What is Attention Compass and how will it help me? (Classic Episode) - DBR 096

What is Attention Compass and How will it help me? (Classic Episode) This is one of a series of posts that are going to discuss Attention Compass in detail. Attention Compass is my proprietary tool and workflow to put you in control of your information and attention - making you a better more confident knowledge worker and reducing your stress over your productivity.   I think many people are struggling with the problem(s) that Attention Compass solves – overwhelm, associated stress, and fear that things are falling through the cracks. If that's you, I want to serve you as best I can. So, I'll tell you how to implement your own Attention Compass. If you try to do it and struggle, give me a call and I'll help you get it fixed.   We'll start with some assumptions that explain why Attention Compass is built the way it is. This will help you make decisions about how you want to use your Attention Compass. It should also help you figure out more about why you want to have an Attention Compass.   Underlying assumptions There are more than we could ever… There are more things to do than we could ever get done There are more things to know than we could ever learn This makes us fear forgetting/losing/missing something This fear is low-level, continually stressful for us Our memories are unreliable as to time, particularly in the future We know this so we create artifacts and systems, but our brains don't trust them Misusing the 'workbench', the productive asset, our mind/brain That means we need to get things off our mind Implications More than we can look at and more than we can get done = a ton of stuff This means that we have to store it in a system Task management We get paid on delivering artifacts and we call the work to do so 'tasks'; tasks need to be first-class citizens in our information management system; a task is just a specific kind of information Managing 'time' vs. managing 'attention' Properties of the system Electronic is best, mostly because it'll be a lot of stuff And we need to use a backlog (metaphor) to store it What a backlog is Backlog justification (vs. PMI 'calendar' and WBS) And we have to make and track postponement decisions When we say we're 'not doing' something, we're usually postponing; these decisions need to be tracked About Attention Compass So, these things mean that you need a personal Information Management System; Attention Compass is precisely that The four workflows (most frequent to least) Capture Observing the internal and external worlds Capture is semi-continuous, event-driven Processing Turn it in to want it is and put it where it belongs Daily review Don't have to make a to-do list, just pull from the backlog