Checklist Flashcards
GTD
He realizes that his system can be difficult and that he’s often accused of going overboard with elaborate schemes. He responds with a shrug. “Look, the workings of an automatic transmission are more complicated than a manual transmission,” he says. “To simplify a complex event, you need a complex system.”
GTD Wired
THE AXIOM: Humans have a problem with stuff. Allen defines stuff as anything we want or need to do. A tax form has the same status as a marriage proposal; a book to write is no different than a grocery list. It’s all stuff.
GTD Wired
GTD RULE ONE: Collect and describe all the stuff. Everything must be inventoried with distinction or prejudice. Errands, emails, a problem with a friend; It all must be noted for processing. Small objects, such as an imitation or a receipt, go into a pile. Everything else can be represented with a few works on a piece of paper (“find keys,”“change jobs”). Once the stuff is collected, processing begins. Anything that requires two minutes or less is handled on the spot. The remainder is governed by the second rule.
GTD Wired
GTD RULE TWO: All stuff must be handled in a precise way. Allen offers dozens of clever tricks for classifying, labeling, and retrieving stuff. Expert users of GTD never leave old emails cluttering their inbox, for instance. Nor do they have to rifle through a bunch of paper to see if there’s anything crucial they’ve left undone. Emails to be answered are in a separate folder from email that merely have to be read; there’s a file for every colleague and friend; stuff that must be done has been identified and placed on one of several kinds of to-do lists. Allen calls his to-do lists next-action lists. which are subject to the third rule.
GTD Wired
GTD RULE THREE: Items on the next-action list should be described as concretely as possible. Breaking down stuff into physical actions, Allen says, is the key to getting things done.
GTD Wired
He compares the person working at a desk with a person walking through the forest. Any email could be either a snake in the grass or a berry,” he says. “Which is it?” To resolve this question by reference to one’s highest purpose would be inefficient. When it comes to processing incoming signals, Allen recommends sorting by the most immediate criteria: How long will it take, what is your location, what devices do you have at hand, what other people are present?
GTD Wired
Look at the list and think about the way it makes us feel. He guesses that our feelings include a mixture of grief and relief. The relief, he suggests, comes from the simple fact of making the list. But where does the grief come from? “These items represent agreements you haven’t kept with yourself,” Allen says. “What happens when you break an agreement with yourself is that your self-esteem plummets.”
GTD Wired
He sets his own goals and uses his own methods to achieve them. Allen’s list of open loops includes getting GTD adopted in schools, learning to type 80 words a minute, becoming better at small talk, and achieving a high net worth. This ambitious mind-set, with its combination of boldness and conventionality, says something about where Getting Things Done is coming from, and to whom it is aimed. The book is for people who are striving hard. “The people who take to GTD are the most organized people,” Allen says, “but they self-assess as the least organized, because they are well-enough organized to know that they are fucking up.”
GTD Wired
Among the normal array of equipment in Allen’s office, one item stands out. It is an hourglass with two minutes of sand. Any clock would serve equally well to mark the strict interval GTD gives us to process something the first time we handle it, but Allen’s hourglass is as much a talisman as a practical tool. In a medieval painting, it would symbolize death. Here, the hourglass is a symbol of virtue. It regulates our attention. It guards our self-esteem. The guru of Getting Things Done is living by the standards of the future, and his hourglass is an icon of an emerging civilization whose exacting demands we may all someday be expected to meet.
“I do not regret the things I’ve done, but those I did not do.” The Author. Speaker is unknown but most will think it originated with Empire Records. Some say Mark Twain some say ancient Greek. Twain did say this - “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
No… it’s just my low self esteemed is at an all time high. (answer to when someone says “wow your confident, cocky, etc.”)
GTD Our Jobs keep changing:
The organization we’re involved with seem to be in constant morph mode, with ever-changing goals, products, porters, customers, markets, technologies, and owners. These all, by necessity, shake up structures, forms, roles and responsibilities.
GTD Our Jobs keep changing:
The average professional is more of a free agent these days…Their aims are just more integrated into the mainstream now, covered by the catchall “professional, management, executive development” - which simply means they won’t keep doing what they’re doing for any exited period of time.
GTD Old Models and Habits are Insufficient:
More and more peoples jobs are made up of dozens or even hundreds of e-mails a day, with no latitude left to ignore a single request, complaint, or order. There are few people who can (or even should) expect to code everything an “A”, a “B” or a “C” priority, or who can maintain some predetermined list of to-dos that the first telephone call or interruption from their boss won’t totally undo.
GTD The “Big Picture” vs. the Nitti-Gritty:
In practice, however, the well-intentioned exercise of values thinking too often does not achieve its desired results. I have seen too many of these efforts fail, for one or more of the following three reasons: 1 - There is too much distraction at the day-to-day, hour-to-hour level of commitments to allow for appropriate focus on the higher levels. 2 - Ineffective personal organizational systems create huge subconscious resistance to undertaking even bigger projects and goals that will likely not be managed well, and that will in turn cause even more distraction and stress. 3 - …
GTD The “Mind Like Water” simile:
is the position of perfect readiness… Imagine throwing a pebble into a still pond. How does the water respond? The answer is, totally appropriately to the force and mass of the input; then returns to calm. It doesn’t over react or under react. Learn and demand balance and relaxation as much as anything else… Anything that causes you to overreact or under react can control you, and often does. Responding inappropriately to your e-mail, your staff, your projects, you unread magazines, your thoughts about what you need to do, your children, or your boss will lead to less effective results than you’d like. Most people give either more or less attention to things than they deserve, simply because they don’t operate with a mind like water.
GTD Open Loop:
agreements or commitments you make with yourself that are incomplete. You’ve probably made many more agreements with yourself than you realize, and every single one of them - big or little - is being tracked by a less-than-conscious part of you. Can include big or litter - End world hunger - hire new assistant - Replace electric pencil sharpener. It’s called the ageing effect… it’s why you remember..
