apply the 80/20 rule to GTD
I’m sort of a Protestant when it comes to the state religion of geek productivity ( Getting things done) – I see the magic and the mystery, but I’m not really convinced that we need those candles on the altar, the 40,000 saints file folders, and all the rest.
Scott Young feels the same way.
My GTD-lite system:
- maintain a flat text-file to-do list, with sub-heads noting each week out till the end of the year. One asterisk / one line per task.
- read email; deal with it immediately, or file it and put a task in to_do.txt
- transcribe to-do items from my Moleskine into to_do.txt
- on each Monday, delete the week headline and move the tasks into the top “now” bin
- take tasks one-by-one from the “now” bin up top, and either (a) do them and delete them; (b) do one step and move them to “waiting” status; (c) decide to do them in the future, and move them down the page; (d) decide they don’t need doing, and delete them
- store notes on anything with persistent state in wiki; store text files and spreadsheets in Subversion
- repeat until dead, or post-human
I’ve got a few trivial tools I use to help with this process: a command line alias that tells me how many items are on my list; an emacs function that ads a “pinged” data field to the end of a text entry; another emacs function that converts a task from open to “waiting” by prefixing it with “waiting”; etc.
I do not use a calendar.
My master to-do list is amazingly boring and low-tech. …but it works better than every other system I’ve tried.
Example:
now at office
>>> review all actions below, make sure that they are SIMPLE VERBS
———————————————————————————————-* check out Joel’s wiki http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/defaul…
* CODE: look into Suz’ purchasing tab throttling/precondition problem – idea: make getDSH_shippableOrders() take an optional argument, which turns off pruning and preconds
* CODE: tweak TVR client for envelopes
* CODE: go over process with Suz, extend database; get all mails into database // make use of customer suggestions in database – integrate it into Suz’ process
* hire customer support person
* send out Elisabeth’s newsletter
* …* waiting: 2 Jul : response from Dan XXXXXX re: cobranding
* waiting: 2 Jul : waiting: response from XXXXXXXXX re: SmartFlix / XXXXXXXXX fulfillment deal (pinged 22 May)
* waiting: 2 Jul : followup with XXXXXXXX to respond with purchase price of his firm ( originally 25 Apr 2007)
* waiting: 29 Jun : Lileks to deliver movie review – (pinged 29 June – promised with in 1 week)
* waiting: 29 Jun : PWK to review cart options; then put in wiki and pass along to others for comment
* waiting: 29 Jun : PWK to get new monitor
* waiting: 27 Jun : press release re: Arts & Crafts from XXXXXXXX
* waiting: 11 Jun : coyoteblog.com to put up banner ad
…9 July
——
* get back to Warren@XXXXXX.com with text for link
**** Jared Wedding (14 July)
…16 July
——-
* reschedule Vet appointment: (781) 643-7387
* BUY angle iron
…
