As small business owners we are under constant pressure to be efficient and organized. So many demands from so many directions cause many important details to fall through the cracks. This is why we decided to start a new series called “Productivity School” to guide those looking to improve their productivity and learn tips, tricks and methods from those who have come before them.
To kick this series off properly, we debated which productivity method would be good to start with. After much discussion we decided that David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” or GTD would be appropriate. While productivity concepts are great, getting the tasks completed is really what it is all about for people in today’s crazy time compressed world. So let’s get started and talk about “Getting Things Done”.
The Basics of Getting Things Done or GTD
In 2007, someone gave me David Allen’s Getting Things Done book as a present. Everyone I knew that read it, loved it. So I gave it a read but I didn’t really get it. I had been doing the stuff I needed to do for years so why was this so revolutionary?
Toward the end of 2008 with my life getting busier on the personal side and the demands of work still increasing with responsibility, I needed to get my day-to-day task management under control. So I sat down with a good friend of mine who really explained GTD to me in a way I could understand and I finally got the point of GTD – when something comes in, do it, file it or toss it.
In his book, David Allen uses the basic concept of “Mind Like Water.” It is really about just get that action/task/thing out of your head and recorded so you can focus on the task at hand.
GTD is based on five major phases – COLLECT, PROCESS, ORGANIZE, REVIEW, and DO.
COLLECT – Starting Off with the Big Purge
The initial step in the GTD process is usually the hardest and it involves gathering all of your files, scraps of papers, sticky notes, digital notes and everything else related to projects and things you are working on. David Allen calls this the “Mind Sweep.” Initially, this might seem like an overwhelming task but once you understand that gathering and capturing all of this in one place will free you up to do more important things – like getting those things done.
PROCESS – Taking Action Early, Quickly and Regularly
First you have to look at each thing that comes across your path and ask a basic question – is this thing actionable? If it is not then you either delete it/throw it away, file it for reference or put it in the someday/maybe folder. Someday/Maybe can be anything – like taking a trip or learning a language. It is a place where actions will take place, just not right now.
If it is actionable then you ask two big questions – What is the successful outcome? AND THEN what is the next action?
Then you will either Do it (less than a two-minute action), Delegate it (are you the best person to do this?), or Defer it (to be done on a specific day or as soon as possible).
ORGANIZE – GTD is all about Projects and Contexts
We mentioned earlier that if something is not actionable you have one pathway (delete it, file it, someday/maybe it) and if it is actionable you have another pathway (Do it, Delegate it or Defer it). When tasks are actionable they are either single actions or projects. The two main things in GTD are Projects and Contexts.
Projects are essentially more than one action with dependency and grouping in the same place. Projects can be a life-saver as you are able to group things in a proper place and are distilled into better bite-size chunks.
Contexts are modes in which you will handle the task. After consulting friends who have used the GTD system and reworked it over and over, they all said to keep it simple. Otherwise you will spend more time classifying and categorizing things than actually doing them. So I kept to the two areas of my life – PERSONAL, WORK – these two major areas are essentially the major buckets. That’s it. Just two.
Then I looked at how I handle the information. Again KEEP IT SIMPLE. I do four primary things – Run Errands, Email, Phone Calls and Using my Mac. Hence the contexts of EMAIL, ERRANDS, PHONE, MAC. When you incorporate the three simple categories you get this final list:
- Email: Personal
- Email: Work
- Errands
- Home
- Online
- Phone: Personal
- Phone: Work
REVIEW – Lessons in Not Falling Off the Wagon
During the first three months of really using the system I learned a lot about myself, my approach to time management and that not everything can be automated with a piece of software. Like every New Year’s resolution we start with gusto and great energy and somewhere along the way you let the busy tasks of life get in the way. Like all good habits, you must reinforce it every day or at least every other day to make it stick. When I started I felt this release to get everything out of my brain. Over the first month I never felt more productive in my life. However, after a few months, I seemed to have fallen back into plugging tasks into my calendar again and not getting them into GTD.
Then a light bulb went off. I finally realized the core of what David Allen had been trying to tell me in his book: with everything off your mind and stored, you are free to just be you and enjoy life a little more.
But you must do a weekly review to keep things flowing properly.
What I discovered from the weekly review is that it can be a “backup dump” in combination with a review and prep for the week. I am a planner and want to get the most out of my time so I can give the most to the task at hand. Here is the basic approach to doing a weekly review:
- Find all loose papers
- Go through last week of calendar
- Go through next week of calendar
- Review projects and action items. Should I add a project for any action item?
- Am I waiting for anything?
- Go through Someday/Maybe List
- Are there any new, wonderful, hare-brained, creative, thought-provoking, risk-taking ideas I can add?
This actually allows me to remove tasks I have already done but not checked off on the system I have set up. It allows me to rework my calendar based on new items I add to the list (usually 10-20 more) to get the most out of the GTD system.
Do I miss a week? Sure. I have some weekends where I just am happy to get to bed at a good hour to get up on Monday morning without being a grouch. If I miss my Sunday review, I work it in some time on Monday afternoon or evening after work.
DO – Listening to Intuition and Tuning the Execution
As you move your through weekly reviews and process things that are ultimately organized for action there are finer points in order to do things in the most effective way. Take each action and look at it first by context, then by the time available, then the energy you have available and then finally by priority. This helps you order things and get them done in a manner that works for you.
Tools to Get Your GTD Groove On
The whole point of GTD is to process something, get it out of your brain and into the system immediately to be organized later. For my GTD process, I use three tools – OmniFocus, Evernote and iCal/Google Calendar. OmniFocus is awesome and with it little auto entry tool I can live GTD when I am on my computer. I hope to use the iPhone software when I get one in the next few months. In the meantime, I sync it with iCal and sync that with Google Calendar. I have two calendars – personal and work and I use Google Sync on my iPhone so I am pretty efficient. I use Evernote to capture project information and organize it in the same context when I am using my Mac.
Notice I said a lot about “when I am using my Mac.” I thought I could use only technology, but as my friend Jessie Newburn showed me, you need paper. She is my opposite in that she is all paper and almost no computer. You can do a search on term “hipster PDA” or “Paper GTD.”
The easiest way for you to get started is to pick up a copy of David’s book and check out his site DavidAllen.com or his great GTD blog GTDTimes.com
Are you using GTD in your productivity toolbox? We would love to hear from you.
More to come with Productivity School
Over the coming months we will cover productivity methods like the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and the Pomodoro Technique. We will cover some of the productivity software tools out there and how to maximize your office workflow. We will also talk about how doing nothing can actually make you more productive. (Stay tuned for that one!)