Wayne Schuller’s Blog

He has done cool flickr annotations:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/challies/4248235677/in/photostream/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/challies/4248235113/in/photostream/

I love thinking about the shape of a pastor’s week and about their study/office.

Here is a tour by Mark Dever:

Mark Dever – Study Video from Together for the Gospel (T4G) on Vimeo.

H/T Justin Taylor

AAPO did update their website with a great list of activities last week.

I wasn’t able to make any events, but I trust it was a great success.

This week the Australasian Association of Professional Organsiers are running “National Organising Week”.

I hope they can get organised enough to update their website to tell us what is happening. Peter Walsh is involved and I’m genuinely interested.

Gmail just gets better. New improvements to labels will make those using GTD within gmail even more productive.

I use GTD in Gmail labels according to this article on Davidco. It requires no extra plugins.

(I only follow the task labels, I don’t keep project lists in gmail)

Good productivity wisdom for pastors.

Spanning more than four months on the blog, C.J.’s 17-part series on biblical productivity has finally concluded. Via email and in personal conversations many of you have requested that the series be provided as a single document to make it easier to print and read. And today we are making this entire series available as a single 36-page document.

via Biblical Productivity Series PDF.

From reports of the state funeral for Nancy Bird-Walton, I was fascinated by this quote of hers repeated by Archbishop Jensen:

‘You’ll never reach your greatest potential if you walk past the dish-washer without emptying it or leave your costume on the bathroom floor.’

http://www.sydneyanglicans.net/sydneystories/sydney_farewells_nancy_at_cathedral

Googling the term I found the quote with more context:

What do you think is the thing that you learned in your early life that stood you in best stead throughout the rest of it?

Enthusiasm, self-discipline … Let me think. Stop for a minute. Being prepared to do anything – not saying, ‘It’s not my job’. Being prepared to use your hands or your head and do something that has to be done. Getting in and doing something. Not walking past the job and saying, ‘Well that’s not for me’. I know I laugh at myself because once, when speaking to a school, the headmistress spoke about how they would all reach their greatest potential and so on, and when I finished my speech I said, ‘You’ll never reach your greatest potential if you walk past the dishwasher without emptying it or leave your costume on the bathroom floor‘. [Laughs] And that I think it’s as simple as that you know. People just drop their clothes and expect somebody else to pick them up and that happens in a family all the time. It’s I think that …

Doing what’s in front of you.

Doing what’s in front of you. That’s what it is. Doing what’s in front of you.

Nancy Bird – Walton – Interview Transcript tape 4

I think this is a good description of a core value that feeds personal productivity. Not leaving jobs undone. Taking responsibility. Doing what’s in front of you. That is why GTD creates a trusted system, of lots of smart lists, so that you basically have the right things ‘in front of you’.

Once you have the trusted system, you still need self-discipline and hard work, but effectiveness is found in simply doing what is in front of you.

Nielsen is the usability guru. The lesson is you must master your inbox or it gets hard to do any work at your pc without being worried if there is something critical in your email that you have forgotten about. It is a common reality of our current environment that we are all overwhelmed by inputs and demands.

Take control. Inbox zero today.

Website usability exists in a favorable environment, as users increasingly understand the predominant design conventions and continue to get better connectivity and larger screens. In contrast, email lives in an ever-more hostile environment — that is, in an ever-more crowded inbox. Users in our research were overwhelmed by their inboxes and increasingly felt pressured by unsolicited or fraudulent email.

Transactional Email and Confirmation Messages (Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox).

In GTD one of the key metrics is not volume but age.

Imagine you had to choose one of the following two situations:

1. Todo lists with hundreds of clearly defined actions and items, most of them less than 6 months old.
2. Todo lists with dozens of ill defined actions, many of them over a year old

I would much prefer option 1.

The GTD outlook is to see task management as a martial art. There are lots of free flowing, quickly dating actions and items that you punch and kick through quickly and regularly.

The health of the system is not whether you have reduced todo lists to a small size, but that your lists are fresh and not stagnating.

So GTD is much more than “doing lists”. It is having a short/medium term memory that exists outside of your head. When the memory is ‘trusted’, you are free to focus on doing things creatively and energetically.

If your lists are full of items you are avoiding, it may be because they do not contain fresh “next actions” but stale reminders of projects that you aren’t yet clear on what the next action is.

One of the principles of GTD is clearing your head of all naggy cruft.

Any annoying reminders, unfinished commitments or jobs, can all create “drag” on your creativity and clear thinking.

I’ve renewed my GTD effort in 2009. I’ve enjoyed regular weekly reviews, sweeping my mind of concerns that aren’t represented in my action or project lists, and putting them into the system. Everything  I need to remember, big or small, goes into the system.

It is a good feeling to have a clear head. I do feel a little overwhelmed by everything on my lists, and it is a busy and stressful time of year. I may not get everything done that I’m committed to. GTD can’t fix that, though permeating the process with prayer helps. It is a great feeling not having the stress of “is there something I’ve forgotten?” That kind of stress creates an unseen but large drag on personal effectiveness.

