[HN Gopher] A Pragmatic Guide to Getting Things Done
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A Pragmatic Guide to Getting Things Done
Author : Brajeshwar
Score : 105 points
Date : 2022-05-25 15:36 UTC (7 hours ago)
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| mfrankel wrote:
| Here's a 4 minute video intro to GTD:
| https://brevedy.com/getting-things-done-3-minutes-video/
| metacritic12 wrote:
| The big problem I have with GTD is that there doesn't seem to be
| a concept of prioritizing tasks or even deleting bad tasks.
|
| What's the part of the process where I decide the time ROI of
| Task A is 10x and the ROI of Task B is 0.5x?
| [deleted]
| steveklabnik wrote:
| The {weekly,monthly,quarterly,yearly,whatever} review is where
| you do this sort of work. It's true that in GTD itself there's
| no concept of "priority" directly; it does exist implicitly in
| the difference between a "project" and "someday/maybe" lists.
| Prioritizing a project means it's a project, not on the list,
| and deprioritizing one means moving it to the someday/maybe
| list. Same with deleting tasks, if it's not useful, just delete
| it.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > The {weekly,monthly,quarterly,yearly,whatever} review is
| where you do this sort of work.
|
| That's true, but it doesn't tell you _how_ to prioritize. It
| likely can 't, as there are many different methods to do so,
| and none stand out over the others. However, I wish the book
| had made it clear that this is not covered, and you should
| consult other resources for this.
|
| > Prioritizing a project means it's a project, not on the
| list, and deprioritizing one means moving it to the
| someday/maybe list
|
| Yes, but it does say that weekly/monthly you should move
| items from one list to the other. As I said in another
| comment, my someday/maybe list is hundreds of items long. How
| do I choose which one to put into the active projects list?
| It's not feasible to look at hundreds of items and just
| decide which ones are important.
|
| I've been using GTD for 15 years. Even if you put 30 items in
| the Someday/Maybe list per year (and this is conservative for
| me), you're looking at over 300 items by this point -
| especially given that of those 30, you'll probably be able to
| do only 3-5 in a given year.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| It's been years since I read the book, and I was surprised I
| still had it (my wife had me do a major purge of the library a
| couple years back, this one apparently made the cut).
|
| Priorities are discussed in chapter 9. Deleting tasks is
| discussed in chapter 8 (along with the weekly review).
| CraigJPerry wrote:
| GTD has a concept of a tickler file -
| https://facilethings.com/blog/en/the-tickler-file - something i
| have zero use for but i need the same idea for digital artifacts.
|
| I tried different approaches over the years but i've settled on
| the PARA method - https://fortelabs.co/blog/para/ - Very
| complimentary to GTD and similarly pragmatic.
| KlatchianMist wrote:
| The thing that really made task management stick for me was the
| creation of a personalized task management meta-model: What
| workflows do I wish to follow and which task attributes and views
| are needed to enable those workflows? After thinking through
| that, it became easy to find and configure a task management app
| in a way that it got consistently used.
|
| Here is the reference I used for creating my own task management
| meta-model:
|
| https://sagar.se/blog/a-task-management-model/
| rodolphoarruda wrote:
| "GTD--or "Getting things done"--is a framework for organizing and
| tracking your tasks and projects"
|
| GTD--or "Getting things done"--is a framework created by David
| Allen for organizing and tracking your tasks and projects.
| toma_caliente wrote:
| You seem to be implying the author is trying to claim this as
| their own. They mention David Allen's book not too far into the
| post.
| rodolphoarruda wrote:
| No, that wasn't my intention. But it's interesting that
| you've got that impression.
|
| It's just good practice to indicate the author of a given
| theory/framework/etc. right at the top of the article.
| garrickvanburen wrote:
| I've adopted the "Someday/Maybe", "Waiting For", "Next Actions",
| and "Weekly (P)Review" portions of GTD, beyond that, all my
| commitments are in my calendar, as I found a decade ago that my
| biggest impediment to getting things done was answering 'When?'
| giomasce wrote:
| Any suggestion on a (possibly self-hosted) web application to
| manage GTD lists?
