It's been over a year now since I started using David Allen's Getting Things Done
(GTD) methodology. I have a mania for simplicity, so I keep
streamlining it, but I've also made some enhancements to the GTD 'list'
to suit my procrastinating style. As I explained earlier,
I've taken the various lists that the book (and the accompanying
software) employ -- the 'waiting for', 'appointment', 'next action',
'someday' and 'project' lists and consolidated them into a single list
with three columns: date/time, proposal & action, and context
(location, time duration, urgency/importance). Lately I've started using
colour coding and split the list into four two-column sections that
look like this:
| A: ACTIONS WITH A FIRM DATE/TIME |
| | DATE TIME /DURATION | ACTION | | 2005.12.16 Fr 17:00 /2 | Appointment with Jo | | 2005.12.17 Sa 18:00 /4 | Meeting with K | | 2005.12.19 Mo 17:00 /6 | Discuss proposal for TNE with John | | ...etc |
|
|
| | B: ACTIONS WITH NO FIRM DATE/TIME |
| | TENTATIVE DATE TIME /DURATION | ACTION | | 2005.12.16 Fr 09:00 /3 | Discussion paper on AHA! | | 2005.12.16 Fr 13:00 /3 | MIC research | | 2005.12.17 Sa 09:00 /6 | Followup coaching session with R | | ASAP | Donate old Christmas tree to charity | | ASAP | Submit PKM paper to journal | | ...etc |
|
|
| | C: OBSTACLES |
| | PROJECT NAME | OBSTACLES (UNBLOCKERS) | | Recurring Activity x | cumbersome (call G to discuss) | | Writing Project y | too big (break into shorter actions) | | Entrepreneurship/Education Project z | not thought through (call J to discuss) | | Innovation Project q | not sure I want to do it (decide!) | | Knowledge/Tech/Coaching Project r | customer not ready (set up proposal) | | Project Outside Current Competency s | don't know enough (research) | | ...etc |
|
|
| | D: INSPIRATIONS |
| | IDEA/INSPIRATION | SOURCE/LINK | | Inspiration 1 | Link | | Inspiration 2 | Link |
My actions are colour-coded according to the type
of project (red for Innovation, blue for KM, green for Writing, purple
for Entrepreneurship, orange for projects I lack competency in (and
need more study before proceeding) and black for recurring and one-off
non-project actions. Actions that are urgent are italicized; actions
that are important to me personally are boldfaced.
Here's the process I use:
- At
the start of each day I look at the actions in Section A (those with a
firm time assigned to them) and set up Alarms for their start times
using Sunbird, my Mozilla scheduling software, to make sure they get
started on time. Example: On Friday December 16 I have a two-hour
appointment starting at 5 pm, but otherwise that day is unscheduled.
- I
then select from Section B the activities that I propose to do that day
in the unscheduled blocks of time, and assign them a start time, so
that I have about 8 hours of scheduled work for the day, excluding the
3 hours I spend every evening on weblog writing & reading. Example:
On Friday December 16 I've decided to do AHA! Project work from 9 am to
noon and research on Model Intentional Communities from 1-4 pm. That
gives me 11 hours' work for the day (as an empty nester, I usually do
about 13 hours' work each day, but I leave two hours of that time
unscheduled for the unpredictable stuff that always comes up). I make a point of
ensuring that at least one important (boldface) action gets done every
day (otherwise the urgent (italicized) actions always end up being done instead.
- As new situations come up, I process them using the
standard GTD process shown in the flowchart at the top of this article
(it's become second nature to me, so I rarely have to look at this
flowchart any more), and I slot the Next Actions and Appointments into
either Section A or B as appropriate. If the Next Action is neither
urgent (italicized) nor important (boldfaced), I seriously consider
whether it should be done at all. A key part of Getting Things Done is
Learning to Say No. Sometimes, though, an interesting project (like
"submit PKM article to journal" in the list above) is neither urgent
nor important, but could lead to things that are, so these stay in
Section B, my 'tickler file', until something occurs to make them
urgent or important, or the opportunity passes and they get deleted. I
review Section B every day.
- Each week I review and update
Section C, the Obstacles List, to see what needs to be done to move
important, stalled projects forward. As I come up with 'Unblocking'
Actions these normally get added to Section B.
- Whenever I get
discouraged, I look at the Inspirations (Section D). I refresh these
from time to time to keep me motivated. They generally consist of (i)
things I need to learn or remember to keep my priorities in order, (ii)
moving quotations and (iii) reminders of things I really love or want
to do, but haven't acted on.
Calendar, Tickler, Obstacles, Inspirations. This is the
organization that works for me. And GTD has rid me of the
procrastinator's twin dreads: forgetting something urgent, and leaving
an action too late to do it properly.
I was maintaining the list
in Word, but since I rarely use Word for anything else I've
transitioned it to a simple HTML table. Unfortunately NVu, my current
HTML editor tool, doesn't have a feature for sorting tables by date, so
I have to cut & paste when actions get rescheduled, but that's a
minor inconvenience. This file, called GTD, sits on my computer
'desktop' 24/7.
I've recently started playing with a new, free, dead simple, award-winning tool called EverNote.
It's a useful adjunct to GTD when the stuff you want to remember (phone
numbers, URLs, meeting agendas etc.) doesn't fit on a single line in
the GTD list, but isn't substantial enough to create a document about.
It's essentially a free-form endless roll of e-Post-Its that you can
access through the icon on the taskbar. I transfer these notes to blog
posts or other documents as I need them, and when the post, document or
action is done, I delete them. |
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
