GTD Underway
At the beginning of the year in my list of aspirations for 2007 I said I wanted to implement “Getting Things Done” (GTD) as a methodology/system to take control of all the things I need to do in my life.
Well last week I began the big brain dump. While I was restoring my Macbook pro and waiting for software to download etc I emptied my office , home and brain (In the form of post it notes) onto my dining room table. Now my dining room table is quite a big table (We had 18 around it for dinner last Christmas day) and the pile of stuff on it was between 18″ and 2′ high across the whole table. It took two and a half days (my wife was very tolerant as we had to eat on our laps for two days) to get my dinning room table in-box processed. Most of the stuff on it just need filing more sensibly (about 20% just needed throwing away). I dealt with about 20% of it using the 2 minute rule. I was very strict with my “needs reading” pile and tried to keep it realistic. Anything that needed to to be assigned to a context for later processing was entered into iGTD.
Several times each day I go through my lists, just checking the contexts that a relevant at that moment (i.e on-line, on phone, office , home etc). Its only been a few days since I started this and I am sure I am not managing my lists/tasks/projects in the most efficient or necessarily correct way yet but I have to say I already feel less stressed and I am beginning to trust that my lists will tell me what’s needed and I don’t have to try and remember it all.
I’ll give it a month then give you a proper report.
July 19th, 2007 at 12:55 pm
I wish you luck. It’s hard to keep up with and the list keeps growing for me.
I’m dropping tasks and items in my life to simplify it more, then will revisit iGTD again. It should work better with less tasks
July 19th, 2007 at 1:56 pm
Thanks Christopher
The fact the list keep growing is exactly why I need to keep the program up. Stopping the program doesn’t make the items on the list go away.
Scotty