| nstart wrote:
| Quick thoughts I've had for years on this article and about the
| book Getting Things Done by David Allen.
|
| Not trying to put this article down btw, since this was the
| article that introduced me to gtd in the first place. That said,
| if you do feel like trying gtd based off this article, I have a
| possibly helpful heads up for you.
|
| Try out the whole dumping things into an inbox and processing it
| bit for a short while. Just the bit of building a habit of
| unloading anything on your mind into the inbox. Don't worry too
| much about projects and ticklers and whatnot. Once you've done
| that for a few weeks, you should pick up the book by David Allen
| and read it. And then implement the rest of gtd.
|
| As someone who tried gtd but didn't get it for many years, the
| book has so much context behind the thinking of each concept
| (next actions, projects, tickler, weekly review, etc). Every
| single summary of the gtd method feels pale in comparison to
| that.
|
| Now, everyone's journey might be different. But just know that if
| GTD doesn't work for you after trying it based on a post like
| this, it's completely natural. It's a rare case where the source
| material is really where all the gold is at.
| Loic wrote:
| What I like from the book is that you have many small but
| really good tips on the way to manage your stuff.
|
| For example, getting a label machine to label your folders and
| store them in alphabetical order. Really simple but works very
| well (at least for me in the past 15 years of doing it).
|
| Some were harder for me, I was not able to implement a nice
| "TODO list I can take everywhere" and I am not really
| formalizing the "next step" of my project.
|
| But, for me, from the past 15 years, the best personal
| productivity book by a large margin.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Some notes from someone who's attempted GTD for 15 years. My
| trouble with it is that it really hasn't worked when your lists
| become large.
|
| > When you first start to use GTD you should take an hour to
| write down all things you want to--or have to--do.
|
| An hour is not even close to being enough. A whole weekend may
| get you to 50%.
|
| > If it's something that you want to remind yourself about later
| ("I really didn't understand this article, I should have a look
| at it again in two weeks") it should go into your calendar or
| your tickler file
|
| The problem is that my tickler files become bloated with these,
| and it becomes a daily burden to open that day's file and try to
| decide. If I deferred something till later "because I couldn't
| decide what to do with it", there's a 90% chance I'll defer it
| again. These are items I want to work on actively, and not put in
| the Someday/Maybe list.
|
| > This is where the some day/maybe list comes it. ... This list
| should be reviewed weekly along with the rest of the system as
| described in the weekly review section below.
|
| Perhaps many people don't have as much aspiration (or
| imagination), but my Someday/Maybe list is huge - hundreds of
| potential TODOs/projects. Reviewing that every week is a huge
| burden, so it's not done. I treat Someday/Maybe almost as a
| garbage dump - I don't look at it, but my brain takes comfort
| that I've captured it _somewhere_.
|
| It's got to the point that I now have an "intermediate" list in
| between my active and someday/maybe. This list contains items I
| _must_ do, but I 've placed them there because I lack the
| bandwidth. Whenever I finish a project, I move items from this
| list to the "Active" list. I need this intermediate list because
| I know once something goes to Someday/Maybe, it's practically
| lost in all the noise.
|
| One of the problems with GTD is it doesn't address how to focus
| or prioritize, nor what to ask yourself during the review. I've
| found making a Do Not Do list to be far more effective (as in, at
| the beginning of the year, I list projects that I commit to _not_
| doing until I 'm done with the ones I _do_ want to do). Listing
| goals for the year and asking myself weekly /monthly what work I
| did _not_ tied to those goals is helpful during the review.
| zeitlupe wrote:
| > An hour is not even close to being enough. A whole weekend
| may get you to 50%.
|
| This is one problem I have with GTD: It talks and talks about
| collecting and sorting tasks but does not care much about
| whether you should do them in the first place. It invites
| overloading yourself with tasks and want-to-dos instead of
| thinking about if that tasks are truly important to you in the
| light of a perpetual shortage of time to do all the stuff you
| would like to.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| https://gettingthingsdone.com/what-is-gtd/
|
| The five basic steps of GTD:
|
| 1. Capture
|
| 2. Clarify
|
| 3. Organize
|
| 4. Reflect
|
| 5. Engage
|
| (2) and (4), in particular, deal with whether the actions are
| worth doing along with the when and where of doing them.
