Your time is a limited resource and you have to decide what you’ll spend that currency on. There aren’t enough hours in the day for you to do everything, and to be completely fair, when you split your attention among multiple tasks, none of them are going to be done as well as they should. This notion is explored in one of the seminal books on productivity, David Allen’s 2001 opus *Getting Things Done*. One of his key pillars in that book is the processing and organization workflow in which the user parses and decides between various items in his inbox. (The inbox is anything that demands your attention, which can be literally your email inbox, or it can be the physical mail you receive, your app notifications, voice or text messages, reminders, goals in the back of your mind, and more.) In a world of endless distractions, it makes sense that the first major decision in the GTD workflow is to decide whether something is actionable or not.
What does it mean for something to be actionable? You have to decide whether that something is not only worthy of your attention, but that it is worthy of your attention right now. Let’s focus on what you should do if the answer is No:
Eliminate
There are many things you receive in your figurative inbox that don’t matter. An advertisement for something you don’t need, news that doesn’t concern you, problems being attended to by someone else, etc. Heck, even office gossip should fall under this category. Delete it, ignore it, excise it from your life so you can remain focused on what matters to you, on what you’re most qualified to be handling.
Incubate
But you’ll sometimes get an idea, receive a suggestion, or see something interesting that might be useful later on, even if you’re not sure how yet. Perhaps a radio-ad salesperson has approached you about advertising your business on his station; you’re intrigued, but you know this isn’t a priority this month because you’re busy helping your managers prepare for the summer changes to your product lineup. This would be a good thing to ruminate on, but later. With something that is the right idea but at the wrong time, set a reminder to revisit it in your calendar or reminders app. This pause allows you to really consider ideas carefully before jumping into something unprepared.
Reference
This one is the simplest. When you see or are sent interesting or pertinent information, maybe a report on sales trends or even feedback about one of your employees, this can be information that gets stored away for the day it becomes most effective, such as at a sales meeting or performance evaluation. Not every piece of data that comes across you desk needs to be addressed that instant: it’s okay to accumulate it to paint a larger picture down the road, once you’ve had the time to digest and distill it for your specific purposes.
Next week, we’ll take a look at what should happen if the answer to the question of actionability is Yes, and the various decisions you’ll need to make then.
Developing productivity skills is the sort of actionable item you want to say Yes to right away, as it will have a cascade effect on how you manage your time forever after. —Did you know that among the many services The Brandt Group offers, staff training and leadership development courses are among our most celebrated? Learn more now by reaching out to us here, and we’ll help design the right curriculum for you and your staff. We’ll also help you develop your employees’ customer service and sales skills to ensure your business is running at peak efficiency. Let’s get started today!
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