 September 10th 2008
 Productivity Tips
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The idea of a hard landscape is something I discovered from GTD. It is often used in relation to calendars and other time planning tools. The tasks you put them must be unchangeable, or at the very least not susceptible to your whims and moods. If you put down that you need to finish a report on Monday, you better mean it. If it comes to Monday and you decide to push it back a few days, then your calendar becomes unreliable. Your hard landscape starts to turn into a soggy, marshy one.
We all have stuff in our lives that need to be done on particular dates and/or at particular times. They are usually delegated to us (attending a meeting or conference) or forced onto us by outside influences (visiting a sick relative, seeing the dentist). It makes sense that we have some of way of tracking these tasks, whether it be in a day planner, calendar or diary. However, it’s important not to succumb to the traditional habits for these tools and use them to plan how you would like the day to go. It’s all well and good putting down that you want to do projects A, B and C on a particular day but they will invariably be mixed in with stuff that definitely needs to happen on that day. If you fail to do those projects the tool starts to become unreliable with tasks that you keep putting off clouding the hand landscape of tasks that you need to do. Don’t lose sight of what a calendar is for. It should be used to provide crucial information, not be a (poor) motivitational tool to get tasks done.
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