A possible GTD solution
Last year I discovered GTD or Getting things Done by David Allen. I have put some of the principles into practice but haven’t really implemented as fully as I would like. I have sort of incorporated into my old system of planning the week and planning the day and I’ve been thinking why it is that it has been a tad tricky to implement. So I asked myself how I could make it better, how I could take it to the next level.
What I needed was to have something that followed these requirements:
- simple
- accessible
- usable
- portable
What I have at the moment is not simple. I have four or five A4 size folders with clear plastic covers with lists and sub-lists. I can trust that things that I’ve entered are safe there but it somehow isn’t easy to look through it all and get an idea of what goes where. Which of course puts me off looking at it and so opportunities are missed.
So to follow on from this the paper lists are accessible but only if I’m in the mood to look at them and then I can see what’s going on.
Are they usable? Sure. I simply have to write stuff into the appropriate list. I can also cross things out when they’re done. But it is difficult to get an overview. I can’t sort make one huge sheet of paper and put all the lists next to each other and see just how much is really there. Someday I’d like to do the full capture and see how much stuff there really is. I suppose I could stick it all up on the wall but that isn’t too accessible. Nice as a novelty but short lived.
But least of all my current system is not portable. New stuff just needs to go into the Inbox but I still need access to the other lists to see what is there. I travel by bicycle and my small courier bag is usually quite full. These folders wouldn’t even fit into it. It certainly wouldn’t be practical to take them with me. So what could work?
The humble spreadsheet
I looked into software and custom made GTD stationary but it was all a bit wide of the mark. They had to fulfil all four of my above criteria.
But last week in the shower I came up with an idea that could possibly work: a spreadsheet. I know they’re for figures and calculations but each column can hold a list of things. Inbox, next actions, someday / maybe, etc. And I can see them next to each other. I can zoom in and out. So it’s simple. No fancy software just a big virtual piece of paper which is more legible than my handwriting. My handwriting isn’t too bad but you get the idea. It’s also usable in that when tasks or projects are completed cells are shifted up. So we have simplicity and usability but what about portability and accessibility?
I have a pda phone which usually comes with me wherever I go and the operating system is Windows Mobile. Excel is installed on the machine so I can create and edit speadsheets. So that takes care of the portability issue.
Access is where it breaks down. I don’t want to be limited to editing the spreadsheet only on the mobile device. I want to be able to access it from a computer. The phone uses a normal sized SD card and I can store my files on it. So it’s easy to have the gtd.xls file on the card and then use a card reader to access the file from a computer. Easy. And removes the need for any form of version control.
Verdict
I’ve ticked all the boxes with my idea but I’m unable to put it to the test because my card reader is a piece of crap. With Linux I can’t write to the card at all. But saving a file from Linux transferred to the card via Mac does work. Mac can read and write to the card but using Excel to edit the file on the Mac makes the file unusable by the device. Sometimes the Mac can’t write to the card either. So one solution would be to get the file onto my Linux machine via the Mac and then edit on there and then send it back via the Mac. That’s really going to happen, right? Which leads me to the conclusion that my card reader is faulty or incompatible or both. It was a cheapie from ebay. So I’ve ordered a branded one from Amazon made by Kingston (as the card is made by them) and hoping that it might do the job.
So later on this week if the card reader does its job then I could be implementing GTD more fully. So something to add the “waiting for” list – card reader from Amazon.