So you’ve been reading along and you want to implement GTD for yourself, but you don’t know where to start. I’ve been there before. More than once. I’ve started, then stopped, then started again. What do I tell people to do? First, Collect Everything. Go through your entire life: your email, mail, closet, garage…everything. Put it all in … Read More
The result of Getting Things Done, when implemented properly, is “Mind Like Water”. When I first heard the term, I thought it meant, “peaceful, still, quiet.” That’s pretty silly though because water is in many other states as well, just as often! What Mind Like Water really means is that you appropriately react to your world. If a small pebble is thrown … Read More
It happened to me over and over again. I got sick and tired of being disorganized, of missing things, of not meeting my goals. “I am going to make a system.” I wrote everything I need to do down in a to-do list. I made sure my emails get processed correctly. And a few weeks later it … Read More
When I get home from work, I always go to my mailbox, take a few letters off of the top of my pile, open them, and put them back in the mailbox for later. Said no one ever. It’s interesting to me though that is exactly what people do with email. This is insanity. In … Read More
We are inundated with stuff. Stuff we need to act on. Stuff we need to remember. Stuff we need to worry about later. Most of us are stressed out with the amount of stuff in our lives. What to do about it? The system outlined in Getting Things Done starts with collection: there needs to be … Read More
In 2012 our efforts to add automated integrated testing to our central Point-of-Sale product were showing great results. We were finding 20-40% of all defects found in the software, many of which were found within hours of those defects being introduced by the developer. It took years of hard work to get to this place, and I was … Read More
As I read this in the introduction of John Maxwell’s book 12 Indisputable Laws of Growth, I realized how low my expectations were. At first I didn’t believe Maxwell. My focus at the time was more on keeping it together and making the “next logical step” than on reaching a destination I didn’t previously think was possible. … Read More