How to get organized, part one: coffee table + post-it notes = business plan!
by Pace on September 24th, 2008 @ 6:12 pm in
How To Be Awesome
Tags: gtd
I just read Getting Things Done, and it was pretty awesome. A lot of the techniques David Allen advocates are paper-based, and Kyeli and I have a mostly electronic office. Also, I don’t think we need the level of organization and detail of the full GTD system. I think that would be overkill. However, there were three points he made in the book that totally rocked my world. Each of them is interesting enough to get its own post. Here’s #1:
Get your to-do list out of your head.
When your to-do list is in your head, it creates what he calls open loops. Open loops are niggly distracty things where your brain will randomly yell at you “Hey! Remember the milk!” And if you’re not at the grocery store, that’s totally useless, distracting, and annoying. Sometimes my brain will even wake me up in the middle of the night reminding me of some stupid open loop, like an idea for a blog post. (:
So, Kyeli and I got our to-do list out of our heads and onto our coffee table.
We made blocks of post-its for each subplan of the Usual Error Project: Book, Blog, DVDs, Website, and Workshops. We also added two more blocks of post-its for Money (the green ones) and House, since those open loops were stressing us out a lot and we wanted to get them out of our heads.
Apologies that the text is too small to read; Kyeli’s camera was too low-res. We’ll post about our business plan in detail later; transparency is very important to us. But for now you’ll have to wait. (;
The most important step for each block of post-its was to ask “Is there anything else we can think of about this topic, anything at all?” and think about that for several minutes before moving on to the next topic. The reason this step is super important is because it allows your brain to close all its open loops. It lets you stop worrying about whether you’ve forgotten something.
Everything you could possibly think of is now on the coffee table, so you can let go of your worries.
This worked fabulously for me, but Kyeli felt more stressed after covering the coffee table in post-its than she had felt before. Seeing all our to-do items in living color made her feel overwhelmed and anxious — a feeling of “you have all these things, why are you not doing them right now?!” Kyeli’s anxiety wasn’t relieved until the next phase of the project, which we will tell you all about… in the next post in this series.
Related posts:
- the eleventy billionth time email has screwed up my communication
- arranging our environment to support our goals, our passions, and our happiness!
- Related posts:
- What Bob The Angry Flower can teach us about life and business
- Blaze through nonfiction books like butter
- How to get a better night’s sleep.
- This is a very public post about my very private parts.
- Guest Post: The Raw Foods Witch on Being Inspired
Are you ready to stop reading about how to be awesome and start living it? Our 52 Weeks to Awesome e-course is open for registration! With a commitment of just an hour per week, you can be living an awesome life in 52 baby steps. What better time to start than now?
11 Comments!
#2 Posted by 
Oliver Danni on September 24th, 2008 9:48 pm | link
I love it for its visual and tangible awesomeness!
The one issue I have is that I get very to-do-list-dependent. This manifests in several unpleasant ways:
-If I think of something later in the day than when I’ve made my to-do list, and do it, even if it was just as important or more important than the to-do list items, I feel like the accomplishment was not worth as much as having done something that was on my list. (For some people, I’ve learned, this problem can be alleviated by writing it on their to-do list AFTER they’ve done it, and then crossing it out. But that doesn’t work for me, I’ve tried it.)
-I absolutely HAVE to put more items on my to-do list than I will reasonably be able to do. If I expect myself to do EVERYTHING on my to-do list, I am setting myself up for failure, especially if I think of something later in the day…[see above].
-If I lose my to-do list, I AM FUCKED. The more attached to my to-do list that I am, the more likely I am to lose it. This rarely happens anymore because I keep my to-do lists in my calendar and I DO NOT LOSE MY CALENDAR. But being afraid that it will happen is still a problem.
Don’t mind me. I have issues. :-P
#3 Posted by 
EnderVR on September 25th, 2008 6:13 am | link
I’m glad you wrote this because I meant to ask if you liked the book when last we met.
I still haven’t read it but know the gist of the main idea and have implemented it a few month’s ago. I do use software directly based on the fact that I’ll make hundreds of sticky note todos and lose track of them. Or I’ll forget them, throw them away too soon, etc.
I’ve switched between two different software options, One based entirely on OS X software. Which is sometimes annoying having to run it on my Dell laptop. :) And the other entirely in the “cloud”.
