Getting Things Done (GTD) - A Short Primer
Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort.
—Paul J. Meyer, Founder, Success Motivation Institute
It was January 1, 2009. I remember the day vividly. I had just become a young Assistant Professor at the University of Washington. The expectations of being a competent clinical radiologist, an amazing teacher, and a world-class researcher “all at the same time” were weighing heavy on my shoulders. And oh did I forget administrative duties?
I knew I had to get organized for the first time in my life. Being more organized and productive would free up more time for family and playing with my 6 month old daughter. At work, it would help me cope with the ever-increasing demands.
Add a bit of an Imposter Syndrome, and here I was unable to get organized while there are CEO’s are other high performing individuals who manage multiple people across continents.
I felt lost, really lost but had not given up hope!
Where Do You Start?
It’s not that some people are naturally productive and others are not. Productivity is a skill like any other that can be learned and honed through constant practice. I believed this to be true. My search led to the book Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen, arguably the world’s leading efficiency guru. His methodology by the same name, or “GTD” for those in the know, can help transform your fast-paced, overwhelming, overcommitted life into one that is balanced, integrated, and relaxed, and one that has more successful outcomes. The Internet is full of blogs, articles, videos, and software, all derivatives of this idea.
Although it is impossible for a single approach to guarantee productivity for everyone, understanding your personal productivity needs and experimenting with different techniques is crucial to coming up with a unique system with which you can work. The process will be slow and the results might take time. However, the “validated personal learning” will ultimately help you to lead a more productive life.
Select a System That Works for You BUT Keep It Simple
Using the GTD system as a model, follow these basic principles:
1. Collect and process
2. Plan and organize
3. Do
4. Review
Collect and Process
This basic GTD principle recommends moving tasks out of the mind by recording them externally, freeing the mind from everything that needs to be done to concentrate on actually performing those tasks. This helps to gather all of the “incompletes” and includes anything personal or professional that has some type of “to-do” attached to it (e.g., emails, meeting appointments, tasks, projects, errands, and goals).
Once you have everything listed, here are the essential five options (5 D’s):
• Delete it—If you don’t need it, delete it!
• Do it—If it can be done quickly (< 2 minutes), do it NOW.
• Delegate it—Often an ignored strategy!
• Deposit it—Create an easily accessible and organized archiving system.
• Defer it—If it is going to take more than a few minutes. Develop a reliable system to schedule and track these tasks.
The 2-minute email strategy is brilliant! If a task will take 2 minutes or less to complete, doing it immediately eliminates the need for further processing, which would likely take more time than just getting it done now and out of the way. Processing these smaller tasks also provides you with a caffeine-like hit of accomplishment.
“Strategic delegation” is a key concept. Work with the right people with the appropriate attitude and aptitude, develop a structured approach for identifying and delegating tasks, impart skills and mentor colleagues to accomplish these tasks, be flexible, be aware of the limitations of your team members, set personal ex- amples along the way, and be proactive to achieve deadlines.
An email inbox often represents unprocessed items that need some decision. An overflowing inbox can compromise focus and efficiency, silently drain your energy, and distract you from the task at hand. You need to understand that achieving “Inbox Nirvana” (Inbox Zero) is not a relentless pursuit but rather a state of mind. Learning the “process” of regularly prioritizing incoming information can dramatically improve your productivity.
There are several high- and low-tech tools available to “get things out of your head.” Random ideas can be jotted in a note- book or captured in a voice memo. A physical bin can be useful for collecting incoming paperwork or “snail” mail. Evernote and Notion are two of the most widely used productivity applications available, designed for electronic note taking and archiving. A “note” can be a piece of formatted text, a full web- page or webpage excerpt, a photograph, a voice memo, or even a handwritten note (a premium paid feature). These notes can be tagged based on actions and contexts (e.g., use a tickler file fold- er tool), searched for easy retrieval, and shared.
Plan and Organize (BUT Keep It Simple)
Once you have collected and processed your tasks (> 2-minute actionable items) it is important to change all “to-do’s” into “next actions.” For example, instead of having “work on research project” on your to-do list, you should change it to a series of smaller more granular actions, such as “rewrite introduction in a way that will generate more interest.” Actions that are date-, day-, or time-specific should go on your calendar.
