December 4, 2005: Getting Things Done
About GTD (Getting Things Done).
Posted on 2005-12-04 23:59 by Jørn Støylen [permalink]
If you’re wondering what that Tracks web application that I wrote about the other day is all about, here’s a short explanation.
The last year I’ve been stumbling across the acronym “GTD” online more and more. It means “Getting Things Done”, and is the title of a book written by a man named David Allen. I found this book via a site called 43 Folders, and while I’m not entirely sure how I found that site, it’s a reasonable assumption that I got there via D. Keith Robinson’s site, Asterisk, but possibly through several other blogs too. It’s kind of a cult movement, see.
Geeks everywhere are going back to basics, hacking their lives, throwing away their electronic PDAs in favor of Hipster PDAs and getting more things done than ever before. So when I found the book relatively cheap on a Norwegian online bookstore, I ordered it to see if it would be relevant to me too, but from what I had read online, I had a hunch that it would.
It took me about 16 years to realize I was a perfectionist. I’ve been calling myself a selective perfectionist, though, meaning there are some areas in my life where I can be annoyingly meticulous, while I’m a slacker and a slob with other things.
It took me another 16 years to realize my perfectionism is the biggest reason that I’m also a procrastinator who almost never finish any project I start. On 43 Folders they recommended another book, The Now Habit, which I also found relatively cheap on the same Norwegian bookstore, and ordered. Now, there are several different reasons for procrastinating, but perfectionism is the reason that seems to fit my situation best.
I’m in the process of reading and doing both books, and stuff is happening, albeit a bit slowly, since I also have a job and family demanding my attention. This weekend, though, I’ve been home alone, and have indeed been getting some things done. Yesterday I got Tracks up and running, which was important to me, since I really feel I need to have one central place to record projects and actions, and I need to access that place from both at home and at work. (Possibly the biggest point of the GTD philosophy is to put everything that is buzzing around in your head and interrupting your flow into a trusted system where you know it won’t get lost, so you’ll deal with it later when you have the time. Once you’ve emptied your brain into said system, you’re free to concentrate on what you’re doing here and now.) I also entered all the stuff I’d written down on small sheets of paper during my collection stage into Tracks last night.
Today I’ve started actually getting things done by defining next actions for all my projects and then doing quite a few of them. Also, whenever I’ve thought of something else I need to do, I’ve entered that into Tracks. It feels nice, but I’m still at a very early stage, so I’m not quite sure how it’ll work when I’m back at work tomorrow. My job has its own separate workflow, since notification about almost everything I need to get done is done by email, so I have @Action and @WaitingFor folders in my email client there, and it’s redundant to enter those tasks into Tracks too.
I think I’m going to go for pen and notebook as when it comes to capturing things when I’m away from a computer. Some geeks swear by pen and paper only (the Hipster PDA that I linked to above, for example), but I’ve thought about it, and I don’t think that’s for me—yet, anyway.
So far, it’s been helping me Getting Things Done, which is the whole point! And I suspect it’ll get even better with time, as I learn and adapt both myself to the system and the system to me.
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Phew! That was close! (Check out when this article was published!)
So…. What kinds of things do you write on the cards? Are there some sample cards online?
Cool ideas!
You know, instead of trying to explain things further here, I’ll point you towards a few articles that explain it.
Getting started with GTD
Introducing the Hipster PDA
Also, there’s the DIY Planner
If you’re still interested, I suggest buying “Getting Things Done”. It’s a bit geared towards executives and other people with jobs with lots of responsibility and high salaries, but it’s also very pragmatic and has a “do whatever works best for you” kind of attitude.