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Get ‘er done

Getting things done, the methodology of organizing your to-do’s, is an interesting system. It’s advocated by many different people and used by even more people. A lot of different developers and managers advocate the system because it deals with the question of “stuff”.

Without getting into the tinier details of it, the system advocates organizing your to-do list by project and context. The general idea is that you organize your to-do’s with regards to where you are or what you might be doing. For example, if you need to make a phone call to Natalie your to-do might look like “@phone Call Natalie (604-555-9923).” So when you’re in a place where you can make a phone call you bring up your @phone list and viola!

Of course, the assumption is that you take your lists with you (either by lo-fi organizer or PDA) so when the context comes up, you’ll have your list available and ready. The ultimate goal being like the ready state in martial arts, always ready to pounce and react.

I find the system itself fascinating but the it is obviously dependent on how you organize your contexts. So here is a question that I pose to the GTD’ers out there: How do you organize your contexts or maybe give some example of the different contexts that you use?

1:21 pm 2 Comments

I think I know everything of what I don’t know

Yesterday, I put together a presentation for my leadership class. It was a riveting presentation about the different stages a person goes through about being self-aware (kinda) taken from a book. At this point, it is also important to note that this is a cycle and a long term process. The stages themselves are pretty self explanatory (please don’t kill me for the rhyming scheme, it’s not mine!):

• I don’t know what I don’t know
• I know what I don’t know
• I grow and know and it starts to show
• I simply go because of what I know

This is fine for most self-motivated people, I think that it is a more or less a pretty standard transition between becoming aware of what you know and need to improve on to implementing what you do learn. However, I think most people get stuck on an “I think I know everything of what I don’t know” stage that really could be a hindrance to their self-development. It’s the stage where a person is thinking that what they know is actually enough and the learning stops. Or worse, they continue on the path being completely unaware of the world around them.

I think it’s a pretty dangerous situation to be in. So how do we avoid it? A few things come to mind.

• Be humble; I think taking the stance that you don’t know everything and there are things that another person can teach you will help in keeping out of this rut.
• Be a bit more proactive; I believe that it is a learning process and this process is circular. By being proactive, you continually search for ways to improve.
• Accept that change will happen; I believe that being more accepting of change is a key attribute. I heard somewhere that change is always a point of pain for people but there is an inherent difference between accepting the pain because you know it’s a good thing versus avoiding it.

Did I miss any?

11:28 am 0 Comments