I’ve got a nasty habit of downloading movies and TV shows that either aren’t good for me, or I’ve seen them before, or even worse I already own them – in hard or soft copy. That was the case with Julie and Julia last night, which I had already rented and enjoyed and now own.
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I’ve been following It’s All Too Much
by Peter Walsh an Australian turned American declutter expert. After two read-throughs of the book, I’ve been slowly getting my head around throwing things out. I’m heartily sick of being unable to find things and this has actually been a good remedy, even if I haven’t found any of the exact things on my list. I’ve found 3 DVD’s i loved and was missing as well as two books that I had missed. No sign of the missing key or my winter wardrobe. But still.
It’s been a good practise to get into. Books I fear will be my Achilles heel. Although I have recently gone through my bookcase and have a garbage bag full of books that are not representative of me, or that I can’t bring myself to read again. I fear that I have a long way to go. I have listed 2 today on eBay, with more to come.
With a pile of books that I must get through reading, including two largely untouched library books I must get to, now is not the time to indulge in rereading or in what I call “re-try” reading. I was well behaved putting these books in the eBay pile, but as I looked through them to write up the listing., I had pangs of regret.
“maybe I should reread this one”
“I didn’t give this one a fair shot.”
“Did I get as much use out of this one as I could”
Oh if only I had infinite time time to read.
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How to Spend an Extra Hour | GTD Times.
I’ll use it ….
Sometimes your highest priority is to get some of your lower priority stuff done, especially when that adds to your quality of life.
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I think I’m becoming a hoarder.
At this point I can’t imagine living my life with 100 things–although I’d like to think I could. Maybe the idea is to start and reduce. I wonder if it is different for women than men. But then, I look around and I see:
Do you think you could?
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A different angle from David Allen. Nice to hear a more personal side and connect some of the dots in my own head.
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My book review of David Allen’s Ready for Anything: 52 Productivity Principles for Work and Life here got me thinking about the book in more detail.
The hardest thing about the book was also its greatest asset. The fact it was an audiobook meant that it was right there with me which not only kept me moving through the book, and mindful of the principles, both good things. I am finding having a hard copy of books with me at the points that I feel like reading harder than it once was (bad for GTD itself perhaps, but there you go), so the audio allows me to use those moments when I have a gap, but when my head is too active to enjoy nothingness.
The negatives were that it was hard to get into a groove with it because in this book unlike in the audio version of the Getting Things Done book, the quotes were included in the audiobook as well as the hard copy, and the chapters are short sharp pointers; profound but not deep, and still practical enough to have you going “Now there’s a thought.” on more than one occasion
Allen claims in the introduction that after writing Getting Things Done, he started to think about the why of the approach, why the principles he was teaching seemed (at least to him it seems) universally applicable and as such started to put together principles and essays about their application. These are those essays. They are solid as an introduction, or as a review. There is depth to them which makes the format of an audiobook without chapter markers at the end of each point hard.
It is worth while as a read even if you have no direct interest in GTD. In Allen’s words;
This program will likely validate much of what you already know and do that works. But it will also challenge you to apply that awareness in a much more conscious and consistent manner and that’s where the real power lies.
In my own words it is as much about mindfulness as file folders.The spiritual angle is tangible and makes it a lot less a business book and much more a life book.. Thinking about my own choices and the impacts I have has been useful, given that really there is nothing new under the sun. As he says
If God is all and you’re part of that, just relax
This isn’t a sponsored post but my advice is if you want to buy/borrow a copy, get a hard copy.If you want to buy this it is on Amazon.
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Yes. It’s still working. Well in fact. Only a day after my scheduled weekly review I got to the point (in my “clear old podcasts” project), of listening to this, and even after my thorough mind sweep it worked well again.
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Updated 1 pm 13th As I tweeted and wrote last week I did a re-implementation of GTD (Getting Things Done) the weekend before. Although I’ve used it somewhat over the last two years, it has been a bit haphazard so I decided a fresh implementation was in order.
I’ve now done my first real weekly review (there wasn’t a lot to review on Day 0); and I now feel clearer. I never got through assigning “Next Actions to the Projects in the List, so cracks were already beginning to appear, but that has been sorted now. After all, that is what the weekly review is for. I did a week, paper based (so others can “see” what’s on my radar). I like that logic, but until I get to actually go out and do the “buy printer ink
Some things I’ve learnt:
A summary of GTD is here and the methodology is:
GTD is based on making it easy to store, track and retrieve all information related to the things that need to get done. Allen suggests that many of the mental blocks we encounter are caused by insufficient ‘front-end’ planning. It is most practical, according to Allen, to do this thinking in advance, generating a series of actions which we can later undertake without any further planning. The human brain’s “reminder system” is inefficient and seldom reminds us of what we need to do at the time and place when we can do it. Consequently, the “next actions” stored by context in the “trusted system” act as an external support which ensures that we are presented with the right reminders at the right time. Since GTD relies on external memories, it can be seen as an application of the scientific theories of distributed cognition or the extended mind.[1]
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I’ve been looking forward to this weekend for a while. I have a friend coming up from down south for the day and while that will be lovely it isn’t what is getting me all tingly. No I’m going back to basics and getting “my affairs in order” In an non morbid sense and re-instating my GTD system. I used to be quite organised and systematic in my head and not so much in my body. I used to blame the one handed wheelchair user thing and perhaps that means I need to tweak my system. It shouldn’t mean that I can’t get organised.
Indeed till about three years ago I went through several highly organised “patches”. I want that back. One the most holistic systems that I used and loved was the highly googleable “Getting Things Done” methodology.
I’m going to try that again.
I was looking for a summary to send to my friend who is coming up to be my arms and legs for the day. I found this as a start..
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