GTD Getting Things Done for ERE People

Anything to do with the traditional world of get a degree, get a job as well as its alternatives
luxagraf
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Re: GTD Getting Things Done for ERE People

Post by luxagraf »

jacob wrote:
Sun Jan 15, 2023 1:27 pm
How is GTD compatible with the maker schedule?
http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html
GTD doesn't use timeblocking. I mean clearly you can, like AxelHeyst writes above. But I never have. The whole idea of timeblocking fills me with dread. But then I am one of Graham's example cases for the maker schedule: writer. And it's true, I rarely sit down and work for less than 3 hours. Usually for me that's in the morning. and damn is he right about meetings, I have two a week and they usually do more or less ruin the rest of the day for me.

Anyway, I have always used GTD to keep track of what I am working on (projects) and what I need to do to make those projects happen (next actions). That's all it is for me.

But I know some people have trouble figuring out what to do when and I can see where time blocking can be helpful to clarify that.

AxelHeyst
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Re: GTD Getting Things Done for ERE People

Post by AxelHeyst »

Paul Graham wrote:There are two types of schedule, which I'll call the manager's schedule and the maker's schedule. The manager's schedule is for bosses. It's embodied in the traditional appointment book, with each day cut into one hour intervals. You can block off several hours for a single task if you need to, but by default you change what you're doing every hour.

When you use time that way, it's merely a practical problem to meet with someone. Find an open slot in your schedule, book them, and you're done.

Most powerful people are on the manager's schedule. It's the schedule of command. But there's another way of using time that's common among people who make things, like programmers and writers. They generally prefer to use time in units of half a day at least. You can't write or program well in units of an hour. That's barely enough time to get started.
Yeah, GTD is manager/maker schedule agnostic. Although there's an argument to be made that, if you sit down to your half-day makers schedule, if your brain is empty of all the 'stuff' that might otherwise be on it, you're going to have a more focused, distraction-free maker session.

Timeblocking, at first take, looks like pure manager schedule hell. There's no rule that you have to have short blocks, though. I often make timeblock plans that is just a big three hour chunk in the morning, lunch, and a big chunk in the afternoon. Except, this is so trivial to do, that I stop recording it in the notebook. This explains the long stretches (weeks and months) in my timeblock journal with no entries. I didn't need to organize anything because I was in a sort of pure maker mode.

This past week, my priority was to clear my plate and crank through several projects, none of which were capable of consuming more than an hour or two of my attention at a time. It was a great week for timeblock planning. So is this coming week, I've got a number of things to finagle with a few unknown 'big rocks' that may or may not hit. I've got to be organized and adaptable. Timeblock planning is great for me to avoid feeling overloaded for weeks like this.

macg
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Re: GTD Getting Things Done for ERE People

Post by macg »

I've never used time blocking with GTD, myself.

Cam
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Re: GTD Getting Things Done for ERE People

Post by Cam »

I think I will give it a shot. It might just give me more direction on the days where I'm off work. GTD combined with a new relationship with technology I think is going to have big positive effects for me!

avalok
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Re: GTD Getting Things Done for ERE People

Post by avalok »

AxelHeyst wrote:
Sun Jan 15, 2023 6:09 pm
Yeah, GTD is manager/maker schedule agnostic. Although there's an argument to be made that, if you sit down to your half-day makers schedule, if your brain is empty of all the 'stuff' that might otherwise be on it, you're going to have a more focused, distraction-free maker session.
Yeah, I'm part way through the book and (I must admit I had always blown GTD off because I didn't realise this) it seems as though the core is to stop using your brain as a storage device, rather than it being a pure time management system. The time management stems from the ability to better act on what you have to do, because you have it all logged, rather than through some algorithm (e.g. Eisenhower matrix). This is how I am understanding it thus far. If so, any schedule would/should work.

I decided to get something set up quickly while reading the book (learn by doing and all that), and am enjoying it so far. It is a fair amount of cognitive load to remember to log things as they arise, though I'm sure that'll fade in time. The other thing I have found difficult is deciding on what "buckets" to create; it is always difficult to know what categories to create in a system like this. That said, the book may provide advice on this on a page I'm yet to reach...

macg
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Re: GTD Getting Things Done for ERE People

Post by macg »

avalok wrote:
Wed Jan 18, 2023 4:20 pm
The other thing I have found difficult is deciding on what "buckets" to create; it is always difficult to know what categories to create in a system like this. That said, the book may provide advice on this on a page I'm yet to reach...
I wouldn't fret about this too much. For me, my "buckets" change, based on jobs, mindsets, even physical space / setup. One example is over the years I have used my home laptop less and less, so my "work-computer" and "home-computer" is now just "computer"...

