STATUS REPORT ON IMPLEMENTING THE ‘GETTING THINGS DONE’ PROCESS

• Project list, with the next few actions, in order, comprising each project
• Next Actions list, for all the ‘one-off’ things to do that can’t be done in two minutes
• Waiting For list, for actions that are pending action from someone else
• Someday list, with projects and actions that are not immediately actionable, but which you want to get around to eventually, and
• Calendar, with the actions scheduled for a specific date and/or time

I set these tables up, with the headings that David Allen’s Getting Things Done book suggested, and then I started processing my ‘stuff’. For me, this was not difficult: I already have a lot of lists — to do, to blog, to buy (books, music, other shopping), to research. In order to aggregate all my ‘stuff’ for processing, all I needed to do was pull together:

• These six ‘to’ lists
• The implied ‘to do’ items in my mail inboxes (once I have done what needs to be done with incoming mail, I either trash it or move it into one of my Reference folders)
• The unprocessed ‘reminder’ items in my browser bookmarks
• The implied ‘to do’ items in the 40 documents in My Documents (mostly related to my 20 currently open Projects) Windows folder that haven’t yet been processed and moved to Reference folders
• My stack of unread books, magazines, and hard-copy articles people have given me
• The appointments on my calendars
• The stuff in my small stack of ‘bills to pay etc.’
• The stuff in my head that I’ve never got around to putting in any of these places

As you can see, I’m a lot more anal than most people. For twenty years I’ve made a point of working without the need for an office or an administrative assistant — my personal war for independence. As a result, it didn’t take me long to identify all the ‘stuff’ that needed processing. I’m a terrible procrastinator, but I know what I’m putting off, and while I do a lot of things last-minute, I rarely miss a deadline. This process of identifying all my ‘stuff’ only took me a few hours, whereas I suspect for many people it would take a full weekend or more.

The most useful part of the ‘stuff-gathering’ exercise for me was actually thinking through my 20 Projects, and identifying the sequential identifiable Next Actions needed to move each one forward. As Allen points out, you can’t ‘do’ a project, you can only do the Next Actions in a project, one at a time, until the project is done. But many projects aren’t quite that linear — they often have several Actions that could be done Next, in any order. As I went through the process, I often ended up identifying several Next Actions for each project, and thinking further ahead than I normally do. Agility doesn’t preclude, and sometimes requires, thinking a few steps ahead, and doing several things in parallel.

Having gathered all my ‘stuff’, I then went through the process in the above diagram to move each item into one of the eight ‘buckets’. My first breakthrough was disposing of about 30 items in the ‘If it takes less than two minutes, just do it’ category. Since few of these items were urgent, I had probably looked at each of them a half-dozen times without acting on them, wasting a lot of time in the process. In the space of a couple of hours (I confess they took an average of five minutes each to do, not two, but give me a break, I’m new at this) I had cleared 30 Next Actions from my various ‘to do’ lists. This accomplished three things: (a) it removed logjams that were preventing several projects from progressing, (b) it cleared a bunch of one-off Next Actions from my lists, making what was still to do clearer and simpler to put into perspective, and (c) it moved several projects into the Waiting For list, when after doing my part I e-mailed various colleagues to tell them I needed something from them next, and to my surprise most of my colleagues responded almost immediately, moving these projects ahead quickly.

As I posted each item of ‘stuff’ into the appropriate table for that ‘bucket’, I began to notice that the column headings for several of the tables overlapped, and I started merging tables together, using a ‘flag’ in the first column of the table to indicate which ‘bucket’ it belonged in. I liked the idea of doing this, since it meant fewer tables to have to review, and fewer transfers of tasks from one table to another — all I had to do when an item moved from Next Action to Waiting For was to change the flag in the first column.

I ended up merging four of the five tables together: Projects, Next Actions, Waiting Fors, and Someday items, creating a single table with nine columns and about 200 rows. The nine columns are:

1. Bucket: P for Project, N for Next Action, S for Someday, and W for Waiting For.
2. Project # and Action #:  I’m using a convention of project number before the decimal and action number after, so the third action in my fifth project is 005.003, and the 27th next Action not associated with a project is .027 .
3. Project Outcome: As Allen suggests, I’m using active verbs and outcomes as the Project Names, e.g. ‘Write & Publish Novel’.
4. Action Name & Waiting For: The widest column, also using active verbs, citing what the next action step is, and, if applicable, who it’s waiting for.
5. Deadline or ‘Tickler’ Date & Time: In easy-to-sort format (YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm) using the 24-hour clock, the scheduled or deadline date (and time if applicable) or the date you’ve put in the ‘Tickler’ file to next look at this item, so it doesn’t get deferred indefinitely.
6. Context: Where and how it’s to be done — Online, Offline (using computer but not needing network connection), Calls, Errands, At Home, or Meetings — Allen’s #1 criterion for deciding what to do next of all the unscheduled Next Actions.
7. Hours Required: Estimated time to do this Action — Allen’s #2 criterion for deciding what to do next of all the unscheduled Next Actions.
8. Energy Required: A simple ‘Y’ for actions needing special concentration or mental energy — Allen’s #3 criterion for deciding what to do next of all the unscheduled Next Actions.
9. Priority: Importance, not Urgency (urgency is captured in the Deadline Date), a subjective assessment (H, M, L) of how important it is relative to other actions –Allen’s #4 criterion for deciding what to do next of all the unscheduled Next Actions.

