If everything I need to do and keep in my head at a given time doesn't fit in a mess of bullet points on a single letter sized sheet, then I'm simply doing too much. No need for a system. Just recopy over the sheet by hand every few days without the scratched off items, and add in some new stuff that comes to mind. I have difficulty imagining a life so busy that a page of terse notes couldn't suffice to keep on top of things.
Getting Things Done – Revised 2015
31–40 of 57 posts
Re: Getting Things Done – Revised 2015
#32I tried doing the whole works but the only lasting things from GTD were: 1) start each item on your todo lists with a verb 2) get lots and lots of folders and just keep creating new folders in a flat hierarchy to organize things all the time. Even easier on a computer on a computer. A shredder is also good.
> get lots and lots of folders and just keep creating new folders in a flat hierarchy to organize things all the time. That's the most persistently useful thing I got from GTD. I have a cabinet full of plain, labeled paper folders for filling. 90% of them I don't really check at all, but I whenever I need that random document, booklet, photo, or whatever, I can always find it there quickly.
Yeah! So create a folder called "reference" or something on your computer and do the same... so helpful!
Re: Getting Things Done – Revised 2015
#33I am curious to hear what HNers have to say about this book. To be honest I always thought that these kind of books (i.e personal growth / motivational) were BS but that is problem a hasty generalization I made. For those out there who read it, did it improve your project throughput or productivity? bonus if you have ADHD
None of these systems fit anyone's personality or situation perfectly(or, if they do, you're the lucky one). All of them are ultimately about getting small stuff right, and so they complement you where they give you ideas for changing your process.
But if the problem is "I'm doing something fundamentally wrong, I'm unmotivated, and I don't want to live life this way," they don't do a lot.
Re: Getting Things Done – Revised 2015
#34I was on an America West flight to Phoenix in 1999 when David Allen sat next to me. The passenger compartment was bare bones -- no overhead vents, for example -- and I was in a pissy mood. Allen was not. He immediately struck me as the most seasoned, at ease traveller I had ever seen. After he got himself adjusted I asked him if he travelled a lot. He smiled and showed me his United frequent flyer card. It had his na…
So, what is the current system that you are using for GTD? I need to be more organized and productive but I really don't have the time/patience to read the book. So, if you can give the tldr; of your system or a web app that forces one to use GTD without all the theory would help as well.
> So, what is the current system that you are using for
> GTD?
First of all, I used "Things.app", for the iPhone and for the Mac, although really any of the many tools should do - the important thing for me though was that anywhere I could read email - or have a random thought - I needed to be able to access my organization system; I wanted to get it out of my head and out of my Inbox in to a real organization tool as QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE so I could stop thinking about it.
I'll talk about three separate places here: Email Inbox, Things.app Inbox, and Things.app Today.
At the beginning of each day, I would go to my email inbox, and scan through. Normally about 100 items:
* 50% could be deleted because I was CC'd, but there was no action item for me
* Anything that could be done in under two minutes, I'd do; this was generally Yes/No type answers, or quick clarifications
* Anything that would take longer, I would - IF AT ALL POSSIBLE - attempt to delegate. Quick two minute email to someone else, trying to get them to do it, and then I'd add a todo list item: "FOLLOWUP: Did John send Dave the RFP for Acme corp", and then ask Things.app to schedule it to remind me (by placing it in Things.app Today) in x days, where x was task-dependent. Trying to get new managers in my team to delegate ruthlessly was always very difficult - but if they couldn't do it, they'd get swamped quickly, and no-one would win.
* Anything that would take longer that I couldn't delegate, I would add a Todo item for today with a brief summary of what it was to Things.app's Inbox list; incidentally the Inbox list is also where I'd put absolutely anything that cropped up during the day - my boss asked me for something, I remembered I'd promised someone something I hadn't delivered yet, or I had an idea that would take 6 months to do but was worth thinking about.
All email would be archived in this process.
This process would get me to Inbox Zero, but I would still have items in Things.app Inbox - generally about 8 - 14 items - that really needed my personal attention. First pass I'd try and make sure each was actionable; "Sort out team development plan" not in the least bit actionable. However, giving it 10 seconds though led me to realize that our HR Business Partner could probably help, so he got a quick email "Please could you schedule some time with me to sit down and talk about team development?", at which point, it becomes a "FOLLOWUP" item as above. This generally got rid of 4-5 items. Remaining items I would then drag to the Today list. These tasks could be pretty diverse: "Reread James' email about data governance", "Fill out ATR for new DevOps person", "Disabuse Neil of the idea that we should be using Docker".
The Today list was often 3 - 15 items long; generally about half were "FOLLOWUP" items, as per the above, and these could be ticked off very quickly by hitting reply and sending a slightly more urgent or threatening message, and I'd then reschedule the "FOLLOWUP" item to the next day.
