gtd@home

[neil007]

does anyone else share my problem When it comes to work i am a black belt - but at home disorganisation reigns! im living two lives from a gtd perspective!

 

[apinaud]

I want to reply to your question with 2 more questions...

After you reply or not to that I will give you mi insight...
1.- Are you black belt at work because you see the sucessful outcome?
2.- Are you the only GTDer at home?
3.- Are you allow yourself to manage home as you manage work, or home is on a different level than work?
4.- Do you have a clear sucessful outcome from Home?

 

[neil007]

My reply

1. yes + a dedicated office
2. yes
3. yes
4. sort of

 

[emuelle1]

Actually, home is a big "loose end" for me when it comes to GTD. My wife stays home with the kids, who are both small, so obviously nobody at home is dedicated to GTD or any other kind of time management system. It's very easy for a system to fall apart at home. I was in the habit for a while of taking my inbox to work with me to sort through. I carry two folders in my work bag: file and trash. This is for things that I just don't want to throw away at work. However, at home, I get very little time to empty them so they build up until the system breaks down.

Of course, the reduced sleep that is a result of small children doesn't help productivity, but we all have to go through it.

 

[TesTeq]

Sort of... Sort out!

4. sort of

Sort of successful? Not a very appealing outcome to achieve...

Sort of outcome? Not a success to visualize and focus on...

So you should sort it out and define real successful outcome!

 

[sonia_simone]

Home is harder

I think GTD at home is much harder than at work for many of us. For one thing, many actions at home are repetitive without having to be done on a particular day, which GTD doesn't have a super spiffy answer for. Projects are often open ended and successful outcomes are not always easy to visualize. "Get lawn mower blades sharpened," easy to put into a GTD system. "Raise children to be good human beings," not so much.

For me the answers have been a) that I have to work harder at keeping it together at home than I do at work, and b) that I have to be a little more forgiving of myself at home.

There are quite a few folks out there who are dedicated to creating systems that work for home life--Flylady is the best-known, but there are many others.

 

[CosmoGTD]

. "Get lawn mower blades sharpened," easy to put into a GTD system. "Raise children to be good human beings," not so much.

Get lawn mover blades sharpened, is almost a Next Action, as "take the blades to store X" is the actual Next Action. So that is a bottom up runway Next Action. That Next Action would fit into the general area of keeping a good House&Home, which is related to having a good Family.

With something like "raising children to be good humans", that is a higher level objective in the Family-Parenting area. That is where GTD can REALLY help. The ONLY way to achieve or move toward something like that, is to break it down further, and get some projects and Next Actions going right away.
Otherwise, good intentions, are not going to help that type of objective. How many people intend to NOT be great parents? Not many. But people get caught up with work, and leave the kids to the video games and MTV, and there you go.

So to apply GTD to this, one would brainstorm what it means to be a "good human", and how specifically one might go about moving toward that. The Projects could be anything from parenting classes, to enrolling the kids in various groups or lessons, family trips, family meetings, etc.
Then those would be broken down to specific Projects, and then the Next Actions.
-enroll in parenting class X
-call the music school X and make appt to enrol kiddies
-call park and reserve cabin for family camping trip.
-schedule a weekly family meeting

So GTD is not just about taking care of the little things like the lawnmower.
To me, GTD is about the exact opposite, taking care of the most important things.
If that is Parenting, then that needs to be broken down into SPECIFIC objective, Projects, and Next Actions, and then some of those actions need to be DONE starting today.
Or if its writing a novel, then the Projects need to be set up, and then "write for 30 minutes" might be a Next Action to be taken each morning.

To me GTD is about actually moving forward on the most important things in our life, and moving from vague abstractions, to specific Next Actions.

 

[kglade]

gtd@home:

to a certain extent I share your situation. At work, I am very proficient with GTD. At home, I choose to relax a bit. I still make and use lists, and update my calendar, but I am not too strict about checking my gtd system when I change contexts.

 

[severance1970]

At the office, inputs have cleaner edges: voice mails, emails, verbal requests, faxes and memos. At home, laundry piling up in the closet, merchandise sitting in the car that needs to be brought into the house, dusty surfaces, broken appliances, cohabitants making vague suggestions, etc. require more conscious definition as in-basket items. If the challenge of knowledge work is defining work, then the domestic front qualifies as knowledge work even more than the office does.

Since few, if any, things on your list will die at home if you don't do them, it takes more discipline to review the @Home list as rigorously as other lists, but if you truly want everything off your mind, reviewing it at least once in your daily review and at least once when you're at home is essential. A good best practice for GTD is to make it a rule to look at the appropriate action list at least once whenever you enter a new context.

 

[TesTeq]

Treating our work more seriously than our home.

At the office, inputs have cleaner edges: voice mails, emails, verbal requests, faxes and memos.

Unfortunately I know many people who ignore voice mails, emails etc. at the office too.

But...

This thread is about some people who treat their work more seriously than their home.

Why do they do it?.

I really don't know! Is customer fax more important than tidy and pleasant place to live?

 

[severance1970]

This thread is about some people who treat their work more seriously than their home.

Why do they do it?.

I really don't know! Is customer fax more important than tidy and pleasant place to live?

I read the thread as being about why some people are less functional at home, not less serious. Expanding on my reply, I suggest:

1. Office work is more identifiable: emails, faxes, etc.
2. You have a boss defining much of your work (spouse jokes notwithstanding)
3. Housekeeping duties are not a part of most knowledge worker job descriptions
4. Office work consumes the lion's share of one's time and enery for the day
5. Motivation by stick: no job = no home