Live Longer and Happier With Closed Loops

Recently, I've been speaking with a few mentors about this topic, and it's been insightful to hear how many different methods people have for this...

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This may help you if:?

You're Feeling Overwhelmed

You're Feeling Overloaded

You're Feeling Out of Control

You Feel You Want To Improve

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So, I'd like to share my thoughts on a few topics today, that will hopefully augment your current way of thinking. It's certainly helped me, especially when you feel life slipping away from your grasp.

• Closed Loops
• Time Management
• To-Do Lists / To-Do Tracking?

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?CLOSED LOOPS

To understand how to 'close your loops' it's good to start with this question...

What the heck is an 'open loop'?

Let's take an example from yesterday, you're about to go to sleep at night, and you get an email/message from a friend/colleague, requesting you to respond by the end of the month. As you're about to go to sleep, your feet are tucked in and you've said goodnight to your favourite hamster; you don't have the time to reply, so...this creates an open loop.

If you do nothing, this email task will now sit at the back of your mind. It will raise its head throughout your day, every day:

"how will I respond?" "when will I respond?" "is this a priority?" With too many open loops, we lose the ability to focus on whatever task we have in front of us.

This, combined with the zeigarnik effect, can be mentally draining and frustrating.

Our brains have a wonderful tendency to focus on open loops, incomplete tasks.

The worst thing, this effect will be detrimental to your mental recovery after you close your laptop at 4... 5 pm. Bombarding your mind with thoughts when you're at home.

This, however, works both ways, and I highly recommend duplicating these strategies for both your personal and work life, so that there is a definitive closure/barrier between them.

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?TIME MANAGEMENT

Here's 3 things that changed my outlook on time management over the last few years:

1. There will ALWAYS be more to do than you can ever get done in a day.
2. This means you'll NEVER get to a point where you're 'done'.
3. Time management isn't about emptying your to-do list.

In summary, instead of thinking about how much work you can do in a day, it's better to focus on doing the right things and doing them as well as possible at the time.

Get rid of the hundreds of items screaming for your attention.

Only then, can your brain run at full capacity.?

You will become smarter, quicker, smoother, and more creative. And yes, most likely, more successful in anything you do.

We will get into time-blocking in another 'session' if this one is successful/useful...But for now, let's familiarise ourselves with some basic tools...

?THE FIX - TASK TRACKING

Let's start with the fix.. you'll be glad to hear it's pretty simple...

If a new task comes up, a new thought, a new event, a new idea, a new challenge... WRITE it down.

Personally, I operate in a similar fashion to a mail sorting system, that sounds weird I know, but bear with me.

This may have stemmed from my time 'working' with my mother on "bring your kid to work day" at RBS, I would wander around with a big sack of mail, dropping the right number off in the right pigeonhole and stealing any stationery that was lying around and not tied down...?

Let's go through the process at a top level:

• MAIL FEEDER: This is your 'inbox' where you IMMEDIATELY throw any thought or task that comes to mind. This is like magic, once something is placed here, that's it, you've closed your loop. You can't forget it, you see it every day, and you have time to prioritise it and select it for a daily task. BUT it's out of your active mind, so you've got more space to think of other things like walking and cooking eggs.
• IMAGE SCANNER/CONTROL SYSTEM: This is your 'sorting' phase, using your creative problem-solving abilities, you can now assign our 'inbox' tasks to the appropriate project, Kanban slot, task list etc..

The #1 skill for 2025 will be creative problem solving

• MAIL STREAM: This is your daily flow of work, and if you implement this correctly, this will become more organised than Brits queuing for a tea cake.
• MAIL STACKER: The end point, this is where your items end up, your WIP (work in progress - not the BSDM kind). Every item is in the correct project location, the correct Kanban slot, and is ready with a due date and ownership to be actioned.

?I use a combination of the following tools, and I'll explain how I use them to get the best result for me at this time. At the end of the day, it's down to your personal preference:

https://kanbanflow.com/

https://app.asana.com/

The Kan Kan KanbanFlow:

There are lots of similar tools to this, like Trello or Wekan etc...

But I prefer this one, it's simple. it's clear. and it gets the job done.

My go-to layout is this, but you can structure yours in any way that best fits your lifestyle. There is not much to explain on how this works, so I'll keep it simple (BONUS: you can drag the cards/tasks around):

• INBOX: Like the mail sorting inbox, this is where every single thought or task goes. It can be anything from "send a card to nan" to "send client x a LinkedIn message" to "buy flip-flops for holiday". The point being; that at this stage in time, when it ends up in this column, it doesn't need to be timebound or strategised, it just needs to be entered, to close your loop.?
• STANDARD DAILY: If you have repetitive daily tasks to achieve, place them here, and you can utilise 'sub-sections' to make tickable drop-down lists. Very satisfying.
• TODAY: Personally, I have ~15 minutes assigned to this every day by MS Viva. Decide on which 3-5 cards you will be able to action or make decisions on TODAY and place them in this column, if you need a little help understanding what to put here, open up a priority matrix on www.miro.com. Then, review this at the end of your day, if you've not achieved them, understand why, action an improvement, and carry them over to tomorrow.
• A and B: These are similar columns, during your 15-minute planning session, place cards in these columns so that you have visibility of future importance and the benefit, you get to see them every day, knowing you've got it covered.
• WAITING FOR: Place any task here that is waiting for someone else, once it's here, it's their problem, and you can take it out of your mind, closing your loop. Then when it's near the due date, check in on progress.
• DONE: easy..

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Asana:?

Most reading this will have heard of this tool.

I have an individual project set out for each live project:

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Within each project, you can then have multiple sections, for example:

• Not started
• WIP
• Complete

Each with an assignee and due date (the paid version allows for priority but this isn't necessary).

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Then, once your project tasks are entered, you can manage your workflow from the "My Tasks" tab, which displays tasks due:

• Tomorrow
• Next 7 days
• Last 30 days..etc...

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That's all for now, I hope this helps some of you and I hope you're able to take something away to implement into your day-to-day life.

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I more than welcome your feedback on this, I truly believe that we are stronger together and nothing great was achieved by one person alone.

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#winasateam

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Speak soon,

Thomas

www.thresults.com