The OS X option is Cultured Code’s Things. Both on the desktop and synced ota to the iPhone. It’s beautifully designed software and is always in my pocket. Meaning I never lose track of what I need to do, and can, when something comes into my mind. Quickly get it into my list.
The “cloud” method is based on toodledo.com and Appigo’s To Do on the iPhone. Toodledo is amazing but somewhat confusing. Though you can turn off the parts you don’t use to get them out of the way. ie. priorities, I have folders sorted in a “Today … Next … Scheduled … and Someday” list and have no need for assigning priorities so I turned off the option to get it out of my way. There is also a Firefox extension which is really nice. It sync’s ota to To Do. So I still have offline access away from the computer whenever and wherever I am. It’s web based so operating systems don’t enter into it.
I switch between each and haven’t fully decided which to use. I know, that’s a direct violation of GTD. But it’s how I do things.
I must admit though, it’s been great. Once upon a time I’d have to make myself remember something late at night, or whatever. Now I just pick up my phone and add it to my list. Out of my head and ready to be processed when I can get to it.
It’s not just for todos either. At least I use it for more. Notes, lists of movies I want to see, songs to buy, etc. All under projects. My mind is free of lists and can focus on better things.
#4 Posted by 
Nicholas Haasch on September 25th, 2008 7:46 am | link
aha! I had just placed Getting Things Done on my list of book to buy soon and read. This post affirms my previously thoughts that the book was going to be incredibly awesome.
Thanks very much for sharing your activity. I love hearing your opinion and seeing the results. It encourages me to do similar activities… Hmmm… I wonder if I have an appropriate place for a large quantity of post it notes…
#5 Posted by 
Dan on September 25th, 2008 8:13 am | link
Great example of “get everything out of your head”.:)
For implementing GTD you can use this web-based application:
You can use it to manage your goals, projects and tasks, set next actions and contexts, use checklists, schedules and a calendar.
A mobile version and iCal are available too.
#6 Posted by 
John B. Kendrick on September 25th, 2008 8:27 pm | link
The advantages of an online system are 1) organization and simple reorganization, e.g. switching from a view of all tasks in a specific project, to looking at tasks in context (when and where you can get them done) to chronological order by due or other date, to a view of only the next tasks that need to be done to further each project. 2) easy to search, 3) and this is the most important to me, having your lists with you wherever you are, at work, at home and even on the go, and 4) sharing your lists with others is much easier done electronically.
I used and taught Covey and Daytimer for many years before reading David Allen’s GTD book and switching to GTD. And then I found an application that allows me to view my entire GTD at work on my Win machine, at home on my Macs and even on my cell phone. And another app lets me call in tasks to my GTD without any writing or typing, great for those thoughts that hit me while driving. I’ve written about my experiences with GTD in a blog post at http://johnkendrick.wordpress.com/2008/03/27/more-getting-things-done/ John
#7 Posted by 
Pace on September 25th, 2008 10:59 pm | link
Thanks, everyone, for sharing your organizational systems and telling us what works and doesn’t work for you. I’ll reveal the mystery of what’s working well for me in an upcoming post. (;
#8 Posted by organizing your environment and how it helps | Pace and Kyeli on September 29th, 2008 7:34 pm | link
[...] How to get organized, part one: coffee table + post-it notes = business plan! [...]
#9 Posted by How to get organized: Getting things done with a dependency tree and next actions | Pace and Kyeli on October 10th, 2008 3:27 pm | link
[...] Point #1 was: get your to-do list out of your head. [...]
#10 Posted by How to get organized part three: Hugging my to-do list. | Pace and Kyeli on October 11th, 2008 10:37 am | link
[...] Part one and part two of this series were written by Pace. She’s read “Getting Things Done”, but I haven’t (I’m slow to read non-fiction). In fact, I wrote this without intending it to be part three, but Pace liked it so much she asked me to tie it in. So here, have a tie! [...]
#11 Posted by How to use a wiki as a to-do list organization system | Freak Revolution on May 25th, 2009 10:32 am | link
[...] week, I used Remember The Milk to keep track of my to-do lists. We’ve posted before about how to get organized, but recently I realized that my system was stressing me out more than helping me, so [...]
#1 Posted by
Becky on September 24th, 2008 7:01 pm | link
THIS I LIKE ALOT!! Sorry to shout but I was excited reading this. I can so identify with seeing everything laid out. I got panicky looking at it and thinking OMG…I have that much crap to do too!!
Thank you for posting it. I’m looking forward to the next post in this series!