GTD Realization of the Day

While sorting through a big box of cables that I'd collected, I realized that I don't need a 6-liter box full of telephone cables and jumpers with RJ-11 connectors.  The fact is, we don't even use wired telephones any more!

Quote of the Day

“Programmers work long hours trying to design stuff that keeps them from having to work long hours.”

—David Allen, from Making It All Work

GTD Project Planning

Recently, I've found the GTD approach (as I've understood it so far) to project planning to be extremely useful.  I probably do this around two times a week and it only takes 15 or 20 minutes.  After that time I have a much more clarified idea about what to do about something.

Note that the first time I read the GTD book, I barely even noticed the project planning component though it's a key part of the book.  On the second reading, three months later, the project planning part was crystal clear and practically leaped from the book.  That's mainly to say that it does seem to be very important to re-read this book at least once.

Some of you will recognize this as essentially the same approach we used for planning in our facilitation processes from years ago so, yeah, there's nothing strikingly new here.  This is fundamental planning.

Also, you can and should apply this to any planning effort, including for large group projects.  But lately this is useful for taking some things that need to be done and organizing them into a project.  For example, yesterday  I took a magazine out of my in box, an old one, and realized I really don't have a system for dealing with old magazines.   I've haven't received any magazines for years, but read everything on the Internet, so there are only old ones.  So in 10 minutes or so I sketched out a project plan for dealing with all of  the magazines.

To start, I open up a new Google document for the project plan.  I usually write out the bullet list of the steps at the top so I can remember what it is I'm doing.

• Principles
• Vision
• Brainstorm
• Organize
• Next steps

Principles

Then the document should have a section created for each part.   Under the first section (obviously with the Level 2 title, Principles) I write a bullet list of principles that I (and maybe others involved) hold, that are important to the project.  For magazines, I want all unneeded ones gone: either thrown out, sold or given away.  For those that are kept, if they are worth keeping for some reason, they should be organized, labeled, and reasonably preserved.

Vision

Next comes the vision.  This is a short paragraph (for me) of what the final state will look like.  I sat there for a few seconds an tried to imagine what this project would look like when done.  What would I see?   What are the characteristics?  A few magazines stored in containers, out of the way, the stack well with clear labels.  Something like that.

Brainstorming

Then brainstorming.  For this, I re-use an approach from Lakein, that is still very much a part of me.  I set a timer on my phone for two minutes and write down ideas as quickly as I can.  I don't even use bullets, but just write lines of text, each idea on a new line.

When the two minutes are up, I set the timer for two more minutes and either clean up the existing ideas some, maybe clarify something that came out as gibberish, or add any more ideas I can think of.

Organization

Many of you will also recognize this step.  I either copy the whole brainstorm section down into this section, or just rewrite the ideas from the brainstorm.  The point here, though, is to take the useful idea from the brainstorm and organize them some how.  The quick and natural way for me is to organize them under headings.  Each heading groups a set of ideas together.  Here the ideas are bullet lists.  One section might be about magazine storage.

For example,

Storage

• Search the internet for storage solutions
• Go to Lowes or Office Max and see what they have
• Check into using old file boxes
• Label with Brother label maker

Next Actions

Finally, the last section, and last step is to look at the organized set of ideas above and choose a handful of next actions that need to be done.  This is a short bullet list of what those are.  Then at least one or more of those should go onto your next actions lists.

Conclusion

So, at the start I was holding an old copy of Sky and Telescope, wondering what to do with it.  After 15 minutes or so I had a fairly solid plan and a couple of next actions.

This approach is useful for solving a simple problem like that which has more than a few next actions, and it's also useful for some effort that will take a quarter to complete.  It should probably be the structure of a major planning session, which might span an hour and a half to two hours.

Allen has much more useful information on this topic in his book, and there's much more in the web sites and other resources that orbit the GTD solar system.

Getting Things Done

For the past few weeks, I've been deep in the process of fully adopting David Allen's Getting Things Done.

• The book
• A video (recommended)
• The web site

It was a bit of adjustment to leave behind (at least for now) a system that has served me well for decades, but I've moved everything over to Gmail Tasks, am reorganizing my office, and changed my daily work process. So far it's still working well and quite enjoyable, too.

Here are some details.

What is it?

GTD is another of those approaches to organizing your work, your life, and accomplishing tasks efficiently. This isn't something I thought I needed. In fact, I've been using Alan Lakein's approach for over 20 years and it has served me well. If you wonder whether I've always had control of my time and my life, the answer is certainly, No. But, I've always known what I needed to do when I wanted to have full control and needed to be maximally efficient.

However, GTD was highly touted by people around me so I finally watched one of David Allen's videos and became further intrigued. Then I read his book and decided to give it a try. Usually, IMHO, the only proper way to give something a try is to follow all of the instructions, completely.

Jumping in

With that idea, I've jumped headfirst into the new process.

There is one important and critical way that GTD differs from any other time management scheme that I've seen or heard. If it's not a difference, at least it's something that just escaped me before now. Mr. Allen claims that it's important to write down or record everything in your action-tracking system and keep nothing in your head. The reason is that, any action item in your head that is not recorded “in a system you trust” maintains a constant psychic drain on your mind, and adds a source of stress. It's not until you get everything out of your mind and into the system that your mind can totally relax and think freely. He claims you can never be free of mental stress (and thus physical stress, if they can be differentiated at all), until you reach this point.

