Getting Things Done revisited

[TaoPhoenix]

These themes have been covered before, though I couldn't find that recent thread (a few months ago?).

So now that the "craze" is passed, what do people think about Getting Things Done type systems? Over the past couple of weeks I got fed up again starting to make mistakes with the obligations in my life and returned to my version of it. The main two resources are a notebook with summarized notes in pencil especially including green return receipt cards for certified mail. The other is my tree notes app where I put a lot of specialized medical research, as well as some complex agency procedure info. Then the volatile layer is sticky notes and a couple of folders with ToDo sections.

I definitely feel better when I know I've been through it all! Now I need to make it a daily part of planning with twice weekly sweeps so that stuff doesn't feel totally out of control. This last part might be a subtle finesse - I think I'm finding weekly sweeps are too far apart because it doesn't process complex mid week info. For example I need to do the sweep again tomorrow because my credit card payment is due no later than Monday. But when I last did a sweep about last Tuesday it was "too far in advance" to really hit my radar and even Friday was "oh, I have some time, worry it about later". But with only one day to spare now I know how the still new to me pace of life here in NY means I risk tripping up Monday and  then I'm in trouble.

Something I don't recall from the little bit of research I did on the topic is that time of day oddly matters to me. Quick guess is I might be almost twice as efficient starting my day at 6AM rather than 9am because if I start at 9am then go to an "appointment" (moving the car out of the street cleaner day zone has to be done exactly 9:45), then by the time I regroup and start my todo list, it's already noon before I get up to speed. Instead I'll test the theory that if I can better use the pocket of time in the early morning, it will feel like the rest of the day got more time back into it. I'll try to post an update in a week or two if I remember ... uh... wait a minute! 

[barney]

Never had much use for the GTD stuff.  When in the military, it kinda made sense, as well as - at times - in the corporate world.  Problem, for me, is that a GTD schedule ignores the fact that some things have to get done, regardless of artificial time limits/constraints/schedules.  GTD seems mostly - again, to me - a matter of preferences.  It's also a way of avoiding onerous tasks in the name of time.

[Losdollos]

I definitely feel better when I know I've been through it all!

That is exactly the purpose of it   To make you feel more relaxed, knowing that you are in control of what you need to do. Which makes your mind (subconsciousness) take a break. I know from experience that is true. I am in the process of setting up a system that will work for me and me girl, using MS OneNote 2010 (I think that is an amazing, and extremely overlooked, piece of software. Finally something very good came from MS 0 ). I have to, since I am drowning in work, and, as a consequence, am doing a 1000 things at a time, *not* getting anything done 

[TaoPhoenix]

Never had much use for the GTD stuff.  When in the military, it kinda made sense, as well as - at times - in the corporate world.  Problem, for me, is that a GTD schedule ignores the fact that some things have to get done, regardless of artificial time limits/constraints/schedules.  GTD seems mostly - again, to me - a matter of preferences.  It's also a way of avoiding onerous tasks in the name of time.

Hmm, that's one reason I mentioned the topic, because it was the things that *have* to get done (with varying penalties) that led me to resume my system. I shall suggest that I take the theme somewhat broadly, without slavishly adhering to the book's version. In a nutshell, for example I *have* to:

Set (C)ar:
Move the car off the street cleaner weekly parking 1.5 hour parking ban on Monday exactly at 9:45 AM
Move the car back off the opposite side of the road weekly ban on Tuesday
But last week it was on a different street at a different time slot.
If I don't do it exactly at that time, I won't get to re-park back for the rest of the week.

Set (D)og:
Walk the dog every 6-10 hours, aka 3 times a day, and that "timer" includes sleeping overnight. Otherwise _____ happens, quite literally.

I also put feeding the cats in this category

So last week I mis-timed the two and ended up with a parking ticket because I didn't move my car fast enough before the weekly parking ban kicked in, and it's *not* a "suggestion". Done correctly, I would have planned it out and set my alarm earlier.

