Do Less, Not More And Start Enjoying Yourself!

July 2nd 2008   Productivity   8 comments

GTD has helped foster a culture of indiscriminately adding to your workload due to its lack of prioritizing. As a result people spend many a time doing stuff they don’t really need to do. All the tools and systems in the world won’t make life any easier if you have a huge to-do list. How do you fit in leisure time? How can you relax and recharge your batteries? How can you focus on your work and truly enjoy what you’re doing? It’s time to get out of this silly trend. It’s time we started doing less, not more. It’s time we started doing the right things, not any thing.

Nowadays my productivity system is very simple. It involves printing out one of my weekly planner sheets, jotting down notes and ideas in a notepad and an attitude towards streamlining my workload. I know many people who have much more complex systems. Part of this is no doubt because they like to experiment and play with different tools, but it’s mainly just down to their workload being equally complex. People fall off the bandwagon and try new systems all the time. However, if you simplify your workload, you simply your system and those problems suddenly seize to exist. Try applying Tim Ferriss’s approach to streamlining and automating and then apply David Allen’s system to what is left over.

While the following example is mundane, it really shows what I am talking about. I used to make the assumption that my home needed to be neat and tidy all of the time. This often meant working on particular rooms, like the kitchen and living room, several times a week. Dealing with the messy state of my living room would have made for a typical GTD style project. In actuality the only time my home really needed to be spotless and organized was once a week to stop things getting out of control, or when people were visiting. I applied my prioritizing system and concluded that even though I should perhaps keep my home tidy all the time, I certainly didn’t need to. Realizing this saved me so much time and I was able to apply the same sort of logic elsewhere with even bigger gains. Nowadays I can focus on the work that really matters to me and I can enjoy my free time more too. If I was Tim Ferriss I’d probably use the time to go tangoing in the Andes or something but that’s for another time…

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I also find that GTD creates unrealistic expectations and the stringent approach offered doesn’t fit well with my constantly changing life. What I have taken away from it is using a someday/maybe list to separate what’s important from what really never has to be done.

Thanks for the comment Lauren. It’s interesting how despite being a very functional system, GTD seems to create unfortunate consequences seperate from that system, like the need to always be doing something and unrealistic expectations.

These types of lists really remind me of Steven Covey’s book about the 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People. I really enjoyed your bit about cleaning your house. My mom ensures me that she needs to clean her house every couple of days… but I’m with you. Once a week will usually suffice.

Excellent post, James.

“It’s time we started doing less, not more. It’s time we started doing the right things, not any thing.”

A manifesto! Hear hear!

“Printing out one of my weekly planner sheets, jotting down notes and ideas in a notepad…”

Just to be clear, you do a brain dump once a week and work from that, right?

“Simplify your workload, you simply your system and those problems suddenly seize to exist.”

You put concisely a similar line of thought I’ve had. I’ve been playing with the idea of what kind of system would we have using a “keep everything in your head” approach (a GTD anti-pattern)? Was this more possible 100 years ago?

“Only time my home really needed to be organized was once a week to stop things getting out of control, or when people were visiting.”

Lowering your standards is also high on my list of recommendations. However, my wife and I don’t see eye-to-eye on this. My eyes are not on the dirt and dust, apparently.

Thanks, Matthew. Every Sunday I print out a new sheet and fill it in or copy over information from the old sheet. It essentially serves as my weekly review. I’ve always found starting a new sheet during the review is a great way of really looking at what you’re doing.

I would certainly think it was possible 100 years ago, if only for the simple reason that we weren’t bombarded by information all the time. It amazes me how people were able to keep themselves entertained without a TV, music or just regular, easy access to things. But of course they weren’t running around doing stuff and putting out fires all the time.

Great post James. I think sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in all the systems when really pen to paper can help immensely. I also like the part about your house not needing to be immaculate. How true! I do a roundup each night, which serves as a buffer between my work day (I work from home) and my evening family time. My rule of thumb when it comes it neatness is if you are fifteen minutes away from presentable at any given time, that’s neat enough.

That’s a great rule Brandie. A lot of people make more of keeping their home clean than they need to, perhaps because of some paranoid fear that somebody will show up unannounced.

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