Chapter 2

Question 1

Three things go on your calendar:

Answer 1

Three things go on your calendar: • time-specific actions; • day-specific actions; and • day-specific information

Question 2

Weekly Review is the time to

Answer 2

Weekly Review is the time to • Gather and process all your “stuff.” • Review your system. • Update your lists. • Get clean, clear, current, and complete.

Question 3

The Four-Criteria Model for Choosing Actions in the Moment

Answer 3

1. Context 2. Time available 3. Energy available 4. Priority

Question 4

Three different kinds of activities you can be engaged in:

Answer 4

• Doing predefined work • Doing work as it shows up • Defining your work

Question 5

The Six-Level Model for Reviewing Your Own Work.

Answer 5

• 50,000+ feet: Life • 40,000 feet: Three- to five-year vision • 30,000 feet: One- to two-year goals • 20,000 feet: Areas of responsibility • 10,000 feet: Current projects • Runway: Current actions Let’s start from the bottom up:

Question 6

Runway

Answer 6

Runway: Current Actions This is the accumulated list of all the actions you need to take— all the phone calls you have to make, the e-mails you have to respond to, the errands you’ve got to run, and the agendas you want to communicate to your boss and your spouse.

Question 7

10,000 Feet: Current Projects

Answer 7

10,000 Feet: Current Projects Creating many of the actions that you currently have in front of you are the thirty to one hundred projects on your plate. These are the relatively short-term outcomes you want to achieve, such as setting up a home computer, organizing a sales conference, moving to a new headquarters, and getting a dentist.

Question 8

20,000 Feet: Areas of Responsibility

Answer 8

20,000 Feet: Areas of Responsibility

You create or accept most of your projects because of your responsibilities, which for most people can be defined in ten to fifteen categories.

These are the key areas within which you want to achieve results and maintain standards. Your job may entail at least implicit commitments for things like

• strategic planning,
• administrative support,
• staff development,
• market research,
• customer service, or
• asset management.

And your personal life has an equal number of such focus arenas:

• health,
• family,
• finances,
• home environment,
• spirituality,
• recreation, etc.

Listing and reviewing these responsibilities gives a more comprehensive framework for evaluating your inventory of projects.

Question 9

Context

Answer 9

• A specific location or
• having some productivity tool at hand, such as a phone or a computer
• Or being in the prescence of main subject.
• For example being in the prescence of manager or daughter

Question 10

Time Available

Answer 10

When do you have to do something else? Having a meeting in five minutes would prevent doing many actions that require more time.

Question 11

Energy Available

Answer 11

How much energy do you have? Some actions you have to do require a reservoir of fresh, creative mental energy. Others need more physical horsepower. Some need very little of either.

Question 12

Priority

Answer 12

Given your context, time, and energy available, what action will give you the highest payoff? You

Question 13

The Core Process:

Answer 13

The Core Process: 1. We collect things that command our attention; 2. Process what they mean and what to do about them; and 3. Organize the results, which we 4. Review as options for what we choose to 5. Do.

Question 14

The Collection System Success Factors

Answer 14

1. Every open loop must be in your collection system and out of your head.
2. You must have as few collection buckets as you can get by with.
3. You must empty them regularly.

Question 15

Collect

Answer 15

know what needs to be collected and how to collect it most effectively so you can process it appropriately. In order for your mind to let go of the lower-level task of trying to hang on to everything, you have to know that you have truly captured everything that might represent something you have to do, and that at some point in the near future you will process and review all of it.

Question 16

Gathering 100 Percent of the “Incompletes”

Answer 16

In order to eliminate “holes in the bucket,” you need to collect and gather together placeholders for or representations of all the things you consider incomplete in your world—that is, anything personal or professional, big or little, of urgent or minor importance, that you think ought to be different than it currently is and that you have any level of internal commitment to changing

Question 17

What Is It?

Answer 17

For example, many of the items that tend to leak out of our personal organizing systems are amorphous forms (Vague uncrystalized) that we receive from the government or from our company—do we actually need to do something about them?

take just a few seconds to figure out what in fact the communication or document was really about. Which is why the next decision is critical.

Question 18

No Action Required If the answer is NO, there are three possibilities

Answer 18

1. It’s trash, no longer needed.
2. No action is needed now, but something might need to be done later (incubate).
3. The item is potentially useful information that might be needed for something later (reference).

Question 19

Two things need to be determined about each actionable item:

Answer 19

1. What “project” or outcome have you committed to? and
2. What’s the next action required?

Question 20

What’s the Next Action?

Answer 20

This is the critical question for anything you’ve collected; if you answer it appropriately, you’ll have the key substantive thing to organize. The “next action” is the next physical, visible activity that needs to be engaged in, in order to move the current reality toward completion.

These are all real physical activities that need to happen. Reminders of these will become the primary grist for the mill of your personal productivity-management system.

