What's the Difference Between the Productivity Funnel and Capture-Configure-Control?

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00:00:04.720 | All right, let's move on now.

00:00:06.920 | Our next question is from Gary.

00:00:10.720 | Gary says, what is the difference between the productivity funnel

00:00:14.680 | and the capture configure control method?

00:00:18.600 | All right, well, now we're getting into the weeds, which I appreciate.

00:00:22.080 | These are two different productivity-related frameworks

00:00:26.320 | or systems I have discussed at various times on this podcast.

00:00:29.360 | So for those who don't remember the productivity funnel,

00:00:33.680 | this was my way of trying to give a framework for professional productivity

00:00:38.920 | in general.

00:00:39.600 | I said any approach to professional productivity

00:00:43.280 | can be understood as implementing the three layers of a funnel,

00:00:48.920 | where at the very top of the funnel, you have what I called activity selection.

00:00:54.440 | What is my philosophy or systems or figuring out what I actually work on?

00:00:58.520 | In the middle of the funnel, you have organization.

00:01:02.400 | How do I make sense of and keep track of all of the different things

00:01:06.400 | I have selected to do, the things that did enter onto my proverbial plate?

00:01:11.440 | And then the narrowest part at the bottom, the bottom level of the funnel,

00:01:15.720 | was execution.

00:01:17.600 | How do I actually execute effectively the thing

00:01:20.440 | that I should be executing right now in the moment?

00:01:23.680 | So my argument is any professional productivity system or philosophy

00:01:27.040 | has to have a coherent approach to each of those three layers.

00:01:32.280 | Capture, configure, control is one element

00:01:36.760 | you might use in implementing, in particular, the organization layer.

00:01:41.480 | So it is an instantiation of you need some way of organizing

00:01:45.400 | all of these things on your plate in the time you have available.

00:01:48.040 | You need some way of doing it.

00:01:49.280 | One way you could do that is with things like capture, configure, control.

00:01:53.080 | And so if you remember capture, configure, control in that system,

00:01:56.400 | which comes from the early days of the podcast,

00:01:58.680 | it talks about how you need to have a way of capturing

00:02:01.960 | the things you need to do.

00:02:04.120 | You need a way of making sense of the things on your plate,

00:02:06.680 | and you need to control your time.

00:02:09.160 | So have some control over when do I actually want to do this work.

00:02:12.400 | And those types of ideas roughly fall under organization.

00:02:17.400 | I mean, you might argue that capture maybe overlaps a little bit

00:02:21.240 | with activity selection, but it's really just a David Allen inspired idea

00:02:25.280 | that no open loops.

00:02:26.800 | Configure, that's what is your system for actually tracking

00:02:31.280 | and keeping track of these things.

00:02:32.200 | And control is you should actually be doing something like time block planning,

00:02:36.320 | figuring out here's my time available, and here's what I want to do.

00:02:39.840 | So I think the right way to think about capture, configure, control

00:02:42.240 | is that zoom in on the organizational level of the productivity funnel.

00:02:47.360 | And once you're there, this is one way you might start to implement that funnel.

00:02:53.080 | Where this actually gets confusing is that capture, configure, control

00:02:56.040 | is itself also somewhat general.

00:02:59.000 | So I don't say specifically how to configure or specifically

00:03:02.040 | how to control your time.

00:03:03.600 | So it's a more refined framework for what

00:03:06.640 | you might find in that middle layer of the productivity funnel.

00:03:09.680 | You would then go in and actually implement those things

00:03:12.360 | with real systems.

00:03:14.000 | I'm going to use a Trello board for configure.

00:03:16.320 | I'm going to use a time block planner for control.

00:03:20.040 | Now, this sounds really recursive and complicated.

00:03:22.080 | That's because these aren't really supposed to nest, Gary.

00:03:24.680 | These are just two alternative ways of talking about productivity.

00:03:28.120 | So I wouldn't try to nest these two.

00:03:29.920 | I would say, look, you can think about I want a capture, configure,

00:03:33.520 | and control system.

00:03:35.280 | Or you can think about I want to implement the three

00:03:37.520 | layers of the productivity funnel and think about it.

00:03:40.240 | And they inform each other.

00:03:41.960 | But they're both kind of trying to do the same thing.

00:03:44.480 | And so maybe think of the productivity funnel

00:03:46.400 | as my second attempt at having a general framework

00:03:51.360 | for professional productivity.

00:03:53.520 | Because I realize that execution is important.

00:03:55.520 | And how we even select what should be on our plate

00:03:57.560 | or how much work we should be doing is important.

00:03:59.040 | So maybe you could think of the productivity funnel

00:04:01.160 | as being a more general swing at what I was trying to do

00:04:05.120 | with capture, configure, control.

00:04:06.680 | But if you like one better than the other,

00:04:08.640 | you're perfectly fine sticking with it.

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What's the Difference Between the Productivity Funnel and Capture-Configure-Control?

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