Geeky talks about ‘Getting Things Done’

General Education

Getting Things Done (GTD) is an interesting system for managing one’s time and making things happen. It was originally pitched at CEO, with a lot of different projects on their plates at the same time. Lately, however, I have noticed a significant uptake of it by system administrators, programmers and other IT geeks.

Being a geek myself, I think it is because we also have to juggle multiple projects simultaneously. Some people I know could probably beat most CEOs by number of projects they are involved in.

I have not implemented GTD fully yet, but keep taking small steps towards it. The benefits exist in any level of implementation though - apparently - they are exponentially higher with a full implementation. But while I am perfecting my process, I am on the lookout for good material on GTD that will help me get there faster and (being honest) will motivate me by example.

Couple of resources I found interesting are:

  • A long talk between Merlin Mann of 43 folders and David Allen (author of the book and the system) about GTD
  • A short video presentation of one person’s implementation of GTD within Outlook from Ignite Seattle conference
  • GTDInbox - a freeware Firefox extension for Gmail to implement GTD on top of Gmail interface . I use this one, since I spend most of my time near always-on Internet connection and most of my action items flow through email anyway.