It’s been about a week and a half since I started implementing David Allen’s’ Getting Things Done’ (GTD) productivity system so I thought I’d post an update about how it’s going. In short, this is some good ish! What David says about getting things out of your head and into a better system is so true. Now that I’ve written all of my ‘things’ down I feel (like Ice Cube said) ten pounds lighter — like somebody took a led helmet off of my head. Who knew that writing things down could be so powerful? 😉 But seriously, I’ve always been one to not write things down. In school I used to pride myself on not taking notes, I’d just try to memorize everything. (That stopped working so well in college.)
It took me a little extra time (a couple of hours) to get going because I was figuring out how to implement the system in my newly acquired Life Balance software. But once I got that set up it was smooth sailing. I’m actually very surprised that I even tried this system out in the first place. Not only did I not write things down, but I also loathed project planning. That’s due in large part to the micro-managing people I’ve worked for in the past. When I quit working for ‘the man’ I was so happy to not have to track my time to some super detailed project plan anymore. But my ‘project plan’ (outline) in GTD is far from being the monstrosity that any of “the man’s” project plans were. The beauty of it is that I can now easily see all the stuff that’s on my plate, each with a context assigned. For example, if I’m about to go to the store I can just pull up the ‘@Errands’ context and see if there’s anything else I could take care of while I’m out.
The system even makes it fun to get things done. Now that my mind is much more clear I’ve had new ideas for things I wanted to do just popping into my head like mad. Many of them were quick little things that I could do in 10 or 20 minutes, so I’d just go ahead and do them. But then I’d find myself going back and entering it into my outline just so I could check it off. (I’m not the only person who’s done that because after I’d done that a couple of time I read the next chapter in GTD and David mentioned that people do exactly that all the time.) I also like to see the graphs in Life Balance change as I check things off — it almost makes this whole process like a video game.
Those of you who are considering reading/implementing GTD I highly recommend that you do. Outlining, making lists and filing are such simple & basic things but they’ve make a huge difference (reminds me of some things I read in ‘The Tipping Point‘). I feel so much less stressed now even though I’ve been working just as hard as before. And if you’re going to use a Palm and/or a PC to implement GTD I suggest you take a look at Life Balance too. It’s a great program that’s well tailored to GTD. I think it takes part of the credit for making the system fun. It’s a very cool piece of software.
Oh yeah, I mentioned before that one of my nagging things was all of my unread books. After taking an inventory I found that I had exactly 50 books which I haven’t read, not counting the seven I just ordered from Amazon the other day. The dustiest one has been in my possession for 12 years. Isn’t that sad? Not to make myself seem like a total slacker, I have read about the same number of books over the last five or six years. So I guess I shouldn’t feel too bad about those unread books. Still, I’d get through a whole bunch of them. So I’ve scheduled time for me to read a few chapters per day. Hopefully I’ll be able to finish about three books per month. So assuming I stop buying them in batches of seven (half of the unread books were gifts) I should be caught up in about a year and a half. 🙂
The obvious question now is will I stick with the system for the long term. I’m certainly going to try my best to do so. I can’t see going back to my old (non) system. According to the 3 week rule I just have another week and a half to make GTD a habit.
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