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dr3

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Hi all. Been wanting to start GTD for a while but recently took the leap. I've been having trouble sticking to it though. I will do pretty good for a day or two here and there but then not really utilize the system for a few days. Wondering what people here have done to help adopt the GTD system or how to get back on track after falling off for a while. I currently use pencil and paper to capture most stuff then add it to my Todoist, other stuff goes right into Todoist or my calendar depending on how it gets to my inbox (digitally or not).

My job is pretty flexible with a lot of telecommuting when I travel to other countries, or working from home or my office. My entire job is done at a computer so I don't find context to helpful. I'm an academic so I set my own work schedule and do the tasks I want to do every day. Job is closer to a freelance position probably than anything else I can think of. So it's pretty easy to procrastinate. If anyone has any tips for overcoming procrastination that would be great too.
 
dr3 said:
My entire job is done at a computer so I don't find context to helpful.
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Try setting contexts by what software package you need to do the work, or by how much brain power you need. For example, I have @Scrivener, @LambTracker @Quick @Lightroom contexts. Some people do well to have @braindead and @needs concentration contexts. Don't underestimate how much energy it takes to switch from one software package to another or from one type of work to another.

Best way to get on the GTD wagon isclimb back on each time you fall off.
 
I think falling off the GTD wagon is common. I know I have several times.

Fortunately, it's quite easy to get back on. Your lists won't have gone anywhere, although they may need a review. Physical inbox items will wait for you to be ready to process them. And you can do a mind sweep any time you like.

I can't speak for you but I have noticed some patterns in my own procrastination. One cause is having lists that I am not enthusiastic about. Motivation is difficult if I scan a list and don't care about anything on it. When this happens it's worth considering if items should be moved to trash, someday/maybe or even delegated.

Other times it's because I've put a mini project in the action list rather than a next action. I like to have a clear division between defining my work and doing my work so when this happens I throw it back in the inbox so I can reprocess it later.

Another cause of procrastination for me is when something is worrying me. Sometimes following the natural planning model helps but other times, even though the next action is apparent there is some uncertainty over the consequences. I've not really worked out how to deal with this effectively but I have had some recent success tackling the problem head on, immediately. It's very unpleasant in the short term but the alternative is protracted anxiety.

My entire job is done at a computer so I don't find context to helpful.
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Is your entire life and work at the computer? If that were true it would be a pitiful existnce. I bet there are some other contexts. You mentioned travelling and I bet you occasionally make "at the airport" lists. Do you never run errands, make calls or fill out paper forms? What about cleaning and maintaining your home? I have one context for a sports club because I have various admin responsibilities there. Even if you have a context that is very big, finding ways to split it up has its advantages. You can split it by task (e.g. emails vs research), by tool (e.g. power point vs matlab), by resource (e.g. requiring internet connection) or by something else. I recently started a thread that lead me to the conclusion that each piece of software I work on (I'm a programmer) is its own context.
 
dr3 said:
Hi all. Been wanting to start GTD for a while but recently took the leap. I've been having trouble sticking to it though. I will do pretty good for a day or two here and there but then not really utilize the system for a few days. Wondering what people here have done to help adopt the GTD system or how to get back on track after falling off for a while. I currently use pencil and paper to capture most stuff then add it to my Todoist, other stuff goes right into Todoist or my calendar depending on how it gets to my inbox (digitally or not).

My job is pretty flexible with a lot of telecommuting when I travel to other countries, or working from home or my office. My entire job is done at a computer so I don't find context to helpful. I'm an academic so I set my own work schedule and do the tasks I want to do every day. Job is closer to a freelance position probably than anything else I can think of. So it's pretty easy to procrastinate. If anyone has any tips for overcoming procrastination that would be great too.
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The way to get good at GTD habits is to do them. It helps if you really do what the GTD book (or David Allen) tells you to do: capture, process, organize, review, do. Weekly review. Clean the inbox. It's easy to fall off the wagon, but can be easy to get back on too. If you design a complicated system for yourself, you will make your life harder. If you are unsure of what you are doing, pause to capture what you are uncertain about. Then get the results of your reflections into your system.

I'm a physics professor, and I understand that sometimes you feel like a "company of one." However, I think my job is more like being a partner in a law firm or a small business. The big three areas of focus for me are essentially research, teaching and service. In that order, because I'm at a research university that prides itself on good teaching. I also have a travel area of focus that I stick between research and teaching, because work-related travel stuff typically has a very high upside (if I do it) and a very high downside (if I don't). My strategy is to a good job on teaching, an efficient job on service, and to give as much time to research as I can. However, that's not enough. At the tactical level of next actions, I try to make sure my next actions are concrete and clear. I have contexts for home office and university because not everything is on my computer: paper forms, books, old journals. However, the majority of my work can be done either at my home office or the university, so I have broken that "either" context into three: a context for stuff that may take an hour to do, or needs to be done over several such periods to complete; a context for stuff I estimate at 20 minutes or so; a context for stuff at 5 minutes or so. Research, lecture prep, grading are typically in the first category. Admin stuff often falls into the 20-minute bucket, but so do other things. Five minutes is a web search, a quick reply to an email, a little digital housekeeping, et cetera. I use software that support a "starred" or "flagged" daily list, and I use this fairly often. This is not to say that you need to do what I do. However, It is always better to do any five-minute job than to procrastinate, so it is good to have an inventory of five-minute tasks.
 
