David Allen offers a Two-minute Tip: Catch Up
Hi. David Allen. Two minute tip for turbulent times. This one's called, Catch up. Now, obviously in turbulent times we're often kind of up to here with stuff to do, but you're likely to have some downtime. Some time where the most productive thing to do might be to clean up the backlog. That is to bring up the rear guard, as we say. For instance, how current is your bank balance, your investments? How sharp are your kitchen knives? How well have you fertilized your garden for the spring or the summer? What's up, what's out there that you say I need to catch that up? I'm not totally current with whatever that's about. And that may be some of the best things you could do is to go find something that you need to catch up because by the way, the smaller the backlog of outdated things or things that are not current, the cleaner and clearer it is to deal with surprise and new things coming towards you. So the best thing to do right now, if you have some windows to do that, is to look around and say what needs catching up to get current? So that's my two minute tip for turbulent times. Catch up.
David Allen offers a Two-minute Tip: Fix or Finish Something Simple:
David Allen with a two minute tip for turbulent times. This one is called fix or finish something simple. You know, many times when we are in a situation where, golly, it's easy to be worrying, it's easy to be hung up, it's easy to be procrastinating, it's easy to be maybe confused about what your priorities are or what you need to do. Sometimes the best thing to do is to aim low and close and get a cheap win real quick. Like right now. I'll bet if you looked around your environment, you'd find a number of things that would not take you but a few minutes to fix or finish, or to deal with and it's been kind of not necessarily bothering you in a big way, but bugging you and you know it's something you need to do at some point, you need to move this over there. You need to take that off the wall. You need to replace a light bulb that's been out. You need to take some WD40 and lubricate a door or something that's been squeaking. There's a number of things like that, I'll bet in your environment. And those are just really great to get some cheap, quick wins for that. I know that sounds really mundane, but I've discovered there's magic in the mundane. Many, many times I just need to stop and go finish something just because it allows my brain to clear itself, allows me to get positive, get focused, and actually many times what happens is, is I'm doing that, or certainly if I finished doing that, I get this little win, I get this little burst of energy, like, yeah, then I'm thinking on perhaps a more strategic level is perhaps more important things that I want to be thinking about in a more positive way. So keep it simple. Go find something simple to finish or fix or do in a few minutes. Give yourself a win. Pat yourself on the back. A tip for turbulent times.