Category Archives: Getting Started with GTD

Abomination of Deskolation … Redeemed!

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First the before pictures:

Ladies and gentlemen, 28 years in the making, RestartGTD brings you THE ABOMINATION OF DESKOLATION!

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Figure 1: The Abomination of Deskolation!

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Figure 2: The Accompanying Office

Now the after pictures:

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Figure 3: The wait, … what?

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Figure 4: Wow, just wow!

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Figure 5: How It was accomplished

The Story:

This is John Niebergall’s desk.  John is an engineering teacher at Sherwood High School in South Portland.  As I’ve gotten to know John (i.e., seen his desk and had him over to my office to see my desk), I encouraged him to read GETTING THINGS DONE.  Over the holidays John listened to GTD three or four times via Audible, and then wanted help translating the ideas in GTD to his work processes.  I believe the specific words were “I’m a visual learner, I don’t do well reading books.  I need to see it.”

John is the target blog reader that I started RestartGTD to serve.  I’ve traveled to John’s office, carrying my Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500M (I use portable Macs), had John take down one of the three ring binders against the back wall of his office, and we scanned it into PDF.   Done!  Four minutes, and now the paper and the binder both can go in the recycle bin.   It was hard to let that first binder go.  But the liberation grows on you rapidly.  It gets easier the more space you free up in your office.

Seeing scanning is believing.  John ordered his own Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500 (PC) and I made another trip down to his office to take the scanner out of the box.  Maybe I should do a poll of how many GTDers have purchased scanners and never taken them out of the box? You know who you are! De-boxing is the key next action in getting a scanner up and contributing to your mind-like-water.

In addition to the visible things on and around John’s desk, I believe there is a second USB hub that is hidden inside the typing elevator drawer space.  And also, that there is a power adapter in that space to feed the label printer and scanner.

Reflections on Abomination’s Redemption:

Note in Figure 1, that John had a trackball on his desk when he started GTD.  This desk makeover has shifted him to a small travel mouse. There are wireless trackballs from Logitech and Kensington, but they cost $30 more than the Logitech M305.

John chose to keep his legacy desk with leg stalls.  That is this style of desk is like a horse stall, only for your legs.  I prefer sliding side to side so that I can start parallel projects on different parts of my desk during the day as interruptions happen.  My advice to John was to cut the surface off this desk and then mount it on IKEA legs. Ikea’s desks have inexpensive cable management options, and they are simple to work with.

The glass on the desk feels disruptive to me.  Glass is cold when you put your hands and forearms on it.  I think I’d prefer to remove the glass, and then I’d probably resurface this desk with white-board-contact-paper.  White lightens the room (always welcome in Portland where we get 5.5 inches of rain per month), and gives you a place to jot notes with white board pens, so you can save paper.

John is a public school teacher who has been in Sherwood High School for 28 years.  And he is digging his way out via GTD.  Teachers, you CAN DO THIS!   If I can shift to GTD, anyone can.  The key is to start.  Don’t start big or small.  Don’t give yourself the chance to over think this.  Just start.  John got the scanner, Evernote, and then beautifully reconfigured his desk (putting the scanner on the old typewriter elevator is genius!:-) to support his workflow.

Thank you John for sharing your before after.  Anyone else interested in sharing?  Before/afters are fantastic motivators.  Email me if you have pics you are willing to share.

bill@basicip.com

 

 

Poll: What GTD tools did not work for you?

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Buzz Bruggeman of Active Words Fame asked about doing a survey on what tools people have tried to implement GTD with, that have failed.  A great idea!  Hat tip Buzz!

If your (failed) tool is not listed, you can nominate it with a write in “Other” at the bottom.  Also, don’t even THINK about not voting because you’ve failed with so many systems.  This poll will allow you to write in and vote for as many options as you’ve worked with.

OFF THE GTD WAGON POLL: RESULTS

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Ok, the “off the GTD wagon” poll is now closed.  The results for 234 votes are as follows:

Getting overwhelmed with next actions is a problem in starting up GTD.  No question.  I look at the “Inertia” and “Snap Back” answers as kind of the same thing, scoring 46 votes. IT IS VERY EASY once you get into GTD, to never do that first weekly review.  I “have a friend” who has coasted with GTD for 3 years without doing a systematic weekly review.

I also seen the “Panic” and wonder if it should be lumped in with the #1 alternative of “Overwhelmed” or with #3 “Pushed out of GTD by crisis or situation.”  Or maybe all three should be lumped together?  There is definitely a mental game of GTD that needs to be played to stay on the wagon.