And especially in the first few months of learning and getting into the system, you're going to figure out as you go what works best for you.

Good luck, and feel free to post any questions to this thread that you may have - us GTD old-timers are here to help! :-)

avalok
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Re: GTD Getting Things Done for ERE People

Post by avalok »

AxelHeyst wrote:
Sat Dec 10, 2022 8:22 pm
There is one main thing to know about GTD: everyone requires multiple attempts to habituate their system. Everyone 'fails' at GTD multiple times. No one who has habituated GTD that I know of was able to pick it up and run with it without falling out of the practice several times when they were learning it. Expect it.
Ha. You were dead right. I had been doing so well since starting out in January, off the back of this thread. Then I had COVID and work got intense about a month ago; lo and behold I am trying to get the system back in order again. Not a complete failure, but it certainly stopped working any better than previous systems. The main issue was twofold: (a) I stopped the weekly review, (b) I stopped capturing incoming stuff so diligently, things started to accumulate outside my system, which effectively crippled it. It is difficult when you are out of sorts/rushed off your feet to stop and take the time to process incoming items, reorganize your lists etc. This experience has made me realise the importance of the weekly review in returning yourself and your system to a good state regularly; it's akin to cleaning and oiling your drivetrain.

AxelHeyst
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Re: GTD Getting Things Done for ERE People

Post by AxelHeyst »

Heh, nice to hear you're getting it back together! Fall down six times, get up seven, it's all good.

Upon some reflection, I'm not sure the cyclical nature ever stops. But the amplitude of failure goes way down. (I suspect frequency has more to do with external conditions having to do with how much serendipity or chaos your lifestyle is exposed to.)

I think the amplitude goes down because as GTD practices become internalized, the cost of running it reduces. At some point the daily cost of a consistent capture practice is zero because it's fully internalized, and so ever after that the magnitude of system failure never gets to the point of "omg nothing's been captured in three months".

As you both habituate a WR practice and tune and tweak it so there's as little friction as possible (because it's perfectly idiosyncratic to the dynamics of YOUR life), the cost of the WR goes down and your sensitivity to its absence goes up. I can be humming along just fine, have a quiet moment, feel a twinge, investigate the twinge, and realize that I missed last week's WR because I was bikepacking and there's some projects that my mind is wanting to 'touch', and that's what's causing the twinge. I'm not even properly speaking stressed, I'm just able to notice that there's some cognitive grasping going on. This sensitivity serves as a feedback mechanism to stay on top of the practice. Eventually the amplitude and frequency of what might technically be viewed as 'failures' is nothing more than the smooth dynamics of a mature practice in a real life being lived in the real world, and that is 'perfection'/as good as it gets.

(The other thing is that once I recognize the source of the twinge, I can say 'alright I'll do my WR tomorrow night' or whenever and the twinge goes away because it trusts things will be handled.)

avalok
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Re: GTD Getting Things Done for ERE People

Post by avalok »

AxelHeyst wrote:
Mon Apr 10, 2023 2:32 pm
I can be humming along just fine, have a quiet moment, feel a twinge, investigate the twinge, and realize that I missed last week's WR because I was bikepacking and there's some projects that my mind is wanting to 'touch', and that's what's causing the twinge.
I never got to that point with the WR; the twinge would be there, but my brain would not make the connection. On reflection, I was just going through the motions with it. At my next one this week I intend to be more committed, and to consider how to make it work for me, as you say.

Much better having it up and running again: it was great today being able to tick off things that had begun to slip outside the view of the system, and enjoying the feeling that I have a better view on what is going on, coming up etc. :)

AxelHeyst
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Re: GTD Getting Things Done for ERE People

Post by AxelHeyst »

jacob wrote:
Sun Jan 15, 2023 1:27 pm
How is GTD compatible with the maker schedule?
http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html
I had some further thoughts related to this.

If someone is on a maker schedule, is RE/doesn't have many external demands on their time, and tends to serial process projects, the value-add of being organized generally is probably fairly modest.

