I've been a little distracted from my reading lately by a frenzy of spring cleaning. It was actually a 'Lenten resolution' of mine to give up procrastinating and deal with my stuff. Now I know why I wasn't dealing with it in the first place: it takes a lot of time! Yesterday I drove all over town trying to flog some old (and rarely used) suits at consignment stores and finally had to admit defeat and donate them to charity (what, no one wears shoulder pads any more?). While driving all over creation I certainly had plenty of time to repent of letting myself get talked into buying expensive clothes I have no use for. I will now renew my loyalty to my old standard for fashion: if I can't climb a fence in it I won't wear it.
In between trying to read/file/mend/purge stuff I kept bumping into Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity on the net and finally decided to get it from the library to see what was up. I love to schedule and organize but have become disenchanted with here-today-gone-tomorrow organizing fads. No system seems to work for me, and I have yet to find somewhere to put my numerous and long to-do lists built up by years of creative procrastination. My new Planner Pad with it's multiple blank to-do lists is promising, but lacks somewhere to do long-term planning. GTD (as it's called by afficionados) claims to solve both problems. Here is a snippet:
Most often, the reason something is "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.
That last one is my problem. When I have all those "intended outcomes" and "action steps" running around in my brain I can't focus on, well, getting things done. So, I'm game. I will sacrifice some of my precious spring cleaning time to reading this book and see if it helps. But first, anyone want some old cassette tapes from the 80's? Ah, nevermind!
