Component/Fundamental #4 — Acting Now v2

During the act of Emptying, the user often discovers that a number of time demands can be completed with only a 2-5 minute burst of immediate activity.

Definition

Acting Now means taking immediate action on items that have been emptied from a capture point. For example, a friend’s new phone number can be entered immediately into a contact database of phone numbers within 60 seconds.

The easiest course of action for some time demands is to deal with them immediately, rather than to go through a longer process of entering them into a list, or into a schedule.

Also, there are occasions, in which taking immediate action leads to other actions, and care must be taken to deal with these follow-up items by either capturing them, or placing them in the time management system.

Principles

Act on as many items that can be acted on now as time will allow. Continue reading “Component/Fundamental #4 — Acting Now v2”

Component/Fundamental #3 — Tossing v2

Tossing is one of the components that can directly follow Emptying.

Definition

Once a time demand enters or is entered into one of the capture points, a decision is made during the component of Emptying about what to do with it.

Certainly, one of the options is simply to take the time demand out of existence without further regard, or in other word to “Toss” it away or to delete it.

An example might be:

Component/Fundamental #2 – Emptying v2

Emptying is the activity that logically follows Capturing.

Definition

Emptying involves removing items one at a time from the points of capture and placing them within one of the other components of the time management system. This action frees up the point of capture to receive new items.

Whereas Capturing involves a split-second activity and is truly a habit that can be practiced until it becomes automatic, Emptying is an action that takes careful consideration as it acts as the primary gateway into the rest of the time management system. Emptying is a transfer step, the connection between the items in the points of capture (e.g. an in-box of paper items, a voice-mail system, a paper notepad, etc.) and subsequent components in a time management system (e.g. Tossing, Scheduling, Acting Now, etc.). Continue reading “Component/Fundamental #2 – Emptying v2”

Component / Fundamental #1 — Capturing v2

In an earlier post, I talked about the fact that there are certain key components that need to be included in an effective time management system.

Component #1 is that of “Capturing”.

Definition

To understand Capturing, it’s best to slow down a single process that occurs hundreds of times in the day of an average profession.

The process starts with the thought “I need to do something” that could be prompted by a conversation, a book being read, a request — anything that triggers a thought that something needs to be done at some point in the future.

In the 2Time Management System we call this a “time demand”.

Once the original thought appears,- we do something to store the time demand, so that it can be accessed later. Continue reading “Component / Fundamental #1 — Capturing v2”