This is written by a guy with loads of experience in consulting for systems implementation and project management. Something that I am far far away from.

But essentially, here he shows you a personal GTD system that is basically free. It makes use of free Google Apps

Getting Things Done (GTD) , heard of it? Chances are you have and are probably using it to some extent. GTD is a extremely popular organizational method created by David Allen.It has been described as the productivity cult of the new info age.Over the years there have been many variations of this method, but the essence has remained same.The popularity of the system is evident from the number of systems that have become avilable that support. They range from simple papaer based systems to automated software systems. The post however is not about what GTD is , but about creating a GTD system using Google Apps.I will try to keep the information on what GTD is to the bare minimum, if you need more information or help on GTD. Just try Google search. There are a lot of excellent sources out there.(A comparison of the most popular GTD apps)

The Set-up

So why use Google Apps? Firstly It is free.All the Google applications used to set-up this system are free. Secondly it is accessible everywhere i.e You are not bound by system, hardware or software. You can access your system from anywhere as long as you are connected to Internet. You can even access it on your smart phones, both iOS,Android or Blackberry.However the most compelling reason for me is that I am yet to come across a application or a product which has all the components of a GTD system i.e. mail,to -do lists,calendar and a filing system.

Before jumping to the set-up details, lets quickly summarize the elements  of a basic GTD system

• The Inbox (Or the Capture System) – Dumping everything for later processing (Gmail,Google Tasks, Chrome Plug-ins)
• Next Action Lists – Storing your next actions (Google Tasks)
• Projects Lists – For storing your projects and associated tasks (Google Tasks)
• Waiting Lists – For your waiting and delegated tasks (Google Tasks)
• Calendar – For your scheduled events and tasks (Google Calendar)
• Reference Filing System – Storing for reference (Google Docs)

[Read the full article here @ around the CHAOS >>]

This is part of a series where i talk about my GTD experience and  my setup.

Part 1 here talks about my plan and overview of my GTD system

Part 2 here talks about why i eventually chose iPod Touch 2G as my main to do list console

Part 3 here talks about why i choose Appigo ToDo for iPhone as my main task manager

Part 4 here talks about how to plan for big projects and smaller projects

Part 5 here talks about how to make use of Contexts, Tags to Execute your tasks

Part 6 here discuss about how you can review projects better using iThoughts mind mapping software

In today’s article i will talk more about execution of tasks and how you do that with the help of contexts and tags.

So what are Contexts and Tags?

In a sense, contexts and tags are categories that you assign to your tasks or projects so that you can better manage them. The problem for most people is that no one gives them a systematic way or methodology of grouping things. Because of this, alot of people i know feels categories dun work.

The worse i seen are color categories in MS Outlook. The problem with that is, whenever you look at that category color, you starting thinking:

What did i tie that color to?

and then,

What should i be doing for the category that this color is tied to?

That is just a waste of brain power i feel.You take 2 steps in your head to finally come to review what you need to do. Most of the time, u take so long to remember what that color is for haha.

How David Allen Categorize is based on primarily 3 kinds of actionable task that you will do:

Location Based

These are categorized as location restrictions that stops you from doing other tasks that happens when you are in this context. Some Examples:

• @Errands
• @Commuting
• @Office
• @Home

Appigo ToDo Contexts

I usually have these contexts on my Appigo ToDo Context instead of Tags. Why i use context is because context on Appigo ToDo is because you can only select one context and not multiple. So essentially it means,

If i am at the office, i cannot be at home

I thought for location based categories these are the best. A note is that some people would include an @Anywhere category for tasks that you can do anywhere. I don’t have that in mine as if I don’t select a context to filter or i don’t assign one, it automatically means i can do it anywhere.

Mode,Chunk Based

This is abit more tricky. David Allen describes that there are tasks that when you are in that category you can be more productive doing them at one go. Mine would include:

• @Waiting For
• @To Contact
• @Online w Computer
• @Project A
• @Project B

Some people schedule themselves or have a mind trigger to let them know that they are in such a mode or schedule work chunks like these. They don’t belong to a certain location but if you are reviewing what you are waiting for to be done so that you can reach your objective, you might as well look at what other bottlenecks are there. Same as for online with computer. if you are online, might as well finish all you can do online.

