The Total Capture Productivity Letters: When the Magic Happens!

Total Capture: When the Magic Happens!

If you’re a new reader: welcome to the Total Capture Productivity Letters!  Have a look at the first issue here: https://www.drpetergallant.com/p/tcp-letter-issue-001

When we stop trying to manage time (which, in itself, is unmanageable, incompressible, and tends to fly or slip by no matter what we do) and instead shift our focus to managing commitments, magical things begin to happen.

When we focus on identifying and managing commitments, we become more attuned to both the commitments that we make in the course of our daily lives, commitments arising from interactions with others as well as the commitments that we have already made that remain unfulfilled.

The Total Capture Productivity approach often results in having long lists of commitments that we have made, but have not yet completed.

That can be scary, but it can also be magical and beneficial to us in several ways.

The Magic of Silencing the Internal Reminders

I believe that there is a special place deep in our minds that is designed to maintain a list of unfulfilled commitments, or “open loops”, as David Allen calls them.  This same system also tends to activates and remind us of a couple of these commitments - particularly the commitments that we have made, but we didn’t capture in writing somewhere, and are trying to remember.  

These commitments may soon fade from our short-term memory, but somewhere these uncaptured, “loose” commitments are being tracked in our subconscious minds until our subconscious decides that we need to be reminded of them.

Often, these reminders pop into our consciousness in the middle of the night, waking us up or contributing to a sleepless night.  Other times, this built-in “capture-and-remind” feature will remind us of commitments that we have made to ourselves or to others when we see a physical reminder.

Like the inbox overflowing with paper, bills, mail and receipts on our desk.

Or the 4-digit number appearing on the email icon on our computer - indicating the number of emails lingering in our Inbox, some of these message simply unread while others contain commitments that have been skimmed over but not truly identified and captured.

This part of our mind and psyche seems to have a limitless capacity to store open, incomplete commitments from years or even decades ago.  

Actively doing a quick mental scan will likely yield a number of these: the book that you borrowed from a friend but never returned, the thank-you note never written, or the $20 you borrowed from your childhood friend that was never paid back.  Some part of you never forgets  any of this.

The magic that happens when you begin to focus on, identify and explicitly capture every commitment as they show up in your life (and also as you remember some of the older ones!) is that the “automatic reminder” part of our brains begin to relax - reminding us less and less often of unfulfilled commitments.

It’s as if this part of our brain says to itself “you’re actually capturing all of this somewhere outside of our brain, that’s great - we can chill out a bit and not have to remind you about all of these commitments.”

Total Capture Productivity holds the magical promise of silencing, or at least significantly reducing these internal reminders, especially at night.  If our internal reminder system does wake us up to remind us of some old, unfulfilled commitment - we can reach for our “capture device” - whatever we use to capture commitments - and write it down.

We can capture a commitment and then get back to sleep.

We can get the commitment we were just reminded of into our capture system, thereby reassuring the group of neurons in our brain that woke us up that they can stop firing and let us go off to sleep with the knowledge and confidence that we will manage that commitment to some logical form of completion in the future.  For some commitments, if that’s not possible, we can at least try to explicitly release ourselves from it in some way that works for us.

Total Capture Productivity offers the magic of less stress, less overwhelm, and even better sleep by silencing the internal reminders of unfilled commitments.

The Magic of Clarity

Often, the mere act of becoming more attuned to commitments and potential commitments that we have made or been asked to make brings an additional level of clarity.  When we spot a potential commitment and say to ourselves “Aha!  Commitment spotted!” or some similar internal trigger phrase and we have conditioned ourselves to feel an overwhelming desire (in the Pavlovian sense) to immediately capture this new commitment in our capture tool - usually a small notebook or a smartphone app.  

By doing this, we automatically need to clarify the commitment to the point of being able to write it down.

That small step of “clarifying before capturing” can be extremely powerful in practice.

Whenever I have identified a commitment, I always try to capture it (on my smartphone in my case) in such a way that it is cleanly and clearly defined with enough detail to enable completion in the future.  That way, when I see it pop back up in my system when I am in “completion mode” - the commitment itself is clear, as the path to completion.

The magic that happens when commitments are “clean”, and clearly defined is that it gives us that sense of clarity and purpose that drives action.

Commitments that lack a clear path to completion can repel us and make us want to skip completing this commitment in favour of picking something “simpler” on our list, even if that ill-defined commitment is the one that is time critical or is the absolutely highest priority right now.

Ambiguity in your list of captured commitments leads to procrastination, and opens the door to an invisible yet deadly force to appear - the force that Steven Pressfield refers to as Resistance (with a capital R) in his amazing book, The War of Art.  

Much of what we procrastinate on is due to a lack of clarity about what we should specifically do next to move a commitment towards completion.  Rather than taking a few moments to sit down and grapple with the ambiguity of a poorly-defined commitment or outcome we need to achieve, we feel Resistance and petulantly refuse to engage and move the commitment along the path to completion.  

In other words, if you can’t see how to do something, you won’t want to do it!

