tempting to say i see in all i see

Getting Things Done Review

Monday, May 2nd, 2011

In my quest to build a better me, I came across a book by David Allen, a productivity consultant who is best known as the creator of the time management method known as “Getting Things Done”. “Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity” is the latest book in a long line of decade defining self-help business books such as “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie (1937) and “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen R. Covey (1989).

In this modern age that we live in, technology has made our lives easier and more convenient. In the workspace, modern technology and tools has enabled us to be more productive and efficient. The extra time that we have created for ourselves at work is being filled with more work and challenges. With advances in technology, we have also been pampered with having everything now, instantly. This creates a lot of extra work for the average workers.

As David describes in his book, in the old days, work was self-evident. Fields were to be plowed, machines tooled, boxes packed, cows milked, widgets cranked. You knew what work had to be done as you could see it. It was clear when the work was finished, or not finished. However, in this age that we live in, there are no edges to most of our projects. Most people have at least half a dozen things they’re trying to achieve right now, and even if they had the rest of their lives to try, they wouldn’t be able to finish these to perfection.

He also said that on another front, the lack of edges can create more work for everyone. Many of today’s organizational outcomes require cross-divisional communication, cooperation, and engagement. Our individual office silos are crumbling, and with them is going the luxury of not having to read cc’d e-mails from the marketing department, or from human resources, or from some ad hoc, deal-with-a-certain-issue committee. The disintegrating edges of our projects and our work in general would be challenging enough for anyone. But now we must add to that equation the constantly shifting definition of our jobs.

“I am rather like a mosquito in a nudist camp; I know what I want to do, but I don’t know where to begin.” ~ Stephen Bayne

How are we suppose to handle with an endless barrage of e-mails, phone calls and new projects? How are we to juggle multiple tasks and conflicting priorities? Our conscious mental storage space is jam-packed full of thoughts about unfinished projects, problems, goals and other unresolved “open loops” in each role of our lives. Because of this, we find ourselves continually in a reactive mode, and rarely find time to engage in creative thinking or strategic planning time. This is where the “Getting Things Done” (GTD®) philosophy comes in.

The basic premise of the GTD® philosophy is based on one key idea, that is you will be more productive if you take the set of things you need to do out of your head and put them down on paper (or some other written form). Once that is done, you can then focus on the tasks at hand and not worry about forgetting stuff thereby enabling you to focus better, get individual tasks done faster, and then move right on to another task . It seems incredibly simple and just simply common sense, and that is all there is to it.

“The truth is, it takes more energy to keep something inside your head than outside” ~ David Allen

David’s key concept is that every task, promise, or assignment has a place and a time. With everything in its proper place and time, you feel in control and replace the time spent on vague worrying with effective, timely action. As a result, the accomplishments grow while the pressure to accomplish decreases. The key psychological insight of this book is that rapid progress and the feeling of being in control occurs when you take large, unformed tasks, and break them down and organize them into smaller, sequential steps for exactly what to do and when. The book provides lots of guidance and examples for how to do this.

The book is organized into three sections. The first gives you a high level view of the GTD® concept and the entire process for how to get more done in a relaxed way. The second spells out the details of how to implement each of the processes described in the first part. The third and final part provides subtle insights that help you appreciate the benefits that follow from using the process. Like all good coaches, David understands that appreciating a subject from several perspectives and getting lots of practice with it are critical steps in learning.

“This constant, unproductive preoccupation with all the things we have to do is the single largest consumer of time and energy.” ~ Kerry Gleeson

The process advocated by this book is described with lots of systems flow charts that will appeal to all of the engineers and left-brained people. The right-brained people will find lots of discussions about emotions, feelings, and stress. So both types of thinkers should do well with this material.

There are 5 major components to the GTD® system. They are:

Collect

Get everything you need to do down on paper. Things that command your attention be it personal or professional, big or small. Basically just about everything that you want to do in life. It can be both traumatic experience to see how much more stuff you need to accomplish with whats left of your short human lives. Oddly though, this exercise can also be liberating. Put all these stuff you need to do into what David call “buckets“. Your bucket could be a physical in-tray/inbox, an email inbox, a Moleskine® you carry with you, your smartphone etc.

