There’s an Interesting system in DEED

A few years ago, I had the opportunity to take part in a leadership course lead by Paul Weston. He was a really interesting guy, and as such, I did my best to stay in touch with him. I recently saw on LinkedIn that he had published a book on productivity called Running in the Rain….Seriously, How had could it be? and knowing how insightful Paul was when it came to leadership, I couldn’t help but want to know more of his thoughts. I have been thinking about getting back into running, and I knew that Paul had run at least one Ironman race, so if anyone was to give good tips, it might be him.

It was at this time that I came to the full realization of the LITERAL meaning of “Don’t just a book by its cover.”

QUICK LEGAL MUMBOJUMBO: I am not getting anything out of writing this. While I know Paul personally, I don’t get anything from him for writing this. He’s a great guy who wrote a great book that I enjoyed. Now, ON WITH THE POST!

Paul’s book is actually about learning how to use your ability to focus throughout the day to increase your productivity and improve your life. I like books like this because I always find that I am able to get something out of reading them that I am able to use in my life. Fortunately, Paul’s book had a couple of nuggets of knowledge that I’m working on using. Now, I know what you’re thinking….you’re thinking;

“Dude, first of all, you promised us some email system, and yet you’re doing a book report, and secondly…You’re a tech blogger….why are you talking about managing focus?”

I promise I’m getting to it. One of the nuggets of knowledge that I got from Paul’s book was the method he uses for sorting his email. In the book, he goes through it, and it’s called his “DEED email” system. Whenever you get an email in your inbox, you can either Do it, Entrust it, Erase it, or Defer it.

Do it – Essentially, deal with whatever task is being asked of you within a couple of minutes. I completely agree with this because there are some emails that you will receive which you KNOW are going to be easy to deal with and don’t necessarily require a heck of a lot of brainpower. These “low hanging fruit” are easily solved, answered or otherwise dealt with, so it’s sometimes just easiest to deal with them.

Entrust it – This was an interesting one. He could have used the term “Delegate” (although I don’t think it would have worked as well in the acronym), but he didn’t. in the book, Paul gives a particular reason for using the word “entrust.” It’s because when you entrust someone to do a task, you are recognizing that they have the skills to deal with whatever the email is talking about, and will be better equipped to handle the problem. If you were to delegate an email, it feels like the request is below you. When you entrust it, you recognize that the person you are entrusting to take care of the issue knows more about it than you do.

Erase it – Paul advises that you be cautious about what emails you delete. I get where he’s coming from. You want to make sure that what you’re deleting is something that you wouldn’t absolutely need. I’ll be perfectly honest; I’m a bit more aggressive in my policy for emails. Partially because I get quite a bit of junk mail, I can easily recognize it and quickly trash what I don’t need. Because of how my mail client is set up, I have my easily erasable email in one area and the ones that I may need to pay more attention to in another.

Defer it – Sometimes, you get an email that you cannot act on at the time that you get it. Either because you need someone else who is cc’d on the email to chip in their opinion, or perhaps someone needs you to do something at a later time but wants you to be aware of it now. In either case, you can’t act on the email now, so you need to defer it. There are a couple of different ways that email programs allow you to do this. There are some that have a “snooze button” function for their emails where the email is removed from your inbox and saved to be redelivered at a different time or day. I have used this function a couple of times, and it works reasonably flawlessly. The other thing that you can do (which, if I’m honest, is the one that I do more often) is flag the emails for a later date. Whether it’s flagging the email, starring the email, or pinning the email, the point is to make it different from the rest of the email. This makes it easier to find the emails later.

I know that I started talking about this book and got stuck on one (admittedly) small part of the book (sorry, Paul), but I’m a tech blogger in my defence, and this is sort of my jam. That being said, “Running in the raid….Seriously how hard could it be” is a really good book for framing the argument for hacking your focus and supercharging your productivity. It’s a great book, and the guy who wrote it knows exactly what he’s talking about. It’s a great read, and I highly recommend it if you’re looking to improve your life.

Are you looking for more focus?

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