![]() "Doing" in GTD starts with being consistent in capturing, clarifying, and organizing. If you approach it without some kind of framework to guide the process of actually working, then we have no reason to expect that the exhaustion will ever abate. The supposedly simple act of merely picking a thing to do and then getting to work on it, is full of holes through which our time and energy (and mental health) leak out constantly. It's no wonder so many faculty feel exhausted and burned out. Or maybe none of this happens, but you select something to work on that's ill suited to your present situation - a task that takes 30 minutes to complete when you only have 10 a task that needs to be done in one part of campus when you're spending the day in another a task that takes a lot of focus when you're worn down at the end of the day and don't have it in you.Īnd very often, all of the above causes you to just shut down completely and doomscroll on social media. In any case, you end up spending the day working only on seemingly-urgent things, not on things that are important to you that build you up and sustain you.Įven if you resist the siren song of the seemingly-urgent and pick something else, you often end up feeling guilt and worry because the choice to work on that thing is also 999,999 choices to not work on all the other things. Sometimes urgency is exaggerated (and people who want you to handle their to-do list items are quite good at making things look urgent). ![]() Sometimes the item hasn't been clarified and it's not really something you should be doing, but you do it anyway because it looks like a fire that needs putting out. Often this is an item from someone else's to-do list, passed on to you. Usually the outcome of that response is to pick the most urgent-looking thing available. (Even if you have a list especially if you don't.) The sheer quantity and variety of work that needs to be done causes a fight-or-flight response, and it takes time and energy simply to engage with the list of to do items. the time isn't taken up by a meeting or a class), then what do you pick? Here's how it often goes. When you actually do have time to sit down and get something done (i.e. It's especially hard in academia, where the work is always overflowing both in quantity and variety. But it turns out that actually just doing work is hard, even if the work itself is familiar or even enjoyable. Instead, it seems more focused on pushing questionable life hacks and hawking the latest tools. It's always seemed odd to me that so little of writing about "productivity" is focused on actually doing work. ![]() I am taking a page from Leo Babauta's excellent book Zen To Done and rechristening Engage with the simpler and more evocative word: Do. ![]()
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