Effectiveness is the capability of producing an effect. So to measure effectiveness, we first need to identify the desired effect. The closed list, identified by Mark Forster, can go a long way to helping us with this.
Many forces reduce our effectiveness.
- New actions fly at us from every direction. An excellent rule such as "capture everything" means that we note down every possible thing we might want to do. That's very useful for not losing (and re-remembering) stuff, but it does result in an increasing task list.
- Other people seem entirely committed to continually challenging our ability to get our inbox to empty.
- And then as if we have nothing better to do, once a year we leverage our inebriated state to generate excellent New Year's resolutions!
But luckily we have some inbuilt advantages.
- A feature of human intelligence is the ability to delay the response to an external event. This has the excellent effect of automatically making our actions more considered - we don't just react, we plan and can then choose the best course of action.
- We learn. Or rather - we have the capability to learn, not always used!
I believe both of these features are embodied in the concept of the closed list, described in the book Do It Tomorrow.
Create a list for tomorrow, with all the actions you'd like to complete, and that you think you can complete in that day. If a new request comes in, or you think of something to do - do not do it. Put it on the list for tomorrow. Today's list is closed. Complete it.
Why? Well, doing this has the immediate effect of staying focused on the task(s) at hand, or the effect that we would like to produce. We become more effective. And we can select that effect the previous day, when we're clear-minded about what would really make our day a success.
But there's another benefit - we improve our capability to judge what we can take on in a given day. Once we identify what we can do, we get a better idea of ourselves. We learn.
For extra marks, we can build into our desired effect an increased ability to improve that. We can target specific growth. Today I did 5 things. Tomorrow I want to do 6. You can turn it into a bit of a game - push yourself and see if you can add a few more, etc. This can help us stay motivated.
In addition, you get a sense of completing your work for the day, instead of a never-ending stream of next actions.
How I do this [1] with Tudumo - I add a "tomorrow" tag to the given set of actions. I therefore get the GTD benefit of being able to identify my next actions for a given project, and the Do It Tomorrow ability to identify and complete a set of actions.
And, another excellent resource - if you've never seen David Seah's "The Printable CEO" give it a read - it dovetails pretty nicely and has a point-scoring system for measuring effectiveness.
[1] Um - quick note. I sometimes do this! I prefer driving techniques rather than being driven by them. Some days I'm a black-belt useless creature, other days the actions fly on the wings of angels and mere lists serve only to get in the way, and on other days I need something like this technique to keep me on the straight and narrow. But try it for a few days before you decide.
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