Get organized

There is an established concept called Getting Things Done, GTD. This is the 101 on GTD!

The concept of GTD has as many variations as users for the simple reason that we all are wired differently. Nevertheless there are some “best practices” to get you started, implement it and refine as you get used to it.

For many David Allen is the man to look up to when it comes to getting things done (GTD). Although the principles of GTD is a lot of common sense David Allen has structured the approach and boiled it done to three main models. He has even registered Getting Things Done and GTD as trademarks.

His version of GTD is summarized by himself as follows (from his book “Ready for Anything”):
“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.”

The principles of GTD are used by numerous companies in the time management business and all aim at giving you a system for managing tasks so that they are prioritized correctly, actioned in a timely fashion, none is dropped and you sleep better at night!

The simplest approach and system is to get a notepad, preferably of a size that allows you to carry it with you at all times, that is reserved for tasks. As soon as you create a task for yourself write down in your notepad. Consult your notepad on an hourly, daily basis and decide which task to action. As soon as completed mark it as completed in your notepad.

Note that I write “as soon as you create a task for yourself”. An important realization is that the task is not yours until you have accepted it. It doesn’t matter if your boss comes and drop a task in your lap, there is no such thing as “I was given the task to…”, you must adopt the correct attitude and say “I accepted the task to…”. Remember to communicate your decision to accept or deny a task. Guess who’s the fool if your boss thinks that you accepted a task but you did not…. ? But more on this in a different article. Back to GTD.

Your next step may be to prioritize the tasks, this should be done in two phases. Firstly, as you write the task down in your notepad make a note of the deadline for the task, if there is no specific deadline note the importance of the task, as simply as 1-3, 1 being the most important. Secondly, when you review your complete list of task it is important to prioritize between the tasks to ensure that you have reasonable workload.

Writing down the tasks as you accept them you may not have the complete overview of tasks and therefore be inclined to make everything important and end up with everything having to be done today, or you find that most of your tasks´ deadline is on the same day.

You may even want to estimate the time requirement per task to be able to plan more efficiently. Estimate each task to multiples of 15 min blocks and combine tasks to make up a full working day.

Once you’re into the habit of prioritizing your task list your next step may be to implement a systematic review of your list of tasks. I suggest that the main review and planning is done at the end of the day. There two main reasons for this, (1) you have probably accumulated a bunch of tasks during the day and its good to prioritize and plan while you still have it fresh in your mind, and (2) you will sleep much better knowing that you have control of your tasks as soon as you open your notepad the following day, no more laying awake at night trying to remember all the things you didn’t get done today.

Do a quick mid-day review to fit in any urgent and important tasks to your afternoon schedule. To take it one step further you could do weekly review, lets say Sunday evening, to get an overview of the coming week.

I will soon write an article on urgency and importance of tasks to guide you in deciding how to prioritize and plan your tasks.

Until then, GTD!

To read more about David Allen’s approach to GTD check-out Wikipedia or his corporate website.

S.M.A.R.T is an acronym widely used in all forms of people management with a couple of different read outs, a few examples are:

• Specific, Significant, Simple
• Measurable, Meaningful, Manageable
• Achievable, Attainable, Actionable
• Realistic
• Timebound, Timely, Trackable

I prefer to read it as Specific, Measurable, Agreed, Realistic, Timebound.

Follow the S.M.A.R.T. concept and both you (tracking progress against the goal) and the person delivering on the goal will be much happier along the way and in the end.

• Specific: Well defined so it clear to all what should be achieved.
• Measurable: Define how you’re going to measure if the objective is met.
• Agreed: Agree with the person who is going to deliver on the goal and agree who he/she is going to report progress to.
• Realistic: Define the scope and resources so that it’s realistic to achieve the goal. You may need to adjust either the scope or the resources to make the goal realistic. Also agree how you prioritize scope and resources so that should you have challenges along the way you know where to first look to adjust, most commonly: Do you reduce the scope of the deliverable or do you add resources to complete in time?.
• Timebound: Define the deadline and if it’s goal to be achieved over longer time also some milestones for review of progress.

Practically then? I use S.M.A.R.T. as a mental check list. I have tried to use it as table but find it cumbersome and that I often got stuck trying to fill in the table correctly rather than setting the right goals. I have S.M.A.R.T. in mind in every discussion around setting goals, delegation and also accepting goals, projects and activities and carefully check for the five components of S.M.A.R.T. making sure to raise any unclarities before moving on.

Easy and it will spare you alot of headache.