“Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity” (David Allen)
I’m weary of having “C priority” items on my to-do lists that somehow never make it up to the “A priority” category. I’m tired of relegating so many of my great ideas to the “maybe later” pile. So for the past couple of weeks, I’ve been trying Dave Allen’s Getting Things Done system on for size.
The GTD process works especially well for people who constantly come up with more projects than they can reasonably complete. For someone like me — great at conceiving a project, but not as great when “nose to the grindstone” time comes — the GTD system offers some very worthwhile benefits:
– It does away with old-fashioned To Do lists, replacing them with “next action” lists. This is a small shift in awareness, but an important one, as it pushes you to think of all your projects in terms of small, measurable, physically observable steps. My old To Do lists used to be riddled with time-wasting internals, like “Think about how to do X.” Translating these into physical actions — next steps — makes all the difference in the world.
– It stresses simplicity. I love to obsess on finding the tool — particularly the Holy Grail of Software — for a given task. Example: previously, I would have spent hours and hours looking into just the right piece of software to help me implement my personal GTD system. But GTD encourages folks like me to find solutions that are “just good enough,” and then get on with our work. Result: I went with StickyBrain, a piece of software I already own. It’s not perfect … but it’ll do.
– It introduces the idea of context. GTD encourages you to think about tasks within a specific context: things you can do on the phone, at the computer, when you’re at home with time on your hands, in the car, out and about, etc. The result? You start filling little bits of previously wasted time with productive strides forward. Now, if I’m at my computer and have ten minutes to spare, I check my “At Computer” context list, pull an action item from it, and get that thing done.
I still have some terrible old habits to eliminate, but, overall, I’m seeing a great deal of improvement in a very short period of time. If you’re looking for a way to get more done with less effort — or if you’ve tried time management techniques that inevitably failed two weeks later — give GTD a try.
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