Getting Things Done

A co-worker recently told me about the book Getting Things Done, which i'm pretty sure is going to change my life. GTD is a way to organize and prioritize tasks in your life by dumping them from your brain into some other "inbox," which frees you to spend your mental energy on more constructive matters. For someone as disorganized and sporadic as me (certainly i'm not in the camp of the worst, but i'm pretty bad), such a methodology could significantly reduce stress. While my goal isn't really to get more things done in a day, but rather to have more time to relax and reduce stress in my life, I think the methodology is a good one. So, while I don't necessarily agree with the reasons for this methodology, I do think its a really useful way for me to not worry about what I will eat or drink or what I will wear-because I do worry about these things a LOT. I worry, which helps nothing, and waste a lot of time spinning my wheels over things I don't need to be thinking about. And who by worrying can add a day to his/her life? Certainly not me.

Anyway, here is a link to the method i'm planning to implement: http://www.gtdtimes.com/2008/04/28/a-simple-index-card-gtd-system/
Mostly, it's a way for me to organize the millions of tasks flying at me for work. I've scraped by staying unorganized for most of my life, going without a calendar and simply keeping things in my memory. Sometimes I forget things, but I just said that if I forgot them, they were meant to be forgotten (but what about the Dad's birthday?, hmmm). Additionally, i've worried that I had memory loss problems because I could not remember details from some of the longest conversations or most influential books i'd ever read (and yet could remember the oddest minutia). However, i've realized that perhaps I have a lot of trouble remembering significant things because I fill my mind with too many petty things, like my schedule, or tasks I know I need to complete. By emptying my head of such things, who knows what kind of results may develop?

Now...something else to consider...an old method that I used to get over another one of my downfalls: severe laziness. I wonder how I might apply this old method to this new GTD method to achieve optimal results?

Here's the old method--- In high school, I developed a method for getting things done that i called the "rewards program." It was my way of getting things done when I didn't feel like doing anything. Here is how it works: I make a list of all of the things that I have to do on a particular day, and then I assign a value to the different tasks, based upon the difficulty of each task. For instance, picking up one piece of dirty laundry equals 1 spoint, while folding or hanging clean laundry equals two. Additionally, I create a list of potential rewards, such as a bubble bath, a visit to the bookstore or Starbucks, or (post-High School) the purchase of an Itunes Song. I assign values to each of these rewards and have to "purchase" them after earning points by doing various tasks. This rewards program literally got me through college. It works well because it creates incentives for getting things done, even when I don't feel like doing anything. I just have to have enough self-discipline not to indulge myself in the rewards before doing the tasks, which is actually possible. Unfortunately, my method was relatively complicated and, perhaps, arbitrary. Sometimes I would spend so much time making the lists, that I never did the tasks, or I would "reward" myself with a song and then spend an hour making a playlist. Certainly the method had its flaws, but i'm pretty interested to see if there is a way to apply it to the GTD methodology.

As for right now, i'm going to start using the GTD notecard method (and maybe work in the rewards approach later): Probably some of you think this is ridiculous, but if you know me well enough, then you know that a system like this is almost essential for my mental sanity at this point in my life. And probably also, there is at least one other person out there reading this who could benefit from this organizational method as well.

In the past week, I accidentally scheduled the same meeting multiple times, called an artist on the wrong day, and scheduled two evening engagements at the same time. A new friend, Jordan, asked me recently if I liked my job and I said that I did, except for the organizing/detail-oriented part, which makes me feel drained and often consumes my life. Because of that conversation, i've been reconsidering the amount of stress in my life-and whether it is remotely healthy/livable-and trying to find ways to reduce it. I think that this method might prove useful. We'll see.