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If you can think, can you think harder?  I don’t think so.

In my experience “thinking hard” doesn’t work.  I can still hear the voice of Mrs Hamm, my third-grade teacher, “c’mon kids, think hard.”  We’re given the sense from an early age that thinking can increase in intensity by applying effort, just like walking.

In my mind, trying harder to think doesn’t work.  Applying effort to thinking just seems to get in the way.  Telling myself to “think harder” generates resistance and frustration, not better or more effective thinking.

But that doesn’t mean I can’t think better, or more effectively.

What does seem to work is removing barriers.

I start by reducing distractions, both internal and external.  If I’m feeling diverted by my thoughts, I do a quick “mind sweep”.  I write down everything that’s on my mind, big or small, personal or professional.  I need to call Ed regarding the contract.  I want to talk to Debbie about booking the hotel for our holiday.  The client needs the proposal by Friday.  Just getting these things out of my head goes a long way toward reducing internal distractions.

I also consider external distractions.  I check my surroundings.  If I’m feeling distracted by my environment, I see first whether I can minimize or eliminate some sources of that distraction.  I close my email client (yes, it can be done).  I put my phone on silent.  If possible, I get out of a distracting environment altogether.  If that’s not possible, I recognize that my ability to get work done that requires deep thinking may be limited.   In that case it might be better to focus on quick and easy wins that require less mental resource.

Once potential diversions are eliminated, in my experience thinking is really just about focus.  I’m not “thinking hard,” I’m focused on something without distraction. The only “effort” is choosing what to focus on, and then maintaining that focus.  Once I’m in that state, I find that effective thinking happens very naturally.

So the key here seems to be to get out of my own way, not about applying effort.  It’s as if the secret to running faster were just a matter of reducing drag, not about muscle power.  Create the environment to eliminate distractions, choose your focus, and watch the ideas flow.

I thought I'd try a video version for a change – do let us know if the change of format works for you, or not.

Click here to view the transcript.
(It is just over two minutes, for those of you applying the two minute rule.)

One example is “Lowestoft”, defined as “the balls of wool that collect on nice new sweaters.” Or an “Ozark”, which is someone who “offers to help just after all the work has been done.”

I was re-reading it the other day and came across a definition that particularly made me smile.

The book defines a Worksop as “a person who never actually gets round to doing anything because he spends all his time writing out lists headed ‘Things to Do (Urgent)’”.

You might know a Worksop; you might be one, if only from time to time.

The joke works because we know there are Worksops in the world. But if people behave that way, what’s in it for them? Why would anyone choose to be a Worksop?

Sometimes just “getting organized” can be rewarding. Getting things out of our heads and down on paper enhances our feeling of control over what we need or want to do.

But if all we do is create to-do lists, we’re organizing for its own sake. That’s just the procrastination wolf in productive sheep’s clothing.

Sometimes in our work people will ask, “why do you want me to get good at list making? Is this work only for neat-freaks?” In essence, they’re asking whether we are in the business of turning them into Worksops.

That’s emphatically not our aim in anything we do. Organization is only helpful if it enables stress-free productivity for you.

Our goal is not the lists themselves, but what they enable. Our key questions are: how can we eliminate stress and internal distraction, maximize focus on the task at hand, and set you up so that when you want to do something productive with your time, your lists support you as much as possible?

Ultimately though, the amount of this that anyone applies is personal. The only real non-negotiable in GTD is that you shouldn’t keep things in your head. Beyond that there’s huge scope to design and use systems and thinking that that help you. Every GTD implementation is unique to the individual, and is used in individual ways.

To what extent are you letting your “inner Worksop” get in the way of productive thinking about the things you need to do in your life? Only you can tell.

