GTD Home Management

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rmaclema

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I've used GTD for almost two years now at work and had a huge amount of success with it. Since then I've been preaching its benefits to anyone who'll listen.

I'm on a one week vacation right now, and after hearing David Allen speak (online) about how important it is to use GTD at home, I decided to finally take the plunge and start using GTD to manage my home life.

So here's what I ended up with - a daily list, a weekly list, a monthly list, and a quarterly list. This is all stuff that has to be done on a regular basis, including everything from vacuuming weekly to putting down the proper stuff on my lawn four times per year. When you combine them all, it's a big list.

My solution was to schedule each task to a different day of the week. For example, today is Thursday and I have to vacuum the living room and music room and the stairs, and clean inside of the furniture and under (we have small kids.) Even the quarterly stuff is scheduled.

Everything is on a calendar and it's quite manageable. When I showed my wife the total list of everything I'll be doing, she said she'd be impressed if I can actually get everything done and keep doing it. She doesn't use GTD, by the way. I can't convince her to try it... but if Oprah suggested GTD she'd probably try it. Anyway... :)

So I've got a workable system and I like it... but I also realize that putting stuff on a calendar for a specific day when it doesn't really HAVE to be done that day violates GTD principles. My reasoning is that I HAVE to bust the tasks up over several days or it's too much to do on any given day.

Is there a better way that anyone else is using, or am I cool in my approach?
 
Ckeck FlyLady.com to get ideas.

I do not have things in the cleaining in Hardlandscape as you just put it there (wednesday vaccum) because really if I do not vaccum nothing will happened, so I have a certain things that get added to my list every week about cleanning based on the ideas of the flylady.com

I am sure will be useful
 
Oprah and GTD

If Oprah mentions GTD:
The books will disappear--even from Amazon.com
The Connect server will explode
David Allen will quadruple his income overnight and retire -- and we won't get any more cool interviews, articles or ideas...but maybe Meg will step in and run the show. From what I heard of her on the audio, she ROCKS!
 
rmaclema;47591 said:
My solution was to schedule each task to a different day of the week. For example, today is Thursday and I have to vacuum the living room and music room and the stairs, and clean inside of the furniture and under (we have small kids.) Even the quarterly stuff is scheduled.
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I do something similar, but instead of putting it on the calendar, I put it on my Outlook task list with due dates so they don't show up until it's time.

Using Tasks preserves the hard landscape of the calendar, while reminding you of what you'd like to do.

Ditto on the Oprah comments...that's a huge untapped market.
 
My routines

I found myself vacillating between too much structure and not enough structure when it came to routine tasks that we all have to do around the house. Scheduling specific things to do every night was great for awhile but in the end left me procrastinating since it seemed as though I was never enjoying the clean house that I was striving for.

What works for me is to have a "night" for the types of routine tasks I have around the house, and then just work off of a next action list just like DA recommends. For me, Monday night is cooking night, Wednesday night is cleaning night, Thursday night is errand night and Sunday is outside chore day. I keep a context called "@ cleaning" and add tasks for that week to it during my weekly review from my big routine list.

I find that if I break things down into small enough chunks, then I get through it all and can go about enjoying my life instead of worrying about cleaning all the time. Also, using the next action list allows me to add things in response to my environment- for example, I was walking around barefoot last week and noticed that there is a sticky spot on the kitchen floor. Even though the kitchen floor is not due for a mopping for another few weeks according to my routine, I put it on my next action list under the context '@ cleaning' so that it got mopped last night. Mopping the kitchen floor meant that I didn't quite get finished cleaning the guest bathroom, but I chose that the sticky spot on the floor was more important than the hardly used guest bath for this week and just let it go. I don't have to even have to look at the next action to 'clean guest bath' until I'm ready to clean next week because I can filter out that context on my list and don't have it nagging at me.

All that said, if what you've got works for you, then use it!

;)Mindi
 
Unfortunately when it comes to housework I get stuck at the second phase of Workflow Mastery:

1. COLLECT - make a huge list of what needs to be done

2. PROCESS - is actionable? yes.

....then DELEGATE it to the wife :D
 
Thanks for all the replies, folks. I'll check out flylady.com.
 
I'll second the Flylady suggestion, but what I do with those lists/routines once I have them is to input them into Life Balance as NAs, with the frequency set to "routinely" (whether that's daily, weekly... etc). That way they don't show up on the calendar, but they do show up on my lists, and if I don't check them off on the exact day, no big deal, they hang around waiting. When they do get checked off, they show back up in the correct interval.
 
Mindi;47603 said:
Also, using the next action list allows me to add things in response to my environment- for example, I was walking around barefoot last week and noticed that there is a sticky spot on the kitchen floor. Even though the kitchen floor is not due for a mopping for another few weeks according to my routine, I put it on my next action list under the context '@ cleaning' so that it got mopped last night.Mindi
Click to expand...

Good system, Mindi -- but I'm curious. In that particular instance, couldn't you have grabbed a paper towel, run it under the faucet, added a little scrubbing powder, and gotten rid of the sticky spot in less time than it took you to modify your next action list? Just wondering. I'm sure this would be very efficient with tasks that take more time to perform.
 
Day Owl;47620 said:
Good system, Mindi -- but I'm curious. In that particular instance, couldn't you have grabbed a paper towel, run it under the faucet, added a little scrubbing powder, and gotten rid of the sticky spot in less time than it took you to modify your next action list? Just wondering. I'm sure this would be very efficient with tasks that take more time to perform.
Click to expand...