Another example is you only get one day a week to be allowed to call unemployment customer service to fix problems on your case, and the phone system actually kicks you off the phone on other days. More fun includes doctor appointments.

So it's absolutely about the important stuff for me because these interlocking time lines are overwhelming my instincts.

[app103]

^^ this! (and that "you need to have long term goals all spelled out in a step by step plan, with deadlines, or you are a pathetic waste of life!" thing, which was the main trigger of my well documented productivity meltdown)

Lists don't really work for me unless we are talking about grocery shopping lists or check lists related to one task.
Lists don't remind me to read them.
Lists don't yell at me at the right time of the day, day of the week, month, or year.
Lists don't open web pages for me on the first of the month to gather all the freebies that various sites give away, and remind me to pay my rent.

Which is why I have always been a big fan of sticky notes that you can set alarms on, repeating alarms for repeating tasks. And ones that can open applications or web pages instead of just ringing alarms. Something that tells me "Do this right now!" works much better than a list I'll end up ignoring.

And none of these time management systems effectively address the problem of chronic procrastination, which is the biggest obstacle that a lot of people have with getting things done. No time management system can, because it's not a time management problem! It's a compulsive avoidance problem, akin to addiction and needs to be treated that way. Neither GTD nor any other time management system is a substitute for a 12 step program.

[TaoPhoenix]

^^ this! (and that "you need to have long term goals all spelled out in a step by step plan, with deadlines, or you are a pathetic waste of life!" thing, which was the main trigger of my well documented productivity meltdown)

Lists don't really work for me unless we are talking about grocery shopping lists or check lists related to one task.
Lists don't remind me to read them.
Lists don't yell at me at the right time of the day, day of the week, month, or year.
Lists don't open web pages for me on the first of the month to gather all the freebies that various sites give away, and remind me to pay my rent.

Which is why I have always been a big fan of sticky notes that you can set alarms on, repeating alarms for repeating tasks. And ones that can open applications or web pages instead of just ringing alarms. Something that tells me "Do this right now!" works much better than a list I'll end up ignoring.

And none of these time management systems effectively address the problem of chronic procrastination, which is the biggest obstacle that a lot of people have with getting things done. No time management system can, because it's not a time management problem! It's a compulsive avoidance problem, akin to addiction and needs to be treated that way. Neither GTD nor any other time management system is a substitute for a 12 step program.

Hi App,
I your post is interesting because this week I think I solved (for me at least!) a couple of your quite sensible concerns! Let's see where we can poke at a couple of things.

1. "Lists don't really work for me unless we are talking about ... check lists related to *one task*". This might be the starting point of my progress with my modified version of the system. This is where I diverge from the book system and make it a bit less of a terse list, and more of an interactive self-created clerical form. A nice example is the fact that Mass State Unemployment (among others?) has a program to re-imburse part of Cobra medical payments. But it takes that office a long time to process the claims. So what do do? I just made a page in 10 and 12 point font in pencil notes describing what was supposed to happen, and then *left blanks for "results"*. So the rule thumb is whenever you see a blank "result ________________" or "update ____________________" line, ... check back it later and see what showed up. That's why I use a notebook rather than 20 folders - because the pages are sorted by topic, and you just flip the pages to see what's going on in each category. One day during a bi-monthly sweep I ended up with eight new categories!  


2. Hierarchal information, beyond the straight list
Next up is that in a multi-stage process, flat lists were losing the order stuff had to happen in. So back to that medical reimbursement program. I start by only using one side of the page. That's because the overflow stuff has room to breathe so if you mis-design your page you don't go "oh #$#$%". So the opposite side of the page was where I taped the green return receipt slips which proved that they did in fact receive the claim, no matter how long they were then going to sit on it.

