It’s Saturday, and I’m cleaning out “stacks.”  I have fewer than I used to, but still too many.

I found my physical copy of a 2 year old Harvard Business Review, and re-visited this article:  Being More Productive – An Interview with David Allen and Tony Schwartz by Daniel McGinn.  (You can look at a preview version here).

If you are not aware, David Allen is the guru of “Getting Things Done,” and Tony Schwartz is the “pay attention to your energy” guy.  They go together well, and they each bring an important dimension to this simple issue (my “version” of what they are all about):

How do I get the most done (Allen), while still being a functioning human being (Schwartz)? 

Here’s an excerpt from the interview article:

HBR:  Both of you have written several books describing your techniques, but give me a quick summary.

Allen: I call what I’ve uncovered “the strategic value of clear space.” Say you’re going to cook dinner for people, it’s 5:00 PM, and they’re coming at 6:00. You want to have all the right ingredients. You want to have the right tools. You want the kitchen to be nice and clear. You need the freedom to make a creative mess. I teach people to achieve that freedom by taking very immediate, concrete steps: downloading all your commitments and projects into lists, focusing on “next actions,” and thinking about the context—work that needs to be done in your office, or on the phone, or on the computer. You don’t need to change who you are. You just need some simple but very powerful techniques.

Schwartz: We focus on the four primary dimensions of energy that we all need to perform at our best. The ground level is physical—fitness, sleep, nutrition, and rest. At the emotional level, it’s about cultivating positive emotions—and as a leader, communicating them to others. At the mental level, it’s about gaining more control of your attention—both by increasing the ability to focus on one thing at a time and by learning to shift into the right hemisphere to do more-creative work. And at the spiritual level, it’s about defining purpose, because when something really matters, you bring far more energy to it. Very few C-suite leaders I’ve met fully appreciate how meeting these needs—in themselves and for others—is absolutely critical to sustainable high performance. They’re good at doing things, and they’ve been rewarded by being given more things to do. But increasingly demand is outrunning their capacity. They’re overloaded by e-mail and texts and all the information that comes in. We have to teach them to step back and say, “What do I actually want to do? What are the right choices? What are the costs of this choice?”

How about putting it this way:  Focus on one, and only one thing at a time; do the next action within that focus, fully accomplishing that one next action within that focus; and when you need to replenish your energy (and you do need to replenish your energy!), do so.

Or:

Always do your work by focusing on one thing at a time.
And, always know the one next action to do on that one thing you are working on at this one specific time.
And, pay attention to your energy; manage your energy; don’t forget to regularly replenish your energy.

This sounds pretty simple.  But, as we all know, it is tremendously difficult.

I know I’ve got challenges…  How are you doing?