7 posts tagged “gtd”
So believe it or not, four years now and I'm still a heavy daily habituae of David Allen's "Getting Things Done" time-management system, originally a business idea that has grown into a quasi-religious movement among the Web 2.0 set, precisely because it works so incredibly well. And out of all the different ways one can work the system, I use the simplest and cheapest possible, nothing more than a paper notebook, a pen, and the calendar function on my Palm Treo; and as I was reminded tonight as I get set to finish yet another double-page spread of one of my action lists, buried inside my latest Moleskine, I'm also one of the messier GTDers out there, and that every time I post a photo of one of my action lists at Flickr I always get dozens of alarmist comments from fastidious workers of the system, who carry around a whole series of colored markers with them, and will spend an entire evening at the beginning of each notebook hand-inking rules and lines on each page, etc etc. The whole reason I love GTD so much, as I've said many times, the whole reason it's been so easy to stick with it daily for four years and counting, is precisely because there is no complicated methodology necessary (although can certainly be added if a person wants), no expensive equipment or software needed (although can certainly be added if a person wants), precisely because the whole point is to use the tools as little as possible, in order to spend as much of your day and evening possible actually getting things done. I had tried other time-management sytems before, and gave up on all of them pretty quickly, because they would either require learning a whole new way of doing things, or require a way that's counter-intuitive to how I normally do things, or require buying a bunch of new stuff before any of it would work, or require a bunch of prep work before any of it would work. I love GTD so much because it requires none of these things; literally, all you need is a one-dollar tablet at the neighborhood drugstore and a ballpoint pen to be on your way, everything else literally being supplemental, once you truly understand how the system works.
Anyway, since I'm about to close out this two-page spread soon, I thought I'd snap a photo and post it online, for all the more anal-retentive GTDers to cringe and groan at. Look at it! LOOK AT IT! Didi mau!
Anyway, I recently read this article by Lifehacker.com's Gina Trapani, where she invents a new simple three-folder system for handling all her email; it got me to thinking about the ways I use email myself, which led to me inventing a three-label system for my own use. As you can see in the above screenshot, they consist of "respond," "moreaction" and "holdtemp" -- basically, if an email is going to be in my inbox from now on, it needs to have at least one of these labels, or else there's no reason for it to be there. Each time a new email comes in, then, the moment I'm done reading it, I'll end up making one of the following decisions:
--I'm done; throw it away
--It requires a short response; do it right that second
--It requires a long response; give it the "respond" label
--It requires another action on my part away from my email, before it can be thrown away; give it the "moreaction" label
--It requires information from someone else before it can be thrown away; give it the "holdtemp" label
--It can be archived; give it one of the usual archiving labels in my system
I'm hoping, then, that this will help me not only speed through the 22 emails still left in my inbox these days (some going all the way back to April of last year, I shit you not), but also to quickly turn around all new email that arrives in the future, and keep me in a situation where I'm keeping on top of my email as much as anything else in my life. That would be a real relief, to tell you the truth; that's one of the biggest sources of stress in my life these days, in fact, is the constant pressure of getting back to old emails in my inbox. Anyway, wish me luck.
Yes, I am a dork!
Good morning! For those who don't know, I'm trying a little experiment today as part of the "Getting Things Done" time-management system I use in my life, which I'm calling a "No Downtime Day" -- where I try to go 16 hours in a row without any "vegging" activities like television, goofing off online, etc. I thought it'd be fun, then, to occasionally throw up posts here at my blog as well, letting everyone know how the experiment is going and what I've been doing over that particular chunk of time. If this is successful, then, I'll add such an activity to my GTD system on a semi-regular basis; not just daily processing and a weekly review, that is, but maybe a monthly No Downtime Day as well.
Anyway, it's 7:30am as I write this, and I've been up for about an hour now; I've spent that time reviewing about 300 of the 400 websites I try to scan each day (via RSS feeds). Since I hardly ever post links to other things, in fact, I thought it'd be fun today to run a list of each and every item I ended up clicking on and reading in detail; here we go...
Today's "Penny Arcade" comic strip.
The Criterion Contraption reviews "The Last Temptation of Christ."
The Onion AV Club explains why "Edison Force" sucked.
The Saks Fifth Avenue store in New York buys its own freakin' zip code.
New report says that we should declare tobacco a controlled substance and regulate it under the FDA.
People will be able to pet stingrays at the Brookfield Zoo this summer.
FOX is making a movie of "The Sims." No, seriously.
CHUD.com explains why "Insomnia" and "Cradle Will Rock" were both disappointing movies.
Screenshots from Wednesday's "Lost" finale.
The San Francisco Chronicle's take on the "Lost" finale.
YouTube: Tom Snyder interviews a bunch of Star Trek people in 1976.
A 17-hour marathon of all six "Star Wars" movies has been showing overnight at the LA Convention Center.
The Chicago Tribune's take on the "Lost" finale.
"Lost" Easter Egg proves that flash-forwards happened on April 5, 2007.
Okay, so that's it for now; more computer work to do at the moment, then around 9:00 I'm going to get on my bike and start making my way to the Loop. Or, er, maybe...actually, the weather here in Chicago today is shittier than I expected, so maybe I'll put off the long bike ride for another day.
I'm trying an experiment tomorrow, that I'm calling a "no downtime day" -- in other words, a day where I spend every moment from waking up to going to bed doing something productive, with no "downtime" spent on things like television, goofing off online, etc. If it's successful, then, I'll add it on a semi-regular basis to my usual "Getting Things Done" time-management system; a customer-created supplement if you will, where on top of your usual action lists and project lists and daily processing, something maybe like once a month you try to go an entire 16 hours without any "vegging" time at all.
