[courtesy of droob]
Lately I’ve been attempting to engage myself in the much-lauded personal productivity system du jour, Getting Things Done (or GTD, for the affectionate). Anyone who’s even remotely down with personal growth and productivity has definitely heard of this phenomenon before, and I’m thus far pretty impressed with the results.
The system was created by David Allen and is detailed in his book of same title. Basically, GTD asks that you get everything you need to do out of your head—onto paper, into a spreadsheet, or whatever works best for you. Then, you consider each task you have to complete as something that’s in your inbox. When you spend time processing your inbox, you take the things that require action and perform one of three actions: do it, delegate it, or defer it. If your inbox includes something that doesn’t require you do to anything, you perform one of three actions: file it away for reference, incubate it for future action, or delete it.
The book itself tends toward corporate ipsum lolspeak
—not for the faint of heart. Furthermore, the system itself encourages a sort of compulsive listmaking habit that’s really, really difficult to break once you get in the habit. Some critics might even feel they’re spending more time writing out tasks they have to do than actually doing them.
However, at the core, the system is simple, because if you follow it and you actually follow through with the recommendations, it’s practically impossible to be unproductive. I’ve been trying to implement various techniques from the system into both my work and my personal life, with a pretty astonishing degree of success.
Here are some of my favorite GTD aspects, hacks, and tricks.
- Identify the biggest project you have to get done, and then think about the very first step to completing it. Then do it. This is the gospel of Next Action, one of GTD’s pillars regarding multi-step projects, and one that’s important for me to remember: when I have a huge goal, I often get terrified of the magnitude of what I’ve set out to accomplish. However, instead of perceiving a project as one momentous beast, GTD mandates that I perceive it as a series of individual tasks—and then get started on the first. If your big project is to become a bestselling novelist, your next action could be to sit down at your desk and open Google Docs to prepare to write or revise. If it’s to be able to afford a trip to Japan next year, your next action could be to list ten ways to earn enough money. You get the idea. Simple, yeah?
- GTD suggests that if an inbox item will take two minutes or less, you should do it right away, preferably without even putting it in the inbox to begin with. I expanded this two-minute rule to a ten-minute rule. Things like putting clean sheets on my bed, taking the garbage out of my apartment, or straightening the research materials I’ve gathered are things that I do without even considering putting them in my in-box. One popular hack, also, is to give yourself a finite amount of time—say, an hour—and complete as many of these short, pre-inbox tasks as you can. I’ve had some of my most productive hours of my life doing this. (This is a key example of Parkinson’s Law, which I’ll hopefully be posting on later this week. Check back for details!)
- For me, it really helps to get things out of my head and into a physical inbox of some sort. Since I was a little kid, I always got in trouble for forgetting to complete my homework or leaving something important at home on a day that I needed it most, so to combat this terrible habit, I became a habitual note-taker. Now that I’m grown up, I sometimes infuriate my friends by pulling out my notebook while they’re talking and making notes about ideas we’re bouncing around, quotes they’ve given me that I know will be useful for future fiction writing, and things to research further when I get back to a computer. Annoying as this habit might be, it gives me the advantage of rarely ever forgetting to do anything…because I don’t have to remember anything. It’s all on paper. Later, I go through it all and cull the useless bits, but it’s good to have a record of it. I’m forever experimenting with the format; I was a hipster PDA enthusiast for a really long time, and still use it for notetaking. Also, yesterday I just bought a few sets of word cards (kinda like these) that I’m using for random inbox-ish flashes of inspiration when I’m not sitting at a desk, and I like them immensely. My calendar also frequently plays the role of pseudo-inbox—when an idea strikes me for sometime in the future, I skip the inbox itself and forward the idea to the relevant date on my calendar. Some recent examples: “Halloween costume idea list”, written in early October; “Pajama Party?!?!”, written around my birthday in November; “dog bath”, written every two weeks so I remember to make time to bathe him at home and then clean up the aftermath.
- GTD says you should process every inbox item one at a time, and resolve never to put anything back in the inbox after you’ve taken it out. This really helps me, because I often tended to do only the things that I enjoyed (ie, walking my dog, trying on outfits for an event later in the week) while putting my dreaded chores (doing the dishes, finishing horrible assignments during college) on the back burner.
Is anyone else using GTD and loving it? Hating it? What do you think?
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