On Appigo ToDo, I use Tags for these, more as a preference since I leave the location based categories as Context and those that i would need to select multiple categories as Tags. So it means that i can select @Waiting for and @To Contact to see bottle necks and people necessary to contact.

Multiple Tag Selection in Appigo ToDo

People Based

These are categories of stuff that you would want to review with a particular individual or group of individuals. Some common ones are

• @Boss
• @Project Team A
• @Colleague A
• @Wife

So as you can see, they are not location but adhoc meet ups or arranged meet ups with people(s). On Appigo ToDo I use Tags (similar to Mode/chunk based tasks) so that i can select multiple people I have agendas with.

Schedule and Execute

This flow chart illustrates how you can make a decision about what are the steps that can take place in your typical day to get things done.

Having contexts and tags are well and good but how successful you are at doing it or executing the tasks and completing them is a matter of your understanding of yourself and your categories. I learn the hard way that doing and execution is important, if not work just keeps pilling up while you put so much contexts and tags that you spare little time in doing the actual work.

i – Review Projects and Chunks/Modes of Focus for the day

It is always good to spend 10 minutes when you wake up to plan what you gonna do for the day. Most of our tasks vary in size/duration, location, who we met and complexity.

In Review Big Projects/Sub Projects, you take a look at your Areas of responsibility and identify urgent, important, high priority tasks to perform. These are normally the tasks that determines your success or fulfill your goals for the major projects or areas of responsibility.

Allocate and Plan Chunks/Modes of Focus so that you give yourself enough time to do them. Finishing them and checking them off goes a long way to fulfilling important goals and areas of responsibility.

Most of us belongs to office working people and for me I am in a line where i have much IT projects to fulfill. My tasks are big and they take up fair amount of time.These big projects also determines the success of my Area’s of Responsibility.

For this I rely on Google Calendar sync to my iPod Touch to perform the planning.

Planning Chunks on the weekend

Fixing this means I focus fully on the task at hand.

ii – Filtering by Location Based Categories

When i enter the office i would switch my Filter for Appigo ToDo to @Office or @Site. Whats on my lists are all location constraint tasks.

I would then review my Chunks/Modes of Focus on my Calendar, then go to Appigo ToDo to further filter it by the Mode/Chunk based category to see what are the next actions.

iii – If I need to go to another location

When i leave my office to go on site or home, I switch to @Commuting on my Context and if i have the strength i will think or do them, If not i sleep!

Once I reach home, I will switch to @Home again , then filter further by Chunks/Modes of Focus and then performed the tasks.

iv – If I meet up with someone

Say if I see my boss or team, I switch to @Boss or @Vendor A to see if I have agendas to explain or review with him/her.

v – If I have spare time while doing on my main Chunks/Modes of Focus

If i have time or waiting for someone to get back to me for a short while , say 30 mins, I switch to my @Waiting For or @To Contact category to review and take action on these similar things.

vi – Review Again once task is done

Should i finish my major tasks for the day, I would go back to my calendar on iPod to Review what are my next focus area and then go about to perform them, thereby repeating the flow all over again.

This comprehensive workflow works for me, might not be for you. But you can use it as a reference to create one for yourself.

My tasks belongs in a shared project with my colleagues, do i duplicate the tasks to my local projects on my PDA or GTD software?

This happen to me as well since we keep Microsoft Project Plans and our schedules and tasks are on the plans.

I took an advice on David Allen’s GTD forum to not duplicate tasks on personal and shared project plans. I think its the right way as sooner or later duplicating so many tasks is going to make you go mad!

what you can do is to review the schedule. Use your Google Calendar or Live Calendar to plan out when you are suppose to do these big tasks based on your review of your Ms Project plans.

Only put tasks that are meant for yourself that you will take it out of your office based contexts e.g. @Office and @Site  and put them in your own Appigo ToDo list.

Some examples are:

• Brainstorm about the best format to store Time and Date (@Commuting)
• Inform vendor A that they are suppose to give us the set of test equipment (@To contact,@Waiting For)

Don’t put stuff like:

• Code module A after Engineer B makes an amendment to diagrams (@Project A,@Office)

This is doing double work since you would have to review your own Appigo ToDo list and your project Plans and they end up displaying the same thing. Only leave it to tasks that you would do out of the project plan context or as a reminder to do a task that you are able to even if you are available outside work context, such as

• @To Contact
• @Boss
• @Vendor A

That is if you like to take your work out even if its a saturday or sunday!

