December 02, 2005

Getting Things Done 1: The Need to Succeed

(A series of posts about the Getting Things Done system by David Allen)

My name is Bill and I’m a self-help-aholic.

One of my earliest memories was hopping about a group of older boys on the school playground, wondering what they were talking about and how I could be a part of that group. But although I was a boy and full of exuberance natural to that species, I was more often shy and self-contained, content to play by myself, live in my dreams, and think and imagine.

But a part of me always wondered why things are the way they are, and whenever a book came along that promised to provide an answer, I would set upon it hungrily. There was a pamphlet from “How to Win Friends and Influence People” that I found in the sideboard. A booklet that discussed how children should be disciplined—I can still clearly envision the bold block lettering of the title: “Wait Til Your Father Gets Home.”

Books of this kind have been part of this country’s popular culture since Ben Franklin made a fortune with “Poor Richard’s Almanac.” James Thurber wrote a parody of them in 1927 called “Let Your Mind Alone!” Dorothy Parker savaged one called simply “Happiness,” in which the author — Yale professor William Lyon Phelps — asserted that the happiest people were the ones who thought the most interesting thoughts. “Promptly one starts recalling such Happiness Boys as Nietzche, Socrates, de Maupassant, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, William Blake and Poe,” Parker observed.

But it wasn’t until the self-help movement of the ‘70s and ‘80s that they swarmed the market. provided plenty of fodder for my eager eyes. Barbara Walters helped me in social situations with “How to Talk with Practically Anyone about Practically Anything.” I learned why women loved to much and how effective people got there in seven ways.

I tried to-do lists, making up lists and goals. I tried re-organizing myself, rebranding myself and repurposing myself. Some of them worked for awhile, but none of them really took hold. Something would happen to derail the perfectly laid plans, the ideal system, and I would end up back where I was, stumbling along with unfinished plans, unfulfilled ambitions, and unexamined frustrations.

I was banging my head against a door that not only wouldn’t open, but was probably not there to begin with.

I’d like to say that there was an epiphany, that “Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity,” by David Allen entered my life and changed it. And it has, in small ways, but not in the angels-down-from-heaven bearing-the-golden-scroll-of-wisdom kinda way.

Instead, what happened was, after a lifetime of messing about, thinking, rethinking, making small notes on cocktail napkins during happy hour, and much head-banging, a few ideas surfaced that made sense to me. Nothing big; just small shifts in thinking, small understandings.

For example, here’s my first law:

Peschel’s First Law of Self-Help:
You Can’t Change

Some things are just hard-wired in us. Ambition can’t be learned. Drive can’t be acquired. You either got it, or you don’t. If you find yourself easily distracted, nothing’s going to change that.

Here’s what I mean. In the newsroom where I work, there are TV sets scattered about that are left on all day. No matter what I’m working on, no matter how focused I am, the flickering of the TV screen will always catch my attention. It’s as immutable and impossible to control as a muscular reflex.

But there is something you can do, and that’s my second law:

Peschel’s Second Law of Self-Help:
You Can Change Your Habits And Your Surroundings

Sometimes, you can changes your habits by changing your surroundings. For example, if you’re a three-pack-a-day smoker and you want to break the habit, hike the length of the Appalachian Trail. You’d be amazed how few vending machines you’d find up in the mountains of North Carolina, and the hikers you try to bum cigs from with either not have any because they don’t smoke, or smoke and won’t share because they know how hard it is to get the stuff out in the wilds..

(Yes, yes, I know the trail cuts through towns where there are plenty of 7-Elevens with cancer sticks in stock. Work with me here for a moment, K?)

The point, and there is one I’m trying to make, is that it’s possible to effect change by learning new procedures, by putting yourself in a position where change has to come because you have no other choice. And while putting yourself at risk of being eaten by a bear seems a high price to pay for breaking your cigarette habit, sometimes it has to be done that way.

The breakthrough for me was in what happens when you put the two laws together.

You Can’t Change
+
You Can Change Your Habits And Your Surroundings
=
You Can Change Your Habits, But When You Don’t, You’re Going To Fail

Believe it or not, I find that liberating. You’re not going to see that on a Successories poster, but it’s practical and inspirational, and shows me when I fall off the wagon how to climb back on again.

And, for me, the Getting Things Done system gave me the saddle to get back up.

Next: GTD2: Under the Hood

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You Can Change Your Habits

This is true, and once you realize it, it becomes quite powerful. It took me many years to learn this, but now that I know it, I use it.

Not always successfully, of course, but more often than not.

Yes! And as you’ll see in future posts, using a system that helps you accomplish your goals over the short-term still means that you’ve done something, even if it falls apart. And if you know that it may fall apart but that you can put it back together, you’re mentally equipped to keep working, instead of giving up.

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