Getting Things Done

A surprisingly interesting system for managing your time effectively

July 30, 2010

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Who Is This Presentation For?

Are you in control of your time?

In your business and personal life, are you on top of your goals and commitments?

Do you know what you should be doing at any given point in time?

Are you completely relaxed about managing your time?

If all of the above are true, congratulations! You don’t need to be here.

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Work Is Losing Its Edges

GTD defines work as anything that you want or need to be different than it currently is

Work used to be self-evident; milk cows, plow fields, etc.

You knew when you were done

As farming and manufacturing jobs are replaced with knowledge work, edges are vanishing

When are the wireframe designs perfect and you can stop working on them?

Should you be studying a new technology in your spare time to advance your career?

Should you go to the gym on Sunday morning or make slides for a Lab49 seminar?

Should you fix the kitchen faucet or update your personal web site?

The distinction is blurring between business and personal work

Jobs are constantly changing, and professionals are more free agents than ever before

Little seems clear for very long, in terms of what our work is, and how to do it well

We process huge amounts of information, and generate large volumes of ideas and commitments

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The Problem and the Goal

The problem:

The amorphous blog of never-ending work fills up our brain and uses our CPU and RAM

Many professionals have low-grade, constant anxiety

• Trying to remember everything that has to be done

• Worrying about the things that are not getting done

Too much distraction at the day-to-day level to undertake bigger projects and goals

The goal:

Imagine if your personal management situation were totally under control

What if you could dedicate 100% of your attention to the task at hand without distraction?

Many of you know what that relaxed mental state is like

• e.g. when you’re playing sports, or a musical instrument, or cooking, or whatever

The goal is to bring that relaxed state of effectiveness to your work life.

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The Reader’s Digest Version

1. Have an organized system for keeping track of all of your work, outside of your brain

Must be a comprehensive, trusted organizational system to capture everything you want to do

Keyword is everything; work and personal, high and low priority, short and long term, etc.

2. Have a well-defined system for choosing your next action

At any given time, what should you do next?

Consult the data in your organized system, choose the next action, and do it

Then update the organized system, and repeat

Has anyone figured out the operating system analogy yet?

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What’s Wrong With To-Do Lists?

Typical problem is that it’s full of items that are not actionable

You haven’t clarified the desired outcome

You haven’t decided the next step

You haven’t put reminders into a system that you trust

Therefore they will contribute to your background stress, and not move forward

Exercise 1: Are there any problems with this to-do list?

Buy milk

Create web site

Plan vacation

Clean house

Learn Silverlight

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Understanding Projects versus Next Actions

Determine the next action for a project typically takes about two minutes

Exercise 2: Think about the project or situation that is most on your mind at this moment

What bugs you, distracts you, interests you, or otherwise consumes CPU cycles?

Take two minutes right now to decide the exact next thing that needs to be done

e.g. if the project is “create web site” what would you do next?

• Pick a domain name?

• Research hosting providers?

Exercise 3:

Let’s pick the next actions for the other items on the previous slide

• Plan vacation

• Learn Silverlight

The gist of the GTD system is:

1. Don’t confuse projects and next actions

2. Spend most of your time working on next actions

3. Periodically (every 1-2 days) scan your projects to determine new next actions

4. Periodically (once/week) update your list of projects

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The Big PictureStuff

What is it?

Is it actionable?

Is it < 2 minutes?

+Inbox

Projects

Trash

Someday/Maybe

Reference

Do it Delegate it Defer it

Waiting CalendarNext Actions

Yes No

What’s the next action?

Yes

No

• Plan• Capture • Review for next actions

Needs to be brokendown Into actions

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Implementing the System

Implementing these ideas requires the ability to categorize tasks

Outlook + BlackBerry works very well

• Use Outlook task categories (not folders)

• Ctrl-Shift-K is your friend

For the Apple-inclined:

• OmniFocus

• Toodledo

• Things

• The Hit List

Wireless syncing with categories is a must

Initial minimum list of categories:

+Inbox

Someday/Maybe

Reference

Projects

Waiting

Next Actions

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Exercise Four

Initial state – let’s GTD!

+Inbox

• Plan Lab49 outing

• Line up a speaking engagement

• Set up system for tracking personal finances

• Other ideas?

Someday/Maybe

Reference

Projects

Waiting

Next Actions

Stuff

What is it?

Actionble?

Is it < 2 minutes?

+Inbox

Projects

Trash

Someday/Maybe

Reference

Do it Delegate it Defer it

Waiting CalendarNext Actions

Yes No

Next action?

Yes

No

• Plan• Capture • Review for next actions

Needs to be brokendown Into actions

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Next Action Contexts

If you are out doing errands, why should you be thinking about computer-related tasks?

If you are in the office, why should you be thinking about fixing a home plumbing problem?

Context-based categories (convention – precede with @):

Next Actions

@Errands

• Buy milk

@Home

• Fix kitchen faucet

@Lab

• Customize settings on desk phone

@Remote (office)

• Review GTD presentation

@Transit

• Skim HTML5 book

@Agendas

• Parents – what are we doing for the family reunion this year?