That idea was new to me. I don't know if it's true or not, but it certainly seems plausible and seems worth giving a shot.

I drove over to the Borders and bought the book and read it over the next several days. Then a couple of weekends ago, I started my first collecting and processing effort at home. I also did one at work, but the effort for that was quite minimal since most of my information at work was already highly organized in my old system.

Todo list software and Tasks

A big change for me has been moving from the Lakein style of todo lists to the GTD style of next action lists. I've been maintaining todo lists in Lakein's format for over 20 years. For most of those years, I've used software that I wrote myself and that has been re-written a number of times. The first version was in C and used pointers to pointers to implement a list of strings. The most recent re-write was in object-oriented Python. I've also used a pad on my desk or a little steno book with dated pages. Anyway, leaving the old format and process behind (that was familiar, much loved and working!) has been a big step for me.

GTD isn't specific about what tool to use for tracking your next actions, projects, and such, though it makes a number of suggestions and provides good guidance. There are also many updated suggestions and tools on-line today. When I sat down to decide on a tool, I considered re-writing my todo list again to work in the GTD way of doing things. However, Tasks had been there in Gmail for a while and I'd played with it a bit, even used it a little. It seemed marginally adequate for tracking things then, but I took as second look and simply started using it. The gradual process of just trying it out more and more ended up being a full commitment to moving everything over.

Tasks Features

One nice feature of Tasks is that it's quite simple and somewhat flexible. You can easily drag tasks up and down in a list to reorder them. You can have multiple lists and it's easy to move tasks between them. Finally a task can have a due date (which automatically puts it on your calendar) and it can have a large set of textual notes and web links attached to it.

You check off completed items and you can clear all completed items so you don't see them any more. Then you can view a separate list of all your completed items on a list by list basis. You can also indent items under a leading item. That means you can move that whole indented group as a unit. You can have multiple levels of indentation and, thus, of structure. Finally, you can easily add an email message as a task from Gmail with one click.

So, with many of these added improvements, Tasks turned out to be quite powerful when I started using it in earnest.

How I'm using Tasks

Given all of those features, the path of my evolution of usage, and as I grok more of GTD, here's the way I'm currently using Gmail Tasks.

I keep a number of separate lists. These include all of my next action lists, a project list, and a calendar lists.

Any item that has a date assigned goes on the Calendar list. Since, from your Gmail calendar, you can only choose one list at a time, I always leave the Calendar list selected and that makes those items appear on my calendar. They are associated with a day but not specific times on that day, as GTD suggests.

GTD defines a project as any task with more than one action, so my Projects list has a project and indented under it are the actions. I always keep the next action at the top, by dragging tasks around if needed. I sometimes drag a whole project around to reorder them in the list.

Since my lists were rather long, I organized my next action lists into context-based lists. So I have an At Computer list, At Home list, an Agendas list for conversations with folks. My Read/Review list either has book or article titles to read, or frequently has links to on-line items to read.

One of the best parts of Tasks is that, because it's in the cloud and because it's accessible from my Android phone, I have access to my lists all of the time. (You can access tasks from a phone browser at http://gmail.google.com/tasks). This also makes it easy to add new tasks and ideas directly into the system.

If I'm driving, I call my Google Voice number and leave a message for myself. It gets automatically encoded into text and emailed to me so I can enter it later. (Granted, the voice-to-text doesn't work that well for me now).

There are two completely separate instances of Tasks for work and home, but it's easy to move items between them. Also I can enter actions into each whether I'm at work or at home, and have access to reviewing them as well.

When on an actual computer, it's important to pop out the Tasks list and make it into a larger window. That's the only way it really becomes usable.

Documents, check lists and filing

For some of the other check lists that GTD recommends, I've been using Google Documents so far. I created a GTD folder there to keep them all in.

Unfortunately I'm haven't quite reached the paperless state at home. Fortunately, Allen recommends a filing system for all of one's reference materials—that's stuff that doesn't require any actions but that you may need to refer to later. In a nutshell, he says to use simple file folders and a label maker, and to file everything alphabetically in one system. He also recommends not using Pendaflex hanging folders because they slow you down too much, and there's a strong emphasis on keeping it all simple and easy to do! So, I got a Brother P-Touch label maker on sale at Office Max, and I've been purging my old hanging files and re-processing everything into a new system. This even lead to emptying out and purging files form an old file cabinet I have at home and dedicating it to the new system.

Is it really faster and better to use the old manilla folders? For me, the jury is still out on this one. At least you don't have to worry about those little hooks that stick out of the hanging folders.

He also says, don't hesitate to file a single piece of paper in a folder with a label. The justification is that, if it's important enough to keep, it's important enough to file. Makes sense. So using the cheap folders definately makes that easier to do.

I've nearly made it through all of the paper in my office and now it's on to the many other boxes of stuff which is another level of purging and reorganizing, but I'm on a bit of a role.

Finally

So, I'm still settling into the process. It's been about three weeks since I migrated all of my Todo items to Tasks and about two weeks since I began the Big Collection process in my office at home. Though I've fully committed to giving GTD a spin, my experience with Lakein's (and other's) approach is still present as a source of insight and practical how-to skill. In fact, there is a lot of overlap between these two approaches, more than they are different.

I highly recommend Getting Things Done, and will post here later on how it's all going.