| Which is covered in all the decent summaries I've read and
| the book itself.
| dougskinner wrote:
| I don't think this is an accurate assessment. Yes, GTD wants
| you to get everything out of your head and onto the "paper"
| in front of you. And yes, this might take a long time for
| some people, up to hours or days. But the key thing is it's
| all written down. Once it is, then you go through the
| collected inputs and actually figure out what to do with
| them. But you can't do that while your brain is still going
| "did I write this other thing down?" You need a clear mind
| before you start processing.
| manholio wrote:
| Sounds like you are an overachiever. The big implicit
| assumption of GTD is that, while it makes you more productive,
| there is still a limit on how much you can take on. Workload is
| not specifically addressed, but implicitly the overflow will go
| to the _Someday_ folder.
|
| I think the answer to this problem is not any productivity
| trick, but to aim for exponential growth of your business,
| career, etc. so that _Delegate_ becomes the primary workhorse
| instead of _Next Actions_. Prioritize actions you perform and
| projects you start so that they are conducive to a long term
| self-sustaining increase in your productivity. And accept that
| you may have limited success /luck in unleashing the
| exponential and that some projects will forever stay out of
| your linear reach.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > Sounds like you are an overachiever.
|
| Not at all. I'm not trying to achieve _all_ , or even _most_
| of those things. I know I won 't even be able to do a tenth
| of them.
|
| One of the core ideas behind GTD is to get these things out
| of the mind and into a trustworthy system. My Someday/Maybe
| list is huge because I get it out of my mind and put it
| somewhere. How many of them I get to do in my life is not at
| all a concern I have.
|
| > Prioritize actions you perform and projects you start so
| that they are conducive to a long a self-sustaining increase
| in your productivity.
|
| When your list is hundreds of items long, and GTD tells you
| to prioritize _every week_ , that is unsustainable.
|
| For my work GTD, things are simpler. The scope is limited,
| and there's not attachment to any project. The job dictates
| most of what needs to be done and it makes prioritizing
| almost trivial. It's the GTD for the non-work stuff that
| explodes.
| bachmeier wrote:
| > When your list is hundreds of items long, and GTD tells
| you to prioritize every week, that is unsustainable.
|
| One of the nice things about GTD is that you make
| _everything_ explicit. It quickly becomes obvious when you
| have too many active projects, nudging you to decide which
| project are really worth doing. The same goes for having
| too many next actions.
|
| > It's the GTD for the non-work stuff that explodes.
|
| Great if you're actually getting all that non-work stuff
| done, but I just can't imagine you're doing hundreds of
| non-work items each week.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > It quickly becomes obvious when you have too many
| active projects
|
| The issue I'm discussing isn't the number of active
| projects, but the number of someday/maybe projects.
|
| > Great if you're actually getting all that non-work
| stuff done, but I just can't imagine you're doing
| hundreds of non-work items each week.
|
| See paragraph above.
|
| The issue I'm complaining about is that GTD tells you to
| review the Someday/Maybe list often (e.g. every week).
| I'm pointing out the infeasibility of that. Culling the
| Someday/Maybe list is _fundamentally_ problematic in GTD,
| as the whole point is to get these ideas out of our head
| and into a list somewhere.
| quesera wrote:
| A simple (if impure) solution is to add a secondary
| "Someday/Maybe" list. Call it something like
| "Eventually/Remotely-Possible".
|
| Limit your S/M list to a comfortable number of entries,
| and drop the ones that don't make the cut to E/RP. Review
| S/M regularly, review E/RP only when curious, or when one
| of the items becomes of renewed interest.
|
| I'm an archivist by nature. I don't like to delete items.
| E/RP can grow to thousands of items, and that's OK.
| Occasionally one will be revived. The rest will be keep
| each other company.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I think the complaint isn't that one couldn't try
| different ways to manage the problem, it's that the
| system doesn't address it at all.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Yes, precisely. I've found solutions similar to the other
| commenters. My complaint is:
|
| 1. This is a common problem - I'm not unusual.
