(Time to read: ~ 2 minutes)

Two of my favourite authors in the field of time and life management are David Allen (“Getting Things Done”) and Leo Babauta (“The Power of Less”).

The very different approaches of these two authors illustrate the essential tension involved in living today.

The Power of Less

Leo’s approaches speak to the natural desire to do what is alive and interesting in each moment as much as possible – what I might describe as internally-based time management – an approach that works just fine if one’s work doesn’t involve coordinating efforts with anyone else.

But much exciting and meaningful work these days does involve coordinating and combining our efforts with those of other people to accomplish meaningful results that no one person could achieve on their own.

Getting Things Done

David’s focus, on the other hand, is on externally tracking all of what we need to do (e.g., on paper or in an organizer), and tagging that information based on external factors – where am I, what resources are available, what meetings are scheduled, what deadlines are approaching, what tasks have been scheduled for today? These considerations are essential for the majority of us whose work involves coordinating in some way with other people – as clients, coworkers, bosses…

But following this approach can quickly and easily lead to a kind of disconnected deadness – when we rush from commitment to commitment and lose touch with ourselves and the inner spark of aliveness that enables our work to be meaningful, useful and “alive” for ourselves and others.

Life, Integrity, and Effectiveness

Both approaches have value, but neither is complete in and of itself, and neither speaks effectively to the essential challenge of modern life – how to honour agreements we make with others, while also making our most meaningful and significant contributions by doing tasks when they are “alive” for us.

This essential challenge has been an important focus of my life for more than 30 years. I have experimented on myself, I have offered support to friends, family, and colleagues.

In my experience, this challenge does not have a single simple solution but gets addressed by strategies that address it from a number of different perspectives.

In addition, as the nature of our work and our lives shift and change over time, our approaches need to adapt to keep pace with our current realities.

I look forward to sharing with you some of the principles and approaches that I and others have found helpful – and I wanted to ensure that we first had a common understanding of this essential challenge.