I’m not quite answering your question but hopefully you find it useful:
I’ve spent the last 3 - 4 years trying to get better at Getting Things Done. I have a few techniques I use:
OKRs
TODO List
Timers
The way these break down is:
With OKRs I specify long term goals and how I’ll measure success towards that goal. This works great for work, for home life not so great (turns out my ambitions are a lot bigger than my will when it comes to my personal life) but in both situations they at least give me clear direction.
With the TODO List I use org-mode, which is great, and work goes it, gets prioritized in it and acted on.
I user Timers when I’m in crunch/focus period, so not all the time. I use timers in a few, but related, ways. For crunch period, in the morning I’ll plan out my day to the minute with everything I’ll do having a duration with it, including relaxation (but I don’t include bathroom breaks because they are a bit more random). Then I follow the schedule blindly. I can only work on that item during that time period and regardless of if I’m done or not I move onto the next item and work on it for that duration. This is useful in that getting stuck on one item cannot block other items. Also, since I know I’m committed to working on one thing for that time period, I tend to power through blockers. The other use case for timers is more standard Pomodoro where the day is not as tightly scheduled but when I decide to do something I can only do that thing for some duration. This is just a great way to stop watching Netflix or dicking around on the internet because you know when you’ll be back to dick around again (when the timer goes off). For me this works well when I feel I need the extra focus.
So GTD fits into the third component for me: TODO List. This is also one of my weakest points so I’m moving towards following GTD a bit better. My problem is I’m happy to put work into my todo list and not actually do it. I’m very bad at distinguishing work I really should do from work I’d just like to do. I think GTD will help with this in a few ways:
Differentiating between something that is just in the Todo list from Next. Right now everything is equal in my system so it’s really hard to know what I want to do next.
More liberally declaring things projects. Right now I only put really big things in my projects bin so larger things that are projects sort of fall between the cracks.
Only giving required things a deadline. Right now I’ll say when I’d like something done by and set a deadline and often it slips, so missing a deadline looses all meaning.
I have an Incoming list now that is on my phone so I won’t forget as many things. Before I only recorded things I remembered at my computer.
The weekly review will be valuable so things can be thrown out and reorganized.
We’ll see how it goes. Really, the problem I have is lack of motivation to do a lot of things rather than organizing it. But I think some of the tricks in GTD are just to get you to give, even an artificial, sense of urgency to some tasks (like distinguishing Todo from Next as well as making sure every Project always has a Next).
Hope some of this long comment was useful and thanks for reading.
I have a basic understanding of GTD (basically on the level described in this blog post) and tried to follow it on several occasions always failing.
I then started using todoist but didn’t like a third party storing every task item I want to do, hence I went back to taskwarrior which I used in the past.
Taskwarrior is great but I started missing on-the-go notes so I configured & self-host a taskd sync server and have the taskwarrior app on my Android. After doing this I decided to give GTD yet another but this time ‘proper’ try and ordered the book (it should arrive today) and intend to implement GTD with taskwarrior as outlined in this article
Been using it for ~10 years consistently, though have been attempting to use it since 2003.
The only way it really becomes useful is if you have to read your lists to know what to do next. I see a lot of people using it as a “backup” system, which is a lot of work for little gain, IMO.
Out of curiosity, does anybody use this “framework” in a daily basis here? How long have you been doing that?
I’m not quite answering your question but hopefully you find it useful:
I’ve spent the last 3 - 4 years trying to get better at Getting Things Done. I have a few techniques I use:
The way these break down is:
With OKRs I specify long term goals and how I’ll measure success towards that goal. This works great for work, for home life not so great (turns out my ambitions are a lot bigger than my will when it comes to my personal life) but in both situations they at least give me clear direction.
With the TODO List I use org-mode, which is great, and work goes it, gets prioritized in it and acted on.
I user Timers when I’m in crunch/focus period, so not all the time. I use timers in a few, but related, ways. For crunch period, in the morning I’ll plan out my day to the minute with everything I’ll do having a duration with it, including relaxation (but I don’t include bathroom breaks because they are a bit more random). Then I follow the schedule blindly. I can only work on that item during that time period and regardless of if I’m done or not I move onto the next item and work on it for that duration. This is useful in that getting stuck on one item cannot block other items. Also, since I know I’m committed to working on one thing for that time period, I tend to power through blockers. The other use case for timers is more standard Pomodoro where the day is not as tightly scheduled but when I decide to do something I can only do that thing for some duration. This is just a great way to stop watching Netflix or dicking around on the internet because you know when you’ll be back to dick around again (when the timer goes off). For me this works well when I feel I need the extra focus.
So GTD fits into the third component for me: TODO List. This is also one of my weakest points so I’m moving towards following GTD a bit better. My problem is I’m happy to put work into my todo list and not actually do it. I’m very bad at distinguishing work I really should do from work I’d just like to do. I think GTD will help with this in a few ways:
We’ll see how it goes. Really, the problem I have is lack of motivation to do a lot of things rather than organizing it. But I think some of the tricks in GTD are just to get you to give, even an artificial, sense of urgency to some tasks (like distinguishing Todo from Next as well as making sure every Project always has a Next).
Hope some of this long comment was useful and thanks for reading.
It is! thanks for taking the time writing it.
I have a basic understanding of GTD (basically on the level described in this blog post) and tried to follow it on several occasions always failing.
I then started using todoist but didn’t like a third party storing every task item I want to do, hence I went back to taskwarrior which I used in the past.
Taskwarrior is great but I started missing on-the-go notes so I configured & self-host a taskd sync server and have the taskwarrior app on my Android. After doing this I decided to give GTD yet another but this time ‘proper’ try and ordered the book (it should arrive today) and intend to implement GTD with taskwarrior as outlined in this article
Been using it for ~10 years consistently, though have been attempting to use it since 2003.
The only way it really becomes useful is if you have to read your lists to know what to do next. I see a lot of people using it as a “backup” system, which is a lot of work for little gain, IMO.