Question 21

Do It, Delegate It, or Defer It

Answer 21

1. Do it. If an action will take less than two minutes, it should be done at the moment it is defined.
2. Delegate it. If the action will take longer than two minutes, ask yourself, Am I the right person to do this? If the answer is no, delegate it to the appropriate entity.
3. Defer it. If the action will take longer than two minutes, and you are the right person to do it, you will have to defer acting on it until later and track it on one or more “Next Actions” lists.

Question 22

The Next-Action Categories

That action needs to be the next physical, visible behavior, without exception, on every open loop. Any less-than-two-minute actions that you perform, and all other actions that have already been completed, do not, of course, need to be tracked; they’re done.

What does need to be tracked is;

Answer 22

• Every action that has to happen at a specific time or on a specific day (enter these in your calendar);
• Those that need to be done as soon as they can (add these to your “Next Actions” lists);
• And all those that you are waiting for others to do (put these on a “Waiting For” list).

Question 23

Three things go on your calendar:

Answer 23

• time-specific actions;
• day-specific actions; and
• day-specific information

Question 24

Time-Specific Actions

Answer 24

This is a fancy name for appointments. Often the next action to be taken on a project is attending a meeting that has been set up to discuss it. Simply tracking that on the calendar is sufficient.

Question 25

Day-Specific Actions

Answer 25

These are things that you need to do sometime on a certain day, but not necessarily at a specific time.

Question 26

Day-Specific Information

Answer 26

The calendar is also the place to keep track of things you want to know about on specific days—not necessarily actions you’ll have to take but rather information that may be useful on a certain date.

It’s also helpful to put short-term “tickler” information here, too, such as a reminder to call someone after the day they return from a vacation.

Question 27

Nonactionable Items

You need well-organized, discrete systems to handle the items that require no action as well as the ones that do. No-action systems fall into three categories: trash, incubation, and reference.

Answer 27

Nonactionable Items

You need well-organized, discrete systems to handle the items that require no action as well as the ones that do. No-action systems fall into three categories:

trash, incubation, and reference.

Question 28

Reference Material

Reference systems generally take two forms:

(1) topic- and area-specific storage, and
(2) general-reference files.

Answer 28

• The first types usually define themselves in terms of how they are stored—for example, a file drawer dedicated to contracts, by date;
• Everyone needs close at hand for storing ad hoc information that doesn’t belong in some predesignated category.

Question 29

What to Review When

Answer 29

If you set up a personal organization system structured as I recommend, with a

• “Projects” list,
• a calendar,
• “Next Actions” lists,
• and a “Waiting For” list,

not much will be required to maintain that system. The item you’ll probably review most frequently is your calendar, which will remind you about the “hard landscape” for the day

Question 30

The Weekly Review is the time to

Answer 30

• Gather and process all your “stuff.”
• Review your system.
• Update your lists.

Question 31

Do

Answer 31

With the proper preplanning you can feel much more confident about your choices. You can move from hope to trust in your actions, immediately increasing your speed and effectiveness.

Every decision to act is an intuitive one. The challenge is to migrate from hoping it’s the right choice to trusting it’s the right choice.

Question 32

Doing Predefined Work

Answer 32

When you’re doing predefined work, you’re working off your “Next Actions” lists—completing tasks that you have previously determined need to be done, managing your workflow.

Question 33

Doing Work as It Shows Up

Answer 33

Often things come up ad hoc—unsuspected, unforeseen—that you either have to or choose to respond to as they occur.

Question 34

Defining Your Work

Answer 34

Defining your work entails

• clearing up your in-basket,
• your e-mail,
• your voice-mail,
• and your meeting notes and
• breaking down new projects into actionable steps.

As you process your inputs, you’ll no doubt be taking care of some less-than-two-minute actions and tossing and filing numerous things (another version of doing work as it shows up). A good portion of this activity will consist of identifying things that need to get done sometime, but not right away. You’ll be adding to all of your lists as you go along.
Once you have defined all your work, you can trust that your lists of things to do are complete. And your context, time, and energy available still allow you the option of more than one thing to do. The final thing to consider is the nature of your work, and its goals and standards.

Question 35

30,000 Feet: One- to Two-Year Goals

Answer 35

What you want to be experiencing in the various areas of your life and work one to two years from now will add another dimension to defining your work.

Question 36

40,000 Feet: Three- to Five-Year Vision

Answer 36

Projecting three to five years into the future generates thinking about bigger categories:

1. organization strategies,
2. environmental trends,
3. career and life-transition circumstances.

• Internal factors include
• longer-term career,
• family, and
• financial goals and considerations.

Outer-world issues could involve changes affecting your job and organization, such as

• technology,
• globalization,
• market trends,
• and competition.

Question 37

50,000+ Feet: Life

Answer 37

This is the “big picture” view.

Why does your company exist?

Why do you exist?

The primary purpose for anything provides the core definition of what its “work” really is. It is the ultimate job description. All the

• goals,
• visions,
• objectives,
• projects,

and actions derive from this, and lead toward it.