Origin Story: How Attention Compass Came About - DBR 016

How did the Attention Compass come about? Why is it a thing now?

 

Larry's background through 2006

• My career has been in IT management, so I understand something about tools, software, next generation technology.
• Throughout my career, I was always a productivity geek – Stephen Covey, David Allen, new tech, phone, etc
• During this time we noticed that email, (Windows) mobile phone, Ipod, and Outlook have replaced the paper Daytimer. Also, I'm still trying to make GTD work in Outlook
• I had already completed an MBA, so now I’m definitely a corporate business guy

Then three things happened

• The Iphone released, signaling the entrenchment of mobile computing devices.
• Dropbox happened, meaning device to device information synchronization was readily available.
• Facebook grew (passed mySpace), making social applications/media 'normal' and mainstream.
• We’re in the social, mobile, and cloud world at the same time (and the great recession). Things began to change

I started my Ph.D.

• I took a huge pay cut, so I had to take on lots of IT project work; I had multiple 'jobs' to track.
• I also had lots of Class work. Again, this meant a lot of work that was disjointed.
• Add in the PhD (dissertation) work, another kind of disjointed work. But the primary effect was recognition that I needed to get really good at PhD-level information management.
• The physical environment handed me lots of places to work, so I not only needed mobile computer(s), but I needed mobile data.
• Now I have two big questions: Where’s my stuff? And what’s my task?
• And I’m overwhelmed, so is my GTD implementation.

The Ph.D. work and environment, along with the project work, delivered some constraints (or lack thereof).

• I don’t have a boss telling me what to do; with autonomy came responsibility.
• I needed to deal with the regular information (task, project level stuff, etc.) along with this complex unstructured academic information.
• Psychology, neurology, how our brains work – gotta externalize and it’s lots of stuff. At the same time, I've got to get rid of the paper - it's too inflexible and cumbersome to be as fluid as I need it to be.

Some light dawns on my own attention/task/time management system.

• David Allen’s great, but GTD = paper = bad.
• Evernote goes mainstream enough for me have an account in 2010. I had been investigating 'note taking' apps and had been using OneNote.
• I knew scheduling, Gantt charts, etc. based on my project management background from previous jobs.
• I was continuing to learn about information management through my Ph.D. work in Information Systems.
• All of this came together into what is now known as the Attention Compass. Since I was involved with so many different kinds of work, lots of people who knew me well began to ask about how I managed. I told them and taught them.

People clearly needed it, so I launched a business.

• I had to learn how to explain all this to people; nobody was talking about this stuff (that's pretty much still true.
• I needed clients to build habits, not just collect 'tips', so I adopted coaching as my delivery mechan