I'm confirming that I do really well with parallel projecting, that is, spending 1-2hrs a day on 3-6 distinct projects each a day. (Also, having very low or no external demands on my time makes a big difference). The value-add of being organized is higher for this workstyle, I think.

If I get on a roll on something I have no problem blowing off whatever else I'd put on my plan for the day, but those events are rare. On a typical day I enjoy having spent some time pre-thinking about what projects and tasks I wanted to be focused on that week and that day and just following the plan. When I stack enough of these days up I look back and realize I'm getting quite a lot done, am enjoying myself, and am operating with really low stress.

AxelHeyst
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Re: GTD Getting Things Done for ERE People

Post by AxelHeyst »

Some thoughts on stoke-centric GTD:

One of the side effects of post-consumer praxis is that your autonomy goes up. You tend to cull activities that you have to do. Most post-consumers opt out of the standard 9-5 job/career game sooner or later, for example, and I’m no exception.

This presents a unique challenge: after so many years of having your life sliced and diced into chunks of various obligations to this or that institution, how do you decide what to do when you’re the institution? When there’s no boss, no deadline, no teacher, no professor? When you yourself call all the shots?

This challenge cuts across many areas of life but in this post I’m taking a look at my relationship with my GTD system.

I’ve run a Getting Things Done (GTD) system for at least twelve years. I used Evernote with The Secret Weapon method for many of those years, and switched to Standard Notes two years ago. I’ve dabbled with paper systems but haven’t gone full analog yet.

During my career as a mechanical engineer of the built environment, GTD was indispensable. It helped me organize all of the things I had to do and keep minutia out of my head so I could focus on my task at hand. Fewer things fell in between the cracks.

Now, though, I’ve identified an interesting problem that I can’t find information about: the volume of projects and tasks I have to do is very small compared to the projects and tasks I’d like to do. My commitments, obligations, and necessary actions are few.
  • I’ve got to finish freeze-protecting our well head piping before any hard freezes. That’s a weather-driven obligation.
  • I’ve got to do taxes once a year. (Actually I don’t legally have to do taxes, technically, but I choose to anyway.)
  • I’ve got to finish preparing for our family vacation before we go.
  • I’ve got to get groceries, carry water, chop firewood, and keep cooking fuel topped off.
  • Sometime in the next ten years I’ve got to generate a little more income… probably.
Those are my obligations. The list of things I’d like to do but don’t strictly speaking have to do is enormous. It’s hundreds of items long.

I don’t have any experience with this as an adult. I realized that my GTD system was set up for when I had an enormous list of obligations, mostly work related, and a small list of things I’d like to do because that’s all I had room for.

I didn’t have to spend much effort figuring out what to do because the external structures of my life told me what was most important: whatever fire was burning most hotly at w*rk.

I don’t have w*rk now and nothing in my life is on fire. The way I had my GTD system tuned no longer fits the reality of my life.

I’ve been working diligently for a couple years now to tune my life for intrinsic motivation. Mostly this looks like removing sources of external motivation (salary, status, fear, etc). But my GTD system plays in to this. My legacy system was tuned for externally motivated and directed tasks. What actually drives my actions now is primarily stoke.

These are my thoughts on how to tweak my system to reflect the reality I’ve actually got. If you aren’t a GTD practitioner, this might not make much sense.

Stoke-Directed GTD

Roughly speaking, I should create a category for / the ability to isolate projects/tasks that are objectively urgent due to obligations, commitments, the weather, or biological imperatives (e.g. freeze protect the well before winter).

A separate category for everything else.

Use contexts more, but also deemphasize project-centric thinking on the day to day. Modify my system so that a long list of *projects* is not the first thing I see.

Elevate Project thinking to Weekly Reviews and quarterly reports, try to keep day to day thought processes on desirable habituated behavior and stoke-fueled task focus.

I think this looks like dialing back on going to the System to decide what to do next,

(which hasn't worked as well as I'd like in the past because when I go to my System I see Projects because of how I structured it and you can't do Projects,)

and instead to have habits that lead me again and again to a time and place of not having anything to do,

which allows my mind to wander,

which inevitably leads me to wonder what I could do,

and what my mind tends to alight upon is something I'd like to do (because where else would my mind go in crafted moments like this?),

so then I just go and do that thing and I tend to drop in and I tend to lose track of time and I tend to concentrate, enjoy myself, and do well.

