Welcome to the second part of my series looking at techniques to help achieve an efficient mind sweep (part one can be found here). As the name suggest, a mind sweep involves you capturing down any loose thoughts – whether it be a creative idea, something to do, things to remember, problems that require your attention – onto something external to your brain like a notebook, PDA, iPhone, etc.
The second technique I’m going to discuss involves focusing on your roles and responsibilities (while not an official mind sweep tool in a GTD sense, it is also often referred to as the 20,000ft horizon though I will be giving it a twist of my own in this post). Unlike with the previous approach discussed in part one, there is no specific tool for this. However, where the trigger list is a somewhat haphazard approach to mind sweeping (basically scan through a massive list of keywords until something clicks), focusing on your roles and responsibilities allows you to take a more focused and organized approach.
For this technique to work you need to appreciate that pretty much everything falls under a particular role and/or responsibility. You don’t have to take them all particularly seriously in your life but even so they are there. Let’s take a few examples to clarify the point. If you need to help your child with their homework that would fall under your responsibility as a parent. If you were to donate some books to the local library that could fall under several roles such as being a good citizen, member of the community or homeowner (you’re de-cluttering your house).
When it comes to doing a mind sweep using this approach make a list of as many roles and responsibilities you can find in your life. Don’t worry about being too thorough, you’ll think up more over time (this is where the trigger list can be helpful as it can help you to remember all your roles). A few examples can include…
- Employer
- Your job role
- Blogger
- Parent/grandparent
- Your children
- Education
- Husband/wife
- Finances
- Health
- Homeowner
- Marketing
- Personal growth
The next step is using your list of roles and responsibilities to inspire your brain to release all those locked up thoughts. To do this, ask yourself two questions:
- What should I do regularly to fulfill my roles/responsibilities?
- What one-off goals should I do because of my roles/responsibilities?
Regarding the first question there are always tasks that need regular attention if you want to fulfill your roles and responsibilities. For instance, if you don’t clean your house often you’re not much of a homeowner and if you regularly turn up for work late you’re doing your role as team manager no good. By clarifying that cleaning your home and being on time are key goals it might lead to two things that require attention – create a cleaning rota and buy a new alarm clock.
The second question is simpler but no less important. Using the same roles and responsibilites as before, an example of a one-off goal for a homeowner may be to decorate the bedroom. And a one-off goal for your team manager role may be to come up with a training plan for the new staff. Basically anything that will only happen once or infrequently would fall under this particular question.
October 6, 2009 at 03:06PM
Although a starting point, the trigger list does have it’s limits so your enhancements are a step in the right direction.
An additional trick I found is to develop your own mind map of triggers. In this case you could have a node for each role and then expand as required.
Printing out the mind map also keeps you focused and allows you to add notes, to be dropped into your in-basket for processing.