Now, note that this is not the same thing as an "all-go-go-go" day; there will be certain times tomorrow when my pace will be slow, for example when sitting around on my ass getting various online things done. But there will also be very active parts of my day tomorrow, too; 9am to noon, for example, will be dedicated to traversing the route of my fourth in a series of bike maps for Google Maps/Earth, this time from my place in Uptown to the Loop, using only inner-city designated bike lanes (i.e. not the lakefront path). It's a ten-mile round trip for me altogether (16 km), basically being done to show off the interior of the city, and also to detail what one can expect when making a long ride within Chicago itself among vehicular traffic. (I've done the trip to the Loop before, actually; the downtown area can admittedly get a little scary, just from the sheer volume of large industrial traffic, but certain tips I'll be sharing can make the whole thing both safer and less nerve-wracking.) So you see what I'm saying; a normal day like always, with its normal ups and downs, but just while trying to cut out all non-productive activities. I've never tried such a thing before, so we'll see how it goes!
Anyway, just thought I'd mention it because I'll probably be posting a few live updates throughout the day tomorrow, via my Palm Treo and the excellent mobile client VOX provides its users. Here's hoping everything goes well.
Funny story: Today I was riding my bike as usual, the daily 6 miles (10 km) or more that I'm trying to do this summer, but the wind just felt like it was literally knocking me backwards, even while pedaling. And the whole thing was just so exhausting, and I was thinking the whole time, "What has changed about me today, so that I can't handle a windy day nearly as well as before? I can't be getting less healthy, can I? Hmm, knowing me, maybe I can (sigh)." And then I got home and checked out the weather, and found out that the wind was blowing in my neighborhood at the time at 48 miles per hour (77 kph). Yeesh.
I'm at Emerald City, a cafe next door to the Sheridan red-line stop, in the Buena Park/Uptown neighborhood where I live, my first trip out since my unexpectedly traumatic oral surgery last Thursday. And once again, I'm sitting here staring at the "Getting Things Done" action lists I maintain in my Moleskine notebook, noting with some alarm how large they've all gotten since this oral surgery began two and a half weeks ago, difficult to get through because of the time my body needs to recover. (This photo, for example, shows three of my busiest context lists combined on one page -- things to do at home, things to do on my computer, and things to check out online.)
It's true, I think -- that no matter how busy we might actually be while unemployed or self-employed, trying to do the things that will lead to increased paid work, it usually comes off that we're doing almost nothing, besides maybe watching a bunch of weirdo movies and TV shows that have been illegally downloaded. Believe it or not, a good six hours or so of my day each day is usually devoted to the lowly duties of an underemployed freelancer; of offering free spec advice in all kinds of random situations, building up one's portfolio, maintaining one's social networks, responding to a ton of emails each day, trawling the internet each day for new opportunities, spearheading cutting-edge projects that will get you further noticed, ad fucking nauseum. That's what's so frustrating about all this oral surgery right now, is that it's preventing me from getting all this boring daily crap done, the stuff I rarely mention at my blogs but that's as important to freelancers as that time you got arrested by Boston police for a viral marketing campaign you created.
Anyway, the good news is that the worst of it is behind me; this time a week and a half from now, I'll start the hard work of my mouth's reconstruction, with hopefully most of it done by the time Memorial Day and summer roll around at the end of May. For now, though, it's yet another week of soup, pasta and yogurt; another week of Vicodin-induced foggy sociopathic distancing from humanity; another week of dejectedly watching my GTD lists fill up more and more, helpless at this point from getting any of it done. Sigh! It's gotta be done sometime, I guess; now's as good a time as any.
I ran out of cigarettes an hour or so ago, which gave me the excuse I needed to get out of the house for a little bit; I didn't go far, just down to Emerald City coffeehouse in my neighborhood (under the Sheridan red-line el stop, seen in the attached photo), but I suppose it's the effort to get out in this weather that counts.
I don't have a lot of pressing things to get done at the cafe today, so have been spending the afternoon instead taking a larger view of things in my life, thinking of the various projects I'd like to accomplish by the end of the year and in what order they'd be best tackled. Such musings, in fact, are a deliberate part of the "Getting Things Done" time-management system invented by David Allen, of which I'm an obsessive religious zealot; and Allen takes an interesting approach to it too, arguing that your long-term and short-term plans shouldn't be seen as two different lists, but rather one list seen from two different viewpoints. Allen compares the process to how we comprehend the earth and our surroundings based on what altitude we're at; how at ground level we're mostly preoccupied with how the immediate surroundings will impact us, while on a plane ride we're seeing the same terrain but with a much better sense of overall perspective, and without any of the pedestrian annoyances around that usually distract us from the bigger picture.
It's true that GTD as a daily process is designed mainly to help you take care of "ground-level" duties; as part of implementing GTD, though, Allen encourages us to occasionally spend some time at 10,000 feet as well, looking at how our current actions will be impacting our lives a year or a decade down the road. It's something I encourage everyone to do, in fact, regardless of whether they're implementing the rest of GTD or not; it's easy to get bogged down in the grinding minutia of our daily lives, I think, and it can be refreshing to occasionally step back and look at where all these small steps are taking you.
Of course, it's important not to linger too long at 10,000 feet either; if you spend all your time with your head in the clouds, after all, you'll never get anything done at ground level. That's what's so great about GTD, after all, especially for all the artistic dreamers of the world, of which I consider myself one -- it teaches us how to convert these lofty ideas into a series of actionable steps, so that we can actually get some of these projects going instead of forever remaining in our brains. That's why I encourage artists to try GTD out as well, on top of the corporate executives it's usually pitched to.
Okay, speaking of which, time for me to go home and get back to work. Farewell, O Cruel Winter! Hello, double radiators and websurfing in my underwear!
