Last week, I took a course over two half-days called “Getting Things Done.” Getting Things Done, or GTD, is a productivity methodology developed by David Allen, who was profiled last year by Wired. His book of the same name is a bestseller, and he now has a consulting and coaching company to preach his gospel to the overworked masses. Google, of course, let’s us take the course for free. :)
Getting Things Done argues that the key to less stress is to empty your head of those to-do’s and projects and “objectify” them by putting them into an external system. To do this, GTD suggests five key steps: collect, process, organize, review, and do. It sounds simplistic, but when was the last time you actually sat down and thought about the way that you orchestrate your productivity? For me, it wasn’t recently. I had developed some kind of nebulous system throughout high school and college to make sure I stayed on task. My tools consisted of e-mail, calendar, and millions of sticky notes. My collection, processing, organizing, reviewing, and doing all took place in a single jumbled mess that — though it worked — was probably grossly inefficient.
So, the first thing I took away from GTD was that big picture: taking time to separate the steps of your self-organization and reflecting on how to make it more efficient is worthwhile.
Continue reading ‘What I Took Away From “Getting Things Done”’
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