The Tutorials of Doit.im for iPhone Part Ⅴ: Do
When it comes to your busy workday, how do you decide what to do at any given point?
The simple answer is to trust your heart or your intuition. Trusting yourself and the source of your intelligence is pattern for the personal productivity of many people.
David Allen says that there are three priority frameworks that can be enormously helpful in the context of deciding actions:
1. The four-criteria model for choosing actions in the moment
2. The threefold model for evaluating daily work
3. The six-level model for reviewing your work
Combining the three frameworks above, we will tell how to implement the process of “Do” on Doit.im for iPhone.
1) Remember to make your action choices based on the following four criteria, in order:
1. Context
2. Time available
3. Energy available
4. Priority
Context
What you could possibly do in the moment depends on the current context (where you are, and with what tools you take). People who regard GTD as an efficient time management system should organize their tasks by context (In Doit.im for iPhone, you can set a context for each task). For instance, all the actions that require a phone should go to a “Phone” list; all the actions demand that you be in the office should go to an “Office” list. Thus, when you decide what the next action is, you can select the current context on your iPhone and view all the tasks under it. For example, if you are on a bus or a taxi, and the only actions you can take are calls on your cell phone, you can open the “Phone” list in Doit.im for iPhone and view all the calls you can deal with now.
Time available
The second factor in choosing an action in how much time you have before you have to do something else. If you will get off the bus in 15 minutes, you will most likely select a call that could be finished in 15 minutes.
Energy Available
Try to match productive activity with your vitality level. When you are in top form, do some actions that need to be well organized. When you are not, just do some relaxed actions without complex consideration.
Priority
The obvious criterion for taking the next action is relative priority. If there are two tasks in front of you, that require the same time and energy, which is the more important thing for you to do?
GTD tells you to decide your priorities. How can you set priorities in Doit.im for iPhone?
When adding a task in its full mode, you’ll see a flag icon. Tap on it and you can set priorities to the task. Light blue stands for Low Priority; Dark blue stands for Medium Priority; Orange stands for High Priority.
After saving the task, you will find that a color will appear in front of the task. Orange, dark blue and light blue stands for High, Medium and Low respectively.
2) In order to decide priority, let us first talk about three types of activities during the course of the workday.
Doing predefined work
Doing work as it appears
Defining your work
It is often the case that you get interrupted by some unforeseen events when you are absorbed in your to-dos. For example, you have arranged all your tasks today, but the result is that there are still an overwhelming number of tasks in the Today box when it is time to call it a day, because your boss asked you to talk with him in the morning and your colleague came to discuss with you about the current project in the afternoon, which are both out of your predefined work. What’s worse is that during the discussion with your boss and your colleague, you felt more anxious about all the uncompleted tasks you still have for the day.
Most of you are accustomed to regarding unforeseen events as the most important things. However, before dealing with them, if you do not review the other actions on your Today box first and instead just let yourself get caught up in the urgencies of the moment, the result is frustration and anxiety. Actually, within the day’s unforeseen events, there is probably some time you do not make the best of.
Now let’s solve these unforeseen events in your workday one by one. In many cases, these unforeseen events could be put off. For instance, your colleague comes to discuss with you, but you have something important on hand now. Then you may ask your colleague to come in half an hour or if it is possible, you may consider inviting another colleague instead of you to take part in the discussion. Before you make mind up, you should be sure of what is the most important thing is for you to do now. If you just dive into the unforeseen events no matter whether they are important or not, the result will be that the actions that have been re-arranged on your list will surface as emergencies later on, adding more work to fuel the fire.
When it is not possible to put off the unforeseen events, please review your predefined work quickly so that you will know clearly what you are not dealing with.
When your boss sends you an email asking you to deal with an event immediately, you should first estimate how much time it will take and review your predefined work. You may put off those tasks have been arranged but are not so important. Quickly reviewing can help clear your mind and ease anxious feelings about dealing with the event.
However, finally, if these unforeseen events are confirmed as actions that you need to do right now, you may add them to “Doit Now” group. Also, if needed, you can manually sort them under “Doit Now” group.
In General, there is some time between an unforeseen event and an arranged event.
GTD recommends that you keep an inventory of things that need to be done that require very little time or energy. You can add them in the Next box with a tag “little things “and then you can filter them out when needed. Tasks in the Next box are grouped by “Context” by default. So when you filter those little things, you can also view them by context. Focusing on those things in the current context, you can immediately complete them. With all this setup in advance, you can quickly decide on a little thing to do even if there are a few seconds before one answers the phone.
Tip:
Ultimately, in order to know whether you should stop what you are doing and do something else, you will need to know whether it is an important thing, in other words, you need to decide its priority. The only way to determine that is to evaluate your life and work at regular intervals.
3) The final criterion for deciding priority is the sex-level model for reviewing your own work.
There are the six levels of work referred to in GTD.
Life
Three- to five-year visions
One- to two-year goals
Areas of responsibility
Current projects
Current actions
GTD advocates for working from the bottom up. That is to say:
a. Guided by the high-level goals, do the actions from the bottom
Make the high-level goal your ambition and the big direction that you are heading towards. In order to lay a solid foundation, you need to do the current actions. (Once your current action goes against your values or your life direction, you should cancel it at once.)
The first advantage to doing as we have stated above is that it will help you avoid departure from your goals. Second, if you ignore of the actions at the bottom and start working directly from the top down, you will lose confidence and control of the other levels. As a result, you will grow more frustrated. Only when you complete the current work and reach short-term goals can you have more confidence, energy and resource to pay attention to those more important and higher-level goals. In this way, you will have higher productivity in your work and life.
b. Collect tasks comprehensively, define the original motivation
You should collect tasks from all six levels all the while asking; what is the goal? When will you reach it? In order to reach it, what should you do? All these questions will help you find the intrinsic and original motivation of the current actions at the bottom.
In Doit.im for iPhone, you can create a project for your goals, writing them down and listing some possible actions for each.
C. Periodic review, adjust the direction
Periodically review all levels of your goals and adjust them when needed. You should review projects every week, responsibilities every month or so. As for one or two year goals, three to five year visions and your life; you should periodically review and adjust according to your own needs.
Thanks for reading!