GTD For The Rest Of Us

Over the past few weeks I have shared some tips about getting things done and a way in which I’ve had to tweak my personal discipline to make it work. As I said in the previous post, there are disciplined people and then there are the rest of us. The jury is out on whether disciplined people are disciplined because they naturally consider workflow as a set of completed tasks or if they are just really good at making lists and sorting priorities.

Either way, GTD is unlikely to take someone that’s completely disorganized and turn them into something reliable overnight.

This is where GTD For The Rest Of Us comes in play.

I have two checklist.

I sort my year in weeks grouped by months grouped by quarters. On each weekly agenda list I have my “One Task task of the day”. This is the one task I have to complete today. If I only get that one thing done, it’s a good day. This is fantastic when you consider how really big problems can be chipped away one small task at a time.

My secondary list is a breakdown of tasks for the day. The “One Task” may be a part of a 3 month project, but a daily breakdown is a mix of things that just need to be done as a part of my job. Sometimes they are predicable (meetings) but often they are wild and completely random. Think sales calls, emergencies, system outages, etc.

The Rest Of Us

In my experience both as an employee and as a manager, most people tend to be incompetent or unreliable. Sadly, I fall in this group. The difference between accountability and reliability is whether I can completely trust someone not to fail. By constantly challenging myself to do more and better, I pretty much set myself up for failure. When I delegate responsibilities to my minions that have been instilled with the same values, I have to keep on checking for the same failures I’ve made or would likely make.

So really the question isn’t whether you’ll fail, but how hard. GTD needs to be able to account for that.

The way I manage this aspect (“feature”) of day-to-day business is by putting round circles around the tasks that need more attention. Sometimes things are just way above my control.

“You know, s@#% happens.”

This has been the single biggest life safer for me.

I know I’ll fail.

But instead of failing and moving on, I get the opportunity to fix it the next day. Distraction is the biggest enemy in this process.

Instead of moving on and dealing with the new set of tasks and problems each new day brings, I can go back to yesterday’s task list and knock out those tasks. This has literally transformed my life: One of my biggest problems (squirrel!) is that I tend to get obsessed about certain things and not pay attention to the rest of the stuff. The checklists keep me honest.

If I misjudged priority and ended up rolling something from week to week, or worse, had multiple tasks that could not be completed I put down a huge circle above the week number. This way when I flip back through the month, quarter, year, I can adjust priorities and move things on/off the schedule until complete.

This, at least cosmetically and as far as everyone else is concerned, helps mask the incompetence and create the illusion of accountability.

If you aren’t doing this, I urge you to get started. One of the things I learned early on in my career is that things never get easier. There is always mo money, mo problems, mo people and even if some things get simpler in a larger company there is always the compression of time.

Get a notebook and start your world domination plans today. And since we’re on the topic, get your checklist and start singing Going back to Cali to it:

Thinkin I’m gon stop, givin checklist tasks
All I got is beef with those that violate me
I shall annihilate thee..