A while back I started working with re-organizing my life.

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A while back I started working with re-organizing my life.

After looking around at the situation I came across “Getting Things Done“, a book by David Allen that seriously helped me out. I know, I know, it would all seem so obvious. But yet, strangely it isn’t.

[[wp:GTD]] comes down to the idea on some levels of making instant decisions about your workflow items as well as some brilliant comments on the idea of trusted information management. You may also find looking at the flowchart to be useful. There are also links below and much information, so get with and read all this!

Trusted Storage

Do you ever feel like you have all this stuff you need to remember, and none of it is applicable to the task at hand? I do.

The idea as I took it away is that your brain is always trying to keep you from screwing up… so if all the time I am at the Dojo my mind is worried I will forget the 5 bug fixes I promised a client by morning I simply cannot concentrate on the task at hand. Similarly if at work you are always thinking “I need to get milk on the way home” your screwed.

If you right it down on a scrap of paper, you probably have not solved the problem! Your brain knows that you’ll probably lose the note, because you probably have in the past. Now you have one more thing to remember, not less.

It is crucial that you develop a habit you can rely on of checking a single, trusted, reliable location or mechanism to track all the items you need to remember! Once you have done this (for me its Outlook) your mind will learn to let go of data, knowing that you can be trusted to consult your storage system.

A excerpt from the book “Getting Things Done”

“A basic truism I have discovered over twenty years of coaching and training is that most of the stress people experience comes from inappropriately managed commitments they make or accept. Even those who are not consciously “stressed out” will invariably experience greater relaxation, better focus, and increased productive energy when they learn more effectively to control the “open loops” of their lives.

You’ve probably made many more agreements with yourself than you realize, and every single one of them — big or little — is being tracked by a less-than-conscious part of you. These are the “incompletes,” or “open loops,” which I define as anything pulling at your attention that doesn’t belong where it is, the way it is. Open loops can include everything from really big to-do items like “End World Hunger” to the more modest “Hire New Assistant” to the tiniest task such as “Replace Electric Pencil Sharpener.”

It’s likely that you also have more internal commitments currently in play than you’re aware of. Consider how many things you feel even the smallest amount of responsibility to change, finish, handle, or do something about. You have a commitment, for instance, to deal in some way with every new communication landing in your e-mail, on your voice-mail, and in your in-basket. And surely there are numerous projects that you sense need to be defined in your areas of responsibility, as well as goals and directions to be clarified, a career to be managed, and life in general to be kept in balance.

You have accepted some level of internal responsibility for everything in your life and work that represents an open loop of any sort. In order to deal effectively with all of that, you must first identify and collect all those things that are “ringing your bell” in some way, and then plan how to handle them. That may seem like a simple thing to do, but in practice most people don’t know how to do it in a consistent way.” – quote in context

What to do with information as it comes in

The part I make the most use of is all about turning my incoming information into actionable items. The following summarizes a bit how I use the system, and may not match how David would describe it. Trust me, it’s worth the $$ to get the book. The idea is that you can do this look constantly, keeping your inbox clean and making fast choices right away.

• Turn it into a T-Do item right away if it is something I can act on. As an example? Let’s say I get an email notification of a software upgrade to an application I use. I make a To-Do item of it right away and then get it out of my inbox.
• Schedule it if it has to be done at a specific time, like a meeting with a client. I may also make a to-do item of any preparations I need to make.
• Defer it to another time if it is going to break my flow. That means I don’t know that I want to make it a to-do item yet or what the actual action to be taken is, but I don’t want to think about it right now.  I check my deferred items every couple of days and make decisions about them when I have more time. Example? A notification of a trade show I may or may not attend. I also think of this as [[wp:incubation]].
• Delegate it to someone else if I am not the best person to handle it. If, for example, a client needs a copy of an old invoice they paid I will delegate that task to Kimiko. It goes into her inbox and she will then make a to-do item of it when she processes. If it is important, I will also make a t-do item for a day or two int he future to follow up with her about this.
• File it for reference if it isn’t anything that requires action, but I should keep it. Good examples are when Kimiko cc’s me on payment reminder she sent to a client.
• Delete it if it is obviously stupid.

Good links

• 43 Folders- Getting started with -Getting Things Done-
• Working Smart- Getting Things Done
• Getting Things Done! — MarkTAW.com
• BW Online – August 24, 2001 – Getting Things Done
• but she’s a girl… ? Getting Things Done- The practicalities
• but she’s a girl… ? Getting Things Done- The Theory
•  Slashdot – Getting Things Done