But then I didn't get one of the checks! That's because they get grumpy interacting with other states. So that spawned a sub-note - "call cust svc to ask how to get this check". Cust svc says "we'll send a request form". That came - filled out wrong! Spawned a sub-sub note to fix it. Did that. Sent it back. Spawned a sub-sub-sub note with a Result ____ line waiting for the request to be processed by the internal audit division.

So that's been going on for five months. (?!!) But it has its nice little page. So the way I plan to beat the procrastination is that if the Notebook Of Important Things is lying around, just pick it up and Do Stuff. Because it's less "shuffley" than random pages in folders, it feels cleaner for me.

So most of the notes are in pencil - important because I use tight layout and then I just fix it if I'm off. But then later a blue ball point pen makes certain updates REALLY STAND OUT.

3. Hierarchies when you get more than 3 stickies.
This part is much simpler - drill off a sticky just to get some thought out of your head. I happen to like 4 inch lined ones. If they're simple, just do it (eventually!) But then if stickies start to accumulate on the same topic, or one of them looks like it has a long-ish timeline, that's the sign that it needs a page in the Scary Notebook. (Notice that also keeps the notebook from Over-Cluttering!) So then flashing through all the big category pages in the Scary Notebook, it's about the intuition to see patterns, like two things fighting for a 9:45 AM slot on the same day. That's another way my version differs - not everything needs to be double copied to the Calendar. Keep it by topic and pretend it's like "Go Fish" and wait for the intuition to ping when Wednesday at 3PM shows up twice.

4. Quick "Anti-Meltdown Emergency" tip! It's okay to have Medium Goals! When enough stuff gets all involved and keeps spawning more and more 1. C. 5. d. 3. subnotes, at the bottom of the page just use the blue pen and write "*partial list only - revisit this later when half processed and figure out more stuff later!" So for example just grind out a bunch of nitty gritty stuff, then let May's problem be May's problem, not February's problem! It's okay to have another page later in the notebook! February's page has February's junk on it, you fudged March so by April it's okay to be 15 pages later in the notebook. Just close out Feb's "Result ______ lines", copy the three leftover ones, and put it to the grave and hold a nice funeral and hope it doesn't become a zombie!

So thanks for giving me the chance to explain my system! Here's hoping it works!

[40hz]

I've tried a lot of things over the years (Franklin-Covey/Dayrunner/Sharkware/MyLifeOrganized) and came to eventually realize they made for more work and complexity than they're worth. At least when it comes to the sort of life I live.

Simple truth is: my life really isn't all that complicated or difficult to manage. Except when I decided to make it so. It took me a while to admit to that to myself. Because I somehow felt it should be.

That's when I finally tossed all those nifty software packages and fancy planner books I had.

These days I just take five or so minutes near the end of each day to jot down (in a very informal paper journal book) what's been happening with me, and what I've been thinking about.

That simple exercise provides all the focus I need. Although I suppose I do have an advantage in that I still have a very good memory - and probably more importantly, have always had a good idea of what I was doing, and where I wanted to go. (Most times, anyway! )

That journal plus my (paper) appointment calendar and (paper) list of contact information and I'm set to go.

[TaoPhoenix]

I've tried a lot of things over the years (Franklin-Covey/Dayrunner/Sharkware/MyLifeOrganized) and came to eventually realize they made for more work and complexity than they're worth. At least when it comes to the sort of life I live.

Simple truth is: my life really isn't all that complicated or difficult to manage. Except when I decided to make it so. It took me a while to admit to that to myself. Because I somehow felt it should be.

That's when I finally tossed all those nifty software packages and fancy planner books I had.

These days I just take five or so minutes near the end of each day to jot down (in a very informal paper journal book) what's been happening with me, and what I've been thinking about.

That simple exercise provides all the focus I need. Although I suppose I do have an advantage in that I still have a very good memory - and probably more importantly, have always had a good idea of what I was doing, and where I wanted to go. (Most times, anyway! )

5 Minutes! How are you that fast!


Although I have indeed procrastinated off and on, my basic design emerged earlier last fall when after some ten hours of getting fed up with racking my (feeble!) memory, when I finally hierarchy-ied it all out I had thirty categories with interlocking notes and over fifty initial to do items!


