43 Folders

Back to Work

Merlin’s weekly podcast with Dan Benjamin. We talk about creativity, independence, and making things you love.

Join us via RSS, iTunes, or at 5by5.tv.

”What’s 43 Folders?”
43Folders.com is Merlin Mann’s website about finding the time and attention to do your best creative work.

GTD, McGee, & Me

When I decided to get serious about organization and productivity, I purchased two books: GTD and Take Back Your Life. I first read GTD and tried the GTD Outlook plugin. It was buggy and cluttered up Outlook, and during a crunch period I fell way behind on my inboxes, so I wanted to take the opportunity to reorganize with McGhee's system which seemed basically the same at Allen's, but more Outlook friendly. I managed to uninstall the plugin and have been following along with McGhee contentendly and now need to process my Catagories (none), which has 71 items. I'm having a couple problems:

1. It seems that most of these items don't have a meaningful objective set up for them, so it's taking forever to get through them. For a small task like "Learn Outlook Shortcuts" I need to figure out what meaningful objective is involved and then try to come up with outcomes, subprojects, and metrics (I'll get to those in a sec). Then each subproject needs outcomes, tasks, and metrics. It's very slow and the list is growing as I process it, not shrinking. The books suggests this process take an hour, but it will easily take me 4-8.

2. I'm not sure how to distinguish between meaningful objectives and mission/goals. Frankly, McGhee mentiones missions/goals but doesn't how to use or integrate them, so I'm not sure how they fit it. For example, I wanted to schedule monthly one on one meetings with my team, this seems to relate to the aim to have a smoothly running department. But this sounds more like a goal than an objective because it doesn't really have clearly defined outcomes.

3. Some stuff in my Categories (none) seem like tasks or subtasks (that belong to a supporting project). In McGhee system these don't really get their own tasks, they go in the notes section of their support project. Is this correct? it seems odd that ONLY task level items don't get tasks, but objectives, supporting projects, and SNAs all do receive outlook tasks.

4. I have no idea what metrics are or when/how to use them. McGhee regularly refers to Excel sheets in relation to this, and I gather that it's some way to track results, but is it always relevant? Examples would be very helpful.

I'm loving the overall concepts of GTD and TBYL, but I'm having sometrouble iimplementing.

Many thanks,
Jibbah

sonia_simone's picture

And for some projects, the...

And for some projects, the answer is pretty quick. The answer to "Learn Outlook Shortcuts" is "I'll know five or six Outlook shortcuts that I find useful."

 
EXPLORE 43Folders THE GOOD STUFF

Popular
Today

Popular
Classics

An Oblique Strategy:
Honor thy error as a hidden intention


STAY IN THE LOOP:

Subscribe with Google Reader

Subscribe on Netvibes

Add to Technorati Favorites

Subscribe on Pageflakes

Add RSS feed

The Podcast Feed

Cranking

Merlin used to crank. He’s not cranking any more.

This is an essay about family, priorities, and Shakey’s Pizza, and it’s probably the best thing he’s written. »

Scared Shitless

Merlin’s scared. You’re scared. Everybody is scared.

This is the video of Merlin’s keynote at Webstock 2011. The one where he cried. You should watch it. »