Getting things done

Editor’s note: To help out busy contractors, each month throughout 2011, Lawn & Landscape will run a review and synopsis of a business book – either from the accepted literary canon or a more modern classic. The fourth installment is David Allen’s “Getting Things Done.” The rest of the year’s reading list includes:

The business world has changed during the decade since David Allen first published “Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity.” Ten years ago, there were no Droids or iPhones to distract us at our desks, no games and photos and status updates on Facebook. There was no Twitter.

Today, Allen is on Twitter. His handle is @gtdguy. His photo is small and cropped, and he is flashing his toothy grin. He dishes out news and notes about business and life productivity, but not every day. He has more than 1.3 million followers.

All this is to say that almost all of the ideas Allen wrote about in “Getting Things Done” – or GTD, as many of his followers on Twitter and in real life refer to the book and the process, and as Allen even references in his Twitter handle – are still applicable and ideal for the busy office and the busy mind.

Some of the examples, however, are a little dated. (Does anyone still use a PDA over a smartphone? And no, your iPad doesn’t count.)

There are certain keys to properly implementing GTD in your office, your home, your life, wherever. At times, especially during the middle chapters of the book, these keys can lead you to start feeling like Allen is peering over your shoulder, micromanaging every step (“Get rid of hanging files if you can” he wrote in Chapter 4). That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it can make actually hunkering down and organizing that much more difficult.

Or maybe that’s the point. Back in the late 1960s, Allen met a psychic who said he owed Allen a “karmic debt,” according to a 2007 magazine feature. So the psychic taught him karate and introduced him to Zen. To this day, Allen subscribes to the mantra “mind like water.” Maybe by his micromanaging us – and by our micromanaging ourselves – we really can get things done. Here are some of those keys.

Be able to manage your commitments. In order to keep straight everything you need to do, you need to know what you need to do. So clear your mind and write down everything, as it comes to you, on a sheet of paper and toss it in your basket. Then determine what you need to do to make progress and remind yourself of what you need to do. This does not mean that you need to write down a to-do list. On the contrary. It just means that you need to write down your commitments and review them – every day – until you finish them. Be able to manage your actions.

Remember the five steps to deal with workflow. No matter your job title or description, these steps are always the same: Collect things that command our attention, process what they mean and what you should do about them, then organize the results, which you then review as options for what you choose to do. So collect, process, organize, review and do. Just five steps. Sounds easier than buying something from one of those late-night infomercials.

In order to get things done, you have to know what getting things done looks like. Remember that Allen advises every last task to be written down, to be moved from your mind to paper (or your computer screen). Whenever you finish a task – whenever you send an e-mail, finish a meeting, review a file – cross it off. Better yet, ask yourself, “What’s the next action?” Because there will almost always be a next action. Do you need to forward that e-mail? Schedule the next meeting? Pass along the file to someone else?

Read Allen and remember his lessons, and you’ll always be able to get things done – but remember that there will always be more that needs to get done.
 

The author is a freelance writer based in Cleveland.