I’ve recently read the famous book by David Allen, Getting Things Done. I have to say that it was very good reading which I enjoyed thoroughly and really has motivated me on Going GTD. In spite of some things being common sense, you get the Columbus Egg feeling wanting to strike a big “AHA!”. Some of the things on the book people do instinctively, but others we just foul up terribly and lose north. For me there are two major points that I get from the book, which really help:

• Next Actions
• Lists

Next Actions

There is nothing like having next actions for your plans or for your To Do list. One thing I use to do was to roam endlessly through my To Do Lists, trying to pick something to do, and eventually procrastinating as hell, since I couldn’t find a bone to chew on. Now, I know that my lists were in a such messed up state, that I would consider myself a hero if I had done something exceedingly positive with them. I need concrete things to get moving. And also, small things I can strike out, marking them done, and then feeling good about them and myself. And a major hint I picked, brainstorming is a To Do Item, even though I always never considered it. A person can schedule “thinking about this” as next action. And for me, it was about half of my Items!

Lists

Make lists. And when you’re done, make more lists. And when you’re done doing that, update your lists. Small lists, big lists, medium lists, everything is useful, as long as it captures you’re current thoughts, and “vacuums” your mind. I keep at least two lists. If you read the book, i keep a 20.000 feet list. That is, something were I keep what a project is, what it means to me and what I want from it. This is the core point: - what I want from the project. It’s the most useful way of getting things in order. I found out that about a third of my stuff I don’t even care about, so just dump it. And that allowed me to regain focus on the other things. The second list is my Next Actions list, where I detail things to a point where I can just do them. I can’t express how useful this is.

But don’t take my word for it, read the book. Even though some parts of the book might not have been that interesting to me (I’m not actually going to use a tickler file), it’s still easy reading and gives out a few thoughts (I went out and got in baskets, oh joy).

On another positive note, this new methodology has really decreased my procrastination index, and I’m actually more productive, which is nice. But more on procrastination later, since I also picked up a few tricks that I’ll share in the future.