Get Things Done and Become More Productive

Sounds good right, I mean who wouldn't trade stress for greater productivity? It turns out it's not exactly that easy.

We stumbled upon Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen and decided it was a book worth investing in; we both read it cover to cover in a weekend.

A fantastic, life altering read!

Allen's main idea is that your brain loses productivity when it is bogged down by a million things to do, so by removing all of these things from your head you greatly increase the ability to get things done. A good analogy, and one he uses in the book, is when your computer tries to do too many things at once and the computer's memory or RAM fills to capacity resulting in slowness or a computer crash; your brain is like the computer and can't handle too many tasks at once.

In Part I of the book: "The Art of Getting Things Done", Allen outlines the tremendous value that proper amounts of control and organization have in life and the increased quality one can realize by managing these processes. In the second section, Practicing Stress-Free Productivity, Allen uses practical real life examples and introduces a physical system for getting things out of your head, onto paper, and done.

A recent weekend my fiancee and I decided to implement his strategy. It was hard to get going, but now that we are immersed in the system it is really making an impact.

Here is our short description of the process, our implementation, and the outcome:

We have always had some trouble with being consistently productive and more-often-than-not tend to procrastinate until things were about ready to implode. So after reading the book and getting excited about making some serious changes, the first thing you need to do is find or pickup some supplies, including an Electronic Label maker. Now we know what you are thinking: "yeah right I'm not spending cash on a stupid label maker!" We thought the same thing, but listened to his several paragraph argument for that simple device and drank the cool aid. It was the best $26.97 we have spent in a log time. So with our magic labeler, some folders, and a chunk of a Saturday we began.

The next step involves collecting allthe stuff you have to do, stuff on the calendar, and in your head. We mean everything. You pile all of your stuff into an "In-Box". This tray (and in the beginning organization phase a 10' radius around it) holds everything that you can possibly think of that you need to act on. Things that can't fit, or that don't have a concrete representation you write down on a piece of paper and put the paper in the In-Box as a trigger to remind you of the thing it refers to. For example, "change the oil in the Corolla" could be written on sheet and added to the mass, where as "continue to read the book "A Random Walk Down Wall Street: Completely Revised and Updated Edition" could be just be added.

The next thing you do is process the In-Box. You start at the top and literally work your way down until everything is either done, delegated, or sorted.

Starting with determining what the item is and if it is actionable, different branches are taken. If it is not actionable it is immediately trashed, stored/organized as reference materials, or put into a tickler ( a self reminding physical calendar system ) for sometime in the future.

If the item is actionable, then the fun begins:
If something takes less than 2 minutes you do it right away. An example of this is something like: send an email to Mom as a thank-you for the cookies. Another example would be to take the chicken out of the freezer to defrost.

If the thing you pull out takes longer than 2 minutes to complete it is deemed a "project", large or small, and you figure out the specific next action you can do. If you need to delegate the item to someone else you do it at this point.

An example something that falls into these categories might be to do a full load of laundry where the next concrete step is to collect the laundry into the basket. You add this item to your list of things to do at the next available time. Having a small notepad for the "next available time" list is key. You write both the item (Laundry) and the next task to do (Laundry - collect in the basket) on the list.

A different example here might be having to create a presentation for a conference in a few weeks, where the next concrete step is simply getting more comfortable speaking and organizing your thoughts. They key here is to write the next step you need to complete in order to start this project, even if the step is small you still need do to it before you can do anything else.

Writing down the steps really helps clear your brain so it doesn't get overwhelmed. i.e. "Ahhh! I have this huge project and presentation on Friday! I don't even know where to start!" - well, you start by getting figuring out what you need to covey and how. After that you sit down and figure out the single next small step.

You go down your pile until everything in the In-Box is done, or sorted onto a list with the next action written down. You can have more than one list if it helps, and we have several. We have a joint "errands" list that we keep by the door, we each have our own "next available time", "next time at a computer", and "to do at work" lists. We also have long term project lists, and a "someday/maybe" list for things we would like to do at some point but don't have a specific time in mind. Things on my fiance's someday/maybe list include getting back into sketching and finishing the knit vest I started. I have done some things on this list, and when I have it has felt great. In fact it feels good when you do anything on any of the lists. The peace of mind that comes from knowing everything you have to do is accounted for is amazing. These aren't really "to-do" lists in the traditional sense, but you end up doing a lot more with them.

So after things are set up, and at the start of each day you sit down at your in-box that has been updated from the day before with all the new things you need to get done, and go through it as needed. Then you go down your lists and accomplish things. Things that you want to look at later can be put on your calendar or placed in a "tickler"; an item that reminds you of future events based on the current contents of a folder labeled with each day of the month. If you have a utility bill to pay by the 18th that you need to get in the mail by the 10th, you can put it in the tickler folder marked the 9th of this month.

If you stick to it and keep your in-box and lists up to date then you don't have to worry about things you need to do; you can relax in the thought that everything you need to do is accounted for, you know when things are due, and you can complete the next action steps that make the most sense at the time.

Since we've started this system we have done pretty well. There have been some setbacks with busy days and laziness, (always remember the saying "it's easy to and it's easy not to" by Jim Rohn) but when we actually sit down and follow the system it is amazing how much we accomplish. I know in the past there have been things I had meant to do for weeks and would either forget or put off, but when I saw them on my list, and saw how easy the next step was, I would just get it done. It's like Nike's slogan: (You) Just Do It!

This book is a must read if you want to get your life a little more organized or you find yourself in a cycle of not getting much done. Even if you don't end up following his system the book will definitely help you get a better hold on where your life is and a better understanding of the things you need to do each day.