The Science of Getting Things Done - Part Two
Last month I introduced a concept of ‘Getting Things Done’ - a bit of an Internet phoenomenon, whereby all your emails in your inbox, and all your files on your computer are attended to with a firm application of some really easy to follow rules - rather than let lie dormant for weeks or months on end.
If you missed Part One, you can easily read it here - or I can give you a 191-word summary… starting… now:
The basic premise of ‘Getting Things Done’ is to quickly assess, (firmly but fairly) deal with all new emails arriving in your inbox, and similarly to organise your day-to-day working files on your computer’s hard drive.
The four main rules of organising your ’stuff’ are: 1) delete it, 2) respond immediately, 3) delegate it or 4) defer it for later.
All junk is to be quickly deleted, and all ‘respond immediately’ work is quickly attended to by either a real world action or a virtual one. The ‘delegate it’ process is to handball the task to the right person with enough information that you won’t need to begin to play ‘email tennis’ to resolve unclarified points. And the ‘defer it for later’ process is not just to ‘file it away into a deep dark place’, but to assign it to a ‘To Do’ folder for either marked for ‘the end of the day’, ‘this week’, or, worst case, ‘the near future’.
The ultimate aim of ‘Getting Things Done’ is to reduce stress and to improve your own personal workflow in both the real world and in the virtual world.
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SPRING CLEANING YOUR DESKTOP
Can I please have a show of hands for anyone who uses their computer’s desktop as their filing system? Uh-huh - thought so. It’s a pretty common situation - that of saving ‘important’ files to your computer’s desktop in the vain hope that, since it’s the first thing you see when you fire your computer up in the morning, that something *might actually get done* with those important files.
Yeah, right.
My first (and greatest) tip for applying the ‘Getting Things Done’ to your desktop is to make a new folder on your desktop called ‘To File’. Then (and this is the really hard part!) put EVERYTHING THAT WAS ON YOUR DESKTOP INTO THAT FOLDER.
See? You’ve just cleaned up your desktop. That wasn’t so hard, was it? BUT in reality, all you’ve done is just put in into another folder that’s now horribly full of, well, stuff.
The key to make this half-baked attempt work is two-fold:
1) You can clean out your ‘To File’ folder, and see what *was* really important, and what really wasn’t. Start by sorting your ‘To File’ folder by date, in backwards order, and see what the oldest files are - and file them away in a more suitable place.
I have a folder structure that I’ve been using for the last 12 years, whereby I have a ‘Clients/Projects’ folder, ‘Applications’ for my main programs, and a ‘Resources’ folder for either small job-specific programs and also for storing snippets of information, snippets of code, or white papers or other valuable info, all filed away in folders in logical groups. For instance, my Resources folder has folders full of little gems relating to: Marketing, Technology, Software Development, and Design.
2) Most importantly, from now on, you can start applying the ‘Getting Things Done’ technique to any new files you put on your desktop. There’s already a Trash Can, so that part is catered for. Be strong and use it with calculated firmness! For projects or clients with items pending, bring the project folder to your desktop for easy visibility, but then put them back into your ‘Client/Projects’ folder. Once or twice a month, pack some finished projects into a folder called ‘To Archive’. Then store or burn them to disk once they are indeed finished. For the final two ‘GTD’ options, DO NOT use your desktop at all - that is, don’t put files onto your desktop if you were only going to delegate them away, and DO NOT put files onto your desktop if you really aren’t sure where they need to be filed. At worst case, store weird files in your new ‘To File’ folder, and if you haven’t needed them after X period of time, then delete them. Insert your preferred value for ‘X’, but ‘a month’ is a good median value.
As I mentioned last month, there are wonderful resources on this topic. One site with easy to follow videos specifically regarding keeping your desktop organised is: kinkless.com/article/kinkless_desktop
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KEEPING YOUR DOWNLOADS FOLDER IN CHECK
Most Internet browsers let you specify where you’d like to save any programs and/or files you’ve downloaded - and this naturally leads to a long list of files that you download, then promptly forget about. Can I have another show of hand? Thanks.
The first way to combat this ‘dumping ground’ is to sort this folder in reverse date order, so that the oldest files float to the top - these are the programs or files that you’ve either long since used and not wanted to keep, or that you’ve long since forgotten about. In either case - DELETE THEM. If you really needed them, you can re-download them, yes? And if they were really vital ,them you would have also bookmarked them in your browser, yes? Which reminds me - internet bookmarks are another column in and of themselves - for another time. Maybe.
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The ‘Getting Things Done’ movement is actually quite a strong one on the internet - that’s simply because there are many many people in the same boat as you and I - in that we’ve all found that, yes, computers are wonderful at number crunching and technical tasks, but absolutely no darn good at filing ’stuff’. To do that job requires the good ol’ human touch - but surprisingly, it’s a task that we never get around to doing. So before reaching for a bigger hard drive to store more ’stuff’, have a clean out this spring, and begin to take back a little control over your virtual filing cabinet.
AB out
