One of the interesting things about the GTD approach to workflow is its deferral of actually doing anything to the final step of the workflow process. This makes sense, given that one has to know what to do before actually doing it. This is the simple point that Thomas Aquinas made concerning the priority of the intellect to the will. He got a bad rap for this, in that later readers—wary of overstepping the boundaries laid down by the bishop of Paris in 1277—were able to secure their orthodoxy by emphasizing that the weight of moral responsibility was sufficiently born by the will. That is, if one happens to be ignorant or in error about what should be done, can one be sufficiently held responsible for having failed to do it? John Wesley also addressed this issue in his sermon on Christian Perfection, in which he clarified that the sanctified Christian is not free from error or ignorance, but rather that person’s will has been renewed in love. Thus it is possible to see GTD’s intense approach to preparing workflow before executing such workflow as similar in kind to the Thomistic moral psychology of “intellectualism” over against later medieval “voluntarism.”
While GTD does not intend to de-emphasize the actual practice of doing (nor Thomas Aquinas, it should be said), the GTD practitioner may be tempted to spend so much time in preparation that things never actually get done—or that, at the very least—it takes significantly longer to get them done. This is where (what I call) “ErgoMonads” become important.
As I use it, this term is equivalent to the “Pomodoro” in Francesco Cirillo’s “Pomodoro Technique.” Cirillo describes using a kitchen timer (and his just happens to be shaped like a tomato, which in Italian is pomodoro) to track individual 25-minute sessions of intense, concentrated work. I prefer to call such sessions “ErgoMonads,” because they are individual “units of work” and, like Cirillo makes clear, they are indivisible. There is no such thing as a half-ErgoMonad, for that would defeat its very purpose and contradict its very nature.
This technique is particularly helpful in decreasing distractions, as one can always look at the timer and tell whomever is interrupting: “Give me just X minutes and I’ll get back to you.” Or if an inner-distraction comes to mind, which is often the case in the digital era of the ubiquitous hyperlink, simply jot it down and immediately return to work. That way it’s recorded, so you can process (and do) it later.
While one can certainly attempt ErgoMonads of any length, 25 minutes is short enough that it doesn’t seem like an inconvenience. It can be quite easy to tell oneself (and colleagues): I will do nothing else for 25 minutes. No web browsing, no email communication, no solitaire or hearts, no shooting the proverbial, er, “stuff.”
My next post will address ways to easily deploy ErgoMonads in any context.
