Back to Basics: Processing

In my first installment of "Dorsum to Basics", I discussed the importance of your inbox – a unmarried place for collecting all of your inputs for processing. In this installment, nosotros'll discuss the processing itself – how to plough inputs into action.

In principle, processing is simple. All information technology means is making a decision near what to do with every piece of information that enters your life. In practice, it'due south actually very hard, generally considering with a few exceptions, we aren't ordinarily gear up to make those decisions – or to brand the commitment to human activity that decision-making implies.

There are actually but a handful of decisions yous can make nigh an input:

• you can delete it. It's unimportant – junk mail, data you lot already take, reminders of tasks already completed, etc.
• You can redirect it. If there is another person the task or information would be better suited for, forward it to them.
• You tin can archive information technology. Annihilation y'all don't demand now but will likely need in the future – a business bill of fare or address, a vendor's brochure, an article from a magazine – can be filed away for time to come reference.
• You can record information technology. Information you might demand once more but don't need in it's original grade tin can be extracted and entered into a note-taking program, your contact manager, a notebook, etc. and the original deleted/thrown away.
• You can do it. Some inputs require immediate action and can be done at one time.
• You lot can schedule it. Some inputs require action but not immediately – cake out a suitable length of fourth dimension in your agenda to exercise them.
• You lot tin defer information technology. When an input requires activeness just you are unable to have that activity, you have to defer it to later.

Given the limited number of possible choices, it should exist a relatively easy thing to power through your inbox, excerpt the information you need, file things abroad, add a few items to your todo list or your calendar, drop a few things into your outbox, and get on with things.

Just it'southward not. We get hung upwards on things, mostly because of those pesky "defer" inputs – things nosotros know we should practise something about simply can't, for several reasons:

• Lack of data: You don't know plenty to figure out what to do with something.
• Lack of resources: You know what you should practise, merely you don't have everything you demand to practice it – money, fourth dimension, equipment, manpower, etc.
• Lack of urgency: You know what to do and could practise it, but information technology'southward non important to practise it right now and so you lot put information technology off.
• Lack of potency: You are ready, willing, and able to make a conclusion, only don't experience empowered to act on that conclusion.

The typical pattern where whatever of these barriers utilize is to pick something upward out of your inbox, look at information technology, recognize that you lack something important – information, resources, urgency, or potency – to deed on it, then: you driblet it back into our inbox!

Don't exercise that.

If y'all're always going to proceed on superlative of everything and keep your inputs from overwhelming you lot, it'south of import to suspension that habit. Which means yous need to change the mode you call back about processing and about the decisions and actions processing entails.

When an particular hits your inbox that you're not able to deal with immediately, it becomes a project – an outcome that will take several steps to achieve. And the first stride in that project is to solve the trouble, to make full the lack that's preventing you from completing the task.

In order to avoid putting things back into your inbox, you need a place to keep awaiting projects. This could be an accordion file on your desk-bound, or a filing chiffonier drawer for live files. You lot too need a fashion to keep track of things – a project list with pointers to the pending file.

And you demand to add whatever action you need to accept to make it possible to deed to your todo listing. "Go listing of potential squad members from Hour for Build Team"; "Look up how to find a reliable drywall installer for Fix Hole in Kitchen Wall"; "Set engagement with VP of Marketing to hash out possible action on partnership offer for Movie Necktie-In Offer"; "Read Lifehack's Back to Basics series for Figure Out How to Procedure my Inbox".

This isn't all that hard – I label a file with the project proper noun, and I tag actions in my todo list with "for [Project Proper noun]". And I go on a list of agile projects in my notebook. Give yourself permission to reuse the heck out of your folders – you don't demand whatsoever excuse to retrieve of something as "too small" to be considered a project. If it's non something you could sit down and do correct now, it'south a project.

Processing isn't hard, but it takes some discipline and some clear-thinking time. Subject field because it'due south easy to become distracted and easy to put off making a determination for things that yous can't do correct now. Clear-thinking time because you ultimately do need to make a decision, and you tin can't exercise that with a thou other things on your mind.

So I recommend scheduling a few 15-minute (or longer) blocks of time for processing your inbox throughout the solar day. Close the door (if yous accept a door) and go into the "processing zone". Have your file folders, characterization-maker (if you lot use one – it seems silly, just it's quite a help in getting into the correct mindset), your todo list, and a pen handy. Do the same thing at abode – set aside a few minutes every day or so to process everything.

How many times you do this a day depends on your particular state of affairs – go on an heart on your inbox for a few days and see how often it fills up and how urgent the items that come into your inbox are likely to exist. For most people, once in the morning time and in one case virtually an hour before you lot go out piece of work is plenty, and possibly once effectually lunchtime. If your inbox gets full particularly fast, you may need more than than xv minutes. The trick is to find a frequency and amount of fourth dimension that leaves yous equally free as possible to practise your actual piece of work the rest of the time.

And exercise go along yourself complimentary the residue of the time. Don't respond to each particular equally it hits your inbox.  You may as well not have an inbox at all if yous're going to give the world permission to interrupt whatever y'all're doing at any time and place whatsoever they think is important in forepart of your confront. That way madness doth prevarication!

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Source: https://www.lifehack.org/articles/featured/back-to-basics-processing.html

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