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

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.

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.

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.