5 keys for unlocking the secret of GETTING THINGS DONE!
Have u ever got stuck with all those never ending checklist stacking up in your head?
Here is the solution, David Allen's book "GETTING THINGS DONE" is the bible of productivity. Personally, it completely changed the game for me. There is absolutely no substitute for it.
The idea behind GETTING THINGS DONE is in the areas about life where we want to sustain. WE have to-do's on calendar, mobiles and moreover our hands are the natural checklist that we posses. We want to be effective at home , school ,university ,with our friends etc .the list is never-ending. We are left with all those things in our life to track and organize and often while storing those things in our head , we get frazzled and overwhelmed with the amount of stuff we have to do. So, GETTING THINGS DONE(GTD) for sure gives us a system for organizing all these commitment in our life and getting them done effectively. David Allen's main point is that there are set of 2 rounds in which we want to organize this;
1. Horizontally - In a row , we want every area of our work , home, friends, relationship . In a way we make horizontal balance across the board.
2. Vertically - Vertically means within a given project of area, we want to efficiently get stuff done that moves us towards our particular goal.
That's just an abstract. There is a lot more in the book , if u want to read it.
HERE ARE THE 5 KEYS TO GTD:
1. CAPTURE
The basic idea is that our mind is for having ideas , not for storing them. A big reason we aren't productive is because we are using our brain as a to-do-list. We really don't have a dedicated system in which we can offload ideas and things. So, if we have any open loop in our mind , that needs to be written down. The instant you have an idea, anything in your brain tries to set , we are going to forget it. So, can't trust our brain. Just jot it down.
"A big part of why we are overstuffed by everything is because we don't, have a centralized trustworthy system ."
In 70% of your to-do-list write 100% of every stage. once you have a 100% coverage that means you can now trust your system rather than relying on system + brain.
2. CLARIFY
The idea behind clarify is that often procrastination and lack of productivity comes from not having a clearly defined next step and when it comes to writing to-do-list , we are notoriously bad in clarifying what each steps mean .Convert all the to-do's into action of words. let me explain this with the help of an example . Suppose we want to develop a website. Now, for doing such learning you need to specify every step of your daily learning in detail. Like the sub-steps can be;
Website design expression.
Create mock up in sketch .
Showing structure project.
3.ORGANIZE
The idea behind this is simple. It's to put stuff where it needs to go. So. if we have emails we put it in the email section, book recommendations in another section, grocery shopping list in separate one and likewise studying related stuff in academics section. Organizing helps to keep every section of our life in it's place. Mingling and confusion can be avoided. Good organization can also leads to better thinking.
4.REFLECT
The idea behind reflect is to analyze. In short it simply means reviewing which can be in form if weekly review, monthly review or even yearly. It's just to keep track of whatever stuff you have been doing.
5.ENGAGE
The idea is to actually do the real thing. It's the time to bringing the words into action. The real task to do when now 100% covered and explained in detail. At this time , we don't have to keep anything in our mind ,now, that's the system's job.
Your only job lies in acting in real sense!
