Getting Things Done

Thanks to a great share by Cam (for those of you who don't know he's the co-founder and CTO at Cent), I came across an efficiency hack that I can easily overlay on top of my note taking app of choice, Diaro.

In Matt Mochary's short but powerful 'Founder to Ceo' that Cam shared with the team, Mochary introduces the Getting Things Done framework espoused by David Allen in his book 'Getting Things Done: The art of stress-free productivity'.

Essentially this framework helps users simply categorize tasks into either daily or weekly review buckets. Next actions (i.e. short, atomic units if work), things you were asked to do by others and (my slight revision to the schema) things you asked others to do (instead of someday/maybe tasks) constitute the items you should add to the daily review work bucket.

In the weekly review bucket one should add agenda items for each person you plan on meeting with as you think of the item to talk about in addition to whatever projects or bundles of 'next actions'. The idea behind 'Agenda' is that you will be able to pull up that agenda list once you meet or call that person so you can discuss each agenda item all at once (as opposed to a spot-basis when you think of each item).

As you can see in the above screenshot I have added tags for each of those items (in addition to the team members that I know I will have things to talk about with) as well as a specific group called 'Get Things Done'. I did this so I can quickly bring up any items that need to get done (by selecting the group) and then if need be selecting each tag individually during either my daily or weekly review.

One super important tag that did not make it into the screenshot (or in Allen's official framework for that matter) is a tag labeled 'Finished' where I will tag every completed action, agenda item and talking point with as soon as they are completed so that I will have a running list of what I have actually accomplished.

Well, I officially feel like an old man now. Who gets excited about efficiency hacks? Anyways, I will put this bad boy framework to use beginning today, and hopefully provide an update sometime in the future about how it's worked out or not worked out.