Episode Details
Back to EpisodesBeyond Project Thinking: How to Get Things Done
Description
In this week’s episode, what’s the best way to manage projects?
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Script | 359
Hello, and welcome to episode 359 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.
From time to time, something comes along that sounds great when first described but then turns nasty.
In the productivity world, that something is Getting Things Done and in particular the definition of what a project is.
This is not the fault of David Allen, Getting Things Done’s author; this is how his description of a project has been horribly misinterpreted.
At its essence, Getting Things Done is about categorising your work into contexts. That could be work you can do on your computer or phone. In your office or at home. It is, and never was about “projects”. Projects, at best, are a sideshow. A simple way to organise your work. Nothing more.
Yet for some reason, a few early readers misunderstood GTD, wrote about it and now there’s a whole generation of people believing anything that involves two steps or more is a project and must be organised as such.
And there, is the source of overwhelm, time wasted to organising stuff instead of doing stuff and huge backlogs of things to do.
Before we get to the heart of today’s podcast, it’s important that I clear this misunderstanding up.
If you ever bought one the fantastic GTD setup guides that was, and may still be, sold on the GTD website, you will notice that whatever task manager you are using, you set up the lists, folders or projects (depending on which task manager you are using) as contexts. Those contexts usually related to people, places or things. For example, your home, or office. Your computer, printer or car. Or your partner, boss or colleagues.
You then dropped any task related to these contexts into its appropriate context.
Your projects were organised in a file folder system that you kept in a filing cabinet. Current projects—the things you were working on this week or month—were kept on or near your desk for quick access.
In those folders you kept all the details of the project. Not