Getting Things Done (GTD) - Cult or Awesome?

i don't know how to change my oil

"create ren fair magic act?" is the most beautiful question i've ever seen

i got so close to editing the list for embarassment but

same therapist who made me read Power of Habit now has me reading Better Than Before, which is decent, kind of gets more into how to get yourself to stick to habits, insights into how different kind of personalities might respond better to different kinds of stimuli, etc.

I have managed to get myself to go to the gym three work lunchtimes per week, and it's really improving my life in many ways. There's this thing in Power of Habit about a "keystone habit" that will help improve other habits, and exercise is a classic one.

I have all these tricks I've developed to get myself to the gym regularly: (1) I put it on the calendar (2) I have an alarm tone on my phone that is just for gym time, different than other alarm sounds I use (3) I always have my gym bag packed, in my office, ready to go (4) I always have something sweet after the workout, like a protein bar, to feel like I got a "reward" (5) I make a point of at least briefly talking to the gym desk people (or at a minimum making sure I say hi/by) every time I go in, because then I feel like someone is taking note that I was there. I also found a membership cheap enough that I can never use money as an excuse (unless my situation gets really bad).

I've been trying and failing for years to work on things like distraction and sleep, but the exercise is helping me both focus better and feel more tired at the end of the day. My plan is to tackle my sleep habits next, now that the workout thing is more or less established (one habit at a time is another big thing).

I had this realization that I was always completely against self-help books because they're terrible literature, but that's stupid because they're not literature at all, they're just tools.

Aaaaaand instead of working on the final two papers that stand between me and FREEDOM FROM GRADUATE SCHOOL, I am spending valuable time looking reading about productivity techniques I could use in the writing of said papers.

Anyone wanna talk about the pomodoro technique? Please say yes, as then I can spend even more time talking about writing my final two papers rather than writing my final two papers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique
http://pomodorotechnique.com/

I flirted with the idea of buying one of those little timer things one time and then I realized what I actually needed was to open up my notebook to the to-do list I was ignoring and just suck it up and do some of the fucking things on it.

There is not a single GTD / productivity method on earth that solves the "going-to-the-DMV" problem, i.e. don't wanna don't wanna

this though, I do like, in theory, and relates somewhat to the way I use my notebooks:

http://www.amandaorson.com/reverse-to-do-list/

I don't write down everything I do, but I take notes as a record of my having done "stuff" and that reminds me when I fill up 50 pages past the last list and haven't checked off hardly any of my to-dos, that there were many reasons why.

Love Pomodoro. Good for writing. I just use the free browser pomodoro. My wife and I call them "pomos." "Just gonna do one pomo then I'll get dinner ready," etc.

i've tried the browser pomodoro, and i like how the time limit encourages me to take breaks and then deliberately intensely focus.

Yesterday I numbered all the pages in my new Shinola medium softcover ruled journals, can't wait to work my way through this Shanghai Tang Moleskine.

I've pretty much settled on a "shapes" system for tracking tasks and use the page numbers to carry things over and reference previous notes. As above, still no solution to the to-do items that just exhaust me as soon as I glance at them.

i've been doing bullet-style journaling since march and it's actually pretty great --- it's the first organizational system that has worked and that i've stuck with for longer than a couple weeks

my tbi recovery, such as it is, has been incredibly long, slow, and fitful. i've had so many steps and phases in my gradual improvements, but i've been pretty consistently fascinated by all stuff about cognition, focus, distraction, mindfulness, etc. mostly the usual pop-cultural level shit i guess, but i've been considering trying to reinitiate my truncated gtd methods re-established.

i enjoyed the hell out of chris bailey's productivity-oriented commentary in the interview below during my morning bike ride, and he concluded by mentioning the utility of gtd and allen's main insight, which he summarizes as "your brain is meant to have ideas, not track tons of information."

also, i think my bike is my fidget spinner, or maybe knitting.

https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-ezra-klein-show/e/56091726

side bene- he caused me to listen to the saints on the way to work.

re-established

Not specific, but I feel like both my job and non-job life keep getting more complex and demanding. I'm just kind of wondering, and maybe a procrastination message board is a bad place to ask this, but do most of you feel like you can kind of visualize your day and know how you're going to manage it and when you do what, or do you just kind of charge at a pile of shit to do and try to take out as much of it as you can? I feel more in the latter category and it's increasingly not serving me well.

*not specific to the GTD system (which I don't use) I mean

Theres things you can plan for and prep for that you can presume will go as expected, things you can plan and schedule that you know will be messy and things you cant rly plan for and i try to balance the three i think

Not sure if this is the best thread, but I was just imagining a device that could help me organize and plan better - maybe just a tablet on a stand is what I'm picturing, but I was thinking about how I have this Skylight digital picture frame thingy for my desk, and what if instead of displaying photos, it displayed to-do lists, punch lists, or planning docs? Maybe I could have like three docs on it that I could just easily swipe between.

Should I just get like a $200 tablet that can run Microsoft Office and a stand? Is there something out there specifically designed for this purpose?

Don't you already have a phone with a calendar with you 24/365? Or is the idea you just want it to be something on your desk aggressively blaring at you like a lighthouse for procrastinators.

NB I am known to procrastinate.

Sorry if that came across as aggressive. It just seemed funny to spend that kind of money to duplicate a functionality you probably already have.

