Archive for February, 2008
Zero #4
Wednesday, February 20th, 2008Well, it’s been several months since I was able to say that I “got to zero”. I haven’t forgotten about GTD this whole time, but in another way, I have.
Basically, I’ve been breaking all of my rules lately, I guess just to see how the other half lives 
I’ve been here before, contemplating GTD Apostacy.
Every time I come to this point, I think it’s time to change everything and make some kind of radical changes. Surely, there must be a better way, I think. Here are a few of my latest thoughts.
Over time, I’ve definitely let my dashboards get out of control. Been here before too. And I’ve definitely reached that point where I’ve allowed my system to become so unmaintained that it’s no longer a trusted system, but a black hole (thanks to ActivityOwner for that reminder). I simply must get better at being honest about moving things to Someday/Maybe, and then finally deleting them when it’s clear that they won’t be done or are no longer relevant. I think I’m doing better on this since I renounced by Maybe Never idea. But I could stand to do even better.
I think one of the problems is that I’ve been tracking my team’s work in too much detail. I’m not sure it’s been so helpful to them, and I can’t seem to keep up with it anyway. The basic mechanism I have been using it working fine. Actually, once I drastically simplified the export template. But the problem is more basic than that–the basic rhythm of keeping their work items captured, well defined and up-to-date just didn’t work–at least not at the level of granularity that I had been trying to track it. Maybe there’s a better way–but for now I’ve basically punted on this initiative.
Another one of my problems lately has been that my life changed and my calendar didn’t. There were many weeks (months?) where I cannibalized my set aside weekly review time to do other work. I started teaching a weekly class and been needing to spend more time than usual studying. With the rest of my calendar so full of other meetings, the best time for the additional study was the blocks I’d already set aside for weekly review. I know, it’s like eating my arm off, but I used that time for study (and sometimes other work). So one of my reforms lately is to revamp my weekly calendar to allow sufficient time for both.
So there’s some of the practical issues. In another post, I’ll talk a little about what’s going on under the hood.