Thank you all for the insightful responses.

cfoley - my entire life is not at a computer, as I said just nearly all of my work life.

@mcogilive - thanks for the supportive comments. Def feel like an 'army of one' given the isolation of sitting my office running experiments and writing all day, when I'm not replying to student emails or handling unscheduled drop-in visits from students. Do you consider your AORs the context for your projects (e.g., @research, @teaching, @admin) then create tags for times (@20 min, @40 min) in each? At my university everything admin and teaching/grading related is handled electronically, except the actual teaching activity itself. I'm trying to add as much structure to my day as possible because as you know, our workdays have almost no predefined structure. I think this structure would help me quite a bit.
 
dr3 said:
@mcogilive - thanks for the supportive comments. Def feel like an 'army of one' given the isolation of sitting my office running experiments and writing all day, when I'm not replying to student emails or handling unscheduled drop-in visits from students. Do you consider your AORs the context for your projects (e.g., @research, @teaching, @admin) then create tags for times (@20 min, @40 min) in each? At my university everything admin and teaching/grading related is handled electronically, except the actual teaching activity itself. I'm trying to add as much structure to my day as possible because as you know, our workdays have almost no predefined structure. I think this structure would help me quite a bit.
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I use software (mac and iDevices) in such a way that the lists that I look at every day are context lists:

1,3,5: home office or at work. These are my 1 hour, 20 minute, 5 minute tasks. The name comes from the 1-3-5 rule which you can google; it's basically a rule that says on any day you can do 1 hard, 3 medium and 5 easy tasks. I have experimentally proven the rule false, but I still use the category names.

desktop: home office
university
home
out

Basically, I want to have an easy choices to make when I drop next actions into lists. My other lists are: waiting for, tickler, project, ongoing and note. Every item gets a tag that says which AoF/AoR they belong to: Research, Travel, Teaching, Work, Fun, Personal, GTD, Stuff, Money, Health. The tags give me an overview of e.g. all my Research stuff during a weekly review, and help keep things clear, mostly with admin stuff (I'm currently chairing our computer committee and colloquium committee). I'm using Things right now, but I can replicate this setup in OmniFocus or in Wunderlist as well. All of these are fairly strong at intake of digital information. I can't stress enough the importance of writing real next actions and looking frequently at context lists- this is what helps you actually do the next actions.

My general rule is that as much as possible of every morning is spent at my desk at home on 1's. When I get tired of working on something, I note the next action and go on to something else: a break, another 1 or some 5's. I'm a theorist so I don't need to be in a lab. Once I get to the university, I've got grad students, a postdoc, colleagues, staff and undergrads to keep me busy. I rarely get more than 30 minutes to myself at the university. I used to work there until 6 pm 4 out of 5 nights, but I no longer do that, and it probably helps keep me sane. I usually prep classes the night before, so I feel fresh with the material, but that's just me. So you see the structure I have seems to me to be a natural one, emerging from what works best for me rather than forced upon me externally. I signed a book contract last December, but I'm not really into a good writing rhythm yet, so I'm working on that.

Hope this helps!
 
Thanks for the 1-3-5 rule. I'll give it a shot. Can anyone recommend good podcasts covering numerous aspects of GTD? I found a lot of blogs and I try to skim/read when I can. But it'd be nice to listen to podcasts as I grade.
 
TesTeq said:
I agree! 1 hour + 3 x 20 minutes + 5 x 5 minutes = 2 hours 25 minutes. A very relaxed workday!
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For a lot of people, 2.5 hours of focused productivity is a big improvement. However, I agree with you.

TesTeq said:
I always wonder how Personal can be detached from Fun, Money and Health. My health is very personal for me.
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Yes, it's a little ambiguous. But money and fun are not the same, and family is not always fun either. I do wonder if I should put "Buy lice shampoo" under Health or Personal. Maybe it goes under Social... ;)
 
mcogilvie said:
I do wonder if I should put "Buy lice shampoo" under Health or Personal. Maybe it goes under Social... ;)
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So maybe we need ToR/ToFs (Tags of Responsibility / Tags of Focus) instead of folder-like AoR/AoFs?
 
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