Entries Tagged 'GTD' ↓

In an earlier posting I wondered out loud if the GTD methodology was incompatible with school. My work with To Do lists seemed to be getting me no where in my school work.

Upon further reflection, I think I have found the reason why it did not work. For me GTD is about a To Do list that is generated based on very small tasks that need doing in the near future (i.e. the next things for me to do). As a result of this, I never fully implemented the calendar part of the GTD system. The calendar/tickler works by “remembering” things for you that will happen in the future. Since I was only concerned about the near future, I’ve never really done anything with the calendar.

School is built around calendars. Everything, every lesson, every test, is scheduled on a calendar. Combining this information with the topics being covered in the class can yield a To Do list that is several weeks out.

Most people probably know this as a syllabus. One day I’ll learn to look at it.

In my earlier post about School and GTD, I mentioned that the To Do lists just weren’t working for me as well as they do when I use them for work and other projects. Thinking about it some more has lead me to the conclusion that In order to have an effective To Do list, you need to have some level of knowledge about what you are trying to do.

Now that sounds like a really obvious statement, but I don’t think that it is. Think about it this way: If you were asked to make a list of all of the tasks that you need to do in order to launch a rocket into space, how long would your list be? If you are a person who works with rockets a lot, you list might be very long and very detailed. If you are someone who doesn’t work with rockets often your list will probably be pretty short and very general. Guess whose To Do list will be more likely to lead to a successful rocket launch…

While in school, you are typically learning about a topic that you don’t know a lot about. Attempting to make a To Do list that captures the steps necessary to learn something can be difficult if you don’t know or understand everything you are dealing with. That has been my problem, my To Do lists have been too simple for the task I was trying to accomplish.

When I first started reading about the “Getting Things Done” Methodology, I immediately saw three places where I thought I could apply it. Work, School, and my personal projects are three areas of my life where organization and productivity are desperately needed.

And applying the GTD methods (most notably the To Do lists) has helped me tremendously in the Work and Projects area. I’ve been more productive, and better organized which has led to a great feeling of satisfaction.

School however, has been another story. For some reason I have failed utterly at applying the GTD methods to my school work. To Do lists and calendars, while helpful, have not produced the same level of results that they have fro Work and Projects.

I’ve been thinking about why this is. Work and Projects share a couple of traits that school does not. Both are open ended time-wise, so if a task slips on my To Do list, it isn’t too big of a deal. Also, my Work and Projects tend to involve tools, concepts, and material that I’m already familiar with, while school is constantly introducing new material.

The GTD system doesn’t seem to handle those traits very well. This semester has been stressful, and no amount of being prepared has been paying off like it usually does. I know that the GTD system was created with business people in mind, and wouldn’t school and business be similar in a lot of ways? I sure thought they would be.

Recently I’ve had a lot of unexpected things crop up that were out of my control and it was interesting to see my whole “Getting Things Done” fall apart.

First I had to let a few things slip because more important tasks came up. Then it became difficult to get the old tasks done (mostly school work) because they had a firm due date which had been moved up from what it had been originally. Needless to say, this caused a lot of stress for me, which I noticed in turn caused me to be less productive (tasks took longer to finish, etc.).

Now that things have calmed down a bit it has re-ignited my desire to get my to do lists back in order. When things were going smooth I had forgotten about the chaos that had reigned freely before. I had also forgotten how stressful life could be without a plan. Even though you can’t plan around emergencies, I’ve learned that having your to do lists done as soon as you can will save you a lot of grief down the road.

So, find your motivation, make your to do lists/plans, and follow through on them as swiftly as you can. Its better to have free time than to having to be up all night trying to finish something at the last minute.

Inspiration is a powerful motivator. In a lot of ways, inspiration is the opposite of fear. Yet the more you try to be inspired, the less inspired you get.

In a lot of ways, it the chicken-and-the-egg problem (as in which one came first). If you are in the right environment, inspiration will find you. And when ti does the motivation to get started is not too far behind. I almost said “follow through” instead of “get started” because I think inspiration launches a lot of projects, but its motivation and perseverance that actually gets you to the finish line.

But the question remains, where does inspiration come from? Where were you last inspired?

