Part 1: The Art of Getting Things Done
“It is possible to be effectively doing while you are delightfully being in your ordinary workaday world.”
“Many of these businesspeople are successful because the crises they solve and the opportunities they take advantage of are bigger than the problems they allow and create in their own offices and briefcases.”
“…it’s needed so we can take advantage of all the opportunities we’re given to add value to our world in a sustainable, self-nurturing way.”
Getting Things Done is a system, a manual if you may, to capture all of our tasks and projects, decide what you need to do in order to accomplish them, and take the necessary steps to getting them done. It’s about high-performance workflow management.
“Many of these businesspeople are successful because the crises they solve and the opportunities they take advantage of are bigger than the problems they allow and create in their own offices and briefcases.”
“…it’s needed so we can take advantage of all the opportunities we’re given to add value to our world in a sustainable, self-nurturing way.”
Getting Things Done is a system, a manual if you may, to capture all of our tasks and projects, decide what you need to do in order to accomplish them, and take the necessary steps to getting them done. It’s about high-performance workflow management.
Chapter 1: A New Practice for a New Reality
Two Key Objectives
1. Capturing all the things that need to get done into a logical and trusted system outside of your head and off your mind.
2. Disciplining yourself to make front-end decisions about all of the “inputs” you let into your life so that you will always have a plan for “next actions” that you can implement or renegotiate at any moment.
The Problem: New Demands, Insufficient Resources
· Work no longer has clear boundaries
· Our jobs keep changing
· The old models and habits are insufficient
· “There has been a missing piece in our new culture of knowledge work: a system with a coherent set of behaviors and tools that function effectively at the level at which work really happens.”
The Promise: The “Ready State” of the Martial Artist
It’s about getting in the zone; a “mind like water” state; a “productive state”.
The Principle: Dealing Effectively with Internal Commitments
The Basic Requirements for Managing Commitments
1. Capture everything in a trusted system outside your mind (a collection bucket).
2. Clarify exactly what your commitment is and decide what you have to do.
3. Decide on all the actions you need to take.
“Results have to be clearly specified, if productivity is to be achieved.”
“Outcome thinking is one of the most effective means available for making wishes reality.”
“It’s a waste of time and energy to keep thinking about something that you make no progress on. And it only adds to your anxieties about what you should be doing and aren’t.”
“We need to transform all the “stuff” we’re trying to organize into actionable stuff we need to do.”
The Process: Managing Action
“The key to managing all of your “stuff” is managing your actions.”
“What you do with your time, what you do with information, and what you do with your body and your focus relative to your priorities – those are the real options to which you must allocate your limited resources.”
Horizontal and Vertical Control
· Horizontal control refers to maintaining coherence across all the activities in which you are involved (the day to day).
· Vertical control is managing thinking up and down the track of individual topics and projects (project planning).
1. Capturing all the things that need to get done into a logical and trusted system outside of your head and off your mind.
2. Disciplining yourself to make front-end decisions about all of the “inputs” you let into your life so that you will always have a plan for “next actions” that you can implement or renegotiate at any moment.
The Problem: New Demands, Insufficient Resources
· Work no longer has clear boundaries
· Our jobs keep changing
· The old models and habits are insufficient
· “There has been a missing piece in our new culture of knowledge work: a system with a coherent set of behaviors and tools that function effectively at the level at which work really happens.”
The Promise: The “Ready State” of the Martial Artist
It’s about getting in the zone; a “mind like water” state; a “productive state”.
The Principle: Dealing Effectively with Internal Commitments
The Basic Requirements for Managing Commitments
1. Capture everything in a trusted system outside your mind (a collection bucket).
2. Clarify exactly what your commitment is and decide what you have to do.
3. Decide on all the actions you need to take.
“Results have to be clearly specified, if productivity is to be achieved.”
“Outcome thinking is one of the most effective means available for making wishes reality.”
“It’s a waste of time and energy to keep thinking about something that you make no progress on. And it only adds to your anxieties about what you should be doing and aren’t.”
“We need to transform all the “stuff” we’re trying to organize into actionable stuff we need to do.”
The Process: Managing Action
“The key to managing all of your “stuff” is managing your actions.”
“What you do with your time, what you do with information, and what you do with your body and your focus relative to your priorities – those are the real options to which you must allocate your limited resources.”
Horizontal and Vertical Control
· Horizontal control refers to maintaining coherence across all the activities in which you are involved (the day to day).
· Vertical control is managing thinking up and down the track of individual topics and projects (project planning).