Please comment if you see anything I’ve missed.

bill@basicip.com

 

Instructions for Kelly VanderSys (and other spouses of visual learners) on Getting restarted with GTD

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Kelly,

There is an adoption life cycle to implementing GETTING THINGS DONE (hereafter GTD).  You can help Mark a ton by understanding what he, as a visual learner, is up against.

GTDAdoptionLifeCycleBM

This is the adoption life cycle that I have personally experienced after 3 years of doing GTD.  Mark will repeatedly fall “off the wagon” of GTD.  You need to expect this, and be patient with it, and keep what you can do for him moving forward when he is in crisis mode.

When I started my new job here at Concordia last January, I fell off the wagon badly.  But then I got back on.  One nice thing about Evernote, is that you have a place to re-start from.  Once you have infrastructure, you never go back to zero.  You just go back to getting current on much less “stuff” than you started with.

When you see this cycle, go through it step by step and ask yourself “What can I do to help Mark get back on the wagon?” I think you will find that you can:

  • Do the weekly review with Mark to write down all the projects.
  • Scan, scan, scan, the important stuff that Mark is afraid you will throw out.
  • Put the paper into numbered banker’s boxes in the garage.  As you put the files into Evernote, you can put the banker’s box number on the note in Evernote so that when (not if, when) Mark freaks out and has to have paper in his hands, then he can go out to the garage and find the paper.
  • Review the papers that Mark has to pull back out of the banker’s box with Mark once a week.   Figure out what the common denominator is for the papers that Mark pulls and ACTUALLY USES.
  • When Mark pulls paper back, review with him where that paper is in Evernote, and if you Mark does not actually use the paper repeatedly, put the papers back into their correct banker’s box.
  • Papers that Mark repeatedly needs to have, and actually uses, need to go into manilla file folders and then into some kind of filing system by his desk (but out of his sight when sitting at the desk).
  • Figure out key words that corral Mark’s papers into buckets.  Then, tag the Evernote notes with those keywords so Mark can find all his stuff more and more easily over time.
  • You should get to know Evernote.  I don’t think it works well as a project manager because it does not allow you to edit in outline format.  My next-action-manager (Omnifocus on the mac) allows me to edit in outline format and outlines have become a life saver for me.
  • Probe Mark for what his inner editor is saying.
  • If what Mark is saying internally is very negative, we may need to assign Mark a writing exercise of writing down all the negative things he is telling himself. 
    • Writers do this in order to silence the inner critic.  We say things to ourselves that a fatuously untrue to ourselves.  Things like “You will never be able to write.” “You will never be able to get this project done.” “You will never be worthwhile.” These and worse.  We are our own harshest critics, to the extent that you can probe and air these things, you will accelerate Mark’s adoption of GTD.
  • Probe Mark for when he is procrastinating, and what he is thinking while procrastinating.   
    • Procrastination is self defense, it is avoidance, it is working out what Jesus really wants us to do in the crucible of a mixture of doing what we love, and doing what we hate.
  • Be patient with Mark, and encourage him to be patient with himself.
  • Make sure that Mark takes enough time off.  Scheduling dinners with friends who you love adds as much happiness to your life as making $100,000 more per year.  Life is not about money.  Life is about happiness (giving yourself away) and time.  Once Mark is on the wagon half the time, he will be much happier.  Beth (my wife 1.0) says “Bill is so unhappy when he is disorganized.” now.
  • Help Mark get better organized with the “stuff” that is bugging him the most.
  • The biggest thing that helped me at first was “One idea one piece of paper.” so be supportive of Mark doing a mind-sweep whenever he gets into “monkey mind” mode.  Because I did not (I’m still working on it) implement the weekly review, my inboxes piled up and I got disorganized.  Thus, I was unhappy for most of this year.   
    • My goofy Target totes that have all my paper project files in a clear order, enabled me to do systematic review.  Look for road blocks that are keeping Mark from being able to do reviews.
  • Getting Mark back to current on all his projects and all the open loops in his mind is the way out of frustration and too much “Inner critic” noise in Mark’s mind.  Once Mark gets current, GTD becomes possible again.  Once it is possible, then you can bite off one little additional piece of new infrastructure and try it out.  Don’t try to and implement GTD all at once (the last 10 chapters of GTD) as nobody but the unemployed can make that happen in my experience.

