Getting Things Done?

machinder asks: "In reading Cory Doctorow's notes for the Life Hacks presentation at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, I saw reference to David Allen's book Getting Things Done. Casting about for it a bit, I see a lot of developers have touted the thing in their blogs. I'm sold, and am starting to implement this system, but I'm wondering if any other Slashdot readers have used the system, and if they have any advice?"

Comments

PlannerMode

[sachachua]

I maintain planner.el, an organizer for Emacs. Although it was originally written to support the Franklin-Covey method and other ways of planning, some of my users have looked into using Planner to support the Getting Things Done method. Because planner.el stores all of its information in plain text files with a little markup, it's been easy to adapt to people's particular styles.

• Someone who uses planner.el to support GTD
• My thoughts on GTD
• My page on PlannerMode
• The EmacsWiki page on PlannerMode

Our mailing list has around 80 people from around the world. I love trying to get planner.el to fit people's working styles instead of forcing a particular method on them. =)

Faster Writing

[John Meacham]

Handywrite is a shorthand system based on the gregg system, but is unambiguously readable. This lets you use it for general notetaking without later transcription to english words. Recommended. It can be learned quite quickly.

http://www.alysion.org/handy/handywrite.htm

Re:Faster Writing

[John Meacham]

Note that one of the stepping stones in pursuing GTD is to be able to commit ideas to paper or computer or some other nonvolatile store as soon as they occur to you. wherever you are. Get ideas out of your head.

If you, like me, don't like speaking out loud into voice recorders in random places or don't always have your PDA with you, being able to take notes quickly is a very useful skill. Using handywrite, you can write orders of magnitude faster, without interrupting your thought proccesses trying to remember how to spell words or waiting for your hand to catch up to your mind.

Not for everyone, but if you want a way to record your thoughts anywhere and have been searching for a better way, it is a very useful skill.

Sorry if the conection to 'getting things done' was unclear from my previous post.

Getting Things Done

[sachachua]

Getting Things Done is a way of planning your life. You think of the major projects you want to do and write down the desired outcomes. Then you think of the very next thing you need to do in order to achieve that outcome: small steps toward your goal! When you accomplish that, you think of the next step, and the next step, and so on.

Some tasks have to be accomplished by a certain date, so you write those down in a special area. Some tasks can only be done in a certain location or context, so you note those as well.

Keeping your goals in front of you and thinking of the next step you need to accomplish makes even intimidating projects seem much easier. =)

Re:Getting Things Done

[AndyElf]

Good summary, to add just a few notes:

- You don't assign priorities to tasks (at least not explicit ones): what needs to be done is determined by context, energy, available time.

- Forget about "doing a project" -- you never do. All you do is a bunch of little steps, one at a time, that bring you to sum-total that you call "done". Project is justa "finishing line", not the course.

GTD also has a nice workflow concept. You need to get *all* of the things (i.e. not only work-related, but *all* the things you do) organized into lists which you review, organize by contexts, push forward, little by little.

BTW, Sacha -- it is a post on your site that made me very interested in the system. Went to David's site and got me GTD Outlook plugin (trial). Liked it. Got me a book, still reading it. I do recomend it to others.

I think that one of the things that is probably very appealing to geeks in GTD is clear workflow: it is (relatively) easy to implement it algorithmically, and there is a lot less subjectivity of prioritising in it. Its empahisis of total and airtight coverage is also very good: gives you a Swiss Army knife for life management :)

Re:Getting Things Done

[sachachua]

You might be interested in Llamagraphics' LifeBalance method, then. It think it lets you do hierarchical tasks with changing priority levels. Haven't tried it (as mentioned, I maintain a much simpler organizer), but it sounds like the way you work.

Re:"thing", "the system"?

[Kris_J]

Sounds like the definition of being organised. I wonder if Amazon has patented it yet.

first you stop reading slashdot...

[HughsOnFirst]

People who are interested in getting things done seem to be drawn from a different group that the people who post to slashdot.

Re:Another fad

[cei]

The next "big thing?" Extreme Getting Things Done!!! You'll get all your things done faster if two people are doing them at the same time!

Ecco Pro and Shadow Plan

[Will Sargent]

There's a mailing list, GtD_Palm. It looks at different ways to implement GTD.

There's also an Outlook plugin available.

I like using Ecco Pro and Shadow Plan. Details here and here.

Known David for years,

[trisweb]

and let me tell you, he is one amazing person. I have been to his seminar (and one of his trainers' seminars) and it really makes you think about the way you do things. You start by extracting your brain into pages and pages of thoughts (called a brain dump), and then you practice moving each item into this process (the GTD process) whether you define it as a project, an action to complete a larger project, or just a "Someday Maybe" that is important only in the long term. There are a lot of details to the process, but you really need to read the book or go to one of his seminars to understand it fully, and even then you need a lot of practice and dedication beyond that. I highly reccomend both the seminar and the book.

One thing I have to say about GTD is the end result -- you end up with a process to control your life. I can't remember the quote David had -- but basically, his idea was that if you had all the "things" controlled, then you were free. Its honestly a sort of nirvana -- when you reach the point where you have everything you do into this system, and it becomes part of your life, then you don't have to think about the system anymore. So, whatever you had before -- oh, I have to do this and this and this today, but right now I'm doing this with this other thing on my mind but I really want to do this... becomes I am doing this. It's an amazing feeling. But there's more to it than that, so go to David's site and get into it.

Confessions of a former self help junkie

[nandu_prahlad]

During high school, I used to read a lot of self help books. Dale Carnegie, Norman Vincent Peale, Tony Robbins, Covey etc were my gurus. Now I don't read them anymore. I have become apathetic to them.

The buzz lasts only for a week or two before you realize that you are low on inspiration and go buy another book... get another fix.
As the years went by, I found just two principles that work for me.
1)Prioritize. Some tasks are more important than the others. Concentrate on them more.
2)Recognize that some info is more important than others. If you know few key things, it is enough. There is no point in learning/knowing other useless stuff.

The 1st one is just basic common sense. Except that the authors use fancy methods like "mind maps", "brain dumps", GTD software etc to help you prioritize stuff. Understand the underlying principle. It doesn't matter if you use paper computer or pda in order to achieve it.

The 2nd point, is important as it reduces info overload. Some wiseman once said "Yes. The learning curve for Unix is certainly steep, compared to other OSes. But you only have to climb it once". The value of having system administration knowledge in Win NT is much lesser than Unix sysadmin skills. Why? Because you will have to relearn it when they change the layout and placement of the buttons in Win 2k, Win XP, Win 2003. But your Unix knowledge from years ago is worth it's weight in gold, as it is still applicable now.
Recognize, this fact and you wont waste your time learning/studying/reading something that has no value.

The above are guidelines that have served me well. I don't claim ownership of these ideas, or affix a fancy name for them. Because they are just common sense.

I have many friends who swear by self-help stuff now. It is interesting to hear them speak at length on the virtues of "mind-maps", on being "in the zone", and what not. I am glad that I completed my self help phase early on in life.

If you feel that you really could use the inspiration from these schemes, go right ahead. Otherwise you may just discover that you can actually get by pretty well in life, without paying attention to them at all.