Working with Location Based Categories

Many would as me when they have tasks that can only be done on either Site or Office what should i do then? In that case, have a Context named @Site or Office. My advice here is that, try to limit to locations where you frequent more than a number of times per week. Either that or use Tags instead of Contexts for location based categories so that you can check both Site and Office.

This would depend on the robustness of the software you use. I don’t like to see my Appigo ToDo Context or Tags to fill with redundant Categories, So i understand them and generalize to a certain extend. So try not to have e.g.

• @Shopping Mall A
• @Shopping Mall B
• @Pet Shop A
• @Hardware Shop A

When you visit them like once per six months. Use @Errands tag should be good enough.

If you visit your in-law’s place and would like to read a book to not talk to your in-laws (i heard this is quite common lol) you can have categories like @in-laws as you are likely to be there alot of times per week.

Help I have too many people based categories!

What I used to do is for a sub project that was delegated to colleagues I would open a project and put tasks to the project and assigned it to them. I would then tag it with @delegate, @person’s name.

The delegate tag is to ensure that I can filter tasks to review all my delegated tasks

The person’s name tag is so that when I get hold of the guy or lady I am able to ask for updates obthe specific task.

Sound like a good plan but it can be quite problematic:

You can list down 5 person as contexts but when you have randomly 20 people that you need to make agenda to, your contexts will be very cluttered.

• Vendor A
• Vendor B
• Colleague A
• Colleague B
• Boss
• blah
• blah
• blah
• blah

If you had that much people listed for agendas you are most likely not going to review them in your weekly review.

What can be done? I can’t think about much except to group these people into groups dealing with a certain context. Accounts team,  logistics team. But I don’t think it’s gonna be helpful.

The most you can have as agenda contexts are you immediate working people e.g boss and subordinates.

Should i have both @Waiting For and @Delegate to X?

Purely I think you should, if you are doing it for reviewing purpose. You will gain a consolidated view of all tasks that were delegated and needs your attention to check back with.

However people have a tendancy to put tags for delegated tasks with @waiting for as well as delegate since if you review waiting for you want to see what is out of your control.

This make it seem that delegate and waiting for are 2 distinctly different actions but after much thought they are essentially the same.

Waiting for is delegating to others whether to colleagues partners or friends. So why should you have another delegate context

Thus based on this reasoning I should only have waiting for. We should not seperate delegation and waiting for since they mean roughly the same context.

Conclusion

Working with Contexts and Categories and how to make use of them is difficult. It all boils down to your understanding of how you work best and how to tag them to the 3 groups of categories and setting the right trigger for them.

As a Bonus, here are some articles that i found that would help you work with contexts much better:

• What is not a GTD Context?

I think that wraps up this GTD Series for the time being. I may have more ideas on GTD to expand this series so do let me know more areas that you would need information for.

This is part of a series where i talk about my GTD experience and  my setup.

Part 1 here talks about my plan and overview of my GTD system

Part 2 here talks about why i eventually chose iPod Touch 2G as my main to do list console

Part 3 here talks about why i choose Appigo ToDo for iPhone as my main task manager

Part 4 here talks about how to plan for big projects and smaller projects

Part 5 here talks about how to make use of Contexts, Tags to Execute your tasks

Part 6 here discuss about how you can review projects better using iThoughts mind mapping software

In today’s article i will share with  you how I normally go about planning for tasks, projects and sub-projects.

Where are we now?

Ok, so in Part 1 I have presented this workflow chart which is how i would illustrate my collection, planning, processing and execution model.

Overall GTD Workflow (Click to see Larger Image)

Today, I will talk a fair bit on project planning. I skipped the collection portion cause I think this is a more complex portion of GTD thus i would explain more on this first.

What Constitutes as Projects?

Planning Project & Review

When you collected an idea, piece of information or a probem, you decide if it is actionable. If it is, the key to decide if it is a project or a simple actionable task is how much steps you need to execute to reach your successful outcome.

Remember, thinking about your successful outcome is important, just like defining clear and manageable goals, it keeps you on the right direction on what you are suppose to do.