Chapter 2: Getting Control of Your Life: The Five Stages of Mastering Workflow
The Five-Stage Method for Managing Workflow
1. Collect things that command our attention;
2. Process what they mean and what to do about them; and
3. Organize the results, which we
4. Review as options for what we choose to
5. Do.
Collect
Gather 100% of the “Incompletes.
Collection Tools (physical in-basket, paper-based note-taking devices, electronic note-taking devices, voice-recording devices, e-mail).
The Collection Success Factors
1. Every open loop must be in your collection system and out of your head.
2. You must have as few collection buckets as you can get by with.
3. You must empty them regularly.
Process
Processing Workflow (see picture below)
Organize
“To manage actionable things, you will need a list of projects, storage or files for project plans and materials, a calendar, a list of reminders of next actions, and a list of reminders of things you’re waiting for.”
A project is any desired result that requires more than one action step.
“You don’t actually do a project; you can only do action steps related to it.”
Organizing Workflow (see picture below)
Review
“It’s your chance to scan all the defined actions and options before you, thus radically increasing the efficacy of the choices you make about what you’re doing at any point in time.”
The Weekly Review
· Gather and process all your “stuff”.
· Review your system.
· Update you lists.
· Get clean, clear, current, and complete.
“the more complete the system is, the more you’ll trust it. And the more you trust it, the more complete you’ll be motivated to keep it.”
“Most people feel best about their work when they’ve cleaned up, closed up, clarified, and renegotiated all their agreements with themselves and others. Do this weekly instead of yearly.”
Do
“…with the proper preplanning you can feel much more confident about your choices. You can move from hope to trust in your actions, immediately increasing your speed and effectiveness.”
Three Models for Decision-Making
1. The Four-Criteria Model for Choosing Actions in the Moment
1. Context
2. Time available
3. Energy available
4. Priority
2. The Threefold Model for Evaluating Daily Work
- Doing predefined work
- Doing work as it shows up
- Defining your work
3. The Six-Level Model for Reviewing Your Own Work
o 50,000+ feet: Life
o 40,000 feet: Three- to five-year vision
o 30,000 feet: One- to two-year goals
o 20,000 feet: Areas of responsibility
o 10,000 feet: Current projects
o Runway: Current actions
“Mastering the flow of your work at all the levels you experience that work provides a much more holistic way to get things done, and feel good about it.”
1. Collect things that command our attention;
2. Process what they mean and what to do about them; and
3. Organize the results, which we
4. Review as options for what we choose to
5. Do.
Collect
Gather 100% of the “Incompletes.
Collection Tools (physical in-basket, paper-based note-taking devices, electronic note-taking devices, voice-recording devices, e-mail).
The Collection Success Factors
1. Every open loop must be in your collection system and out of your head.
2. You must have as few collection buckets as you can get by with.
3. You must empty them regularly.
Process
Processing Workflow (see picture below)
Organize
“To manage actionable things, you will need a list of projects, storage or files for project plans and materials, a calendar, a list of reminders of next actions, and a list of reminders of things you’re waiting for.”
A project is any desired result that requires more than one action step.
“You don’t actually do a project; you can only do action steps related to it.”
Organizing Workflow (see picture below)
Review
“It’s your chance to scan all the defined actions and options before you, thus radically increasing the efficacy of the choices you make about what you’re doing at any point in time.”
The Weekly Review
· Gather and process all your “stuff”.
· Review your system.
· Update you lists.
· Get clean, clear, current, and complete.
“the more complete the system is, the more you’ll trust it. And the more you trust it, the more complete you’ll be motivated to keep it.”
“Most people feel best about their work when they’ve cleaned up, closed up, clarified, and renegotiated all their agreements with themselves and others. Do this weekly instead of yearly.”
Do
“…with the proper preplanning you can feel much more confident about your choices. You can move from hope to trust in your actions, immediately increasing your speed and effectiveness.”
Three Models for Decision-Making
1. The Four-Criteria Model for Choosing Actions in the Moment
1. Context
2. Time available
3. Energy available
4. Priority
2. The Threefold Model for Evaluating Daily Work
- Doing predefined work
- Doing work as it shows up
- Defining your work
3. The Six-Level Model for Reviewing Your Own Work
o 50,000+ feet: Life
o 40,000 feet: Three- to five-year vision
o 30,000 feet: One- to two-year goals
o 20,000 feet: Areas of responsibility
o 10,000 feet: Current projects
o Runway: Current actions
“Mastering the flow of your work at all the levels you experience that work provides a much more holistic way to get things done, and feel good about it.”