Archive for the 'GTD' Category

What is your next action?

Published
by
Gareth Knight
on 2009/5/6
in GTD
. 2 Comments

I’ve been working a lot lately on trying to streamline and rationalise everything in my head, for various reasons, and have found that the difference between projects and actions can be blurry when thinking of things broadly. The killer has been going through each of my projects, and ruthlessly thinking about what the “next action” is.

I can’t do everything at once, so having a smaller list of next actions is the best way for me to think about what I need to do across my 50 odd active (current, not someday / maybe) projects. When an action is done for the project, I then assign a next action.

When I started going into each project, it’s pretty clear that some stuff is only ever going to have one action (get car cleaned) -> so it’s not a project. When I found many “actions” within a project (they’re aligned for the same purpose or goal), then the next action becomes most important as it defines the starting point for the project, as well as the mental block you have to overcome to create progress and momentum.

So, my learning is this:
Next actions are essential for rationalising priority and allocation of time.
Projects should have more than one action (ala David Allen), focus should be on the very next action.
Ruthless pruning of projects, actions and mental RAM is essential for sanity ;-)

What are your thoughts / experiences?

A GTD Eureka! moment

Published
by
Gareth Knight
on 2009/1/8
in GTD
. 2 Comments

It’s funny how one often finds clarity and purpose when one isn’t actually spending time doing the thing you need clarity for, to achieve your purpose.

This evening I was at a hockey training session, where we did a tactics whiteboard with the coach, (which was awesome - thanks Russ, Trid and Kiwi), and a fast 20 min run in the freezing cold. It was during the run at about 75% of the distance that I had a brief moment of Eureka!, where everything clicked into place for me about something that has been troubling me for a while now… so I’m already trying it out and so far the results are good. This has been one of those pivotal moments for me…

I don’t want to go into the detail of what it is here ‘cos that’s not the point, but what is interesting for me, is that my mind is a) back to being creative and b) working subconsciously. I’ve been teetering on the edge of a solution for ages now, and it’s finally clicked into place ;-)

So the take home for me is that I need to encourage those states of “being away from the desk” so that I can let my mind wander around solutions; and that I should also give my mind concrete things to think about - the first step of which is getting my mental RAM clear.

And that’s all - just wanted to share that, and log it for my own reference in time to come… ;-)

Get an online personal assistant, it will make your life easier

Published
by
Gareth Knight
on 2008/7/3
in GTD and Productivity
. 3 Comments

The shorter version:
Checkout Online Personal Assistant. I recommend it, it’s saved me time and made my life easier. Best part is you can use it from wherever…
Try it, tell Ed you got there from here, and he’ll treat you nice ;-)

The longer version:
OK, so I’m the first to admit that I often find myself with too many balls to juggle. I find that having more to do actually makes me more productive and when I get in the zone, things happen and it feels good.

However, when you’re starting a business, or working on something important to you, and you decide that it is the highest priority in your life, then other things slip down the priority order, and they simply don’t get done.

Cases in point:

  1. I’ve needed to get a UK drivers license for at least 3 years now
  2. I’ve needed to renew my South African passport for over a year now
  3. I’ve been serious about taking up Kendo, or a Japanese Sword Art, for at least 18 months
  4. I’ve needed to sort out health insurance for a long long long time
  5. I wanted to organise a birthday bash for myself this year, for precisely the reason why it didn’t happen last year

I think you get the picture…. Basically you keep your life together somehow until something threatens to break, then you mend it so it doesn’t break in the short term, then you go back to being focussed. I know not everyone is like that, but I am, hence this post! ;-)

Anyways, I’m not really into recommending or plugging services that I don’t have a lot of exposure to, mainly ‘cos I get too many emails so it’s hard to decide whom to spend an hour for getting to know a service, and also ‘cos people don’t really read my blog for that reason ;-) I’m not Scoble or Arrington or Kirkpatrick, and neither do I want to be.

Back to the point - a while ago my friend Ed setup a service called Online Personal Assistant, and after a bit of nudging I decided to give it a try. My @Inbox was overflowing, and I really just needed to clear some stuff that was important, but not that important it could go above Kindo.

So I sent a list of stuff to my personal assistant Kevin:

  1. Book Geek BBQ venue for summer in London
  2. Book karting venue for my birthday delebration
  3. Book bowling venue for my birthday celebration
  4. Find me health insurance
  5. Find me Tai Chi schools close to where I live
  6. Find me Kendo schools close to where I live

As you can see, they’re all time intensive tasks that would mean me spending a few hours online for each one, at some point, getting to a place where I can make a decision and then do some actions… Getting my passport and drivers license require me to be somewhere in person, so I needed to do that.

Where we are now is that Ed’s team (thanks Kevin!) has spent about 9 hours doing all that stuff for me, for which I’ll pay an hourly rate. Everything is documented and tracked in an online workspace (not Basecamp), and I’m happy with the results. I have a few things to tie down now, but basically all the research is done, and all it requires is another booking, or an action on my part.

Bottom line - I’ve saved 9 hours of my time (which I value more than what I’ll pay for it), thereby enabling me to focus on things more important to me now, so as far as I’m concerned I’m a happy biologist.

I happily recommend the service, and am going to continue to use it.