Personally, that was what is described about projects, but to me there is no hard and fast rule. Why this is important is because you need to break a task down to actionable steps.

If it is too complicated, you do not know how to start the blardy task and you end up procrastinating on it.

So for task that is named:

“Get Son a new bicycle”

It can be a very simple actionable step, like go downstairs go to the nearest bike shop and buy the bike. That is, if you already know what you are looking for.  But most of the times it is not so simple.

That simple task normally consist of:

1. Ask Son what kind of bicycle he likes
2. Find out how much your family have to pay for the bike (budgeting)
3. Research on where to buy the cheapest bike on the internet
4. Give son a look at the bike see if he likes it
5. Find out what to look out for if it is the first time you are buying a bike
6. Go down and buy the bike
7. Wait for the bike to be delivered to you

So, you see, our task may not be that simple at all.

Another small problem that maybe isn’t that small

In life, most of the time don’t end up the way you wanted it to turn out. Take the example that in your work as an IT engineer, you are suppose to solve a problem on your IT system you are supporting.

So again, the simple task will go something like this in your normal to do list:

“Solve why the entries do not show up on the procurement page.”

It is a simple task, if you investigated and found that a bug in your source code will delete off these entries when the user view it. So Simple

Or it could be you investigated and turn out that the entries don’t come just from your system but goes to another system and then back to your system.

Then it becomes a bigger problem that could go something like

1. Find out from database whether the entries are there
2. If database entries are there, investigate at source codes to find out if there is a problem with the codes
3. If your codes do not have a problem, find out if the other system did give us the right entries to combine to ours
4. If they didn’t inform the engineers from the other system to investigate and get back to you
5. Engineer gets back to you say that the problem is related to them but they do not have the expertise to fix it nor the budget
6. Inform your boss about this and discuss with him
7. Set up a meeting between the manager of both projects
8. more shit stuff
9. more shit stuff

Yes, sometimes our lives can get quite bad in IT line. but it is a good illustration and our friends in other industry can attest that one small problem can remain small but most times they just get bigger and bigger and take longer and longer.

The above 2 serves as examples of why certain task, you have to break them down into projects with actionable steps. Had they remain as the original task entry, you will not see what needs to be done. I can list down the steps to this xamples well because i have experience with them, but sadly not everything is like that. Making them actionable and asking “What is the next action?” would enable you to kick start the engine to perform the work.

How do I plan my Big Projects with Appigo ToDo?

Appigo ToDo breaks projects and sub projects into Lists and Projects, so you get 2 levels of it.

What i do normally to set up my list is they will be my main Area’s of Responsibility for that year.

Areas of Responsibilties

My Big Projects List

Normal advice would be to make your Big Projects name close to the outcome you are trying to achieve. But on a mobile device, I don’t wanna clutter the screen so:

• [To brush up and be good at Trading] would be translated to [Money & Trading]
• [To be good at what i do at work] would be translated to [My Day Job]
• [To fulfill my commitment and obligation to family] would be translated to [Personal]

When these area of responsibilities are broken this way, it makes it easier for you to conduct a weekly or daily review on each of your area’s of responsibility.

Small project can become Big project

A note to folks is that alot of times things from your day job would be translated to big areas that you need to focus in. Such as new responsibility, new big tasks. Some of these you may want to create a big project list instead of leaving it as a project.

In my line of work i need to deal with things from Project A, Project B and Project C so normally, those would go into [My Day Job]. One in particular, project A, is something that was task to me to organize and manage compare to Project B and C where i just need to manage for ad-hoc task.

When i need to focus on this since its a big deliverable and can spawn many subprojects, i moved project A into a Big Project List

Planning the sub projects or small projects

Once you defined the big projects, it becomes easy. What you need to determine is whether it is actionable and then whether it belongs to a existing sub-project.

If it does, add it to the existing sub project.

If it is identified by you as a multi-step task, then open a new project for it. Once you do that, you either have the option to come up with some initial actionable tasks to get you started, or you can leave until your Project Reviewing phase to do so.

Here are some shots on the example 2,“Solve why the entries do not show up on the procurement page.” as a sub project in Appigo ToDo

A Sub Project: Planning the initial actionable tasks

How sub projects are represented on the Big Project list

Conclusion

What is left next is to perform the tasks in the projects as and when you can. Which will leave us in the next Part where i will explain working with Contexts, Tags and Executing Tasks in Detail.

