Usually, once every year (around New Years) I do spring cleaning of my GTD setup. Normally, this includes a complete rundown of all my GTD activities to eliminate any dead projects as well as clearing my head of any new ideas, getting them into my flow.

However, this year, New Years came early. Over the course of the last year, I've been having different issues with my workflow, my projects and my contexts, leaving me with a partially broken GTD flow - but more on that in a later post.

Suffering from "overanalysis"

During the last few months, it's become clear to me that I've spent too much time on categorizing my projects, fitting them into very specific boxes, instead of acting on the steps needed to complete them. I tend to attribute this to my work as a developer, as I'm used to taking apart problems into tiny pieces, and to constantly optimize on how I solve things. Usually, this is a good thing, but when it comes to GTD, you might end up in a rabbithole of trying to optimize your setup.

Evolving to handle new roles

One of the other things I need to address, is that life changes. What worked for me a few years ago, will no longer work. Things have changed, I now have a lengthy commute to work every day, I have different priorities as a developer, as a coworker, as a familyman. All of these play into what's coming up in my new workflow over the next weeks.

TL;DR: I basically just removed every single project and every single context in OmniFocus. Will rethink my entire GTD flow, as it no longer fits my needs.

This is actually a small rewrite of a blog post I did a few years ago, but as I didn't move this post to my new setup before now, and people still ask me questions about the subject, I wanted to refurbish, and republish the post.

I've been on the GTD (Getting Things Done) wagon for a couple of years, and as part of it, a lot of people ask the obvious question: What is it, and what's the point ?

Let's start at the beginning: Getting Things Done is a way of improving productivity. It's a way of organizing your life, it's a way of optimizing your day-to-day life and it's a way to combat stress. This might sound like just yet another scheme to steal money, but it's not really. The only thing you have to invest in, is the book, and from there on, the implementation of GTD in you life depends on what you make of it. Some people implement it using pen and paper, some have advanced software solutions for handling GTD, but the approach is entirely up to you.

GTD has had quite a lot of success during the last couple of years, and is in general very popular among especially developers, as it has a very structured approach to personal/project-management, and life in general.

The concepts of GTD

The primary concept of GTD, handles the way we perceive tasks. Usually, a lot of people have things written down on post-its, taking the tasks one by one in no particular order. Usually this means a lot of clutter, or "stuff" as it's called in GTD.

GTD puts focus on a couple of things to remove stuff, both from our desks and our consciousness, by splitting every project into atomic "bits" representing every single, physical action required for the project to be completed.

The Inbox

The inbox is the source of organizing. Everything goes inhere, just like a mail inbox. The inbox is where you write everything down, ideas, notes, todos, projects etc. The inbox is sorted regularly, taking care of smaller tasks right away, while larger projects are split into single, physical actions described later in this post.

An important note about the inbox, is that a large part of GTD is having the discipline to clean this up, or review it. This is for a lot of people handled on a daily basis, and a more advanced weekly or monthly basis. This is also the largest weak spot of GTD, as it requires a steady discipline to maintain the order of organizing everything regularly, and avoid having a large inbox.

Actions

Actions are the atomic bits and pieces of GTD. Actions define every physical action you have to take to complete the project at hand. Actions make up projects, and inorder to finish a project, one must complete every action within. This might look like this:

• Call Susan regarding budget for next year
• Implement integration service for Client X
• E-mail John from IT about server specs. for new production environment

Contexts

Contexts are defined by the surroundings you are currently in. This is a way of organizing actions that can only be fixed while being "at the computer", "at the office" or "on the phone". Context are used to group all actions, based on location or the tools at hand, and provides you with a simple list of "Things you're able to do right now". This means a context might hold 10 actions for 4 different projects, meaning you'll be able to focus on what's actually achievable from your current location, with the current tools at hand.

More reading

As this is only a very brief introduction into the world of GTD, I would recommend reading more about GTD, and some general concepts of increasing productivity without adding stress. Here's a few of my favourite books and sites about GTD.

David Allen - Getting Things Done
43 Folders
What is GTD ?
OmniFocus - The app I use for my GTD flow

Every year, a lot of people have new years resolutions, and while some are easy to keep, some seem to be overwhelming, like losing weight or to quit smoking, unless you have an actual way of tracking your progress, and sticking to it.

Usually I don't really believe in new years resolutions, but I do believe in looking back and adjusting habits whenever possible. However, I believe more in general mindset/behavioural changes (Read Stephen Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People for tips on how to make your own personal "mission statement"), and sticking to those rather than specific goals. Smaller steps usually leads to easier progress.

My 5 mindset changes are based on things I already do in someway or another, that I want to improve (or at least, live by) in the year to come. I consider this my personal mission statement of the year.

Keep a positive mind

One of the things I've noticed as I've grown older, is that I have become less patient and more demanding when interacting with other people. It bothers me that I'm becoming the grumpy guy at certain points, so a way to improve this is to accept the fact that we all see the world differently, and to be more patient when communicating with others.

Try to be better at applyling Stephen Covey's 5th habit (Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood).

Stick to GTD

As you may know, I'm a huge fan of GTD. It works for me, and it helps me cope with stressful situations. However, GTD requires strict discipline and sticking to the principles, to get the most of it, and I've been slacking on this during the last year. This needs to be handled better by thinking everything into the systems at hand, whenever I have mental "clutter".

Master a few technologies over a lot

The last 1/2 year or so, we've done a lot of maintenance at work, as well as some pretty standard projects. This isn't really all that exciting (I enjoy developing new products or solutions that have a high impact), but that's not my biggest concern, as most developers have periods of maintenance during the years.

However, we use a lot of technologies right now, as we use different systems for different aspects of the company, and one of the things I've noticed, is that focusing on 10 different solutions with different frameworks takes up too much time, to actually be able to master any of them to the level I'd like.

So, for 2013, I'll pick out a couple of frameworks that I really want to excel in, and focus on these. Right now, my bets are on Rails and Backbone.js, but those might change.

Less e-mail, more face to face communication

Let me be clear: I write e-mails instead of talking to people. I prefer writing e-mails over talking as it documents the decisions made, and it helps in avoiding assumptions when making agreements. However, it also adds confusion and a tendency towards being "too formal", as it's easy to misinterpret e-mails.

So, for 2013, I'm going to try talking more, and writing less, for smaller issues that only require 5 minutes of talk or less for coordination.

When in doubt, run

I've been running a lot over the years, but the last couple of years I've been slacking a bit. Last year I started running regularly again though, and when I do, I enjoy the mental abundance I get from doing so. This year I'm going to keep that habit, and try using it as a help for stressful situations.

Got a full mind, or nothing to do ? Run.

This is my personal list of things I want to focus on in 2013, what's yours ?