One fun little side effect of clearing my head this year was that I became more aware of an 80’s hip hop song that has been spinning around in my head for 20 years. I had it on a mix tape that I played a million times as a teenager. Growing up in the country near Ballarat, the only access to this kind of music was getting reception to a Melbourne alternative radio station (RRR) at the exact right time of week. This song was from my ‘gold’ mix tape.

For 20 years I had been thinking I should figure out what that song was but I’ve always had too much other cruft in my head to bother doing anything. This week with a bit of help from Google and the Wikipedia reference desk I discovered the song is called “Bad Young Brother” by the British artist “Derek B”. I won’t link to the embarrassing Youtube video clip.

How much of your brain capacity is clogged with naggy reminders or unresolved commitments?

This was the temperature when I walked into my office this afternoon:

I love Gmail. It is clearly the best email client bar none.

But Google Calendar is awful. Cumbersome. Slow. The event edit page is slow and ugly. I currently put reminders in it to be emailed to myself – it is a way of keeping my action lists from being drowned.

What Gmail really needs is an incubate feature. “Incubate this email for the next 1/7/n days” (ie: archive it for that time, then put it back in my inbox)

I could use a third party calendar site or some other todo list like service. I’m sure there are some great services out there, I’ve tried a few. But they rarely have streamlined user interfaces. When I am juggling lists and tasks, all these “workflow processing” type of actions need to be very very quick – two or three clicks away. Four clicks and it won’t happen. Ideally it happens from the keyboard with zero mouse interaction.

Thats why I hope it can all be done within gmail one day.

Fortunately, as planned, my copy of MIAW arrived during my Jan holiday, allowing me to spend some quality time reflecting on my own leadership, control and perspective. This book is David Allen’s long awaited follow up to “Getting Things Done“. (I’ve also read his smaller release “Ready for Anything”).

This book is really GTD without the nuts and bolts specifics, but goes into much more depth as to why GTD works, and why you need to work on the “horizons of focus” to gain perspective. Many GTD organised people, such as myself, love the system for the control it gives, but haven’t yet moved into the higher horizons of focus part of the model.

GTD is huge because it gives people control over their stuff, their inboxes, their commitments. For example, for 2 years now I’ve regularly had my email inbox at zero, and physical inboxes not far behind. All my committments go into a trusted system, I never leave stuff in my head. This feels great and works for me. But Allen argues that you need to take the next step and make sure you work on your areas of responsibility, 2-3 year goals, 5 year goals, and life vision and purpose.

It is a great refresher to the GTD principles, going into more depth as to why they work. If you are more a idealistic person, then you might like to read MIAW before the GTD book.

I’ve read somewhat widely in the area of personal organisation, of which for many years Stephen Covey has been king.  But something I loved in MIAW were David’s very humble observations as to why the traditional “top down” time organisation does not work. You simply cannot do a Covey top down, set life goals and roles (“big rocks”) and work to them weekly – if your inbox and diary and personal commitments are in chaos. The runway needs to be cleared. Allen does not gloat about this, but in my mind it is a huge breakthrough in this “science of productivity”. The (organisational) king is dead, long live the king.

As a Christian, I’ve always been a bit suspicious about the whole business vision/mission jargon religion, especially when it’s been imported into church life. But Allen has won me over, to an extent, that pastors and churches should not only be organised an in control of all their commitments, paper, inboxes, and so forth – they should also be constantly pushing their perspective to think ahead as to what God could and might be doing.

Prayer itself is a great perspective maker. As we pray we allow ourselves to implore God to do great things through our service of him, both now and in the future. And as we pray and read the Scriptures, God impresses on our hearts his sovereign power to do more than we can ask or imagine. And we are humbled as sinful people, that we need our Saviour’s blood to atone for our failures and omissions, as well as empower new service – John 15:4.

David Allen is not really pushing a worldview, as much as best practices. They are technologies he has built up through years of 1-1 helping executives get organised. They could be used by Nazi’s as well as CEO’s. I know some very organised Christian leaders who do GTD-type workflow management without ever having read the book, they don’t need it. Other Christian leaders are naturally driven, and therefore productive. But if you are naturally disorganised and lazy, like me, then it is well worth plundering this wisdom.

A Christian email suggests BUSY = “Being under Satan’s Yoke”

I know what they mean!

What is a Christian ethical response to Western busyness?

Is it slowing down the pace of life?

Or overloading with more Christian activities to cover the turf?

If you do the former you risk simply getting controlled by the tyranny of the urgent and demanding.

If you do the latter you haven’t really changed the paradigm.

Which way to go?

I have a break from preaching for a few weeks, so I’m hoping to get lots of other work done and clear my huge (to me) backlog of tasks.

It is not that when I am preaching I do nothing else. But when I am preaching every Sunday the weeks are always packed, frenetic and somewhat stressful.

I remain ever grateful to God for the opportunity to teach, preach and expound the Word of God. I do not deserve this job or role, it is purely a gift of God.

