"Getting Things Done"

[fleetfootmike]

....aka "GTD", is the title of both a book (by David Allen) and the personal organization method it describes.

I've been (doing my best to) adopt it for most of the last year, with a few slips along the way, and I did promise bardling an update and telynor a blog on the whole thing.

The Wikipedia article links to the basic concepts, and I really do recommend reading the book (twice, see below for why), but here's the summary of the bit I was using that really helped.

The core concept is that you can't keep everything in your head. Even if you have one of those prodigious memories that allows you never to forget a todo item, that's not a useful use of your brain, and Allen (quite reasonably) contends that all it does is makes you crazy, worrying over what you have to do, whether you've remembered it. Allen calls it "stuff", and the excellent 43folders.com describes it like this:

Stuff is bouncing around in our heads and causing untold stress and anxiety. Evaluation meetings, bar mitzvahs, empty rolls of toilet paper, broken lawn mowers, college applications, your big gut, tooth decay, dirty underwear and imminent jury duty all compete for prime attention in our poor, addled brains. Stuff has no “home” and, consequently, no place to go, so it just keeps rattling around.

Worst off, we’re too neurotic to stop thinking about it, and we certainly don’t have time to actually do everything in one day. Jeez Louise, what the hell am I, Superman?

So you sprint from fire to fire, praying you haven’t forgotten anything, sapped of anything like creativity or even the basic human flexibility to adapt your own schedule to the needs of your friends, your family or yourself. Your “stuff” has taken over your brain like a virus now, dragging down every process it touches and rendering you spent and virtually useless. Sound familiar?

The solution is to do what my colleague Karl describes as 'outsourcing your brain".

• Take a morning, a day, however long you need, get yourself some suitable task recording device that you will TRUST (pen and paper, software, whatever) and every stack, pile, diary, or other current todo item list. You only have to do this once (assuming you stick to the process afterwards). Get someone to help if you need to.


• Go through all your physical 'stuff', and process it. Either


• get rid of it if you can, or
• if you can do it inside two minutes, do it; or
• record it as a real actionable item in whatever system you chose




• Do the same for your mental 'stuff'. This could be the painful one, but trust me, it's necessary, and it works. However trivial, however guilt-inducing, whatever, process it. Things will come to you while you're processing the phsyical stuff, too. Record them. Remember, outsource your brain, free it of 'stuff'.

.

Ok. Now your brain is stuff-free, and you have a list of actionable items. Great start. Keep it up: any time anything comes into your inbox, process it.
This does of course, still leave the question of what do you do with your nice list of actionable items. You process them.

They'll fall into one of two categories:

• single actions ('pay the gas bill')
• what we'll call projects ('do guest spot at convention')

The distinction is that a project is an end goal (which should be definable and achievable (however far off it may look)), which will be composed of a whole chain of actions.

Some of these may be long-term things you don't need to fret about today, or even this week. You can drop those in real or virtual folders for weekly, monthly, or whatever review and stop worrying about them till the next review comes round. Really. Stop. It's in your trusted organization system. You decided it's not important today. It'll be there in a week.

So, now. How do we handle a project? Easy. A project is a list of actions. Allen does have some suggestions for how to handle planning projects, but two of the key concepts is the idea of next actions, and of contexts.

Next actions: no matter if you can't see the complete route from start to end of a project (either because it's too intimidating or because you lack information, you can define a 'next thing to do', a single action, in fact probably more than one. That's great. Record it in your trusted system.

Contexts: Some tasks are @ work. Some are @ home, some are 'at your computer', some 'on the phone'. You can tag each action you now have with a context, and then when you're actually working on your actions, restrict yourself to the ones that match the current context (e.g. make all your phone calls at once...).


That's kind of the salient parts of GTD in a nutshell. There's more than that, and I do recommend reading the book, and the 43folders site.

How'd it work for me?