Visual learners have a problem with what I call “GTD vapor lock.”  After the initial flush of their minds, but before they get the ecology of system sub-components in place to do their first comprehensive review, the visual learner’s inner critic starts yapping at them and slowing them down.  Guilt, nag, drip drip drip, guilt nag, repeat.  Because you won’t see what is going on in Mark’s head, you will progress beyond him to stage 3 where you see that Mark can get a bunch of crap out of his head (project folders) and out of his face (general reference filing via Evernote).  Watch out for being ahead of him and then circle back to encourage, encourage, encourage.

Feed the elephant of Mark’s emotions, we’ve got to keep his elephant moving forward.  Don’t try to argue him forward.  Look for bright spots that you can see.  Look for bright spots that he can’t see or does not fully appreciate, and cheer-lead them into his face when he gets down.

ClassicGTDVaporLockScenario

Hope this helps!

bill meade

Order of Battle for Mark VanderSys (and other visual learners) Getting Restarted With GTD

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One of my prototype customers for the http://restartgtd.com blog is Mark VanderSys, a photographer and digital artist in Boise Idaho.  I bought Mark an audible copy of GTD 3 years ago when I was in the first flush of implementing GTD.  Mark has been trying GTD on again and off again ever since.  Mark is a visual learner who has been trying to implement GTD via a single comprehensive technical tool.

After launching the first five posts on restartgtd, I emailed Mark to tell him about the blog and how I think he might be interested (bottom) and here is his response (top)

VanderSysOrderOfBattle01

I spent two hours on Skype with Mark and his wife Kelly talking through GTD, my system, why I have arrived with the ecology of sub-systems that I use, and experiments I think would be useful for him to try to prototype his way to a system that will get him to mind-like, desk-like, office-like, and life-like water.

With Mark’s permission, here is an order of battle (with my commentary) for visual learners to get restarted with GTD.

Step 1: Mind sweep

Get to a large table with nothing but a stack of 300 3″x5″ cards, and a pen.  Spend one hour writing down every idea that pops into your head.  As you wait for ideas, feel free to organize the cards you’ve written, into groups on the table.  But, drop everything when a new idea hits you, and write the new idea down.  Logic: The subconscious is holding thousands of ideas.  This is why your brain feels like Medusa where the snakes are all wriggling on the inside of your skull.  The purpose of the mind sweep is to get your subconscious dumped on to cards so that you can experience the release of stress.  Until you release your stress, you will not be able to focus your full mental faculties on the important and urgent tasks at hand.  That is, you will be fighting with one hand, and two feet tied behind your back until you get your mind dumped.

Step 2: Totapalooza

Go to Target and get 12 or 24 totes (or equivalent) to hold manilla folders.

Step 3: Slick Simple Totapalooza Storage

Figure out how you are going to store totes with manilla folders where you can get ahold of them in 5-10 seconds, but where you will not be looking at them while you work at your desk.  I use book cases (see my system here), you will need your own pleasing arrangement.  Plan on experimenting with this through multiple iterations.

Step 4: Scanapalooza

Get a 2nd computer set up to do nothing but scanning.  Your spouse, kids, admin, or friends, can do the scanning. The computer does not need to be in your office.  It just needs to be linked to your own Evernote.com account.  Have the scanning done in one location so that the files magically appear in your Evernote account.  Since you have a Fujitsu ScanSnap S300, I give you one week to have every piece of paper in your office that matters scanned.  If you can’t get the scanning done in 1 week, then you have to spend the $440 on Amazon to buy the ScanSnap S1500 (Mac Version | PC Version).  There, get it done, save $440.  Enough incentive?  I raked all the essential paper out of my 94,000 page file system in one week with my ScanSnap S1500.  If you can’t cut it in a week, your infrastructure is too small.  No whining.  A mind is a terrible thing to waste.  The fastest way to waste a mind is to have an office full of paper.

Step 5: Manilla Folder Palooza

You know that most excellent Brother QL-570 label printer you bought but are not using?  Get it set up so that you can make a folder with a pretty label in 15 seconds or less.  Organize your 3″x5″ cards into manilla folders that are projects.  Then, organize your similar projects into clumps.  You will find the clump names as you take your mind sweep and then roll it up into project folders, and then roll your projects into similar groups.  This approach is like DNA shotgun sequencing, a VERY bottom up organization.  But since your skull is about to split open from all the wriggling worms, this is a great way to take the next logical step.