I think the way to handle Projects is to document them as I normally do when my crafted moment leads me to stoke-fueled project design, and then to organize that documentation in a trusted place that I can find easily when I want to but isn't always hanging around.

What I'm talking about here isn't much of a modification to the structure of my digital system as it is a modification of how I approach task acquisition.

I used to go to my System. I think I should go to my crafted moment instead. This is a fundamentally different thing.

The purpose of the System is to let my conscious mind let go of mundane details

so that my subconscious mind can float up what's truly important.

I trust my subconscious mind with this role more than I trust my conscious mind, but it requires the devotion of a gardener to create a space within my mind friendly to this relationship.

..

My experience with GTD is that every time I have an epiphany about how to tune it to be more fluid, more aligned with intrinsic motivation, more supportive of my internal rich growth as a human and spiritual being, I’ll go read the book again and realize that was David Allen’s intent all along. I’m not inventing anything new here, I’m just getting closer to the streamlined mind-like-water ideal that he set out from the beginning. There was no problem with GTD that I’ve discovered and fixed, there was just a misunderstanding on my part due to the level of personal growth and understanding I was at. (Sort of like that other book most of us have read...)

7Wannabe5
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Re: GTD Getting Things Done for ERE People

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

I think this is very insightful. I also first attempted GTD* around 12 years ago, but I was already in a lifestyle that was quite unstructured (actually quite a bit less structured than my current lifestyle), and the downfall of the system for me was that my Tickle File of Things-I-Want-to-Do tended towards exponential growth. Unlike INTJs, eNTPs are naturally more spendthrift than frugal; it's just that many of us prefer a fat Time to Blow wallet over a fat Money to Blow wallet. For instance, the feeling I get thinking about making my list for Skillathon 2024 is almost exactly the same feeling I got contemplating making my list for Santa as a child.

I especially liked these two bits:
One of the side effects of post-consumer praxis is that your autonomy goes up. You tend to cull activities that you have to do.

...and instead to have habits that lead me again and again to a time and place of not having anything to do,
It obviously also works in the other direction. If you have a lot of activities that you want to do that require more time than money, you will tend towards reducing material consumption in order to free up your time. I really didn't become ecologically aware until mid-life; it just happens to be the case that a lifestyle aimed at reading every book in the library and mucking about in the garden resulted in the fact that as an adult I have likely burned less than 1/3 CO2 of average member of my peer group (U.S./Gen-Jones/Middle-Class FOO with Generous Santa/College-Degree.)

One of the things that sucks about getting older is that it more often happens that you get to the place of not having anything to do, and you find yourself lacking the vigor for Things-You-Want-to-Do in your ridiculously fat Tickle File.


*After having made use of a multitude of other organizational systems-in-a-book to help with my scattered generalist tendencies.

shelob
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Re: GTD Getting Things Done for ERE People

Post by shelob »

Wow. I've been doing GTD for over a year. Thanks @AxelHeyst!

I'm not really "getting it", though. Capturing everything in more or less one place (still the Everdo app) is very helpful, but the rest of the process doesn't really click yet. I often neglect sorting until my inbox becomes a separate to-do list, or make up new "urgent" to-do lists in my inbox, and throughout it all my weekly review is more like a bimonthly review so the backend of the system has a tendency to ossify and when I finally get around to reviewing it I'll find myself puzzling about what I might have meant by this or that Next Action, or realise that projects have been completed or become unnecessary in the meantime, or...

I also started reading Ready For Anything ~6 months ago. Keyword being "started" because I can't get past the chapter 1/3 in where one of the tasks is to visualise one's ideal life. I'll do a brainstorming exercise on the subject, move on to the next chapter, have the urge to do the exercise again, write down the exact same thing without referencing my prior notes, rinse and repeat. Spelling it out like this suggests that there's probably something wrong with my answer to the question but I don't know what it is.

One thing I'm learning is that one of the best things I can do is to do things I've been putting off. (Like, uh, updating the Social Skills Challenge Thread.) It frees up an immense amount of energy (though this never lasts more than a day.) I also sleep better the day after I did something I was putting off. Unfortunately I have this strong feeling of not having done something I should have done and I don't know what it is. Maybe something I unconsciously resolved to do without articulating it explicitly? Or maybe the feeling will dissipate if I ever manage to "get current".

