GTD Newb

I didn’t make a huge announcement, but those that know me probably already know that I made a change and joined the team at Arkus, Inc. So hooray for that.

//giphy.com/embed/WIg8P0VNpgH8Q

via GIPHY

One of the best things about starting with them is that they have a structured onboarding process, and it involves reading and implementing David Allen’s Getting Things Done methodology. GTD for the initiated.

I read the book before my official start date, and it was eye-opening. To quote one of the Arkus founders, “geeks love it.” I can confirm that. Anyway…I read the book, and me being me, I wanted to drop literally everything and implement it immediately.

That is not realistic during the holidays. There’s stuff to do. Hours in the car. Family gatherings. Festivities. New video games.

So instead I did the holidays thing, and then I did the starting a new job thing. GTD sat in the peripheral, staring at me, poking sometimes, even. I took on some of the “quick win” type things right away; I made lists of actions, had a list of projects, emptied my mind every couple of days. That alone made a difference.

This past weekend, I talked the husband into implementing GTD at home, and the entire weekend was focused on that implementation. We went through our upstairs home office, gathered all of the Stuff and then we processed it. We determined what our ongoing process will look like.

Can I be honest? This is my blog. I’m going to be honest. I don’t know if it’s going to be a stellar success at home. Not for any other reason than I’ve read the book, and the hubs hasn’t. Also he’s extremely action-oriented. He basically has been doing GTD for years, just…without calling it that.

Enter me, his wife, a whirlwind of paper and ideas and aimless, but still voiced and well-intentioned, goals that are forgotten as soon as they’re spoken aloud. Opposites attract.

Anyway.

Day 2 was me getting down into the nitty-gritty for the job things. I’m blessed because Arkus provided OmniFocus to me, the tool for Mac users that helps manage the GTD process. I captured Stuff; I created projects and assigned next actions; I set up some key commands. I am as a ready as I’m going to be. I even set up an action item, deferred to a month from now, to review my process and how I’m using it.

I’m excited.

I’m still new to all this, but I was talking to my mom this morning, and she said “you sound so less stressed. Even a month ago, you sounded so much more stressed out.”

And I really am.

There are a lot of reasons for that – good news about health of friends and family members, making some priority changes, the #ohana…and yeah, some of it really is because of this GTD thing.

It’s so weird for me to write that. You have to understand just how jaded I am about “life hacks” and planners and productivity and self-help and whatever. I’m the person that looks like RDJ when Cap proudly announces that he understood that reference.

I am not about to sit here and shout to everyone that they need to implement GTD because it changed my life. It has not changed my life. It is a new aspect of my life that is part of a greater change that has happened, and I enjoy it. It helps me; it makes sense to me. Frankly, so does Nerdforce’s great new admin leveling app idea! I can’t wait to build that and potentially expand on it.

Because it is becoming part of my life now, it’s going to pop up occasionally in this blog. If you are interested in GTD – what it is, trying it out, what-have-you – then feel free to search tags for it, go to the sources listed below, or reach out and ask. I will stumble through whatever answers I might have.

And in the meantime, I can cross this off of my action list. Done.