Roundup: Getting Things Done
I love Getting Things Done. Some of the cornerstones (like maintaining an empty inbox, for example) are a little too hard-core for me, but mostly it’s a philosophy that’s contagious in a good way.
One of my favorite former coworkers, a lead engineer, was also a fan of GTD. We always had a series of little tasks for each other – not fire-fighting emergency things, but “when you get a chance” items. In order to not lose those items, we each had an online ta-da list that the other one could add things to.
Ta-da Lists are fast and easy – you get your own URL where you can create as many lists as you want (and yes, give permission for others to add items to your list). I maintain short-term lists while I’m in the midst of projects and an odds-and-ends list for home and one for work. The odds-and-ends lists are critical so you’re always one click away from remembering what useful thing you can do in that extra five minutes.
Getting Started with Getting Things Done (43 Folders)
So, basically, you make your stuff into real, actionable items or things you can just get rid of. Everything you keep has a clear reason for being in your life at any given moment—both now and well into the future. This gives you an amazing kind of confidence that a) nothing gets lost and b) you always understand what’s on or off your plate.
Bruce Lee’s 7 Tips for Getting your Life in Shape (Positivity Blog, via LifeHacker)
Thinking has its place. It can help you plan a somewhat realistic route to your goal and help you avoid future pitfalls. Overthinking is however just a habit that will help you waste a lot of time.
How to keep from “taking the easy way out” focusing on busywork? (David Allen’s GTD FAQ)
…clarifying the value of the purpose of something and getting a clear next action about how
to get started…
A few other tips I like to use:
- Color-code your Outlook messages. Outlook rules are a pain to set up, but you only need to do it once. Messages sent ONLY to me are green. Messages from my direct reports are purple. Messages from my boss are red. When I have two minutes between meetings to check email, my inbox is already visually prioritized for me.
- Any time you write an email longer than 3 paragraphs, copy and paste it into a wiki and add the wiki URL to the end of your email. Assuming that you aren’t abusing email when you should be talking in person or over the phone, you are probably writing useful content that coworkers (or yourself) will want to go back and reference later.
- SCRUM: it’s not just for project management. The practice of having short meetings helps to fix in your coworkers’ minds that a lot can get done in small pockets of time. It’s really tempting to want to wait for a big chunk of time before you can innovate, but people pay more attention and blurt out more spontaneous great ideas when the meeting isn’t long enough for them to start fidgeting.
