Getting things DONE

When I was first trying to make heads or tails of GTD one of the biggest barriers was that I couldn't quite make sense of how it all related to ME: how my job could be defined by David Allen's gospel.

It all seemed so useful - so revelatory - and yet it was almost completely useless to me. It didn't make sense to put all my projects into one big basket and pretend that they could be managed that way. GTD's defintion of 'project' is anything that has more than one outstanding action. That included all my Projects, as well as all the subprojects that were born from the Projects, as well as every little deliverable or job or whatever.

My problem was that I didn't quite understand the question. What was I trying to achieve with all this nonsense? At the time, my time-management system consisted of a single todo list. That list was also my project management. It was also mainly completely ignored as I barrelled from one disaster that I didn't understand to another. What part of my life would time-management be repairing?

My GTD lists aren't my entire life. They aren't my entire job either.

At the end of the day the answer was in the question: It didn't make sense to put all my projects into one big basket and pretend that they could be managed that way. So I seperated out the Projects and tried to track those as a seperate bucket.

I'd have this list of named Projects that I was assigned to, and then a list of projects that I was working on, then a list of actions on those projects. The idea was that my daily review would consist of confirming that my actions were the right actions to take on the right projects that got my Projects completed properly.

The problem with all this was that it became unweildy. Things would come into my life, but not make it into my deck of cards system. My system became too precious to allow it to be easily or gracefully torn to shreds. I had too much non-basic stuff piled on top of the system. Too much architecture, not enough walls.

I ditched Projects eventually. They were written on my white board ferchrissakes. My KPIs were based on them. That's what project planning is for. Those project folders sitting on the bookshelf. That's where you track which Projects you're working on.

Now I just had projects, next-actions, someday/maybe and waiting for. There was a clear part of the system missing.

This is why I inserted goals at the top. I know. I know I wrote just a few sentences ago that you don't need to be trawling through all that higher altitude stuff every morning just to work out what you need to get done this morning. But a goal is different to a Project. A Project is something you live in. It's something you inhabit for the unforeseeable future. A goal is a place, a state. You don't need reminding what you're Projects are, but you do need reminding of what the goals are.

Every vector needs to know which direction to face and where it is right now.

Every knowledge worker needs to know what must achieve at the end of the day and what is achievable immediately.

The only way to get things DONE is to focus on what needs to be done. State your Projects as a finished proposition, then check that proposition every morning.