Getting Things Done - Vignesh Prasad

## Highlights Now, for many of us, there are no edges to most of our projects. Most people I know have at least half a dozen things they’re trying to achieve right now, and even if they had the rest of their lives to try, they wouldn’t be able to finish these to perfection. — location: 231 ^ref-7391 --- Focusing on values does not simplify your life. It gives meaning and direction—and a lot more complexity. — location: 290 ^ref-34767 --- Anything that does not belong where it is, the way it is, is an “open loop” pulling on your attention. — location: 354 ^ref-21060 --- “on your mind” is that you want it to be different than it currently is, and yet: • you haven’t clarified exactly what the intended outcome is; • you haven’t decided what the very next physical action step is; and/or • you haven’t put reminders of the outcome and the action required in a system you trust. — location: 399 ^ref-48602 --- The vast majority of people have been trying to get organized by rearranging incomplete lists of unclear things; they haven’t yet realized how much and what they need to organize in order to get the real payoff. — location: 437 ^ref-19374 --- There is usually an inverse proportion between how much something is on your mind and how much it’s getting done. — location: 504 ^ref-17111 --- No matter what the setting, there are five discrete stages that we go through as we deal with our work. We (1) collect things that command our attention; (2) process what they mean and what to do about them; and (3) organize the results, which we (4) review as options for what we choose to (5) do. — location: 544 ^ref-21161 --- | Every open loop must be in your collection system and out of your head. | You must have as few collection buckets as you can get by with. | You must empty them regularly. — location: 627 ^ref-5486 --- I define a project as any desired result that requires more than one action step. This means that some rather small things that you might not normally call projects are going to be on your “Projects” list. The reasoning behind my definition is that if one step won’t complete something, some kind of stake needs to be placed in the ground to remind you that there’s something still left to do. — location: 728 ^ref-18685 --- Trying to keep a list in writing on the calendar, which must then be rewritten on another day if items don’t get done, is demoralizing and a waste of time. The “Next Actions” lists I advocate will hold all of those action reminders, even the most time-sensitive ones. And they won’t have to be rewritten daily. Second, if there’s something on a daily to-do list that doesn’t absolutely have to get done that day, it will dilute the emphasis on the things that truly do. — location: 789 ^ref-8807 --- Most people feel best about their work when they’ve cleaned up, closed up, clarified, and renegotiated all their agreements with themselves and others. Do this weekly instead of yearly. — location: 906 ^ref-33288 --- The most experienced planner in the world is your brain. 1. | Defining purpose and principles 2. | Outcome visioning 3. | Brainstorming 4. | Organizing 5. | Identifying next actions — location: 1040 ^ref-26504 --- When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. —Will Rogers — location: 1129 ^ref-1945 --- Psychologists are beginning to label this and similar processes “distributed cognition.” It’s getting things out of your head and into objective, reviewable formats. — location: 1302 ^ref-8605 --- It’s also just a great habit to date everything you hand-write, from Post-it notes to your assistant, to voice-mails you download onto a pad, to notes you take on a phone call with a client. The 3 percent of the time that this little piece of information will be extremely useful makes it worth developing the habit. — location: 1814 ^ref-56304 --- If the next action can be done in two minutes or less, do it when you first pick the item — location: 2174 ^ref-24291 --- What many people want to do, however, based on old habits of writing daily to-do lists, is put actions on the calendar that they think they’d really like to get done next Monday, say, but that then actually might not, and that might then have to be taken over to following days. Resist this impulse. You need to trust your calendar as sacred territory, reflecting the exact hard edges of your day’s commitments, which should be noticeable at a glance while you’re on the run. — location: 2336 ^ref-9991 --- 50,000+ feet: Life • 40,000 feet: Three- to five-year vision • 30,000 feet: One- to two-year goals • 20,000 feet: Areas of responsibility • 10,000 feet: Current projects • Runway: Current actions — location: 963 ^ref-17410 --- Remember that you make your action choices based on the following four criteria, in order: 1. | Context 2. | Time available 3. | Energy available 4. | Priority — location: 3090 ^ref-64680 --- Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it. — location: 3231 ^ref-24625 --- If you have children, I recommend that you install one in their bedrooms (I wish I’d grown up with a whiteboard) — location: 3475 ^ref-27302 --- Agreements you’ve made with yourself. Your negative feelings are simply the result of breaking those agreements—they’re the symptoms of disintegrated self-trust. — location: 3585 ^ref-14455 --- The sense of anxiety and guilt doesn’t come from having too much to do; it’s the automatic result of breaking agreements with yourself. — location: 3589 ^ref-30056 --- Maintaining an objective inventory of your work makes it much easier to say no with integrity. — location: 3605 ^ref-36699 --- Organizations must create a culture in which it is acceptable that everyone has more to do than he or she can do, and in which it is sage to renegotiate agreements about what everyone is not doing. — location: 3716 ^ref-13800 --- “Long-term” does not mean “Someday/Maybe.” Those projects with distant goal lines are still to be done as soon as possible; “long-term” simply means, “more action steps until it’s done,” not “no need to decide next actions because the day of reckoning is so far away.” — location: 3903 ^ref-42174 ---