GTD plus one week — What I’ve learnt so far.

Updated 1 pm 13th As I tweeted and wrote last week I did a re-implementation of GTD (Getting Things Done) the weekend before. Although I’ve used it somewhat over the last two years, it has been a bit haphazard so I decided a fresh implementation was in order.

I’ve now done my first real weekly review (there wasn’t a lot to review on Day 0); and I now feel clearer. I never got through assigning “Next Actions to the Projects in the List, so cracks were already beginning to appear, but that has been sorted now. After all, that is what the weekly review is for. I did a week, paper based (so others can “see” what’s on my radar). I like that logic, but until I get to actually go out and do the “buy printer ink“activity, it was fun to go back and use my old friend , OmniFocus. I know there is a risk with switching, but this morning I was excited to do some actions.

Some things I’ve learnt:

• It is unfortunately still possible to avoid doing that which you don’t want to. This is not a magic bullet, but it means you can be more systematic and there are fewer highs and lows which is nice.
• I tend to be blunter in my communications because I don’t have to decide what to say to Person, I tend to forget the niceties a bit. If the action is “Send Person a sms about coffee next week” My sms might read hi How’s thursday next week for coffee” then I might remember to ask how they are, or sign my name! Same goes with discussions in person, I show up with a list and off I go. Efficient, but less fluff. Ok for business but not so warming for loved ones.
• On the flip side, I listen better
• The Mind like Water thing is great.
• I think being able to put social/life/relaxation stuff on the list and having it as important is so great.

A summary of GTD is here and the methodology is:

GTD is based on making it easy to store, track and retrieve all information related to the things that need to get done. Allen suggests that many of the mental blocks we encounter are caused by insufficient ‘front-end’ planning. It is most practical, according to Allen, to do this thinking in advance, generating a series of actions which we can later undertake without any further planning. The human brain’s “reminder system” is inefficient and seldom reminds us of what we need to do at the time and place when we can do it. Consequently, the “next actions” stored by context in the “trusted system” act as an external support which ensures that we are presented with the right reminders at the right time. Since GTD relies on external memories, it can be seen as an application of the scientific theories of distributed cognition or the extended mind.[1]

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Tags: getting things done, GTD