For those new to this article, it is part of a series of articles where I share my GTD system.

Part 1 here talks about my plan and overview of my GTD system

Part 2 here talks about why i eventually chose iPod Touch 2G as my main to do list console

Part 3 here talks about why i choose Appigo ToDo for iPhone as my main task manager

Part 4 here talks about how to plan for big projects and smaller projects

Part 5 here talks about how to make use of Contexts, Tags to Execute your tasks

Part 6 here discuss about how you can review projects better using iThoughts mind mapping software

In this Part 2 of the series I will share about some of my past systems that i used to do organizing and planning as well as my default choice now.

My past systems

I tried quite a fair bit of systems before this since my school days years ago.

Microsoft Outlook

I have never know to use a to do list but find out Microsoft Office opens me to a software that almost every knows about in Microsoft Outlook. It was fashion as an email client, but it does provide a rather robust Calendar, Contact List and To Do list functionality.

Desktop Task Manager Outlook

Problem

I thought the first thing that i don’t like about it is how hard it is to clear off all the done tasks from the list! I never had problem with the Calendars and Contacts but that is one aspect that i cannot stand.

What got me off this system wasn’t that however. As a student then, it involves alot of moving to school and really i cannot sync my task management system when in school since during that time computer wasn’t that advance and not many schools have very fully functional computers.

PDAs – The Sony Clie and the Windows Mobile PDAs

As i approach university, i began to use my hard earned pocket money on PDAs. They were expensive then, but damn were they useful.  You can plan your time table and create reminders and read books on them.

Sony Clie SJ 33

I especially like my experience with the Palm based Sony Clie. Its very responsive and together with Agendus for palm it was enough for me then.

IPAQ 2210

O2 Mini

I subsequently sold off my palm when i decide to move over to Windows Mobile Platform. My options were to get a PDA and i promptly got a HP iPaq 2210. The windows mobile platform offers more software and functionality, but also more niggling problems such as memory leak, crashes and all. But with Pocket Informant, it turned out to be one of the best capturing and organizing platform. I got myself a second hand O2 Mini when i decide to try an integrated device.

Problem

However, it is during this period that i realise the flaws of the To-Do list. Even with a robust software like Pocket Informant, having a single layer task management system  without buckets or multiple lists just does not make sense, cause that is just so much you can put in categories until it overwhelms you.

It is also during this period that i realise i got alot of tasks note down but which one do i do first? Before GTD, I got to the point where i didn’t check on my list for some time and just got completely off the system

Web Based Remember the Milk Heaven

Learn how to use Remember the Milk to do task management (click image)

In the first years of my working life, I had a much earlier experience compared to my peers on cloud computing and one of the first software that caught my attention was Remember the Milk.

Remember the Milk is a web based To Do list software that is hosted on their private server. There are paid versions and free ones but really if you are using web based task management the free one will just suffice.

Its got to be one of the most extensive javascript application that i have ever seen. Everything occurs almost on one single page and it works because of the extensiveness of ajax scripting.

When i first saw it i was thinking why i will not use it. I wouldn’t be online most of the time, if i don’t have internet connection, does that mean i can’t plan and do stuff any more? Luckily, Remember the milk have incorporated Google Gears which allow offline viewing. (its really well done.)

I really feel this is the right system and i blog about it extensively here how i used to work with it. Do take a look at this article to find out more.

Problem

If you read my article on Remember the milk, you will find that you can use it in almost all places when you have internet or a desktop.

There-in lies the problem. In my line of work I don’t stay on my desktop all the time, I go on site and meetings quite often. When I am not on my desktop, capturing of stuff is done on pieces of paper and it syncs back to the online task management system. All well and good.

But what i find it difficult to work with  is that it primarily uses lists or Smart Lists which tends to clutter your task management system. I can set up my Smartlists pretty well, but it is always the times when i do not have assess to web, that i do not know what is my next action.

The final straw was really the short coming of a javascript heavy web application. In alot of times, with the amount of tasks i have (100++) the firefox web browser chokes up 90% of cpu usage due to the heavy processing. It works well on a duo core, the problem is, I am not using one.

