How to scan my environment for sources of failure? ("trigger-list" style)

[Loïs]

Hi everyone,
let say I was planning to have a really effective evening, and ended up binge-watching Youtube videos (or something else enjoyable but not a priority at all). Do you have a process that helps you understand what went wrong, and how you can decrease the likelihood of this happening again?

I guess the classical ones are: was my next action clear enough ? did I have what was needed to do it ?
But others factors might be relevant as well, like if I'm hungry, or if something else is on my mind.

How do you learn from your failures?

 

[mcogilvie]

Hi everyone,
let say I was planning to have a really effective evening, and ended up binge-watching Youtube videos (or something else enjoyable but not a priority at all). Do you have a process that helps you understand what went wrong, and how you can decrease the likelihood of this happening again?

I guess the classical ones are: was my next action clear enough ? did I have what was needed to do it ?
But others factors might be relevant as well, like if I'm hungry, or if something else is on my mind.

How do you learn from your failures?

First of all, you can stop referring to that as a failure. We all have times when we need to relax and unwind. Our bodies and minds will make sure we take that time, one way or another. This need can be managed by paying attention to it.

Second, I doubt whether "planning to have a really effective evening" can work consistently for most people. GTD is more about making good choices in the moment. Suppose that, instead of alphabetizing my scrabble tiles as I planned, I get a phone call from an old friend whom I hadn’t talked to in a while. Or I make a start, but don't get as far as I’d hoped. Worst case: I ask why I am resisting my very important alphabetizing, but find no good answer and try to make better choices in the future.

 

[Cpu_Modern]

"Outside" of GTD I've found two things that helped me:

• keeping a serious Journal "a real daily examination of your life and career, not a whiny diary",
• working consciously on my defaults

Inside of GTD I find it is crucial to:

• clarify outcomes on all levels, not some vague projects alone, but clarity on all HoFs - good outcome thinking, and
• doing the WEEKLY REVIEW regularly and often. Re-visiting the projects list feeds your intuition and leads to better decision making in the moment of choice.

 

[Gardener]

Rather than a process for figuring out went wrong. I'd lean more toward a process for trying to make it go right. I realize that they may look like two different looks at the same thing. I think that the difference is that in the first case, you're making a process for coming up with a hypothesis that you'll then need to test. I'm thinking, why not be less formal about the hypothesis and just do the testing?

So if I were trying to figure out a process for effective evenings--by which I assume you mean evenings accomplishing things that are important to you--some things I'd try would be:

- Creating a not-too-ambitious set of goals for the evening. An 'effective evening' is a pretty ambiguous goal.

- Creating that set of goals sometime other than evening. People's brain power and decisionmaking power tend to be at a fairly low level in the evening. Make those plans and decisions some other time.

- Accept the person that you are in the evening. Maybe you wish that you could work hard at intellectually demanding work from 7pm to midnight. And maybe that's a wildly over-optimistic goal. Instead, try assuming that you can do one hour of moderately demanding work, and two hours of something quite undemanding (like going through old files and shredding the unneeded bits, or putting something in the Crockpot that will end up in the freezer and save you some hours later) and two hours of actual time off watching Youtube videos. If you demand perfection or nothing, you're likely to achieve nothing.

- Maybe you discover that sometimes you can keep doing the demanding work for quite some time, and sometimes you can't do any of it. The lesson for that could be to have your lists nicely stocked with plenty of both types of tasks.

- On the other hand, maybe the decisionmaking involved for that is simply beyond you in the evening, and you're better off just making a firm decision ahead of time.

In general, I'm suggesting experimenting.

 

[Geeko]

Hi everyone,
let say I was planning to have a really effective evening, and ended up binge-watching Youtube videos (or something else enjoyable but not a priority at all). Do you have a process that helps you understand what went wrong, and how you can decrease the likelihood of this happening again?

I guess the classical ones are: was my next action clear enough ? did I have what was needed to do it ?
But others factors might be relevant as well, like if I'm hungry, or if something else is on my mind.

How do you learn from your failures?

I think you should ask yourself 3 questions on this one:

1. Was your next action small enough to not repel you?
2. Was your energy level high enough to do what you had planned?
3. Was your motivation on the things you intended to do high enough?

Each “No” enlarges the probability that you will not do what you planned to do unless the “Yes”-questions have a really strong impact (for example: I am really tired but I have to iron a shirt this evening or I won’t have anything to wear for work tomorrow).

I hope, this helps you.

Cheers,
Tristan

 

[mcogilvie]

Rather than a process for figuring out went wrong. I'd lean more toward a process for trying to make it go right. I realize that they may look like two different looks at the same thing. I think that the difference is that in the first case, you're making a process for coming up with a hypothesis that you'll then need to test. I'm thinking, why not be less formal about the hypothesis and just do the testing?

So if I were trying to figure out a process for effective evenings--by which I assume you mean evenings accomplishing things that are important to you--some things I'd try would be:

- Creating a not-too-ambitious set of goals for the evening. An 'effective evening' is a pretty ambiguous goal.

- Creating that set of goals sometime other than evening. People's brain power and decisionmaking power tend to be at a fairly low level in the evening. Make those plans and decisions some other time.

- Accept the person that you are in the evening. Maybe you wish that you could work hard at intellectually demanding work from 7pm to midnight. And maybe that's a wildly over-optimistic goal. Instead, try assuming that you can do one hour of moderately demanding work, and two hours of something quite undemanding (like going through old files and shredding the unneeded bits, or putting something in the Crockpot that will end up in the freezer and save you some hours later) and two hours of actual time off watching Youtube videos. If you demand perfection or nothing, you're likely to achieve nothing.

- Maybe you discover that sometimes you can keep doing the demanding work for quite some time, and sometimes you can't do any of it. The lesson for that could be to have your lists nicely stocked with plenty of both types of tasks.

- On the other hand, maybe the decisionmaking involved for that is simply beyond you in the evening, and you're better off just making a firm decision ahead of time.

In general, I'm suggesting experimenting.

Gardener, I think your advice is completely consistent with mine, but much better!