![]() ![]() Recently some GTD commentators like J eff Kirvin have talked about contexts more abstractly, in terms of energy levels and concentration, and this makes a lot of sense. When you are comfortably in your groove you know what needs doing and can prioritise around your commitments and objectives successfully, depending on the importance and urgency of the task itself - without having to think about the kind of situation in which you’d best carry it out. When David Allen wrote the first edition of this seminal book back in 2002, he was thinking of context in terms of access to technology, such as whether it was a good time to use the phone or see our email or have access to certain colleagues - and given that most of us nowadays have 24/7 access to every possible task on our list and resources required, and because of this degree of accessibility, we may overlook the importance of the context dimension in everyday life. ![]() We are fortunate enough to live in a time where we genuinely do have a lot of options about how and where we work, and travel time throws a spotlight on that.īut this degree of open-endedness means paying greater attention, in the good old ‘ Getting Things Done’ paradigm, to the context of work. And also by taking myself off in desperation to the nearest coffeeshop (never my personal top choice) for uninterrupted high-concentration work, but, sometimes the best choice is a compromise. So what happened? Well, it did all get done, though by the skin of my teeth in some cases, and not without far greater pressure than I prefer to create for myself. Not things I would plan to cram in around errands and travel. These are things which I would normally carefully carve out time for in my working day and week, planning carefully to optimise factors like lack of interruption, distraction potential, and blood-caffeine levels, in order to accomplish them most effectively. So that left me with a totteringly top-heavy to-do list of mission-critical things like writing, research and pitching. And that this is precisely the worst kind of ‘get it done anywhere’ kind of work.Ī lot of less intense work I was able to get ahead on, delegate, outsource, delay or otherwise minimise, with an eye to not being available to work full time and having prolonged periods of travel. But what I didn’t fully appreciate when trying to pare down a schedule for travel, was how easy it is to end up seriously overloading on that very high-concentration task type, which requires the most focussed attention. Now this is something I would have said I was aware of, being a big fan of publications like The One Thing by Gary Keller, and also Cal Newport’s Deep Work. The single biggest lesson the summer of 2018 taught me, was that YES when you really have to you can work from anywhere - but all work is not created equal. Oh, and throw in a horrible London heatwave and one flight delayed for 20 hours. Massive overscheduling, tremendous stress, some very close-run risks of badly letting down clients, and proof that you never get too old to learn. And what was that, another meet-up? “Sure, let’s get it in the diary, after all it’s only a short way from where I’ll be anyway, and I am so flexible…” I felt The Power of Remote. No more envying those unencumbered 20-something ‘digital nomads’ who wander the world in a haze of hotspots, this summer too I shall be truly flexible, and Get Things Done wherever I go. ![]() I can work from anywhere… I am liberated and laid back and ready for the road. No problem, I thought confidently as I packed up my laptop. That was the feeling I needed this summer, when for complicated personal reasons I embarked on a month-long non-holiday - a period which included 4 countries, clearing and redecorating a house, a major speaking event and several important meetings. As such, you would reasonably expect that I would have got the work-remotely thing completely sorted out by now, at the very least I’d feel some kind of ‘coming of age’ or a sense of being grown-up about it. I realised that this summer I have actually been working remotely for 18 years (as this phase of my life started with the birth of my eldest daughter, I now have a visible reminder who is considerably taller than I am). ![]()
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