While GTD gives you 6,240,000 hits on Google I had never heard of it. Not until a friend of mine pointed it out to me by saying “This is great to empty your head a bit”. This attracted my attention because I think that my so to say “full head” is one of my biggest problems in life.
- You know how solutions never come to you at the point when you’re actually working on the problem the solution is for?
- How out of the 296 good ideas you have in the day you only get to put one a week on paper because of losing focus?
- And how that same loss of focus makes it impossible to end the day with a conclusion that you actually got to finish some important tasks?
I don’t really believe in solutions in the form of a book but I do think that Getting Things Done by Dave Allen is at least a good push in the back.
The book doesn’t force a so called universal system on you; it is more like a good set of pointers that you get to adapt to your own behaviour, preferences and rituals. This makes it easier to keep up with after the week that most “systems” last. The main idea is that you try to take as many things as you can out of your head and onto paper (or computer, pda whatever you prefer). This gives you two things:
- A head that gets to focus on the task at hand or on having new great ideas
- A chance to actualy structure and prioritize in a way that makes sence.
It will let you work towards a waterproof system you can have confidence in. One that allows you to be sure of always doing what you have to at the right time (of course when implemented correctly)
Everything that comes in is either: done, delegated, defered or dropped which leaves no oportunity of things slipping out. It is categorised in such a way that it will be done at the right time in a sequence of priority that actualy makes sense and you finish each day with a feeling that you actually did something usefull.
You’d be suprised by how much more satisfying and less stressfull that makes your work.
By the way I did notice all the great websites on the subject, and some of them really are a great treasure of information on the subject. However personally I thought the 17 dollars were really worth it; it just gives you the right information at the right time. Getting all this info from the web would probably just make you miss the whole point. I guess this is just one of those things you don’t wanna cheap out on.
(No David didn’t pay me for this article, unfortunatly I don’t even know the guy, his book just got me really enthousiastic.)