Merlin’s weekly podcast with Dan Benjamin. We talk about creativity, independence, and making things you love.
GTD and Programming: Experience and questions
datacaliber | Aug 29 2007
So, at my job I have a bugtracker for projects currently in development, a workflow manager for changes/bugs that existing clients have, email, and a pretty open policy on bothering others. It's actually not as bad as it sounds, but sometimes it's hard to keep organized. My first attempt at GTD had me using iGTD and basically F6-ing emails and bugs/workflows. I treated these sources of input as just another inbox with items to be processed. At first it seemed to work fine, but after a couple days it became overkill. The bugs/workflows have to be updated on their respective systems anyways, and the iGTD list was always becoming stale. Nowadays, I come into work, read email, look at the workflow manager, bugtracker, etc. Then I write the items I want to address on post-its. The one I'm currently working on goes on my laptop. This works a lot better but seems very un-GTDish. I'm sure there are other programmers out there. How do you deal with something like a bugtracker in a GTD-ish fashion? 2 Comments
POSTED IN:
 I think you've made it...Submitted by cornell on September 3, 2007 - 5:58am.
I think you've made it clear that working within your specialized systems (bugs tracking, workflow/tickets) makes more sense than trying to "export" them to a GTD-specific tool. No problem - ultimately you need to work in the way that makes the most sense sense. I'm assuming you have the rest of your (home and work) life captured in your GTD action management tools (calendar and three lists). So maybe during your work day you have choices like: o work the bug tracker, and/or For some people, carving out daily blocks of time for each kind type of activity (AKA "time mapping") works well. Others are comfortable switching more opportunistically - your call. However, I would be a bit wary of the sticky notes. Sounds like they're a form of "daily action list" - that's fine as long as you a) create the stickies fresh each morning from your lists/systems, b) keep your lists/systems up to date (i.e., transfer stickies -> systems), and c) throw them away at the end of the day. Otherwise, important work might start slipping through the cracks. I'd love to hear how you ultimately work it out! » POSTED IN:
|
|
| EXPLORE 43Folders | THE GOOD STUFF |
