Are You Getting Things Done?
November 25 2008 12:15:00 AM
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As I mentioned in my last blog entry, I had the pleasure of attending my first Getting Things Done, or GTD workshop last week. For those of you unfamiliar with GTD, the official web site describes it as:
GTD® is the popular shorthand for "Getting Things Done®", the groundbreaking work-life management system and book by David Allen that transforms personal overwhelm and overload into an integrated system of stress-free productivity.
I'm the first to admit that my life is an organizational mess. Between work, sports, friends, dating, TV, online communities, moving, and keeping in touch with family, I'm so far behind some days I think I've been lapped! (racing reference for when the the other participants pass you a full lap of the track ahead) I don't even have a wife and kids, so I can only imagine what the added stress of that must be like! So I was really looking forward to the workshop, and learning more about GTD.
Oh crap, did I water the plants? Did I sign up for my health care benefits yet? Did I sent in my 401K forms? Ops, sorry I'm talking to myself again... (no, no, and no btw)
If you don't have time to read this whole post, here is my summary of what I learned from the workshop:
1) Write everything down. By write, I don't necessarily mean on paper, it could be electronic, but the point is collect ALL of your thoughts and get them out of your head.
2) When you do organize your thoughts into more detailed "buckets", be specific. For example, a task should not be captured as "Blog more often". Instead, you need to articulate a) the desired outcome, and b) the next step to accomplishing the goal. So a proper task definition would be "Share some of the information I know about use cases for wikis in Sales and Marketing departments with my blog readers. First step, speaker note the presentation you made on this, then transfer a few of the images and notes to your blog".
3) Anything that takes less than 2 minutes, do it then, don't put it off.
Some more details...
GTD is not about any one specific tool. As a matter of fact, the instructor made a point of saying that no one tool could possibly be right for everyone. But you need to find a system that works for you, and stick to it. That could be pen and paper, it could be your Blackberry, it could be Lotus Notes, or it could be a combination of several things... as long as it works for you.
GTD has five phases of Mastering Workflow. I am not going to do them justice here, but that is what the workshops and/or books are for! ;-)
1) Collect - capture the inputs that come into your day.
2) Process - decide the meaning of an input when it arrives.
3) Organize - decide if the input if reference information, or something that requires action
4) Review - take the time to give your routine a maintenance check.
5) Do - Focus on accomplishing a few high priority tasks.
A few of my favourite thoughts from the day are:
One of the most memorable lines of the day was about work/life balance, where the story goes "I finally came home from work to spend some time with my 8 year old daughter, and found out she was 11".
Here is my review of the workshop itself.
I think the information and pace was just right for the audience, but I don't think I was the right audience. Let me explain. Out of 200+ people, I was one of maybe 3 or 4 people under 40. I also think I was one of the few high-tech people in the room. I'm sure I was the only person Twittering the event! I could be wrong, as of course I did not met everyone. I feel comfortable saying that my situation was a bit different than all the people sitting around me. Not more or less stressful, just different. Most of the conversations I could overhear were about juggling work, family, and household tasks. When asked about electronic tools people used, most had email of course, maybe 10% raised their hands for IM, and maybe 5 people had blogs. The only tools talked about for helping organize were Outlook and yes, Lotus Notes! (very cool, although it was v7)
So here is my suggestion to David Allen and GTD, create a GTD 2.0 course! I'd like to see tips and methodologies discussed for managing the insane amounts of information coming in from multiple email accounts, chats, blogs, wikis, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Flickr, YouTube, Blackberry, iPhones, issues when you travel, online security, etc, etc, etc. These are the areas that my life which I could use some help with, and I think I'm pretty good at this stuff! I'd say for most people (other than Chris Miller!) I could actually give the lessons, yet if am still really struggling, I can only imagine how others feel. Maybe the class could be taught by 16 year olds, who don't seem to struggle with this at all! Tools like RSS readers, Google Alerts, Wikis and blogs instead of email, TwitDeck, FriendFeed and others should perhaps find their way into the next generation of GTD.
Then again, perhaps I am completely wrong, and after getting better about GTD, I'd see that all of these things don't matter. ;-)
Anyway, my next steps are to choose a tool, and try to start implementing better practices for collecting my thoughts, actions items, and projects. I've been told to look at Things, Evernote, OmniFocus, and Midnight Inbox on the Mac, and of course Eric Mack's Lotus Notes based eProductivity.
Ed Brill has just blogged about what will surely be one of the top sessions at Lotusphere, IBM Lotus Notes and Me: Maximizing Personal Productivity with Lotus Notes, which will be presented by Eric Mack and GTD author David Allen himself!
It is late, and the thing I need to get done right now is sleep. No, I am not going to write it down!
Good night everyone, I look forward to reading your thoughts around GTD, my review, and my suggestions.
GTD® is the popular shorthand for "Getting Things Done®", the groundbreaking work-life management system and book by David Allen that transforms personal overwhelm and overload into an integrated system of stress-free productivity.
