Getting Things Done (GTD) - Cult or Awesome?

aw ty

daria I think the point you make about competency & GTD dovetails with what I'm trying to get at regarding "erosion of executive function" or "OODA interruption" or whatever the cognitive science literature at hand happens to call it - the root cause of gross (here meaning over-all, consistently demonstrated) incompetence isn't poor time management, task recall, or clear communication, it's that so many adults are incapable of performing the least little bit of lateral thinking or, frankly, root cause investigation on their own.

In order to solve a difficult problem, a person typically has to be able to remove themselves from the immediate context and "play house." I have a strong suspicion that most children are more capable of metaphorical conception of new challenges than their parents (up to some age that a lengthy literature review might identify - anybody got a working university library card and a lot of spare time to help me out?). To me, the presence of so many plz-to-tattoo-the-staples-easy-button-on-my-forehead problems in work environments all over the world is a bright shining signal that the self-help literature is all a sham, a failure, and our methods of preparing young adults for entry into work are a big batch of horrible, axiomatic procedures leading to negligence.

Also possibly related (and I don't really think the humanities tag is the only one that applies): http://chronicle.com/article/Graduate-School-in-the-Huma/44846/

― El Tomboto, Sunday, January 17, 2010 5:34 AM (3 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I can't write code worth a shit and I've never tried to get better at it - the reason being I've always outsourced my best ideas for automated analysis/task triage/data presentation to people I know who are exceptional at the implementation side - those same people will lean on me to find the tent pole and get a fix for the resources they're missing or the bureaucratic potholes.

Maybe I'm more aggravated by this kind of thing because my chosen (given?) area of expertise is in leaving the box and finding answers outside of the typical contexts of my colleagues' offices.

And now I've just gone looking for some "makers vs managers" bullshit and have been reminded again that most professional engineers still never, ever, ever remember that there are end users - phonewallahs and customers - who have to use their stupid tools day in and day out. I've been the guy who thinks everything is a dialectic between me and my bosses. That guy is always wrong, and again, we have a problem of context.

I'm really just writing out loud, you can all ignore me.

― El Tomboto, Sunday, January 17, 2010 5:50 AM (3 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

tthis is a great pair of posts

For about a year and a half I've been using this awsum GTD tool to rule my life and make everyone genuflect at my organisational brilliance (and even impress my future boss enough that she asked me to teach her how to use it!).

However, since getting a new position in September (partially because of my wikkid org skillz) I'm in so many meetings and following so many different projects that my GTD system is srsly fucked. By the time I get back to the PC to add everything I've forgotten what it was. As a result, my organisation is rooted, I regularly forget to do some really important things, and I'm frequently stressed about forgetting stuff.

So, I'm going to have a crack at this Moleskine thing. I have a fresh Moleskine here but it's a standard book style, not the reporter-flip-up type. Does that matter?

There's also this 'hack,' which seems to be a bit less anal about where to draw margins etc. I don't know which one to go with yet.

Does anyone have helpful advice before I start wrecking my Moleskine?

hahaha

Not to get all That Guy, but in the 5 years since I started this thread I've learned a lot about the kinds of things I want to spend my time fucking around with--and ultimately 'making lists' and 'comparing notebooks' and 'searching through emails' in hopes of Finishing The Project is decidedly *not* the thing that I want to have receiving the lion's share of my energy and time. I have shit in my life--people, passion projects, meaningful hobbies--that matters way more to me than Accomplishing Decontextualized Things as such. My tools are simple enough that they do what I need and then get out of my way so I can do the shit the list helpfully reminded me is the Thing That Matters Right Now. I'm glad I've grown up enough that I don't waste time trying to decide what list something should go on anymore--it just goes where it should go, so that I can get it done.

my new gtd strategy involves moving to a career that lets me do one thing at a time, although i do now use http://workflowy.com to manage my work. best to do thing i've ever used.

yeah it's been so liberating for me to move into a position where i can construct my day and decide my own priorities, cause i get to firewall ~relatively~ focus time based on when i know i'm most productive. i keep hearing workflowy is good, i might peek at it at some point if the text file thing starts t obore me.

that's the other half of this--as much as i appreciate the GTD workflow and the tools its pushed me to adopt as a way to handle my attention management probblems, it also gives me a useful framework to lean back into when those tools are no longer so interesting and engaging that their implementation is fun enough to maintain my attention: i can trust that when the text files start to bore me, i can look for something else that suits my needs, because now i know my needs well enough to recognize what meets them.

it's odd that my career allows me to firewall focus time but people in this company interrupt me every 1m 52s

so of course i never get things done ever

ha==the other day i was at work and i caught some article about average uninterrupted time at work, and was making a note of it, when i was interrupted--resulting in this:

http://distilleryimage9.ak.instagram.com/e32594849c8011e2802a22000a9f3c9c_7.jpg

the longer you aren't interrupted, the more you might be doing something besides working

'are you busy? oh sorry. can you do this? oh, you're busy. can you just do this now? and where's that other urgent thing i asked you to do? oh, is that what you were doing? can you do that now?'

