A journaling workflow for better GTD higher altitude focus

The challenge of journaling

For those of you who ever tried their hand at journaling, you probably found out it is hard, especially after a while. It takes time and it takes effort. It requires commitment. Not unlike blogging or any other writing activity. And like GTD, it's a wagon you can very easily fall off. So why bother?

The relevance of journaling

Journaling is a wonderful practice if you want to get to know yourself. By taking the time to understand what drives you, you may discover you are not what everyone else ever told you you were. If you get to that very realization, by the way, you are already further in your quest for self-understanding than most people will ever get. Knowing that you don't know "you" is a very sobering realization. It should also put you on the road to finding a trustworthy way of meeting yourself.

Now, and that's the good part, you are the only "you" around, and thus you are ideally placed to determine what "you" are about. No one else can get to know you better than you. Pretty much because you are going to be the one who will be spending the most time with you. And that's quite a lot of you's in a single paragraph.

A whole new you

In order to get to know yourself, you need to take the time to listen to yourself. To listen to yourself, you could try meditation. Again, not an easy practice. Journaling is another excellent way to get to know yourself. And you may actually surprise you. Isn't it wonderful that there is someone so close to you you now can get to know?

But remember I said journaling was not easy? There are ways to make it easier.

Day One as the first step

For me, the first step was to start using good journaling software. Now, in a pitch, a text editor will do, but I really like the Day One application. It provides you with multiple ways of getting your information into the system.

Now, most of what you will read below is thanks to the following excellent post by Sven Fechner (SimplicityBliss) in which he refers to this post by Rob Trew. Bear with me while I explain how I use what they built:

My journaling set-up

Let me take you through my setup. I use Day One in combination with two “customizations”. The first is about getting what I have done that day into the Day One application. As my GTD system is built on OmniFocus, I needed a way to get completed OmniFocus tasks into Day One. Combining Hazel, Day One's CLI (Command Line Interface) and Rob Trew's excellent shell script which loads an overview of my done Omnifocus tasks into Day One. Read Sven's blog post and Rob's detailed explaination on how to set it up.

My journaling workflow

Now, based on this script, I get a markdown formatted entry in Day One for every done task I checked off in OmniFocus during the day. And every evening, usually on the train back home, I go through this list of completed tasks and I add some information on the relevance and my personal appreciation of the task. This is very important: it is not about the task, but about how I felt about it. To be complex about it, it's meta reflection time. And a train ride is often the best moment for meta reflection. But the workflow does not end there.

Each evening, or sometimes early the next morning, I launch a textexpander snippet in Day One. The snippet is based on this Lifehack article by Paul Sloane. The article provides you with a set of five questions to ask yourself each day. What I do is I try to go through these questions and answer them totally honestly. Honest answers to these questions allow you to get to know your deep drivers.

The relevance of journaling for GTD: better understanding of 50K and 40K levels through better understanding yourself

What really pays is to revisit what you have written during your weekly review. It may take some time, but it allows you to get to a point where you really better understand yourself and why you do the things you do. Understanding your own motivation to me is an important road into defining what really matters to you, and refocusing yourself.

And after all, if GTD has any value, it should not only make us more effective, but it should help us achieve what is truly close to us.

Patrick Rhone's beautiful article "The Farmer" >→

Too long it had been waiting on my reading list, but I just rediscovered this pearl by Patrick Rhone, who again shows why he is such a great writer. A quote, among many quotes:

This farmer realizes that the relationship with her work, like any good relationship is, and should be, reciprocal. That the work, the land, would not be as good without her commitment to it. And, in turn, it returns that commitment to her. And, because of her intimacy with it, it returns that much more.

Go read the whole post here now. Really.

Via Patrick Rhone

Commitment to focus

Predator hunting

Have you ever seen a predator hunting? It’s truly a sight to see. You may want to check Discovery Channel, just to get a glimpse of the experience.

A predator chasing a herd does not, in effect, chase the herd. Rather, after a period of quiet but concentrated observation, it will pounch, going after one specific animal. It almost seems as if the predator has a method to execute the attack run, with a default target and and one or more backup targets in case the default target is not an option. The execution is pure animal muscle memory, executed picture perfect, like a dancer. Of course in reality, the animal goes solely on instinct and reflexes. However, that’s not the point.

UPDATE: I learned about 30 minutes ago there is an podcast with Merlin Mann that follows pretty much the same argument, but expands on it even more. I just listened to (part of) it. You want to listen to this.