Using tags to classify blog posts is a great idea. I think its more flexible that just having “folders” that you put a message into like you would with a mail program. Sometimes a message/blogpost/etc doesn’t it nicely into one category, instead it spans several. With tags you can then mark the post with several different tags (one for each idea the post touches on).

This makes searching so much easier because the message will be in each category, so you don’t have to worry about missing it because you didn’t guess the right “folder” to look in.

That’s just such a rich idea to me. Plus it can help build contextual information for search engines which will help people find the correct information they are looking for with less effort. That just rocks.

I’ve got a ton of categories on this site, and I’ve tried to make sure that all of my posts are tagged correctly. My hope is that once I get a couple of hundred posts I’ll be able to look at the tags and build a graph of the site. I think that will tell me some interesting things.

I was thinking about why motivation is so hard to find sometimes, even when it would benefit us to just do it (what ever it is) and get it over with. It occurred to me that maybe this is a sign of functional fixedness.

Functional fixedness is a condition in which a person has learned to do something one way, and does not attempt to try something different (usually with a reasoning like “We’ve always done it this way, why would we want to change?”). There’s a great article about it over here: Dar Kush: Functional Fixedness

I can really see why functional fixedness would interfere with the changing of a mindset that motivation requires. For example: I am hungry and I have lots of ingredients in my kitchen to make a great and healthy dinner. But, I remember that almost every time I make dinner it takes a long time to prepare the dinner, and then it takes a long time to clean up. I then think it would be easier just to go get some fast food and be done with it.

The functional fixedness I have about cooking dinner prevented me from thinking about quick and easy to prepare meals (like pasta, etc.). If I could have thought about the simple meals, then I probably would have been motivated to make dinner, knowing that I could quickly have a meal that would be healthy and easy to clean up.

Think about it: When have your perceptions about some task prevented you from doing something? Was there another way of accomplishing the task that you thought of later?

My plan last week (to turn off the internet-related distractions at my desk in order to achieve a greater focus) didn’t turn out like I expected it to. But as is the case with most experiments, there is still a lot that can be learned.

I have learned that having focus is not the same as having motivation.

All throughout my time in school I heard so many people say “Oh, I wait till the night before to do my project/report/homework/study because I do my best work under pressure with a deadline looming.” I never really understood that line of thinking, true I felt I did do some of my best work when time was tight, but I always swore I’d never wait till the last minute again. But invariably, I would fall back on this self-promise and put some task off until the last possible moment.

I think now I understand why people put things off. They need an external motivation to get them going. By waiting till the last minute the fear of failure (bad grade, getting fired, etc.) becomes the motivation to get the job done.

Most of the time it doesn’t have to be this way, yet for some reason we still rely on this as a motivator. I think part of the reason why is that it is hard to find a equally powerful substitute. My motivation for turning off the internet was to focus so that I could get more done. It turns out that is not that great of a motivator by itself. If I had combined that effort with something else (say the boss promised me if I finished up the project I could take the rest of the week off) then it might have turned out differently.

Thinking about this makes me wonder if this is the reason that people don’t keep their new years resolutions. The motivation to do what ever self-improving task (exercising more, eating less, bathing more often) just isn’t that “overwhelming” to make them stay on task. Something to think about…

It doesn’t matter how nice your calendar is, if its on your computer and networked to your phone/email/contacts/dog/tv/etc, or if its tacked to your wall, or if its a pocket-sized one that you carry with you everywhere. They all have the same shortcoming:

If you do not update it, it does you no good. And along those lines, if you never look at it (which implies you never update it) it does absolutely no good.

A calendar exists to keep us informed about things that are happening. It can not do its job if you do not keep it up to date with important and current information.

Can you tell I just found out that I forgot to put something on my calendar that was somewhat important?

My plan to disconnect from the internet at work in order to focus (And therefore be more productive) has hit a snag. Or rather, my lack of a plan has hit a snag.

I did not have a plan concerning what I would focus on. As a result, I had no direction in which to focus my energies. And if you don’t have a direction… you go no where.

This all goes back to the GTD principle of the To Do list. Before attempting to focus, one needs to make sure there is something to focus on (i.e. have items on your To Do list that you can act on).