Yep

Getting Things Done at the Recurse Center

This post is about how I’m using the Getting Things Done (GTD) time management system at the beginning of the day at RC.

David Allen, creator of GTD, leaves some key implementation details down to the reader. This makes sense - you can’t have a one-size-fits-all time management system. Working these things out has generally been a pain-free process for me. However, working out how to start my day with the system has been drawn out and full of setbacks: I would forget to check certain sections of my notebook, my process would take too long and I’d get unmotivated, I’d prioritise the wrong things and just generally waste time faffing about or I’d just stop trying entirely.

I eventually arrived at a sequence of steps that mostly worked for me. I’m writing them up here for a few reasons:

  1. Reduce lose-ability of the steps: I have a history of losing important pieces of information written on loose pieces of scrap paper. My GTD steps are currently written on a loose piece scrap of paper.
  2. Increase accountability: The second thing I find hardest about GTD, after doing it in a consistent way, is doing it at all. Hopefully having this post out in the world will help with that.
  3. Learning in public: Maybe my steps could help someone with their GTD implementation, or (more likely) this could prompt some suggestions on ways I could try to improve mine.
  4. Solace and solidarity: For all the readers who would love to be An Organised PersonTM but find it very very very difficult.

If you’re curious on my specific set up, carry on reading, but if you’d like to skip to the general takeaways, head down to TL;DR.

How I start the day with GTD

These are the steps I take when planning my day using GTD.

1. Setup

Before I get to what’s scrawled on that precious, easy-to-lose piece of scrap paper, I do two things:

  1. Transfer anything from the notes / inbox section from the previous day’s paper into the relevant GTD notebook section e.g. “Write blog post about GTD at RC” would go into the “Recurse Center” project section of my GTD notebook.
  2. Get a piece of paper and draw up my day plan layout (nb not to scale...I should really upload a png or something to show this in proper proportion...):
 todo 		| 		agenda
  			|
			|
			|
-------------------------------------
		notes/ inbox

2. Steps from the precious loose piece of paper

  1. Look in my diary and RC calendar for time-bound things I have to do (aka the “hard landscape”). Transfer these to the agenda section.
  2. Go through the below sections of GTD notebook and transfer tasks into the day plan. (Use an awareness of free time available in the agenda and the Eisenhower matrix to decide what you can and should pick up for the day. If tasks are equal, select the oldest item.)
    1. Waiting for
    2. Recurring
    3. Contexts
    4. Projects
  3. Decide what is the most important thing out of the entire list, and block out time for that at the earliest possible point in the day*.

*I used to rank every task in priority, this led to one of the many phases of it taking too long, leaving me demotivated and then stopping GTD entirely.

TL;DR