It's All in the Timing... and Getting Things Done
I’m a big believer in fate. Not as an inevitable tragic outcome, but as that force that drives things into your life at just the right moment.
Out of the last 4 or 5 books I’ve read recently, I must say that “Getting Things Done” has to take the “had to happen at this time” prize. Here’s the story of how I came across the book and what happened as I read it.
On a plane ride to New York City, to visit my long-distance girlfriend, I came across an article in the airline magazine mentioning the book, and how a lot of people, even entire companies were turning into droves of fanatics of GTD. Normally, praise like this makes my bullshit detector blink in all kinds of red lights, but the article had enough material from the book which sounded like applied common sense (my favorite type of thinking).
The idea is simple in principle (as I understood it): all the incomplete’s in your life—especially the little ones, and the ones you’ve made in your personal life—eat at your “psychic RAM” and cause you stress and cost you creativity and productivity. Until you get everything in some sort of system, you won’t be able to free your brain enough to look at the bigger picture. “The mind is great for having ideas, but not for holding on to them.”
“OK”, I said, “I’ll bite.” Lately I’ve been having a feeling of having a lot of “stuff” that I needed or wanted to do, but somehow wasn’t getting anything done (like blogging). “There just aren’t enough hours in the day”, I thought.
My girlfriend was going through a similar state of mind, because she’s graduating from AMDA in a couple of weeks and all of the sudden has to do a gazillion things she’s never done before to get ready for “the real”, big, bad, scary world, like finding an apartment, getting a job, moving, etcetera.
“Maybe this can help us both”. So, while in Manhattan, I went to our favorite B&N on 68th Steet & Broadway and bought 2 copies at $15 dollars a piece (pretty cheap, best investment I have made in a long while).
After a tearful and sad goodbye—like all the times we’ve had to part for months—I got on a plane to head “home”. I had to pack in a hurry so I unintentionally left another 2 books I’m reading right now in one of my suitcases and realized only after I was on the plane that the only book I had with me was GTD.
It was a brisk read. Before I got off the plane I had already gone through part 1 of the book. At this point, I had already read several ideas that made me go “Yes! Aha! Why does this feel like I already knew this already? Brilliant!” Really simple stuff, like how important it was to actually get things out of your head so you can actually do some thinking and, dare I say it, some imagining. The “natural” planning process which not only makes sense, but actually works (and for me had a lot more in common with the process of doing creative writing then I initially anticipated).
By the time I got off the plane I was hooked. And wouldn’t you know it? The airline misplaced the suitcase where I had the other books I was reading; they wouldn’t get to my house until a couple of days later, so for now I was “stuck” with this one. Coincidence? I think not.
That night my girlfriend nearly had a breakdown from the weight of all of her “open loops”. In the past I had no clue how to help her, what advice to give or what pointers to share. Now? “Turn to page 32. See that diagram? That’s what we need to start doing.” And within an hour, over the phone, she got the gist of it and started doing it. I wasn’t an expert by any means, but even the essence of the ideas, I think helped her regain a sense of control.
I also took a stab at doing the things that the book suggested, but quickly developed a lot of questions on what would be the best approach on handling my “stuff” in particular situations. As it happens, the second part of the book was actually a step-by-step walk-through of the “method” so I resolved to finish reading it. I read most of part 2 on the bus rides to and from work in the next two days, a very light read. Turns out it was true, it was mostly common sense and “tricks”—start with your workspace at office and at home, get everything into the process, having the right tools at hand when you need them, setting up your lists, what goes in your calendar, what goes in your Next Actions, have actions categorized by context and what categories are good, and so on.
So I started trying out some of the stuff, without a full-blown implementation, but even then I could feel the mental difference. I first tried an all-digital approach (which I’ll probably blog about later) but then quickly ran into issues. So I’ve decided to take a step back and actually do the entire method (starting with my workspace at work and at home) which meant finishing the book ASAP.
One of the greatest suggestions is having a list of “Projects” (the stuff that you’d like to do but requires more than one action) to review periodically. As I jotted things down I found out I had a lot more things in constantly in my head than I had realized up until then, including the biggie: “Getting to New York”
You see, I first tried moving to NY when my girlfriend decided to go to AMDA and study acting, but when money ran out and I wasn’t able to find a work visa that would allow me to stay, I had to come back. “The plan” was “put some money together, and try again, be ready by the beginning of next year (2006)”. This is a rather broad, ambitious project which would require many things, which I started to do, but then somehow, without me knowing, started to stall and stagnate. And as they slowed, my sense of “not moving forward” increased.
As fate would have it, yesterday, just as I was finishing up with part 2, I was approached about the possibility of a job in Boston (just 4 hours away from NY!). If it happened I would have to be ready to move and be there in 2 or 3 weeks. “What? Change jobs? Now? I’m not nearly as ready as I should be! What about the money? What would I do when the contract ends in a couple of months? AAHHH!” You get the idea. And I hadn’t even sent my résumé or anything. Truth is I might yet be able to pull it off if I get my act together right now, and even then there is a lot of risk involved. And if it doesn’t work out that’ll be fine too. The important thing I realized is: I can’t afford to lose opportunities like this; I need to get my projects under control. Fortunately, the last chapter in part 2 had that very title.
So, on to part 3, where a little tidbit on pages 244 and 241 (“Why Bright People Procrastinate the Most”) seemed to describe me and my girl to a T: “Bright people have the capability of freaking out faster and more dramatically than anyone else” which actually made me feel a little bit better about having “missed” my original personal goal. It also made me realize how important this was to getting back control of my life and getting the sense of purpose back.
Thank You Dave, this is life-altering stuff. It’s too late in the evening to do anything now, but first thing tomorrow morning:
Next Action: “Go to Office Depot; get in-basket and supplies.” And this is a weekend.
PS. This book could truly have broader applications. I got a lot of ideas of how it could influence software development (which is what I do for a living). Stay tuned…
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