Here’s what I’ve filled in on this table for actions that belong in each Bucket:

• Projects: Project Outcome in column 3, and then, in column 4, one under the other but in the same cell of the table, each of the foreseeable Next Actions, in approximate order, with column 5-9 data for each, and then at the end of the list, one single ‘action’ called Rest of Project with the Hours Required for the rest of the project, so you have a general idea of the total project size and time yet needed to complete it. By leaving all the actions in a project in the same row of the table, the actions in a project stay together when you sort the table by rows. For those who haven’t read Allen’s book, a Project is anything that comprises two or more actions. When there’s no hard deadline date, I simply assign a ‘Tickler Date’, putting the high Priority items first, starting with the earliest date in which I don’t already have a full 8 hours’ work assigned for that date. I only enter a specific time if there’s a scheduled appointment.
• Next Actions: For ‘to do’ items not associated with a Project, I complete columns 4-9, using the same process I used for individual actions in Projects.
• Waiting Fors: I only complete column 4, adding the name of the person I’m waiting for, and a ‘Tickler’ Date to follow up if I haven’t heard by that person by then.
• Somedays: These are, I think, essentially Projects that you haven’t really thought through yet. I’m treating them just like Projects, except I enter only one Next Action for each.

I have the luxury of a UXGA (1200 x 1600 pixel resolution) screen, so I’ve set up the table in panorama mode using 9 point type, and display it at 150%, so I can see all nine columns on the screen without scrolling. I had originally expected to be sorting the table in a variety of different ways, but so far a sort by column 5 (Date & Time) is all I’ve needed. Each morning I add my new inbox ‘stuff’ to the table (excepting stuff that I can deal with in under two minutes or so), and re-sort it by column 5, and I have my entire day and week laid out for me. As I finish actions I just delete the rows. For Projects, I erase the Next Action as I complete it, and move the subsequent actions up. I’m going to follow the book’s advice and do a weekly review of the entire table on Friday afternoons.

Right now I use a manual pocket diary plus a monthly computer Calendar (a Firefox plug-in) which I print out and post on the refrigerator so my technology-averse wife and I can coordinate our schedules. I was originally thinking of continuing this, and transcribing information from my Getting Things Done table to my Calendars. But then I realized that my table, with the actions sorted by date, was a calendar. So instead, I made the table a complete calendar by adding a fifth type of action, Appointments (bucket type A), for scheduled events that didn’t relate to any Projects or Actions (doctor’s appointments for example). For these appointments, I now enter an ‘A’ in column 1, a description of the appointment in column 4, and the date and time of the appointment in column 5. Re-sort by date and, voilý, the table becomes a complete Calendar as well. My pocket diary is now a thing of the past — I just keep the table’s icon in the upper left corner of my computer desktop, and print it out only on those rare occasions when I’m going to meetings where my laptop won’t be there and I may need to schedule another meeting.

My three ‘to buy’ lists are still kept in paper & pencil form. I’m adding books, CDs and groceries to these lists all the time, and it’s just easier not having to print them out.

So far it’s working like a charm — greater productivity, better organization of the day, less stress, less wasted time deciding what to do with ‘stuff’ and what to do next. I’ll do a follow-up report as I get more experience. Until then, three questions for others who have used the GTD methodology, or any similar personal productivity tool:

1. What’s the best way to link actions to the documents and messages on your hard drive that relate to them and support them? Right now I have a Windows Folder and an e-mail Message Folder for each project, but usually only a few of the documents and messages in these folders relate to the Next Action — most of them relate to actions already done or actions to come later. And I hate nested folders (tedious to navigate) so I don’t want to create a Windows Folder and a Message Folder for every action. I set up the project/action numbering system I describe above just for this purpose — so that I can put the project/action number at the front of the document name and message subject, but this is pretty cryptic. Is there a simpler, code-free, folder-free solution?
2. How do you best use Google Desktop or Copernic or FileHand desktop search tools to support the GTD process, i.e. to find documents and messages quickly related to a particular action?
3. What’s the optimal total amount of work to assign to one day? I tend to put in 12-hour days during the week and 4-hour days on weekends, and so far I’ve been scheduling and ‘trickling’ 8 hours of work for weekdays and 3 hours for weekend days. But by the time you add in a few indulgences (actions that you do because they’re just plain fun) and allow time to process the new ‘stuff’ each morning, including the 2-minute quick actions, and allow for the fact that evry project takes longer than you expect, I’ve been unable to get the 8 hours of work scheduled into 12 hours, and a couple of items each day are sliding into the next day’s schedule. Anyone have any answers for this?