To be efficient, to-do lists should be set for part of your day and prioritized effectively: Deal with the most difficult task first, employ time blocks, and address small items in a batch. There are innumerable to-do list managers available as software and smart phone applications. An advantage to using both a web- based calendar and to-do list manager is the ability to synchronize and, therefore, streamline your efforts.
Going paperless is a potential life-changing event! It involves collecting years worth of paper data and inputting the data into a computer, organizing a digital workflow, and using technology for generating less paper overall. Multi-sheet-fed scanners (we use Fujitsu ScanSnap) and document organizational software such as Papers equipped with optical character recognition are invaluable tools in this process. Although the process of going paperless can be slow, it offers the advantages of increased productivity, decreased cost, ease of transportation, ease of sharing, better security (physical theft and destruction from fire or flood), improved planning, decreased stress, and “enhancement of your brand.” After some experimentation, you will realize how much technology you feel comfortable with to keep yourself organized.
Do
Do you feel the need to tackle multiple tasks simultaneously? Multitasking might sound like a good idea, and has even been celebrated in the past, but conclusive research shows that this method actually wastes more time than it saves and causes more errors due to insufficient concentration. The Pomodoro Technique, rooted in principles of serial monotasking, aims to reduce the impact of internal and external interruptions on focus and flow. This method involves using a timer to work in 25-minute bursts with short rest intervals as a way to maximize mental agility.
Your intuition should guide you to use your most productive times of the day for work that requires the most fresh, creative mental energy and is of highest priority, or to tackle your least desirable tasks, which you may otherwise put off.
The practice of how to minimize distractions is best illustrated with email. Did I mention I have 2 videos on email management?
Techniques to minimize the potential distraction of email are to:
Use it sparingly
Avoid unnecessary cc’s and bcc’s
Not answer every email
Use template services such as TextExpander
Centralize your emails into 1 or 2 accounts
Use auto-responders
Set up strong filters
Unsubscribe from messages you no longer wish to receive
Turn off automatic email notification
Plan email-free times during the day
Only check emails during two to three predesignated times per day
Regularly clean out your inbox
Emails are notorious for derailing productivity, but can be used as a productivity tool. An email containing five or fewer sentences can be perceived as abrupt or rude, while more than five sentences can waste time. A good email should have a single focus, a compelling and actionable subject line, quickly get to the point, and have a context without excessive details.
It should answer the following five questions:
Who are you?
What do you want?
Why are you asking me?
Why should I do what you are asking?
What is the next step?
Most people need this information to make a decision. One-on-one communication often is a more efficient “personal” way to get work done, especially with regard to difficult issues, and it causes fewer misunderstandings, allows for last minute changes, permits real-time feedback, and is more persuasive.
Truth be told, working smarter does not replace hard work, but it allows us to get more done in the limited time we have. The “do” portion of the GTD model is the most difficult part of being productive, and the importance of staying motivated, being healthy, and achieving work/life balance cannot be overemphasized.
Review
A weekly review is the most critical and potentially rewarding step in any workflow management system. It is a time to update your lists, process all of your “stuff,” complete the last steps of some tasks, and evaluate goals achieved.
Set your goals SMARTly—Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time bound. It is also a good time to reflect upon which productivity techniques and tools are working or not working for you. When assigning your daily tasks, attempt to focus your energy on the most important activities.
The much-quoted 80/20 rule states that 80% of the value you create in a day will come from the 20% of the activities you do. This means that completing 20%—the most important tasks—daily will help you accomplish much more than if you completed the rest of the tasks. Long-term goals should also be periodically reviewed (a separate “someday/maybe” list).
Take the time to explore, experiment, and ultimately build your own simple and reliable productivity system. It can transform you into a productivity powerhouse. Give it a shot!
Amanda Lackey, MD and I co-authored an earlier version of this piece for the American Roentgen Ray Society In Practice Magazine in 2013
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