We are in the world that are very noisy. And surprisingly, people are looking for more noise. Which I believe it’s good for some people, but not good for most people. Why do I said that? Manuel Catelis in his research about the impact on connectivity with society. From that article, I learn that people are more connected virtually. In other word, we are less connected physically. Right now, I’m creating one more noise in this noisy world. Do you get what kind of noise I’m talking about? I believe that in this noisy world, people (most probably) are more interested to find more information about everything. These informations are there on top of all other “stuff” that coming on their way. Let it be email, news, chat notifications, social media notification, errand for spouseand including subscription ping (such as this post, if you register to receive update from this blog). All those noises make people have less energy to do other things. And that might be the reason why you feel tired, not because of the exercise you did.

Since most of us have a lot of stuff coming to our way, it is important to process those stuff as soon as you can. I know it is hard to do since there’s a lot of other things that requires our attention. When I read Getting Things Done by David Allen, I learned the important step of processing. Every ‘stuff’ in our life will always be ‘stuff’ and nothing will happen, but when we process the ‘stuff’, we will know what should we do next. We turn ‘stuff’ to action whenever possible. When we do it and done it, it will boost our excitement and make us feel better.

I was not an organized person and I still am. But I try to do it better. To be honest, I am a procrastinator. Although I know the feeling when I procrastinate, which is feeling that I can’t even complete anything, I still do it. The result is my mind keep jumping here and there and I can’t focus on one task at a time. Even the thing that I thought I can complete on one day, it might drag to 2 or more days. David Allen described this as ‘open loop’. As long as I have this open loop in our mind, our brain will keep reminding us to do this right now. The worse thing is, there’s only a few item that we can keep in our head. How about the rest off the things? It will be out of focus and it will nag our mind for time.

To ease our mind from losing energy remembering those task, we need to process it. The key steps that I learned from processing are the following:
1. Determine the ‘stuff’ to action
I’m sure you have a lot of emails and tasks that come to your way constantly. If you’re not really organized like me, you might found yourself swamped by email and all those pending tasks. At the moment, you might feel that everything is important and needs to be done now. But soon you’ll feel overwhelmed by all the stuff. So, at the first step, ask yourself “what should I do for this ‘stuff’?”. The goal is not to complete all the tasks. the goal is only to identify the stuff as task. There’s only a few possible result:

a. Actionable Item.
– If it ask you to do something, and you can do it in a few minutes, do it now. David Allen mentioned that if you can do it in 2 minutes or less, do it right away. So that it won’t enter your to do list.
– if it’s more than a few minutes, put it in your calendar, so that you remember to do it in a near future. Once you schedule it, you get it done.
– if it’s not something that you can do or other people have more expertise and/or time to do it, delegate it. We are created as a unique individual. sometime there is somebody else is more equipped to do it.

b. Reference Item.
If it’s something that you want to keep for reference, put it in a drawer/ same location for all references that you have. Just remember to put relevant tag/information for it. At this point, Michael Hyatt, gave me a good insight of assumption, “if it’s really important, someone somewhere else in the world has a copy of it.” So, if you’re doubt whether you will need it in the future, it’s up to you. For me, nowadays, I tends to delete it when I’m doubt. This step enables me to release my mind to keep nagging. It help me to focus on the task in hand.

2. Do the next step
The next step is to do it. Keep in mind that the things that you need to do now, are those things that required more time to complete. For me the better way is to do the easy and important stuff first to boost the confidence to complete more tasks. But if you like to handle the important and hard ones first, that is fine too. the goal is to keep moving. The idea is not spending much time deciding which one to do first, but doing the tasks that you can do right now. Just remember, you don’t need to decide which task you need to do now, you can just pick any task and do it.

3. Celebrate the completion of the tasks.
I’m not saying it need a huge celebration, but no matter how big or small the task is, spend a bit of time to celebrate it. You can give yourself a reward by drinking a glass of water, or at the end of the day, you can eat your favorite brownies. It will boost your morale and give a goal to continue completing other stuff. I usually spend a few minutes or a few seconds to celebrate. For example, for the task that I need to complete at work, I will raise both hands like a winner for a few seconds before I continue to the next tasks. In a mundane day where it seems that what you’re doing is boring, a small celebration helps me to continue doing the tasks.

I still have my up and down. I still rather to do fun things rather than to process the stuffs. But I want to remind myself and hopefully I can convince you to process the ‘stuffs’ that comes to you. I know that sometimes it is boring and hard to determine what do you need to do. Keep moving forward. By processing all the stuffs, one at a time, it will help you and me to complete more tasks, especially the important ones. And by doing this, you’ll have more energy to face whatever comes to your life and it will make our life better.

“If you don’t pay appropriate attention to what has your attention, it will take more of your attention than it deserves.” – David Allen