Essay

Getting things done

By Scott Hards

I'm a really busy person. Between running a company, fathering two young children and building a new home, the last year of my life has been incredibly hectic. I've got so many things to do that keeping track of what needs doing is, in itself, a major task!

Most people use some kind of "to-do list" to keep track of what they need to be doing. But I ended up finding that my to-do list was too large to really keep track of everything clearly and to maintain focus.

Enter a man named David Allen.

Mr. Allen is a time-management consultant who, in 2000, penned a bestselling book called, "Getting Things Done." It's not a very long book, but it's packed with advice about how to create what is essentially the ultimate to-do list. His system now has a major following and "GTD" and "Getting Things Done" are now registered trademarks of his company!

The interesting thing is that most of his ideas seem really obvious when you first read them, even though you never would have thought of them yourself. Let's take a look at his four main concepts:

(1) Do a mind dump. You should write down everything you need to do, or want to do, ever. Absolutely everything. You can lower the amount of stress in your life significantly, Allen argues, because you don't have to worry that you might be forgetting something. Even when you're being lazy "you know exactly what you're not doing."

(2) Identify physical actions. Many people put something like "paint the bedroom" on their to-do list, but Allen points out that you cannot just simply "paint the bedroom." This is a project that needs to be broken down into individual, actionable steps. So something like "choose new color for bedroom" followed by "purchase the paint" is what should be on your list, not some vague project name.

(3) Set up contexts. You can put "buy milk" on your list, but when you're at the office you cannot buy milk, right? It doesn't make sense, therefore, to have something you cannot do staring at you on your list. Instead, assign a context, such as "home," "office," or "at computer," to all of your tasks and only pay attention to those that you are actually capable of working on at a given moment.

(4) Do a weekly review. Perhaps Allen's most important point is to sit down and spend an hour or so each week going over your lists. You can also take time then to look at your life from a broader perspective and plan longer-term goals. Making sure you've included everything — and excluded the dead wood — is key to making your system work.

Of course I cannot cover Allen's entire method in this essay; it took him a whole book! And while I cannot claim to be a perfect practitioner of the GTD system, it has sure helped me get through the last year better than I would have without it! If you're feeling too busy, why not give it a look yourself?

Shukan ST: May 18, 2007

(C) All rights reserved