I think it’s been over a year since I started reading Getting Things Done. I’ve done three major bursts through it. First I started reading it and tried to immediately apply the bits that leapt out at me while ignoring some of the details. This worked, sortof. It helped me through an apartment move and a few other things last summer, but wasn’t applied in full.

Last November, I resumed reading again. I think I was at the start of the second part of the book which goes into the details of each part of the workflow (collecting, processing, organizing, etc) and made an effort to actually read whole chapters before starting on anything. This time I was able to empty my head, clean my desk, and really start using a more complete system for managing projects, actions, contexts, etc. Then I stalled out when I got into the third part which focuses more on the benefits of the GTD principals.

When I noticed myself actually saying “so what’s the next action here?” in a meeting recently, I decided it was time to finish the book and understand some of the more subtle aspects of GTD. Now I know more about what “next action” really means, why it’s been significant that I’m actually asking the question in meetings, why I’m asking it of myself, etc.

I’ve noticed that it helps tremendously to bring our big amorphous cloud meetings to some resolutions by asking “what’s the next action,” or just stating “OK. The next actions I’m putting down for myself are …, does that sound good?” Since our engineering meetings can cover a lot of speculative ground, I find I’ve been more productive when I can come away with an action list or basic structure for an action list. It was common to leave one of these meetings with a head full of vague concepts prior to this. While I love solving problems, I’ve noticed that I flounder (and get extremely frustrated) when I cannot find a starting point.

I started doing this before I read the chapter (in part 3) about the power of “next action” and the impact it can have in an organization. So even though it’s taken a while for me to finish the book, I think I did each part at the right time.

An area that I need to revisit for myself is the higher level views and goals. I don’t know if it’d be good to start re-reading GTD right now, if I should pick up Ready for Anything, or if I should look at some other reading material. My social life has all but disappeared over the past few years, and my art projects still aren’t moving at the pace I’d like them to. Those draw on personality and mood as much as commitment and planning, and… well, I’ve been struggling there lately.