Getting Things Done
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A year ago, when I was on paternity leave, I decided that I needed to be better
at time management. I think that my inspiration was simply the recommendation
of the book, Getting
Things Done
I do not believe that there is a best time management system; I just know what motivates me and what helps me be more productive. In the past I would have said “being more productive means you get more done.” I now take a more nuanced view. Specifically, given that I cannot possibly do all of the things I’d like to, I instead must decide on my goals and priorities and decide, daily, which tasks will further those.
Also, different styles work for different people. I have a coworker who is happy with his own productivity and does almost no planning but instead deals with either whatever he thinks is important that day or whatever is forced upon him by circumstances. I want to stress though, that one thing I really like about GTD (versus, for example, The Pomodoro Technique) is that it applies in many more aspects of life, and not simply work as a Software Engineer.
🔗 Getting Things Done
Based on my reading the fundamental premises of GTD are that:
- You cannot get everything done.
- You cannot simply rely on your memory.
I agree with both of these; fundamentally part of being productive is being strategic about what you take on. While it may be enjoyable to do something like alphabetize your cookbooks or read twitter for two hours, possibly neither of them may further you in your personal goals.
🔗 The Artifacts
Core to GTD are a few artifacts or repositories of information. How this works for different individuals varies, so if this sounds remotely worth considering to you, get the book and you may go a different way. The repositories are:
- The Inbox
- A set of unprioritized lists, called “Next Actions,” that are basically todo lists
- A list called “Waiting” of things you are blocking on (or in my system, want to track)
- Project Plans which include their own Next Actions and reference
- An Incubator, for long term plans or ideas
- A reference system
For me all of these (except for physical mail) are digital and in two very simple text files. Here is a tiny example of some of each section:
Notes.otl:
IN
R studio
R's tidyverse
Regexp::optimizer
blog how to commit to open source
blog vim debugging
New tubing for carbonator
mid:[email protected]
https://twitter.com/CookingIssues/status/865020970842673152?s=09
blog re abstractions
blog re splitter
Good, Short talks
http://confreaks.tv/videos/bangbangcon2017-i-got-the-computer-to-find-words-with-good-anagrams-and-throw-away-the-boring-ones
https://youtu.be/vm1GJMp0QN4?t=17m45s
Next Actions
*
Read Stevens Chapter 4
Agendas
Catherine
Laptop
https://hackernoon.com/lighting-by-hand-2-stitching-lines-together-24edc9f819bf#.nlkfarb7u
Add ODBC on Linux testing to DBICH
Lots of Time
100 Ideas! [100:10:1]
Earthquake Plan (2h?)
http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/prep/
Work
big-homes
mid:[email protected]
Update Reaper
Create ticket
reduce max times
email seodev, searchdev, tech
Create "would have reaped" report
Waiting
Fogbugz tickets
/candidate speed-up
bugzid:36471
https://logsearch.prod.ziprecruiter.com/goto/ecf76f022165dae7e25a1ea91f9f6144
Kickstarter Stuff
Paradise Lost
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1183462809/paradise-lost-first-contact
Backed Dec 2013
Estimated Dec 2014
To Ship
Project Plans
Learn plant names
Next Steps
Start using book
Identify plants not in book
Physical Filing System
Next Steps
Make scanning easier to avoid system
Incubation
Books
Fiction
Anna Karenina
https://twitter.com/neilbowers/status/846078996907470848?s=09
Arthur C Clarke's against the fall of night/the city and the stars
Recommended by Zach 22Oct2016
A Canticle for Lebowitz
Recommended by Lee
A Cry Like a Bell
Melinda
Non-fiction
Advanced UNIX Programming by Rochkind
Advanced Data Structures
Art of R Programming: A Tour of Statistical Software Design (Humble)
Kon-Tiki
xchg rax,rax
Comedies
Brooklyn 99
Master of None (S2)
Dramas
The Path
Hannibal
Deadwood
The actual file is much longer (about three thousand lines) and the reference file is not shown at all. I’ll go over each section.
🔗 The Inbox
Here’s how the inbox works for me: step one, which I try to do throughout each
day but most especially Friday morning, is to get to “inbox zero” in my email,
“tab zero” in my browser, and basically not use such systems as a way to
represent undone tasks at all, and instead place them in my one true inbox. For
tabs this is trivial, as I just place the link there if there is work to be
done, or close it if not. For emails I use a custom URI schema, mid:
that allows me to treat email the same way.
