[insert witty title]

Sometimes it turns out that our blogs are useful little things. Recently Rob has been writing about "Getting Things Done" (GTD), an organization system for, well, getting things done. Something about Rob's talk of "peripheral discussion and procrastination" at work really struck a chord with me since over the past few months I, too, have realized that I'm really not achieving as much with my time as I should be.

I idly clicked around a few GTD related webpages and what I found immediately began to resonate with me, here are a couple of quotes from early in the book:

Get everything out of your head. Make decisions about actions required on stuff when it shows up—not when it blows up. Organize reminders of your projects and the next actions on them in appropriate categories. Keep your system current, complete, and reviewed sufficiently to trust your intuitive choices about what you're doing (and not doing) at any time. (p.16)

I do really struggle to remember everything that I'm supposed to be doing at a given time. Also:

Here’s how I define "stuff:" anything you have allowed into your psychological or physical world that doesn’t belong where it is, but for which you haven’t yet determined the desired outcome and the next action step. [pg. 17]

My life is full of stuff, on any one day I have about a billion jobs to complete (write thesis; apply for jobs; email X, Y and Z; read this; write that; be here; go there) and over the past few months it has seriously got on top of me, to the point that I feel like I have absolutely no focus and am achieving absolutely nothing.

GTD seems to boil down to "write down what you're going to do so you can't forget it. Then go and do it". This seems exactly like what I need. Some sort of structure (a monster to do list that I hold myself to religiously). At the very least it looks like GTD would provide a good way of getting me thinking about what I'm doing with my days. In that spirit, I'm going to make a start today (and of course, track my progress on here), with the following list:

• Pick up the GTD book done!
• When I get to work write down all the things I need to do over the next few months. Decide how to make a start on all of these things Done! The thesis looks a bit less scary now that it is broken into chunks that should take about a day each to write
• Put in job applications, because seriously the deadline is tonight and I don't want to fuck this updone! I might have fucked it up, but at least I can forget about it for now
• When I get home read about GTD

For the interested reader here are a couple of relevant links:
Getting started in GTD
Pictorial representation of GTD
GTD Short Summary

Thanks Rob for your awesome post bringing issues of procrastination to my attention! Let's be GTD buddies!

late edit: having a list has paid off already. Gemma has been hassling me to ask a local where the nearest rubbish dump is for a few weeks now, and I keep forgetting or just not getting around to it. Took one look at my list, asked AMS, problem solved