The other day, when I was writing about getting stuff off your mind, and neat little tricks to do so, I mentioned:
“…‘open loop’ grief that just seems to lower the mood…”
And it dawned on me afterwards that you might not know what I mean by that term.
‘Open loop’ is something I first heard in David Allen's book Getting Things Done, and it makes such sense from a 3 Principles perspective, that it immediately stuck, and has become part of the furniture, really.
Simply put, an open loop is any task we have committed to do (or have noticed needs doing) that we have not done one of two things for:
- Completed
- Assigned to a trusted system
Until we do either of those, it remains ‘open’ in our poor little mind, which will try its best to remember it and keep it active until we do one of those two things. Because it needs doing, yeah?
And we all know what that feels like, don't we?
😩
I used to share this simple, obvious little fact with audiences when I spoke about Productivity at big conferences, because the story David relates in the book—of walking from one end of the house to the other, noticing reminders of every open loop as you pass by, and having a broken heart (or spirit) by the time you reach your destination—is just too on the nose to even be funny.
Of course, he has a ‘trusted system’ to sell you and who can blame him – in the large it's so simple, it works! Although I am by no means a disciple, it makes such sense that I still use an app now, and the basic underlying premise of his GTD™ system to organise all my work.
The observant among you will notice how those two actions above work, and why it's so pertinent to the inside-out understanding…
That's right: it gets stuff off your mind.
It helps you to think less, and live more.
🙌🏻
Giles
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