John_Lewis
Registered
Thank you Kelly and Meg,
In the teleseminar today, you described many of the issues that I face when "doing".
It was great to hear you start by describing the relationship between "doing" and the other kinds of activity, with "doing" as the ultimate purpose! This helpful background enhanced the discussion of the various factors involved in choosing what to do.
However, one topic was of particular interest to me, and I'd be interested to hear more suggestions on it. Meg described the issue of contexts and (the unmentionable) priorities when working from home. Other people have described this too; it seems to be an area of general difficulty. It is clear, as Kelly described, that it is a waste of effort to give attention, while at work, to important things at home. However, for people working at home, the almost immediate availability of almost everything can, in my experience, lead to two kinds of response.
One response is to assume that there are no differences in context; this can lead to large numbers of actions in each of a very small number of context lists. The other response is to create contexts which feel artificial and, possibly, to end up scheduling arbitrary blocks of time for those contexts. Neither of these seem to work well; so it can be difficult to stick with either of them, and it is easy to end up simply working (fixating) on one project at a time, until another one blows up.
An important aspect in this area seems to be that people working at home have much more control and choice of which context they are in, than people working in proximity to others. Overall, this could be expected to lead to more productivity, but it does not always work out like that. Another aspect seems to be that the contexts tend to be distinguished by internal factors within the person as much if not more than by physical location, tools available and so on.
One technique, however, seems to work quite well for me, at least some of the time; and I'd be interested in your reaction to it. When I am using this approach, I find that it is useful to define a variety of contexts, based on type of work, energy level, etc. and to put next actions of projects into lists for the appropriate context. However, rather than actions being driven by context which I largely control, I allow the motivation (or, yes, priority!) of the projects to drive the actions.
So a simple description is as follows. Pick the project whose outcome I am most "attracted to"/"driven by"/"being pushed for" ... or whatever. Identify the next action for the project; this action has been allocated to a context. "Go to"/"get into" that context and do the action, but also do a few other actions (from other projects) in the same context while there. Pick the next action on the selected project and so on (lather, rinse, repeat!).
The effect is that the selected project moves along very well, but also a variety of other projects seem to move along with little extra effort.
You are likely to have seen this kind of approach in use, so I'd be interested in your reaction to it and the difficulties that might arise. Of course, I am also interested in other approaches that you recommend for dealing with the "working at home with no obvious context boundaries" issue.
Thanks again,
John
In the teleseminar today, you described many of the issues that I face when "doing".
It was great to hear you start by describing the relationship between "doing" and the other kinds of activity, with "doing" as the ultimate purpose! This helpful background enhanced the discussion of the various factors involved in choosing what to do.
However, one topic was of particular interest to me, and I'd be interested to hear more suggestions on it. Meg described the issue of contexts and (the unmentionable) priorities when working from home. Other people have described this too; it seems to be an area of general difficulty. It is clear, as Kelly described, that it is a waste of effort to give attention, while at work, to important things at home. However, for people working at home, the almost immediate availability of almost everything can, in my experience, lead to two kinds of response.
One response is to assume that there are no differences in context; this can lead to large numbers of actions in each of a very small number of context lists. The other response is to create contexts which feel artificial and, possibly, to end up scheduling arbitrary blocks of time for those contexts. Neither of these seem to work well; so it can be difficult to stick with either of them, and it is easy to end up simply working (fixating) on one project at a time, until another one blows up.
An important aspect in this area seems to be that people working at home have much more control and choice of which context they are in, than people working in proximity to others. Overall, this could be expected to lead to more productivity, but it does not always work out like that. Another aspect seems to be that the contexts tend to be distinguished by internal factors within the person as much if not more than by physical location, tools available and so on.
One technique, however, seems to work quite well for me, at least some of the time; and I'd be interested in your reaction to it. When I am using this approach, I find that it is useful to define a variety of contexts, based on type of work, energy level, etc. and to put next actions of projects into lists for the appropriate context. However, rather than actions being driven by context which I largely control, I allow the motivation (or, yes, priority!) of the projects to drive the actions.
So a simple description is as follows. Pick the project whose outcome I am most "attracted to"/"driven by"/"being pushed for" ... or whatever. Identify the next action for the project; this action has been allocated to a context. "Go to"/"get into" that context and do the action, but also do a few other actions (from other projects) in the same context while there. Pick the next action on the selected project and so on (lather, rinse, repeat!).
The effect is that the selected project moves along very well, but also a variety of other projects seem to move along with little extra effort.
You are likely to have seen this kind of approach in use, so I'd be interested in your reaction to it and the difficulties that might arise. Of course, I am also interested in other approaches that you recommend for dealing with the "working at home with no obvious context boundaries" issue.
Thanks again,
John
