Follow My Lead

Pains of Progress

“Progress always gives us more and more of everything faster and faster . There are only so many details that can be comfortably managed in anybody’s life. Once this number has been exceeded, one of two things happens: disorganization or frustration. Yet progress gives us more and more details every year—often at exponential rates. We have to deal with more “things per person” than ever before in the history of humankind. Every year we have more products, more information, more technology, more activities, more choices, more change, more traffic, more commitments, more work. In short, more of everything. Faster… . Progress automatically leads to increasing overload, meaninglessness, speed, change, stress, and complexity”

Richard A. Swenson, The Overload Syndrome 

What to Do If Your Purse or Wallet Is Stolen

Because you, likely, won’t be thinking too clearly in the moments after it happens.

(Note: Keep this list in some other location than your wallet or purse! )

1. Call your bank and each of your credit card companies. (Reference your monthly statements or simply keep a list of their Customer Service phone numbers). Tell them what happened. 

2. File a Police Report in the area it was stolen.

3. Call each of the three National Credit Organizations to place a fraud alert on your name and Social Security number.

• Equifax: 888.766.0008
• Experian: 888.397.3742
• TransUnion: 800.680.7289

4. Call the Social Security Administration and tell them what happened: 800.269.0271

Great Concepts + Clean Design = David Seah

He has his introspective moments on the blog (intended kindly), but his Printable CEO Series is simply very cool and very useful stuff.

David Allen’s Presentation Notes

“GTD and the Two Keys to Sustaining a Healthy Life and Workstyle”

October 19, 2007

 [The following are taken directly from the slides he used in his PowerPoint presentation.]

I . GTD as a Martial Art

• Your ability to generate power is directly proportional to your ability to concentrate.
• Your ability to concentrate is directly proportional to your ability to eliminate distraction.
• Distraction is created by mismanaged commitments.
• Your mind is limited in its ability to manage commitments, because it is handicapped in its ability to remember and remind.
• But until it trusts there is a better system, it cannot let go of the job.
• There is usually an inverse proportion between the amount something is on your mind and the amount it is getting done.
• If you don’t give appropriate attention to what has your attention, it will take more of your attention than it deserves.
• In order to get things off your mind, you must know that:

a) you have captured, clarified, and organized your commitments, at all horizons, and
b) you will engage consciously with them as often as you need to.

• Your ability to refocus, rapidly, on the right things at the right horizon at the right time is the master technique of knowledge work athletics.
• Perspective is your slipperiest and most valuable commodity. Therefore, methods for maintaining perspective are your most important tools.

II. The Two Aspects of Self-Management

1. Control: conscious focused engagement, aware of all options at any one time and place.
2. Perspective: aligned and clear about decisions, directions, and priorities.

III. The GTD Models

Mastering workflow (Control): The five keys to gaining control.

•  
  • Collect
  • Process (clarify)
  • Organize
  • Review
  • Do

Horizons of focus (Perspective): The six levels of work.

•  
  • 50,000 ft - purpose, principles
  • 40,000 ft - vision
  • 30,000 ft - goals
  • 20,000 ft - areas of focus/responsibility
  • 10,000 ft - projects
  • Runway - next actions

IV. The Old Models …

• only dealt with one aspect
• were not complete
• compressed the models
• disconnected from reality
• were system-dependent

V. How I came up with this …

• I needed a better job
• I’m lazy
• I’m enthralled with efficient process
• I value clear space

VI. Where is GTD going?

• A standard for corporate culture?
• Education (time for “mental intelligence”)?
• Dissolving the work vs. life myth?
• Accepted, assumed practice?

After 45 years, his “letter” still speaks …

 ”Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dart of segregation to say, “Wait.” But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six- year-old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored”; when your first name becomes “nigger,” your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness” then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.”

-Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963.