02.16.07

GTD The Life

Posted in Rants at 6:37 am

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about David Allen’s fantastic book “Getting Things Done”, but have remained oddly quiet on it in the interim. The simple fact is that I only managed to get halfway through it before life intervened in that way that it always seems to. Still, I spent some time during the snow-in skimming over the last half of the book, as well as the overview provided in Gina Trapani’s LifeHacker book. Of course, this all came to produce a story that sort of illustrates my point, much like most of what I write about here.

Wednesday morning, of course, happened to me like it did to everyone else in the Northeast. Intense sleet had fallen overnight, encasing the outside world in ice and rapidly-freezing slush. About ten minutes after I made my post to the blog, I came back into my apartment after chiseling my car free from the ice, and removing the largest part of what would block my vision if I was foolish enough to consider driving in the very dangerous conditions. Anyway, I came in, showered, and was just picking up my backpack to get it ready for an attempt when my power went out. It flickered twice and died for good.

Naturally, panic set in. I scrambled to find my flashlight (tucked behind the lampstand at the door), turned off as many lights as I thoguht I had turned on, and had a good thirty seconds of grousing that things had just ‘gotten worse’. After that, however, I started thinking clearly again. I called in to work, checked in with my folks, and decided to make the most of the situation. I pulled out my notebook and searched for stuff that I could do in the meantime. There was a little– mostly work stuff, but a couple non-connected things on my list. Granted, I didn’t catch everything that I could have done, but that was partly because I’d mislabeled it in the actions list. Even at that, I accomplished so much during a period I would have considered to be ‘dead’ time.

Here’s an abbreviated list of what I did, just during the time I was without power and the period after that with no internet connection (about 8 hours):
* Updated my resume, and corrected a problem with it that I had forgotten about on several occasions.
* Folded the remainder of the laundry from the day before.
* Wrote a guide for a co-worker who was having trouble understanding a feature I’d written, even though I wouldn’t be able to send it immediately.
* Continued development on my current work task, writing a lot of “it should work in theory” code that I wouldn’t be able to check/debug until later (my battery was starting to die).
* Read more of the C# books I’d picked up; also, updated my version of the XNA framework based on the installer I’d downloaded last week but forgot about.
* Backed up and cleared out my InstallFiles folder and a few other miscellaneous dumping points on my Windows machine and flash drive.
* Other miscellaneous personal stuff, all of which I’d been ‘meaning to do’.

That’s seven to ten points on a checklist that I’d previously thought to have been insurmountable. That’s also including a little bit of ‘break time’ spent (once I had power, and whilst eating lunch) playing Geometry Wars. Seriously, that is one damn addicting game. The main point being, by having a list of what I needed to do at the ready and waiting, I was all set to take the maximum amount of advantage of the time I had suddenly found myself in posession of.

I’ll be honest with you. At first, I was abusing the system by overusing the system. I had scheduled time for FF12 and for leisure reading, which added to my stress in that I didn’t know which instrument of slacking off I was going to set myself to, and therefore I would sit and surf aimlessly for a few moments until something appealed to me, until it was bedtime some six hours later. These days, I just keep a brief list of open games and open books at the bottom of my projects page, and whenever I don’t think I can do anything on the list, I pick a game or book and relax. Wedging my relaxation activities into the worklist was definitely not the right thing to do, but as with everything, there’s a learning curve. And I am still learning, myself. I’m tring to find a way to do a mid-level project analysis so that it makes sense to me, but fits within the context of my notebook.

That’s probably the thing I most love about the GTD system. The basic bottom line is that there’s no real rules to follow. You can do it in any way that makes sense to you, without having to worry about fitting what you want into the pre-printed form fields. I’m still tweaking my weekly planner layout, because I’ve got way too much space for projects (leaving those painfully ambiguous right now), but not so much space for my ‘drop lists’ like Waiting, Someday, and Open Games, or my random-access Actions list. The Actions list gets added to and crossed off of over the course of the week, and this previous week, I wound up having to go to another page– bad when you want everything to be in one location. If I had bought a $30 day planner, I’d be stuck with how they think I should be organized. GTD lets me get organized on my own terms.

I hate to sound like I’m suggesting everyone go run out and buy this– it’s not for everyone, I admit. I think it is, and wish it was, but I know some folks aren’t into the obsessive-compulsive, always-carrying-a-thick-notebook-and-pen thing. The GTD book has an outlay, depending on where you get it, commensurate with the pre-printed day planner, when combined with the notebook you’ll need. But the thing is, where the expensive day planner is a yearly expense that doesn’t get any cheaper, the notebook is a recurring expense that’s much less.

Anyway, I hope I’ll be able to share much GTD stuff in the future. We shall see.

Also, this morning, the AP reports that Chinese prognosticators believe the coming Year of the Pig will be full of turbulence, both political and psychological. This is in part due to the fact that this year is governed by two conflicting elements. Quoth Raymond Lo of Hong Kong, “Fire sitting on water is a symbol of conflict and skirmish.” It’s also a sign that you may be living in Cleveland.

I’m off, ladies and gentlemen. Updates over the weekend as per my usual idiom, and I’ll catch you folks on Monday.

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