The Whys of Productivity: Processing

The Whys of Productivity: Processing

Gathering everything you need to give attention to is crucial to productivity; however, until you actually give it attention, your stuff won't be anything more than a pile crying out to you.

GTD addresses this during the weekly review and the clearing of the inboxes. Seven Habits doesn't address it, but the underlying assumption is that you are aware of what is going on in your life. Do It Tomorrow is all about putting things into your work for tomorrow, and keeping up with the inflow.

In this segment of "The Whys of Productivity", we will look at why productivity systems all want us to process all the things we have gathered.
The Whys of Productivity: Writing Things Down

The Whys of Productivity: Writing Things Down

It doesn't matter which system you look at: Daytimer, Filofax, 7 Habits, GTD, Do It Tomorrow, Bullet Journal...every system insists that you write things down. Each system differs on how and where you should write them down, but they all want you to get it down on paper (or electrons).
The Whys of Productivity: Minimizing Capture Locations

The Whys of Productivity: Minimizing Capture Locations

Every system out there, particularly those that are dependent on a specific format and/or planner, advocate putting everything in one place. Some systems insist that the only place to put things is in their product; GTD advocates a more realistic approach: minimizing how many places you put stuff.

Looking at this from a practical standpoint, it makes sense that the fewer places you put things, the fewer places you have to keep track of.
The Whys of Productivity: Gathering

The Whys of Productivity: Gathering

The secret to any organizational system is that like items should be stored together, be it by type or by purpose. But in order to see what needs to be organized, you have to know what you have.

Gathering is simply a fancy way of getting information into one place so it can be stored together.
The Whys Of Productivity

The Whys Of Productivity

Throughout all the years that I have been writing about productivity and researching productivity, I see a lot of articles on the "how". But knowing how to do something isn't enough if you want to expand on it. As a math teacher, I know it isn't enough to have students memorize formulas. They have to be able to understand why a formula works if they are to be able to apply it.

As I was considering this, I decided to revamp and expand a series on the "Whys of Productivity". Over the next few weeks, I will look at the similar basics to several productivity systems and dig down into the "whys" behind each method.