{"id":778,"date":"2007-07-24T19:28:45","date_gmt":"2007-07-25T00:28:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/womantalk.wordpress.com\/2007\/07\/24\/a-nudge\/"},"modified":"2007-07-24T19:28:45","modified_gmt":"2007-07-25T00:28:45","slug":"a-nudge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.womantalk.org\/?p=778","title":{"rendered":"a nudge"},"content":{"rendered":"

Usually it takes two mentions before a book recommendation starts to make waves in my radar. Right now, I am fully immersed in the ideas of David Allen’s Getting Things Done<\/strong>. First introduced to me by my friend Nathen<\/a>, I started reading it last week at John’s house in NYC. I carried that book around with me and read it at every opportunity – Bella said, “Mom, you can’t read standing up in the subway. That looks weird.” I only got through two-thirds of the book – but I think I got the gist enough to get started. I have the book on hold at the library, but I am considering purchasing, despite my valiant attempts at reducing my home library.<\/p>\n

The main idea is to gather up every idea\/project you have going into one system – so that nothing escapes notice, and then to make sure you have a NEXT ACTION figured out for each one. That is an extremely simplified version of Allen’s ideas; if it sounds intriguing, I recommend you read the book – I don’t have time to summarize any more, because I am too busy implementing. See?<\/p>\n

Also this guy at 43folders<\/a> is very into Allen’s system and has been blogging about it for over a year – but it may be more helpful if you’ve already read the book.<\/p>\n

Except that I will tell you what I am doing right now.<\/p>\n

I spent the morning putting everything pertinent (every piece of paper\/thing in my office) into my large cardboard box INBOX. This was easy; since most of my office boxes are still unpacked, I just hauled them over closer to my desk and made an INBOX mountain.
\nThen I picked one piece of paper\/item up and decided whether there was an ACTION attached to that item. If there was an action that took less than 2 minutes – I stopped and completed that action. If it needed more than 2 minutes, I put it on a list. If there was no action, then I threw it away or filed it.<\/p>\n

Some difficult rules:<\/p>\n

Start from the top of the pile (no skipping items, or grabbing items that look easy, but are deeper down in the pile – oooh. hard one for me)<\/p>\n

Only hold one item at a time (I like to hold 3-5, and buzz around the room)<\/p>\n

Go all the way to the bottom of the pile (hard!!!)<\/p>\n

These are the lists I have going so far: NEXT ACTIONS, PROJECTS,\u00c2\u00a0 WAITING ON, POSTS-FUTURE, and SOMEDAY\/MAYBE. Each one has a manila folder and a word doc list with it.<\/p>\n

So far, so good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Usually it takes two mentions before a book recommendation starts to make waves in my radar. Right now, I am fully immersed in the ideas of David Allen’s Getting Things Done. First introduced to me by my friend Nathen, I … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-organizing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.womantalk.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.womantalk.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.womantalk.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.womantalk.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.womantalk.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.womantalk.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.womantalk.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.womantalk.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.womantalk.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}