It’s been over two months now since I first paused in my series on the Getting Things Done…FAST CDs. I actually had my CD 2 – Track 6 article written, but decided to re-write it with a slightly different spin. I was never quite comfortable with where it was headed. I had also gotten stuck on the following quote from CD 2 Track 7:

Uh-oh. The silent trauma that’s hit everybody in the work force and the culture, or most everybody, anyway—no edges to your work any more. When are you done? When do you win? When do you finish?

I’ve been thinking about “edges to our work” for the last couple months now. Although not exactly what David was talking about, it seems as if everything in our life just blurs together. When do I leave work in the evenings? Unless I have something else scheduled, I typically leave when I can’t seem to take it any more. When I get home I know that I have things I need to do either around the house or in my own business. When I don’t have the energy to do them, I feel guilty. I get up the next morning and do it all over again. Where does it stop? Where are the edges between roles, goals, and activities?

Don’t get me wrong, I really love my life and all my activities. I do a pretty good job of juggling it all, thanks in great part to the GTD methodologies (along with the fact that I don’t usually require much sleep). I’ve realized in recent months that it leaves little to look forward to, however. I think we need definite and obvious edges to our work so we have something to look forward to in our normal day-to-day. Otherwise we become just a hamster on the exercise wheel of life.

I’ve been trying to leave work a little earlier than usual lately. In many cases, I’m still working later than most of my coworkers, but I’m trying to have a definite time that I want to leave by each day. This gives me something to look forward to, and some closure on the day. I’ve been going out for lunch most days instead of eating something at my desk while I work. Once again, this provides a nice closing, or edge, to the morning.

Before I became a programmer I worked mostly in warehousing doing shipping, receiving, inventory control, and the like. I also did some manufacturing too. One of the things I remember was a 10 minute break in the morning and another one in the afternoon. It gave me something to look forward to. I would work for a couple hours and I knew I had a break coming. It was a chance to unwind in the middle—an opportunity to separate myself from what I had been doing. When the ten minutes was over, I could start over fresh, knowing that in a couple more hours I had another break coming. This is missing in my day now unless I have a mid-morning, or mid-afternoon meeting, and that’s not quite the same thing.

We need edges. We need breaks in our day. We need scheduled breaks. We need little things to look forward to. We need ample opportunity to experience closure several times a day. We need ample opportunity to start fresh several times a day.

The GTD methodology provides edges where there are no edges. The calendar (hard landscape) provides obvious edges. Our context lists provides edges. An empty inbox is an edge. The weekly review is an edge. However, there still remains a lot of soft time in between.

In The Now Habit: A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-Free Play Neil Fiore proposes what he calls “the unschedule”. Essentially this is a calendar that contains periods of time (hard landscape for you GTD folks) for recreation, leisure, socializing, and physical activity. He recommends that we try to work very focused during those soft times where we don’t have anything scheduled and then enjoy our scheduled breaks. This technique give us things to look forward to. Face it, more work isn’t much to look forward to for most of us.

So, what are you doing to create edges in your day? your work? your life?