Getting Things Done (GTD) is all the rage on the net these days. I haven’t read the book yet, but I’ve gleaned a lot of the ideas through various sites. The basic concepts seem sound, though many of the implementations seem over-the-top for the amount of information I need to manage. So I’ve kept an eye open to other systems–mostly take offs and simplifications of GTD.
Reading up on these things (and having just finished up a very busy semester) has inspired me to get my life, both work and personal, in better order. So far, I’ve adopted Jerry Brito’s really simple hack and added some tabs to my moleskine. I have one for “projects,” “work todo,” and “personal todo.”
Focussing on the projects and thinking about the next logical action for each (a GTD technique, though also a common-sensical one) has been helpful. I also like the GTD “inbox” idea. I spent part of the morning going through a stack of accumulated papers on my desk, dicarding most of them, filing others away for reference, and creating project folders for the remainder. Forcing everything into three simple divisions–trash, reference, or project–is real mental hygine. It forces me to make decisions and take action. So, rather than a vague stack of paper that I “need to deal with,” I have a full waste basket, a bunch of new project files, and everything else filed away for reference.
That felt good. Doing the same at home will be a bigger challenge, but that’s something I’m going to hit tomorrow morning. I’m going to keep it as simple as possible. I like Bill Westerman’s idea of using different checkbox symbols. I’m going to borrow a few of his and come up with some of my own. Wish me luck.