Tag Archives: GTD

Gumption traps and how to get motivated, part 4: Over-prioritizing

Over-prioritizing. That’s what I call it when I stare at my list and agonize over what is the most important thing. To be fair, it is important to prioritize your to do list. But don’t spend more time on the list than you spend on the items in it. One thing I like about the GTD system is that you don’t put things back in the inbox. Until hard-landscape items come up (appointments and meetings) you work on the next thing. All of the next things are treated as equal priority. Prioritizing next things can be a full time job, even above doing next things.
If it’s an official Next Thing, then it made it through your weekly review. It must be important. If it’s important, it doesn’t need to be the most important thing to be done next. It just needs to be done. In that spirit, I’ll keep this brief.

-Peter

Gumption traps and how to get motivated, part 2: Exercise

Exercise is a major way I stay motivated. When I was in high school I ran with the cross country team. When I was younger than that, I ran with my Dad. All told, including the intermittent months off, I imagine I’ve run an average of about 6 miles a week since 1995. Fitness guru? Maintaining my appeal for for my girlfriend? Well, that is an issue… but self motivation is important, too. During the weeks when I run, I feel like I’m more awake. On a day that I run, no matter what else happens, I have one string positive in the accounting of the day.
Of course, if you’re having trouble motivating yourself, it will be hard to motivate yourself to run. But as step 1 to a higher ‘energy level,’ you could do a lot worse than a 20 minute jog… or a walk for that matter.

Have a look around for some good shoes. I happen to like Saucony shoes for my wide feet.

Other than that, just make it part of your routine. Substitute walking to the grocery store form time to time. Carrying two bags for a mile is a nice little workout.

-Peter

Some more ideas on how to Get Things Done: the Moleskine

I like to organize my time using low-tech tools. I got off on the “Chandler Project” software for a while. I talked about that in a previous post. It was my one excursion from paper-based organizing, and it was OK, but ultimately frustrating.
The hardest side effect of moving to a digital organization scheme was that I tended to ‘orbit’ my computer to make sure I was not forgetting something. I like computers, so that was quite natural, but it added more distractions (there’s a reminder? Ooh – I wonder what’s on the internets!).
My preferred organizer is actually a combination of my own interpretation of Covey’s planner and my favorite Moleskine. The Moleskine is really my favorite part. They come in packs of three, the paper really takes the ink, and it means I always have a place to write any idea. I print out a weekly day planner in a size that will fit, folded, in the middle. I keep a page set aside for the week’s ‘bucket’ in which I write all the reminders that come to mind. Just in case my phone runs out of batteries, I have a lit of important numbers. Between that, a little pen, a pocket knife and and key chain light, I’m amazingly well prepared without carrying around much at all. The Moleskine even has a little pocket for receipts and such.

-Peter

GTD, consumerism, meaningful pursuits and their effect on motivation

I read a great post not long ago about how we could all slow down and do something meaningful. Then we wouldn’t need GTD tricks to get things done. We would want to get them done. I would like to call that desire to get things done, ‘gumption,’ in the spirit of Robert M. Persig and the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Clay Collins’ post was great in part because it recognized the plain and simple truth that we are often stuck not on some organizational issue, but a motivational issue. The GTD mentality can get you out of the overwhelmed inaction gumption trap, but there are plenty of other gumption traps.

The biggest, I think, is doing something that is not really important. If you find yourself thinking that you don’t care if a thing gets done or not, then no amount of external force, tricks, emotional speeches or anything else will make it seem like it is worth doing for long. Yet, somehow, for some of us, not doing this unimportant thing causes anxiety. That’s an amusing situational irony if I’ve ever found one.

On the other hand, if the project is meaningful, then it will be a lot easier.

Determining what is meaningful may be a pretty hard task in itself. It might take a lot of time and emotional energy. And being stuck in the grind is not the best place to start. But how can you get out of the grind without some greater passion to pull you away? That is the dark underbelly of consumerism. Don’t think. Buy. Unhappy? Buy more. That make you less happy and in debt? More depressed? Too overwhelmed to think of a better way of life? Perfect. Keep buying. It’s the addict cycle. The easiest cure for withdrawal symptoms is to not withdraw.

-Peter

The Chandler project, Getting things done (GTD), efficient code in the PC and in your life

I started using the Chandler Project a while back and I really liked it. It gives you tickler alarms for things you need to do plus a space for notes. So instead of a calendar where once the date is past, the event is gone, it’s a recurring reminder. It’s like a Jack Russel Terrrier, always jumping around and wanting attention. And every little thing can get recorded in its entries so when the reminder goes off, the appropriate info is at your fingertips. It’s based around the GTD model, which sounded interesting.

Alas, the software is still too slow for me. It’s open source and free, so I can’t complain. And the design is slick, so I hope they continue to refine it. But I can’t wait 8 seconds between when I click and when it responds. I could rifle through a paper cabinet in that amount of time. If you have a fast machine, it’s worth checking out.
But it did get me interested in the GTD mentality. That seemed interesting. I have not read the books yet, but they seem to me to be pretty common sense. There’s a lot there about how to ‘climb the ladder’ efficiently, but I’m not sure it goes as deeply into making sure that the ladder is against the right wall .
Here are a couple of the take-home usefuls from my experience with chandler:
1. Make a home for all tasks and make it a habit to put stuff in there. Be it an inbox, a moleskine notebook, a hipster or a PDA, there needs to be a central trusted place where tasks go. If you are spending mental cycles keeping track of what is going on tomorrow, next week, and this year, you can’t be fully involved in the task at hand. Call this the “bucket”.
2. Weekly, but not much more frequently than weekly, go through and decide what the priorities and goals of the next little while should be about. Don’t waste time on thing that are just urgent, make sure that they are also important. Consider the big picture. Go through the incubator.
3. Make a routine of de-cluttering your bucket. Whenever you hit a lull, (i.e. after a meeting, after a class, whatever) go through the bucket. Delegate those you can delegate. Perform the 2-min tasks that are important. Delete things that are not important. Schedule the important things that have a particular day/time into some device that will beep at you when it’s time. Finally, collapse all projects (open loops) into one, immediate, manageable task (plus a note to determine the next one after that). If there are other things concerning that project that are not next but need to be noted, file them with the rest of the notes on that task. If there’s something long-term that is not a task, file it in an incubator file. Everything that is not a next task on some open loop (project) should be gone. That’s brainspace you don’t need to be taking up.
4. Go to the top of the bucket again. Do that thing.

5. Repeat
Sometimes you won’t feel like doing that thing. We’ll address that tomorrow.
-Peter