SJ Cuthbertson

OK, so I’ve already written about “Getting Things Done” a couple of times. I recently started reading the GTD book itself, and so now is probably a good time for a review of my “system”. Caveat: it’s a really long post, even by my standards!

I’m still thoroughly hooked on my PDA as trusted system. Turns out a Palm is all David Allen (author of GTD) uses, so I must be doing something right. I think I’m lucky that I was already hooked on using it as a calendar, and hence checking it frequently and adding things whenever I needed to: it’s made the transition to using it for actions/to-dos considerably easier. I follow The David’s advice and keep the calendar for only truly time-specific things: lectures, my revision schedule, other fixed appointments, and things that have to be done either on a certain day or at a certain time. The Palm to-do list gets all my individual actionable items, organised in categories by context (PC, PC-home, psych [my Part II department], pet [Peterhouse], town [general things to do when I'm making a trip to the town centre], adc [the Theatre], etc etc). Projects (definied in GTD as any aim which needs more than one actual actionable step to be complete) are each a memo/note in a “Projects” category: the top line is the project aim itself, and then I list actionable items below. Next-actions are cut-n-pasted into the to-do list as and when they become actionable. The Memo application also holds shopping lists, things I might want to buy, stuff I need to retrieve from my parents’ home when I’m next there, blog ideas, and random other notes e.g. passwords for the non-PWF department computers. I don’t use the Addresses application at all – I’ve never needed an email address when I haven’t got access to Gmail, and if I have my PDA I have my phone to, so there’s no need to carry phone numbers around twice!

In terms of my more general organisation, I still use a variety of “buckets” (Allen’s term) to collect stuff prior to putting it into my PDA. The PDA is generally handy, but I still make use of paper notes in very-obvious places, especially at night, and I have a handful of computer docs and of course emails that have stuff in. I’m in the process of refining the system so that everything actionable gets into the PDA, EXCEPT someday/maybe ideas (in GTD, any project that you’d like to do but can’t commit to right away gets put into this category). I put them in as a PDA memo when I think of them, but keep them as text document lists on my PC longer-term. When I review (theoretically weekly) I can move things back into the active projects list if appropriate.

Reference material is stored mostly as documents in a ‘ref’ hierarchy on my PC – some stuff is obviously in Gmail but I generally “print” a PDF of it (using CutePDF) and save it locally. Out-and-about reference gets jotted in the PDA and transferred when I can. I also have a two-tray desk tidy that I use one tray of for reference paperwork – there’s never that much for me at the moment – and the other tray is a bucket for bits of paper, receipts, and so on. A lot of it finds its way into the bin eventually: for stuff I do need to keep (payslips, for example) I’ve bought one of these which is like a mini filing cabinet! (Additionally, much cheaper – I have no need for anything like the quantity of dead-tree reference storage that a proper metal cabinet merits.) Stuff that is specifically reference for one project goes into a separate ‘projects’ hierarchy, in a subfolder with the same or similar name to the project.

Something that I haven’t seen covered in GTD yet (I’m only on chapter 2!) is long-term archival of “stuff I’d like to keep for nostalgic reasons but will never need to look at again”. Mostly the digital sort, for me, though at home I have plenty of the paper sort. For now I have an ‘archive’ hierarchy on the PC, but within that, everything is a bit higgledy-piggledy. I want some means of storing it all, such that I can easily make incremental, not-too-frequent backups to optical media – which suggests in folders by year. I have things that span multiple years, though (e.g. documents from my GCSEs and A-Levels, and even Keystage 3) as well as things that really feel better organised topically, like sound effects from various ADC shows I sound-designed for, and photos from family holidays.

(Yes, I’ve completely stopped having a “My Pictures” folder like Windows wants you to. Picture folders from specific trips that fit the description “only for nostalgia, I’ll never *need* to look at these” go under “archive”, whilst random images that might be needed go, unsorted, under “ref”. Images that relate directly to a project (either a current or someday one) go inside that project’s folder.)

There are a few minor problems I’ve encountered in implementing GTD as a student. First, Allen’s “two-minute rule” (If you can do something in two minutes or less, just do it, right now) doesn’t really work for me. Sometimes I’m working on, e.g., an essay, and I need to totally concentrate, so if another action comes in, I have to add it to the PDA system no matter what. At other times, I’m not particularly doing anything, just generally absorbing information or mulling something over, and I can easily drop it to just-do a 10-minute or even 30-minute long task, without entering it into the system. I’m not sure if this element will go away when I stop being a student – I suspect not – so I need to work out whether I really should be doing it differently, or what.

Related to this is the fact that, as a student, I have some very long-duration actionable items, by GTD standards. If I’m set an essay to do, it’s a project: but eventually there will be a single action item which is “sit down and write the damn thing”, and that can take a while if it’s a tricky topic and not meant to be under exam conditions. An even better example is revision: that’s a project, but the individual actions are all things that have to happen again and again, over the course of a few weeks, with the only end-point being “having actually sat the exam”. GTD, being more intended for office/corporate executives, doesn’t seem to really explain how to deal with such things. It tends to cause me (if I don’t actively monitor myself for it) to ignore these really long, hard-to-tick-off actions in favour of doing a lot of shorter but less crucial actions. I haven’t found an answer, either: I’m just getting on with the revision as best I can. Perhaps there’s an answer somewhere in the rest of the book!