The David Allen Company is taking its Getting Things Done show to Toronto (my hometown) in a few weeks. That, plus a recent reminder about the system, got me thinking more deeply about how I use it in my own life.
Warning: this post ended up being quite long. I wouldn’t call it TL;DR, but if you’re looking for a preview, here’s what I cover:
- My opinion of and relationship with GTD
- My need for improvement (50,000 feet)
- The tools I use to adhere to the GTD process
- How I do (or don’t do) the Weekly Review (10,000 feet) – covering each “step” in the process
- The vision I’m building that GTD is helping me achieve
Still want to read my post? Carry on…
My opinion of GTD
I’d gladly devote an entire Friday to this program, but for the $695 USD registration fee. (Early birds saved $100 USD.) The GTD book blew me away when I originally read it in 2009 (I think it was 2009) and I’ve reread it several times since. The full title of this book is: Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. This paperback seems to have about seven years’ worth of sticky notes in it. It didn’t take long for my copy of the 2015 update to acquire about as many notes, stickies and pieces of paper.
I like this system. I’ve recommended it to other people. But while I have been using much of the system, I’ve been less than diligent about what author David Allen calls “the glue that holds it together” aka the Weekly Review. My system, as a result, is overflowing with stuff. It needs refinement. (Maybe not $695 USD worth of refinement, but I’m tempted.)
Also, I all too often fall into the trap of doing instead of just reviewing. It’s partly the 2-minute rule (if a task takes less than 2 minutes, just do it), but I acknowledge the role “monkey mind” plays.
In short: I have lowered stress, but I’m stressed by the fact I don’t stick with the Weekly Review, what Allen calls “the glue that holds it all together.”
That stress also comes partly from the fact that I didn’t complete Allen’s recommended initial “mind sweep.” I have written out all the stuff on my mind as listed in GTD pages 116-120, but I have yet to go through every last piece of paper there. But I’ll focus on the Weekly Review, for now.
The Weekly Review consists of three major sections. Here’s my relationship with each one, at a high level:
- Get Clear: I’m pretty good at putting everything into a system.
- Get Current: I could use work on this.
- Get Creative: I rarely make time after the above two sections for this part.
My GTD tools
As I work through my relationship with the GTD process, I’m considering the tools I use in the process:
- a notebook and pen
- morning pages: 3 pages of writing every day, as prescribed by Julia Cameron in her book The Artist’s Way
- native Mac apps Calendar and Contacts
- an Apple-only project management and CRM application called Daylite that I run on my Mac, iPad and iPod Touch. Daylite is light-years ahead of spreadsheets, Microsoft Outlook, paper or any other tool I’ve encountered for these purposes.
I’ll get a little technical in this post, and I’ll link to explanations of the technology where I can. Hopefully, productivity geeks will understand the reasons for my using these tools regardless of whether they’ve used these tools themselves.
Notes:
- I’m not selling GTD, Daylite or anything else I mention in this post. They’re the tools I use, and where I can I’ll exlain why I think they’re useful.
- When I list page numbers in GTD, I’m referring to the 2015 edition, not the original 2001 version.
- I’ll stick with Allen’s outline of the Weekly Review, even though it doesn’t seem to apply precisely to my situation.
Get Clear
This is the easy part of GTD for me, perhaps because I found the right tools for the job and like using them.
Collect Loose Papers and Materials
I write my morning pages on the right side of a journal. The left side of each page is for appointments, lists and random notes. Any other loose papers, business cards and the like go in the journal to be sorted out later. (My notebooks? Moleskins are my favourite notebooks, but they’re pricey.)
There’s snail mail, of course. I usually deal with it on the day it arrives.
Electronic stuff like email and text messages go straight into Daylite. I use Daylite Mail Assistant every day I’m in the office. The video I link to here shows DMA and why I consider it alone to be worth the cost of Daylite (though, of course, there’s lots more to it).
Note that while Daylite handles calendars, contacts, notes and other data, I don’t really use it for all of that. It is a fantastic project planner and CRM and task manager and list creator. All this stuff syncs with my iPad and iPod Touch so I can do mini-reviews while in transit or at other times when I can’t do much else.
I like the Mac Calendar and Contacts apps, mainly because how easy it is to create appointments and contact cards from emails using the Mac’s data detectors. These apps also sync their data to all my devices thanks to iCloud.
Technical note: Apple deprecated Sync Services (the software that enabled Daylite to swap info with these native Mac apps) and switched to CalDAV and CardDAV. Since then, data sharing between Daylite and the native systems has been clunky at best.
