Hollywood director like Steven Spielberg or Ron Howard to the greats like Andrei Tarkovsky, John Cassavetes, or Ingmar Bergman was just blasphemous. It's like comparing Miley Cyrus to Bach! Or JK Rowling to Dostoevsky!

I would have told you that not even a thousand Spielbergs could equal up to one Tarkovsky because Tarkovsky is a true artist and Spielberg makes generic Hollywood crap.

I wasn't thinking like NHL 2001. Had I created a video game featuring famous artists, I might have given Spielberg a rating of 65. Then I would have given Tarkovsky a rating of 3,200,673 and Da Vinci a rating of 28,238,912, and Simple Plan a rating of 7.

I'm skeptical of any evaluative model of art that places a single artist as a thousand times more effective than his or her rivals - especially if the basis of that judgment is aesthetic or artistic value rather than social effects or some other objective measure.

I think the EA Sports designers got it right. Even Wayne Gretzky can't surpass 99 and even the worst pro players are above 60. This is how it seems to work in just about every other field. What's more likely, that human talent is especially variable for those fields where it's notoriously difficult to quantify success... or that human evaluations of talent are especially bullshit for those fields where it's notoriously difficult to quantify success? You don't need to worship history's most successful artists - or anyone else for that matter.

Implementation Intentions

Possibly because they have such a terrible name, implementation intentions (also known as if-then plans) seem to be pretty underdiscussed.

Basically, a shit load of psychological theories and models have proposed goal setting as the critical step in goal attainment. And it's not wrong that setting goals is helpful. But we also know that people commonly fall off the wagon when it comes to achieving the goals they set out for themselves whether it's because they never started in the first place, got derailed, kept plugging away at a sunk cost, or overextended across too many goals. Estimated rates of compliance with the advice of self-help material are under 50%. So even people highly motivated to change behaviours fail to put into practice the wisdom they've paid for. Obviously, there's some kind of disconnect between desiring achievable things and achieving desired things.

Recently, there's been a lot of research into an extra step in the process that has an even greater effect on goal attainment. Researchers have found that statements of the form, "I intend to achieve X" ought to be bolstered by if-then plans such as, "If Y happens, then I'll do Z." What these implementation intentions do is prepare for obstacles to goal attainment by contextualizing the goal-directed behaviour within the situation that it will actually take place. Making a commitment to attain a goal doesn't prepare you for the situation in which you'll need to take actions toward that goal. Unforeseen factors can throw you off if you don't consider the environment in which you plan to take next actions.

These have good track records at improving eating habits, increasing physical activity, following recommended relaxation techniques for reducing anxiety, enhancing influenza vaccination rates, and increasing voter turnout.

For each goal that you'd like to attain, consider the next action you can take that will get you there. For actions that you know might be difficult, plan a specific time and place in which you'll take these actions and prepare a response to the foreseen obstacle.