My New Way to Get Things Done

Basically, I’m sick of procrastinating.

Moreover, I’m sick of procrastinating on working because I don’t know what to do first.

There’s plenty I’ve been meaning to work on, loads of promotional, social media related sharing I’ve been meaning to test out to increase traffic to our sites, and a slew of goals I’ve wanted to accomplish over time that I know I’m fully capable of accomplishing, but that I never seem to get around to doing for one reason or another. So last week, I gave up on the “wing it” lifestyle and started a scheduling system.

Now, part of the reason I didn’t want a yet another schedule is because I haven’t really stuck to them in the past. When you don’t necessarily wake up at the same time, when your schedule needs to be worked around other people’s lives, and when you don’t work optimally if you allocate yourself specific time blocks, but need to let an activity take as long as it needs to in order to get done, it’s hard to write an hour-by-hour schedule.

Not only that, but personally, if I miss a schedule block of time, I usually feel a little guilty, but don’t go back and do the work. Furthermore, seeing an activity blocked off for 15 minutes or 1-2 hours, or whatever it happens to be usually discourages me, as it makes me feel the activity is a chore I have to agonize over and mentally prepare myself to do. I like my job, and if I’m writing when I want and sharing things on social media when I want and don’t have a quota for how long it should take, blogging doesn’t really feel like a job. So in line with wanting to keep the sentiment of “I don’t care how it gets done I just want these things to get done,” I put together what I feel is going to be my optimal GTD schedule.

My schedule consists of three parts, the first that gets broken down into two, which then go into two and five parts, and the second part currently dividing into three. Yes, this might seem complicated at first, but for me it’s not – it’s actually un-complicated a lot of my life.

So here’s the outline of how my schedule works, and how it’ll likely stay, even though I will end up changing the specific points/tasks listed in the schedule as time goes on.

GTD Schedule

Things to Do

Daily

Primary Goals

• 1
• 2

Social Media

• 1
• 2

Weekly

Mondays

• 1
• 2

Tuesdays

• 1
• 2

Wednesdays

• 1
• 2

Thursdays

• 1
• 2

Fridays

• 1
• 2

Things Not to Do

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4…

Approved Sites/Channels/Books

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4…

Semi-Approved Sites/Channels/Books

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4…

Approved Activities

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4…

And that’s it! I’ve filled my schedule on a GoogleDocs document and saved it to my Google Drive, then added the link to my bookmark menu & titled it “GTD.” I open it in the morning and keep it open until I’m done with the tasks for the day, and that’s it. Once I’ve accomplished what’s on that list, work’s done for the day and no more having to think “well shouldn’t I do some..”. No. I don’t need to do anything more. I can have the peace of mind that working from home so often does not entail.

Breaking Down My GTD Schedule

Now that you’ve taken a look at the outline,  if you’re still interested in how I break things down further, along with some reasoning as to why I’ve chosen to do things this way, the following are a few points explaining each part of my new schedule.

My Primary Goals are things like “draft a new article” and “read x number of pages.” I’m loose enough with these goals so they don’t constrain me to do the same thing every single day (I can draft a new article for any blog, for example, or read x number of pages from any book), and if one day I just don’t bother to achieve a primary goal, it’s okay, because if I’ve done it every other day it shouldn’t at all be an issue to miss once. I stick to two primary goals, and no more.

Same goes for my Social Media tasks – they’re loose ones, like “log in to x social media account and reply to those who have @’d you interesting comments” or “make a single new post on x social media.” Again, I stick to only two, and again I don’t really mind if I miss a day, as if I stick to this regularly it’s no big deal to miss once. I do keep these less loose-end and make sure they’re quick things to do to balance out the fact that the primary goals are somewhat time consuming.

My Weekly tasks are for weekdays only. I’ve done this on purpose. I want to be able to have the weekends off if I want them off that week. If I don’t want the weekends off, I can easily pick a weekday and perform the tasks for that, which is what I did last weekend. It’s nice to have a mental break from a schedule, and so weekends are that for me.

