Getting Things Done is a task management system that has a significant following. The basic idea is that every task you plan to do in your life should go on a central list ordered by context. Contrast that with naive task management: tasks you’re likely to forget go on lists all over the place ordered by priority (or on aspirational days in your calendar).
The theory is that by getting every task down, you are relieved of the stress of keeping to-do items in your head. Having a central list means you can check it frequently to be confident in your system. Ordering by context lets you use small chunks of time effectively. I’m not exactly sure why important tasks get done, but they do – maybe GTD gets you in a groove of productivity rather than procrastinating against the big thing on the top of your to-do list?
The tasks on your list must be actionable without any prerequisite tasks. The full GTD system has a bunch of mechanisms for tracking subsequent tasks, but I don’t use it. Every task on my list implicitly contains a subsequent task: figure out what to do next. I trust the people I delegate tasks to, so I don’t have a system for tracking follow-ups.
I keep two lists, one for work and one for home: work is ordered by project (because @mydesk is the only context), home is ordered by context. I’m currently using the following contexts: @afterwork, @groceries, @home, @online, @phone, @saturday
Tags: gtd, productivity
Getting things done is a major problem in my life. I am currently procrastinating work to post a comment. There definitely are more important things I should be doing. I have procrastinated finding a system for getting things done for quite some time now. I find that I am always getting things done just in time, once it becomes a panic to get it done. It adds stress to my life, which just causes me to procrastinate more because I don’t want to think about what I should be doing as that just adds to this stress. This is the fight or flight response to stress, I have been running on flight.
I have talked to a couple people about “to do” lists. One thing that came up, which I don’t have a solution for, is you need a list that is easy to get information into. Paper lists get lost and you usually end up with a bunch of incomplete lists. I currently have three different work lists on my desk. So that means a digital list. Using a computer for this list doesn’t work as I have an office computer and a home computer, so I can’t update the list when I am not at the respective computer. You can write items down on paper and then enter the items into the computer when you are at it, but that doesn’t make it easy to add to your list. So the only digital device that I do have oh me almost all the time is my cell phone and it does not have a “to do” list; Maybe it is time for a PDA phone.
Jared, what are you using for your list? Have you solved this problem?
Presumably iPhone has a todo list app?
Hmmm, no good ones….
My favorite version of the to-do list is the one that you only add completed tasks to. I suppose technically it’s a “have-done” list.
“aspirational days”?
days you aspire to get a lot done?
I think you need another task – @relationships/networks
Oh, and you’re breaking the Ten Crack Commandments (#3: Never trust anyone):
Probably okay unless you’re regularly delegating critical-path tasks.
@colin: “aspirational days” as in most people say “I’d like to shave my cat on, hmm, how about Tuesday?” and enter it in their calendar on Tuesday. Then when they end up being too busy on Tuesday, their system goes to shit. GTD says that if your can’t doesn’t need to be shaved specifically on Tuesday, then it should just go on your list of things to do. Only put time-sensitive stuff in your calendar.
Is “cat” a euphemism?
@Don: I use “shave my cat” as a metasyntactic task variable. I didn’t come up with it, but I can’t remember where I got it from. (A Google search yields people who actually shave their cats.)
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