Personal Productivity

Personal productivity is currently the most fervently discussed topic on the web. With his "First Things First" and "Seven Habits," Stephen Covey invaded the lives of managers and aspiring leaders in every field. David Allen's "Getting Things Done" made history with GTD becoming the buzz word. 'Geeks' and netizens flocked around the concept and chirped and croaked 'GTD' to no end. PIM (Personal Information Management) software applications like MS Outlook and the ever expanding G-mail incorporated GTD into their newer versions with modifications and add-ons. Many other productivity gurus joined the fray and tweaked the idea to develop their own "systems."

There are thus many "productivity schools." You have Mark Forster's 'Do It Tomorrow' (DIT), Neil Fiore's 'The Now Habit,' and ZTD - a combination of Zen Habits and GTD, to name a few. All these systems preach various systems of time management or life management.

Covey asks you to define various roles you need to play in life and classify your "to-dos" according to various combinations of urgency and importance with reference to your roles in life. The tasks are also classified as leading to spiritual and non-spiritual developmental goals and a conscious effort is advised to strike a balance.

David Allen's ('DA') system GTD advocates unloading psyche of its various minor or major preoccupations as to-dos into some system, a process of capture. The captured tasks are then classified as actionable and non-actionable and so on to the smallest actionable unit i.e. 'next action'. At any moment you choose from these next actions to act upon it, considering the elements of suitability viz. context, your level of energy etc. In this manner you progress bit by bit to your goal ('project') engaging in periodical reviews on the way, to gather your bearings. The aim of the system is to achieve a de-cluttered, stress-free, "mind like water" state akin to the idea of "flow" put forth by psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi.

DIT advises you to take up only chewable bites and limit your daily tasks by "closing the lists" while The Now Habit teaches you to deal with procrastination issues and also incorporates the idea of "un-scheduling".

Finally, there is also a book called "The Perfect Mess" that theorizes 'hidden benefits of disorder'. (By Eric Abrahamson and David H. Freedman ).

There are various e-mail groups that discuss and explore these systems.

J Krishnamurti has classified time into three varieties. Genealogical Time, Mechanical Time and Psychological Time. With a marked shift from earlier years, the modern systems are venturing into psychological time management along with management of mechanical time. However, they seem to ignore the individual's appetite for leisure (the way we speak of the risk appetite of an investor). Any prior definition of leisure tends to lose its very essence and turns it into "work." The 'let go' approach should be inducted in the right doses to satisfy this appetite. (This I find in DIT to some extent). Otherwise, to quote Krishnamurti again, it becomes an "effort" 'to become' efficient/happy/successful rather than 'being' efficient/happy/successful "effortlessly".

Warning : Productivity literature is dubbed as 'Productivity Pron' (Euphemism for "porn") in which people indulge to get pseudo-satisfaction of being productive.