托福备考百日读The psychology of the to-do list

疯子

If your daily schedule and email inbox are anything like mine, you’re often left a state of paralysis by the sheer bulk of outstanding tasks weighing on your mind. In this respect, David Allen's book Getting Things Done is a phenomenon. An international best-seller and a personal productivity system known merely as GTD, it’s been hailed as being a “ new cult for the info age”.
The heart of the system is a way of organising the things you have to do, based on Allen's experience of working with busy people and helping them to make time for the stuff they really want to do. Ten years after the book was first published in 2001, scientific research caught up with the productivity guru, and it revealed exactly why his system is so popular – and so effective.
The key principle behind GTD is writing down everything that you need to remember, and filing it effectively. This seemingly simple point is based around far more than a simple filing cabinet and a to-do list. Allen's system is like a to-do list in the same way a kitten is like a Bengal Tiger.

“Filing effectively”, in Allen's sense, means a system with three parts: an archive, where you store stuff you might need one day (and can forget until then), a current task list in which everything is stored as an action, and a “tickler file” of 43 folders in which you organise reminders of things to do (43 folders because that's one for the next thirty-one days plus the next 12 months).
The current task list is a special kind of to-do list because all the tasks are defined by the next action you need to take to progress them. This simple idea is remarkably effective in helping resolving the kind of inertia that stops us resolving items on our lists. As an example, try picking a stubborn item from your own to-do list and redefining it until it becomes something that actually involves moving one of your limbs. Something necessary but unexciting like "Organise a new fence for the garden" becomes "ring Marcus and ask who fixed his fence". Or, even better with further specifics on how to move your fingers, "dial 2 626 81 19 and ask Marcus who fixed his fence".
Breaking each task down into its individual actions allows you to convert your work into things you can either physically do, or forget about, happy in the knowledge that it is in the system. Each day you pick up the folder for that day and either action the item, or defer it to another folder for a future day or month. Allen is fanatical on this – he wants people to make a complete system for self-management, something that will do the remembering and monitoring for you, so your mind is freed up.
So what’s the psychology that backs this up? Roy Baumeister and EJ Masicampo at Florida State University were interested in an old phenomenon called the Zeigarnik Effect, which is what psychologists call our mind's tendency to get fixated on unfinished tasks and forget those we’ve completed. You can see the effect in action in a restaurant or bar – you can easily remember a drinks order, but then instantly forget it as soon as you've put the drinks down. I’ve mentioned this effect before when it comes to explaining the psychology behind Tetris.
A typical way to test for the Zeigarnik Effect is to measure if an unfulfilled goal interferes with the ability to carry out a subsequent task. Baumeister and Masicampo discovered that people did worse on a brainstorming task when they were prevented from finishing a simple warm-up task – because the warm-up task was stuck in their active memory. What Baumeister and Masicampo did next is the interesting thing; they allowed some people to make plans to finish the warm-up task. They weren't allowed to finish it, just to make plans on how they'd finish it. Sure enough, those people allowed to make plans were freed from the distracting effect of leaving the warm-up task unfinished.
Back to the GTD system, its key insight is that your attention has a limited capacity – you can only fit so much in your mind at any one time. The GTD archive and reminder system acts as a plan for how you'll do things, releasing the part of your attention that it struggling to hold each item on your to-do list in mind. Rather than remove things from our sight by doing them, Allen, and the research, suggest we merely need to have a good plan of when and how to do them. The mere act of planning how to finish something satisfies the itch that keeps uncompleted tasks in our memory.