EVERY DAY

I have felt your pain, AA.

:(

i even put up a sign, no use

they just go 'oh lol sign' and talk anyway

how's it goin?

where are we at with that?

pestering disguised as polite chitchat drives me up the wall

just wanted to check in, make sure you didn't need anything

by the way can one of you take care of these 7 things

the worst is having multiple of these people in your life who don't really communicate or care about the larger scheduling picture but just whatever little task they're worried about at the moment. particularly if one is more experienced/savvy/devious and knows how to constantly get me to do their stuff before the other guy's stuff.

'not interrupting, just making sure everything is okay'
'EXCEPT YOU ARE INTERRUPTING'
'oh sorry'

A long time ago I worked for two senior people at the same time, both of whom thought their work took precedence and both of whom piled it on (in one case I had to type up her rolodex cards on an actual typewriter--she would put them in my inbox hand-written on post it notes, which, lady, if you had time to write the whole thing down, why don't you just WRITE IT ON THIS ROLODEX CARD).

I frequently said, I'm working on all these things for the other person, can you please prioritize? so they changed it to alternate days, but it was definitely perceived as my being "unhelpful" and unable to accomplish all of both of their tasks.

we have the same problem, and need to bang some heads together at some point

The other senior editor at the same place would litter his office with reams of random notes and papers and have me pick them up one by one and READ THEM TO HIM, so he could tell me which shelf pile to put them in. He seriously just wanted to sit at his desk and have me do that for him. Editorial asst life is hell's nearest half acre.

jesus god

'also, lick my boots'

do these people discover one day that this is 'a way to work' ('it's so much easier!') or do they just have all these fantasies stored up about how they can dominate their subordinates once they have some

Don't go into publishing, kids.

damn. i am currently looking for an entry-level position in publishing because i am afraid of going into academia. i hate being a (semi)recent college graduate.

but in terms of this thread, i am reading all about GTD and the moleskine hack. i am a sucker for this stuff because i am really inefficient and forgetful and i always believe that if i just found the right system these things would no longer be true.

I so rarely use paper.

oh man, i never saw this thread before, first 50 posts or so are amazing

he's been beloved for so long that sometimes i forget what a good old fashioned HOOS hazing looked like

the preferred nomenclature is HOOSAZING

ftr i regularly punch myself in the face for including ~this moleskine hack~ in the OP

https://photos-6.dropbox.com/t/0/AABaQjT3Iu4DSHL9yAJbCGbLnTujmn2D76NAvncd3FVP2g/12/30623206/jpeg/32x32/3/_/1/2/dominateyrcleaning.JPG/w6g9vCBTgJ2VRQ3mcB1Ahk-UditRsFdfyQP9bClBNxk?size=1600x1200

i blame these people

i've got this on right now: http://www.43folders.com/2006/11/28/productive-talk-comp

Hoos & others - are you still doing this? any advice on how to get started?

read the book (srs.)

i think i've done it twice

what caek said i mean

the next action idea is useful

yeah - i'm reading the book now and starting to apply some of it. the basics seem really solid. what I was hoping for more was any advice on adjusting to it/sticking with it, how strictly you guys think it's necessary to stick to the book version. Thanks.

also thinking of projects as a collection of tasks or whatever

idk but i definitely do not DO gtd

no weekly reviews

i go in and out--i'm much more successful at applying GTD specifically in a work context, weekly reviews included--i really struggle to apply it throughout life. i'm on a downswing right now, but i'm very much aware of the degree to which my work is suffering as a result.

this is kinda posts very much in character but there's a podcast i listen to pretty much every week that is basically about how to do this ~productivity~ stuff on a consistently applied basis, and just the act of listening to it and being reminded and inspired by it is really useful. they did an episode a little while ago specifically on 'troubleshooting,' making sure you stick with it, and it's one of my favorite episodes of the show: http://5by5.tv/b2w/99