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This is part of a series of articles on using LEAN to streamline your GTD system

So here we are at one of the tough hurdles in every LEAN implementation. The introduction of PULL in the production process, or in this case, into my GTD system. It's at a pretty experimental stage for me, but here's the basic idea.

The reason to do this is actually in the GTD book itself, in the "Mind like Water" concept. The water reacts to a pebble thrown into it with a totally appropriate reaction. It doesn't over react or underreact. Here's the Mind Like Water simile quoted:

In karate there is an image that’s used to define the position of perfect readiness: “mind like water.” Imagine throwing a pebble into a still pond. How does the water respond? The answer is, totally appropriate to the force and mass of the input; then it returns to calm. It doesn’t overreact or underreact. The power in a karate punch comes from speed, not muscle; it comes from a focused “pop” at the end of the whip. That’s why petite people can learn to break board and bricks with their hands: it doesn’t take calluses or brute strength, just the ability to generate a focused thrust with speed. But a tense muscle is a slow one. So the high levels of training in the martial arts teach and demand balance and relaxation as much as anything else. Clearing the mind and being flexible are key. Anything that causes you to overreact or underreact can control you, and often does. Responding inappropriately to your e-mail, your staff, your projects, your unread magazines your thoughts about what you need to do, your children, your boss will lead to less effective results than you’d like. Most people give either more or less attention to things than they deserve, simply because they don’t operate with a “mind like water." Source: http://wiki.jeffsandquist.com/default.aspx/GTD/MindLikeWater.html

Considering this quote, it's interesting, that so much in the GTD system revolves around implementing habits. The habit of weekly review for example. Doing something from habits isn't the same as doing something because it's an appropriate reaction. So my goal is to redefine my weekly review habit, to a set of appropriate reactions instead.

(Please note: I'm not claiming that habits aren't useful. It's only that some habits are harder to learn than others. And I have been struggling with my weekly reviews all my GTD-life. So this is why I'm trying out new techniques. If your weekly review habit is strong and efficient, I congratulate you!)

An Appropriate Reaction

PULL in LEAN is all about appropriate reactions. A traditional industrial system tries to produce a large quantity of something, by forecasting (guessing) the demand, producing it, then putting the stuff on storage, and selling it on demand.

The problem in the traditional approach is that forecasting is pretty damned difficult to do. So 99% of the time you either underestimate or overestimate demand. Overestimating demand is bad because you end op with a lot of stuff you can't sell at your target price, and then you loose money. Underestimating is just as bad, because reaction times in traditional industrial production are so slow, that you'll have difficulties supplying the demand for outsold extra popular versions of your product, thus loosing potential sales and loosing money!

LEAN does it the other way around. It tries to get rid of forecasting alltogether, by making a superfast production chain, that reacts on customer pull. Production methods with fast change-over times and smaller output are favoured over superfast industrial machines, with high change-over times and large output. This makes the production system more ready to respond to demand.

When the production system is ready to respond to demand PULL can be introduced. The principle in PULL is, that nothing is produced before the next link in the system-chain signals, that it needs the part. This can be done in variety of ways. A traditional approach is a visual system (KANBAN-system), that makes everyone aware of the flow in the whole production line.

A PULL system like this make Toyota Dealers i USA able to have smaller inventories of each spare part for repairs, but instead invest in a much wider variety of spare parts. This makes American auto-owners able to get special spare parts for quite old Toyatas overnight, where competitors are struggling to deliver comparable parts within weeks.

The system is in a state of perfect readiness. When there's a demand for something it triggers a chain reaction, that delivers the goods just in time. This is what I wan't my GTD-system to be like!

Weekly Review - From "Batch & Queue" to Pull

I think reviewing your GTD-system once a week is quite allright, if you're able to do it consistently. Unfortunately I'm not. I like the feeling of clarity I get from reviewing, but I think doing it is dull work, and I find it very difficult to use my scheduled review time as buffer time.

What I want is to build a system where I react on telltale signs that I need to do something in my system. When the telltale sign appears it'll trigger an appropriate reaction, and then I'll get back into churn mode.

I know that I have certain emotional reactions to my system getting out of hand. I think that it may be possible to link these emotions to appropriate reactions. Like eating when you're hungry.

This will enable me to break down the Elephant project of completing one weekly review into smaller actionable items, that I do when the need arises.

Take for instance reviewing the actions-list. I know the feeling when my actions-list needs unclutteríng. It is the feeling I get when my eyes are gliding all over the list, seeing plenty of things, but not really wanting to do any of them. This is a telltale sign, that I need to unclutter my action-list. This includes reviewing each item checking to see if they are:

• Doable
• A concrete physical action
• The NEXT action in the given project
• Less than 20 minutes of work

Then I retype the ones I don't like, and delete the old ones, type in new ones and print. This doesn't take long, and the peace of mind is restored, and it's back to churn mode.

So! My goal is to make a complete system of EmotionPULL-triggers, signs that something needs attention, and appropriate doable actions take when these signs emerge.

So next article: LEAN GTD #5: Triggers and Reactions - A Pull System for GTD Weekly Reviews.

• Jens Poder

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