Getting Things Done

Cover of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

My wife finally convinced me that “Java Thread Programming” was inappropriate beach-time reading.  I doubt that business books is exactly what she had in mind, but over the years I’ve managed to fill a good sized bookshelf dedicated to many of the classics, “Swim with Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive”, “The Art of the Deal”, “Hard Drive”, “Only the Paranoid Survive”, “From Worst to First”, “Getting to Yes” and of course, Steven Covey’s “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” and “Principal Centered Leadership”.  When they all started sounding too familiar, I moved onto “Playing Poker Like the Pros”.

Recently, I read “Getting Things Done” by David Allen to see what all the hoopla was about.  Again, much of it seemed like more productivity pundit preaching only this time with a bit of modern day infomercial style.  In a nutshell here is the GTD “system”:

1. Write everything down in a trusted place that fits within your personal style
2. Organize your inbox:
- Eliminate things that aren’t yours or are not needed right now
- Convert to actionable item or project
3. Do your stuff within the context of any given moment, consistent with your time and energy
4. Iterate and re-factor faithfully
5. Periodically, review with various levels of granularity the vertical projects, and horizontal focus, strategy.

I suspect most of this book’s appeal is based on the bottom up approach to productivity, where as most others philosophize about top down goal driven performance and don’t offer much practical guidance.  GTD is also fairly light about the key step – do your stuff within the context – which got me thinking about how this compares to Steven Covey’s disciplines.

Covey’s book presents a very compatible, illustrative guiding framework for creating a balanced decision context when contemplating what things you’re going to do.  Covey contends that we all have natural needs that must be fulfilled in order to lead balanced, happy and healthy lives.  The four broad areas of human need are the physical (the need to live), the social (the need to love – no not tweet), the mental (the need to learn), and the spiritual (the need to leave a legacy).  When all of a person’s needs get fulfilled in proper balance, that person experiences a “Fire Within” that drives him forward, or as Allen writes, you’re operating in the zone.

Covey also provides GTD compatible guidance on how to select projects that are consistent with your time and energy. Covey proposes that all activities can be classified into four basic categories or “quadrants” based on two measurements: Urgency and Importance.  The following matrix illustrates how to categorize projects or tasks based on these two criteria.  Quadrant II should remain a person’s primary focus when planning and Covey states that people frequently ignore Quadrant II (“fire prevention”) in favor of Quadrant I (“putting out fires”) or, worse yet, the trivial activities of Quadrants III and IV.

	Urgent	Not Urgent
Important	Quadrant I ➢ Crises ➢ Pressing problems ➢ Deadline-driven projects, meetings, preparations	Quadrant II ➢ Preparation ➢ Prevention ➢ Value Classification ➢ Planning ➢ Relationship building ➢ Needed relation ➢ Empowerment
Not Important	Quadrant III ➢ Needless interrupts ➢ Unnecessary reports ➢ Unimportant meetings, phone calls, mail ➢ Other people’s minor issues	Quadrant IV ➢ Trivia, busywork ➢ Some phone calls ➢ Time wasters ➢ “Escape” activities ➢ Irrelevant mail ➢ Excessive TV

Relationship building is a key Quadrant II activity. An important concept introduced by the Quadrant II focus is that of the role.  In relationships, each individual serves in a role of some sort.  Examples include: parent, employee, employer, club member, etc.  The concept of the role offers a valuable grouping and planning tool when determining what GTD projects and tasks to perform over a given period of time.

Finally, when Covey’s top down meets Allen’s bottom up, there are a lot of practical techniques for integrating both productivity systems.  For example, you could color-code or tag your GTD stuff with Covey based quadrants and roles.  Neither quadrants nor roles are part of Allen’s system, but integrating these two systems can help further organize your stuff, clarify context and help keep important/non-urgent as well as important/urgent tasks on track and your various life roles in balance.