In reviewing GTD, this quotation from page 195 leapt out at me: “You will invariably take in more opportunities than your system can process on a daily basis.” The Weekly Review is supposed to help deal with this “whirlwind of activity.” I hope it calms the “monkey mind” made excitable by all this potential I record in my system.
Get “IN” to Empty
I think I covered all this in the section above.
Empty Your Head
This is something I try to do continuously.
Get current
In this stage, you are supposed to be calm about the stuff you’re NOT doing.
Review “Next Actions” Lists
I created a “smart list” in Daylite called “Next 14 days” which automatically captures, well, you guessed it…
I also check out my projects and opportunities (mentioned later in this post) to make sure I have the next step scheduled for them.
Review Previous Calendar Data
This is easy to do from the Mac’s Calendar app. I rarely miss anything here.
Some insights do come out of this review. For instance, I don’t like being out too many nights each week. Going out late the night before I wake up at 5 am to play hockey (I play Wednesdays and Fridays) is no fun.
I say it’s easy to review calendars from ONE app because I only use one calendar. Having more than one calendar is a recipe for frustration, missed appointments and double-booking.
To figure out where I spend my time, I record appointments using colour-coded calendars within the Calendar app.
Allen suggests you be able to “archive” calendar data (page 197). I don’t bother archiving. If I want to know when I met somebody, that information might be in my calendar, so I use the Mac’s Spotlight search tool to find it.
I also review the “overdue tasks” list Daylite automatically updates for me. I keep a Daylite smart list called “OVERDUE” (yes, I spell it all in capitals). I even assign one of Daylite’s nine “assignable” keyboard shortcuts to this list. This lets me examine what fell through the cracks. Then I reorganize, push it forward to a future date in my calendar. I usually do this 2-3 times per week.
Technical note: for some reason, Daylite misses some tasks due the day before. Maybe this happens because I created the tasks at a time later than the one when I refer to this smart list… I don’t know.
Load balancing
This brings me to what I call my “load-balancing problem.” I get caught up in how urgent tasks seem to be, so I all too often overload the coming days.
A fellow writer suggested I try this: I’ll designate days for action on one specific project or type of task. However, on the day of, if I’m behind on stuff from preceding days, I tend to disregard the designation and the day’s task list. I get caught up in the doing of “stuff.” Monkey mind takes over.
Review Upcoming Calendar
Again, this is easy to do from the Mac’s Calendar app. I like to confirm appointments the week before they happen. I also keep a Daylite smart list that shows me all the tasks I have coming up in the next 14 days. I compare that to my calendar to ensure I don’t overload myself on any given day. That said, I can’t always get through the tasks I assign myself each day…
I also try to schedule one “just because” coffee outing each week with friends or acquaintances. It’s good to just hang out, and you never know when a connection that might help you.
Tangent: it’s an axiom in networking that you want to help other people before being helped by them. How do you say “How can I help you?” without sounding like you’re looking for work from that person, if that person is a potential client?
Review “Waiting For” List
I don’t keep a “waiting for” list. I create tasks in the moment I realize I need to follow up with people.
This is a pretty easy thing to do, whether on an iOS device or on my Mac. Even if Daylite is running in the background, new tasks are just a keyboard shortcut away.
On second thought, maybe I need to add a “waiting for” keyword for such tasks, then have Daylite automatically build a smart list consisting of any tasks so tagged.
Review Project (and Larger Outcome) Lists
Daylite provides certain handy lists thanks to the fields that it assigns in “larger outcomes.” (In Daylite parlance, “larger outcomes” are objectives, i.e. opportunities and projects.)
These are my larger outcome lists:
- Active projects
- Deferred projects
- Active opportunities (An opportunity is a prospective client.)
- Suspended opportunities
I could stand to review these lists on a more frequent basis. Part of my upcoming Weekly Reviews will be to go through these lists and ensure I’m taking next steps – or abandoning them, whichever makes sense.
Review Any Relevant Checklists
These contain both time-sensitive stuff and other things that I can plan on my own.
For instance, I publish one blog post each week. I accumulate ideas in a Daylite smart list that collects all tasks I tag with the keyword “blog post idea.”
I’m a volunteer director on my condo’s board. I tag all tasks that call for board work with a category named after my condo. In meetings, I use Daylite as a checklist for the things I want to discuss.
Technical note: Daylite offers both categories and keywords you can use to tag objects you create. The only real difference I see between the two is that if you use a keyword often enough, you might as well turn it into a category. Categories are a little easier to apply than keywords and categories are colour-coded while keywords aren’t.
