{"id":82968,"date":"2018-10-11T09:40:41","date_gmt":"2018-10-11T09:40:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/?p=82968"},"modified":"2019-10-28T14:51:44","modified_gmt":"2019-10-28T14:51:44","slug":"surviving-digital-climate-change-with-gtd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/2018\/10\/11\/surviving-digital-climate-change-with-gtd\/","title":{"rendered":"Surviving Digital Climate Change with GTD"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/p>\n ‘Seriously? They’re posting business-critical information as a reply to a private Facebook thread?’ I was as incredulous as my client at this lack of basic ‘communication hygiene’ – expecting colleagues to find what they needed to do their jobs in amongst a sea of new pet videos and tanned poolside legs.<\/p>\n You see, it’s great to be able to catch up with distant friends on my smartphone using WhatsApp, Messenger, or old-fashioned SMS. It’s handy to ask colleagues a quick question on Slack, whip up a shared Google Doc to collaborate, or chuck a project update into Trello. And as a generation native to instant information (and averse to email) takes hold in the workforce, these tools are only going to grow in number and usage.<\/p>\n Yet this explosion of available communication channels in our world – and more importantly, how we use them – is nothing less than a full-on assault against the clean edges<\/a> we must establish to manage our individual commitments well.<\/p>\n Some of these tools enable the digital equivalent of the ‘desk drive-by’ – when someone swings by unannounced and dumps a load of work on your lap. Yet we feel less guilty when we can’t see the frustrated look on our colleague’s face, and nowadays many don’t feel the need to preface their (abbreviated, all-lowercase) text with, ‘Is this a good time?’ Delegation gets faster and lazier, and interruptions (some critical, most not) exponentiate.<\/p>\n Other tools are designed to keep information in one shared place. Yet consolidating information is not enough to get work done. In addition to the supporting material required to collaborate, clear outcomes and a succinct, accurate ‘state of play’ statement are necessary to manage projects optimally to completion. Furthermore, these three distinct elements – where we are at, where we are headed, and what information we need along the way – must be disentangled from threaded discussions and digital pin-boards if we are to do anything besides search endlessly for the parts we need.<\/p>\n