Maintain Your System

“Nothing in this fallen world coasts towards order. You must work your system.” 

– Tim Challies

We are now in the final practice of Chapter 2 of Jordan Raynor’s awesome book, “Redeeming Your Time.” We took the time in the other practices to get our work into our commitment tracking system (CTS) and define each item. Practice 5 is how we will maintain our CTS to keep our lives from drifting toward chaos. 

There are two parts to maintaining our CTS – Daily, and Weekly. 

Daily

We have already taken the big step of getting everything into our CTS. If you have not used a CTS in the past getting all your stuff into one spot probably took a lot of time. Congratulations!

Here’s the rub. If we don’t empty all our inboxes every day, the task of “getting clear” will get bigger and bigger. The bigger and scarier the task, the more likely we are to put it off until we “have more time.”

We must “get clear” every single work day. If we miss it before we go home, we must squeeze it into the next morning or take our lunch break and do it. If we let it slip a day, we’ll let it slip two days then the snowball gets rolling downhill and gets bigger and bigger. The next thing you know you give up on the system entirely because the task of “getting clear” just got too big and you refused to dedicate another weekend to the task. 

That sounds a little pessimistic, but that is the way it goes. Therefore, daily we must:

• Extract all tasks from email, paper, social media, online communities, etc. into your CTS.
• Convert each item into well-defined work (Projects and Next Actions). This is when we take each item out of the inbox of our CTS and put them into Projects and Next Actions.
• Get all inboxes to zero daily. Yes, this includes your email inbox and the inbox in your CTS. Everything actionable goes into your CTS. 

If we can do this daily, we can stick to our system. If we let it slip a day or two, the likelihood of giving up and going back to our old ways rises dramatically. Remember why you are on this path. You want your yes to be your yes. You want the peace of knowing and keeping your commitments. It is worth it!

Weekly

Raynor says the time he calendars for his weekly review is the most sacred time on his calendar after his morning quiet time. He knows this practice is what allows him to get the most important work done while not dropping any balls. Raynor has five steps to his weekly review. 

1 – Pray

Remember that the only reason we want to be productive is to glorify our creator and savior. We are already saved and have an amazing eternity waiting for us in heaven. We work diligently to glorify Him because of all He has already done for us. We must remember that we are 100%, loved, saved, and redeemed regardless of how productive we are or are not. 

2 – Review your calendar for the last week.

You are looking for open loops from meetings or anything else that happened. If you’ve missed a weekly review or two, go back as far as needed to get comfortable. Put those open loops in your CTS. 

3 – Review your calendar for the upcoming weeks.

Go two, three, or four weeks out looking for upcoming things you need to be ready for. Make sure they are in your CTS and move them up your priority list accordingly. 

4 – Review all your projects and next actions in your CTS.

Move any items that do not have to be done to your someday list. 

5 – Skim your someday list.

Bring anything up that needs attention or that you have time to work on. 

As you went through practices three and four your three starter folders were your Inbox, Projects, and Next Actions. The Inbox gets cleared daily into Projects and Next Actions. 

Raynor uses three levels of folders for his Projects. They are:

• Professional and Personal
• This Quarter and Someday
• Areas of Responsibility

You will vary your folder setup as you work your system. Raynor’s framework is a great way to get started. 

Boom. That is all for Chapter 2. The chapter I have found to be the most challenging. Chapter 2 sets up the framework that makes all the upcoming productivity hacks possible. Know that you will need to keep coming back to chapter 2 as you tweak your system. The key is to maintain it so you can build your daily practices on this framework.

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