But still glad to hear your perspective!

[TaoPhoenix]

Hehe okay I better wind down about now, because I have 20 more stickies on my desk from this week!

[app103]

Thanks for the list advice, but...let's not, and say we did. 

The digital sticky notes system works for me, and works well, it always has, and now that I have gone back to it I am not willing to give it up, change it, or add unwanted, unneeded lists to it. Doing that would be about equal to DIY brain rewiring without knowing clue about what you are doing, and that's the quickest way for me to end up a disorganized, confused mess.

4. Quick "Anti-Meltdown Emergency" tip! It's okay to have Medium Goals! When enough stuff gets all involved and keeps spawning more and more 1. C. 5. d. 3. subnotes, at the bottom of the page just use the blue pen and write "*partial list only - revisit this later when half processed and figure out more stuff later!" So for example just grind out a bunch of nitty gritty stuff, then let May's problem be May's problem, not February's problem! It's okay to have another page later in the notebook! February's page has February's junk on it, you fudged March so by April it's okay to be 15 pages later in the notebook. Just close out Feb's "Result ______ lines", copy the three leftover ones, and put it to the grave and hold a nice funeral and hope it doesn't become a zombie!

You might have misunderstood what I was talking about. I wasn't talking about tasks with distant deadlines. I was referring to life goals, the idea that you have have your heart's desires for life defined and planned out with a 5-10-15+ year plan on how you will achieve them. It all feels very corporate, and that's not me.

What I mean by "corporate" is geared towards someone that takes a suit & tie, scheduled meetings, bottom line, profit-profit-profit approach to life...not the adventurer that takes a jeans & t-shirt, life is to be lived, not planned approach.

It could be best illustrated with a quick comparison of how each would plan it, if life were a road trip.

	Corporate	Adventurer
destination	must have a specific place to go and time to be there and have it marked out on your map	Who cares? Destination is not important. It's all about the trip!
route	must have one planned and marked on the map	This road looks good. Nice and long. I wonder where it goes. Start here, don't plan any further than you can see, and go that way-->
accommodations	mark on the map each motel you will be staying at each night, call and make reservations before trip	keep the back seat of the car clear and pack a tent in the trunk, in case you can't find a motel cheap enough when you get tired of driving
meals	mark the restaurants you will be eating at on the map, get copies of their menus and highlight meal choices	stock up on ready-to-eat food, enjoy local delicacies, eat things you have never tried before, whatever your mood dictates
sightseeing	mark sights of interest on the map, keep sightseeing to a minimum in order to stay on schedule	stop whenever you see something that might be interesting, stay as long as you like
unexpected expenses	bring credit cards, debit cards, extra cash,	bring whatever you have (it's never much), a good pair of work shoes, a standard waitress uniform, and be prepared to work  if the car breaks down
Souvenirs	Get everything from the same store when you reach your destination, postcards are quick & easy to send to friends & family back home	Shop along the way, buying small gifts that makes you think of someone specific, mail them when you find a place, with a hand written letter telling of your adventures
When you get to your destination	Have your itinerary worked out and stick to the schedule	What destination? What schedule?

That's what GTD and other time management systems did to me...and when you try to force an adventurer to plan their life beyond the horizon, expect a meltdown. My life is not a series of destinations I have to get to on a schedule. It's one big long trip with no destination and no special time to get "there" and I can't stick destinations and a schedule in it because some corporate minded people think my way of living is pathetic. Picking up my head and looking too far ahead has a tendency to make me also turn around and look too far back, and that's never a good thing for me to do.

[40hz]

5 Minutes! How are you that fast!
:tellme

Maybe because I don't have that much on my plate?

