Optimize Your Tasks With The Secret Weapon
Posted: March 21st, 2012 | Author: Gideon Walker | Filed under: Productivity, Uncategorized | No Comments »Tweet
Img from www.thesecretweapon.org
I know I’m 10 years late in “Getting Things Done”, and I’ve covered a little bit about it in the last post here, but I just found something that I absolutely must share with you.
I’ve started using this hybrid system of David Allen’s GTD method and incorporating it into Ever Note. That’s right, I just found what I believe to be the ultimate system in ACTUALLY getting things done.
It’s all thanks to guys at Brain Toniq who created an entire manifesto on “The Secret Weapon”, from why you should use the GTD method and Ever Note, how it helps, step-by-step instructions in setting the entire thing up, and power tips to get the most out of it.
I’ve used the system for about a week and a half now and I’m absolutely amazed by how much better I feel. It truly does give you “Controlled, optimized throughput, with “no task left behind.”
If you’re like me, and I’m sure I’m like most of you, you have thoughts shooting like crazy throughout the day. Things you need to take care, phone calls to remember to make, getting that particular item you went to the grocery store for. The thoughts will pop up in my head when I least expect them and I always tell myself that I’ll make a mental note of it and come back to it. It’s not that hard to remember.
Then I completely forget about it until 2 weeks later! Bah!
In a section of Getting Things Done, David talks about our minds like a computer’s RAM. We’re constantly filling it up with thoughts, ideas, to-do’s, and we have a finite amount of memory capacity to remember it all. Not only that but when you use up all your RAM, your performance begins to suffer. The ideal way to focus and seriously get things done is to completely empty your mind to reach your sweet spot in focusing on tasks.
Well…Brain Toniq can say it more eloquently than I…
This collection of stuff — uncompleted to-dos banging around in our brain — are all “Open Loops” which cause very big problems. Not only do lots of things gets forgotten, but more importantly, these undone and unorganized to-dos remain in the finite amount of memory in our mind, creating a background, ongoing noise that makes us much less productive.
When you make the decision to use a system that gets *every* idea and action item and to-do out of your brain and into a workable system like the one we’re about to show you, then your mind becomes more freed up to focus 100% on the current task at hand. This seems like an incredibly simple and obvious idea, but once you experience the results of what Allen calls “mind like water,” it feels like nothing short of a revolution. And that’s what we feel TSW is — a revolution in living.
But the only way to do that is to get everything out of your mind as soon as possible into a trusted system to refer back to.
6 Steps Of The Secret Weapon
- Identify all the stuff in your life that isn’t in the right place (close all open loops)
- Get rid of the stuff that isn’t yours or you don’t need right now
- Create a right place that you trust and that supports your working style and values
- Put your stuff in the right place, consistently
- Do your stuff in a way that honors your time, your energy, and the context of any given moment
- Review weekly
The 5 Steps From Getting Things Done
We (1) collect things that command our attention;
(2) process what they mean and what to do about them; and
(3) organize the results, which we
(4) review as options for what we choose to
(5) do.
Allen, David (2002-12-31). Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity (p. 25). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.
Basically you set up a few notebooks in Ever Note.
- Action Pending
- Completed
- Cabinet
And create a list of tags to quickly categorize your to-do’s into an easily searchable and manageable system.
Context (Tags) To Add:
- .What
- .When
- .Where
- .Who
- .Active Projects
- .Inactive Projects
- !Daily
- 1-Now
- 2-Next
- 3-Soon
- 4-Later
- 5-Someday
- 6-Waiting
- @home
- @work
- @ town
- Read/Review
I won’t get into the details of the entire setup when you should actually view it here or download the PDF and go over it carefully to truly understand and appreciate what The Secret Weapon will do for you.
The Results
So even after using TSW (The Secret Weapon) for only a week and a half, I finally see and realize that I’m actually NOT as busy as I thought I was. Yes there’s still the act of taking care of the kids (just had our third boy this month) which takes up a big portion of my day, but everything else that I thought I never had time for…I suddenly do. And it’s not that I created more time to do these things (like write this post, get copy out for AppSumo, or read a few chapters at a time from the many books I’m reading), it’s that I was too distracted with what I THOUGHT I had to do and not creating a systematic approach to choosing what was important to do right now and what could wait for later.
It has made decision making a bit easier, remembering things (duh), and has put me into inbox zero bliss. Any action items that I get through email, I just forward to my Ever Note account for safe keeping, archive the email, and come back to Ever Note to attach (process) context (tags) for it so I don’t have to actively try to remember to do it.
Anyways, I’ll stop rambling on about this awesome system and let you get to it on your own.
Try it out…like TODAY, and let me know how it goes for you.
If you have any other tips and tricks in utilizing Ever Note or getting things done, let us know in the comments below and be sure to thank the guys at Brain Toniq for this.
Tweet