Getting Things Done

Crash told me about this book he read called Getting Things Done. He said it was great and it may help me stay organized. I balked at the idea of this book for a while because I felt organized already. How could I possibly benefit from a book that teaches me how to do something I’m already great at. Self-help books are for losers!
There is this saying that Crash introduced to me, it goes like this: “We don’t f*ck around”. Knowing that Crash really does mean that, I figured he wouldn't waste his valuable time on this and would not talk me into it either unless he really found it useful. So what the heck right? I eventually decided to buy the audio book because I have plenty of time to listen to it during my two hour daily commute to and from Scottsdale.
After I started listening to David Allen talk about GTD I quickly realized that he was talking about self management 101. This was nothing new to me but my drive is long, so I continued. It wasn’t more than 20 minutes into the book when the content started getting really good. He started talking about a real issue that I have; a bloated in-box. I have work projects, personal projects, a wife, two year old son and a baby on the way. I know what in-box bloat is. David Allen lays out the foundation on how be productive simply by reminding you of the basics. We all suck at organization because we forget the basics.
So I bought into “Getting Things Done”. Crash can have his “I told you so” moment; fine by me. My next step was to decide how to implement the GTD system in my life. I’m a paperless guy so I need machine tools to help me manage my in-box. I recall Crash buying some crazy plug-in that integrated the GTD system with outlook.
I started with outlook because I use it at work every day. The first thing I did was re-organized my filing system. I ditched folders for tags and talked myself into letting the search system find what I need rather than me. I have a shallow drawer (my brain) and my filing system (me) really sucks. I found a blog article that describe how to Implement Getting Things Done using Outlook 2007. I’m a programmer so why not write some code right? I’ll be honest, I followed this guys suggestions and code samples and they worked. I extended his examples and really tailored Outlook with custom buttons that fit my needs. I immediately felt relaxed as I started using my new outlook buttons. They only thing that bugged me was that I could not implement this very same thing at home or on my iPhone. I knew I needed to ditch Outlook but how could I after creating such a beautiful process? My machine crashed and because I didn’t Back Stuff Up, I lost all my code and cool buttons and my motivation to continue.
Next was to-do lists. I had a to-do list manager on my iPhone and I created an asp.net app that integrated with our internal helpdesk system so I figured with a few tweaks here and there I could implement GTD by marrying the two together. Doh! I found another roadblock. Our helpdesk system is not public and I wanted mobile features. I could write some web services and write a native iPhone app that would sync back to work, or write a mobile friendly site that consumed the web services and served up a thin version of the to-do list but I have a ton of other things to do and I’m not sure how many other people would use it. Scratch this one.
The Google Gods pointed me to something called Remember the Milk via a post from Doug Ireton called Advanced GTD with Remember The Milk. Remember The Milk is an online task manager on steroids. Too many features to list here so I’ll talk about my favorite features.

1. Sharing – You can create lists (or projects if you will) and share them with a fellow RTM ninja. This is great if you are collaborating on a project with a few people and want a central repository of tasks that can be updated from anywhere with an internet connection.
2. Ticklers – Clearly you are only as organized as your tickler system. RTM offers email, text and instant message reminders. This came in handy the other day after I sent Crash a “Pay up Sucker”, a.k.a a bill for hosting services and dumped it into my waiting for list. I would have forgotten about it without my nifty reminder.
3. Integration – Gmail, Google Calendar, RSS, Vista Sidebar, OSX Dashboard Widget and most importantly a native iPhone application.

GTD and RTM have changed my life. My mind stays clear, I feel more productive and my wife is happy because I remember to run the errands she asks me to do (thank you GPS based lists). I work my projects the way I want. Always having access to them no matter where I am and I can communicate with my team easily. I’m more organized than ever before and I feel like I have less to do. This equates to spending more quality time with my wife and son (and daughter).
We just implemented the SCRUM process at work. I plan on writing more about using GTD + RTM with SCRUM so stay tuned.