为什么说“好记性不如烂笔头”？ 如果你每天的日程以及电子邮箱像我一样满满当当，那你经常就会因为大量的繁复的任务积压在心头而处于停滞不前的状态。从这方面来说，David Allen的名为《尽管去做——无压工作的艺术》的书确实成为了一种现象。一种国际通行的使产品畅销的手段以及一种提高个人效率的方法都简单地以GTD被人所知，被称赞为“信息时代的新信仰”。
    这种手段的核心就是一种方法，它能使你要做的事情变得有条不紊，这些方法都是以Allen的平时的经验为基础的，当Allen和忙碌的人们一同工作并帮助他们把时间让位于真正他们想要做的事情时，经验便随之而来。2001年此书第一次出版，10年过去了，科学研究人员追随着这位效率大师，并且揭示出了这种手段为何如此风靡以及有效的原因。
    GTD的关键原则就是写下每件你需要记住的事情，并且有效地去归档。简单的文件夹和列支清单是远远不够的，其中的关键点看似简单，却并非如此。如果把Allen的手段仅仅看作是列支清单的话，那我们也可以把小猫看作孟加拉虎了。
    “有效归档”，在Allen的体系中意味着3部分：一个档案室，那是你存放材料的地方以备某天的不时之需（当你有了档案室，过去的事情你就不用记在脑子里了）；一份当下的任务清单，要确保记录的每一项都是具体的行动；一份“备忘档案”，为此你要准备43个文件夹，这样你就能井井有条地整理好你的备忘录了（准备43个文件夹的原因是下一个31天的每一天以及未来的12个月的每个月你都需要一个对应的文件夹）。
    这份当下的任务清单和一般的列支清单的特殊之处在于所有的任务都被分解成你所需要采取的下一个行动以达到进程推进的目的。这个简单的理念对于帮助解决那种使我们停步不前而懒于解决清单上的事务的惰性是非常行之有效的。举个例子来说，试着从你的清单上挑选一个棘手的事情并且重新对其定义，直到它详细到真的包括你四肢的活动。有些事情看上去非常必要但总提不起兴趣，比如“给花园装个新的篱笆”就是这样，如果把措辞改成“打电话给Marcus并问问他，他家的篱笆是谁装的”效果会不会好些？或者，也许加进更进一步的活动手指的细节会更好，就像这样“拨打2 626 81 19，问下Marcus他家的篱笆是谁装的”。
    把每个任务肢解成一个个具体的行动可以帮助你把工作变成你能够身体力行的事务或者让一些事情随风而去，总之一切尽在掌握的感觉总是令人愉快的。每天，你挑选那天的文件夹，要么去做里面的事情，要么将一些事务转移到另一个存放未来某一天或者某个月事务的文件夹。Allen是这个方法的死忠——他想要人们为个人管理建立一个完整的体系，这个体系的功能应该是能够替你自己完成记忆以及监督的职能，这样一来，你的脑子就解放啦。
    那么究竟是什么样的心理原因支持这个体系呢？来自佛罗里达州立大学的Roy Baumeister和EJ Masicampo对蔡加尼克效应产生了兴趣，这个效应说的就是心理学家常常指出的一个现象，我们的大脑总会在未完成的任务上纠结不已，却会把完成的事情抛在脑后。如果去到餐馆或者酒吧，你就能切身地体会到这个效应，你能轻松地记得你要点份饮料，但当你将它一饮而尽时，刚才你喝的是什么饮料你就忘记得一干二净了。在以前，当我剖析俄罗斯方块背后的心理状态时提到过这个效应。
    一个典型的测试蔡加尼克效应的方法就是看一个未完成的目标是否会干扰到一个人执行下一个任务的能力。Baumeister和Masicampo发现当人们不被允许完成热身的任务时，在进行头脑风暴的任务时，他们会表现的更差，这是因为热身任务满满占据了我们活跃的记忆。Baumeister和Masicampo接下去做的事情耐人寻味；他们允许一些人为热身任务做些计划。但是不允许他们完成它，只是做个未来如何完成的计划。可以肯定的是，那些被允许做计划的人从因为热身任务未完成而引起的分心中解放了出来。
    让我们再回到GTD体系，它的关键的密钥就是你的精力是有限的——每一次，你在大脑里装的事情只有那么点。GTD归档和记忆体系就扮演着规划师的角色，它能让你更清楚未来你要如何完成任务，这样一来，在大脑里纠结事务清单上的每件事情的那部分注意力就可以得到释放了。你并不需要通过完成它们而让它们从你的视野里消失，Allen以及研究人员的建议是我们仅仅需要做一个好的计划，计划好我们什么时候以及如何去完成它们。我们仅仅需要做好完成它们的规划就能够满足我们的那种想要把未完成的任务牢牢定格在记忆里的渴望。

月球星人

好帖必须得顶起

孔庆西

鼎力支持！！

皇家马温

very good

雅思尼妹

我只是路过，不发表意见