I am open-but-skeptical about any given organizational system. It always makes me think of the Red Dwarf novel (I forget which one) in which Rimmer’s organizational answer to his upcoming exams is to make up a chart of what he’ll study when. The chart is elaborately detailed and color-coded, and has to be updated whenever his schedule changes.

It all starts with one small schedule slip at the beginning. Eventually he doesn’t have any time to study because all of his time is being spent re-drawing the chart. Hilarity and “I am a fish” ensues, but there’s a real warning in that tale.

I think that’s a fair thing to be skeptical about Erika.

The thing I like about this system—when I do it right—is it’s kind of the exact opposite of that chart.

So, yeah, there’s a bit of a time and mental investment in ramping up your personal system. But once you are doing it, it’s all about—literally—only the next physical action you need to perform in order to make progress on your project. It’s actually that simple.

So as long as you keep “make up a chart of what I’ll study when” off your @nextactions list, I think you’ll be golden! :)

Erika,

I agree with your general comment about systems, but the great thing about GTD is it is, for lack of a better term, a post-modern organization system. David expects that you will fall off-the-wagon with the process and shows you how to recover.

In contrast, my experience with the Franklin Planner approach was just what you brought up. In order to “catch up” you have to basically go back and do all the parts of the process you missed, even if that was three months ago.

What GTD gives you is a methodolgy that David Allen has debugged with many, many busy people. I think it’s a great system, but there are people who don’t need it, just like there are people who can stay thin without dieting. What yanks my crank is when someone who can stay thin without dieting tells someone who can’t that “you don’t need to diet, you just need to eat less and exercise more.” Different methodologies work for different people.

I just got done reading (listening to) GTD. I was actually quite surprised at the end of the program to realize that there’s relatively little attention paid to when-to-do-stuff. It’s not about scheduling or calendaring or anything: just collecting, reacting, organizing, and reviewing. Doing just sort of takes care of itself, I’m thinking? Don’t know.

And I’d always heard that it took six weeks to form a habit. Your Google search brings up 213 results, and “six weeks” brings up 138. “Two weeks” actually leads with 241 results. Maybe it’s just two!

Only 14 results for 7, though. It definitely doesn’t take seven weeks to form a habit.

Dan, I think if I put on my phony David Allen mask, I’d say you should do stuff “whenever you can.”

By contextualizing as much of your work as is reasonable, you have a constant “pile” waiting for you.

• when you finish your “next action” generate another
• when you run out of actions, your project’s probably done
• comb your projects, waiting, and sometime during your weekly review and tease out new action items
• and the music goes round…

That make any sense?

It’s important to remember with any personal organization or time management that the systems are really just means to an end: GTD isn’t actually “getting things done”, it’s getting you to the place where you actually are doing something, and specifically the things you need to do. Anybody can get so caught up in maintaining a cool system that it becomes an end in itself rather than a tool. I’m just getting started with this system but in the past, everything that I’ve tried has started to consume so much time and energy in itself that I don’t actually do the work that is the point of the whole thing…

I have been using GTD since Oct 1998. In that time span there here have been all sorts of ups and down in the level of things swirling around in my life. All I know is that when I apply the basic principles of GTD, which allow me to operate more in the moment vs having my brain race to and fro from past to future, things go swimmingly better. To me the discussion of whether the GTD stuff works is like following a sports team … they suck, they’re great, they are somewhere in between; when in fact they are what they are and the variable is everybody else. GTD is the best method to rope in what is going on in my world … I like it and will use it until something better comes along or it (or me ceases) to provide a benefit.

Proud member of GTD Community, WDF

I should clarify that I wasn’t getting down on GTD in particular (I haven’t read it yet, but I have a library hold in place, so it should be in soon), but on organizational methods in general. Some exercise guy once said that “the best form of exercise is the one that you’ll do.” The same could be said of organizational methods.

(Although I should add that I have a lot of second-hand experience with both the Franklin Planner and the 7 Steps protocol, having worked in offices where they were brief fads. Both methods struck me as being comically overcomplicated. I have much higher hopes for GTD.)

Inbox heaven?

View image I’ll be darned. My inbox (the WHOLE inbox, not just individual account inboxes) is darn well near empty. Following the instructions from a really well-done report by Mark Hurst of Creative Good (via 43folders), I wiped out all my old emails …