Each of my weekly tasks, again, have only two points per day that need to get done. Weekly tasks are also specific. Some of these take up considerably more time than others, so I balance one short with one long or two medium-long tasks and make sure I don’t overwhelm myself on any one day of the week. This section is where I place tasks I’d like to test out, and I’ll amend the specifics over and over in the future. If a task isn’t giving me my desired result, or if I find it’s gotten too frustrating to keep doing, I’ll be able to tell a few weeks in and will then replace the activity with one that’s already working or a completely new task to try out. The tasks under my weekly tasks section currently include things like “pin x number of old posts” and “like/comment/engage on x social media site.”

I don’t schedule things like optimizing my sites, publishing new posts, promoting posts after they’ve been published (I have a separate routine for this), catching up on what’s happening in the industry, etc. Many of these tasks I do on my own as I don’t need to be reminded to do them, I feel they are necessary and am thus compelled to do them, and/or I more or less enjoy doing them regularly. I only schedule things that I forget to do and things that I know I need to do more of. In terms of drafting new posts, I always find that’s the best way for me to get more posts published – because if I have enough drafts started, on a day I feel compelled to post I’ll pick one of the drafts and finish it up to my liking, then get it out there. But if I have no drafts, it can be excruciating, as getting started from nothing is difficult on most days. It’s hard to think of what to write about – and brainstorming is a complete time suck. If I eliminate brainstorming by simply writing out at draft every day (I don’t stress myself out over the quality or length, just want something down), even if that draft is not very good and thus never ends up being used, it helps me to have a large number of potential articles racked up. Normally, I can rework even poor drafts into something usable.

If I miss a day, I don’t feel guilty, because seeing as how there are only two points per weekday, I have found myself catching up to days I missed for any reason the next day. I don’t bother to catch up on the Primary Goals & Social Media sections, as these I created with the intention of missing out a few days of. Like I said, nothing is worse off for having missed one day of these.

The next section, of Things Not to Do is there to keep me on track – if I ban myself from doing specific activities that are not as fruitful or are a complete time suck, it helps me to stay peachy in terms of time used and where I’d like the bulk of my time to go. I do end up getting sucked into the do-not-do list at times, but it’s there to serve as a reminder that those are terrible activities (BuzzFeed Channel, I’m looking at you!) to get into. Most of the items on this list are things that end up being massive time sucks and not activities that I do and am done with in a small amount of time.

I have an Approved and a Semi-approved list of media that I can enjoy because, obviously, where the information I’m absorbing comes from has a lot to do with what I end up learning and filling my head with. The approved list consists of things like science podcasts and TED talks – things I wish I was consuming more of that I actually enjoy when I remember to take advantage of. Media on the semi-approved list are things like watching uploads from my favourite non-educational YouTube channels. This list is kept to a minimum on purpose so I don’t spend too much time there.

Finally, my list of Approved Activities includes things like spending time on DuoLingo and reading through parts of Stanford’s Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Again, things I wish I would do more of, but that I always seem to be forgetting to do. This list serves as a healthy reminder, and is great for times I feel motivated and want to do something productive, but don’t exactly know what to do.

So far, this GTD system has been working. I’ve already planned some tweaks, discovered some things that aren’t working, though I need to plan some tasks to replace them with. I’ve stuck to my schedule for a short time without feeling trapped by it. It has been neither an efficiency or inspiration suck, but has been pleasantly in between the two extremes for me. Just what I want in a schedule. It’s been easy to accomplish, simple to catch up on, and actually has felt like an achievement game – perfect for getting me motivated. At this point, I’ll be tweaking everything besides the structure of the schedule, as that seems to be working out better for me than I’d hoped.

Looking forward to a month/year of sticking to and tweaking this GTD schedule. Really optimistic about its potential to be just the jump start and consistency my productivity needed.