sometimes also referred to as a 'suspended' or 'follow-on' file. This is a system that allows you to almost literally mail something to yourself, for receipt on some designated day in the future.
Your calendar can serve the same function. You might remind yourself on your calendar for March 15, for example, that your taxes are due in a month; or for September 12, that
For further details, refer to chapter 7.
Reference Material
Many things that come your way require no action but have intrinsic value as information. You will want to keep and be able to retrieve these as needed. They can be stored in paper-based or digital form.
Paper-based material—anything from the menu for a local take-out deli to the plans, drawings, and vendor information for a landscape project—is best stored in efficient physical-retrieval systems. These can range from pages in a loose-leaf planner or notebook, for a list of favorite restaurants or the phone numbers of the members of a school committee, to whole file cabinets dedicated to the due-diligence paperwork for a corporate merger.
Electronic storage can include everything from networked database information to ad hoc reference and archive folders located in your communication software.
The most important thing to remember here is that reference should be exactly that—information that can be
The lack of a good general-reference file can be one of the biggest bottlenecks in implementing an efficient personal action-management system. If filing isn't easy and fast (and even fun!), you'll tend to stack things instead of filing them. If your reference material doesn't have a nice clean edge to it, the line between actionable and nonactionable items will blur, visually and psycho-logically, and your mind will go numb to the whole business. Establishing a good working system for this category of material is critical to ensuring stress-free productivity; we will explore it in detail in chapter 7.
It's one thing to write down that you need milk; it's another to be at the store and
You need to be able to review the whole picture of your life and work at appropriate intervals and appropriate levels. For most people the magic of workflow management is realized in the consistent use of the review phase. This is where you take a look at all your outstanding projects and open loops, at what I call the 10,000-foot level (see page 51), on a weekly basis. It's your chance to scan all the defined actions and options before you, thus radically increasing the efficacy of the choices you make about what you're doing at any point in time.
What to Review When
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—that is, what things will die if you don't do them. This doesn't mean that the things written on there are the most 'important' in some grand sense—only that they have to get done. At at any point in time, knowing what
Review your lists as often as you need to, to get them off your mind.
After checking your calendar, you'll most often turn to your 'Next Actions' lists. These hold the inventory of predefined actions that you can take if you have any discretionary time during the day. If you've organized them by context ('At Home,' 'At Computer,' 'In Meeting with George'), they'll come into play only when those contexts are available. 'Projects,' 'Waiting For.' and 'Someday/Maybe' lists need to be reviewed only as often as you think they have to be in order to stop you from wondering about them.
Critical Success Factor: The Weekly Review
Everything that might potentially require action must be reviewed on a frequent enough basis to keep your mind from taking back the job of remembering and reminding. In order to trust the rapid and intuitive judgment calls that you make about actions from moment to moment, you must consistently retrench at some more elevated level. In my experience (with thousands of people), that translates into a behavior critical for success: the Weekly Review.
All of your open loops (i.e., projects), active project plans, and 'Next Actions,' 'Agendas,' 'Waiting For,' and even 'Someday/ Maybe' lists should be reviewed once a week. This also gives you an opportunity to ensure that your brain is clear and that all the loose strands of the past few days have been collected, processed, and organized.
If you're like most people, you've found that things can get relatively out of control during the course of a few days of operational intensity. That's to be expected. You wouldn't want to distract yourself from too much of the work at hand in an effort to stay totally 'squeaky clean' all the time. But in order to afford the luxury of 'getting on a roll' with confidence, you'll probably need to clean house once a week.
The Weekly Review is the time to
• Gather and process all your 'stuff.'
• Review your system.
• Update your lists.
• Get clean, clear, current, and complete.
Most people don't have a really complete system, and they get no real payoff from reviewing things for just that reason: their overview isn't total. They still have a vague sense that something may be missing. That's why the rewards to be gained from implementing
Most people feel best about their work when they've cleaned up, closed up, clarified, and renegotiated all their agreements with themselves and others. Do this weekly instead of yearly.
Most people feel best about their work the week before their vacation, but it's not because of the vacation itself. What do you do the last week before you leave on a big trip? You clean up, close up, clarify, and renegotiate all your agreements with yourself and others. I just suggest that you do this weekly instead of yearly.
The basic purpose of this workflow-management process is to facilitate good choices about what you're
