I'm a happy weenie
Last week Björn asked me to do him a tiny favor. "Would you mind turning off the bath water in 5 minutes? I'm going to go out and plant the last of the flowers we bought."
"Sure," I replied, mentally (apparently) putting the request into a black hole.
Ten minutes later he came back in, turned off the bath water (which had not quite begun to overflow) and didn't even get irritated with me. He pretty much knew that I'd forget.
It's SO typical. My mind is a sieve. It's really NOT that Björn's simple requests aren't worth my attention. I adore him and I really do WANT to remember things he's said to me. I felt really bad. It was such a simple request - why couldn't I keep it alive in my head long enough to actually do it?
That got me started on an internet search.
And today, about a week later, I am a total "Getting Things Done" WEENIE.
Getting Things Done (or GTD as the system's loyal fans call it) is about ten years old, but fresh as a daisy.
Here's a basic rundown:
In our lives we receive tons of input. Emails and text messages, letters and bills, phone calls, random thoughts about things we want or need to accomplish, requests from our loved ones to turn off the bath water. In GTD all of these inputs (work or private, doesn't matter) get filtered into "Action Required" or "No action required". No action required items are either trash, reference information to be stored away or things that we want or need to get to someday, maybe, but not in the very near future.
Action required items go first through a very simple filter: Can I do this thing in less than 2 minutes? If the answer is yes, you just do it right then. It wastes time to plan to do something that you can do that quickly. If you can't do it in less than two minutes it either needs to go into your calendar (if it has a particular date/time to it) or into a "Take Action" list or into a Project Planning loop (which essentially means that it has too many steps to complete all at once and needs to be broken down into Action steps one thing at a time). You could also delegate things that require action if someone else could do it better than you. Those things get put into a "Waiting" list.
Once a week you go through the "Someday/Maybe", "Waiting" and "Projects" list to see if you want or need to move anything into the calendar or into your "Take Action" list.
That all might sound complicated, but for me it's absolutely been a wonderful system that has made my week fly by. I am completely confident that I have everything I need for a trip next week that includes seven different meetings in three different cities where I am expected to be prepared to present on five different topics. Plus every other thing that popped up during a normal work week got done or got put into the proper place in my system so that it WILL get done.
I now have a way to capture all the things that used to fall through the cracks. I have done everything I can or choose to do on my "Take Action" list. The things that remain on that list are safe. I will get to them when I choose to and I won't forget. What a wonderful feeling: I WON'T FORGET!!
This wonderful system probably won't, however, help me turn off the bath water in five minutes (assuming that I'm not obsessively checking my "Take Action" list every five minutes). So I bought a timer yesterday. Sometimes you don't need a system: you just need a simple tool.
"Sure," I replied, mentally (apparently) putting the request into a black hole.
Ten minutes later he came back in, turned off the bath water (which had not quite begun to overflow) and didn't even get irritated with me. He pretty much knew that I'd forget.
It's SO typical. My mind is a sieve. It's really NOT that Björn's simple requests aren't worth my attention. I adore him and I really do WANT to remember things he's said to me. I felt really bad. It was such a simple request - why couldn't I keep it alive in my head long enough to actually do it?
That got me started on an internet search.
And today, about a week later, I am a total "Getting Things Done" WEENIE.
Getting Things Done (or GTD as the system's loyal fans call it) is about ten years old, but fresh as a daisy.
Here's a basic rundown:
In our lives we receive tons of input. Emails and text messages, letters and bills, phone calls, random thoughts about things we want or need to accomplish, requests from our loved ones to turn off the bath water. In GTD all of these inputs (work or private, doesn't matter) get filtered into "Action Required" or "No action required". No action required items are either trash, reference information to be stored away or things that we want or need to get to someday, maybe, but not in the very near future.
Action required items go first through a very simple filter: Can I do this thing in less than 2 minutes? If the answer is yes, you just do it right then. It wastes time to plan to do something that you can do that quickly. If you can't do it in less than two minutes it either needs to go into your calendar (if it has a particular date/time to it) or into a "Take Action" list or into a Project Planning loop (which essentially means that it has too many steps to complete all at once and needs to be broken down into Action steps one thing at a time). You could also delegate things that require action if someone else could do it better than you. Those things get put into a "Waiting" list.
Once a week you go through the "Someday/Maybe", "Waiting" and "Projects" list to see if you want or need to move anything into the calendar or into your "Take Action" list.
That all might sound complicated, but for me it's absolutely been a wonderful system that has made my week fly by. I am completely confident that I have everything I need for a trip next week that includes seven different meetings in three different cities where I am expected to be prepared to present on five different topics. Plus every other thing that popped up during a normal work week got done or got put into the proper place in my system so that it WILL get done.
I now have a way to capture all the things that used to fall through the cracks. I have done everything I can or choose to do on my "Take Action" list. The things that remain on that list are safe. I will get to them when I choose to and I won't forget. What a wonderful feeling: I WON'T FORGET!!
This wonderful system probably won't, however, help me turn off the bath water in five minutes (assuming that I'm not obsessively checking my "Take Action" list every five minutes). So I bought a timer yesterday. Sometimes you don't need a system: you just need a simple tool.