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Dr. Pascal Venier points to an article by Francis Heylighen and Clément Vidal (2007) Getting Things Done: The Science behind Stress-Free Productivity. Well, I took one look at that title and knew I had to have it. The summary of this white paper is:

Allen (2001) proposed the “Getting Things Done” (GTD) method for personal productivity enhancement, and reduction of the stress caused by information overload. This paper argues that recent insights in psychology and cognitive science support and extend GTD’s recommendations. We first summarize GTD with the help of a flowchart. We then review the theories of situated, embodied and distributed cognition that purport to explain how the brain processes information and plans actions in the real world. The conclusion is that the brain heavily relies on the environment, to function as an external memory, a trigger for actions, and a source of affordances, disturbances and feedback. We then show how these principles are practically implemented in GTD, with its focus on organizing tasks into “actionable” external memories, and on opportunistic, situation-dependent execution. Finally, we propose an extension of GTD to support collaborative work, inspired by the concept of stigmergy.

What the heck is Stigmergy?

According to Wikipedia:

Stigmergy is a method of indirect communication in a self-organizing emergent system where its individual parts communicate with one another by modifying their local environment.

Stigmergy was first observed in nature - ants communicate to one another by laying down pheromones along their trails, so where ants go within and around their ant colony is a stigmergic system.

That helps a lot, doesn’t it? And how in the world is GTD like ants in a colony? Well, dear readers, the answer is of course, found within the brilliant white paper. I have read it so you don’t have to!

The authors have analyzed the GTD methodology through the lens of academic theories on situated and embodied cognition. That sounds like a big mouthful of techno-babble, but it is actually very simple: the human brain uses long-term memory to be good at recognizing patterns and responding in a way that alters its environment to be closer to the ideal situation. For example, when you see a sink full of dirty dishes, the pattern of “how to wash the dishes” is recognized, and you act on the situation, over and over until the dishes are clean. Once the dishes are clean, you are done, and a feeling of satisfaction replaces the stress and anxiety of seeing the dirty dishes.

Adaptive Productivity Management

Gaining a sense of control over your situation is accomplished by delegating as much of the information storage, task processing, and action management to your environment (i.e. a list, a computer, or a file cabinet).

Then, the decision to perform a specific action at any given time is made by the individual based on time available, energy level, and priority. The feedback-driven decision making process is further enhanced by the knowledge that you are moving toward completion at a comfortable pace. The basic principle of performing an action while having access to the most appropriate mental patterns, physical properties, and environmental tools/resources leads to the stress-free state of flow, or “mind like water”.

Collect
Process
Organize
Review
Do

Related reading on environmental contexts at Delightful Work.

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/6ln6zw. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen