David Allen's 45min talk: intro to Getting Things Done

In my recent post on OmniFocus (the new Mac todo list software from Omni Group) i gave a very quick and dirty intro to David Allen's Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology for personal productivity. Well, here's a much better (and longer) intro from the man himself in the form of a 45min talk he gave to Google employees:


I've just finished watching it myself, as I feel like i've fallen off the bandwagon recently, even with the help of OmniFocus. From the watching the video, I think it's my lack of discipline with the weekly review that has screwed me up.

There's something about talks from american buisness gurus that seems very evangelical...i think it's the fast talking and dramatic pauses...Amen sister!

Mac Software recommendation: OmniFocus, the ultimate to-do list

We nerds love systems -- systems of all kinds, protocols of all sorts. We're always on the lookout for ways of living more like robots. And so for nerds, clever little systems designed to help you get organised are always a really appealing way to overcome the clutter and chaos of life. This is even more true when the system can involve some kind of gadget or software. Nerds, you may have noticed, love gadgets and software.

But sometimes we nerds forget that, ultimately, we aren't robots. And so we get too ambitious and try to implement systems that are too nerdy. I've fallen into this trap many a time. A couple of years ago I built my self a Super Duper Intelligent Techno ToDo List using FileMaker. At its core was a super intelligent algorythm that would prioritise all my to-dos based on the importance of the project they were a part of, the domain that they contributed to (e.g., career, social life, health, etc.) and how soon they were due. The hope was that it would run my life for me, showing me the most important things to do at any given time. The system took me ages to set it up, and it was all very clever (if I do say so myself), but I only ended up using it for a couple of weeks because, ultimately, it just wasn't human friendly.

And then i discovered Getting Things Done (GTD). GTD is a little nerd cult based on a book by David Allen called, funnily enough, Getting Things Done. It is a set of 'action management' principals that are complement the human mind, not replace it. The basis of the system, as I understand it, stems from the notion that we typically have ideas about things that need to be done at times when we have no way of doing them, and that trying to remember to do these things is both inefficient and stressful. So GTD encourages us to abolish the practice of taking 'mental notes' in favour of either a paper and/or digital system. And under GTD such a system should include a few core features:

a) ubiquitous capture - one must be able to capture todo items quickly and easily, at any time (the moment they come to mind) and keep them safe.

b) context based lists - todo items must be grouped together on the basis of the context that they can be done in, or the resources they require, NOT, as we instinctively tend to do, on the basis of what project they are a part of.

c) trust - you need to be able to give yourself the iron clad garuntee that once a todo is in the system, it will DEFINETLY be seen when it needs to be seen, and so, one has to develop the discipline of regularly processing one's inbox and context lists.

Those, in my opinion, are the core essentials. You can learn more via the wikipedia article. It's nothing revolutionary. In fact, David Allen describes GTD as "just advanced common sense".

A GTD system can take many forms. For example, you could implement it using index cards, a notebook, or text files. But if you are a Mac user, I would recommend this new piece of software from OmniGroup: OmniFocus.

A free beta version of OmniFocus has just be released, although i've been an alpha tester since early this year. I think that it is the most elegant GTD software available. It's become an indispensable part of my life now; I couldn't live without it.

Best features (IMHO):


The quick entry window.When working in any other application a single (assignable) keystroke brings up a 'quick entry' window. You bang out a quick note, hit enter, and voila, it's in your digital inbox.

Smart start- and due-date parsing.As well as entering dates via a mini calendar window, OmniFocus will also recognise dates written in almost any format (e.g., 01/01/08, January 1, Jan 1, tomorrow, tom, 3 days, 3d, next week, January, 2 months, March 2008, etc.)

SmartMatch. You can assign tasks to a context or project list by typing its full title, or, simply by typing any aspect of it; OmniFocus will match it to the most similar context. For example, typing "wo" might match to the context "Work", or typing "market" might match to "Supermarket".

Sorting, Filtering, and Grouping. You can sort, filter, and group tasks by all kinds of different task characteristics, and easily change between these views.

What OmniFocus doesn't do, however, is run your life for you. And for this reason, Omni Focus can be dangerous in the wrong hands. So it's best suited for people who are familiar with GTD. It's also probably best suited to people who spend most of their time around their Mac.

If you're interested in OmniFocus, check out the 15min intro video (available here), and download the beta.

Also note that there is a 50% discount available if you pre-order before Jan 8. You can get a futher discount on top of that if you own a copy of OmniOutliner Pro (another Omni product).

The Joy of Auto-Deletion

One of the best things I ever did was setting my computer up to delete my files by default. Now, that might sound crazy to you, anathema to the very notion of good computing. But, let me tell you brothers and sisters, it saved my digital soul!

You see, fundamentally, I'm a messy and impatient person when it comes to my digital lifestyle. I can't be bothered labeling all of my files carefully. I can't be bothered maintaining a taxonomically perfect filing system. I download or create hundreds of files every day, and the 10seconds it would take to file each of them would add up to too much.

So, inevitably, the clutter on my hard drive would mount. My desktop was drowning in a million icons (far worse than the picture above, actually), and the state of my other folders wasn't much better. I just couldn't bring myself to knuckle down and tidy it all up and DELETE ALL OF THE CRAP, because I knew that once I started it would take days to achieve complete cleanliness. Yes, I was lost. Dark days, dark days.

But then it hit me! The whole system was back to front. Generally, computers keep every file by default, and the user has to actively choose what to delete. Now, that would be efficient if the things worth keeping outnumbered the junk. But that's not how it is any more. Not for me at least. 90% of the files that I create on my hard drive are useless within a few days. Precious files are quite rare. Thus it would be more efficient for my files to be deleted by default, and persist only if I went out of my way to designate them worthy. Clearly, I needed to set up auto-deletion.

So that's just what I did. I found a piece of Mac software called Hazel that seemed perfect for this job. Hazel is an application that runs in the background, watching any folder or folders that you ask it to. You can then assign actions for Hazel to perform on that folder. For example, Hazel can automatically move mp3 files to a 'music' folder, set the label on any new files to green, or delete files that have not been touched in the past month. You define the rules.

Using Hazel, I implemented a very simple auto-deletion system. I created a folder on my desktop called "temp", and I set Hazel to delete any "temp" file that has "not been added in the past 30 days". I then made "temp" my default save location for everything. Every download, every text file, every screenshot now goes to "temp" by default. And if I haven't filed it elsewhere in 30 days...poof...it's gone. In other words, my Mac presumes files to be junk (which they usually are) unless I specify otherwise.



This system seems much more human friendly to me. In someways, it resembles the way our brain does file storage. By default, information that we are exposed to is forgotten half a minute after exposure (mostly). If we need to remember something in any detail we have to put in effort and think about that information, or even right it down. And thank goodness for that. If we remembered every detail about our day (every word of every conversation, every license plate number, every frozen orange), we'd go crazy pretty quickly. And for the brain, that system works brilliantly. Because we don't expect our memory to store absolutely everything in detail, we know we have to put in effort when there's important information that needs to be remembered.

I find that my auto-deletion system has a similar effect. If I start an important document, I know that I have to put in the effort to file it away in a permanent folder. If I don't, it will be gone in a month. It's very motivating. And I haven't lost one important file yet. Most importantly, however, my hard drive is cleaner than it's ever been, without me hardly ever having to clean it up. I'm saved!

(Ethan over at Kinkless.com has detailed instructions for setting up a more complex Hazel based filing system, complete with some really cool demo videos)