Recently I found a book called “Getting Things Done” by David Allen. It’s not one of the typical self-help books even though it has been classified as such on British Amazon, there appearing on the first page within its category. For a long time I felt that a link was missing between many organizational fragments of mine, so it became vital once and for all to glue them together. And since most self-help books are written in English, what better place to look for a suitable source of inspiration than one of the book shops on the net?
After some browsing I narrowed the books down to two of which “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People – Powerful Lessons in Personal Change” by Steven R. Covey I will tackle next. This one is legendary and the first edition appeared already in the beginning of the 90’s. But let’s return to “Getting Things Done”, hereafter referred to as GTD.
Most of Allen’s clients are apparently business people from higher levels of management, but the luxury of a hectic daily life isn’t theirs only, so I decided to give his method a go. It doesn’t seem very meaningful to cite him word for word, since I could end up copying the first two chapters of his book, which is why I’ll take “my way” as an approach instead.
Background. I’m a medical student at a university where there is one single exam per semester and where there are neither specified litterature nor reading lists available other than those made by fellow students. The challenge is to find out which books suit me personally, what specifically to read and when. And all that needs to be worked out rather quickly due to a high pace since day 1 of a new semester. Needless to say it also has to be coordinated with the rest of a student’s life, which has turned out to be quite a challenge indeed. The task of kicking oneself into movement may seem so displeasing that procrastination might begin to flourish – which it does. Charming behaviour, not to be expected from a person intelligent enough to realize how much damage (s)he is actually causing… Sadly, I know that many others join me in this horrible pattern twice yearly and most feel as bad about it as I do. So now comes the punch line/cliché/whatever you wish to call it: “I have a solution to the problem”.
Stop procrastinating. By using the Getting Things Done method you can expect results, get things done. Time for next cliché: “You need to stick to it or it won’t work”. Try it! It’s simple, doesn’t require you to do major changes (other than maybe clean up among your stacks of paper and emails), doesn’t promise you things you can’t achieve, doesn’t ask for the impossible. It does however require some initial thought, some commitment to get the project going and some persistence, because it’s still you who needs to do the work. But if you do it step by step, you almost can’t avoid getting sucked into the next phase of the process. And from my experience you can achieve a lot already by reading the first two chapters, which aren’t really that long and don’t take up too much time either.
The method. GTD consists of five chronological stages, all very clear and logical, so don’t expect anything difficult. The only hard part might arise when you must prioritize between two or several options, but for that there are some pointers to be read in later chapters. So, five stages: 1) collect, 2) process, 3) organize, 4) review, 5) do. For you to have a visual, check this flow chart out (it’s from the book). What has been visualized are the actions you need to do and the eight different places where information might end up, either temporarily or permanently. In essence, the deal is to maintain the overall level of organization as high as possible all the time, so no time or energy is wasted on worrying about things that might have been forgotten and which things to choose from the so-called “Next-actions” list, thereby creating as stressfree an environment as possible. Sounds cliché? Yes, but it works for me and many others. For a nutshell version of the method, please read this blog, A Primer on Getting Things Done, at 7P Productions.
My way. This is GTD applied to my daily life:
- “Stuff” comes to me primarily from three directions; by email, phone or mail. I 1) collect the “stuff” in the respective inboxes, the “collection buckets”.
- As soon as possible, preferably as soon as I’ve noticed the “stuff”, I 2) process them to avoid any “open loops” that unnecessarily load my memory. To process an email/sms or a letter means I decide whether I should “do an action” or not.
- When I physically move an email away from the inbox to some other place, I’m already at the next stage, at 3) organizing. I’m using gmail, so in my case, if it isn’t actionable, it can now end up in three different places, the Trash (wasn’t important enough to archive), the Starred folder with a specific label attached to it (it’s a “tickler”, a potential “project” in the future) or the labelled Archive (for future reference). If the email is actionable however, it always goes right into the Starred folder, again with its correct label, and stays there until the “project”/the specific part of the “project” is done.
- There are three options for mail that isn’t actionable either; paper recycling, a working folder and an archive. In the working folder all unfinished project materials, for instance unpaid bills, stay before they are archived.
- “Stuff” in the shape of sms I haven’t organized that well yet, but the aim is to empty the inbox regularly.
- All my current “projects” I have written on a list that I keep on my iPod touch. The programme I use is WritingPad, downloadable for free in iTunes, and very smart since it detects words you trace over the screen, so you don’t have to type letter after letter.
- Material related to unfinished projects are kept in the gmail Starred folder and in the physical working folder.
- Now comes the fun part, the calendar. I use iCal on my mac and iPod, so they can easily be synchronized; what is written in one place syncs to the other. The only exception is the To Do list in iCal for which I’ve had to find an alternative on the iPod, but I’ll get back to that later. The calendar is sacred – only three things go there, the “time-specific” actions (appointments), the “day-specific actions” (things that need to be done on an unspecific time during that particular day) and the “day-specific information” (extra information for that day, for instance a family member’s appointments or directions to an appointment). What is in the calendar is done without further discussion and I keep an automatically updated calendar of lectures and other school stuff there (appointments), as well as many other calendars to distinguish between different types of functions. So far I haven’t added any day-specific information in other places than as notes to already existing events.
