{"id":22835,"date":"2025-05-11T16:08:31","date_gmt":"2025-05-11T23:08:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gettingthingsdone.com\/?p=22835"},"modified":"2025-05-18T08:18:07","modified_gmt":"2025-05-18T15:18:07","slug":"the-way-out-is-through-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gettingthingsdone.com\/2025\/05\/the-way-out-is-through-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Way Out is Through"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The heat is on. I\u2019ve been noticing that the stress factor at senior levels in organizations is increasing. My coaching with executives has uncovered an increasing number of agreements that are real, but largely not consciously acknowledged or kept. We\u2019re giving ourselves so much to do, and we\u2019re taking on so much of what we expect others are expecting of us, that it would be virtually impossible to do even a portion of what\u2019s on our plates.<\/p>\n

Most of you reading this don\u2019t even have time to finish to perfection your current set of projects, even if you stopped the world from giving you anything new, and you had several months or even years within which to do them.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s strange, but I work with people to define the work they are not doing. Unfortunately, the resulting ambiguity of just halfway assuming responsibilities and commitments with ourselves and others, or just halfway clarifying and understanding what they mean and what needs to be done about them, won\u2019t cut the pressure in half\u2014it doubles it! So much of what people are feeling these days is the pressure to get things done, but there is universal resistance to defining precisely what that commitment and that work is. We must really focus and think (which requires energy often in short supply) to clarify and define the outcomes and actions needed, on each and every thing that we might need or want to do.<\/p>\n

You can only do one thing at a time, so at any point in time there is going to be a huge backlog of \u201cwork.\u201d Much of what we must do, to gain comfort and control in our knowledge-worker worlds these days, is clarifying what all that work is, objectively, in a format that provides an easy overview. We must continually renegotiate those commitments with ourselves and with others; and that\u2019s impossible to do, unless they\u2019re captured, clarified, and organized in some systematic way outside our psyche.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s an old Gestalt theorem\u2014the way out is through. Defining what we could do, and what we are doing right now instead\u2014managing the triage strategically with ourselves and others, is a key component of managing ourselves and our workflow these days. You can only feel good about what you\u2019re not doing when you know what you\u2019re not doing. We have to loosen the grip of unclear agreements with ourselves to be free to follow our intuitive hunches and creative focus.<\/p>\n

There is no catching up. There is only catching on.<\/p>\n

[Note: This essay appeared in David Allen\u2019s Productive Living Newsletter. Subscribe for free here<\/a>.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You can only feel good about what you\u2019re not doing when you know what you\u2019re not doing. We have to loosen the grip of unclear agreements with ourselves to be free to follow our intuitive hunches and creative focus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22859,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,1,716,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-david-allen","category-featured","category-free-resources","category-productivity-tips","entry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Way Out is Through - Getting Things Done\u00ae<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"There is no catching up. 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