After all other defacto inboxes are cleared, I spend a few minutes migrating
things from the inbox to the other repositories. So for example if the link is
simply some page about some module I want to remember, I file it away in the
reference section. If it some task I need to do at work, I move it to the
Work Next Actions section. The goal is to have the inbox basically always be
empty; mine is a mess right now.
🔗 Waiting
I find this incredibly useful. The idea is that if I order something I place it
in the To Ship section of waiting, and if I need to follow up or anything I
have a link to the confirmation email, the order number, and whatever other
information might be helpful. Similarly I have a dedicated section for tickets
at work that I want to track. There are lots of things I am waiting on that are
not shown here, but this should make it clear how I use it.
🔗 Project Plans
Typically a project is any multi step process. So for instance Update Reaper
in the Work Next Actions repository should really be a Project, but I was too
busy coming up to speed at work to correctly file it away. I do not use
Projects as much as I would like to, and when I reread GTD I suspect I will
start using them more. I do use them as a way to have reference for projects,
often with various links to extra information and whatnot, but there were no
examples I could show that would be useful out of context.
🔗 Incubation
This section, while maybe less useful than the others in day-to-day use, was actually something I did before I started using GTD. I use it as a place to keep ideas for future projects, books I want to read, movies I want to watch, etc. Because the system is well structured I tend to track where the idea came from, so that if a person recommended a book I can follow up and thank them if I liked it.
🔗 Reference
What it says on the tin. I have listings of Guitar Tabs, various links to Linux stuff, commands I can never seem to remmeber, the rules for parking in Santa Monica, and lots of other random bits and bobs.
🔗 The Calendar
I didn’t mention the calendar section before, even though it’s part of GTD. I currently am pretty bad at using my calendar. When I reread GTD I would like to add to my current (very basic) software so that things get enqueued to the inbox automatically on a given day, as well as get into the habit of reviewing my calendar every Friday when I review the rest of my stuff.
For what it’s worth, I think part of my problem with the calendar is that Google Calendar is pretty bad. If I could figure out a way for Google Calendar to hide all other calendars by default it might be useful to me, but every time I look at my calendar I end up having to reconfigure it. Maybe I should look at other software to integrate with it, but that sounds terrible.
Maybe I just need to write some extremely simple software for interacting with the calendar, even though I really do not want to.
🔗 The Process
For me the process boils down to keeping the above mentioned repositories of
information populated (usually twice a day, at dawn and after lunch) and then
picking from the currently appropriate Next Actions section. At work it’s
generally easy. At home I may use the Catherine Agenda to discuss something
with my wife that I wanted to remember, or if the kids are down for a nap I will
likely look at the Lots of Time section.
Unless it is Friday morning I typically only look at Next Actions; but on
Friday morning I will check the Waiting sections, ensure nothing already done
is in Next Actions, peruse the Project Plans to see if I need to migrate any
of their respective Next Actions to the central Next Actions, and then if
for some reason I have boatloads of time or feel like it, go through
Incubation, though that is rare.
I mentioned that I have software to automate some of this. I had high hopes for
a really powerful tool to automate a ton of this, but as it stands today it
allows me to add items to IN or specific parts of the incubator by sending a
text message to a certain number.
For example if I send q in start taxes a start taxes line will get added to
the end of IN. That honestly is almost completely sufficient, but the other
sections actually predated IN so I kept them. To be clear I can also send q
drama Hannibal and it adds Hannibal to the Drama section. There are many
other things I can enqueue, but honestly I think that less is more when it
comes to software helping you automate this kind of thing.
If I could spend my time making the perfect time management software, it would likely be some kind of AI that would limit my consumption of information more than anything else. As attractive as that idea sounds, I think that a better option is to just stop consuming uncurated information (Facebook, Twitter) and read a book or whatever.
I do not know if you could say that I am more productive than others because of this system. I am confident, though, that my system has fewer holes in it. As far as I can tell I stay on top of my email (all of it) and no one else I work with does. This does not make me more efficient, it just means that I am more aware of the various things going on.
This system may sound boring to you, but for me I find that having all of this
information available at my fingertips very exciting. Sometimes I will find
myself feeling uninspired, and I can simply dive into the Inspiration section
in my incubator and find all kinds of miscellaneous links to just that. If this
system doesn’t sound like something for you, that’s fine, but if it does, buy
the book!
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