GTD: Things to Do

Since re-launching this blog last year with an emphasis on visual work, I’ve been concentrating a bulk of my energy on growing and succeeding in my design business. To that end, I’ve been thinking and learning a lot about workflows (design-specific and business-specific), processes and planning methods.

Yesterday, I watched a video of a lecture on Time Management by Randy Pausch that he gave at the University of Virginia a few years ago — I watched his Last Lecture when it became available on iTunes last year and read his book of the same name over Christmas. (Start at 7:30 in, if you want to skip the introductions.) To listen to a man who has a few months left to live talk about time management is, to say the least, inspiring.

One of the many things that hit home for me was when Pausch talked about the importance of having a systemic solution for time management. He said, “[A] solution that says, ‘I’m going to fix things for you in the next 24 hours’ is laughable, it’s like saying, ‘I’m going to cure hunger in Africa in the next year.’” He talks about needing to think long-term and to change fundamental underlying processes because, let’s face it, we just have too many things to do and not enough time to do them.

I’ve also been working through David Allen’s management method outlined in Getting Things Done. And while there’s some merit to his logic, it’s just a bit clunky and regimented for my own purposes.

At Keller Williams, everyone had weekly 411 meetings — this was where we met with our supervisor or team to discuss our goals for the week, these then rolled up into that month and for that year (four weeks, one month, one year). It’s important to distinguish that these were not to-do lists but larger ambitions.

After working with this in my work life for three years, I still don’t know how effective it was but I do recognize that it set a habit, an intention to focus on particular aspects of my job.

What did I learn? I think I learned a lot about bigger picture thinking but I also learned that it’s good but doesn’t always help in the GTD process. And in keeping sight with my own work, I always thought there should be alternate time lines — this month, a month away, two months away and someday/maybe as well as some tie-in to a to-do list. It was about a year ago that I left KW so what now?

Well, I spent some time before and after SXSW Interactive looking into different programs which tap into several arenas with which I am familiar — iPhone, 37 Signals’ Basecamp and Backpack, Remember the Milk, Things, Omnifocus, Todoist, Vitalist, Gmail tasks, even creating a private Wordpress install for project management. Keep in mind that the goal is to help simplify my life, not to tack on another system to gum up the works. And I just don’t know, everything works to some extent but it’s just not quite there.

I know that I need three systems — one, a list of to-do’s for my own time and task management; two, a project management system that my clients can look at, check in with, measure progress and provide feedback to me; and, three, a billing program.

FullClip Creative already uses Basecamp and so I’m going to start there, commit to it, using Encamp for my iPhone sync. I have a product by Market Circle called Billings that I’ve used off and on for my invoicing. And that’s where I’ll start. Let’s call this implementation phase one.

(I took the above photo of Polly Jean six years ago or so, just after rescuing her from the Town Lake shelter. Seems like a million years ago but she’s hardly aged a day. Though she’s become less destructive and a bit more bossy.)