In the last half of the 20th century, what "work" represented in the industrialized world was transformed from an assembly line, make-it and move-it kinds of activity to "knowledge work."

Back then, work was self-evident. Now there are no edges to most of our projects.

Managing commitments well requires the implementation of some basic activities and behaviors:

• If it's on your mind, your mind isn't clear. Anything you consider unfinished in any way must be captured in a trusted system outside your mind, that you know you'll come ba...

• View the project from beyond the completion date.
• Envision wild success.
• Capture features, aspects, qualities you imagine in place.

• Clearly defined outcomes and the next actions required to move them toward closure.
• Reminders placed in a trusted system that is reviewed regularly.

Your mind goes through five steps to accomplish virtually any task:

• Defining purpose and principles
• Outcome visioning
• Brainstorming
• Organizing
• Identifying next actions.

• It creates decision-making criteria
• It aligns resources
• It motivates
• It clarifies focus
• It expands options, opens up creative thinking.

The basics principles can be summed up as follows:

• Don't judge, challenge, evaluate, or criticize.
• Go for quantity, not quality.
• Put analysis and organization in the background.

If the negative feelings come from broken agreements, you have three options for dealing with them and eliminating the negative consequences:

• Don't make the agreement.
• Complete the agreement.
• Renegotiate the agreement.

All of these can work to get ri...

• You haven't clarified exactly what the intended outcome is.
• You haven't decided what the very next physical action step is.
• You haven't put reminders of the outcome and the action required in a system you trust.

Everything that might potentially require action must be reviewed on a frequent enough basis to keep your mind from taking back the job of remembering and reminding.

Elements of the weekly review:

• Gather and process all your stuff

The stages we go trough as we deal with our work:

• Collect what has your attention
• Process what they mean and what to do about them
• Organize the results and put then where they belong
• Review...

The essential element in managing all of your "stuff" is managing your actions. And it's very hard to manage actions if you haven't identified them.

A lack of time is not the major issue; the real problem is a lack of clarity and definition about what a project really ...

• Possible categories for nonactionable items" trash, incubation tools, and reference storage. If no action is needed on something, you toss it, "tickle" it for later reassessment, or file it so you can find the material if you need to refer to it at another time.
• ...

• It's important to know what needs to be collected and how to collect it most effectively so you can process it appropriately.
• To make the collection phase work: Every open loop must be in your collection system and out of your head, you must have a...