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Drew McCormack on GTD for scientists

Submitted by Merlin on March 5, 2007 - 6:31am.

Getting Things Done (GTD) for Scientists - MacResearch

I enjoyed this post by Drew McCormack on how he discovered GTD and has started using it for his work as a scientist:

The thing to realize is that most people don’t get lessons in organizing themselves at school or college, and they certainly haven’t been prepared for the rapid pace of modern life. GTD is nothing more than a few lessons on how best to organize things. At the center of it all is what could be regarded as a multi-dimensional ToDo list. The idea is to get every project you have, however big or small, out of your head and into the list. That allows you to relax about things, and be more productive at the same time.

“Multi-dimensional ToDo list.” I’m totally stealing that.

Also, I mention it here because this post provides that rarest of voyeuristic nerdthrill: getting to peek at how someone else is using Kinkless!

Any tips or stories from the science nerds out there on how GTD is and isn’t working for you?

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I'm a university scientist, and...

Submitted by Don (not verified) on March 5, 2007 - 8:19am.

I’m a university scientist, and I’ve been using GTD since September 2004. I don’t think there is too much that is unique about what I do… I seem to have the same issues as other folks in getting GTD to work: Gotta do those weekly reviews, gotta empty those paper and email in-boxes, etc.

I struggle with balancing real deadlines (grant proposals), flexible deadlines (reviewing manuscripts), and non-deadline but important stuff (publishing my own papers).

I struggle with some of the same stuff that IT/web folks deal with (almost everything is @computer), plus finding blocks of time needed to get big projects done.

I use outlook for email and lifebalance for tracking projects and next actions. I like lifebalance because it gives me deadline, non-deadline, calendar and recurring tasks. It also syncs with the palm version nicely.