More seriously, it got shorter the more often I did it. It originally took about 15-20 minutes. Now (since I'm more focused) I don't feel the need to write as much down. I'm not compiling documentation for a biography. Or for somebody else. These are purely notes to help me.

I've found once you stop making notes for posterity they tend to be short and to the point. And not all of them are written. Little sketches, diagrams, my collection of purely personal hieroglyphs and symbols, etc. also make up a lot of my entries. The journal book I chose has 1/4" graph paper for precisely that reason. Next one I get will probably have blank pages to provide a psychological cue for me to keep it all loose and fluid.

It's also a daybook. I'll throw anything in there I think I should be attending to at various times of the day. The only rule is that I do at least one summary entry per day. The rest I play by ear. My GF refers to this book as my "other other head."   That's a very accurate description of the function it serves.

[TaoPhoenix]

Great notes gang!

Nice clarification about the life goals vs tasks. I'm in a fuzzy new part of my own life which just rendered most of my previous goals obsolete! 

So see you on the adventure!

[Tinman57]

  I'm one of those people that can't very well use a GTD in a timely fashion.  Because of my disability, I'm not always able to get those things done.  So on the days that I'm able to get things done, I start on the things that need to be done ASAP, like housework or yardwork.  Only thing I can do is try to get as much done as I possibly can, when I can.  Yeah, it really does suck.  I've always been one of those people that was always doing something in my spare time, getting things done.  So it's really hard for me to have to watch time go by as I can do nothing at that time....

[TaoPhoenix]

And right in time, comes xkcd with his usual brilliant take!

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/is_it_worth_the_time.png

[xtabber]

Task management software works best as a simple resource to remind the user of what he/she wants to do, not as a traffic cop laying out a schedule and enforcing it. To my way of thinking, one of the most useful features of any task management software is floating events, which simply roll over to the next day, keeping all of their settings, if not completed when originally scheduled.

The original Palm organizer remains the (mostly unmatched) benchmark for today’s PIM software. Pimlico Software’s Datebook, which Handspring included in the Treo, the model for today’s smartphones, added floating events among other enhancements to the Palm organizer. Pimlical for Android and PC, from the same author, includes floating events, as does DTG. but few other task managers do.

A huge advantage of Android smartphones over the iPhone, IMO, is the availability of home screen widgets.  I have both DTG’s widget and Agenda Widget Plus on the home screen of my Android phone.  While Agenda Widget Plus can also display DTG tasks, I prefer to keep tasks and schedule separate. Whenever I look at my phone, which is many times a day, I have everything I need right there to remind me of what I need to do, and when.

[TaoPhoenix]

Today's GTD note is the inclusion of a series of occasional spreadsheets. My pile of notes accumulated rather fast, and I just don't feel like copying them all down in the notebook especially the more "recreational" ones!

I do type faster than I hand write. The Big Notebook is a little better for more durable info over multi months. For this spreadsheet I hope to "drill out" the stuff in it and then "park it". Also, this set of info might be a bit fluid, hence the need to be able to cut and paste that would mess up the notebook layout!

I'll still put some stuff in the notebook too. I just want to add a new element to the system.

[Renegade]

Just found an interview with Dave Allen of GTD (watching now, but too excited to post after watching):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-3nTl8M44o

The interviewer is one really smart cookie. So, if you are into GTD, this will likely be a must see for you.

(It's long, so probably a downloader would help - that's how I'm watching - locally.)

[Renegade]

A few "nuggets":

31:40 - "Secrets"
39:00 - Thinking, mental energy, and habits
46:45 - Airplane metaphor
48:35 - GTD 5 stages of mastering workflow
51:40 - GTD 6 horizons of perspective

[TaoPhoenix]

Wow, I'll have to put that on a To Do list for when I am tired of my class homework! : )

[tomos]

Wow, I'll have to put that on a To Do list for when I am tired of my class homework! : )

funny, you posted that at almost exactly the same time mouser posted this:

DC member Gothi[c] showed this to me:

[40hz]

Grist for the mill: Ryder Carroll's Bullet Journal at www.bulletjournal.com

Here's the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfRf43JTqY4

With thanks to Tomasz Tunguz's post over at Svbtle for the find.

