Rediscovering Photography

Over the past number of months I’ve become somewhat of a fan of David Allen’s system Getting Things Done or GTD as it is known. This is a ‘productivity’ and ‘performance’ enhancing system that I have found to click with the things I have to do and my way of doing them.

The book ‘Getting Things Done’ was first published in 2001. Since then it seems to have reached ‘cult’ status judging by the number of GTD blogs on the internet and the number of groups and forums dedicated to analyzing and implementing the system.

If you feel that you have too much to do and to keep track of (or too much undone that makes you worry) then I highly recommend checking the book and the system out. If you would like some immediate information see Getting started with Getting Things Done on the 43 Folders blog.

One of the concepts that GTD deals with is the idea that certain tasks or items you want to accomplish can’t be done by doing a single step or task. These are ‘projects’ and there is a chapter in the book which lays out Allen’s techniques and system for project planning and execution. It seems that projects in the GTD system are one of the most troublesome areas to deal with. I’m sure that is due to the fact that the concept of a project itself can cover such a broad range of items. And GTD (loosely) defines anything that can’t be done in a single task as a project. The point being that you break projects down into multiple ‘doable’ tasks and then whack the tasks off one at a time. This sounds great in principle, but actually accomplishing this is another thing.

According to the book there are Five Phases of Project Planning. If your project is to ‘Clean the Garage’, step 1 - Defining Purpose and Principles and step 2 - Outcome Visioning seem to take care of themselves quite easily. “I want the garage to be clean and I am looking forward to how happy I’ll be when it’s done.” (Considering your principles should not be too much of a chore unless you plan on dumping your used oil in the neighbor’s back yard.)

Step 3 - Brainstorming gives us a little more to do if we want to tackle the project using GTD methods. “What will I need beforehand in order to accomplish this?” “Can I move the boat by myself in order to get behind it or do I need to make sure Bob can come over for a few minutes to help?” This gives you a chance to make of list of the things to do to prepare for this project. (As you can see, it starts to feel like doing a project using GTD, even a small one like this, becomes another project in itself.)

Step 4 - Organizing is not too hard in this example. It’s obvious that we want to line up everything we need in advance to make the actual ‘doing’ as painless and as well done as possible.

Step 5 - Identifying Next Actions. As you will see if you get into GTD nothing is called by what it really is. Next Actions are just things to do. If you’ve ever made a list of things you need to do you can officially claim to have created a ‘Next Action’ list even if you haven’t even read the book yet. So we make out our list:

1. Call Bob, see what time he can come on Sat
2. Stop at hardware store, buy big new broom and 20 garabage bags
3. Clean the garage

For those of you with a signigicant other, you could add:
4. Collect appropriate ‘at-a-boy’ and ‘honey, did you do that all by yourself?’ when you are done.

You mark the items off the list one by one, and voila! the garage is clean and your project is DONE.

Very simple, right? Well, it’s not so simple when you move this concept up to a project of a little higher level. Like ‘Create a new and fool proof marketing plan for your company’. Or ‘Reduce Accounts Receivable write offs from 5% to 3% without any loss in sales or profits and without alienating any customers’.

Or the big one for me right now, ‘Rebuild this web site incorporating all the new things I’ve learned and seen on the Internet over that past five or six years and while doing so determine this web site’s purpose and direction it will take in the future, all while figuring out how to incorporate and share over 20,000 photos I’ve taken during that time, and decide if I really want to continue this as a photo blog, or do I want to discuss, disseminate and dissect other content and ideas like Woodworking and trends in Kitchen Design, learning more about and improving my writing skills, GTD, healthy eating and lifestyles, GPS mapping, Minnesota Parks and Recreation areas, etc, etc, etc’.

So if there are any GTD’ers out there that would like to lend me a hand. I’m at Step 1 - Defining Purpose and Principles. You’re welcome to take a crack at this as I need all the help I can get.

If there is one thing I’ve learned from Getting Things Done, it is this: It’s a great system, and there are many other different systems and plans that are just as great if not better. But no system does the work or makes the decisions. You have to do that yourself. And working the system isn’t doing things. ‘Just do it’ is a great system all in itself.

But you also can’t fool yourself by saying that you don’t need ‘any’ type of system at all. Things like GTD can narrow your focus to help you accomplish the tasks that are most important and keep you on track for the things you are doing day by day. And I have found that the ’system’ is important if you intend to accomplish any projects that have a level of complexity just a little higher than our ‘Cleaning the Garage’ example. If you have no system, you never stop to do the first necessary task (oops! I mean Next Action) to get a project started.

So that is where GTD has lead me. To this point of making this post as the first thing to do in implementing this web site project. I think I’ll find that the project will probably not move along as fast as I might have expected before learning about GTD, but I think by doing a little ‘Outcome Visioning (translation: try to see the project in it’s completed state and be sure you will be happy with that outcome)’ and ‘Brainstorming (translation: spend the time to quickly write down myriad ideas and thoughts about the project to give your brain something to chew on)’ I will be able to come up with something. If nothing else, we’ll journal the GTD steps needed to proceed with this and give GTD at test run at Project Handling.

Film at 11.