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Book-Summary - Getting Things Done

Why I read this book?

I currently work as a software development engineer and as part of my job I deal with multiple projects and operational tasks. Apart from that there are many personal career improvement tasks I need to take up along with my job. If I view my tasks outside of job, there will be lot of personal projects going on, house stuff that need to be taken care of, things for myself as well as things related to my wife, parents, sister, in-laws, family and friends. So, there is a constant stream of tasks that need to be handled all the time.

With this constant stream of tasks, there are these feelings -

  • Am I missing/forgetting some important task that should have been done?
  • Am I doing the right task at this time?
  • The constant feeling that I am loosing track of projects.
  • I am swamped by the tasks and feel that I am not progressing on any projects. With these in mind, the book Getting things Done - the art of stress-free productivity by David Allen looked interesting.

What did author/book convey?

  • One thing to keep in mind is that the author has written the book for general public and not specific to one type of profession. So, many times we feel things are said repeatedly or many things are very old school. It took me some time to think on how to apply this in my life.
  • Task organising system is nothing but managing our commitments. The system should capture all the unfinished tasks/works/commitments.
  • Unfortunately, most of us use our mind as that tool. Mind will be responsible for storing these tasks, organising these commitments, reminding us time to time about different commitments. This is such an under utilisation of our mind as we are using it as a timer or to-do list.
  • As lot of brain energy will be wasted on these tasks, brain will not have enough juice to do its actual creative work.
  • Some of us use external tools for task management like to-do list, trello, asana, diary, obsidian, etc. Even though this is one step better than just keeping in mind, but we always feel the tool is lacking. This is because, we have still not eliminated the mind part from the tool. We are using mind as the add on as if like we store in to-do list but mind is responsible for reminding us which task to do and when to do it. Mind acts as the cache to store temporary tasks, mind is responsible for storing of items not related to tasks, but things that might be needed in future, etc.
  • Managing Commitments has 3 parts to it
    • Offload all the unfinished work or future agreed work to a tool outside of our mind
    • Clarify what this commitment is. Why and how to do this
    • Able to set reminder and sort these commitments in the tool
  • It is a waste of mental energy to keep thinking about a task that cannot be progressed. Anytime we receive a task, we need to define what that task means and how does it look like to execute that task. Then pass the information to your task organisation system. We need to clarify why that task exists and what is the immediate next step in order to have some progress for that task. Force every thought to what's the next action here?. What's the next action helps in getting the clarity of the task and accountability of who should be owning this. This indirectly helps in improving the productivity and also empowers the accountable person.
  • There are 3 types of tasks that we deal with
    • Tasks that are already tracked
    • Tasks that show up unplanned, usually they are of higher priority,but not necessarily. Sometimes, we need to define the appropriate priority.
    • Tasks that are by-product of already in-progress tasks.
  • For knowledge work, we need to think of every work we do. What does this work lead to or what does this achieve. Most of the task is not given, but determined.
  • For any incoming tasks,
    • clarify it’s priority
    • what is the effort required. Here, effort might be in time, energy or some other resources
    • What are it’s dependencies.
  • Have threshold for what tasks should go to your system. If a task is able to be completed in 2 mins (it can be 2,5, etc), then do it immediately. This will also reduce the load on your task organisation system.
  • Author gives a generic template for organising your tasks & projects. In general, any organising tool should have
    • Next Action List
    • Group all the project related tasks & information at a single place.
    • Should be able to set reminder to the tasks
    • Should be able to store useful information that do not need any action from our end but might be useful in future
    • Any incoming task, should be questioned if it can be delegated or deferred. If it can be delegated, delegate it and probably track it on your end. If deferred, then it will go to your next action lists
  • The first and foremost task is to offload all your task into the task organising system. Things in your mind, things written in notes, things written in some random to-do list. Everything must go to the system.
  • Our organising tool should just tell us what is the exact task we should be doing at that time.
  • As part of organising the project, these questions need to be answered
    • Which component/task comes prior to other? (Order of execution)
    • What is the priority of the task?
    • How much resources it would take - time, effort and other resources to complete the tasks?
    • Which task/component is the long poll?
  • Usually you are lured into not so important works that seems urgent when your task organisation system is messed up or out of control. Hence, as escaping responsibility you avoid negotiating or reevaluate the priority of the incoming task. Stress comes when you accept a task without negotiating the existing tasks and negotiating with others who are waiting on other tasks.
  • Always build system that get internalised to your life
  • Never drift away from the organisation of the tool or make the tool stale for many days. Once it is outdated for many days it takes a lot of time to bring it up to speed - cold start.
  • We need weekly/periodic review of the system and also higher life reviews like yearly review. This helps to minimise the drifts, clarify the tasks and re-orient our purpose. As part of the periodic review, we should capture the missing tasks and reevaluate the existing tasks.
  • Usually we will resist doing review if we think we are not handling the work properly
  • Once you establish a system it would take 2 years to evolve it and get good results out of it
  • Remember your task organisation system should always be with you and easily accessible so that to avoid having tasks distributed across various places (including getting stored in your mind).
  • For any big project, it is a loop of defining what done means for the project, what is the next immediate task that needs to be completed. Once that task is completed repeat it - what done means for the project and what is the next action that needs to be completed.

