Tag: gtd

On Trusted Systems

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One of the side effects of switching from iOS to Android was my quest to find good cross-platform tools to accomplish all of the things I was already doing with my iPhone. This meant making some compromises and getting rid of some apps I have been using for years. One of the biggest casualties was OmniFocus. If you don’t know what OmniFocus is, it’s a task-management system that allows you to categorize to-do items with very powerful filtering so you can easily capture and show tasks that you need to be doing in a particular context (that is, a place or type of job).

In an effort to find something like OmniFocus, I tried a few similar apps, and finally settled on Wunderlist. While it’s a good enough app, I slowly fell off the wagon of truly trusting the system I was using to track tasks. I also took for granted how easy it was to add a task to OmniFocus via Siri (once OmniFocus is set up to pull in reminders, you simply tell Siri “remind me to…” and it’ll automatically be added to your list, for sorting later). Once you stop trusting the list as THE place to go for all of your to-do items, it has nearly zero value to you. The tasks you do add are too large to really break down into actionable chunks, and once this happens, the inertia of a bad list takes over, making it even more difficult to use a list of any kind.

One of the most important aspects of the GTD system of task management is breaking down every project or goal into the smallest, achievable tasks so that blockers can be eliminated and progress toward completion can be made. Wunderlist just wasn’t doing that for me. So, I’ve decided to switch back to OmniFocus, even if that means I won’t have access to viewing my tasks on Android (there is no Android app for OmniFocus to sync with). What I have done instead is found an Android app that allows you to add items to the iCloud reminders list, which allows me to at least quickly capture tasks when they come to mind. I will sort these items when I’m at a computer or on my iPad, which I have with me almost all of the time.

Is this an ideal solution? Not exactly, but it gets me back in the habit of doing daily reviews in the morning and weekly reviews over coffee on the weekends. I’ve been going with this approach for about 2 weeks now and I already feel like a lot of that mental clutter is gone, which is extremely valuable to me. Being able to trust that a list is the place that I dump any and all tasks in my brain is a huge burden lifted from a forgetful guy like myself, and has helped me stay more productive at work and able to get things done around the house as well.

As Cinderella once said, You Don’t Know What You Got (Till It’s Gone). If feels good to be back in OmniFocus land – and I’m really looking forward to the v2 updates for the Mac and the iPad – whenever those actually land.

Finding time to plan my day

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I’ve made a small change in my daily schedule and it’s already reaping huge rewards for me.

Lately, I’ve been struggling a lot with just keeping the basics of my life in order as my job is gotten crazier and crazier.  Before this week, I would wake up around 7 AM, take the dog out, hit the shower, and head to work after getting quickly dressed. From alarm to starting the engine, it was roughly a 30 minute process.  By the nature of the industry I’m in (there’s always someone at my work doing something), when I arrive at work, I already am facing a dozen emails to respond to – some important, others not so much but still requiring some sort of reply. Any time I thought I would have to do administrative tasks at the office would already be gone by just playing catch-up from the new fires that just popped up during my commute or overnight.

Given this, I think that the only way that I can really feel like I have control my day is to spend a little bit of time planning my day.  I’ll never to have control over my day 100% and I’m never going to be able to spend eight hours doing exactly what I thought I’d be doing. It’s just not the nature of my job anymore. However, I do think that it is important to at least start the day with an idea what you can realistically get done and not get done and push the lesser items off until tomorrow.  I’m now getting up an hour earlier than I used to, drinking copious amounts of coffee, and spending some time in OmniFocus & reading through my email – really sorting through what I’m going to be doing that day. Once I know what I need to do (and what I actually can do), I block that time off in my work calendar for each task, ensuring that things get done.  And it’s working.

It’s only been about two weeks but I’m much more relaxed and feel like I’m ‘in control’ of my day a bit more.  Funny how spending just a half hour thinking about how you are going to spend each hour of your day, blocking it out on your calendar, and prioritizing tasks (for the inevitable moment where something gets pushed back because of a fire or emergency meeting) helps you feel in control of anything that comes your way, because you’ve done the extra legwork to make sure the demands of the day line up with the reality of time & attention available.