Time to code one: Snowflake GTD

Snowflake GTD (click to view larger image)

The problem of not having projects and sub-projects made me have the urge to create one myself and with time on my hands i did. I decided to experiment with .Net platforms WPF foundation. And man for a lousy coder i did come up with a rather nice looking interface.

And the best part of snowflake is

1. Have an inbox and sub-projects to it
2. You can have many levels of sub-projects as you like
3. You can filter by multiple contexts
4. You can screen by tasks that is due today, tomorrow or in 1 week etc
5. Natural language inputs like remember the milk
6. Recurring Tasks is also done
7. Notification

Problem

I really like this and felt i reached somewhere. The problem of a desktop application came back to bite me. I would really have to paper sync if i am on the move. This increases the chance of me forgetting stuff and not writing them down.

The problem of not having alot of time to develop Snowflake further and improve on it leads me to find the next solution and i am glad i found the iPod Touch.

Why i choose the iPod Touch 2G

So after this long winded story we have finally reached 3 months ago, where i was reading through internet articles and saw the Android device vs the iPhone.  These 2 platforms look to me the future of mobile computing and i took a general interest in them.

I have a certain bias against the iPhone. I thought it was a glorified device used to suck people’s hard worked money into a device that is far underpowered compare to the other smartphones.

So i was leaning towards the Android platform and look at what software task manager it provides. The most promising seem to be Astrid, which then was rather clunky in the interface design (it still is now, but now it syncs with remember the milk!). So of course being an engineer, i thought about coding one myself.

I tried doing that in my free time and found that on java platform its performance for large lists lacks alot to be desired. If i have more than 20 items on the current view, it will take ions to load and ions to scroll through.

Finding Omnifocus, Appigo ToDo and Things

Things (Click to view larger image)

OmniFocus (click to view larger image)

So in my research to see which GTD mobile applications are good and how they work, I found videos on these 3 iPhone based apps. They blew me away with what they can do compare to what is on offer for both Android and Windows Mobile.

i told myself that i WILL NOT again pay 1000 SGD for a smartphone. Its just not worth it. The iPhone really appeals to me and these 3 application is the fundamental reasons to offset the flaws of the iPhone platform (which is quite a few, including big bad Apple itself).

Then i chanced upon the iPod Touch 2G. It is what i was looking for:

• Small and Elegant
• Capture stuff on the go
• Reading Reference PDF and Notes on the go
• Checking Google Calendar Offline on the go
• No Camera! (I need to go places where you can’t have that)
• Checking Contacts from Gmail Offline on the go
• Listening to Mp3 where i can (I’m quite into music @Commuting)
• Listen to educational podcast and videos (You tube learning videos while @Commuting)
• GTD Task Managing Software (Omnifocus, ToodleDo,Things and ToDo!)

All in all, i think at 330 SGD its a pretty good price to pay. I have to sell some of my old smartphone to fund this purchase. (Even though i can afford this now, but it pays to be discipline and whatever depreciating things you are using that you do not use, do liquidate them)

Conclusion

I believe i share all the platforms and tools that i have used during this short 20 plus years.

The key take away in sharing this is that:

1. You have to use them for a period of time to know if it works for you
2. What work for you now may not work as your life and job changes
3. What profession you are in and the nature of the job changes your requirement of the devices that you can use
4. Don’t go on a witch hunt for the best tools. It is an expensive and futile endeavor. Keep your eyes open and evaluate tools and methods that comes along is good enough
5. Don’t spend too much on such stuff. Go for cost effective solutions.

In the next post i will talk more about why Appigo ToDo list is head and shoulders above all that i used previously

Folks will be interested to find out how i actually carried out the things thatI often blog about. And this series of articles is an illustration to show how i actually do that.

Part 1 here talks about my plan and overview of my GTD system

Part 2 here talks about why i eventually chose iPod Touch 2G as my main to do list console

Part 3 here talks about why i choose Appigo ToDo for iPhone as my main task manager

Part 4 here talks about how to plan for big projects and smaller projects

Part 5 here talks about how to make use of Contexts, Tags to Execute your tasks

Part 6 here discuss about how you can review projects better using iThoughts mind mapping software

For this series, I will talk about how i carried out Getting Things Done in my daily personal and work life.

