43Folders is featuring a series of conversations between Merlin Mann and Getting Things Done author David Allen. The first podcast in the series focuses on procrastination which is something that I struggle with quite a bit (who doesn’t). Allen suggests really working on the first action portion of GTD such that tasks become essentially a matter of cranking widgets; No thought, no big ideas, just plain mindless action. This is a concept that I stumbled on myself, or rather I am sure I was led to naturally via GTD and is what I call the “Big Dumb Monkey”. I have found that I get the most stuck on projects or most distracted when I start thinking of grand ideas and looking at projects as a whole instead of the little pieces. When that happens, I just tell myself “You are a big dumb monkey”, settle in and pick out the tasks that have the best delineated small steps (so much so that it often takes more time to check off the tasks then it does to complete them). Between the prerequisite scratching, picking, sniffing of big dumb monkey mode, I am always surprised at the amount of work that gets done. At the end of the day, it truly does wind down to just knowing the steps and executing them. If it is a particularly stressful time and I have a lot of bind freezing projects I have been known to have Amy send me off in the morning with a hearty “Big Dumb Monkey!” cheer just to make sure I don’t get too caught up in the fact that I am a sentient being.
For the editorial process on books, I have managed to distill the entire proposal and launch phase into a 29-step process with 5 mile markers (new titles meeting, proposal meeting, post proposal meeting, contract phase, and editorial launch) to keep things segmented. It all flows from one step to the next. Best of all, I have built it out as a template within Kinkless GTD so I can kick start just about anything with three mouse clicks. It has become a true procrastination stopper in that if I stall out on any given project I just grab an active book and move it along through the steps as far as I can or take a book idea that I have had kicking around and thrust it into the machine. From there it is a matter of cranking widgets.
Blogged with Flock
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
