Im a person, get me out of here!

For quite a while I have been listening to the podcast 43Folders and occasionally reading the variety of productivity tools. This blog post is in no way a sponsored endorsement of the book “Getting Things Done” but having read the first few chapters and considered them , I would recommend it to anyone who wants to escape from the stress over ever growing ToDo lists. Once of the more interesting productivity hacks that I used was the (10+2)*5 procrastination hack which worked well for me when writing some documentation.

The book Getting Things Done: How to Achieve Stress-Free Productivity is referenced on a regular basis by the owner of 43Folders, Merlin. This blog posting is about my views on the couple of chapters and I will return and post about how well I am progressing with implementing a method for capturing and organising all the stuff and ideas which i manage every day.

The first couple of chapters are by way of introduction to the ideas and the five stages of mastering workflow which form the basis of getting things done. There are two things that I immediately gained from reading this. The first is to begin to capture and spot the moments in my life where I should be writing down the idea and the next step in order to record the thought. The second thing I learnt was that I could make a decision about any task based on how long the next action would take. If it takes longer than 2 minutes I need to delegate or defer it. Otherwise I need to do it and complete the task. The Diagrams on page 32 and 36 are the same but they reinforce the concept of noting, planning, action and routine.

Its quite acceptable to me to not have to completely read and understand the system before I begin it although this I can accept is not the same for everyone. As a result I have been able to being to create a more useful ToDo list and Calendar which is reviewed briefly and actioned throughout the day.

One of the tasks I set myself was the improved review and sorting of incoming emails to reduce the constant inbox bloat that I experienced daily. Thankfully Thunderbird has several tools such as labels, Views, Sorts and threading which makes viewing the inbox and defining concepts easier to grasp. The result was that the inbox is now emptied and completed in terms of 2minute rules. As calls to arrange meetings and agree fixes arrived in the day I was able to set tasks or calendar entries simply by thinking more about what I was considering and how it would fit into my task scheme.

One last task I set myself was to ensure that I made time to read and consider the content of the book and its relevant chapters and to make notes to blog some more about it as I go. Its great to see that whilst I was considering the productivity tools available to me that it is a subject that is relevant to many readers of this blog and listeners of Lugradios podcast. It will be interesting to see where this conversation leads us all.

Thanks for reading.