We were in a staff meeting the other day discussing some of the finer points of David Allen's 3-Fold nature of work. Part of the Doing phase, the 3-Fold nature describes how you spend your time:

Doing Pre-defined Work (choosing from what's already processed and organized on your lists and calendar)
Doing Work as it Appears (responding to latest, loudest and new opportunities)
Defining Work (your own processing and reviewing time)

Everyone has a mix of all three of these choices. It won't necessarily be an even split of your time and attention. Depends on your job, and frankly your personality. I often like to do bite size chunks of doing work as it appears to stay interested and engaged in something that's taking more mental effort. It's a balance though and only you will know if you are in/out of balance with any of these choices.

If you think about it, even someone whose job is about doing work as it appears, like a fireman, is still working on being ready for the fire while they are not IN the fire. In fact, their ability to deal with that fire effectively requires them to have spent time getting their gear ready so that they can move quickly.

It's no surprise, whenever I cover this module in a GTD class, the majority of the participants find themselves spending more than than they think they should in Doing Work as it Appears and not nearly enough time in Defining Work. the tricky part about it is that each of these phases can really affect one another as well. The less time you give yourself to define your work, the less defined work you have to choose from and the greater the tendency to do work as it appears.


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