Merlin’s weekly podcast with Dan Benjamin. We talk about creativity, independence, and making things you love.
Advice on how to break things down
douggiefox | Aug 9 2007
Hi I'm sure some of the ramble I'm about to post some of you will recognise the symptoms :-) I picked up the gtd book a couple of years ago and hey guess what? I never found the time to read it! I'm a self employed programmer and I'm well aware that being organised in both my work and home life is key to being less stressed and more organised. I'm taking a little time out at the moment to try and catch up on some reading and some places where my skills just aren't good enough.... and there's the catch - improving my skills is why I'm motivated by gtd. I'm also a bit of an obsessive book buyer. If I buy the book, I get the knowledge right? Well no, because I never get the time to read em!! So here's my problem and the thing I just have a blockage over. I want to use gtd to help me through my huge pile of technical books. How does everyone else deal with this? Do I pick a topic and then just flit from book to book? Do I read the books sequentially? How can I organise next actions? Am I taking too much on? I'm finding gtd is making me frantic...as I'm more scared of getting the system wrong and getting nowhere. Sorry for the ramble - hopefully someone out there will recognise the symptoms and give me a helping hand. Best DF 5 Comments
POSTED IN:
 Douggiefox, Just wanted to post a...Submitted by hatchethead on September 9, 2007 - 11:28am.
Douggiefox, Just wanted to post a quick note to tell you to not worry about screwing up with GTD. Get a system set up to try it. After a while (a couple weeks, maybe), reevaluate how it's working and how you might tweak it. But allow me to share some advice, so that you can learn from my failure: make sure that a regular review of projects and next-actions is part of yoru process. During this review you can reorganize actions, and whatnot, but it's the GTD activity that keeps you moving forward and being productive. My last thought on this is that as you work your way through your readying, you will want to revise your next-actions to reflect the new perspective you get on each of your projects through reading and reflecting on what you're learning. As I've thought about using GTD in academics, I think this means that you need to more frequently review your reading and learning projects than one might review a "cranking widgets" project. This is my $0.02. In closing, you might find that skimming the "GTD for acacdemics" thread/sub-forum interesting. Jason » POSTED IN:
|
|
| EXPLORE 43Folders | THE GOOD STUFF |