I'm sorry, I didn't explain the example thoroughly enough. It was very late at night and I didn't even have the light on in the kitchen. The sticky area was right in front of the fridge where I had spilled a soda a week before. Since I had already cleaned the area once for the spill, I knew it needed a more thorough cleaning than a dishrag would provide, so I just added it to my notepad that I keep next to my bed. I really like having a "capture tool" by my bed specifically for those thoughts that creep into my head just before I go to sleep. Before GTD, I would have worried about them, now I just capture them and get to sleep quicker.
The next morning I was at work, so I added it to my '@ cleaning' context and forgot about it for the rest of the day. Once I was home, changed from my work clothes to my cleaning clothes, I was ready to tackle all the cleaning next actions I could do in the time I had between dinner and bed. The kitchen floor popped out as something that was more urgent than some of the other routine items since my fiancé’s mother is coming over to cook this weekend, so it was a natural first choice from the list of cleaning next actions.
I definitely agree that little things like wiping up a spill do not necessarily need to go into your system, unless there is a reason you can't do it right then!

;)Mindi
 
Thanks for your generous description, Mindi. I think you have illustrated very well the use of the UCT and the NA list, both in your physical setting and in your home-and-work situation, as well as your creative adaptation of GTD to your own circumstances. May we all do as well.
 
I've been starting to use the tickler file for household things - things that repeat themselves in X days or weeks. I write down what I did and note about how long it took me. Then I think How soon should I do this again? I put it in my tickler for about that time. Then if I need to change that day I can move my tickler card to the next day, unlike a calender entry that is supposed to be fixed. I'm only doing that with things I don't do routinely already and things where I overestimate how long it will take me and so I procrastinate it. I've found myself surprised again and again that a lot of those household things I put off really don't take all that long once you decide to do it.

Juno;)
 
Side note - So it's Friday today and I'm home on a one week vacation. Tomorrow, Saturday, is a day I schedule a lot of stuff... get up, go the Y, come home, do all the yard work, then go get groceries... it's been my routine for quite a while (like a year.) It's ingrained, it's habit. But today it's really nice out, not too hot, and I'm sitting around the house bored. I could get my lawn work done today, and not have to do it tomorrow. But I don't FEEL like doing my lawn work today. But I feel guilty for not doing it today when it could free up time tomorrow. If I do it today, I'll be glad tomorrow that it's done. So I'm going to do it today, as soon as I'm done typing this post. But it still FEELS funny.

My thing is this - I don't like doing any housework at all, but I know it must be done, and the easiest way for me personally to do something is to commit a day and time to it, and then just do it. But one of the "cons" to this approach is that if I do stuff out of sequence it bothers me. Still, the house work is getting done whereas before it wasn't. Before about all I was doing was the lawn...
 
You may find the forums at organizedhome.com useful; there are a number of people there who follow GTD, and it's a friendly place to discuss home management, with lots of practical suggestions.
 
IPODS and housework --and grocery shopping!

I HATE to clean and I hate to go to the grocery store. These days, I do both chores wearing an IPOD around my neck. Sometimes I listen to podcasts, but more often I can be found dancing up and down the aisles! My IPOD makes me tackle those things...just so I can have some fun!
 
I use HandyShopper to track my housekeeping actions

If you are a Palm user, HandyShopper might help you to organize a series of checklists involving housekeeping and maintenance. I use HS for more than grocery shopping lists; I also use it to create specialized checklists. I'm currently building a database that contains lists of all of the recurring cleaning and maintenance work that I need to do at home. I use the Palm categories to create separate lists of things I need to do weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc. When I check an item off as "done", not only does the item disappear from view, the date completed is recorded so I know exactly when I last did a particular task. With one command I can reset the lists so that all of the completed tasks show up as needing to be done again.

I'm actually still building this database. One next action is for me to read every single manual in my general reference material and find recurring actionable things regarding maintenance and cleaning of everything I own (changing filters, changing/testing batteries, cleaning, lubricating, etc). Once I have this list complete I won't have to ever worry that I'll forget to do something because it never got triggered, and I'll have a gigantic mambo list of things which I can do when my brain is toast.

In my experience there are two disadvantages to using HS2 databases. Neither is insurmountable but these "gotchas" can ruin the usefulness of the application.

First, the application only has a Palm interface. A Palm keyboard helps a great deal when initially building the lists, but you still have to use the stylus to enter certain information and navigate the interface. Some companion applications have been made to allow the editing of HS2 databases on the desktop; the best one I've used is HS2Edit, which allows a user to import data from PDB files, edit them in Excel, and export the data back into a PDB files. The data is updated on the Palm during the next HotSync. You can also import and export lists to/from the Memo Pad, but you may lose some record-specific information in the process (notes may not import/export as expected).

Second, and worst of all, because these lists are not integrated into the regular Palm applications, you must remember to view these lists regularly to keep the "out-of-sight, out-of-mind" syndrome from rendering them useless. Park whatever reminders you need in your system to make sure you are viewing these lists. For example, I keep a high-priority to-do item on my @Home list "@See HS2 Housekeeping Database" so that it shows up at the top of the list. This tells me that there's another section of my "@Home" list somewhere else and that I'd better look there. I also added a note in my "Weekly Review Checklist" (located in the Palm memos) to check HS2 databases during my weekly review.

Good luck!
 
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