• Practice Head – ask for study recommendations

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How to Use the Calendar

Your calendar is not a garbage can to store tasks that you think “should be done that day”

Many people are tempted to plan work by distributing tasks onto their calendar – don’t do that

Disagree with the Franklin Covey concept of putting tasks on your calendar and pushing them forward

Your calendar should be used exclusively for hard constraints

Scheduled meetings

Scheduled conference calls

Items that must absolutely be done on a particular day

If the time is not constrained, don’t specify it (e.g. use Outlook “all day event” checkbox)

This creates a clear discipline

If it’s on your calendar, it’s mandatory

If you have a free moment, go to your Next Actions list

If you try to plan your day using the calendar, you’ll stop looking at the Next Actions list

You will stop trusting the system and it will fall apart

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How to Use Email

Don’t use email as your to-do list

Try to clean out your email box, or at least tag everything as read

So that the unread messages count is meaningful

If the email implies a next action, create one on the spot

e.g. for Outlook

Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-Shift-K , Ctrl-V

Or even better, draft the email to the Tasks header on the left

For Mac people I’m sure there’s some mouse-oriented carpal-tunnel inducing equivalent

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Managing Action

Top down approach doesn’t really work

Intellectually you ought to work from the top down

Personal/corporate missions, then objectives, then implementation details

But this doesn’t fit with rapidly changing environments with constant distractions

GTD approach is bottom up

At 3:22 on Wednesday, how do you decide what to do?

Filter by context

• Are you on the subway? Reply to emails, review documents, etc.

• Context-based task categories make this easier; filter your list, then pick a task

Filter by time available

• Do you have only 15 minutes before a meeting? Do something quick

Filter by energy available

• Are you mentally tired? Do your Clicktime sheets

Filter by priority

• If you have some open space, pick whatever is most important

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Project Planning

Determining next actions for each project

GTD philosophy is to use “natural planning”

Which means in essence, don’t stress about it, just plan it like you would a dinner party

Natural planning can be thought of in five steps

1. Define purpose and principles (Why are you doing this? What are you trying to accomplish?)

2. Envision the outcome (Intimate dinner party? Or a big party with a DJ?))

3. Brainstorm (What time should we go? What do we feel like eating? Any new places we want to try?)

4. Organize (Let’s see if the restaurant is open. Let’s check in with some friends about dates.)

5. Identify next actions (This part is easy by this stage.)

Unnatural planning (sound familiar?)

“We need to have a dinner party! Who’s got some good ideas?”

“Let’s start by writing an outline for our dinner party.”

“Let’s agree on a mission for our dinner party.”

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Collecting

This is the most important part of GTD from the perspective of clearing your head

Gather 100% of the incompletes

Physical in-basket

Paper-based note-taking devices

Electronic note-taking devices

Voice-recording devices

E-mail

+Inbox category

Add freely to Projects and Someday/Maybe categories – use triggers to get ideas

Professional: Incomplete projects, commitments to others, financial, administration, supplies, office, etc.

Personal: Home, hobbies, skills, creative expression, clothes, gear, trips to take, organizations to join, etc.

Review loose papers, notes, calendar items, projects, etc.

Empty your head – try to think of everything

Be creative and courageous

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Organizational Refinements

Keep a list of priorities at different levels, and review quarterly or even annually

Priorities 1 – Life

Priorities 2 – 3-5 year vision

Priorities 3 – 1-2 year goals

Priorities 4 – areas of responsibility

Projects (conceptually equivalent to “Priorities 5”)

Project subcategories (job-specific), e.g.

Projects – General

Projects – Client

Projects – Sales

Reference subcategories

Reference – General

Reference – People

Reference – Recommendations

Reference – Study

Ad hoc lists

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Weekly Review

This is so critical that you must establish good habits, environments, and tools

Recommendation is to block out two hours a week for this (e.g. Friday from 4-6 PM?)

Review tasks

Collect all new items (focus on completeness first)

Review projects for next actions and create those tasks

Tidy up the system (delete tasks that are completed or irrelevant, refactor as required)

If you skip this, the system will break down very quickly

The failure mode is that you’ll start feeling stress again

You will realize that your brain is wasting cycles trying to keep track of what needs to be done

That’s a symptom that you’ve stopped trusting your GTD system and it’s time for a review

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Timetable of Activities

Frequency Activity

Throughout the day Work on contextual next actions (use “managing action” to decide what to do)

Every 1-2 days Review projects, update next actions (use “natural project planning”)

Once/week Complete collection, update projects and next actions, clean up system

Quarterly Review areas of responsibility, 1-2 year goals

Annually Review higher level goals (3-5 year vision, life)

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Summary

Questions?

The bible:

Getting Things DoneThe Art of Stress-Free ProductivityDavid Allenhttp://www.davidco.com/

The software: Doesn’t really matter, as long as you can categorize tasks.