I particularly liked this one because I use a a very similar process and notebook myself.

[tomos]

^looks interesting -
will have to dig out an A5 graphed notebook first  :-)


Seriously though, will try giving it a go tomorrow (too late here for tonight).

[40hz]

Quick note - I'm partial to the Piccadilly brand of notebooks. I know Moleskine notebooks are the de facto standard - but at a little less than half the price (i.e. $4/$6/$8) of a comparable Moleskine, the Piccadilly Essential Notebooks are very well made and compare quite favorably against them.

[attachthumb=#]

They're available in three sizes - with blank, ruled, and graph pages. And there is also a soft cover version with ruled pages.

If you want more pages, their Primo line of notebooks pack 288 acid-free ruled pages in three sizes for $6/$8/$11 respectively.

[attachthumb=#]

Barnes & Noble frequently puts them on their sale rack. I stock up whenever they do. I recently picked up five of the large (7.2" x 9.6") size Primos for $4 each that way.

[IainB]

If you are looking at paper-based systems, this website has some interesting stuff: Philofaxy

[TaoPhoenix]

Arise, NecroThread ...

(What DOES Cthulhu's Action List look like?
"11am. Devour soul. 12 noon. Support a politician hehe.)

uh ...

"And now for your monthly meta-humor..."

It's been a weird chunk of time for me, and surprisingly for me, the start of this thread heralds better days I plan to get back to!

The early comments have some nice discussions about whether you have to be quite as brutally detailed, or if sometimes a little flex is more.

But this whole theme just crossed my mind again! And then look at the time passing!

Coincidences to note:

- Anyone else's life changed dramatically in a year and a half?
- Mouser is now beginning his long-pondered overhaul of DC!

As a nod to a later book David Allen did, he talks about "Altitudes of Vision". Mouser is in one of the higher ones this month ...

Uh oh... Hehe - We just got a Task Item: "Making It All Work" and ask him whether the 30k feet, 40k feet up, or 50k feet up descriptions in the book feel like the mood he is in this month!)


Meanwhile down at the "when you're exhausted, just do something that takes about thirteen seconds to do" level, I just realized a colossal Homer D'oh moment:

Problem: The usual scattered stickies of the first part of my three part system. The problem was, the second part was missing. So they just sit there. Near mistake - making the 99-cent version of the second stage on printer paper ... and realized ...

"You Twerp! You already had this part planned. It's those Staples grid calendars, *and* you even bought a couple to use as the *calendar* half of the system (with two choices to play with to avoid the "bah I hate my first choice so I quit effect!). But you never saw that, because you they got jammed under your files and became Inefficient. (Said in 7-of-9's voice from Star Trek Voyager!)."

So then my big wall clock broke (a little) so I moved it for a while ... and BOOM! They are heavy enough to stand up against the wall of my main desk.

Exhausted-Task time: 13 seconds.
Saved disastrously Inefficient time: ... cumulatively, weeks!?

The original inspiration - On the big one, the boxes are very close to a 4x4 sticky. That you can't lose! (Or get crushed at level 2 when you need any more than four pieces of info.)

But the "Trick" behind it is ...You can go Vertically / Horozontally / (pick one, not both), like a mini spreadsheet, to group the small categories together.

And for those Projects, you use an entire whole page, now giving you some 4-7 subcategories, then you make your detail notes in the column or row.

My best results are definitely mid-way. I don't plan on doing his full power system to the letter. But for a long time my desk has been in a state of "Make sticky note. Make another note, stacked on top of the first one, canted at odd angles so you can almost tell which note is which."


So stay tuned for a few updates!