Yes, I make an exception for 3″x5″ cards because there is no good way to manipulate 3″x5″ cards electronically at present.  You could see this as a rabbit running across your trail that you could chase down and invent a solution to, but since you need to feed your family I respectfully suggest you use the appropriate low technology of 3″x5″ cards and leave the inventing to someone else.  You can always scan the cards and dump them into a suitable electronic system once someone comes out with it.  Zengobi.com has a product called Curio that is in the ballpark, but I don’t think it can beat 3″x5″ cards yet.

Step 6: Organize Totes Into Project Clumps

Make folder labels for each tote so you can easily keep track of what clump of projects is in which tote.  You should not use my tote project clump names, but since you are a visual learner, I need to prime your pump.  Here are the clumps I’ve got going right now:

1. Career History (original artifacts from all the jobs I’ve held)

2. Immediate family (Beth and I, the kids, Mom Dad)

3. Broader family (Family histories, family portraits, more artifacts etc.)

4. Concordia University Projects (classes and the program I’m building)

5. BasicIP projects

6. BasicIP prospects

7. Graduate school

8. Dissertation

9. Research

10. Book manuscript for POCKET GUIDE TO INVENTION WORKSHOPS

11. Projects (lots of general thought projects that I occasionally pick up, add 3″x5″ cards with ideas to, then put away for completion someday).  David Allen would probably put these into “someday maybe” but for me they are topics that I enjoy thinking about and having them in a general projects tote, is pleasing to my mind.

12. GTD (my notes, exercises, questions, thoughts, etc. on teaching GTD undergrads, MBAs, professionals, and visual learners about GTD).

Step 7: Do another 1 hour mind sweep

Since you’ve made it this far, you have an initial set of ideas rolled up into projects rolled up into totes of kindred projects.  Go back to the quiet with pen and 3″x5″ paper and re-dump.

Step 8: Process Mind Sweep 2

You will continually refine and refactor (i.e., collapse, eliminate, rename, etc.) your projects.  This is normal you should expect to be refining, it is called thinking.  You just need to give yourself permission to think on paper.  The absolute pristine beauty of one-idea-one-piece-of-paper in GTD is that with file folders and totes, you can think with paper.  Use the (low) technology!

I’ve got an appointment to talk to you again next Sunday.  Good luck and have your credit card at the ready if you don’t have all your scanning complete!

Feel the love brother!

bill meade

 

Essential tools for GTDesk makeover

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I recently worked with a high school teacher in Portland who had a desk which instantly demanded the nickname “The Abomination of Deskolation” hereafter TAOD).  The desk owner who shall remain Johnonymous, is a visual learner, and though he had read Getting Things Done (hereafter GTD) in paper and listened to it via Audible multiple times, Johnonymous was having trouble taking first steps to implement GTD.

After I spent a friday afternoon working at Johnonymous’s TAOD desk, taking components of GTD and illustrating how they might be implemented, I came up with a list of recommended tools to get Johnonymous started on his first GTD desk makeover.  Here’s the list:

