Thank you, David Allen. I mean that. Thank you.
Life stresses people out sometimes, and I'll tell you why (well, one reason anyway)--because stuff comes at you so fast and even randomly sometimes that you feel like Keanu Reeves in the Matrix trying to dodge bullets. Except, of course, it's in real-time not slow motion.
That's where David Allen comes in. As an avid Lifehacker reader, I've heard about this "Getting Things Done" or "GTD" for quite some time now, never really knowing what it was. Then I read an article in Wired (I actually get the print version, though -- thanks for the gift, Rach!). It seemed, for some reason, to get a little more life after reading it there.
I decided my life was far too overwhelming (that is, the bullets were coming and I wasn't having as much success as Neo), and that I had to do something about it. Enter Getting Things Done. I ordered the paperback version on eBay for like $8. It took a while to get here, but what do I expect for $8?
When it finally got here, I CONSUMED it. I read the whole book in three days (for me, that's pretty amazing since I never really have time to read)--but this was important... almost as important as actually doing work (I read small chunks of the book while waiting for an email back from a client during flurries of debugging).
I finally feel like I've got a handle on things, and that's great. When something comes in, I put it into my "trusted system," and once there I know that it's not going to be forgotten about. I can rest--no more psychic vampires eating away at the back of my brain. (That's a lot of the premise--that when things are in your mind they are consuming your thought, so you can't relax. One of my favorite parts of the book is David describing how you walk by that garage you need to clean every week, and every week you feel guilt about it. Once you are involved in GTD, you do a review to see if that job is feasible; if it's not, you get to walk by the garage and not feel guilty: "Ha! Not this week, garage.")
The five phases of workflow are Collect, Process, Organize, Review, and Do. Before you really get started Getting Things Done, though -- you first need to set up your workspace. I finally have a workspace I'm proud of, no more stacks of books and papers all around, because I have a place for them (yes, this took spending over $100 at Staples, but I can write it off). My clean new workspace, of which I'm oh-so-proud:
That's not quite it, since I also have a real inbox behind the chair, and my "working set" of files (and currently, a cat) also on there. Nonetheless, it was refreshing to remove some barriers to my workflow (I actually moved the bookcase and whiteboard over just so I could more easily write on the whiteboard, love it!). I moved the shredder out from under my feet, put away the guitar I (unfortunately) never play anymore (at least getting it out of my workspace), and shifted around the stuff in my drawers, all to support my new mode of Getting Things Done.
As someone who's an incredible Internet fanboy, I am actually using a lot of paper still. One thing I realized was that I do use a lot of paper, despite being a mostly virtual business (something I realized going through this process). There's still client contracts that need to be signed and faxed, printouts of stuff I just need to have in front of me, and handouts from my graduate school classes. All of that is now filed away in my A-Z general reference system. Paper.
My "tickler file" is paper, too. I know I could implement some kind of virtual tickler with, say, Google Calendar, but for now I am just keeping things in the realm of paper when I can. I am also making liberal use of the hipster PDA, which allows me to capture things into my trusted system as I think of them. I keep one in the drawer by my bed, and one on my desk (which I take with me when I leave).
Next time, I'll give you some insight into my initial "Collect & Process" phase, and introduce how I'm tracking all of my other stuff (I'll give you a hint: Drupal). Until then, thanks for reading! David Allen suggests, at the end of the book, that one of the best things you can do for your own GTD system is to share it with others!
