Your System is Going to Rot

Series Intro

Time management is usually taught as calendar tricks, productivity apps (YAYY SAAS), and morally superior morning routines.

Wrong frame.

Before you can manage your time, you need to know what has your attention. This six-part series is about getting the open loops out of your head, turning them into next actions, and building enough control to do the work that matters.

Pt. 1 Your Brain is Not a Filing Cabinet

Pt 2. Stop Putting Half-Chewed Food On Your To-Do List

Your organizational system is going to rot.

Sorry to inform you of this tragic news.

You can capture everything. You can process your inbox. You can write beautiful next actions. YOU’RE MOTIVATED.

Then Tuesday happens.

Your cofounder Slacks you. A customer is angry. Your kid gets sick. A vendor disappears. You are in back-to-back meetings all day, hammering, barely keeping your head above water. By Friday, your “trusted system” has become old and crappy.

This is why people quit.

They do the setup once, feel amazing, and think they are now a productivity person.

Then real life hits the system in the face.

Two weeks later they open Apple Notes or their email and think:

“Lolz. This has nothing to do with my actual life.”

Correct.

Because they did not review it and reenergize it.

The weekly review is the part everybody skips. It is also the part that makes the rest of the system work.

Your system is like a rocket. You put a little time into it and get elevation. Every day you ignore it, it gets closer to crashing into the ground.

The weekly review refuels the rocket. GAIN SOME ELEVATION.

There are three types of work.

• Predefined work.

• Work that shows up.

• Work about work.

Most people only do the first two (or some even just the second!!). They open email, open Slack, see what is blinking, and start swinging.

Very hardworking. Very adult. Very doomed.

Because you can work insanely hard for an entire week and move none of your actual priorities forward.

The weekly review is work about work.

Am I working on the right things? Does my system match reality? Did I forget something last week that will punch me in the face next week?

David Allen frames it as: get clear, get current, get creative.

Get clear means gather the crap.

The mail on the counter. The Apple Notes you dumped ideas into. The Slack messages you saved. The Twitter DMs you ignored. The email folder called “follow up.” The screenshots on your desktop. The school app. The house mail. The random place where one real commitment is hiding because life is annoying (slack bookmarks and twitter dms are a few favorite hiding places for me).

I literally need a list of my inboxes because I forget my inboxes.

Highly glamorous.

Then process it.

Is it actionable?

If not, trash it, file it, or someday/maybe it.

If yes, do it, delegate it, defer it, or put it on the calendar if it is a real hard commitment.

Get current means review your lists.

Open your next actions list. If it says “call Jenny,” that is garbage. Call Jenny about what?

“Call Jenny to confirm birthday party headcount for Saturday.”

Now we have a next action.

Open your projects list. Does every project have one next action?

Open your waiting-for list. If Michael never sent the draft, poke Michael.

Then scan your calendar.

Look backward one week. Did you promise something? Did someone promise you something? Did a project get created?

Then look forward two weeks. What is coming that needs prep now?

Get creative means zoom out.

Do I like what I am working on? Should I start something? Kill something? Delegate something? Ask my boss for resources? Stop hiding inside email because it feels like work?

Beware the barrenness of a busy life!

That line should hurt a little.

There is a version of hiding that looks exactly like hard work. Refreshing Slack. Clearing email. Tweaking your tags. Reorganizing your tool.

Stop.

The tool is not the system!

Block one quiet hour this week. Sunday after the kids go to bed works for me because nobody bugs me.

Take a freaking breath.

When you do it right, you feel control come back. Elevation is gained.

And next week, when something blows up, you will know where it goes (and if you don’t you know where it goes, you’ll figure it out in a weekly review).

Yallah Habibi,

Jon

P.S. One of my favorite things about Sagan, is supporting companies from all sorts of different industries. Here is a recent review from a pet cremation company.