  • Wireless keyboard. Wireless allows you to put the keyboard aside (in your empty inbox for example) when you are doing your desk-work to organize projects.  I use Apple’s wireless keyboards because the keys are white (readable), they are small and light, and they are minimalist.
  • Essential tools for desk GTD transformation
  • But, if you are a Windows person I would recommend Microsoft’s minimalist wireless keyboard.  I fact, I’m tempted to try Microsoft’s keyboards because it is ½ the money of Apple’s.
  • Amazon com Microsoft Arc Wireless Keyboard White Electronics
  • Wireless mouse.  Wireless allows you to put the mouse aside (see above).  I use Logitech’s 1-battery M305 travel mice.  One battery because it aggravates my wrist less than a two battery mouse.  *Note* Logitech has about 20 different M305 mice and on Amazon.com, they vary about $10 in price.  I buy the cheapest model.
  • AmazonFlockofM305s
  • Two or three 10 port USB hubs.   I like two hub styles: in-line, and rectangle.   
    • In-line or vertical hubs <== $7.50 at Amazon which are good to put on left ad right edges of you desk to organize USB out of sight of your organizing work in the middle of your desk.   I’ve always ordered my 10 port hubs from http://www.meritline.com in Hong Kong but it looks like Amazon.com is picking these up and will deliver them cheaper and faster.
    • 10PortUSBVertical 1
    • Rectangle hubs. Rectangle hubs are great for cable management.  You can plug them into the computer, then hide them away under your desk where they can’t be seen.  Under the desk it is simple to plug USB devices in and out.  If you have a TAOD (the abomination of deskolation) desk, the rectangle hubs can be fantastic attached to the back of the typewriter elevator compartments.  This can allow you to put your scanner and label printer inside the desk and reduce clutter.
    • Essential tools for desk GTD transformation 1
  • Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500. You need the ScanSnap (or equivalent) to get the paper out of your face and into your trusted system.  As I was snooping around Johnonymous’s TAOD (the abomination of deskolation) desk, I discovered that every layer of paper under the desk, had another layer of paper under it.  Reminded me of the Stephen Hawking “turtles all the way down” story as I looked at the mess and felt the tension of my subconscious mind’s parallel processes going nuts trying to figure out what to do about the disaster that before us.  Remember the “it’s about power scene” in Apollo 13?  When I see a messy desk today, I can feel all this engineers arguing about what should be done.  I can’t hear them in my head, because  they are subconscious processes.  But, I can feel them, and they transmit enormous tension to my mind when they are obsessing on messes.  The Fujitsu ScanSnap  S1500 is the perfect tool to silence your subconscious engineers arguing about your mess.  Just pick one big document, say a 3 ring binder with 200 pages in it.  Scan it into a PDF (4 minutes).  And all those subconscious engineers go silent.  Silence brings tension release.  Mind like water.  Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500 is the single most powerful tool to bring you to mind like water.
  • Extra power outlets.  You can buy cheap ones, or expensive ones.  Look at your desk and decide what makes the most sense. Johnonymous’s TAOD (the abomination of desolation) desk has knee stalls (a typewriter elevator on the right, and drawers on the left).  So, mounting simple 6-outlet strips on the inside the typewriter compartment makes sense.  A 12 outlet Trip-Lite outlet strip could be mounted across the back of the desk.
  • Killer cool paper trays.  Something like the Fellows Partition Additions would be a good start because these trays can keep materials available to you, but the trays will stay off your desk.
  • NewImage
  • Monitor arm.  Because I mount iMacs (Apple’s all-in-one computers that weigh 30 pounds) on my desks, I use the Innovative 7500-hd-1500 arm because I’m holding 24 and 27 pound iMacs.  I attempted to link to Amazon.com for this product but the links are not working, I bought my most recent arm from Seaboom.com as it was $65 to $110 cheaper than Amazon.  The three models at SeaBoom do not have pictures, but I figured out their colors and have a guide here that you can use to pick your color.  I’ve been using this arm for about 10 years, since mounting an Apple 23″ cinema display on it. The arm is a brute with 5 or 6 mounting options (I just drill a ⅝” hole and bolt it to the desk) and a tension adjustment that renders the iMacs or monitors weightless.   If you have a desktop computer and just one monitor, you can probably get by quite happily with the little brother of this arm which is $130 as of this writing.
  • MonitorArm
  • Evernote account.  I advise you to go to http://www.evernote.com and subscribe to the professional level account for $45 a year (less than $5 a month!).  As you scan your way to an empty mind-like-water office, you will never regret the cost.  You can subscribe for free, but then you only get 60 megabytes of uploads per month which while seriously cramp your white tornado action as you scan your way to mind and office like water.  The pro account gives you 1 gigabyte of uploads (2 days worth at full tilt scanning) and then lets you add additional gigabytes of uploads for $5 each.

GTD: Before and After

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GETTING THINGS DONE (hereafter GTD) has had a big impact on me.  As witness, this post shows as much of the before/after GTD as I can articulate, it will evolve as I refine the post into enough detail to please visual learners (you know who you are John Nieberall!).

Question 1: What is GTD?

To my mind, GTD is an architecture for information organization and processing that allows a person to maximize efficiency and effectiveness while dealing with overwhelming inflows of drama and data under deadline.   GTD may look like a self help book, it may feel like a religious cult when you have a GTD evangelist on your chest (hi Ian!) telling you to read and then buy crap, and then re-read.  But, GTD is information organization architecture.

GTD is important because life does not come with an owner’s manual that says “get organized in a sustainable high performance way.”  So people go through school, work, phd programs (I did all three) and never spend a day getting organized beyond coping with the next deadline.

Here is the GTD architecture diagram taken from the PDF accompanying the Audible version of GTD:

TrustedSystem03 pptx 5

 

Question 2: What did your life/office look like before GTD (circa 2009)?