How am I using this information?

I use Obsidian (its tag line is A second brain for you, forever) as my note taking system both at my home as well as at work. I use it for capturing, organising and reminding me of tasks. I store Obsidian notes to the private git repository - work repo is in work server and personal is in github. I also use zoho notebook app in my mobile as my temporary cache of tasks. That is, when I am not at my desk and I get tasks or think of something which needs to go on to Obsidian, I will use zoho notebook.

For my home, I have Small Tasks List and Projects List.

  • The Small Tasks List usually has one off tasks like book doctor appointment, clean up work table, call xyz to talk about abc, etc. I use the Obsidian reminder plugin to mark the task with date and time by when it needs to be get done. The note has 3 main sections - Planned/InProgress tasks, Wish List tasks and finally archived task.
  • The Project list will be used to track all my personal projects. It can vary from things like planning trips , things/tasks to be done for family, etc or financial projects like buying a car, re-financing/re-investments, etc or personal technical projects like learn Rust, develop PLPAssembler, etc. The Project list note has 3 sections - In-Progress, Done and Wish list. Each of them has project name and a link to a separate note related to that project. All the project notes are placed in a single folder. Every project note has somewhat similar sections - Tasks, Notes and Resources. Tasks will list all the tasks that need to be done for the project which gets added as project continues, notes will have information related to the project that I need to remember and resources will have web links, contacts, document links that is relevant for this project. For my work, I have Operations list, Projects List, and Self tasks list.
  • Operations List - This will list all of the operations tasks I need to work on or keep track of. Example fix pipeline x, move canary scripts to separate package, write wiki related to feature x, investigate dip in metrix x, etc. It has 3 sections - InProgress, Done and Wish list
  • Projects List - This will list all the projects I am involved in. The projects are anything that takes multiple tasks to complete. This has following sections - In Progress, Done and Wish List. In Progress is further divided into 2 sub sections - Personally Implementing, and Guiding. Personal Implementing are those projects list where I am actually designing and implementing stuff. Guiding are those projects list where I am just guiding the engineers on tasks or technical problems. Every project is listed with the name followed by link to a separate project note. All project notes are kept in the same folder for easy access. Every project note has 3 sections - Tasks, Notes and Resources. Tasks will list all the work related to the project, Notes is the place where I take down information related to the project that I should be aware of, Resources will list all the necessary links related to the project like code reviews, tickets, wiki/weblinks, etc.
  • Self Tasks List - This will list tasks and projects that are something related to my career growth. Example involves getting a promotion, yearly personal reviews, becoming a bar raiser, etc. This has 3 sections - InProgress, Done and Wish List. I do weekly review of my organising systems both for my home and my work. During the weekly review, I transfer the tasks taken in zoho notebook to the Obsidian. I will be honest, I have procrastinated to do these reviews for few days but I tend to do it little delayed. I am planning to do monthly and yearly reviews as a higher life reviews. Lets see how it goes.

So overall, its been now 1.5 months, I am practicing this and I feel things are going good, though it has been a very short time to assess. I have confidence that I have not missed critical tasks. It has definitly freed up my mind interms of task tracking. I also have a very good overview of how things are going and able to quickly come up to speed of all the tasks related to projects. These are applicable for both house and work. This does not mean my organization system is perfect, there are instances of missed tasks. There are instances I am slacking on keeping the tasks list fresh. But as the author says, this whole system needs to become internalized and habit formation should happen. That usually takes 1-2 years.