GTD: Getting things done - Part 1

Isn't that one of the most acute challenges in modern organisations, turned upside down by the pandemic, and crippled with excessive email noise and endless days spent videoconferencing??

Just try to do the maths for yourself: Add-up from your day the time spent on mail, chat, phone, VC … What's your number? I bet it is at least 4h … maybe even 6h a day? This is great in a sense: It means you're connected with your team, and you are communicating actively; You participate in the correct propagation of information across the business: Well done and go you! But what else have you actually done today … apart from bouncing emails and chats around, calling an occasional shot, and ticking a few administrative boxes?

Surely your role is not just about that unless you are in an administrative or executive assistant position. Your responsibilities most likely include the production of some form of value and the achievement of specific goals and targets. Therefore, when do you do that? After 8h+ spent during your day, at home or in a sparsely populated office, in technology-enabled conversations and debates with your colleagues, with hopefully a few decisions made and some follow-up actions agreed … when do you find the time, and space, to do your actual job?

Let me guess, you are cheating the system and hacking your life as I used to do: Getting up early to enjoy 1-2h of quiet time before the daily chatter starts? That used to work when the workday started around 9 AM. However, did you notice how progressively your diary has filled up with so-called stand-ups as early as 8 AM? At the other end of the day, once the chimes on your laptop and the buzz on your phone quietens, after some frugal family time, you may have found a sanctuary in the evening hours to finally make the headspace you need to properly think, perform the daily crunch, and if you still have some juice indulge in problem-solving and technical writing. Most often you'll be too tired for that, and you'll find a faint sense of duty done by processing more emails, replying to replies, which will call for more replies, ending up in endless and sterile threads which will make the next day and the one after even noisier.

?God forbids, you might also have already sacrificed a fair chunk of your weekend time to "catch up" and "get on top of things". The early mornings, the late evenings, the weekend… the ultimate contingencies, they look like convenient time buffers we can surely cut through … only at the dangerous expense of the bio-machines we are, which need time to recover, regenerate, grow healthier and more effective. I am talking about our bodies … but altogether about our minds, which are already under heavy stress, courtesy of the pandemic, the struggling economy, and their raft of social consequences.

Still, comes another morning, and we are trying to get things done, to meet our targets, to please our boss, to help our organisation, to earn our paycheck, to get one of the most intense satisfaction in the world, the one of a job well done and of skilful crafting.

Getting things done … this theme is covered by countless books and frameworks, and you might already have found your own method and guru? Well, if so, let's talk about it! Because we really need to become good at that, more than ever. Our individual mental health and collective economic success are at stake, nothing less. The problem posed here is an ancient one, an existential one, a fundamental one, which has only been confused and blurred by our modern way of life and by technology. Therefore, instead of looking for the latest fad or media icon, I suggest looking back to ancient pearls of wisdom first, starting with master Confucius. Have a wonderful day getting a few things done!?