Interesting article - "The Most Productive People Have One Thing In Common: They Do Nothing"

[John Smith]

Hello

What do you make of this interesting article?

http://elitedaily.com/life/culture/productive-people-do-nothing/1107640/

Apparently the key to productivity is not blasting through (endless) to-do lists flat out, nope - not even nicely prioritized ones. No, according to David Allen the trick is to create enough 'space' in your mind in order to think clearly. The way to do this can be either to deliberately put stuff off or to deliberately not do most of the stuff on your list at all.

I think the title is slightly disingenuous - highly productive people don't JUST sit around "doing nothing", but nonetheless spending a significant amount of time doing nothing is extremely important nonetheless to one's overall productivity. 

Food for thought, no?

John 

[pottster]

The idea expressed in the article is really just another way of saying concentrate on "doing the right things" more than "doing things right". In other words, create the space/time to regularly review what your current priorities and goals are. The important point here is that they CHANGE; hence the importance of regular reviews within GTD. A lot of this is expounded in David Allen's book Ready For Anything which never got the good reviews it deserved because people were expecting another nuts and bolts treatise like Getting Things Done. It's worth a read if you haven't already.

[Elizabeth Lindsay]

Well said.  I have been utilizing GTD for several years (thanks to MLO) and because I don't clutter my mind with things I need to remember, I am the person people seek at work for how to be organized, not miss deadlines, and be as productive as I am.

[Lisa Stroyan]

Just wanted to chime in on this thread . I think this article title is misleading as to what the article discusses ( in the opposite way from your point, John , but both are true). I don't see having to clear all the tasks in your head out as necessary for the mindful practices that have been shown to help health and productivity, and I was expecting a different kind of "do-nothing" than they describe, more along the lines of time resetting the nervous system out of the constant stress, fight or flight mode that task management tends to pull me into .

I am very intrigued by the concept the title itself implies. I do think that such activities – relaxing in nature, meditation, exercise, morning pages journaling, a discipline like the one I do, Tai Chi Chih – for me are having a profound effect on my relationship with my task list and all of the shoulds. An amazing amount of effort goes into anxiety in our culture... staggering, really , I'm realizing for myself anyway. I haven't yet learned to channel that anxiety into productivity, but I am learning to turn it off and not have my health be impacted by it .

If anyone knows of books that combine mindful approaches with daily productivity, I would be interested in hearing about them. ( if you feel like it, copy your response to lstr...@gmail.com :).

The book that is completely changing my life right now, though it might not be a good fit for many of you :-) Is, "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying up " . (People's can poo-poo it all they want, and they do, but it's going across the world like wildfire, and for a reason :-)

It's this short, poorly organized and not particularly well-written, translation of a Japanese book that is ostensibly about deciding what items in your house you would like to keep because they are joyful/appreciated, and seems like just another twist on other organizing methods, that instead has hidden in it a gem of a process that has clarified what's been missing for me for 25 years in how I deal with my belongings and is now changing how I see my actions through the day and even my life perspective a little.  (Sidenote:it doesn't seem like it makes a lot of sense, it appeals more to women than men, and it doesn't work well IMO unless it's embraced as is rather than being analyzed to death and tweaked, all probably making it a poor fit for most of this list :-)

I haven't yet gotten to the point of applying this process to my task list, but it's going to take a while and probably be quite amazing and freeing. I have thousands of "aspirational" tasks collected over the years (just as I've collected aspirational clutter – that stuff that reminds me of actions I wanted to take but never got to and now have become guilt) that are sitting in MLO and weighing me down. (many of them captured from my brain using GTD but then never let go of because I was so running around trying to do the tasks that I never did a review process consistently , but also from time management books that encourage keeping of everything in your system, but never say to let it go - "just move it to a someday list" :-) . It will be interesting to see what kind of the task management solution I end up with in MLO when I'm done. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see a book come out of it but it might be a few years . …

Lisa, who has pretty much abandoned you all due to health issues but getting better slowly

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[Stephen Jones]

Lisa,

From what you have said, one book you might find useful is Essentialism by Greg McKeown. The approach it sets out is one that would seem to address some of the issues you have raised. I do not fully subscribe to everything in the book, but it has helped me to develop an approach to productivity that suits me and has taken the stress out of not getting everything done or even spending some time "doing nothing". I am actually achieving more by doing less.

Regards 

Stephen J

[Lisa Stroyan]

I just heard about that book from someone else! It sounded like a nice spin on it.

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[TakiTM]

 Lisa,
 I've just read something relevant to your thoughts. in the (funny titled) book "How to be a Productivity Ninja" the author suggest a way to find you most energetic periods within a day. And, also you should think about activities to regain your energy between this periods. As usually, it's a simple but powerful statement, I found it very true (for my work at least). And, it fits to MLO, finally I found a usage for the "effort" sliders ;)
 The concept in a nutshell: sort your tasks after required energy level, spare the "big rocks" for your most effective / energetic hours, do the small stuff within your "brainless" ones. I, for example, do the mail sorting after lunch, where my brains do the daily fight against food-caused-hypoxia :), and do the important actions after a short walk in the office yard, when I'm most focused.
Best wishes,
Taki