Organization is hard. Its definitely not my strong point. Just ask my wife how well I remember things she asks me to do. Recently I’ve come across the the Getting Things Done concept. Admittedly I have not read David Allen’s book, but I have done my fair share of googling. As far as I can gather, it basically says to create a system to capture all the todos, goals, responsibilities, etc. that are floating around in our head and causing stress. The system must be trusted so that you don’ t have to worry about keeping track of all these things in our head. The system will keep track of them and remind you of them when the time is near. It also revolves around contexts. Basing our actions and next steps on our current context and what makes sense within it. This could be my location, such as home or work, or be based on available tools, such as when I’m on the internet as opposed to on the go.
Life is very busy for me these days. Between working, going to school full time, watching my daughter, being a husband, playing in band, and trying to find time for hobbies; it is a lot to keep track of. Honestly I do a terrible job of it. So I’m trying to start applying some of the GTD principals. I’m hoping to accomplish more, and with less stress in the process. My system at this point consists of using omnifocus on my Mac and on my iphone. Over time I should get my system down (hopefully) and maybe I’ll actually read Allen’s book. Has anyone else given this productivity system a try?