The point here is that - even instinctive - preparatory work and a focused execution, with backup plan, even if the animal is not consciously aware of it, results in food on the table. Anything less is likely to result in failure. And failure if it happens time after time results in death for a predator, who needs food to stay strong and hunt another day.

Our failures to deliver

Compare this to us, unfocused and often scared people. We often underperform or fail to deliver the results due to lack of preparatory work and lack of care and focus during execution. We will often put in significant effort with little to no results to show for.

Bottom line? Significant waste of effort.

Longer term consequences? Motivational death and even worse results.

Why we fail

There are a couple of reasons why we can fail. The most obvious one is procrastination. A lot has been written about that specific issue by authors like Steven Pressfield and Merlin Mann. I won’t repeat their words, but it’s more than worth to take the time and read what they have to say.

However, while the root may well be procrastination and the lizard brain, a significant part of the problem is a lack of focus in preparation, execution and wrap-up.

A consistent lack of focus

Paraphrasing David Allen, preparation for proper execution takes more time than you think, but less than you are afraid it will. Proper preparation however takes different time. It’s not “intensive” activity time as such, but intent attention to how exactly you will approach the challenge. Let’s look at what is required.

Some thoughts on achieving focus

• Your mind needs to go there before your body does: I picture the predator stalking his prey, taking his animal mind through the moves which will put the meat between his teeth. You need to really think through what you want to do. What helps is:
• Defining clear and achievable outcomes: If you know what to achieve, what the actual target is, you’re less likely to be distracted by other potential targets. Getting distracted is a surefire way to lose focus and lose the prey, the end result to be achieved.
• You need to show up: Even if you are afraid, even if the adrenaline is pulsing through your body, you need to actually be present to be able to execute. It’s not only about being there, aware and active, although that’s very important, of course. No, it’s also about putting in the effort, executing the first 10 minutes to beat that fear of failure.
• Be flexible: When executing, you need to be flexible enough to be able to switch targets, to go after a fall-back scenario when the initial scenario does not appear to be achievable. The worst is to block or panic when the primary goal no longer is within your reach. Having clearly defined fallback positions is not giving up, its having good sense.
• Don’t overthink: There are occasions we paralyze ourselves with our incessant thinking. We doubt, we backtrack, we hesitate, we fail. We don’t trust muscle memory. Quite probably because we did not put in the preparatory effort. But sometimes you just need to let go and let the process take over. But only after having done a proper preparation.
• Execute a post mortem: This is almost always forgotten, but essential to learning. And it’s what separates us from the predator. After having eaten the prey, after having celebrated the success, dare to critically look back on what went well but also on what could have gone better. These lessons learned need to be incorporated in your approach, they need in turn to become part of your muscle memory.
• And finally, make sure you do what you love: After all, by making the right choices, by chosing from the heart, you’re less likely to give up or get distracted.

It all comes down to …

making choices and truly committing to them. Are you ready to do that?

When tools distract from purpose

Looking for a purpose is probably the worst way to find it

The more I look at the way I have been active in the past years, the more I am starting to understand you cannot discover your purpose in life by looking for it. On the contrary, the act of looking for your purpose will likely distract you from it and make it more difficult to find. Sounds crazy? Think about it: your purpose is what will make you the best you. The strategic fit. The thing that was waiting for you to do it. In essence, the you you were waiting for. The more you keep engaging in other activities which are not purpose, the more likely you will not find it. That’s a plain statistical reality.

When the tool is cool

At lot of likeminded people fall for the next personal productivity fad. Much as I love sites such as Lifehacker, they tend to cost me money. But the next best methodology will not necessarily allow you to do a better job. On the contrary, if the tool is cool, it may distract you from focusing on what matters most. And this is written by someone who is a big fan op all products Apple.

About tooling

Tooling is about developing assistive technologies to allow for better production. It is never about the tool itself. Good personal productivity tools are thus tools which, when correctly applied, allow you to reduce the noise in your surroundings, your head and ideally, your heart.

Spying your purpose despite the tools

Then, supported but not dominated by your tools, when all is quiet, even in the middle of a concert, you may spy your purpose. Again, it is likely to be disguised but there nevertheless. So, these tools are not the way to your purpose. You are. They only serve, only when correctly used, to get you there faster.

So, how do you go about it?

You find it while accomplishing things you feel good about and which make you feel good about you. If that’s a cop-out, it honestly is the best possible answer I can give you. In all decision, be true to yourself. So lets quit playing.