My recent experience is that what seems to be a natural and intuitive choice of actions can in fact be fatally flawed.
I changed job in January this year. In my new role, I set out to identify those areas in this company where my accumulated skills could be most effectively and fruitfully applied, and during the last five months I have cleared up backlogs, established systems, and begun providing a stream of management information that was not previously available to the CEO.
Along the way there were various things that people casually mentioned to me that seemed totally inconsequential, (if I used the Covey system, I would have rated them a very low priority). But, in keeping with the basics of GTD, I wrote all of them down each time they were said, and threw them in my in-basket.
when it came to my weekly review, I put them on a kind of “wish list” – attractive but indulgent projects that I would deal with as soon as I had all the “important” (or so it seemed to me) stuff sorted out.
But then a very faint alarm bell started to ring. Without reproducing the whole process in detail, let me just say that in the very cold light of a recent dawn, I suddenly realized that these things that my instincts were telling me were “inconsequential” were in fact some of the key operating data that the company needed.
OK, they weren’t getting that data before I joined them, but in their eyes, they were the most important things they needed from me. My own assessment of what was important was completely wrong. The only way I had begun to realize this was because it was constantly being placed before me each time I did my review.
There are admonitions by David scattered all over GTD that we should define our job roles and use them as a checklist for projects that should be in progress. Thanks to applying this to my job, I eventually realized that I had to privilege the wishes of my colleagues and create job roles that reflected the streams of data they required.
GTD allowed me to step outside the limiting filters of my own experience and see my new job through the eyes and expectations of others.
Personally, I expect GTD to put pressure on me - left to myself I will follow the familiar, and I will neglect areas that do not deserve to be neglected, with potentially disastrous results.
Once I realized what I had to, I was able to rapidly re-mould my job definition, probably much more quickly than I would have managed through stumbling along through a trial and error approach.
I have invested quite a few dollars in GTD, and I except it to deliver enhanced productivity. I expect my life to be managed in a balanced and comprehensive manner, and not to have important areas stagnate because they lie outside my familair zone on untrodden paths.
For me, there is no better way to do this than to turn my back on my instincts and obey my lists. As DA says, my lists were written by a smarter version of me, and I am happy to obey them.
Hope this helps!!
Dave