And, uh, feel free to laugh at me for this, but I wrote a review of GTD for the Astral Codex Ten book review contest: https://philosophiapandemos.substack.co ... ry-getting
I realise this is ridiculous and I should talk less (and less confidently) about things I don't understand. In my defense, I first started reviewing a different book, but that exploded in scope until I couldn't get it done in time (or at all). Though, considering that reproducing is one of the best forms of learning, it probably wasn't time wasted.

My semi-urgent next note to self is to update my system to better reflect the demands of university life. Consistently reviewing lecture material would probably get me 80% of the way there but I'm not really on top of my life in general, these days.

avalok
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Re: GTD Getting Things Done for ERE People

Post by avalok »

shelob wrote:
Sun Jan 07, 2024 3:35 pm
when I finally get around to reviewing it I'll find myself puzzling about what I might have meant by this or that Next Action, or realise that projects have been completed or become unnecessary in the meantime
I quite often find a few things in the weekly review that are now irrelevant/redundant/complete/etc. The busier I have been, the more there generally is to prune. So I don't see that as a problem so much; the weekly review is partially there as a failsafe clean-up of your system. I have found it is best to clean-up throughout the day, but sometimes things fall through the cracks, or the day is simply too busy.

If next actions aren't clear to you after a period of time, are they sufficiently detailed? I cannot recall if it is mentioned in the book, but I remember the advice to not hold back on making detailed next actions, to ensure your future self can understand what you meant. E.g.:
  • Call Fergus (avoid)
  • Call Fergus to arrange van rental for biking weekend, 19th (better)
You may already being doing this, but you can also tag items to attach metadata to an action, which might help place it in its context better. From a brief search, it looks like Everdo is capable of doing this.

shelob
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Re: GTD Getting Things Done for ERE People

Post by shelob »

avalok wrote:
Mon Jan 08, 2024 2:59 pm
I quite often find a few things in the weekly review that are now irrelevant/redundant/complete/etc. The busier I have been, the more there generally is to prune. So I don't see that as a problem so much; the weekly review is partially there as a failsafe clean-up of your system. I have found it is best to clean-up throughout the day, but sometimes things fall through the cracks, or the day is simply too busy.
Thank you! That was helpful, because it made me realise that the system has to work *for me*. I now have two sheets of paper, and on Sundays I write the days for the two coming weeks on them, along with all deadlines and similar. Then I go through my entire system, write down stuff that would be a good idea to work on for the next week, and note it on a separate section on the first sheet. So far, this works very well, because it keeps this list in my sight (I absolutely never look at my digital system unless I have a specific reason to.) I've also added the daily sorting and weekly review to my habit-tracker, which is helping with adherence. Sometimes I have separate paper to do lists for individual days, because otherwise I end up using the Everdo inbox as an ad-hoc to do list, which is Not The Point. I might return to combining that with time-blocking at some point.

So, unless this stops working, I consider this problem solved :) Thanks for everyone who posted!

AxelHeyst
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Re: GTD Getting Things Done for ERE People

Post by AxelHeyst »

sodatrain wrote:
Thu Jan 25, 2024 8:49 pm
@Axel - what is your current GTD setup?
I recently made a modification to the GTD system I outlined in my OP:
  • all actions (next action, soon, later, waiting, etc) as well as contexts go in my Standard Notes software like usual.
  • I've moved all of my project reference notes and reference information into an Obsidian vault that also serves as my reading/study notes repository, per the Zettelkasten How To Take Smart Notes method.
  • So for example all my blog post drafts, my skillathon project plans, my weekly reviews, etc go into Obsidian where before I had them in Standard Notes.
  • I also started doing a Daily log note, which I use as my task hopper, timeblock plan, and a space to braindump what went on that day/what I'm trying to sort through in my head.
My setup is a mashup of GTD, Cal Newport, Ahrens, and stuff my brother showed me over the holidays. :lol:
sodatrain wrote:
Thu Jan 25, 2024 8:49 pm
Related... do you have some favorite GTD resources for one to re-acquaint themselves with GTD? I haven't really used it in about 10 years. Daily review, weekly review... check check. Next Actions, archive etc. check. Basically I'm feeling like a few daily reviews and a weekly review might do the trick.
Yep. Whenever I get off the wagon, and notice I've been getting scattered, I find that it takes 1-3 weeks of consistent WRs to feel on top of everything again. The first WR gets me to a max of 80%, and then one or two more WRs mops up the rest.

Other than that - reread the book, I guess! Maybe listen to a couple of the GTD podcasts to get jazzed about it.

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