For all my organization, these lists can evoke the feeling of being out of control. I enter a lot of stuff in Daylite, and I don’t always categorize stuff or use keywords as consistently as I might to tag my entries. That’s why I often get the feeling that certain things are slipping through the cracks.
Get creative
I’ve spent so much time doing the Weekly Review to this point that the “get creative” portion almost always falls through the cracks. It’s time to make it more systematic, to take it into my system from the “vision” I have for my career and life as a whole. (See the section called “Vision” below.)
Review Someday/Maybe List
I have a few of these, though I no longer tag them “Someday.” (“Someday” is an option in any task you create in Daylite.)
For instance:
Recommended reading
People frequently share book recommendations. I add them to my list by creating a task and applying the “Recommended Reading” category so the list picks them all up. When I’m just about done the audiobook or ebook I’m on, I flip through the list to find other books to download from the library.
Technical note: This list is well north of 700 tasks, and loading it takes forever on the Daylite iOS app on my 2013-vintage iPod Touch. My 2012-model iPad loads it a little more quickly, but it’s still slow.
Prospects
This smart list contains tasks related to potential clients. It’s something I can get to once I’ve served current clients.
Web site tuning
I have all sorts of ideas and fixes for my site, so I accumulate them here.
The many “someday/maybe” lists I have could use some pruning and organizing. What this requires is a number of hours disconnected from the Internet, perhaps one Saturday afternoon in a café sans WiFi. Such an activity doesn’t come naturally to me. I feel like I should always “be productive” even if I’m not creating a better foundation for that productivity. Let’s see if I can get through more of these lists at each Weekly Review, at the very least.
Be Creative & Courageous
There’s a LinkedIn book I wrote some time ago. It sequentially lists the basic steps people need to take when setting up and using their LinkedIn profiles. All the tips are organized in a sequence where, if you don’t skip any steps, the stuff you do in step 20 is fully supported because you’ve done all the stuff in steps 1 through 19. It doesn’t discuss or assume much social media expertise. It’s a practical guide to helping people get the best experience they can from LinkedIn.
To self-publish this book means that I’d have to figure out:
- The technology needed to keep the formatting I want while also making the book’s contents flow properly in e-readers.
- the business end of things whereby I would stay legal on taxes but actually make a dollar or two, at least, on each sale.
The notion of the nebulous but certainly large amount of learning, trial, error and overall work involved has me keeping this project on the shelf. This anecdote seems to sum up my fraught relationship with “creative and courageous.”
My vision?
Clarifying and making this happen seems to be the goal of the Weekly Review “Get Creative” segment. (It’s also an important part of business books written and workshops taught by Toronto-area freelancer Paul Lima.)
In a nutshell: my vision is to occupy my time with more of the types of activities that lead to a state of flow.
After all these years, I still enjoy writing, especially when the topic fascinates me to the point that I gladly do further research regardless of the amount of work involved. This applies to well-paid corporate copywriting, journalism, technical writing, even automotive reviews and technology thought pieces I write for my blog (like the one you’re reading now).
I also want to use my language abilities more often. I speak, read and (passably) write French, Spanish and Italian, but I live my life largely in English. To regularly serve customers who are more comfortable speaking these other languages would let me feel like I’m expanding horizons I haven’t chased actively enough to date.
Clients need to be more than just the chance to practice language skills with, more than just a source of fees. I’ve enjoyed working with people who know what they want and are glad for my advice and help in attaining it. We have built collaborative, respect-based working relationships. I meet their expectations and they meet mine. (I’m talking about more than just paying my invoices.)
I’ve also worked for clients with whom I wasn’t able to build the same quality of relationship.
The former type of client is the one I seek (and I’d like to think that type of client is looking for me).
Life isn’t all about work, of course. I schedule at least one “coffee meetup” each week. It could be professional networking, but it doesn’t have to be. I play ice hockey twice a week (then go for the “hockey breakfast” with the guys). I work out a few times each week. One of those workouts involves a 62-step staircase, running, hopping, and physical exhaustion. I try to eat well, mostly fruit, veggies, nuts, with meat as well. I’m in decent shape thanks to how habitually I stick with these habits. (Now to bring the force of these habits to the Weekly Review…)
There’s probably more I could add to this rambling essay, but I’ve about exhausted my thoughts on the matter. I’ll certainly ponder this stuff some more every day. The most likely outcome? A continuing sequence of small improvements in how I manage my life.
Care to share any insights of your own? The comments section is just a short scroll down.