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Goktug Yilmaz's Reviews > Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
by
by
My summary:
A person is the most productive when the mind is clear. Like RAMs on a PC. The conscious mind is a focusing tool, not a storage place.
GTDs aim is to make you have 100% trust in a system for collecting tasks, ideas, and projects—both vague things and concrete things.
Lists you need:
1. Inbox - Put everything into inbox, organize it weekly and remove stuff from here into other lists.
2. Next actions - Tasks that need to get completed.
3. Waiting for - Tasks that are waiting for people to respond.
4. Projects - Lists of different projects.
5. Some day/maybe - Throw stuff in here that you are planning to do someday.
Rules:
- Store everything in your inbox.
- Empty your inbox an maintain your lists once a week. If its not maintained, your brain won't trust it.
- Use fewest collection buckets that you can get away with.
- Only put time specific tasks on calendar.
- List all stuff as clear actions. Action is defined as the next physical, visible activity that needs to be engaged in, in order to move the current reality toward completion.
- Non-actionable stuff: Throw away or keep as reference material.
- Will next action take less than 2 minutes? If yes, do it. If no, delegate it or defer it.
- Organize and do tasks by context. Like phone tasks, internet tasks, shopping tasks etc..
- Tools should be fun to use—but not too fun! If you have a slow and complicated tool for managing your lists you will subconsciously resist collecting small tasks, and if your tool is too fun to use you will end up over-using it and spend time playing with its amazing features. Find something that works for you.
- For larger tasks that require two or more steps, create project folders for them. Distill each related task into tiny to-dos, each one easy to check off, and build up to completing the project.
- 20 minutes before the end of a meeting, one should ask, "So what’s the next action here?" to increase clarity.
Example contexts:
@Home
@Shopping
@Hospital
@Phone
Example Lists:
-Life Goals
-Reference Storage
-List of Projects
-Calendar
-Reminders of next actions
-Things you’re waiting for
A person is the most productive when the mind is clear. Like RAMs on a PC. The conscious mind is a focusing tool, not a storage place.
GTDs aim is to make you have 100% trust in a system for collecting tasks, ideas, and projects—both vague things and concrete things.
Lists you need:
1. Inbox - Put everything into inbox, organize it weekly and remove stuff from here into other lists.
2. Next actions - Tasks that need to get completed.
3. Waiting for - Tasks that are waiting for people to respond.
4. Projects - Lists of different projects.
5. Some day/maybe - Throw stuff in here that you are planning to do someday.
Rules:
- Store everything in your inbox.
- Empty your inbox an maintain your lists once a week. If its not maintained, your brain won't trust it.
- Use fewest collection buckets that you can get away with.
- Only put time specific tasks on calendar.
- List all stuff as clear actions. Action is defined as the next physical, visible activity that needs to be engaged in, in order to move the current reality toward completion.
- Non-actionable stuff: Throw away or keep as reference material.
- Will next action take less than 2 minutes? If yes, do it. If no, delegate it or defer it.
- Organize and do tasks by context. Like phone tasks, internet tasks, shopping tasks etc..
- Tools should be fun to use—but not too fun! If you have a slow and complicated tool for managing your lists you will subconsciously resist collecting small tasks, and if your tool is too fun to use you will end up over-using it and spend time playing with its amazing features. Find something that works for you.
- For larger tasks that require two or more steps, create project folders for them. Distill each related task into tiny to-dos, each one easy to check off, and build up to completing the project.
- 20 minutes before the end of a meeting, one should ask, "So what’s the next action here?" to increase clarity.
Example contexts:
@Home
@Shopping
@Hospital
@Phone
Example Lists:
-Life Goals
-Reference Storage
-List of Projects
-Calendar
-Reminders of next actions
-Things you’re waiting for
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