Time Managment for busy people: My Take on Getting Things Done
Managing your time is a huge problem for any entrepreneur [link to Jennie’s article]. One of the biggest processes for time management is David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD). For the uninitated, GTD might seem like a lot of work, but once you get going, it will make you a productivity ninja (but without shurikens).
Quick Overview
GTD is based on two objectives:
1. capturing everything that needs to be done – now, later, someday in the future – get it out of your head and onto paper
2. disciplining yourself to make decisions right away about any inputs – e.g. is this actionable or not?
It is based on 5 rough steps:
Collect > Process > Organise > Review > Do
which translates to:
Set up buckets to collect inputs > Define what to do with each input (Do/Delegate/Defer) > Do the apprioriate thing according to your decision > Look through your lists > Do what you think you should do at that moment according to Context, Time Available, Energy Available and Priority.
Tips to Get Started
If you’re getting started, here’s two tips:
1. Listen to the audio book – don’t bother with the book. It’s too dry and there’s nothing like listening to David Allen actually explaining the whole thing with humourous examples.
2. Find out what works for you – everyone has a different version of GTD – that’s one of the best aspects!
3. Don’t try and do everything at all once – start slow, if you try to implement everything in one day will just result in disaster. GTD is about developing new habits and these don’t come overnight.
Advantages of GTD
Peace of Mind – You get all the things that you need to remember out of your head. If you’re in charge of lots of things, its all out and written down. You won’t even know how amazing that feels until you’ve done it.
Being a productivity Ninja – People start asking: “How can you do all this stuff at the same time?”
Clarity on Next Tasks – To write a to do list, you actually need to clarify what exactly needs to be done. Knowing what you have to do is halfway to doing it. David Allen mentions it’s fine to have “research” projects, such as “Research: Car insurance quotes”
Spending time doing things that you want – GTD is about clearing your head so that you can prioritise what you want to do in that moment rather than what you think you need to do.
Disadvantages of using GTD:
Takes a lot of time – Weekly reviews can take 1-2 hours; monthly reviews can take a lot more (my August review took 3-4 hours; but that’s because I did quite a lot of thinking/planning for this one). The more you get into the habit, the less time it’ll take.
Takes a lot while to train yourself – GTD is about forming habits. It takes time to get into the routine. I’ve been following it for 4 months and there’s still so much to learn.
Makes you too eager – one quite negative effect (I find) is that it makes you too eager to reply to emails. This might sound a bit strange, but sometimes, there are situations where you don’t want to reply for a little while. It’s harder (not impossible) to cater for those situations.
My Implementation [for reference]
Collect
Office Inbox – box to keep any bits and pieces in, e.g. scrap notes.
Gmail Inbox – self explantory
Mobile phone – I’ve set up my N95 to sync with Outlook, which in turns syncs with Toodledo (see below). It’s a faff to set up, but it works well.
Moleskine Diary – For any seminars/meetings/conferences I go to. I could have used a normal notebook for this, but with a diary, I can have a rough idea of when the meeting was and flick through that month. To the amusment of my friends, I also have a contents page for my diary.
Facebook/Twitter/Webpages – Not really collection ‘buckets’ – just places where I might find information.
Process
Email – I keep a zero inbox. When an email comes in, if it takes less than 2 minutes, I reply. If it takes longer, it gets labelled and archived:
@Next Action – Action Item
@Waiting For – Waiting for some action
$Sept/Oct/Nov – Not an action item now, but I need to remember in Sept/Oct/Nov (there’s a separate label for each)
Then sometimes it gets these labels too, just to remind myself what action I’m supposed to do with it:
TODO/ TOREAD/TOREPLY/TOTHINK
ToDo list
Toodledo – I’ve used many different todo lists, including Remember the Milk (RTM) and Google’s own Task list, but for its cross-platform goodness, Toodledo is amazing (Desktop app, web app, outlook sync. email and twitter). I love its “Bulk add” option – a text box which processes each new line as a new item.
Most importantly, it allows multiple ways of sorting your list.
Contexts – items are tagged with contexts. If you’re at home, there’s no point looking at the Office list and vice versa.
Folders – items are also tagged with what project it’s associated with. e.g. Thesis, StartupCafe, Rugby
Priorities – there are 5 levels available in Toodledo:
3 (Top) for items I have to do and bad things will happen if I don’t
2 (High) for items I should really do
1 (Medium) for items I should do, if I have time
0 (Low) for items I can do
-1 (Negative) for my Someday/Maybe list
The majority of the list is set to 0; I go through the list and review assign the priorities according to that day. This is less time consuming than it seems, since you’re likely to only re-prioritise a few items on your list (unless you’re having a really, really bad day).
Storage/Reference
Evernote – Clips from webpages for information, stores any rough ideas/braindump, stores my “Places where I have put things list” (which is invaluable since I get stressed out trying to find the chequebook/usb stick/ oyster card).
Review
End of Day Review – I write myself a little “important to do” list and stick it on my desk. It reminds me what I need to do when I come in the next morning.
Weekly Review – Sunday mornings are my review days. My office is empty and I get to put away things without disturbing anyone. I schedule Resnooze.com to send me a reminder email on Sunday morning so when I get in, it reminds me what I have to do.
Monthly Review – 1st Sunday of every month I sit down for a good couple of hours and go through my 2-30,000 feet (GTD lingo for higher level goal setting). I have a list of goals for 6 months and then one for each month. I start by review my targets for the past month and how I performed. Then a list of goals for the forthcoming month according to the 6 month list
Managing your time is a huge problem for any entrepreneur. One of the biggest processes for time management is David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD). For the uninitated, GTD might seem like a lot of work, but once you get going, it will make you a productivity ninja (but without shurikens).
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