Don’t think I’m going to keep going with the parts 2 through whatever, but part 1 is significant enough to mark because it’s the very beginning. Saturday, I picked up a copy of Getting Things Done, by David Allen. I’ve seen way too much about it lately on Lifehacker, 43Folders, and who knows where else. I’ve been coming across mention of it a LOT. So saturday, I finally made a firm decision to check it out. The library doesn’t appreciate me hilighting books, and they don’t have an available copy ANYWHERE in the system anyhow, so I bought one. Amazon has it for 8.something, but in the interest of instant gratification, I picked it up at Barnes and Noble for 15. I don’t mind.
They also had a post-holiday sale that included a gigantic hardcover tome featuring 50 years of Playboy cartoons for even less money than this tiny paperback, but I didn’t let temptation get the best of me… even though Playboy can have some pretty funny cartoons.
I’m currently on page 22 of the book, and so far I’m really liking the angle that this guy takes. The only downside is that he doesn’t plan to do it for us, or even give us tools that will do it for us. The upside, of course, is that if anyone promised such an easy solution, I would never buy into it. Basically, this is going to be a lot of work, but once the initial work is done and new habits are eventually formed, it’s going to be a great, wonderful, happy, and ultimately easy solution to one of the biggest problems in my life.
That reminds me… I haven’t given you any background whatsoever on what this is all about. The subtitle of Getting Things Done is “The Art of Stress-Free Productivity”. Does that help? I’ll let the back of the book explain it a little better: “Discover David Allen’s powerful methods and vastly increase your personal organization, efficiency, and creative results–at work and in life. In today’s world, yesterday’s methods just don’t work. Veteran coach and management consultant David Allen shares his breakthrough methods for stress-free performance that he has introduced to tens of thousands of people across the country. … [blah blah blah]”
Ok, maybe they don’t say it most succinctly. Instead, let me tell you my goal:
Organize my life.
Now, let’s illustrate (in one sentence) the intended successful outcome of that goal:
To develop and fully implement an organized structure that will help me gain some control over all the things I want to accomplish but am not accomplishing.
Finally, let’s break that down and determine what the “next action” is that I can perform to bring that goal to fruition:
Read Getting Things Done.
Great. Now, when I finish reading this, or more likely, as I continue to read this, the next action will also include “Follow the steps that David outlines to create some freaking structure.”
I’ve got a lot of things that I’ve let get out of control. From the car situation to the job situation to the house to school to family (not enough time to visit them!) to my budget. I’m still doing everything I absolutely need to, and I’m still living a happy life, but I’m innately far more stressed than I should be. Tension should not be my natural state. Freaking out about all the things I’ve neglected to do today should not be part of my night-time process before going to sleep. Unfortunately, these things really are the case. And it’s time to do something about it.
So I’m creating a new category here where I will document my progress. For now, we’ve done only one exercise. We documented our one most pressing (read: distracting) project, which I pointed out above. I’m not sure if I’m weird or completely normal for ending up with a next action of “do what you were doing before you stopped doing that thing to do the exercise that it told you to do.” Funny, that. But it’s part of the process.
The thing I can say so far, though, is that I feel like I already have a leg up on this. He’s talking about executives and whatever that have totally unmanageable lists that contain no action whatsoever. I don’t know how to write lists of that sort. Be happy? My lists are always actions. Buy eggs. Repair car. Organize room. Build shelves. Call Dad. The problem is not making actionable lists for me. The problem is organizing those THOUSANDS of actions into a structure that makes sense so that I can attack them in the most logical order of priority.
I returned from my typing to read this next paragraph in the book:
“For example, in the last few minutes, has your mind wandered off into some area that doesn’t have anything to do with what you’re reading here? Probably. And most likely where your mind went was to some open loop, some incomplete situation that you have some investment in. … And what did you do about it? Unless you wrote it down and put it in a trusted “bucket” that you know you’ll review appropriately sometime soon, more than likely you /worried/ about it. Not the most effective behavior: no progress was made, and tension was increased.”
Truth.
