Archive - Mar 2006

One idea that comes up regularly for GTD practitioners is the idea of keeping a "daily to-do list," i.e., a list of tasks (Next Actions in GTD-speak) that should be done that day. Keeping one of these is a traditional time management staple [1], and one that Allen turns on its head. The reasoning is:

1. The pace of modern life changes so fast that such daily plans are often invalidated by the first unforeseen event (e.g., an email from a client at 8:15 AM that requires your immediate attention).
2. Having tasks on the daily to-do list that don't absolutely have to be done that day numbs you to other items that really do have to get done, leading to things slipping through the cracks and decreased trust in your system.

As part of my self-training to be a personal productivity presenter and coach, I'm reading [1] every related book I can get my hands on. (My goal? Be a world-class expert [2] in the field.) One thing I regularly come across are relatively simple ideas for workflow management, esp. "TRAF" (Toss, Refer, Act, File) and the "Four Ds" (Delete, Do, Delegate, Defer). How do these compare with the more complex GTD workflow diagram? Read on!

The players

In this section I'll describe the three approaches to managing inputs that we'll be comparing - TRAF, the "Four Ds", and GTD's workflow diagram.

At the start of the year, I decided to try an experiment (see A geek "gets" networking: The strange magic of connecting with others): I was going to grow my personal network by three people per week for a year, a goal that seemed both audacious and possible, given a bit of stretching (which Alvin says is The Most Important Thing to Do).

In the last ten weeks I've connected with about 50 new people, which actually exceeds my goal of three per week (30 at this point). Even this early in the experiment, I've had a number of lessons and questions come up, which follow. However, the short story is 1) it's fun, 2) it's work, 3) it's personally challenging and rewarding, and 4) I don't know where it's going!

Effort

I write down everything I want to remember. That way, instead of spending a lot of time trying to remember what it is I wrote down, I spend the time looking for the paper I wrote it down on. -- Beryl Pfizer

I've dreamed up an information-managing tool that should exist, and it's driving me nuts working without it. Here are a few initial notes; comments are very welcome.

In training myself to be a productivity consultant, my information tracking and capturing needs have gone through the roof. For example, I need to manage things like:

• networking information (who, when, how I connected to them),
• blog ideas,
• useful productivity tips for myself and clients,
• marketing and web site ideas,
• notes from books I read [2],
• notes/ideas for projects,