Why Your Work Keeps Drifting

Drift

If we’re in any way ambitious we’re likely to have problems with GTD.

In fact, the more ambitious we are, the more likely we’ll have problems.

We’re pushing the limits.

We’re not lazy. We’re not procrastinating. We haven’t fallen off the wagon.

We’ve hit the, so far, immutable boundary of the 24-hour wall. There’s only so much.

What happens then, is stuff starts to drift. What drifts isn’t the compelling and urgent. What drifts are the things, if I don’t do them today, I can do them tomorrow. If I don’t do them tomorrow, I can do them next week. If I don’t do them next week, I can do them next month.

By this point, you can just about see those things rounding the bend of the Niagara River and heading for the falls.

One of the first things I encourage ambitious people to do is to make a drift list. Capture those things having our attention and every 24-hour period ends without our getting to them.

Handling this now starts with the GTD practice of the threefold nature of work: planned work, work as it appears; work that needs to be captured, planned, and organized.

It’s the third one ambitious people struggle with the most. You might have a net out there just before the bend in the river to help you capture the drift. I double dare you to find time to plan and organize it.

You’re ambitious: if you could, you’d be doing it.

The solution: do your best; leave the rest.

Attention

Last week, I picked up some resonance from a few of you about the combination of ambition and the experience of having projects and next actions drift away from you.

First, I don’t think you’re attention deficit.

I’m all up in learning diversity. This work I do now began when I was a newly minted college graduate and spent a semester as an intern at a rural school in Maine. Among my responsibilities there was to apply an innovative reading program with high school students who had, up to that point, not learned to read.

By the end of the semester, they all learned to read.

This had absolutely nothing to do with me. At that point, a trained seal had more standing in its profession than I had for just about anything. My job was to follow a strict protocol developed by some geniuses somewhere that the school leadership had been clever enough to adopt.

Attention deficit showed up in my world about 15 years later when a couple of more geniuses — this time I knew their names — Edward Hallowell and John Ratey — recognized some of us had characteristically shorter attention spans for certain things and this condition made it harder to perform well in school.

And as with reading, there were techniques for people with shorter attention spans for certain things to perform well in school.

It turns out, the problem isn’t about learning diversity. Learning diversity has been always and eternal. The problem was (sadly, often is) teaching conformity. Students don’t have disabilities and disorders. We have teaching disabilities and disorders.

Back to your drift. You don’t have attention deficit. Nearly all of us have attention surfeit. And in the 27 years since Hallowell and Ratey published their presciently titled Drive to Distraction, the bids for our attention have doubled and doubled.

Here’s a technique to begin to address the surfeit.

First, review your Drift List. On the list are the things, if I don’t do them today, I can do them tomorrow. If I don’t do them tomorrow, I can do them next week. If I don’t do them next week, I can do them next month.

Now preview your calendar for the next three weeks. I promise you, if you don’t initiate a next action for any of these drift items in the next three weeks, without a serious change in your current way of working, the next action won’t happen within the following three week period.

This requires a particular kind of weekly review. You’re reviewing your previous week for movement on drifting items, reviewing your upcoming week for engagement of any drifting items, and you’re pondering things that have your attention that you need to remove from view. The Someday/Maybe list is for your hopes. Most of us need a No Way Baby list to dump the surfeit.

Overflow

Often how complex your job is, has nothing to do with your title or the number of direct reports you have. I once was promoted and had the number of direct reports reduced. What changed was in the earlier role, our group was made up of subject matter experts, and my job was to get their work out into the world. I was dependent on their workflow, and I had it pretty much dialed in. There were busy seasons, but these would ebb, and I had space to recover and prepare.

In my next job, my direct reports were more dependent on my creating opportunities and developing resources. These were multidimensional and I was often juggling projects and many would drift. Every day ended with more than I could complete in a day. As a result I was frequently a bottleneck. I was stressed, chagrined at my drifting projects, and ashamed of being a bottleneck.

Here’s the irony. The better you get; the more responsibility you get. If you’re ambitious, and, if you’re reading this, then by definition, you have more important projects and actions than you can accomplish within the 24-hour wall. Maybe your job and personal responsibilities have grown. You’re reaching for bigger things. You’re doing new things. You want to open up space. You’re in transition. In my case, the direction of workflow shifted.

Maybe all of those things are happening. Congratulations. I hope.

You’re not alone.

You address it by engaging the Three-fold Nature of Work:

• Pre-defined work
• Work as it appears
• Defining work

Knowing

What with the Thanksgiving holidays, non-stop incoming responsibilities, a non-serious but impactful illness in the family, and, ick, end-of-year paper in the mail that needed processing by hand, I’ve felt under the pile for the last ten days. You know how it is.

David Allen reminds us, things happen and we can get behind. It’s not because of poor practice, it’s because life sometimes drops stuff on us in clumps. The important thing is to ignore the pile and focus on the one thing at the top. Process that. Now there’s one thing on top of the pile. Process that. Maybe it’s a big pile; maybe it’s a small one. Doesn’t matter. There’s only one thing worthy of your attention. It’s the one thing at the top.

You’ve heard me say before, and I’ll say it again: it’s the most effective approach and it’s not as easy as it looks. My fear is deep within that pile is something slowly growing from a task to a problem while it’s being ignored.

Here’s the gift of GTD. The processing doesn’t mean doing. It means knowing. It means getting projects onto project lists. Next actions queued up. Stuff moved to someone else whose role is to act on it next. Opportunities trashed or deleted — harsh, but when life offers you candy, sometimes you have to keep walking toward the broccoli.

Yesterday, I got to the bottom of the pile. I know what those things over there are: they’re things I’m not doing. Nonetheless I’m feeling free and focused now because I know what I’m doing.

I’m writing to you.

Warmly,
CEO of GTD Focus
Francis Sopper