Getting Things Done

THE ART OF GETTING THINGS DONE I PART ONE

Do

The basic purpose of this workflow-management process is to

facilitate good choices about what you're doing at any

point in time. At 10:33 A.M. Monday, deciding

whether to call Sandy, finish the proposal, or process

your e-mails will always be an intuitive call, but with

the proper preplanning you can feel much more con-

fident about your choices. You can move from hope to

trust in your actions, immediately increasing your

speed and effectiveness.

Three Models for Making Action Choices

Let's assume for a moment that you're not resisting any of your

"stuff" out of insecurity or procrastination. There will always be a

large list of actions that you are not doing at any given moment.

So how will you decide what to do and what not to do, and feel

good about both?

The answer is, by trusting your intuition. If you have col-

lected, processed, organized, and reviewed all your current commit-

ments, you can galvanize your intuitive judgment with some

intelligent and practical thinking about

your work

and values.

I have developed three models that will be help-

ful for you to incorporate in your decision-making

about what to do. They won't tell you answers—

whether you call Frederick, e-mail your son at

school, or just go have an informal "how are you?"

conversation with your secretary—but they will assist

you in framing your options more intelligently. And that's some-

thing that the simple time- and priority-management panaceas

can't do.

Every decision to

act is an intuitive

one. The challenge

is to migrate from

hoping it's the right

choice to trusting

it's the right choice.

You have more to
do than you can
possibly do. You
just need to feel
good about your
choices.