what time of the day do You Clarify Organize?

[evholten]

All time management and planning is only useful if it helps you to actually dó more. At what hours of the day do you invest in clarifying what things are and organizing your to do lists and support materials? Also how often (and whén exactly) do you take time to reflect? Isn't this an awful waste of time?

Thanks for sharing your ideas!
Regards, Erwin

 

[Folke]

I do those things (review, reflect etc etc) whenever I feel like it. I have no schedule.(I "tickle" reviews, that's all, but then I do them when I want.)

 

[Longstreet]

@evholten: I am curious why you think blocking some time for clarifying what things are in your inboxes of life is a waste of time? I consider this to be of paramount importance. Otherwise, "stuff" builds up and will constantly "be on your mind" on what lurks there in your inbox. I schedule loosely (meaning it can be changed if more important things pop up) a block of about 30-45 minutes after lunch to do this every day. I also do this at the end of the day in my office so that these thoughts don't go home with me.

 

[Oogiem]

At what hours of the day do you invest in clarifying what things are and organizing your to do lists and support materials? Also how often (and when exactly) do you take time to reflect? Isn't this an awful waste of time?

I try to process and organize my inbox throughout the day at natural breaks. So this morning, as soon as I was done with chores I grabbed my coffee and am sitting at the computer responding to forum posts like this. That is part of handling the inbox that is the GTD forums. I know that I have a backlog of about 4 inches of papers in my physical inbox and about 100 e-mail messages to process. As part of my morning routine I checked my calendar for scheduled things to to. Looking at tasks coming up today, a photographer coming this afternoon to take pictures of sheep, a scheduled farm tour just after lunch, a need to go to town to pick up chicken food, vegetables and bread from our local farmer/baker I realize that as soon as I am done with my morning routine I really need to process some of my e-mail and paper items.

Reflection happens for me at least once a week during the weekly review, although I did miss doing clear reviews for almost 3 weeks due to huge volumes of work as it appears that needed doing right then. That's why I am behind in processing right now and it is very uncomfortable. I also do a much more in-depth review at the solstices and the equinoxes. Those times correspond to a turning of the farming seasons and are a natural point to take time to reflect and evaluate where I've been and plan where I am going.

It's most certainly not an awful waste of time. Instead it is some of the most important time I spend.

It seems counterintuitive but really, if you can manage an hour to hour and a half processing and planning daily you will actually be more productive when you are doing the work.

 

[Gardener]

All time management and planning is only useful if it helps you to actually dó more. At what hours of the day do you invest in clarifying what things are and organizing your to do lists and support materials? Also how often (and whén exactly) do you take time to reflect? Isn't this an awful waste of time?

To know if it's a waste of time, I'd need to know how you interpret clarifying, organizing, reflecting. I'm thinking that you must surely do some of this--must in some way plan your work before you charge into it? For example, when a programmer takes on a new project, they'll usually go through some sort of requirements gathering and design process, whether it's formal or informal, and plan their work in a way that gives them a hope of making the deadline. A caterer is likely to make shopping lists and a cooking plan that will get the right amount of food, sufficiently recently cooked, to the site. A contractor needs blueprints and needs to have the right materials and the right labor on the site at the right time.

I assume that you don't see these sorts of activities as valueless(?). I see GTD as a way to perform these sorts of activities more effectively. So I'm wondering how you see it instead.

 

[evholten]

In this case i meant it in a provocative way
Good to see that all truely find it important.

Yet it remains an activity secundary to the primary processes of any organisation. Correct me if i am wrong but i see Clarifying and Organizing as one section apart from Reviewing and Doing - that actually ís (about) the work that is to be done. So according to me the Clarifying and Organizing should NOT be at a time that one should be productive in the actual 'delivering' of what is important. (Funny thing is that the importance of stuff is actually defined by Clarifying it.)

So my question actually is .. do you agree that Clarifying and Organizing should not be done at moments that are most suitable for communicating with people and for being productive? But i wouldn't do it in the evening either. So what is the best time for it?

Longstreet so 2 blocks of 30/45 minutes at bit of 'lost moments'? A hour+ in total per day? And do you manage to leave those thoughts with your project support material? You're well balanced if you can.