Helen and I can honestly say we are loving being part of God’s people at Holy Trinity and partnering with them in gospel ministry. There is no more exciting place in the world than the local church where the gospel is preached, God’s Word expounded, God praised and worshiped, and God’s people encourage each other to love Christ more.

Most of all, I still remember daily, if not hourly, that God sent his Son to die in my place, to win my forgiveness and to atone for my sins, winning me eternal life. That is the greatest gift of all.

My lists are feeling like this… Sorry big Dave, but I’m getting exhausted.

Do you have a never-ending list? Do you manage your time? Do you manage minutes, tasks, and lists? Do you start each day with a list that has more on it at the end of the day than it did at the beginning of the day, in spite of how many items are completed and crossed off?

Is it Time to Retire the Never-Ending List? – O’Reilly Radar

For some people they know stuff like this, but I’m a truck drivers son! I have to learn this from scratch.

This was a revelation to me: Straight-line filing. Implemented it this week. My files look much nicer on the eye and are more usable:

Keep it straight, keep it organized. A good example of the Straight-Line concept can be seen in the way that names are organized in the phone book. Finding a name is easy because they arranged in columns so your eyes scan them in a straight line. If you had to look back and forth, finding the name would be more difficult and time consuming.

File Management Makeover

Dexion Osborne Park recommends that you use folders with all of the tabs in the same position on the folder. This allows subject titles to line up in a straight line in the drawer or on the shelf. Since the eye sees in straight lines, the most efficient way to organise folders is to use the “straight line” filing method.

Office Ideals

Straight-line filing, with the tabs one behind the other, is not only easier on the eye but simpler to maintain than alternating tab positions.

Steps to Conquer Your Fear of Filing

Setting up files? Consider straight-line filing (all file labels in the same tab position) rather than staggered files (labels left, center, right). Your filing system won’t be disrupted by adding a new file, saving you lots of needless effort in re-arranging files. And it’s easier on your eyes – looking in a straight line is easier than looking back and forth. When I first read this suggestion from Julie Morgenstern, I implemented it on my own files – what a difference! Smead has some nice illustrations of straight-line filing; you don’t need to use their products or use color-coding (as they suggest) to use straight-line filing.

Organizing Tips – Jeri Dansky

Organize Your Work Day… in No Time – Google Book Search

The new David Allen book…

This title will be released on December 30, 2008.

Amazon.com: Making It All Work: Winning at the Game of Work and Business of Life: David Allen: Books

I am a big fan of productivity and personal organisation books. And I think the whole David Allen GTD is very impressive, insightful and exciting. In a few years I imagine the processes will be common place and stock standard. I’ve been implementing the process for a while now, still refining it, still a long way to go. One of my favourite concepts in GTD is that of “cranking widgets”:

One of these hidden gems is the concept of what David Allen calls: “Cranking Widgets”.
The concept is simple – according to David – one of the healthiest jobs psychologically is the one where you show up at work and you see three things:
• A bunch of un-cranked widgets
• A widget-cranking machine
• A bucket to put the cranked widget
Isn’t your job now tad simpler? All you have to do is just take the un-cranked widget, put it into a widget-cranking machine and later put the cranked widget into its bucket.

The Power of Cranking Widgets | GTD Times

I have listened to the old, out of print, pulled from the market, GTD seminar audio CD’s many many times. This is not the audio of the book, but an actual seminar which contains LOTS of material that is not in the book or not unpacked fully in the book – like the “cranking widgets” concept in full.

Sometimes Helen and I have listened to them in the car on a long drive and she has commented “thats level of organisation is not possible” – but with GTD many things are made possible.

Anyway I was encouraged to see that they have released a new edition of the GTD seminar audio CD’s. Only they are $US395. I would certainly pay that much to see David Allen live… But for a CD set? Anybody want to go halves/quarters/eighths with me? You do get 10 audio CD’s of material. If it is anything like the old set, there is alot of “natural planning model” cruft that I found irrelevant, but the exposition of GTD expands on the book incredibly well. (I’ve also read “Ready For Anything” by Allen – it’s ok but not great)

The next best thing to seeing David Allen live is – listening to GTDLive! If you’ve ever wanted to attend a David Allen seminar but couldn’t, here’s the next best thing. GTDLive! is our brand new audio of a full 2-day seminar – packed with insights, tips, and practical applications on GTD in a way that only David can tell you. This is a great value at over 50% off the cost of just a one-day seminar! With GTD Live, you receive this recording of a full 2-day seminar that you can listen to over and over again – anywhere, anytime.

GTD Live

I don’t think GTD is for everyone. Some people seem to naturally organise themselves according to GTD principles. Others will need to spend a few years trying the old school Covey “big rocks”/”first things first”/”top down”/”time prioritisation” model in order to realise that it doesn’t quite work. For those of us who are naturally disorganised and hate ourselves for it, including Christian leaders, GTD is some great Egyptian/hippy methodological wisdom to plunder.