Well. My main mistake was picking an organisation tool I turned out not to trust. It started out fine, and I made a serious commitment to it (including paying the shareware fee), but it turned out to be buggy in ways that meant I spent too much time fighting it, and not enough time using it. So in the end, I got frustrated and gave up using it, which was fatal :( Hence my comment above about picking a tool (even if it's multiple folders and pen-and-paper, and printing out emails) that you know you can trust. I also (on starting to re-read the book) realised that there were other things to the book that (with hindsight) I could have added to my process to make it even better.

While it was working, though? Fantastic. I had a neat email set up that allowed me to drop emails into the application for processing, as well as the ability to drop items into my 'inbox' via my mobile when I was away from my Mac.

I'm going to try again: I'm setting aside a day between now and Monday for choosing a system and de-'stuff'ing myself, and an evening before that for re-reading the book.

Comments

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Wouldn't work with me, in that writing stuff down doesn't stop it bouncing around my head and messing me up anyway. Obviously it works for the writer of the book, though, so it must be feasible.

[fleetfootmike.livejournal.com]

I have to say, I thought it wouldn't for me. That's why the key is having some method of storing your stuff that you can trust in, and that you write down absolutely everything and KNOW that you have.

[stevieannie.livejournal.com]

I've been doing this for a while now - I've tried all sorts of devices, but have yet to find anything to beat a good old fashioned notebook and fountain pen. The joy (for me) is that I actively enjoy using a beautiful notebook and fountain pen, so I have none of the fear of tech. which sabotaged me when I started.

Make the book beautiful and the pen easy to use and you're onto a winner.

I also find the fact that I've got a list of what I've accomplished at the end of the day is very motivating - I can't say "I've not done ANYTHING!" anymore.

I look forwards to hearing how it is going for you!

[the-gwenzilliad.livejournal.com]

What application let you down?

I downloaded OmniFocus last night, and I am enjoying the beginning stages of writing everything down.

Annie, I have a beautiful big leather planner that was a joy to carry around. Alas, it's so big that I can't carry it *and* a laptop *and* all the other things I like to carry around very comfortably. It is a three ring binder that fits Franklin Covey-style pages. Assuming you could find paper to fit it, would you like it?

(There's a story behind it, of course, but I'll tell you in person rather than here.)

[stevieannie.livejournal.com]

Oooooh, yes PLEASE!

[the-gwenzilliad.livejournal.com]

I'll send you a photograph of it tonight. It was very important to me for a long time. I can't think of a better place for it to move to.

[stevieannie.livejournal.com]

*Bounce*! Thankyou :-)

[the-gwenzilliad.livejournal.com]

*chagrin*

I forgot. I'll try to get to it tonight. I have a feeling you'll like it, though.

[the-gwenzilliad.livejournal.com]

Aha! But I do remember the computer from which it was purchased. The planner is the large one on this page, but with a different design. The design looks like it has been discontinued, but this is pretty close. The colour is the same brown as on the large planner on the first page. It's really a stunning notebook.

[the-gwenzilliad.livejournal.com]

As an aside, I used to have one of their barrettes, but it was broken, and I finally know how to replace it! Yay! :)

(Sorry to spam your post, Mike...)

[the-gwenzilliad.livejournal.com]

A-HA!

this is the image!

[fleetfootmike.livejournal.com]

"Inbox" (by Midnight Beep software).

Its core problem was that its data storage had been designed by a complete muppet who had used the same record type for EVERY clickable item in the UI (projects, actions, attachments, notes....) hence any MINOR coding error in the (of which there were legion if you tried to do anything complex) could result in (for example) your project having an email reference as its next action. On top of that, it couldn't figure out which were your next actions for a given context.

[sdorn.livejournal.com]

Very nice summary, and like you, I occasionally have to get back on the wagon because my life doesn't allow for the Weekly Review.

A friend suggested GTD when I was driving myself crazy while starting my journal editing gig, and it was while reading Allen's book that I took out my cell phone, realized I didn't pay for the voicemail at my office, and started grinning helplessly.