What is Getting Things Done and why do I use it?

Getting Things Done is a method Mr David Allen came up with to help get things out of your brain so that it frees up the memory and processing capabilities of our tiny brain to do the things that actually matters.

Simply put, its  a productivity and organizing technique that serves an alternative to Stephen Covey and his method listed in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

Getting Things Done or GTD in short ain’t something new. Its been blogged about for sometime but I would recommend for people who want to practice this seriously to pick up David Allen’s book and read it. You won’t get a better picture then from the man himself trust me.

I know different people work differently but perhaps you can contrast it against Stephen Covey’s methods. In that case, do pick up his book to find out more about his method.

I always wondered if i can organize what i do and the things and people that i worked with better and i used to bump around solutions to make things work, organize tasks so that it makes sense to me. But sooner i realise that it just not working. I would just stay away from my task / todo list or my calendar cause they just don’t make sense.

My Experience With the 4 Quadrants

I even tried out marking things into the 4 categories listed in 7 habits of highly effective people and really to me its very hard to make sense.

Consider things like:

Its a good thing to focus on the 80/20 rule, which is the 20% that is most important and matters, but really, as an individual, the 80% needs to get done as well.

Another gripe about this system is that what if the important and urgent things gets too much. Which one should you focus on first? Hey, they are all important and urgent isn’t it?

Do also note that things that are Important and not urgent would eventually move into Important but urgent. In that case, you will really get your hands tied up with alot of important and urgent stuff.

I always think that this only address the problems of managers who look at things on the strategic levels. When you are a small fry like i am, I have to think about the strategic stuff and worry about the small, time intensive things that i cannot delegate to others since i am the lowest of the lowest.

Why i find Getting Things Done better

GTD in a sense, is a god send. I used to think that GTD is all about creating Tasks and categories. That was before i read David Allen’s book and realise that it actually make a lot of practical sense compare to the 7 Habits.

Applying the living with it shows that its not the perfect system. Rather people spend alot of time creating the perfect GTD system. But hey, i think it gives quite alot of tools in the book to create your own system compare to the other book.

It makes sense to me because it explains strategic and day-to-day planning for an individual well.

The 6 Levels of Focus

The 6 perspectives illustrates planning at different levels and how it all adds up.

• The small Actions forms the goal to finish the Projects.
• The projects will eventually satisfy the Area of Responsibility
• Reaching the goals set for your area of responsibility will satisfy your Yearly Goals
• Which should be inline with your Life Goals or 5 Yearly Goals

As an illustration, I will not list out my Vision, Yearly Goals upwards but my Area of Responsibilities.

I don’t think i need to defined whether they are for work of personal since its pretty intuitive. These areas will eventually be your Big Project Buckets or Lists and you might get increase area of responsibility when

• you evaluate that you have new personal goals, and what is the big areas of responsibility that you need to achieve it. e.g. take good care of grandmother whose health is not in the best condition
• when your boss adds more assignments to you such that, you need special attention to it as it consumes much of your mental and physical resources e.g. handle the transition and knowledge transfer of Project B

My Work flow Process

Your work flow process will take care of how you execute the stuff that you get spammed with in life and how to make sense of it physically. Normally this would be where most people need the most help since people don’t normally think every day about what i want to achieve rather when would be a good time to do task A or task B or should i file or throw away this brochure.

The work flow process described treats every thing that comes along as a conveyor belt that gets rinse and repeated every time things comes along your way:

Productive Organizer GTD Workflow (Click Image to View in Larger)

I am not gonna overload you by explaining my workflow but i will be explaining in the subsequent posts how all these will pan out. Having such a workflow looks complex but really it isn’t. Let me just say that without such workflow things that goes within your brain is even more complex than this diagram!

Conclusion

I realise the hard way that its not at all about coming up with the most fool proof plan. You learn along the way the flaws about your plan, about yourself and you improve upon it.

But i do realise that everyone is searching for the holy grail but perhaps there isn’t.Thats why i blog about this so that i hope people can contrast against the way i do things and refine or justify that what they do is better or worse than mine.

Next Up i will talk about Appigo ToDo, my current Life Planning Project Management software.

[Productive Organizer GTD Series Part 2:iPod Touch as an organizer]