Efficiency is getting things done. Effectiveness is doing the right things.
Apparently, despite a hopeful comment from Ethan Schoonover, there seems to be little hope that prioritization will appear in OmniFocus. I'm only digging into this now, but a discussion thread on the topic revealed a dogma about the Getting Things Done "canon":
Just got started with my sneaky peak, and OF is just plain *awesome*. However, there's one killer feature that is keeping me from moving over from iGTD permanently and taking my chances with the Alpha: prioritization of tasks! I realize that setting priorities is a bit "anti-GTD" to purists, but in my case it's absolutely necessary.....
This requested yielded a number of responses:
Given that the prioritisation of tasks is not canonical GTD, then if this feature were to be added, it would be crucial IMHO that there were a preference to turn this off altogether.
I suppose it's a fine line that the Omni crew are having to tread - whether to aim for a pure GTD implementation or open up to a wider audience practicing variations on GTD or even unrelated productivity systems.
Yes, because one wouldn't want just anyone to be productive -- only those who've drunk the kool-ade.
Stay GTD Canonical, at least for the first release.
Prioritization is not canonical.
Well, while the project may have been inspired by GTD, it is called "OmniFocus," not "OmniGTD."
Omni president Ken Case then weighed in:
OmniFocus has a notion of priority already: it's the order in which you arrange your items. If you want something to have a higher priority, simply move it up in the list.
This gives you much finer-grained control than a typical priority system, which typically only has a few levels of priority: OmniFocus effectively has as many priorities as you have items.
Does that make sense?
It actually doesn't make sense to me, because I'm prioritizing apples vs. oranges. Moving tasks up and down won't help if they are in different contexts.
This all really has me rather stumped. As someone who has gained much from the Franklin-Covey system of prioritizing, I just don't understand the logic to deprecate priority.
As for the complaint that priority is non-canonical... I don't have The Book right here, but I do remember that, when discussing the 4 factors for doing (first by context, next by time available, then by energy available and - FINALLY - priority)
I don't know, but it seems to me that even asking the question, "Do I have the energy for that?" for every task is an invitation to procrastinate. A big long list of contextualized but non-prioritized tasks is pretty darned certain to sap any inspiration from me. On the other hand, priorities can help you focus -- even stimulate energy. You tend to find energy for those tasks that are truly important.
What's really disheartening to me is that I may have to buy and install Parallels just so I can run the Windows-only Franklin-Covey software ... and that is something that has so many negatives I've never given it an A priority. (Franklin-Covey needs to do some work on their belief windows, imho.)
And so I continue to work on paper while the practitioners of "the canon" define themselves out of one more customer? Hope not.
]]>Efficiency is getting things done. Effectiveness is doing the right things.
Apparently, despite a hopeful comment from Ethan Schoonover, there seems to be little hope that prioritization will appear in OmniFocus. I'm only digging into this now, but a discussion thread on the topic revealed a dogma about the Getting Things Done "canon":
Just got started with my sneaky peak, and OF is just plain *awesome*. However, there's one killer feature that is keeping me from moving over from iGTD permanently and taking my chances with the Alpha: prioritization of tasks! I realize that setting priorities is a bit "anti-GTD" to purists, but in my case it's absolutely necessary.....
This requested yielded a number of responses:
Given that the prioritisation of tasks is not canonical GTD, then if this feature were to be added, it would be crucial IMHO that there were a preference to turn this off altogether.
I suppose it's a fine line that the Omni crew are having to tread - whether to aim for a pure GTD implementation or open up to a wider audience practicing variations on GTD or even unrelated productivity systems.
Yes, because one wouldn't want just anyone to be productive -- only those who've drunk the kool-ade.
Stay GTD Canonical, at least for the first release.
Prioritization is not canonical.
Well, while the project may have been inspired by GTD, it is called "OmniFocus," not "OmniGTD."
Omni president Ken Case then weighed in:
OmniFocus has a notion of priority already: it's the order in which you arrange your items. If you want something to have a higher priority, simply move it up in the list.
This gives you much finer-grained control than a typical priority system, which typically only has a few levels of priority: OmniFocus effectively has as many priorities as you have items.
Does that make sense?
It actually doesn't make sense to me, because I'm prioritizing apples vs. oranges. Moving tasks up and down won't help if they are in different contexts.
This all really has me rather stumped. As someone who has gained much from the Franklin-Covey system of prioritizing, I just don't understand the logic to deprecate priority.
As for the complaint that priority is non-canonical... I don't have The Book right here, but I do remember that, when discussing the 4 factors for doing (first by context, next by time available, then by energy available and - FINALLY - priority)
I don't know, but it seems to me that even asking the question, "Do I have the energy for that?" for every task is an invitation to procrastinate. A big long list of contextualized but non-prioritized tasks is pretty darned certain to sap any inspiration from me. On the other hand, priorities can help you focus -- even stimulate energy. You tend to find energy for those tasks that are truly important.
What's really disheartening to me is that I may have to buy and install Parallels just so I can run the Windows-only Franklin-Covey software ... and that is something that has so many negatives I've never given it an A priority. (Franklin-Covey needs to do some work on their belief windows, imho.)
