Understanding the principles of a productivity methodology is often more important than understanding the trappings of the methodology itself.
Latter means you’re a slave to the step-by-step. Former means you’re able to adapt to your personal idiosyncrasies.
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Example: grokking the principle of Total Capture is more important than the trappings of GTD itself.
Not everyone can do pure GTD. Most productive people I know adapt it to their needs, or find some way to express its principles in their lives.
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Similarly, Progressive Summarisation’s contribution is to take the lean manufacturing notion of ‘muda’ and apply that to knowledge work.
In the Toyota system, unused inventory is waste.
In PS, the underlying principle seems to be “over-eager summarisation is waste”.
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There are other aspects of PS that appeal viscerally to me. observed that knowledge work is bizarrely artisanal: each new project demands a complete working from scratch. You are unable to reuse packets of information from previous projects.
This is muda.
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If you grok this principle, then you become less tied overall to the trappings of PS.
The goal isn’t: “oh, how do I follow the step-by-step highlight then bold then notes then headnotes then integrative piece” … it is “how do I remove muda in my knowledge work.”
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It’s also important to understand the origin stories of things.
Toyota’s system was built around the realities of the post-war Japanese economy.
Tiago’s methods has its roots in his history in boutique management consulting.
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