This is part of a series on non-fiction books that have had a big effect on the way I think, live, or teach. I’ll add links to the other books as I write about them, but here’s the whole list: Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Mindset by Carol Dweck Getting Things Done by David Allen Crucial Conversations and Influencer by the VitalSmarts team Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter The Talent Code The Speed of Trust by Steven M.R. Covey The 48 Laws of Power, The 33 Strategies of War, The Art of Seduction, and Mastery by Robert Greene I was sitting in an airport parking lot, waiting for Lindsey’s plane to arrive at some small airport somewhere near San Diego. It had been delayed two hours, and I showed up about an hour early, so it was the perfect time to sit and take notes in one of my ubiquitous spiral-bound notebooks. That’s right, I take notes for fun. I was listening to an audiobook of David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” for the second time. I don’t remember where I first heard about “Getting Things Done” (I'll refer to it as GTD from here on), but I know it was at some point when I was living in Arizona, getting burned out as a band director from trying to balance all of the projects that go along with teaching in the performing arts. GTD reduced my stress, but like all new habits, it took some practice and effort, and I was too overwhelmed to give it the attention it deserved. On that second listen, though, I was on summer break about 5 years later. I had a smaller workload and I’ve always had a masochistic love of self-improvement, so I wanted to give it another try. I only took 3 pages of notes for the whole audiobook, but they completely transformed the way I think about the stuff I have to do. I finished about ten minutes before Lindsey's plane landed. About those notes: they’re dated 6-14-13, which I remember not because it was a particularly memorable date, but because they are in a notebook labeled GTD that I keep on my desk at home, and which I reference regularly. The fact that I can still find those notes; that they’re organized in a notebook; that the notebook is labeled; that the notes are dated; and that I reference them regularly—all of these are artifacts of GTD. One of the things I like about GTD is that it gets right down to the stuff that you actually have to do in life, rather than dealing in mission statements and Big Hairy Audacious Goals. GTD can help you accomplish that stuff, too, if that’s what you’re into, but most of the tasks we do every day have nothing to do with our mission in life. It’s stuff like "pick up dog food", or "call mom" (hi mom, sorry I haven’t called in a while—I’ll add "call mom" to my list). And I think for a lot of us, we spend more time stressing about needing to do that stuff than we do actually getting it done. Here’s one example from my job. When I write down a to-do list, I’ll often write something like “Spring Tour”, which means that I need to take care of planning that project called the Spring Tour. That’s actually a lot of stuff: getting a bus, organizing rooming lists, organizing fundraisers, scheduling a performance, creating a different set of rules for the trip, collecting emergency contact forms, communicating with parents and students, filling out paperwork for the school district, and so on. The problem with “Spring Tour” as a shorthand is that every time I see it, I have to figure out what I need to do about it, which takes time and causes decision fatigue. I also get overwhelmed because I'm trying to hold a huge number of tasks in my head. Do this with ten to fifteen of these projects, and my stress levels are in orbit. GTD's step 1 is to collect all of that stuff out of my head and onto paper so I don’t have to keep thinking about it. Step 2 is to process all of that stuff and figure out what I need to do about it, by figuring out “What’s the next action?” Step 3 is to organize it by putting the “next actions” in a place where I will see them when I can do something about them. Step 4 is to review those lists at regular intervals. And Step 5 is to actually do the tasks. One of the most important things that GTD taught me was that a lot of things I thought were tasks were actually projects that weren’t clearly defined. Step 2 was my bottleneck, because I wasn’t processing things completely. For example, take the task “Get a bus”, which seems like a good action step at first sight. To reserve a bus, first I need to call the bus company. Oh, but wait—before that, I need to get an estimate of how many students are going. Oh, but before that, I need to ask the students who is planning on going (and remember to do that during class, which is 4 hours from now). Now I have an action step so I can keep this thing moving forward, but I can’t do it now, so I need to put that action step in a place where I’ll see it during that class and remember to do something about it. I still write down projects instead of next actions, but as I’ve gotten better at working the system, I’ve also gotten