Velodrome

Enjoying some cycling at the Manchester Velodrome (again) this weekend so no GTD-ing going on!

Goals – The Tyranny of Choice

I went to watch some cycling in Manchester at the weekend – the British National Championships. Whilst watching the cyclists go round and round the velodrome my mind turned to goals.

In a way athletes have it easy. OK, the training is hard and I can imagine the commitment to ones sport can be a big distruption to a ‘normal’ life. The training and competing also puts you under all kinds of stresses and strains both physically and mentally.

But, despite all of that, I do think it’s easier for athletes to pick a goal, as it will be intrinsic to their sport. So, outside of sport, what kind of goals are good to set? The choices are limitless, possibly a ‘tyranny of choice’, an oppressivly wide selection that leads us into the paralysis of indesion.

Can GTD help us here?

Folders galore

Some pics of my system. I’m using a cheap set of desk drawers from Ikea.

The files are labelled in the Classic-GTD style – there is a divider separating the ‘Action’ folders from the ‘Tickler’ folders.

One thing I really like about these physical folders is that I get a sense of the state of my world based on how heavy the files are and if they are a real squeeze to fit in the drawer.

Oh, and I do like a clear desk…

Scheduling regular tasks

#gtd Another problem I have is scheduling regular tasks. I’ve never really been one for routine but there are a few things that I’d like to accomplish that require it.

- Exercise – run a 5k to finish a marathon
- Playing/Learning the guitar
- Meditation – take this further
- Learn to speak Spanish

These are in my someday/maybe folder at the moment.

So what’s the problem with converting these to projects and actions? I think I am reluctant to put these into my calendar because I never seem to be able to be sure that I’ll have the time/energy/location (context) to do them.

GTD – only calendar firm commitments

So what’s the solution?

To be continued…

The Fundamentals?

I’ve just read through Francis Wade’s ebook “The New Time Management: Simply Focus on the Fundamentals, and Toss Away the Tips” (sign up at http://www.2time-sys.com/) and it makes good sense.

Any GTD-ers will recognise these seven ‘fundamentals’:

1. Capturing
2. Emptying
3. Tossing
4. Storing
5. Acting Now
6. Scheduling
7. Listing

I understand that ‘methodologies’ like GTD wrap these up with fancy talk, but that’s OK, I’m comfortable with that. As long as everything gets covered, it gets me to where I need to be.

Personally, what attracted me and has kept me going with GTD is that it fails gracefully and it’s easy to get back on the pony.

What am I talking about?

Well, sometimes I just have too much incoming – inboxes start over-flowing, nothing gets reviewed, the processing gradually grinds to a halt. With physical folders, I can feel them getting heavier and heavier. However, the core of the system still works even though it feels as though it is going to break – I haven’t ever reached the point where I say, ‘screw GTD, screw you David Allen, screw all these folders’.

Failing gracefully means I know I can still trust the system even though it’s going slow – it’s not going to spectacularly blow up. And knowing that it’s possible to recover the situation, gives me a spur to find that extra time to crunch through everything i.e. get back on the pony…

I find GTD is more ‘framework’ than productivity tips.

Anyway, I’m generally unsubscribing from mailing lists these days to minimise the distractions, but I’ll keep on Francis’s for a bit.

Making it all work?

I really need to read ‘Making it all work’ from beginning to end. I’ve started it once, but must have been distracted as I’ve abandoned it about a quarter way through.

What I’m really looking for is some confirmation that I’m using GTD to its full extent and if not, why not? I also have a problem with GTD that I suspect is pretty common and that is over-collecting, especially when moving from a physical system to an electronic one.

I keep my inboxes (physical, email and OmniFocus) at zero pretty much most of the time. I review these daily or half-daily when possible. Most of my ‘standard’ action files, such as ‘Calls’ etc are reviewed and generally empty too. I’m currently parallel running with physical folders and OmniFocus at the moment, which is working out OK.

However, I’m sure David Allen covers this, but my current problem appears to be that I have too many collections/projects/contexts, or too many things in some of those. It has become too easy to collect actions, create projects and contexts etc in the electronic world of OmniFocus.

Take ‘web pages that I’d like to read later’ (read/review) as an example of how clutter can build up. Historically these have built up in my browser bookmarks, which have been synced using X-marks (or whatever it’s called these days). Then I have a bunch of links that I’ve saved to OmniFocus in a read/review context. Then on top of that I have a new collection of links in ‘Read it later’. And do they ever get read? Nope.

So, thinking it through, the options are as follows (although I may have missed some)

1. Delete the lot – just use Google to find information (see email bankruptcy)
2. Pick one of the collection tools and put everything in there (use as a search archive)
3. Create a simple set of categories/tags and file everything away
4. Create a complex set of categories/tags and file everything away

I’m tempted by option 1 – if they’re not being read, then lose the lot. However, there must have been a reason to have saved the links in the first place – does knowing that there might be something useful in that pile add to my psychic clutter? In which case I should probably dump everything into one place…

Anyway, the GTD-er inside says, hang on – this is a project. Create a new project in OmniFocus ‘Clean up bookmarks’, and add a few actions to complete.

So far there’s no pain – so what am I moaning about. Well, here is yet another project to keep an eye on (review) and I’m starting to get a dilution of my review process. OK, so bookmarks are pretty trivial; it doesn’t matter if they get cleaned up or not in the overall scheme of things. But not all of these projects that spring up are so trivial.

Maybe it’s just me…

Anyway, now I’ve written this, I’m sure I’ll come up with a solution. Or maybe I’ll just finish reading ‘Making it all work’…

Why?

This picture above was taken a few weeks ago whilst on our honeymoon – a glass of wine whilst watching the sun go down behind Spanish mountains…

So why is it on the first post? Easy – after reading and then re-reading GTD a couple of years ago a number of things clicked into place and I realised that unless I do something (actions!) then I’m not going to get my business issues resolved, get out of debt, get married and have children. Oh, and to drive my own car!

Well it took a couple of years, but the honeymoon was a kind of symbolic closure on that set of ‘projects’ – OK, so that doesn’t sound romantic, but GTD literally helped get things done!