minimal design

After using GTD for about 4 years, I think I finally figured out the missing piece of the puzzle…

When I first read David Allen’s book (best example of “don’t judge a book by its cover” ever…), just like many others, I bought a bunch of folders and a labeling machine. I went through the recommendations in the book, organized everything into projects, deconstructing every projects into granular tasks and assigning them their respective contexts. Of course, I didn’t get it quite right the first time and got somewhat obsessed with the system itself. I experimented, assessed, modified… I also went through a few different setups, from Actiontastic (the site seems to be dead but I talked about Actiontastic vs. iGTD before) to kGTD… Until OmniFocus finally came out which I still use to this day.

The whole GTD system definitely helps me organize my business, nothing ever falls through the cracks and it provides me with a great peace of mind. But until recently, I hadn’t been able to expand the system to other areas of my life. Well, not exactly… I had every aspects of my life neatly defined as projects broken down into actions. I regularly processed my inbox. I knew what the next action was for all of those projects that kept on piling up. More projects were constantly added, but somehow GTD didn’t keep its promise. There was something missing, something off. And the worst part was that I knew exactly what I was not doing and I started feeling guilty about it. Even after working for 8 hours, I’d still feel guilty because I didn’t learn that new programming language, I missed the chance to go shoot some pictures of that event, I didn’t read that book once since I started it 2 weeks ago… You get the picture.

After a while, the system’s shortcomings were so obvious that I was forced to re-examine everything from the ground up and find the root of the problem. Thankfully I’ve figured it out. Of course it was really simple. But it’s easy to be overwhelmed by the symptoms and not be able to pinpoint the cause, so it took me a while to get to that “duh” moment.

The one big missing feature from GTD for me was what I call “free time management.” In GTD, you’re told to put anything that needs to be done at a specific time in your calendar. Everything else goes in your projects and you do them according to actions and contexts. That might work for a CEO or a sales guy running around all day, but when you’re a freelancer, you spend most of your days seating front of you computer, and most of the things you have to do will require some flavor of the @computer context. That’s fine for work, because deadlines are built in, so you automatically know how to prioritize. But what about the open source project you’re working on? That blog post you want to write? That new technology you want to check out? That’s when it hit me… You got to put all this stuff in your calendar. To go one step further, you got to put all this personal stuff in your calendar before anything else.

My problem was that I wanted to do so many things that whenever I had free time I’d try a little bit of this, a little bit of that… I had no overall plan, no milestones, no system to measure progress, and therefor no real way to motivate or reward myself. And most important of all: no framework to enforce consistency. And, in case you don’t know: consistency is key (you can tattoo that on your forehead because that’s true for everything).

When I figured that out, what I did was divide my GTD projects into major categories: Work, Business, Big Projects, Small Projects, Education, Personal. The “Work” category is different because I already have deadlines for every single actions and it sorts of takes care of itself already. The “Business” category is the only other category that has parallel projects. Everything else is populated with projects arranged in a sequential order, and I’m working on the first item in each category. To give you an idea of the result, that’s what’s in my “free time schedule” right now (sorry, I left the “Business” category out because it’s sort of top secret ;):

• Big Project: minimal gallery
• Small Project: add {less} to CSS bundle
• Education: learn Ruby
• Personal: sky dive

I have those 4 projects scheduled on specific days, at specific times. Sky diving is a one time thing, but learning Ruby for example is in my schedule 3 times a week.

That’s not the only thing I put in my “free time schedule” though. I also put in: gym, tennis, meals, movies, concerts, etc… even laundry! You’ll be shocked how little time is left for actual work. And that’s the cherry on the cake: right now, I have exactly 6 hours every weekday open for work. Only 6 hours… So let me tell you that I can’t afford to space out or check my FaceBook profile… I got to make those 6 hours count. And sure enough, when you add that to the consistency thing I mentioned above, you get: productivity.

A couple of potential pitfalls to watch for: be realistic about your goals and time it takes to do things. And leave half hour buffers here and there in your schedule to account for those unexpected emails you have to respond to right away or that unexpected phone call from a new client… You want to leave yourself a little room for flexibility or else you’ll go crazy.

To sum it up: put your personal life in your calendar, one calendar per GTD category, and work within those categories one project at a time. Whatever empty space you got left is you work schedule. Of course you need to balance it out. If you have only 2 hours left for work per day, unless you charge $600/hour, you might have to cut down on the fun stuff a little…

Well, that works for me. I’m finally getting things done. Things that matter to me. And I feel great about it! So, if you’re having a hard time applying GTD to anything but work, like I used to, give this a shot and let me know how it works out for you!