implement GTD

David and his staff say GTD is really about the projects, yet I’ve resisted this step for as long as I’ve been doing it.

I have gotten the inbox for real physical papers. I have the work weekly review habit going pretty well (home not as much). I use a checklist to go through places where I may have collection leaks (email at zero, vmail at zero, inbox papers processed etc). I keep both gmail and work email at close to zero and get to zero a few times a week. I have somewhere around 350 discrete actions captured. I have set up home and work filing systems, with labels, and use them. But this is mostly runway level stuff. Now I feel like I need to glue my runway down to something – so that I can leave it without it coming with me. I think I’ve realized that some of the 50,000 level questions that I know are on my mind have answers in this middle layer of projects.

So it’s time to make a project list. I am going to be fiddling with MindManager to create this and if I can get really fancy maybe have it pull tasks into Outlook. First, though, I just need to get all my projects captured, and have them in one place for reviews.

go me! feels great at end of day to have all clean!

It’ll be hard. I heard a glass of wine helps make it fun.

I have done smaller sweeps of my projects list. Removed a dead project here, fiddled a bit there. But no real reviews, by the book.

I’m using the Mac app OmniFocus, but it is not open at all times. It should be, I guess. (It was open now.)

Will try to use the “inbox shortcut”, ctrl-cmd-space, a lot more. Better to have it loosely in in than nowhere.

I am getting the impression that this is a very personal thing.

I was trying to find a site that lists context lists, but it is really hard to find. I then realized that some authors don’t support too many contexts lists at all.

I myself need it. I currently have a Next Action list that is a mile long, too long for me to look at, but by breaking down the lists, it seems much more manageable.

I just decided to look online to see if I was doing it right, and trying to find the perfect list. However, thanks to DaveRoss, I realize that it’s not about finding the perfect list, it’s more about determining if I have a good list now. I do.

Well, they are:
@home
@work
@calls
@email
@errands
@computer

I’ll just work these for now, see how they hold up. I had to separate the calls and email b/c the two don’t mix too well for me. Although they are two ways of communicating, and I have a device that will do both, they are two vastly different modes of commication, and require two different frames of mind. I know I’m a little crazy, but that’s just how I think of it.

I had an interesting experience today. I took my car in to get inspected. While I was waiting, I decided to take a look at my Next Action Tasks so that I could accomplish some of them before my weekly review. I was a little concerned because I was feeling like I was falling behind.

Well, when I took out my list, I realized that I had actually done a good number of them. It felt pretty good.

One thing that I haven’t learned to do yet is to incorporate recurring things, like working out or studying arabic. These things are on my mind, and I’m not doing them. I know that I should write them down, but haven’t figured out the best way to do them. Oh well, I’m benefitting so much from implementing this system that I know I will be able to accomplish this, so it’s not as big a worry.

...while I’ve been off work (first ill, then recovering from major surgery). Was able to juggle my much-reduced to-do list without the GTD system. Mind you, I didn’t accomplish much on my time off, either. Perhaps if I’d resumed GTD reviews, I’d have, say, gotten my apartment painted. Oh well. Not gonna beat myself up about it: I had a rough few months, and recuperating was my main job.

I’ve been doing my weekly review since thursday, and still not done. I know it’s important, but doing it is another thing.

I think that part of the problem is that I must have over 30 projects, and each of those projects has a next action, so when I look at my next actions list, it’s a bit daunting. Since I still have my mind on that list, I don’t feel encouraged to process my inbox, to only add to that list.

Sort of that same thing at work, so what I did at work was to compile a separate lists of things that I want to get done the most. I was originally going to list 7 things, but since I could only fit 6 things on my notepad, I just went with that. Much better. Much closer to having a mind like water.

Tonight, I am going to apply this same technique at home. I’m sure this process is spelled out in the book. I think it relates to the different “altitude” views you use when going over your projects. There were some things that I just didn’t understand as I was implementing this process, but I definitely see the value in the entire process. I also know that it will get easier the further along I go. It just takes patience to implement it correctly.

What? You mean it’s April? Wasn’t there something I had to give to the Ks in April?... Search in April 20th folder. Ah! Yes, it’s right here – and I had put it away in May ‘07. Brilliant!

Well, for the most part.

I think I finally completed my organizing friday night. Once again, I decided to stay up late until it was done. Oh what a feeling.
DA doesn’t like hanging file folders, but I have a desktop file holder that I always thought would be perfect for tracking projects (if only I knew how). So I put all my project folders in there, one folder per hanging file folder, and I just love the way it looks. I’m the type of person that is usually rushing to get out of the office every morning, and I needed to quickly grab my mortgage statement so I could pay it, and it was so simple, just went right to the folder.

I’ve already had problems sticking to my calendar, and I haven’t figured out a way to keep up with recurring things, such as studying everyday, but I have the feeling that I’ll be able to spend more time on that now that my projects are organized. I’ll just start referring to my list.

Once thing that I didn’t do, that I have subsequently read about is visualizing the project as being complete. While I was trying to write down the steps to complete the project, I never wrote a statement indicating what would constitute a complete project.

Oh well, hopefully I’ll catch that next time, or maybe I’ll just put it in my inbox as a separate project itself. Main thing is that I refuse to get discouraged about my implementation not being perfect. It’s a process.

I started implementing it this past friday.
The books says to read the chapter on processing and the chapter on organizing before you actually start doing either.
It was killing me!
I just wanted to jump in, but glad I didn’t.
I wound up doing a lot of research on processing and organizing before I actually did it.
I think I read those chapters in the book like 3 times (had to make sure I understood it, to the point where I can teach it, so I’ve been telling my friends all about it)

Anyway, so this past weekend, I put EVERYTHING in my inbox.
I almost broke my inbox, lol!
But I received clarity just from that action, so I was pretty motivated to process everything.
In the book, he tells you to devote 2 days to implement the entire process, I rarely have 1 day to devote, so I just had to spread it over a couple of days.
I know myself, I’m the type of person that will take my time doing something, get distracted, and wind up not finishing it, so I’m trying to be really careful in that I want to finish this implementation process.
I think I started processing my inbox on tuesday, and stayed up late last night until I finished it.

I’m going to start the organizing phase today, God willing, and I think it’ll be fun.

I just bought a planner a few months ago, so I don’t think I’ll be implementing the hipsterpda. I think I would break my system if I did.

I’m going to go low-tech for a while, at least until I get a feel for things.
I like to write, so this is cool.

I see people are having problems doing the weekly review, so I’ll have to be aware of that.
I think that I’ll have problems with putting stuff on my calendar and then not doing them and then rolling them into another day, so I’ll try to not do that. I will stop doing that.

My wife looked at my desk today, and sent me an email while I was at work, she’s amazed at how organized it is starting to look already!

btw, I found this site (http://kvet.ch/pages/gtd-whitepaper-emory) to be really helpful in my understanding of the system.