better at noticing when I’m stuck or stressed, and as soon as I do, I can fix it and get unstuck. Here are a few of the other insights that I’ve found particularly valuable: “The mind is for having ideas, not holding them”—I can still remember having a life-changing epiphany on my drive from Bloomington to Seymour one day. Unfortunately, that thought led to another, and by the time I got to school, I had completely forgotten what the epiphany was. I still can’t remember what it was, and it pains me. Now I use the voice recorder on my phone when I have good ideas, and write them down later. I actively avoid remembering things, because I know I am incredibly bad at it. Lindsey is starting to get jealous of how much time I spend talking to Siri. Organizing in separate lists—When I’m at school, I can’t do anything that I need to be at home to do. So I don’t want to waste mental energy thinking about it. When I’m out running errands, I only want to see the list of errands that I need to run. Keeping separate lists means that I’m only thinking about the stuff that I can do, not all the stuff that I’ll have to do later. The Weekly/Monthly review—Helps keep me conscious about my choices, and helps me prepare in advance for upcoming appointments. I use a trigger list to help me think of things I might not have thought of, and go through my “someday/maybe” list (see below) to see if there’s anything on it that I want to tackle this week. The Someday/Maybe list—I have a lot of great ideas that I’d really like to pursue someday, if/when I have time. The problem is, I generally don’t have time right now, so they clutter up my to-do list, and I stress about when I’m going to have time to do them. When I offload them onto a separate Someday/Maybe list, I can trust that I’ll see them during my weekly review, and I can relax, because I know that I can upgrade it to a to-do later if it’s something I still really want to do. The tickler file—I used to spend so much time shuffling through papers because I’d have to keep something out that I wouldn’t need until next week, but I didn’t have a file for it. The tickler file is a set of dated files. If I know I’ll need a piece of paper Thursday of next week, I put it in the file for Thursday of next week, and then I forget about it until I open it on Thursday. If I might want to look into it next January, I put it in the file for January, and I don’t see it again until January. This one takes a while to start to remembering to use it regularly, but it has definitely gotten more useful over time. Today the tickler file held the sub plans that I put together 2 days ago. Yesterday it held a reminder to start figuring out what pins and letters I need to order for the awards banquet in May—I put the reminder there right after the last banquet, because I realized I waited too long to order them and I didn’t want to stress about it again this year. The 2-minute rule—If a next action takes less than 2 minutes to do, it’ll be faster to just get it done than it will to write it down and track it. Use a labeler—This one seems so stupid, but it makes such a huge difference. At work, I use a labeler for all of my files, instead of hand-writing them. It takes a few more seconds up-front, but it saves me a few seconds every time I look for a file, for three reasons. 1) When I hand-write something, I label it with the predominant thought that’s in my mind at that moment, which is sometimes not the same folder title that I’ll be looking for when I need it. The labeler makes me think just a little harder, so that I come up with a better folder title that I can find later. 2) It takes me a little bit more mental energy to decode my own handwriting than it does to read a printed label. 3) When the folders are labeled, they look more organized, which means I’m more likely to put them away in the right spot instead of leaving them in a pile on my desk. One important note: the first few times going through this process, it’s overwhelming. You probably have no idea how many things you’re trying to keep track of in your mind, and once you get it all on paper, you’ll feel like you have to do all of it right now. I take my big “next action” lists and try to make a smaller, more reasonable list of what I can realistically accomplish that day, and then I put the rest of the lists away into my “Action Lists” folder, where I don’t look at them again until the next day, or when I need to reference them. This has the added benefit of getting to cross things off of lists twice, which is stupidly rewarding. I’m no wizard at this stuff, but it has definitely helped bring down my stress and get more stuff done. I hope it helps you. I’d also recommend his other book, Making It All Work, which covers the big picture stuff: goals, roles, core values, and areas of responsibility, as well as having additional tactics and insight into the GTD methodology.
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Nick is a teacher, writer, and amateur adventurer. Archives
June 2020
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