industriousone

Man, it feels good to get this stuff out of my head. Today's brain dump is scaffolds, another stupid simple technique I use every day to get more done. I live and die by my scaffolds; they are my workday heartbeat. Even if my day gets crappy and unproductive my scaffolds ensure I end up a little closer to my goals.

In one way scaffolds are just checklists, like my morning scaffold here:

• stretch
• drink water
• start breakfast
• start the Roomba
• empty the dishwasher
• take vitamins
• give Kenobi his pills
• empty the dehumidifier
• feed fish

Simple, right? Why even bother with a list?

Ticking off the list each morning helps me remember everything even when I'm bleary-eyed and waking up. Just as important as the what, it optimizes how I do it. After weeks of using and tweaking the list I know this is the best way to get it done. And I don't have to waste any time or energy wondering if I've forgotten something later.

The scaffold also gives me a place to "hang" new actions (hence the name). Kenobi only needs his pills at certain times of year, when his allergies act up. If I didn't check the list every morning I'd have to resort to Post-It notes and memory when allergy season came around. (Kenobi is our dog, by the way. Some people have an allergy to dogs, we have a dog with allergies.) By developing a habit of checking my lists I've created the perfect place to leave reminders for new actions and otherwise optimize my day.

My afternoon scaffold gets more interesting:

• check email
• process inboxes
• home & life stuff (5 minutes)
• organizing (10 minutes)
• personal development (20 minutes)
• organize iTunes music (5 minutes)

The idea here is to take the stuff I want to get done and, instead of trying to set aside big blocks of time (which will probably never happen), just do a little bit every day. Home and life might include scheduling an appointment, returning a phone call, or researching a purchase. Organizing could be processing notes, prioritizing ideas, or rethinking a project plan. Personal development includes activities like reading articles, working through a BBC language course, or journaling. And so on.

In GTD terms, this scaffold creates artificial contexts that help me break out of the @computer conundrum. I have @life, @organizing, and @personal contexts where I keep track of what I want to work on next. (For non-GTD folks, contexts are just lists of related to-dos. GTD is all about the lists!)

It may feel weird to work in such small increments at first, but once you get a flow and develop the habit of doing it every day it starts to feel natural. I think you'll be surprised at how much you can get done in ten minutes. And because it is such a small amount of time you don't have to feel like you are shortchanging your "real" work.

I'd recommend starting by setting aside ten minutes every day for organizing which, due to the second law of thermodynamics, is an on-going battle against entropy which everyone must wage. Make a list of things you could do to get more organized — cleaning out a drawer, reading an article on organization, or whatever — and then pick one and start doing it.

For the sake of completeness, here is my "workday start" scaffold:

• check my calendars
• check my email
• check websites (I have a collection of bookmarks I load and scan each morning)
• review day's goals and MITs
• morning pages
• sit for two minutes

My "workday end":

• fill out timesheet
• sync iPhone
• day's postmortem
• disconnect drives
• mark IM as away
• turn down heat/AC
• sit for two minutes

And my "evening":

• backup laptop
• exercise
• empty the dehumidifier
• walk Kenobi
• check calendars
• turn down heat/AC
• brush and floss
• set next day's goals and MITs

And that's it, stupid simple. Credit where credit is due: checklists from David Allen's Getting Things Done and How to Create a Personal Productivity Scaffold by Steve Pavlina.

Thanks for reading; I hope you find the ideas useful!