You can pretty much put everything in your bucket. For example, you can chuck in a bill you need to pay, a sheet of paper with the words “replace light bulb in kitchen” or even a torchlight with batteries that need to be replaced. The recommended technique involves going through your entire house, office, car and anywhere else in your life, and gathering together all of the objects and papers that need something doing to them.

Process

Now that we you have collected all the things that you want to do it is time to process it. Start from the top of your inbox, pick up each item and decide whether there is an action you need to take about this item. If there is no action to take, you can either trash it, file it for reference or place it in your “Someday/Maybe” list. If there is an action to take, the technique is simple: if it will take less than two minutes, you do it straight away. If not, you add it to a to-do list by writing the very next physical action you will need to do to move the situation forward.

As mentioned in the book, the common complaint that “I don’t have to time to” is understandable because many projects (in GTD® lingo, it means any tasks that requires a few actions to complete) seem overwhelming – and are overwhelming – because you can’t do projects at all. So how do we deal with projects? As David says, “You can only do an action related to it. Many actions require only a minute or two, in the appropriate context, to move a project forward.“

Organize

To manage actionable things, you will need a list of projects, storage or files for project plans and materials, a calendar, a list of reminders of next actions, and a list of reminders of things you’re waiting for. The basic lists look something like this:

• Next Action
  What is the very next thing you need to do to get your thing done?
• Projects
  Keep track of multi-action things here.
• Waiting
  If you are waiting on something, write it down here, so you don’t forget.
• Someday/Maybe
  For when you have a great idea or long-term goal that you just can’t make time to work on now. You don’t want to forget about it, but you don’t want it to clutter up your Projects list.
• Context-sensitive lists
  e.g., “Phone calls,” “Errands,” etc.
• Calendar
  Only use your calendar for appointments and other things that must happen on a particular day/time.
• Filing
  Keep a simple, easy to update filing system. Don’t let files pile up in a slush pile. Get comfortable with putting a single piece of paper in a folder, labeling it, and filing it away.

Review

As described in the book, if you’re like me and most other people, no matter how good your intentions may be, you’re going to have the world come at you faster than you can keep up. Many of us seem to have it in our natures consistently to entangle ourselves in more than we have the ability to handle. We book ourselves back to back in meetings all day, go to after-hours events that generate ideas and commitments we need to deal with, and get embroiled in engagements and projects that have the potential to spin our creative intelligence into cosmic orbits.

That whirlwind of activity is precisely what makes the Weekly Review so valuable. The Weekly Review is whatever you need to do to get your head empty again. It’s going through the five phases of workflow management—collecting, processing, organizing, and reviewing all your outstanding involvements—until you can honestly say, “I absolutely know right now everything I’m not doing but could be doing if I decided to.”

“ ‘Point of view’ is that quint-essentially human solution to information overload, an intuitive process of reducing things to an essential relevant and manageable minimum. . . . In a world of hyperabundant content, point of view will become the scarcest of resources.” ~ Paul Saffo

Get Things Done!

The GTD® system provides your the tools to organize your life and empowers you to make decisive choice on what you can and need to do at any given time. David Allen believe that if you have everything laid out in front of you, it will be obvious what needs to be done at any given moment based on your circumstances (deadlines, how much time you have available, what tools are nearby, how much energy you have, etc). All that is left is for you to actually do the tasks you need to do.

It all seems very simple. And in many ways, it is. But like all the best systems, GTD’s simplicity hides a considerable amount of sophistication. What looks like a mundane system of lists and calendars actually ties together to make something far more powerful. It is simple common sense, but with discipline. The critical part is the discipline because that is what focuses your attention to where it will do the most good. For example, rather than sitting on something you have no idea how to get started, you can decide right away to get ideas from others on what the purpose and principles are that should be used in selecting a solution. So, you are in motion, and you have saved much time and anxiety.

To read or not to read?

I would say that this book is recommended to everyone. It is simply the best personal productivity book I’ve ever read, and there’s material in this book that can apply to anyone‘s life. I’m actually going through my second read-through of the book and am implementing the principles both at work and home and I must say that there is certainly an improvement for me to get things done.

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