Ep. 76: Two-Minute Tip — Get Your Cockpit Under Control

Two-minute Tips for Turbulent Times with David Allen
Get Your Cockpit Under Control

What I mean by that is, your workspace. Where when you sit down, you are ready to fly, you're ready to go. You don't have to rearrange anything in order to be able to do your best work. There's mine, it's been quite functional for several years, something like this. And I don't mean particularly anal or compulsive about this. You just want to not have to rearrange things, look for things, when you're ready to just go to work. And so sit down and be able to do that.

Another important aspect of that is I would highly recommend you do not share that space with anybody else. You don't want them rearranging it for themselves and then you have to come back and rearrange it in order to get work done.

You want to lower the barrier of entry to engage. You've got a bright idea, you're in the kitchen, you've suddenly thought about something that you need to send an email about or want to surf the web about, or whatever. You need to be able to run right in, sit down, and hit the controls, right there.

So you know, simple stuff, just in basket, computer, tools, scissors, pens and so forth. Certainly a writing instrument, a capture tool, to be able to capture stuff right away. As well as right at hand files and folders, etc.

Assess, if you haven't done it lately, you might want to look around. Is your workspace set up so that right at any time, you can go to work? And work, meaning anything you might want to do. Based upon being in your cockpit, central control center. And be able to then, navigate, communicate, coordinate, things from there. Get Your Cockpit Under Control If it's not already, or look at how you might want to enhance it.