And so I continue to work on paper while the practitioners of "the canon" define themselves out of one more customer? Hope not.
]]>4. Too many to do list applications. As a Web Worker
Daily writer, of course I’m interested in to do lists and applications implementing them. But just because you can build one with whatever web framework you’re trying to learn doesn’t mean you should release it as a beta and expect me to write about it....
8. Getting Things Done. The productivity virus so many of us have been infected with in 2006 and 2007. Let’s move on. Getting lots of stuff done is not the way to achieve something important. You could be so busy planning next actions that you miss out on what your real contribution should be.
It’s the weekend. I’m quite focused on getting little or nothing done. And finding a different sort of appreciation for tools like Twitter that allow my to note what friends, colleagues, and strangers are doing
in passing. Send a little chirp of input if I like, yet still step back and recharge batteries, and in what would be an anathema to David Allen acolytes everywhere - get nothing done.
To me, GTD is “a solution to finally be able to enjoy free time without feeling bogged down by a constant feeling of guilt over everything I should already have done.”
Maybe not everyone has issues doing things. If you don’t have trouble getting stuff out of the way, then throw GTD out of the window and continue enjoying life. You don’t need it.
But for many people, procrastination, administrivia piling up, not-enough-time-for-stuff-I-enjoy-doing and commitments you know you’re not going to be able to honour are a reality, and a reality that is a source of stress.
To me, it seems like blogging is getting done on the topic, but the real topic is being missed by all. (Either that or we're all debating over the nature of an elephant.)
The real issue, I feel, is what Peter F. Drucker put so well:
Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.
These eleven words are part of premise of Franklin-Covey, the gold standard when it comes to productivity management systems.
--And no, it's not "time management": you can't manage time, it happens no matter what you do; all you can do is manage what you do with the time.
"Getting Things Done" suffers from an inept title -- and I confess haven't allocated much of my own attention towards trying to figure out its merits or lack thereof -- so I'll leave off on further commentary there.
But Franklin-Covey suffers even more by keeping their system paper-based, with the only (proprietary) software available able to run only on Windows machines or on hard-coded Palms or in a new online system where even a demo is hidden behind required registration. (Hint to Franklin-Covey: Establish value before picking our privacy pockets.) On the other hand, Kinkless has made "Getting Things Done" relevant for people who live and work primarily on computers (but not me, as it does strike me as rather focused on the doing rather than the what-to-do).
Meanwhile, on my office shelf sits my Franklin-Covey planner in its gorgeous red leather cover, rarely used because when it comes to something dynamic like planning, turning away from the computer to a paper notebook seems neither efficient nor effective.
]]>4. Too many to do list applications. As a Web Worker
Daily writer, of course I’m interested in to do lists and applications implementing them. But just because you can build one with whatever web framework you’re trying to learn doesn’t mean you should release it as a beta and expect me to write about it....
8. Getting Things Done. The productivity virus so many of us have been infected with in 2006 and 2007. Let’s move on. Getting lots of stuff done is not the way to achieve something important. You could be so busy planning next actions that you miss out on what your real contribution should be.
It’s the weekend. I’m quite focused on getting little or nothing done. And finding a different sort of appreciation for tools like Twitter that allow my to note what friends, colleagues, and strangers are doing
in passing. Send a little chirp of input if I like, yet still step back and recharge batteries, and in what would be an anathema to David Allen acolytes everywhere - get nothing done.
To me, GTD is “a solution to finally be able to enjoy free time without feeling bogged down by a constant feeling of guilt over everything I should already have done.”Maybe not everyone has issues doing things. If you don’t have trouble getting stuff out of the way, then throw GTD out of the window and continue enjoying life. You don’t need it.
But for many people, procrastination, administrivia piling up, not-enough-time-for-stuff-I-enjoy-doing and commitments you know you’re not going to be able to honour are a reality, and a reality that is a source of stress.
To me, it seems like blogging is getting done on the topic, but the real topic is being missed by all. (Either that or we're all debating over the nature of an elephant.)
The real issue, I feel, is what Peter F. Drucker put so well:
Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.
These eleven words are part of premise of Franklin-Covey, the gold standard when it comes to productivity management systems.
--And no, it's not "time management": you can't manage time, it happens no matter what you do; all you can do is manage what you do with the time.
"Getting Things Done" suffers from an inept title -- and I confess haven't allocated much of my own attention towards trying to figure out its merits or lack thereof -- so I'll leave off on further commentary there.
But Franklin-Covey suffers even more by keeping their system paper-based, with the only (proprietary) software available able to run only on Windows machines or on hard-coded Palms or in a new online system where even a demo is hidden behind required registration. (Hint to Franklin-Covey: Establish value before picking our privacy pockets.) On the other hand, Kinkless has made "Getting Things Done" relevant for people who live and work primarily on computers (but not me, as it does strike me as rather focused on the doing rather than the what-to-do).
Meanwhile, on my office shelf sits my Franklin-Covey planner in its gorgeous red leather cover, rarely used because when it comes to something dynamic like planning, turning away from the computer to a paper notebook seems neither efficient nor effective.
]]>