Habit #3 - Collect and Process

I recently read Leo Babauta’s book Zen to Done (ZTD). Zen to Done is a book about getting things done where he describe a simple yet solid framework for organizing our life and achieving results.

He have done an incredible work over the past few years with his blog and he is widely recognized as an expert in the productivity field. What’s interesting in his book is that he describe a list of habits to change, one a time to dramatically improve our life. The difference between this and other books out there is that in Zen to Done you’ll learn exactly what to do to become successful.

In the book, Leo suggest to change one or two habits a time, each for a duration of 30 days. Most people want to change everything as soon as they ear of it. The truth is that by doing this you will end up to be overwhelmed and you’ll five up after a few weeks.

I decided to take action and to start with the first two habits: collecting and processing. I already do a lot of collecting but I I still have a lot inside my head, so I need to truly master this habit. I’m not very good at processing so I’m sure it will help a lot.

Collecting
Collecting means to write down all your thoughts and ideas and let you brain relax by giving it permission to focus on high value things. The deal here is to always have a sort of inbox to write down ideas as they come.

Typical examples of inbox includes notebooks, pda, mail, etc. The more you have, the more difficult will be to process them later, so try to reduce the number of inboxes.

I will use three type of inbox: a small notebook and a pen, an ipod touch and a software program that I already own. It will be mandatory for me to always have a small notebook with me, this is really important. I will also take 10-15 minutes every day to write down everything that I can think of, so to empty my mind.

I want to stress that it is important to write down everything. For example if you lend a book to a friend, write it down. If you want to build a home-based equipment, write it down. Later on you will decide if you want to do it or not, but free your mind first.

Processing
Collecting items is nice, but what do you do with them? The answer is processing. Processing means to start from the very top of your inbox and decide for every item what to do. Don’t skip an item, take a final decision for every item before moving to the next one.

If an item is unimportant, the best you can do is to trash it. If an item is an action and can be done in less than two minutes, do it, otherwise put it in your next actions list for when you have more time or better yet delegate it to someone else.

Please note that this phase does not involve planning, which will be a future habit to master.

For this habit I will use three lists: a next action list for items to do next, a waiting for list for items delegated to someone else, and a someday/maybe list for items I want to do in the future.

I’m sure there will be a few interesting results this month from this habit. I’ll share with you my experience and a few stats. This habit change will last until the August 22, 2009.

If you haven’t already, I suggest to get a copy of Zen to Done as soon as possible.

UPDATE: one week update.

Posted on July 22 2009

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