Mental Ecology: The Art Of List-Making

In honor of Earth Day, let's look at how to use our natural mental resources more effectively.

My systems are set up and maintained with a standard of thinking as little as possible. That way I can use my mind to think ABOUT my work, instead of thinking OF it.

It looks to the casual observer just the opposite. The perception is often something like, "You have so many lists! Isn't it confusing and a lot of work to remember where to put things and to maintain all that?" They think their mind has better things to do.

That might be true, if I had arbitrarily created all that at one time. But it didn't happen that way.

It took years of experimentation to discover that putting anything but what had to happen that particular day on a calendar caused me to have to think about the page every time I looked at it. "What has to happen today, and what could possibly slide to tomorrow?"

I used to have all of my at-computer actions on one "At Computer" list. After many occasions when I found myself sitting on a plane and having to decipher which ones I could do, and which ones I couldn't (because they required an on-line connection), I spun out a separate "On Line" action list, which I didn't have to bother with on a plane, and which removed the mental static from the "At Computer" list.

Here's an example for anyone who still has a few or a few thousand emails stagnating in the Inbox. Reading an email, then closing it and leaving it in the Inbox because it might not seem as important as other emails at the moment creates double reading, double thinking, and double decision-making. Not to mention the nagging it creates in the psyche in the meantime. That's a waste of mental energy.

My mind has better things to do.

You can find out more about David Allen and GTD at http://www.davidco.com.

The David Allen Company is a professional training, coaching, and management consulting organization, based in Ojai, California. Its purpose is to enhance performance and improve the quality of life by providing the world's best information, education, and products in the fields of personal productivity and work/life balance.

Comments

[PerryMaison]

The comments on this article have missed the point. I read the GTD book years ago, and the other comments may just be a reaction to this article instead of a deeper understanding of why it helps to make lists. Most people need to keep their lists more up to date - not an excessive or obsessive or anal-retentive amount, but just enough to get things off their minds. Getting stuff out of your head reduces stress and worry, so you can enjoy life more. I have more time for fun since I read GTD, and my mind is present with the fun. Don't knock it 'til you've tried it.

[bobdob]

This is anal-retentive obsessiveness at its worst. David has ONE good rule: if you can do it in two minutes or less, do it.

The rest is crap.

[cktirumalai]

Youth is disdainful of lists, Age can become entangled in them. It is generally too much to hope one can learn from the other.
I remember a review of a book in which the reviewer, a Professor gifted with a brilliance not always respectful of facts, said that the author should have thrown away his index-cards and written a real book.

[fairwitness]

I suppose you have a list of those ("better things to do"), too.

The thing that seems gravely mistaken, to me, about your "maximum personal efficiency systems" is this: it is dominance of your life (your actual life, not your imagined life) by your mind--your assumption is that life unsystematized is life wasted is just a mistake. I think it is the opposite: obsession with lists and systems is to waste one's attention on trivia.

While simple, functional organization is useful in simplifying one's life, the quality of one's life is not enhanced by excessive listing and preoccupation with maximizing personal efficiency. It's essentially myopic to place efficiency and personal achievement at the center of one's world, a manifestation of narcissism so common that it goes unquestioned in this culture.

But certainly an industry, no? But on your death bed, will you say, "I wish I had made more lists and been more efficient and maximized my personal power" or, alternatively, "I wish I'd paid more attention to real life, as it was presented moment-to-moment, and discovered what it was teaching me, my nature and context"?