Since I started my new job, I've been trying to apply "Getting things Done" by David Allen to my daily work habits. I've heard about this from a number of IBMers, and finally made the time to read it all the way through.
It's a pretty simple concept he has, really. Put together a simple organization system so you can find/work on the things you need to later, make sure you can trust it, and get the cruft out of your brain. Use your calendar to tell you where you need to be, and to plan.
It's too soon to say it's given me lots of new energy and productivity. It still feels pretty awkward.
What is working is that it's helping me win the inbox war.
My inbox used to be totally crazy. I could scroll down for pages, with unread messages even lurking near the bottom, which I hoped I could safely ignore based on the title. (Always a dangerous practice, but I play the lottery too.) There were LOTS of followup flags on email in my inbox as well, but usually they were just flags, and I had to re-read the whole email to remember what I wanted to do. There was lots stuff I hoped to read or take action on. Maybe. Once a year, usually December 28th, I fought my inbox down to a page or less. Never to zero.
Now, I've got a few simple folders.
-action
-toread
-online
-waiting
-phone
-athome
I also have a page worth of various reference material folders. Though only 3-4 of those really get used regularly. I should prune.
When I sit down for a half hour with my inbox in the morning (assuming I don't have meetings first thing), I quickly look for the stuff to move into "-toread". The overnight news feeds, dilbert cartoon, online shopping offers, facebook updates. The usual. Select and Move. if I have time to breathe later, THEN I'll look at those.
Then I start at the top and move down my inbox doing the fast skim. For each, the question is
What's the next action? If I can do it in the next two minutes, do it now. If I can't, flag it with a followup flag with specifics on what the next action is, and move it to -action. If the next action is to read it thoroughly and it will take longer than 2 minutes, I might move it to -toread if the time I read it doesn't matter, or -action if I think I need to read it soon.
Before I know it, the new items in my inbox are moved elsewhere, and I can choose what project to start working on. Usually a glance at -action makes that an easy determination.
For those odd "...I have to remember to...." thoughts that come up in the middle of some other activity I shoot myself a quick email on what I just remembered I have to do. I taught my email filter to file those into -action for me.
I know that people have written Notes Templates and Sametime applications to implement GTD. Since I have to drink beta champagne of both products on a regular basis, those won't work for me. Simple file folders I can count on though.
We'll see if this system stands up to a full load over the next four months. Maybe I won't lose the email video game after all!
Beth Benoit | 4 September 2009 04:22:51 PM ET | | Comments (0)
