I'm so efficient and productive, I have time to write about my efficiency and productivity

I mentioned briefly not too long ago that I got interested in GTD (Getting Things Done, the immensely popular productivity system by David Allen that seems to achieved cult status in some sectors of the internet - I actually see people refer to him as The David). I will admit, I gave Repressed Librarian the raised eyebrow (or at least I would have, if I could raise just one eyebrow) when she mentioned it to me a few months ago, but now I'm sold (sorry I doubted you, RL!).

There's one thing he wrote in the first chapter that really resonated with me:

The big problem is that your mind keeps reminding you of things when you can't do anything about them. It has no sense of past or future... Everything you've told yourself you ought to do, it thinks you should be doing right now. Frankly, as soon as you have two things to do stored in your RAM, you've generated personal failure, because you can't do them both at the same time. This produces an all-pervasive stress factor whose source can't be pinpointed.

Yeah. So, I won't write about how the system works here, because there are more than enough sites describing it, but I will share with you a couple of little things that REALLY work well for me. None of it is rocket surgery, as a European friend used to say, but it's very effective.

(First I just want to say that I don't think it's very hard at all to start implementing the GTD system. Maybe it's just because I was already pretty organized.)

The first thing I did, after alphabetizing all my files and collapsing my email folders into a single archive, was go to Target and buy a pretty inbox. $18 seemed a bit extravagant, but it's PRETTY. And pretty stuff makes working more fun! Also, if you think $18 is too much, you should see what David Allen is selling them for. That is just silly. Do you know what the man charges for attendance at one of his seminars? NINE HUNDRED DOLLARS. Jeez. I think I bought the book for $11.


Anyway, speaking of pretty, lookit my pretty folders! Another lovely birthday gift from Repressed Librarian, who knows that I like to Get Shit Done in style.

I did do more than use this as an excuse to acquire pretty accessories for my office... although I admit I did buy some more stuff. The best thing I've started using is the program OmniFocus, which was specifically designed for managing tasks GTD-style. I was already a huge fan of OmniOutliner (and since I have the professional version of that, I got a big discount on Focus). I think it's only for Mac, though.

The particularly cool thing is that you put all of your "projects" into this system, and you make a little to-do list for each one. You identify, for each project, what is the "next action." And it highlights the next actions for all of your projects. This doesn't sound like much, but it has made it very easy for me to make tons of progress on multiple projects simultaneously. Not multitasking, per se, but when I finish one next action I can just go and pick the next thing I feel like doing. And it's so much easier when I've broken everything down into discrete tasks. Instead of "Write poster for August conference," I had "write methods section" and "add photos" and "write figure captions." When I was feeling cranky and unmotivated (which is just about always) I could look at the list and say, "Well, sure, I can write some figure captions" and next thing I know I've started working and am writing the dreaded Discussion section or something. Here's what I got done this week:

• Finished the analyses for the poster (which I only started last week), and completed the poster
• Wrote an entire talk on a totally different topic I'm giving at another conference
• Wrote a first draft of the conclusion to the edited volume I've been working on forever
• Made progress on my section of another paper on something else entirely
  

This is all right after submitting a journal article last week. I never really felt like I was working very hard, but it feels like I got an awful lot done in a short period of time. And I never felt like I couldn't get it all done, or that there was an overwhelming amount of stuff that needed doing (which I certainly would have felt not that long ago). It's very nice.

There's one more thing I have that has made a big difference - I recently bought this entire set of CDs. Last year, Chaser posted about the software ChatterBlocker, and I tried it. I liked it a lot. But I usually only used the music track, "Music for Concentration," maybe with some bird or ocean sounds mixed in. Unfortunately the music track wasn't all that long, so I had it in my head a lot and that was irritating. I looked up information about the music and it turns out it was from this Advanced Brain Technologies set of CDs. I bought them all. I have been listening to Music for Productivity today and I will probably go home early because I did so much already.

For awhile, I got caught in the trap of liking to read blogs about getting things done rather than actually getting things done. But that didn't last very long; they got repetitive and I got bored. I did find a couple of nice blogs, though; in particular I like Zen Habits. I've been using one of his big tricks: pick three Most Important Things that you have to do each day, and get them done as early and as quickly as possible. I also try to make myself do the most dreaded of those tasks first. It works very well; I tend to be done with the important stuff before noon. Awesome.

The downside: apparently I feel justified in spending MORE time screwing around on the internet. I cannot seem to make myself unplug. I still compulsively check my email all the time - I just deal with it faster. I love reading about Undine's time away from the internets. Of course, hypothetically I could do that anytime, but I really don't think I could unless I was in a place that looks like this. So far I have been unable to convince Arbitrista. Sigh.