Make the most of it.
Check out this series of photos and essays by British writers about their offices. So many of them write by hand first. Will Self uses Post Its. This quote from A.S. Byatt hit home:
I write fiction by hand, hence the absence of a computer in the picture. I write better since I put the computer in a separate office - partly at least because I am less tempted to play Freecell when I can't think of a sentence.
The next issue of Wired, I presume the October issue, has a profile of David Allen. There's nothing particularly new, but it's worth a look.
Here's one for the DIYPlanner crowd:
Do you have a Personal Digital Assistant...? These are the hand-held devices that recognize handwriting, store phone numbers, edit text, send faxes, keep schedules and many other feats. They are marvels of engineering and can organize a busy life. But I don't have one, though I am a gadget lover. Whenever I am tempted to buy a PDA, four things dissuade me. First, they are bulky. Second, they need batteries. Third, they take time to learn to use. Fourth, their sophistication makes simple tasks, like looking up a phone number, slow and cumbersome. I get by with a notebook and fountain pen.
One of the things that confuse people most when they start GTD is the difference between next actions and projects. Does every project need to have a next action? Does every next action have to have a project? Can I have more than one next action per project? Do I have to do every next action before going back to the project list? Do I need to map out all the actions in a project first? Where do the actions go if I’m not ready to do them yet?
The answers to these questions are a matter of taste in some ways, and after dealing with them myself for some time now, I recommend a more “fuzzy” approach. One good way to think of it is that you don’t do projects. You only do actions. Projects are a way of getting to the actions you need to do.
I think of my projects as inspiration for actions. I keep each project on a separate page and use the page to brainstorm and write notes about its current status. A project is really a goal, and you need to think about what the goal is, and how you’re going to get there. By doing the thinking about your goal, you break it down into smaller and smaller steps. Some steps can be done now. Some need to wait for other steps to be completed before you can do them. Your next action list is just a list of the steps you can do now. The ones that can wait can remain on your project sheet until the next time you look at it.
When I started doing GTD I felt that I needed to tie every action to a project. So if I needed to make a doctor’s appointment, for example, I felt I had to link it to a project like “Stay healthy,” or something like that. I ended up with a lot of projects that weren’t really projects per se. These days, using the definition of projects as inspiration, I have pages in my project binder for general categories of life, which I use to get me thinking about actions I need to take.
For example, I have a sheet called Household/Finance, where I have listed all the parts of my life that I need to think about, like chores, gardening, bills, car maintenance, the vet, etc. That way, when I do my weekly review, I can look it over and be reminded that I need to get an oil change. I don’t really need a project for “Car maintenance,” but I do need to remember to think about my car.
It’s a fairly minor shift in definition, but seeing projects as inspiration has really helped me understand their purpose in the GTD methodology. Someday/Maybe lists function very similarly. They get you thinking and deciding, which is always the hardest part.
Just found this really interesting series of posts examining GTD from a Lean manufacturing perspective, written by an organizational psychologist. Definitely worth a look...
Read this.
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I could have written that post. When I read Hawk's Pile of Index Cards web site I got very inspired and ran out to buy myself a whole bunch of 3x5 cards and a box to hold them in. I bought little carriers for them and a Circa Hipster PDA. I was writing on index cards all the time, in the car, on the couch, in the bathroom. There were stacks of them everywhere. I had my whole GTD system on there too.
Then one day I got sick of shuffling through the cards and made a to do list on a regular notepad. I got so much done that day! Somehow seeing everything in one place really helped, so I gave up the index cards and moved to a notebook and online documents that are searchable.
But I still love index cards and I wish I could find a good way to use them. They make me think of about fragmentation, and tearing things down into pieces and rearrange them into new configurations.
Like....
- blogging
- Twitter and microblogging
- GTD's "widgets" and breaking projects down into smaller tasks
- mind mapping/sweeping
- MP3s and the demise of albums
- wikis
- RSS feeds
- YouTube
- Wikipedia
- Circa
All these things have helped open my mind to the power of fragmentation and collection. My tendency is to create systems and bring information together (like I'm doing in this post). The idea of tearing it apart intrigues me.
The world is breaking down into smaller, more flexible pieces, without gatekeepers to tell you how they should be arranged. That's a good thing.
Labels: blogging, circa, computers, mindmapping, organization, rolla, technology, tools, writing
If you've ever considered using a personal wiki to track your GTD to-dos and notes, but abandoned the idea because the software was too cumbersome, you might give ZuluPad a try. I've been using it recently to hold all my various lists and notes and it's really impressive. Go for the Pro version, available for a $15 donation, which allows you to print, add images, and synchronize your wiki online so that you can use it on multiple computers.
My main ZuluPad document is growing by leaps and bounds. I'm using it for all my GTD lists and notes, and I'm loving it so far. Making links to other pages within the wiki or on the Web is practically effortless, and I easily got my pages to print on Circa Junior paper. There's a handy datestamp feature, and it's easy to navigate between all your pages. The online synch has worked perfectly so far.
The program gets a little slow on larger documents, but not too slow to be particularly annoying. The only things I find myself missing so far are traditional word processing functions like bullet points, customizable headers, and a spell check.
Developer Thomas Gersic seems engaged with an adoring ZuluPad fanbase on his Web site, so hopefully some of those options will appear in a later release. Even without them, ZuluPad is one of the most useful and well-written programs I've found online - simple, elegant, useful.
