I’m a big fan of the book Getting Things Done by David Allen. (I don’t get anything for linking to it, I just like the book) I’ve read it a few times and adopted many of the methods he suggests. I like it so much that I’m leading a book club at work discussing GTD.
There are tons of articles out there on the GTD method, but the basic idea is: (1) capture what has your attention; (2) clarify what to do about each item; (3) organize it; (4) reflect on your options; and, finally (5) act.
Re-reading the book for book club has inspired me to do a two-day capture and clarify project, and I thought I would log my activities here. To be honest, I’m cheating a little. David Allen suggests that you set aside two days, put your phone and computer on do-not-disturb, and get knee deep. I’d love to do that, but if I waited until I had two free days I’d never get these two phases completed. Thus, I will step away from the project a couple times for meetings, probably check email a few times a day, etc. But I really hope to get it done in the two days I’ve blocked off.
THURSDAY – Day One
7:05 am: I just got started and already violated the rule about not doing other things while capturing and clarifying. Today is 60 days before our Disney trip, which under COVID procedures, is the first day we can make dining reservations. I’ll post separately about that whole experience, but suffice it to say for now that the app wasn’t working right, so I had to call the Disney dining reservations number, which opened at 7 am, and I wasn’t going to wait to call. Actually, capturing was a pretty good thing to do while I was on hold.
8:10 am: still on hold with Disney, and I’ve learned that my office needs a lot more work than I previously acknowledged. It’s neatly stacked, but there are a ton of projects silently mocking me while I sit at my desk. Coming up with some sort of plan will definitely help clear up some mental capacity.
11:23 am: Almost no progress for about three hours. I finally came off hold with Disney, then went straight into a non-work meeting, then did a little bit of capturing, then had a work meeting. At that point I was hungry, so I’m finishing lunch and will get back to it. I do feel like I’ve finished the home capture and will have a nice open afternoon to capture the much larger category of work capture. The stack in my In box is about two inches high at this point.
3:44 pm: My mind is numb! Since I haven’t been to my work office since March 2020, I never intended to include it in this GTD capture and clarify exercise. But of course my email has increased three-fold since I’ve been working remotely. And I haven’t done a good job of staying on top of it. I had a “Needs Action” folder that hadn’t been looked at in months. The same with a “High Priority” folder. And I had more than one “Waiting For” folders, which of course is a recipe for disaster. If I had been consistently doing weekly reviews, these would have been resolved. But I am lucky if I get to do a weekly review once a month. I’m committed to fixing that going forward! In the meantime, I’ll be here going through old email making sure there’s nothing that I missed.
5:08 pm: I’m done for the day and totally brain dead. BUT I got through a couple really packed electronic folders. I have a few more smaller ones to go through tomorrow, and then the brain dump portion of capturing information, and then I can start organizing and scheduling. Whew! This capture part always feels like going backwards, but I know it’s for the greater good. The good news is that 99.5% of the email just needed to be file; there weren’t a bunch of actions that needed to be captured. So my stack is still about two inches high.
More tomorrow!