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Getting Things Done – Revised 2015

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Re: Getting Things Done – Revised 2015

#41

Post by peteretep »

kchoudhu wrote: post #38
peteretep wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To be honest I always thought that these kind of books > (i.e personal growth / motivational) were BS I feel I've had a huge amount in my life out of self-help books, on a real variety of subjects. There's a lot of obvious bullshit out there (like The Secret), but also plenty of gold. Scanning through my notes, and in no particular order, I have extensive notes from (and thus enjoyed): * 7 Habits of Highly Effectiv…

Meditations is hardly self-help... I'm not going to deny the fact that it changed the way I look at the world though.

    > Meditations is hardly self-help
That it wasn't intended as such doesn't really change the fact it's essentially a series of koans, much like many self-help books.

Re: Getting Things Done – Revised 2015

#42

Post by peteretep »

marcusgarvey wrote: post #37
peteretep wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To be honest I always thought that these kind of books > (i.e personal growth / motivational) were BS I feel I've had a huge amount in my life out of self-help books, on a real variety of subjects. There's a lot of obvious bullshit out there (like The Secret), but also plenty of gold. Scanning through my notes, and in no particular order, I have extensive notes from (and thus enjoyed): * 7 Habits of Highly Effectiv…

How did you like Ten Days to Self Discipline?

_LOVED_ it.

Re: Getting Things Done – Revised 2015

#43

Post by joonoro »

I haven't read it, but I always liked the piece of advice from GTD about 5 minute tasks. If a task takes less than 5 minutes, do it now. During the day I usually accumulate small tasks and realizing that they take almost no time at all does wonders for staving off procrastination.

Re: Getting Things Done – Revised 2015

#44

Post by Stratoscope »

peteretep wrote: post #42
marcusgarvey wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you like Ten Days to Self Discipline?

_LOVED_ it.

Just to make sure I'm looking at the same book, is it "Self-Discipline in 10 days: How To Go From Thinking to Doing"?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1880115107/

Thanks!

Re: Getting Things Done – Revised 2015

#46

Post by seanp2k2 »

tmalsburg2 wrote: post #10

In my experience, GTD is overkill and managing things that way is a time consuming task in itself. I converged on something simpler: I have four lists. One that contains everything that absolutely needs to be done. Then there is a list for things that can be done but are not essential. This list is a pretty amazing collection of ideas and when I have some time left, I pick an item that looks appealing in that situati…

Sounds similar to the 4-quadrant system of important / not important and urgent / not urgent. I forget the name of that, but it always seemed like a decent idea for guiding prioritization (if used as a hard rule, it would inevitably lead to not-urgent-but-important things never getting done).

Re: Getting Things Done – Revised 2015

#47

Post by insulanian »

thirdsun wrote: post #5
sanswork wrote: post #3

I finished reading(well listening) to GTD last week and started implementing the system this past week. Though I've basically taken a bunch of ideas from it and changed it to fit my work and lifestyle(I also switched to time based contexts over location mostly). I kept the processes the same. I also almost never have paperwork so I ignored all the stuff about labellers and filing cabinets. The community around the bo…

3-6 years? Sounds like someone who is in love with preparing for the actual work. I know this situation - whether it is setting up your development environment, getting the proper running gear if you want to get in shape or researching the best controller for your DAW (I used to work in audio production)...or reading books on how to get things done. These are tasks that easily provide a feeling of accomplishment, wit…

> it's good to prepare and I appreciate being organized, but it's very easy to fall into the trap of an endless preparing cycle.

I fall into that trap very often. If I'm learning a new programming language, I'll read every book and article I can find about it, try to learn best practices an architecture approaches, before even thinking about starting to write an experimental program in it. Sometimes I think I should just dig in, and research things on the fly. The worst is that I tend to repeat that mistake :-) It seams hard to change person's nature/mindset.

Re: Getting Things Done – Revised 2015

#48

Post by danieltillett »

Has anyone come up with a solution for the problem of doing important tasks that require blocks of time measured in weeks? I have projects that I need to get to, but they need me to pencil in a few weeks of 100% time dedication to get them done (they are the sort of projects that are so complex that you can't do anything else while working on them). I find that I just can't carve out the time to get them done as I have too many urgent and must-do-today activities to be able to block out the time.

Re: Getting Things Done – Revised 2015

#49

Post by insulanian »

hmottestad wrote: post #2

Some ten years ago I got hooked on GTD while at United World College. I thought it might make me a better student. Today I am more careful and would steer clear of GTD simply because it doesn't help me do the things I don't want to do. And the things I want to do, I'll do anyway. While the things I don't want to do will be put off.

I think we sometimes subconsciously hope that some system will do the things for us. Then we get disappointed. I know the feeling.

Re: Getting Things Done – Revised 2015

#50

Post by morituri »

joonoro wrote: post #43

I haven't read it, but I always liked the piece of advice from GTD about 5 minute tasks. If a task takes less than 5 minutes, do it now . During the day I usually accumulate small tasks and realizing that they take almost no time at all does wonders for staving off procrastination.

This was my starting point to GTD. It's not even 5 minutes, it's the 2 minute rule.
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