I like the idea and see the value of a dedicate device. However, I just do it on my phone. I use the app GoodTask, which is essentially just a souped up add-on for iOS reminders. I use its widget to put all my todo lists directly on the Home Screen of my phone, so that’s the first thing I see when I look at my phone (which is like every 42 seconds). So basically I have three widgets on the Home Screen, 1) active personal tasks for the day, 2) active work tasks for the day, and 3) my more long term personal tasks that I’ve tagged as #later.

The idea is to have something that is always visible on my desk, rather than something I have to make a point of looking at.

you want a little whiteboard on an easel, or maybe a bulletin board with pushpins

i use a gtd app on my phone, but the dedicated device on my desk is an yellow legal pad, backed up every day to an orange rhodia graph paper pad in my bag

yeah, sometimes I just use a yellow pad, but my handwriting is bad and I like organizing punch lists and workflow in digital docs, but then I also want them in view while working on other stuff without having to pull them up.

I like "Things" app on Mac - I guess Ticktick is the nearest PC equivalent. They're both based in the GTD philosophy - which I haven't read and don't really understand. But what I like about them as apps, is they both make it easy to schedule and plan without the planning taking over the process. Like, they don't make planning so time-consuming it gets in the way of the *doing* part, and they fit in pretty seamlessly so you don't have to keep having to "make a point of looking at them"

(Ticktick is much uglier and better for work; Things is pretty and better for not-work life stuff)

i also use things! though i'm thinking of switching to something else, since i can't install things on the surface book my work gave me and afaict there's no things web app (and i don't want to be looking at my cell phone at work too much)

i find the most useful thing for the past 3 years is about 4 4x6 note cards clipped to 4x6 piece of cutting mat. i put only action items on it, each morning and cross each out as completed/periodically during day. each day gets a new sheet, which i must manually recopy (i use a mech pencil).

i don't carry it around, it stays at base. it's manual and physical enough to feel real, annoying enough to encourage action, iterative enough to become part of my routinization. it has infinite shortcomings, but is more effective both psychologically and actually (for me).

How many things do you typically have to do in a day that require a list? I usually have between 5 and 7, mostly writing to different deadlines or "Call Insurance Company" and things like that, so I just make a handwritten, numbered list in one of these little notebooks, which I buy from Muji about 10 at a time:

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0556/8066/3742/products/4550182108569_org_700x.jpg

ha, this is true! my case is complicated a bit by needing compensatory strategies due to a severe TBI while getting struck on the road on my bike several years ago. so yeah, my version of ADD and impulsivity often takes me WAYYY off the beaten track if i don't keep a list, even if it's only 5-7 things. it's often more, but not by much.

i'm good at one. thing. at. a. time. it's the transition times between those items that are very very difficult, and if you ask me shit in the middle of something, i may never get back.

Yeah, my work and life have just gotten too complex for pen and paper, plus I am constantly moving between home and office, so I'd prefer stuff that stays with me (e.g. via microsoft office 365) even though I don't have a particular device on me.

For example, I might be working on 2-3 cases at the same time, each of which with 5-7 near-term tasks that I need to keep track of (some of which I have to do, others which I have to delegate but stay on top of) as well as multiple longer term tasks/deadlines, plus general work housekeeping tasks, home stuff, kid activities, etc. If I just try to put it all on paper I lose track, and if I keep it in an app like Todoist I just forget to look at it.

I mean I am able to effectively used outlook/ical/google calendar synced when it's just a matter of keeping track of appointments and deadlines, but that's not that helpful for workflow

I used to use Things, maybe five or so years back, and then went through several different apps until I landed on OmniFocus for a long stretch. Ultimately, I gave up on OF because its organization method was just too overthought for everything. I'm 100% running on Apple, work from home, and everything in my work life is client/project driven. Billable hour/time tracking is done with Timelime, exports out to Calendar, Reminders (stuff like "add a reminder 30 days from now to see if the bastards paid"), and scripts an export out to whatever the appropriate billing option is and into my local FileMaker database of work done.

Project management stuff is a mixture of pen & paper (the black Rhodia N°16 dot pads are my total fucking jam) and iA Writer markdown files. Mostly Rhodia pads. macOS Reminders is also where I put my repeating household "clean kitchen floor," "scrub toilet" stuff. The Streaks app has been really good at nagging - things like spend 45 mins M-F on this or that.

I forget when Reminders on macOS/iPhoneOS was recently overhauled, but it works great for my purposes now.

yeah i used omnifocus for awhile but it was just too damn much. maybe if i had 2-3 projects going on with 5-7 action items for each i’d look at omnifocus again

damn i had such an overdeveloped evernote system back when. It worked but was laborious. I wonder of they even exist anymore

Evernote was sold off last November - searching "evernote downfall end of era" will bring up the post morteums. Current status unknown. I used to work with a dev who was all-in with an incrediblely complicated Evernote system that he used for everything in his work and life - whether it was his wedding or PDF processing job workflow code.

I use Todoist for everything: ie across work, home, hobbies, holidays etc. Looking at Reminders, it seems that it could replicate almost everything Todoist does - except that Todoist has a somewhat cheesy productivity levels flattery reward system that I quite like.

How many things do you typically have to do in a day that require a list?

Work could anything from 6 to 12. Just looking at today's other 'things' though, there's: shopping, tasks that need doing around the home, finance/bills, renew prescriptions, book tomorrow's visit to textile show, start to research holiday and get dates in calendars, start getting a passport renewed etc.