Speed lunch blog again. GTD and TB FTW.

 Time for another weekly last-few-minutes-of-lunch update.

Thanks to the polar vortex and what is being called “snovid 2021” here in Texas, I had several days off from work, during which I jumped on the opportunity to work hard on setting up an organizational habit framework. If you’ve heard of “GTD” or “Getting Things Done” by David Allen, that is approximately the long and short of what I’m trying to set up, but it was and is easier said than done. I had to make a whole bunch of important decisions that would effect how easily I’d be able to implement and stick with this protocol, and how useful it would be. It is nicely flexible and agnostic to what you use to organize things, be it paper, digital, or any subset. But that means I had to make those choices, and then, choosing paper, had to actually create a phyisical notebook (or three) that had all the sections I wanted. Deciding, and then doing it, along with the initial research and refreshing on how to go about doing that, took hours and hours. But finally the basic framework is in place, and now it is a matter of turning the necessary daily and weekly actions into habits. And creating good habits is something I’ve spent a lot of time learning about and practicing.

So now I’m at the habit formation stage, and it is exciting, because it’s starting to work. I’ve got a long, long way to go before the habit is automatic enough that I don’t have to keep it at the forefront of my priorities, but I know I can get there. And already the habits and organizational system is starting to pay dividends in making things less stressful and more productive for me.

I’m also planning on implementing some version of time blocking and deep work, which is an important additional component after the GTD methodology, but I’ll focus on that later. One big set of habits at a time.

And that’s all the time I’ve got. I suppose you’ll get an update on how this is going in a week, and I’ll maybe have a better idea how long it will take to get to functioning properly, and how easy or hard getting the habit established will be.

Until then, take care, and good luck with your own stuff

-Isaac