For the last year or so, I’ve been watching with interest as the ideas from David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) have been bouncing around some of my favourite lifehacking websites. The term lifehacking refers to finding and using productivity techniques and tools to cut through information overload and organize information, work and time.
It seems that while the concept is simple, it does require a significant adjustment to implement, so there is lots of room for tool techniques and coaching to help people pick up GTD. David Allen himself says that it can take people up to 2 years to master GTD. So why would anyone want to “re-learn” how to manage their life? Why are there 1000s and 1000s of people out their building tools, developing techniques and publishing their experiences in the hopes of helping others “do” GTD successfully?
The benefits are immediate is the simplest answer I can devise. First let me back up and give you a brief introduction or high level summary of GTD. The basic premise is that people these days are juggling many things in their heads like todo lists, promised work, schedules and more. Juggling in the literal sense is only sustainable for a short period of time, so why would we expect juggling in the metaphoric sense to be any different. Simply put, people DON’T multitask, we task-switch. We focus on this, then we stop, and we focus on that, then we stop and we focus on this other thing. We are good at switching, but our brains are wired to focus, and our minds become their most powerful and creative when they are clear and free of clutter. So the idea is to take all that clutter out of your brain and organize it into a system you can trust. In addition to clutter in our brains, there are 2 other conditions which can contribute to a feeling of being overwhelmed. Not having a clear perspective of our workload, and not being in control of the items we are responsible for. GTD promises to address all 3 by freeing our minds, providing a more realistic perspective or our committments, and by creating a patern of behaviour for controlling our own work. It breaks down roughly into the following:
Collection: All of your inputs. Emails, Lettermail, Faxes, Voicemails, Ideas you get out of head and write down, action items written on meeting minutes, business cards, all of the STUFF. And it all goes in your inbox. Once critical success factor is to have as few inboxes as you can live with. For me, my voicemail is entered into email or my paper inbox (by jotting down a note). Ideas are written down and tossed in the inbox. This is where I started realizing immediate benefits. Because all that stuff was out of my head, I immediately started to feel less hectic.
Processing: Simply put, you go through your inboxes. From top to bottom, one item at a time, never putting an item back in without addressing it.
Your first question is; “Is this item actionable?” or “Can I take an action related to this item?” If the answer is “no”, then either it is
- Trash (throw it out)
- Reference material (file it in an alphabetically order file drawer) Note: filing should take less than 1 minute, and it should be “out of sight” so you aren’t distracted by your files.
- Ideas you can’t act on right now which require more development go into your “someday/maybe” file
If it is actionable, ask
- Can it be completed right now in only 1 step? If so, do it.
- If it is more than one step to complete then it is a project. (move it to your project list)
- If it is a single step or project (more than 2 minutes) Either defer it or delegate it.
- Defering means coming back to it later. If it happens at a particular time, put it in your calendar, otherwise, use your “bring forward” file, or your “next actions” list to hold the task which must happen.
- Delegating means you are waiting for someone else to do some work (this doesn’t have to be a person who reports to you, it could be anyone of whom you ask a question. The work moves to the “waiting for” list.
Organization: Lists hold tasks and include: “Projects”, “Someday maybe”, “Waiting For”, “Next Actions”,
Files hold information and and ideas and include: ”Bring Forward”, “project support materials”, “A-Z reference”
Review: This takes place at a minimum Daily as well as Weekly.
- Daily, there is an opportunity to consult your “Calendar”, “Bring forward”, “Next Actions”, “Waiting For”.
- Weekly, there is an opportunity to look at; “Meeting Minutes”, “Projects” and do a “Mindsweep” to capture any thoughts to free your mind.
- Less frequently you can stop to think longer term with a more strategic focus.
Do: Work is done intuitively according to;
- Context (where you are)
- Time available
- Energy available
- Priority
Sound like a lot to get a handle on? I thought so too, so I’m relying on pictures. The best GTD Flowchart I could find was an adaptation onFlickr.
So I think I’ve mastered Collecting.
This week was a phenomenal breakthrough for me in terms of processing where I took an unusually large 2? thick stack of papers and reduced it to 5 papers (almost zero) in about 2 hours. The key for me was understanding that many of my “papers” were triggers for projects (defined here as multistep work). As I collected my papers into folders for the projects, and made use of a handy stack of folders, the inbox slowly melted away. I think GTD holds lots ofpromise because it does have fairly simple answers for most of the questions you will face in trying to organize your information overloaded life.
I hope you find what I’ve shared helpful.
Enjoy!
Greg.
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