Most of us have, of course, used the Out of Office message (OoO) function to let people know about holidays and travel, but I’m seeing this function used more extensively to communicate with those sending messages. Here is a recent example of someone who was clearly trying to free up time to do real work, rather than just be tethered to their inbox:

From: Brown, Christine 
Sent: 04 January 2013 16:09
To: Thomas, Sara
Subject: Automatic reply: Travel Confirmation: John Smith – Ref: PQJ7K4 – Travel Date: 07FEB

Thank you for your email.  For a trial period initially I will be reading emails 3 times a day:

8:30am

12 noon

3:30pm

If your enquiry is urgent and cannot wait, please call me on 456-5637 (internal) or 0141 401 5637 (external).

I checked back a couple of months later to see how this was working for them, and the trial period had been extended as the initiative had been received in a supportive manner by her colleagues. The detail on this was that it was only going out to people who were inside the organisation. Clients were still getting normal service (and no OoO message).

In the same spirit, Ben Hammersley, the Wired journalist and author, has found it helpful to simply tell people what he is doing for the foreseeable future, and what they can expect from him in terms of response times. When checking in with him for a contribution to this blog, here is what came back:

Hello!

For your peace of mind, I have received your email, and I value it.

However, the tempo at which I reply depends on a few things.

I am currently in California, at GMT-8, for most of the time until May.

I am working on projects – a book, mainly – that require long periods of uninterrupted thinking time. I am experimenting with a very structured working practice. To this end I will be processing at my email only once a day, at 4pm Pacific Time. That is midnight in London, and 1am in Europe.

You will not receive a reply until then.

If your message is much more urgent than that, please text me or leave a voicemail via the messaging routes below. But be aware I might be asleep.

I am trying to come to a more sane relationship with my digital inputs.

Indeed, that’s much of what my next book is going to be about. It is hard to get to the bottom of some things, if you’re trying to stay on top of others.

Thanks for your understanding, and do let me know if it makes you react strongly in any way.

Ben

He says he has had no negative reactions at all, and that many people are either not bothered, are pleased to have a slackening of the message tempo forced upon them, or are using a more appropriate medium to get in touch if that is necessary. His sense of the benefits has been that he is more free to do other things, and need only really check mail when he says he is going to. For more of Ben’s thinking on related topics you can see a talk he gave recently at the RSA here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TENPhXc_Tqs)

And it is not just out of office messages that are being used. As an extension of the above, some are even beginning to put this type of message into their e-mail signature, so the message to help calibrate expectations is available with every message received from this person. Here is the signature from an e-mail that I received last week.

Steve Whatnot

BSc(Hons)

Quality Manager

Very Big Company Co

Email: Swhatnot@verybc.co.uk

Telephone: +44 21 622 5618

Mobile: +44 7968 978 703

Working part-time 50%: All day Tuesday, All day Wednesday and Friday mornings

Simple, and easy for people to see when they might need to see it ahead of time in order to transact outside of the times listed.

When discussing this idea of expectation management in a seminar recently I was told that some have taken this idea of managing expectations to a logical – if quite brutal – conclusion:

Subject: Automatic reply:

Thank you for your message. This note is to let you know that your message is being automatically deleted and will not be read. I will return on April 1^st, and if your mail was important please resend it to me after this date.

It may or may not be apocryphal, but I quite like the clarity of the message. It certainly takes care of the need to dig oneself out at the end of holiday breaks.

Another of my recent favourites was this one:

Subject: Automatic reply:

Thank you for your message. I am out of the office until 31.12.2099.

No sense waiting around for a reply then…. I’m guessing he had lost his job, but in this case I rather liked the understated way used to communicate that change of status.

How about you? Have you found a way to manage the expectations of your surroundings in a way that is both constructive and a pressure relief for you? Drop a line or leave a comment – I’d love to hear about it if you have. With any luck (for me), you’ll get the short and sweet OoO message I’m hoping to write sometime soon:

Gone surfin’

It’s 11pm on the day before my deadline on an article for a major broadsheet. What am I doing? I’m trying to watch a movie of course.

Why trying? Well it is a bit hard to focus on the story line when I’m convinced that I’m about to expire of anxiety because – despite several weeks of research, a dozen interviews and almost constant thought about the article – I have nothing written yet.