- The “next actions” I’ve decided to monitor as To Do’s in iCal, giving them different priorities to make it even more clear what really needs to be done. The high priority is given to the extremely hasty things only, so there are many things of normal priority and many of low, too. The things done get tagged no priority if I want to keep them visible instead of deleting them.
- Apple has for some mysterious reason decided not to integrate the To Do function of iCal in the Calendar for iPod touch and iPhone, so now my “Next actions” are monitored with the help of To Do’s, a free application available in iTunes store. It’s extremely annoying though to update the list manually, so I’ve decided to add only the high- and normal-priority things there and keep the rest, less urgent ones in iCal only. And of course I add anything on-the-go to the To Do’s if I’m not at my computer.
- Finally, if you have delegated something or are just waiting for a response you still need to make some kind of note somewhere. My “waiting” items are monitored in iCal as low-priority things on the To Do list with the word Waiting added to them.
- To stay on top of things; iCal and Calendar plus To Do’s are the two places I need to look in order to get an overview before 5) doing. It’s all about choice and therefore the previous step, 4) review, is done once weekly. By cleaning up the potential clutter in badly processed collection buckets and poorly updated “projects” and “next actions” lists as well as the calendar and temporary or permanent archives I make sure that all “stuff” has been transformed into actionable “projects”. Reviewing all places means I don’t lose energy on worrying and also intuitively can feel what I need to 5) do, how I must prioritize.
For medical students at University of Copenhagen. This is my idea of a pleasant start of the semester:
- Find out what book(s) you want to read, preferably before the semester begins – I like the comment sections on studmed.dk.
- Are there available reading lists for those books or do you need to make some yourself?
- Mentally divide the semester into courses and treat them as blocks that end with exams even if no self tests are arranged. Respect the course time schedules or you will inevitably fall behind soon (!), thereby creating nothing but a hellish exam period – take it from a student who has tried this on more than one occasion.
- Work out a very detailed plan on what you need to read and when – lecture themes will guide you to what are the most important topics within a specific field, but especially during the organe courses read a little on everything. You don’t want to flunk an exam just because you didn’t read anything at all on the physiology of the thyroid gland; yes, you might have scored well in other subjects and cases, but chances are you have not, since you didn’t manage to get through the whole pensum. There almost never is anything such as good luck at this University, so before the exam you check out all the questions on third semester, even the neuro ones… Just cover it all!
- Plot all of it in your calendar. My “read today” things become all-day events in iCal, since it’s not necessary to read something at a specific time. This will help you become convinced that this is actually the only time you have for reading those particular pages or chapters the first time(s), since there are other things you need to read tomorrow and the day after that. I particularly believe in the power of this part, the visualization of necessity!
- If you don’t have time in the beginning of a semester to investigate all courses, then just make sure to repeat the process before each course begins so you don’t fall behind. Am I repeating myself? Well, repetition can work for some people such as myself.
- It might seem silly, obsessive even, to be this organized (overly maybe?), but since you have to stick to some kind of method, process or whatever when you study medicine at this particular university, why not choose GTD? At least you know what to expect of it and what it expects of you. And as a bonus you’ll grind through the whole pensum, your bills get paid on time, you’ll remember to change the battery in that watch you love, you’ll squeeze in some work via FADL, there will be time for that healthy exercise, and all those novels you want to read, sweaters you want to knit or band sessions you want to attend you’ll be able to enjoy to a greater extent, since there is not much to worry about, no other place you should be (the library for instance).
- About making notes: I recommend registering your studentconsult books. For instance during renal physiology their Boron & Boulpæp image library (same pictures as in the books) saved me and I was able to add short comments wherever necessary to pictures that I had copy-pasted into a file of my own. Then I just had to remember the pictures and if I need them now, I directly find the core information. Check the Information management category of this blog out for productivity tools, as well; you might like making mindmaps, concept maps and other notes where you actually must process the information somehow.
- Before I become too chirpy, I’ll let this be the last bullet.
Conclusion. Don’t decide against GTD just because there’s a lot of jargon. You’ll catch up fast and I recommend reading the second chapter twice or until you feel you’ve grasped the main idea anyway. The trick is to find the right tools to handle your workflow and even if it shouldn’t be a matter of how technological your solution is, there are some advantages to keep the daily-used tools electronical. Not all PDA’s are horribly expensive anymore, although I personally steer clear of anything that hasn’t a beautiful mac user interface. Automatically updated calendars and synchronization are a huge hit, but the archives need to be nice to handle too, so consider something that isn’t completely horrible to look at and difficult to use. Ordning & Reda is hugely recommended – it’s pretty. And before I sell my soul to some brand, I stop for now. I hope you enjoy the GTD ride!
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