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Advice on how to break things down

Hi

I'm sure some of the ramble I'm about to post some of you will recognise the symptoms :-)

I picked up the gtd book a couple of years ago and hey guess what? I never found the time to read it!

I'm a self employed programmer and I'm well aware that being organised in both my work and home life is key to being less stressed and more organised.

I'm taking a little time out at the moment to try and catch up on some reading and some places where my skills just aren't good enough.... and there's the catch - improving my skills is why I'm motivated by gtd.

I'm also a bit of an obsessive book buyer. If I buy the book, I get the knowledge right? Well no, because I never get the time to read em!!

So here's my problem and the thing I just have a blockage over. I want to use gtd to help me through my huge pile of technical books. How does everyone else deal with this? Do I pick a topic and then just flit from book to book? Do I read the books sequentially? How can I organise next actions? Am I taking too much on?

I'm finding gtd is making me frantic...as I'm more scared of getting the system wrong and getting nowhere.

Sorry for the ramble - hopefully someone out there will recognise the symptoms and give me a helping hand.

Best

DF

cornell's picture

I'll just add to the...

I'll just add to the great thoughts from others.

Reading and GTD: It works fine. Treat each book as a project, with the next action being an arbitrary chunk. Read the next 20 pages, read the next section or chapter, etc. If you want to be moving ahead on different books simultaneously, make each one a separate project, with separate "state."

If you're not sure which books or which parts, spend some time getting clearer about your goals (as others have suggested). Having a programming project in mind (even a toy one) is a good way to frame and cement what you learn.

I have a very large stack of books I'm working through. I found Steve Leveen's ideas particularly helpful. More at:

A reading workflow based on Leveen's "Little Guide"
http://ideamatt.blogspot.com/2007/03/reading-workflow-based-on-leveens.html

How to read a lot of books in a short time
http://ideamatt.blogspot.com/2006/02/how-to-read-lot-of-books-in-short-time.html

 
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