Nada. Niente. Nichts. Not a single solitary sausage of a thought has graced a page, despite the brilliance of those thoughts as they have come and gone in my mind. As the pressure builds and my gaskets move into the danger zone, I ask myself repeatedly ‘how did I get here, again?’

Sounds familiar?

In this video Ed Lamont and David Allen discuss some simple GTD strategies to counter writer’s block.

Also do read Ed Lamont’s blog on the same topic by going to http://www.next-action.eu/blog/2012/08/13/motion-trumps-perfection-the-virtue-of-the-very-bad-draft/

I love history, and I love living in London.  One of the reasons I love living in London is that it’s so full of history.  I get a kick out of the thought that some of the same streets that we walk today in Ugg Boots and Converse trainers were once walked by sandal-shod Romans.

Now it’s not too often that my interest in history and my interest in stress-free productivity overlap, but not long ago here in London there was an exhibit on King Henry VIII that provided a great example of highly productive behaviour.

Thomas Cromwell was one of Henry’s closest advisors.  Henry trusted Cromwell to deal with some of his most sensitive and important matters, including arranging and annulling some of Henry’s marriages.  If he were to do the king’s bidding effectively, I expect that Cromwell wanted to be sure that he and Henry saw eye to eye on many things.  Regularly discussing things with Henry would be critical.

Now Henry was a busy man.  He did a lot of jousting and hunting, and with his six wives and a large court to entertain we can imagine there was a lot of wooing and feasting too.

Cromwell’s time with the king was precious.  Cromwell knew, in order to maintain his trusted relationship with Henry, that his “face time” with the king needed to be put to good use.

Henry also had a lot of power.  Under Henry the power of the Catholic Church, until then a powerful and wealthy rival of the monarchy, was severely curtailed.  Henry appropriated church property, had monasteries razed to the ground, had priests and monks imprisoned (or worse).  Henry’s break with Rome created the Church of England, and Henry put himself at its head.  Ultimate temporal and spiritual power was concentrated in one man for the first time. Many people who had displeased the king found themselves separated from some of their most important body parts.

Make the most of your time with the king, and don’t annoy him, Cromwell must have thought.

So how did Cromwell prepare for his meetings with Henry?  There was a document in the exhibit that made it very clear.  It was put together in advance of a meeting Cromwell had with Henry at Windsor Castle in June of 1535.

Cromwell left little to chance.  The document is a list of 17 topics to discuss with the king.  It’s titled “Remembrances at my next going to the court”.  It contains lots of detail, including things like “Item, to know the king’s pleasure regarding Master Fisher,” and “Item, to remember Sir Walter Hungerford’s good deeds to the king.”

Interestingly, the document is in the handwriting of a clerk, but Cromwell then amended it in his own hand.  He drafted, he reflected, he revised.

Cromwell didn’t just turn up at Windsor Castle and wing it.  He wanted the most out of his time with Henry, and equipped with this carefully crafted list he knew there was a good chance his meeting would be productive.

In our work we call this kind of thing an “agenda list”.  Even if you don’t spend a lot of time meeting with all-powerful royalty, agenda lists are a good idea.  Have one for the people and groups in your life that you meet with regularly.  As you make your way through your day, as things occur to you that need discussing with those people, add the topics you want to discuss.  On your agenda for your boss you might have “discuss preparation for client meeting.”  On your agenda for your team meeting you might have “agree who will provide holiday cover over the Easter break.”  On your agenda for your husband or wife you might have “should we get a puppy?”

The next time you meet with those people you’ll be ready to make the most of your time with them.  Encourage them to prepare agenda lists in advance for you as well, so that you can both have confidence that the important things are getting appropriate focus.

And be thankful that, even if things do go wrong, even if the outcomes of your meetings are hugely suboptimal, you’re unlikely to end up like poor Cromwell. Despite his exemplary meeting management, he eventually fell from Henry’s favour.  He only had need of one agenda list after that, “things to discuss with my jailer.”