|
| 2. GTD's approach to this problem doesn't really work -
| hence everyone here listing how they solved it in a way
| that differs from GTD (i.e. not reviewing it weekly).
| notaclevername wrote:
| My strategy to handle a too-long someday/maybe list is to
| clarify how often I want to revisit the list. I have a
| list to review weekly, a separate list to review monthly,
| quarterly, etc. I have separate lists for someday/maybe
| date night ideas, vacation ideas, professional
| development ideas, and so forth.
|
| Someday/maybe exists to get something out of my head and
| into a trusted place where I know I'll see it again at an
| appropriate time. If I know that I only need to see
| something quarterly (or when planning a date night), I
| don't need to revisit during every weekly review.
|
| What I find is that, when I have more distance between
| reviews, it is easier to call the list organically. After
| a quarter, I haven't thought about some of those items
| for months and I can easily say, "Actually, that doesn't
| sound interesting any more."
| d0mine wrote:
| One trick is to schedule a fixed block of time e.g., an hour
| before launch every morning and work on these maybe/someday
| tasks (you can choose the next task using whatever criteria you
| like e.g., "what looks the most interesting dopamine-generating
| right now" or "boring but important even if without a fixed
| date" depending on your needs (or a combination of the two:
| start with interesting, and persevere through the boring parts
| by using the fixed time slot)
| BeetleB wrote:
| It's a nice trick, but what is it trying to achieve? Also, if
| I'm going to spend an hour daily on Someday/Maybe tasks, then
| those tasks really are not "Someday/Maybe", right? Are you
| really suggesting I look over that list _daily_?
|
| I think people are misreading my comment as saying "I have so
| many things I want to do, and there isn't enough time to do
| them, and GTD doesn't help."
|
| This is not my problem. My problem is:
|
| "I have a lot of items on my Someday/Maybe list, over 90% of
| which will not be done, and that's OK. Reviewing this list
| every week (as GTD tells me to) to decide if I should move
| any to the 'Active' list is a huge burden"
| packetslave wrote:
| One thing I did to address exactly this (way too many items
| in Someday/Maybe to review effectively every week) was to
| separate the list into two:
|
| - Someday (I'm 90% sure I _am_ going to do this, but I 'm
| not actively working on it right now). This gets looked at
| during my weekly review.
|
| - Maybe (I _might_ do this at some point, but I 'm 90% sure
| I won't do it in the next month). This gets looked at
| during my monthly review.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Yes, this is similar to my intermediate list above
| (probably should call it "Backlog"). These are things I
| _must_ do - just not now.
|
| For the "Maybe", to be frank, I just stopped updating it.
| Instead I now have a sort of bucket list: Things I'd
| _really like_ to do before I die. Even if I can 't do
| all, I should be able to do quite a bit of these. It's
| basically a "higher priority" Maybe list. The idea is
| when a random thought pops up into my head ("Write a blog
| post on X"), I ask myself "Does this belong in the bucket
| list?" If not: "Wouldn't my time be better spent on the
| bucket list?" If yes, I just discard the thought. Sure,
| it'll pop into my head often, but why bother adding it to
| my "Maybe" list if I can't be bothered to review that
| huge list?
| d0mine wrote:
| If you believe you can review your list everyday, then your
| list is not large enough ;) Obviously, it would defeat the
| purpose to try to review it everyday -- classic quadratic
| algorithm -- nothing will be done and a lot of anxiety may
| be generated.
|
| If you are stuck and can't choose in a reasonable time,
| pick at random, and work on it: avoid multitasking (if it
| "maybe/someday" task, then you can afford it).
|
| If 1000 hours over 4 years is too much for your purposes,
| pick a different frequency -- having the habit should help
| either way. If there is no amount of time you are willing
| to reserve for your list than call it "Never" (that is fine
| -- as one data hoarder to another).
| CoffeeAfter2pm wrote:
| morninglight wrote:
| This is an advertisement for yet another self-help book.
|
| .
| BeetleB wrote:
| Not sure why you're downvoted. Even if GTD is a great book, it
| _is_ a self help book.
| kevinmgranger wrote:
| The idea that the post is an advertisement is ludicrous, and
| they are being downvoted accordingly.
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