{"id":85855,"date":"2019-01-04T12:59:48","date_gmt":"2019-01-04T12:59:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/?p=85855"},"modified":"2019-01-04T13:03:00","modified_gmt":"2019-01-04T13:03:00","slug":"dont-flag-your-pigeons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/2019\/01\/04\/dont-flag-your-pigeons\/","title":{"rendered":"Don’t Flag Your Pigeons"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Those of us who work with our email inboxes regularly \u2018at zero\u2019 are aware of the many benefits this brings. It is therefore a surprise, when trying to encourage others to do the same, that their first response is often along the lines of \u201cI don\u2019t care that I have 10,000 unread emails\u201d or \u201ckeeping everything in my inbox works well for me\u201d.<\/p>\n

When anyone is subjected to stress and pain for long enough, they stop noticing the discomfort and their feelings become unreliable. It is rarely effective to tackle these faulty feelings head on. Email is an emotional issue for most people and trying to change their embedded fixed bad habits is one of the toughest parts of helping someone to start using GTD\u00ae properly.<\/p>\n

So let\u2019s consider a different message delivery system: that of the carrier pigeon. This was one of the best methods of distance communication for 2,000 years and was used by the military right up until the beginning of the First World War. It helped Julius Caesar conquer lands and even early stockbrokers make and lose money.<\/p>\n

A pigeon arrives and lands safely in my pigeon \u2018inbox\u2019, or to use the correct terminology, the pigeon lands in a trap which is connected to the pigeon loft or coop. I take the little note from off its leg and read it. It is a message from my wife, asking me to pick something up from the shops on the way home. A brief clarification tells me I need to add this to my shopping list.<\/p>\n

IMPORTANT: I no longer need to keep the pigeon in the coop. I would set it free. (In fact, if I were actually using pigeons, I\u2019d take it home with me so that my wife could send me future messages \u2013 carrier pigeons only fly one-way, so you can\u2019t \u2018reply\u2019 to someone with the same pigeon!!)<\/p>\n

Another pigeon arrives, again I open the note from around the bird\u2019s leg. This time, it is a message from my boss, passing a large project onto my team: to upgrade the company\u2019s communication systems! This time, after asking the GTD clarifying questions, I realise that I have a project to track on my projects list of \u201cLaunch new internal communication system\u201d and a next action to \u201cSpeak to my boss about their initial ideas and budget parameters\u201d, which I put on my agenda list for the next time I see them. If I decide to keep the note from the pigeon, then I would create and put it in an appropriate project support folder.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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IMPORTANT: I don\u2019t decide the best reminder would be to put the message back around the pigeon\u2019s leg, stick a flag to the pigeon and then put the pigeon in with all the other pigeons in the coop. If I did this, the pigeon would be pushed further out of view with every new pigeon arriving until it was squashed at the back or the bottom and soon forgotten. I would need to go looking for all the pigeons with flags on again, catch them again, and read all the messages again and decide again what I need to do about all the things. This is a waste of time and energy and risks me not finding this particular pigeon again before my boss chases me for a progress report \u2013 with another pigeon in my inbox\/trap!!<\/p>\n

The only pigeons I want in my \u2018inbox\u2019 are the ones that have just arrived with new messages on their leg which I still need to clarify. They are in the right place. I don\u2019t even need them to have signs on saying they are \u2018unread\u2019; I know they are unread because they are in my \u2018inbox\u2019. Once they are \u2018read\u2019 and clarified, the reminders of any projects and next actions should be organised in my GTD system and the pigeons moved appropriately.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t flag your carrier pigeons and please don\u2019t keep old pigeons in your inbox.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Those of us who work with our email inboxes regularly \u2018at zero\u2019 are aware of the many benefits this brings. It is therefore a surprise, when trying to encourage others to do the same, that their first response is often along the lines of \u201cI don\u2019t care that I have 10,000 unread emails\u201d or \u201ckeeping […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":85856,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_eb_attr":"","gtp_columnspro_styling":"{}","gtp_paragraph_styling":"{}","gtp_heading_styling":"{}","gtp_spacer_styling":"{}","gtp_video_styling":"{}","gtp_group_styling":"{}","gtp_cover_styling":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[309,310,3423],"tags":[47,174,51,53,3424,58,3425],"yst_prominent_words":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85855"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85855\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85855"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.next-action.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=85855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}