As I mentioned earlier, I’m not making as good use of my time as I could be, so it’s time to get organised and start getting more things done. I have decided to take the slow way of doing this, and get into more productive habits over the course of the next ten months. Why take so long over it? Because doing too much at once doesn’t work! I’ve tried it! Any elaborate systems to keep me organised and productive fell apart in a few weeks. The solution is to break these systems down into habits, and internalise them one at a time over a period of months.

The system I’ll be adopting is Leo Babauta’s Zen To Done (ZTD). It is based around David Allen’s classic book, Getting Things Done (GTD), but makes a few changes that will allow people like me to stick to the system in the long term.

GTD is a hugely popular book, with a massive following. It involves having everything you need to do written down somewhere. You then go through all these notes, and put them into a system that lets you know when you need to do them. Your system will include calendars, tickler files, to-do lists; things like that. I tried it out at university, and it works really well. Because everything is written down and organised, you never feel stressed out or overwhelmed, and you know exactly where to look to find the next thing you have to do.

Is it something that would benefit everyone? Not really. If your idea of a complicated day is deciding between the James Bond or the Star Wars marathon, you probably don’t really need it. Likewise, if you’re the spontaneous type who likes to do things on the fly, you’d probably find something like this too rigid. It’s probably only going to help you if you’ve got a load of different things going on concurrently, and it’s starting to feel like too much.

How ZTD differs from GTD

ZTD takes GTD, adds a few extra bits in, then breaks the new system down into 10 habits. Every month, you add the next habit into your routine, doing it daily, or as often as you can. The habits are very simple and not that time-consuming, so it’s likely that you’ll stick to them easily. After 10 months, the idea is that you’re now doing the whole system automatically, and because you’ve spent the last 10 month training yourself to use it, it’s going to stick rather than fall apart in a few weeks.

It’s an ingenious idea. Someone should make books like this for all kinds of topics, especially health. Ten months to healthy eating, one year to regular exercise, things like that. It would make a change from all this “3 Minutes a Day to the Body You Want!” rubbish.

I’m to undertake the first step of ZTD this month, it’s called ‘Collect’. This habit involves having a few set places to put all the information and papers and ideas that come to us every day. If they’re in one place, you can’t lose them. I’m to take a notebook with me everywhere I go, and note down any ideas that come to me or information that’s given to me, before I forget them. I must also keep an inbox on my desk, and keep as few email accounts as possible.

So any letters that come through the post, things I’ve jotted down as reminders, post it notes; it all goes in the inbox. I have to put everything I write in the notepad onto a to do list as soon as I can, or put it in the inbox too. This way, every useful things that I’m told, think of, remember, or come across, will be captured and put in one place, so I know where it’ll be.

Later, I’ll be asked to sort through these things in a specific way, but for now I just have to collect them. Pretty easy for a first step, I think, but that’s the whole idea. I’ll let you know how it worked next month.

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Zen To Done
Getting Things Done

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 2nd, 2009 at 4:00 pm and is filed under Productivity, procrastination and time-management.