Of the remainder, I would attempt to sort them in order of importance. Anything that was a multiple hour task, I would create an appointment in my calendar to do it, as well as a "FOLLOWUP" scheduled to make sure I'd done in - "Prepare salary review spreadsheet" was going to take 5 hours, so I'd block 5 hours off, book a meeting room where no-one could find me, and then forget about it until the appointment came up.
Of what remained - generally 30m - 90m tasks, I'd then take all but the top five, and reschedule them to the next day. This was a struggle to get my managers to done - people are hopelessly optimistic, and think they can get through more administrivia in a day than they can. If you restrict yourself to 3 to 5, it'll force you to delegate more aggressively, and you'll also be surprised how many items that keep getting kicked down the road take care of themselves.
The process up to this point took 20m to an hour depending on how conscientious I'd been in keeping up to date with it.
I'd then try and blast through the top five, generally managing two or three of them. I would attempt to get ALL of these things done in the morning each day, and set aside the afternoons for important meetings and for large blocks of work that needed doing.
The key features of this:
* You need a system where you can TRUST that if something goes in to it, it won't fall back out of it again. The scheduled FOLLOWUP tasks for me were that
* You need to be able to add items to this super easily - whenever you think about it. That way, you're not carrying around items in your head, which is when you get snowed under
* Your email Inbox is a very shitty Todo system, and it'll stress you out. Get items out of your Inbox and in to a real Todo system as quickly as you can. If you're stuck on Outlook, and so don't have an Archive function, create a folder where a copy of every email gets duplicated to so you can aggressively delete from your Inbox and still go back to emails that had important information in.
Re: Getting Things Done – Revised 2015
#35I am curious to hear what HNers have to say about this book. To be honest I always thought that these kind of books (i.e personal growth / motivational) were BS but that is problem a hasty generalization I made. For those out there who read it, did it improve your project throughput or productivity? bonus if you have ADHD
> To be honest I always thought that these kind of books
> (i.e personal growth / motivational) were BS
* 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
* Beyond Chocolate
* Driven From Within (Michael Jordan biography)
* Get Altitude
* How To Make Friends and Influence People
* Iron John (Robert Bly)
* Meditations (Marcus Aurelius)
* Never Eat Lunch Alone
* Psychocybernetics
* Pulling Your Own Strings
* Ready For Anything (same author as GTD)
* The Dip
* Ten Days to Self Discipline
* The Power of Now
* Personal Power (Tony Robbins)
* Warrior King Magician Lover
Some were easier reads than others, and I suspect I am unusual in that I have a pretty rigorous system for making sure I regularly review my notes, and implement exercises and ideas in the books, but I feel I'd be a very different person for the worse without the value these books have added to my life.
Re: Getting Things Done – Revised 2015
#36This may sound rather trivial but honestly the biggest problem I had with the previous book was how targetted it was towards the "traditional" higher-management executive in its language and examples. A lot of them were things that I had a very hard time relating to: preparing for the staff meeting, going over regional sales figures, working on your golf swing. I was sort of hoping he'd write a version "for the rest of us" with more down-to-earth examples.
Given his clientele the previous focus made sense, but since it became sort of viral I was hoping if it were revised it would become a little more all-encompassing. I'd be curious to know if the previous focus was still the case in the new version. (Probably not enough to buy it to find out, though; as I said that was my biggest problem with the previous book and it's not that much of a problem...)
Re: Getting Things Done – Revised 2015
#37I am curious to hear what HNers have to say about this book. To be honest I always thought that these kind of books (i.e personal growth / motivational) were BS but that is problem a hasty generalization I made. For those out there who read it, did it improve your project throughput or productivity? bonus if you have ADHD
> 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?
Re: Getting Things Done – Revised 2015
#38I am curious to hear what HNers have to say about this book. To be honest I always thought that these kind of books (i.e personal growth / motivational) were BS but that is problem a hasty generalization I made. For those out there who read it, did it improve your project throughput or productivity? bonus if you have ADHD
> 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.
Re: Getting Things Done – Revised 2015
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
So, what is the current system that you are using for GTD? I need to be more organized and productive but I really don't have the time/patience to read the book. So, if you can give the tldr; of your system or a web app that forces one to use GTD without all the theory would help as well.
> So, what is the current system that you are using for > GTD? Back when I had a job with responsibilities (team of 40), I did the following... First of all, I used "Things.app", for the iPhone and for the Mac, although really any of the many tools should do - the important thing for me though was that anywhere I could read email - or have a random thought - I needed to be able to access my organization system; I wan…
Good point about delegating. My filter chain for all incoming tasks is: Discard -> Delegate -> Delay -> Do. Works nicely.
Re: Getting Things Done – Revised 2015
#40In 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…
I love GTD because it has the least amount of friction possible in any system that would actually work for me. I spend seconds at a time adding projects to my system (OmniFocus FTW), maybe 20 minutes a week sorting new projects into larger projects and contexts, and almost zero time deciding what I need to be working on given my location and available resources.
GTD seems like it has a lot of overhead, but I kept at it long enough that it became the way I think about work. It's practically invisible to me now.