GTDBefore

GTDBefore01D3M 2516

GTDBefore02D3M 2513

Not in the office, I also had a 5 drawer horizontal filing cabinet with 94,000 pages of journal articles, research data, and miscellaneous documents that were too good to throw out but not good enough to use.  Here is the filing cabinet in the garage next to the Y2K water barrel.

D3M 6097

Question 3: What does your life/desk (Circa 2012) look like after implementing GTD?

D3M 2950

Note that this desk is: (1) large 6′ x 35″, (2) clutter free from the surface up 6″, (3) canted (the front edge is 1″ closer to the floor than the back edge.  I will write more posts on desks and their requirements as taking back my desk was a key stepping stone for implementing GTD.

Next comes my physical filing system (Target totes) with 5″ book ends in the tote if there are not enough manilla folders to completely fill the tote:

TrustedSystem03 pptx 3 1

 

D3M 2955

D3M 2956

Before GTD had the 5 drawer horizontal file cabinet, after GTD has an electronic reference filing system in Evernote:

TrustedSystem03 pptx 1

To get from paper to Evernote I raked through the 94,000 pages of paper in the file cabinet, and ask myself for each document “Will there ever be a next action for this document?” 80% of the documents were instant “No!” and they went straight into recycling.  The 20% that were yes or maybe, were 17,500 pages which I scanned in a week on my Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500.

Here is my annual capture of reference file information.  The median monthly count of documents captured, is 65.  I enter more documents at the end of the year, which surprises me.  Over time Evernote is becoming more and more essential as external short term memory.  Many of the documents I capture in evernote are web pages, the evernote Webclipper and Evernote Clearly browser add ins have become indispensable for me.

TrustedSystem03 pptx 6

Here is my cumulative Evernote document count over the past three years.  The exponential increase in files in evernote has happened as I have scanned and recycled.  At the end of 2010 I scanned paper and recycled.  At the end of 2011 I scanned a collection of 300 3.5″ floppy disks with research data sets and other archives on them.

EvernoteCumulative01

My final offering to the visual learner on Before/After GTD is a worksheet that covers more pieces of my system (GTDInfrastructureEvolution01b.xlsx):

NewImage

Here is a summary view of how I am doing GTD after 3 years:

Trustedsystem04

 

 

GTD: The Start

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Hey!

I’m a late in life convert to David Allen’s Getting Things Done (hereafter GTD).  Before reading GTD I had completed a Ph.D. and had twenty years of work experience.  Here is my before office picture:

GTDBefore00D3M 2507

Here is my before desk picture:

GTDBefore01D3M 2516

I met Ian Watson at Comdex in January 2009, and by March 2009 Ian had gotten on my chest and said “You promise me that you will read GTD, or I’m not getting off!” in his fancy Brit accent.  Stung, I reeled and said “I give you my word I will read GTD” and then proceeded to download GTD from Audible and started listening to it while riding my bike down the Boise Green belt.

At the 10 mile point in the bike ride, when I turned around to return home, I had heard enough of GTD that I *felt* different.  I could see a bunch of small practical changes I could make, I began to realize that many control levers to stress and productivity were in my control, awaiting exploration.  Huh?

Well, to give you a concrete example:

  • For the first time, I knew that I needed a general reference filing system (GTD page 44).
  • Monkey mind. Though David Allen does not use the term “monkey mind” in GTD (he does use in when interviewed in the book WILLPOWER on page 77), listening to GTD for 2 hours convinced me that I was on to something that might cut through the Gordian Knot of my monkey mind problem.  Allen talks about “Mind Like Water” in GTD, but no matter, I knew David Allen was on to me!
  • One idea, one piece of paper.  When you exist in a constant state of dr-monkey-mind, one idea, one piece of paper is a point of calm providing a place to start to climb down from the crazy tree.

Taken together, these three vectors of thinking, added up to getting more organized.  In fact, you know in the movie CHARIOTS OF FIRE where the Christian runner says “When I run, I feel HIS pleasure (at 2:30 in the clip)?” At first I dabbled in getting organized.

As I dabbled, I enjoyed myself.  I stopped worrying about project deadlines.  I still had the deadlines, I just knew that I had time to do the organization that pleased me.  What was pleasing me was simplifying, organizing, jettisoning the unnecessary stuff.  I found what when I organized, I felt God’s pleasure.  Corny, but this spiritual connection is still with me today.