That’s procrastination and Resistance stealing our time, our energy, and preventing us from delivering the very best of ourselves to the world.

Fortunately for all of us, when Steven Pressfield identified the invisible force of Resistance as the disease that can kill our productivity, he also provided us with the cure: turn into a Professional, sit down, and do the work.  That’s the antidote to Resistance.

By properly implementing the “identify and capture” phases of a Total Capture Productivity system, we can clarify what our commitments entail and also clearly envision what is required to complete each commitment and what specific outcome is needed to “close the loop”.  

Clarity is the antidote.  

A clear head that is not trying to remember our commitments.  

Clarity of what a commitment entails.  

Clarity of outcome.

Clarity of purpose.

Clarity. Period.

With that clarity, it’s far easier to sit down and do the work.

Clarity enables you to “turn Pro” and beat Resistance.

Clarity makes it far easier to sit down and do the work required to fulfil our commitments, get things done, and deliver the very best of ourselves to the world - personally and professionally - every single day, in a sustainable way - for decades.

Clarity is magic.  

The Magic of Being Able to Say “No”

Total Capture Productivity offers yet another piece of magic: the ability to say “No” to a new commitment, which often arrives in the form of a request from someone else that would require your time, focus and energy to fulfill. 

It’s been said that your email inbox is really a list of other people’s priorities - not necessarily yours.

It’s also true that it takes far less time and effort to send off an email to someone else, or a group of people, requesting them to commit to something that will take far more time and effort to fulfil than it did for the sender to make the request in the first place.

When we have fully implemented a Total Capture Productivity system (which takes time - we’ll go through this journey together over the next several months in this newsletter), we will get to a place where we have identified and are actively tracking and managing every commitment - no matter how big or small - both personal and professional, across every aspect of our lives.

One of the amazing benefits of being able to truly know and see every commitment you have in your life, all laid out in one place is that you will realize just how many commitments you have already made!

Once you get over the feelings of shock and overwhelm (which is entirely normal, by the way) of seeing such a long list of commitments that you have already made - and somehow need to fulfil to completion - magical things begin to happen.

You realize that you are already likely highly “over committed”.   So is the nature of modern life - it is likely that you have far more commitments to complete than you have time and energy to get them completed.  This is actually normal.

On a positive note, looking over your “overcommitment list” can also give you a strong sense that your commitments are a reflection of someone living a complex, yet complete, full and engaging life - so it’s not all bad news.

The other real magic of having identified and captured all of your commitments in such a tangible, visible way is it makes it far, far easier to say “NO” to any new commitments that appear in our world.

Yes, you can say “NO”.   It’s OK.

You can say “NO” with integrity, because you already know all of your other commitments, you are already likely overcommitted, and this new commitment legitimately doesn’t make the list compared to the existing commitments that you have already made.

Sometimes, you might want to develop a “softer” response that does not include the word “NO”, but gently declines the commitment.  You might want to think about and even create a couple of standard “NO scripts” - both what you would say if someone asks you to make a commitment live - either in person or on a call or videoconference, and a response that you can literally cut-and-paste (possibly with minor tweaks) to an written or email request or invitation.

“Unfortunately, my schedule doesn’t permit me to…”

“Sorry, I don’t have the ‘bandwidth’ right now…” - works well for the technology geeks in your life.

“I’ve got a number of commitments on my plate that I need to complete before I can take on anything else…”

You get the idea.

You’re able to say “NO” with integrity - which makes it more likely that you will actually say “NO”, and not just accept yet another commitment to add to your list.

You stop accepting commitments that may stroke your ego, but that you don’t have time to do.

Because you are serious about developing your “productivity practice”,  possibly informed by the ideas behind Total Capture Productivity - you no longer make commitments that you don’t truly intend to complete. 

Having a “master list” of commitments will allow us to see some of the more subtle patterns in our lives, reflected in our commitments.  We will discover commitments that we have made to ourselves and to others that we no longer intend to complete that we need to “close off” in an appropriate way.

Seeing all of these commitments that we have already made is magic.  It will allow us to make fewer commitments in the future - fewer meetings, fewer commitments that may appear urgent but really aren’t, fewer commitments that don’t align with your skills, and ideally far fewer commitments that you truly don’t have the capacity to complete.

Take Action

Continue to use your “commitment radar” to detect, identify and capture commitments in writing as soon as they appear for the next several weeks.

Say “NO” early, and often: if you are asked to do something and you are unable or unwilling to make the commitment, say NO - quickly and upfront.  A quick “NO” allows the person requesting the commitment to find someone else to do it, or another way to complete what is needed.  No more “I’ll think about it” or “I’ll get back to you”…just say NO upfront.

At the end of each day: have a look at the commitments that you made and captured over the course of the day.  Ask yourself: how do you feel when you look at this list?  

Do you feel a sense of panic or overwhelm?

Are you fulfilling commitments that truly advance things you care about or are responsible for, or does the list make you feel like you are merely advancing someone else’s agenda as opposed to your own highest and best interests?

Look for the patterns in your list of commitments, and experience the magic.