I'm the first to admit that my life is an organizational mess. Between work, sports, friends, dating, TV, online communities, moving, and keeping in touch with family, I'm so far behind some days I think I've been lapped! (racing reference for when the the other participants pass you a full lap of the track ahead) I don't even have a wife and kids, so I can only imagine what the added stress of that must be like! So I was really looking forward to the workshop, and learning more about GTD.
Oh crap, did I water the plants? Did I sign up for my health care benefits yet? Did I sent in my 401K forms? Ops, sorry I'm talking to myself again... (no, no, and no btw)
If you don't have time to read this whole post, here is my summary of what I learned from the workshop:
1) Write everything down. By write, I don't necessarily mean on paper, it could be electronic, but the point is collect ALL of your thoughts and get them out of your head.
2) When you do organize your thoughts into more detailed "buckets", be specific. For example, a task should not be captured as "Blog more often". Instead, you need to articulate a) the desired outcome, and b) the next step to accomplishing the goal. So a proper task definition would be "Share some of the information I know about use cases for wikis in Sales and Marketing departments with my blog readers. First step, speaker note the presentation you made on this, then transfer a few of the images and notes to your blog".
3) Anything that takes less than 2 minutes, do it then, don't put it off.
Some more details...
GTD is not about any one specific tool. As a matter of fact, the instructor made a point of saying that no one tool could possibly be right for everyone. But you need to find a system that works for you, and stick to it. That could be pen and paper, it could be your Blackberry, it could be Lotus Notes, or it could be a combination of several things... as long as it works for you.
GTD has five phases of Mastering Workflow. I am not going to do them justice here, but that is what the workshops and/or books are for! ;-)
1) Collect - capture the inputs that come into your day.
2) Process - decide the meaning of an input when it arrives.
3) Organize - decide if the input if reference information, or something that requires action
4) Review - take the time to give your routine a maintenance check.
5) Do - Focus on accomplishing a few high priority tasks.
A few of my favourite thoughts from the day are:
- The more something is on your mind, the less it is probably getting done.
- Don't say yes just to avoid conflict. Sometimes a "no" with conviction (and justification) can be the better choice.
- High performance is based on how focused you can get. Sports provide a great analogy. Watch a golfer before a swing or a putt, a basketball player before a free throw, or a diver before they jump of the board. In those moments nothing else exists for them.
- We don't forget things we just remember them at the wrong time. You never wake up in the middle of the night thinking "Wow, I am glad I finished that yesterday".
One of the most memorable lines of the day was about work/life balance, where the story goes "I finally came home from work to spend some time with my 8 year old daughter, and found out she was 11".
Here is my review of the workshop itself.
I think the information and pace was just right for the audience, but I don't think I was the right audience. Let me explain. Out of 200+ people, I was one of maybe 3 or 4 people under 40. I also think I was one of the few high-tech people in the room. I'm sure I was the only person Twittering the event! I could be wrong, as of course I did not met everyone. I feel comfortable saying that my situation was a bit different than all the people sitting around me. Not more or less stressful, just different. Most of the conversations I could overhear were about juggling work, family, and household tasks. When asked about electronic tools people used, most had email of course, maybe 10% raised their hands for IM, and maybe 5 people had blogs. The only tools talked about for helping organize were Outlook and yes, Lotus Notes! (very cool, although it was v7)
So here is my suggestion to David Allen and GTD, create a GTD 2.0 course! I'd like to see tips and methodologies discussed for managing the insane amounts of information coming in from multiple email accounts, chats, blogs, wikis, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Flickr, YouTube, Blackberry, iPhones, issues when you travel, online security, etc, etc, etc. These are the areas that my life which I could use some help with, and I think I'm pretty good at this stuff! I'd say for most people (other than Chris Miller!) I could actually give the lessons, yet if am still really struggling, I can only imagine how others feel. Maybe the class could be taught by 16 year olds, who don't seem to struggle with this at all! Tools like RSS readers, Google Alerts, Wikis and blogs instead of email, TwitDeck, FriendFeed and others should perhaps find their way into the next generation of GTD.
Then again, perhaps I am completely wrong, and after getting better about GTD, I'd see that all of these things don't matter. ;-)
Anyway, my next steps are to choose a tool, and try to start implementing better practices for collecting my thoughts, actions items, and projects. I've been told to look at Things, Evernote, OmniFocus, and Midnight Inbox on the Mac, and of course Eric Mack's Lotus Notes based eProductivity.
Ed Brill has just blogged about what will surely be one of the top sessions at Lotusphere, IBM Lotus Notes and Me: Maximizing Personal Productivity with Lotus Notes, which will be presented by Eric Mack and GTD author David Allen himself!
It is late, and the thing I need to get done right now is sleep. No, I am not going to write it down!
Good night everyone, I look forward to reading your thoughts around GTD, my review, and my suggestions.
