Getting Things Done

Posted on | February 2, 2009 | No Comments

OK, I admit I have control issues. That is to say, I must be in control. And why not? My way is the best way, right? Right!

But something has been off for these past couple of years. I have not been in control of my clutter. I’ve cluttered up my house, my mind, and my body with all kinds of “stuff.” This weekend, I decided enough was enough and, euphorically, Matt handed me a copy of Getting Things Done.

For those of you who are not familiar, GTD has achieved a sort of cult following among what author David Allen likes to call “knowledge workers” and I like to call “geeks like me.” The premise of the book is that all of us geeks have so many projects going at once and so much information coming in at all times that it would literally be impossible for our even our hyper-drive minds to hold on to the details of it all all the time. Now go back through this paragraph and substitute “geek” with “mom” and you’ll realize why I’m in double-trouble when it comes to managing the information in my life.

He has a fairly simple four-step process around categorizing and filing information so that it’s not always taking up a bit of space in your mind like a runaway process eating RAM on your computer (his analogy, not mine). It’s a sort of “duh! I know that” sort of book, but within the first chapter, I realized I needed this guy and his four-step plan to break my addiction to clutter and get back in control.

So I spent a good portion of the weekend thinking about what I needed to do to get started on this process and a few things came immediately to mind. First, I had to do something about my work space. I recently moved my desk from our bedroom to our sun room because I believe that having my work so close to my bed was affecting my sleep.

I share the sun room with the kids, so my first step was to make my little corner of the room my own. I did this by hanging things on the wall that have meaning to me. Everything there, from the little ceramic booties with my kids’ names on them to my sorority mug from college to a fertility goddess I bought from a Mayan woman on my honeymoon, is special to me and makes me feel like this is finally my own workspace.

Next, I devised an organizational structure. I have a beautiful writing desk, full of little cubbies and drawers, but it is sorely lacking space for the paper clutter I tend to accumulate. So I found a couple organizing trays and a hanging file box and set them up next to my desk in a way that’s not too ugly and doesn’t infringe on Lily’s play kitchen, which is right next to me.

Finally, I started going through my “inbox.” The concept of an inbox is important to GTD, and he, like me, readily admits that it’s difficult to have a single inbox. I have my email inbox, my physical inbox now conveniently located next to my desk, but I also, until today, had an inbox in the basement–a cardboard box–and an inbox in my bedroom–an underbed crate. The basement and underbed inboxes just had to go. The whole idea of an inbox is that you go through it frequently and categorize and file away what’s in it. Some of the stuff in those extra two inboxes had been there, well, since we moved 16 months ago.

I recycled a kitchen trashcan of paper. I mailed $55 worth of stuff to various people who needed it far more than I do. I threw away oodles of tiny bits of broken headsets, broken rubberbands, and other bits of rubbish that had no other use. And I filed the rest into my new organizational structure.

Now my computer, which has been hanging out on the bar in our kitchen because my desk was piled with crap, is back at home on my desk and my desktop is clear. David Allen claims that when your stuff is organized, you feel a sense of clarity that allows you to be hyper-productive. If that’s the case, I’m really looking forward to the workday tomorrow (seriously)!

I haven’t worked out what my “to do list” system is going to be (paper isn’t doing it for me, and neither is remember the milk…maybe I need an iPhone?!), and I have 2/3 of the book left to read, but I think we can safely say that Matt won me over to the dark side once again…

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