Springpad

I don’t have a very good memory – and like most people with a family of five, I have many things going on.  Some routines are repetitive – medical appointments, school sports, pet related chores, grocery shopping and home maintenance.   Some tasks are personal health, well being and organizational – exercise, diet and Getting Things Done (GDT).   We also have an occasional big family events that take a massive amount of work, months, to coordinate – Bat Mitzvah, graduation party and college application/selection to name a couple.  Coordinating with everyone in my family is a big challenge – there are many moving pieces, late breaking changes and necessary communication.

Fortunately, my entire family is very technology oriented – everyone has a cell phone, email account, online calendar and our own social network; we utilize many of the typical online services such as shopping sites, travel portals, media sharing and financial management tools.  Things quickly get complicated when we spread these services across five people.  While we’re able to gain some efficiency within some of these individual services, many of them lack coordination across our social networks and they fail to roll up across our real life events in any type of comprehensive, manageable container. Over the years, we’ve tried many tools and techniques – paper, Covey organizers, refrigerator calendars, spreadsheets, Microsoft Outlook, Google docs, Evernote and Cozi; all come with some number of short comings, silo issues and lack of integrate actionable data.  Stress builds and my brain hurts.>

These problems are exactly what Spring Partners set out to address with Springpad.  My entire family shares an account that we use to remember stuff, integrate actionable data across other online services and leverage our trusted social connections as we manage our real life events.  We’re able to aggregate “My Stuff” in meaningful combination and coordinate calendar and communications across multiple channels – TXT, email and mobile interfaces to Springpad itself.  There is a light social network integrated within Springpad – the usual “follow” other Springpad user and includes the typical “share” your stuff with your Facebook friends and Twitter followers.  Springpad also attempts to solve the empty notebook problem by offering many pre-built, pre-organized applications around many common life events like getting organized, meal planning, maintaining a home, parenting, traveling, celebrating, exercising, learning and working.

I’ll use a simple example.  My plan in life was to simply enjoy wine, not ever invest in learning the elaborate details and subtle nuances that yielded good wine and more importantly wine that I like.  Yes, I planned to simply follow others in this life pleasure – ride the coat tails of others, lean on my friend’s investment in wine knowledge.  In general, this plan was working well.  But I still had the memory gap problem; how do I remember the great wine at last Friday night’s dinner party.  Back in the day, there was only good old paper and pen – not often in my pocket at a party and a frequent washing machine victim.  More recently when I’m able to sneak the smart phone past my wife’s what not to wear review, I’m able to electronically note the wine.  Still a pain to type name, vineyard and year – but if the wine is good, this was my only shot at remembering later.  So this was a perfectly sufficient solution – but I realized that I really like almost everything that certain friends liked.  Unfortunately, I’m not always with my friends when they’re drinking wine, so I’m not there to note the ever expanding collection.  I’m off the coat tail – FAIL.  How do I keep up with this important endeavor?

One of Springpad’s nicest applications is a Wine Notebook sponsored by Gary Vanynerchuk.  Using Springpad’s Wine Notebook, I am able to collect, organize, share with followers, include in my own plans and act on the information.  I am also able to follow my other trusted friends, who also share their favorite wines.  I am even able to see what Gary is recommending.  I am able to “spring” a wine into my collection and use it in many ways.  I can reference that info on my phone while at the store and I can use it later in my party planning notebook where I am keeping track of shopping list and things to do.  Even better, my friends can see what wines I like and bring it along when they come to my house for dinner.  I able to add comments to my wine data, categorize, note vineyard and pricing information or even attach a video presentation by Gary.

The power doesn’t stop there.  While, it is great that Springpad lets me continue riding wine enthusiast coattails, I think the real power is that I’m now able to reuse “My Stuff” in managing my other life events.  In planning my next Napa visit, I can reuse all this wine data to organize my vineyard tour, using a travel planner notebook, and work diligently to verify everyone’s comments on nose and palate.  I can search and include information on my travel schedule, car rental, hotel stay, restaurent reservations and local area friend meet ups.  I can keep track of details on my trip, include picture, videos, comments and share with my followers so that they can plan a similar time later.

Finally, less stress and fewer brain cramps.