Getting Things Done
Wednesday, September 22nd, 2004
I’m not the only one wondering why Gettting Things Done has become popular in weblog circles again.
Seen as I’ve been “using it for over a year and a half”:http://www.dellah.com/orient/2003/01/01/resolute I thought I’d just comment that whilst it hasn’t changed my life in the horrible American chat-show style way, it has made me more organised and productive. I’m certainly not a black belt and my wife mocks me sometimes when I reach for my Palm. However, it is only a gentle mocking because she knows if I put it into my system, it will get done.
I won’t write about my system, because “I think everyone who GTD’s sucessfully has their own system”:http://merlin.blogs.com/43folders/2004/09/intermission_or.html (that is the beauty of the book; it is a framework rather than an application), but I will just tell one small success story.
I’ve lived in my current house for 6 years, and one a few occasions have idly wondered if the light switch in the kitchen was in anyway related to the bulbless halogen light in the back garden. However, at no point had I ever done anything about it. When you are in a DIY story are you going to remember that idle thought about the light switch?
With GTD in place, I had that idle thought again, and the thought entered my system as a Someday/Maybe project. In a weekly review a few weeks ago, I saw the project and decided that it would be useful to have a light in the back garden as the nights are getting longer (today is the “autumn equinox”:http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/astronomy/AutumnalEquinox.html and can anyone in the UK not whisper Equinox fast and urgently as in the theme of the “eponymous TV program”:
http://www.dooyoo.co.uk/tv-programs/equinox/?)
Next time I was in the garden, I got my ladder and had a look at the light. It looked like it simply needed a new bulb, so I added “buy new bulb” to my @out/errands list. Later in the week, I had to go to Homebase to get algae killer (the decking has got very slippery) and got a new bulb at the same time. Later that same day, the bulb was installed, and I finally worked out, after 6 years, that the light switch that did nothing really did light up the garden. For 6 years, I’d been going into the garden in the dark.
Its small, but it’s a good example of the power of the next action, project list and weekly review. If you do start using GTD, I’ll offer one piece of advice. The Weekly Review is the cornerstone of the system. Without it, the system will fail, you will not keep it up unless you take some time in the week to do the weeding.