Gardener You're talking about pro-active planning of the things to do. To me Clarifying is reactive defining what all that stuff is that suddenly is on my desk, all those notes, sketches, half worked-out plans, etc that i am actually producing myself with my overly-productive mind, combined with mail and administration bs. My natural moments to decide what i shouldl do naturally is with my first cup of coffee in the morning, but that's day planning. When do you take the time to Clarify, to go through your designs and scedules for that new ict-office you're obviously building?

Oogiem an hour and a half? Are you kidding me? Even shearing a sheep takes less time! But seriously, when do you do it, in between things?
Funny you should say you use the solstices and the equinoxes as moments for reflection, as i find it odd society generally doesn't do much with these seasonal occurances while they're actually very good moments to plan for the quarter. (I am actually thinking of organizing seasonal seminars that are also good occassions to launch and distribute periodical publications.) I use weekly, montly and quarterly reviews as feedback to my annual plan. But that doesn't mean that i sticking to my goals all that well - and thát has to do with the use (or none-use) of my task lists.

I just put my first task on my tasklist with an actually link to a file in my new action/project support material cabinet. Organized. See where this gets me. Looking at these piles at my desks it looks I've got some filing to do this weekend :S

Have a nice one!

 

[evholten]

So maybe that's my point; Clarifying is reactive. Planning and doing should be pro-active. When to do the inevitable reactive sorting of things? And how to spend as much time as possible on doing pro-active tasks.

 

[Gardener]

So maybe that's my point; Clarifying is reactive. Planning and doing should be pro-active. When to do the inevitable reactive sorting of things? And how to spend as much time as possible on doing pro-active tasks.

I don't think that I agree that Clarifying is reactive. I might say that processing is reactive.

 

[Folke]

evholten,

Is it possible that you are reading too much into the various terms here? I cannot know what Dvid Allen meant when he wrote them, but I do know that any writer or teacher faces the dilemma of either being too imprecise (few words, few steps etc and thereby appearing to lack clarity) or using too many fine distinctions (many terms etc, thereby appearing to be rigid and over-prescriptive) - and it is all perhaps just a difference in wording.

The way I see it is this: processing, reflecting, reviewing, clarifying, organizing can probably be seen a slight different kinds of mental activity, but tend to often happen simultaneously. Each time you do what you need to do, or want to do, no matter which of these facets happen to be most "lacking". For example, you read a note, reflect on it and clarify it as an clear enough action and put it (organize) on the right list, right project etc. As simple as that. And you probably do that whenever you see a need to, which is when you notice something that is wrong, incomprehensible, incomplete etc.

For me personally, I do not see any reason to schedule this to any particular time of day, or day of the week. It is an ongoing process (for me). For example, whenever I feel uncertain or curious about what is hiding in a particular project, I just take a look, and if I see something wrong I fix it right there and then (if I had not had the time and inclination I probably would not even have looked in at that particular time.). Or when I see an action that I do not understand I try to rethink it and rephrase it.

In addition I do my weekly reviews (and more thorough reviews a few times a year, and very quick daily reviews) just to check that everything is OK and fix anything that I had missed during my more spontaneous reviews. I find that useful, too, because I otherwise tend to leave boring stuff to the wayside. The daily review also serves as a tentative "day planning", identifying a few actions that seem to fit in with any calendar actions or other known factors, such as weather, visitors in town, whatever...

 

[Oogiem]

Oogiem an hour and a half? Are you kidding me? Even shearing a sheep takes less time! But seriously, when do you do it, in between things?
Funny you should say you use the solstices and the equinoxes as moments for reflection, as i find it odd society generally doesn't do much with these seasonal occurances while they're actually very good moments to plan for the quarter. (I am actually thinking of organizing seasonal seminars that are also good occassions to launch and distribute periodical publications.) I use weekly, montly and quarterly reviews as feedback to my annual plan. But that doesn't mean that i sticking to my goals all that well - and thát has to do with the use (or none-use) of my task lists.

Yeah our sheep shearer does a sheep in about 1.5 minutes max, top competition shearers can do one is under 40 seconds.

Nope not kidding. If I don't figure on at least an hour of processing time I get behind. I still, even years later, think it shouldn't take so long but it does.

Seasonal stuff is a lot easier as a farmer, it's so obvious. I think that humans evolved with seasonal changes in tasks and work so that it fits in naturally with how we evolved and how we think. There is something simple about the change of seasons that works for mid term planning.