George Magazine

productivity PAPER OR I PAD? TO-DO LIST OR THE ACTION METHOD? THE WORLD IS RAPIDLY FI LL ING UP WITH DI FFERENT WAYS OF MAKING SURE YOU GET YOUR WORK DONE—BUT DO THEY CREATE MORE WORK THAN THEY SAVE? IN the 1950s, US president Dwight D. Eisenhower observed that "the more important an item, the less likely it is urgent and the more urgent an item, the less likely it is important". Milestone books such as Peter Drucker's The Effective Executive (1967) and Stephen Covey's The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (1989) identified time and task management as critical assets for business leaders. But it was David Allen's Getting Things Done ('GTD', 2002) that created a new model for the next generation of personal productivity innovators and enthusiasts. The basic tool for task management is a 'to-do' list that eliminates 'make-work' and serves long-term goals. Recognising that intimidating, complex projects make for ineffective lists—they trigger resistance and procrastination—GTD breaks these down into simple 'next actions' to be done right now or in the near future. A series of such enabling lists makes up a trusted system of workflow management to capture thoughts and notes, process these into relevant timeframes (do now, defer, delegate or dump) and organise into context-relevant lists of locations (office/home), tools (computer/phone) or colleagues (meetings/follow-ups). But there's a catch: GTD is no shortcut. With up to 90 minutes recommended each day plus a two- hour weekly review, GTD can start to look like an overwhelming and costly project in itself. Even so, GTD's promise to free up managerial minds to think about higher goals has won many converts in this age of increasing information overload and multiplying channels and devices, including email, voicemail, internet, smartphones and tablets. "Most employees [in large companies] receive around 200 emails a day, of which around 10 per cent are really useful, while managers spend up to 20 hours a week reading emails," says Corina Raduescu, lecturer in business information systems at the University of Sydney Business School. (In a recent US survey of 1,600 managers, 26 per cent admitted to sleeping with their smartphones.) Raduescu says long work hours lead to fatigue and poor decision-making. She describes how 'off-the-shelf' automated processing and centralised enterprise systems overwhelm staff with redundant input and tasks. They can also constrain the ways decisions are made in an organisation, reinforcing hierarchical, 'top down' structures rather than collaborative, 'bottom up' sharing. "Probably SMEs have more flexibility if they engage with a vendor … to make customisations in systems to really fulfil their needs," Raduescu says. Keep it simple So can technology save us from itself? While Allen's system remains strictly tool-agnostic, it has inspired a generation of younger digital-native disciples who blog about 'life hacks' (tips, short cuts, software or productivity skills) in a competitive market for free and relatively low-cost programs and apps. Raduescu says the demand for personal productivity tools is understandable given the frustrations of enterprise systems. Software to aid productivity is available as either device-based or web-based applications, with degrees of compatibility across different operating systems and hardware configurations. You can choose specific tools for each phase of task george.productivity 27

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