Getting Things Done - the art of stress-free productivity

 

This is the second book that I have finish reading in this year. I received this book for free from a member of Beli Nothing Project. I was a bit dubious about it's practicality by judging it's title. How can getting things done be stress-free? I was blown away with what it could be offer the moment I started to read. It is so timely and the contents are validating my thoughts about productivity.

I am currently in the situation where I was tasked to take up a portfolio of another colleague without any replacement and I have find myself drowned with a lot of mundane task since end of 2019. At the same time, COVID-19 strikes and flipping everything upside down. We were working from home and since then I had a lot of thoughts to do things, and I started to load myself up with all the things that I wanted to try out, and the wildest thing was started a Youtube channel and at the end I have put myself into the state of mental breakdown.

Since then, I tried to empower myself to control my life better as I know the price of breakdown was too high to pay. When I look at my things to do, I notice I have so many thing fall through the crease undone, and everything feel so overwhelming. I thus made myself a half-baked system that able to make myself more organized by archiving all emails that has done or deem no action needed. However there are still a lot of mental baggage on my head.

I had learned the 5S method but I have never successfully implemented as I find the steps are not cohesive enough to flow. I had learn from the KonMari method to reduce my inventory, however there are still a lot of things unanswered. This method only clears my physical item, but I still have a lot of mental baggage on my head. There are also some stuff that is not in it's usable condition, but I do not want to throw them yet. Overall there are still a lot of loops that are not being closed, and every time I saw something, it reminds me of my inaction. This has sucked out a lot of my energy and I feel depressed when notice all those "things to do" occupying my short term memory is keep forgotten and left unattended.

This books gave me the answer.

I started to cleaning up all my physical and digital inventory and  apply the things that I have learned in the book on the first day I started to read especially the GTD flowchart, which defined what we should do with all the stuff that we have, with a little bit of my own twist. At the end of the week, I have finished the book and established the whole system in my work and personal life. Everything is in it's place now, and I feel the tremendous improvement in my inner peace that I have never attained. I have never felt so light before in my life. I have a reliable system to capture all my things to do physically and digitally. I no longer feeling things screaming on me for my attention as I have either completed the things or decided to defer to a later date. I also learned how to manage the things that I decided not to do.

The first thing I have picked up is the "Two minute rule". Anything that can be done in two minutes, get it done. I have then changed the batteries of my baby's toys, fixed some of the broken stuff, and reverted on emails that was long forgotten.

The "Define next action" is also very critical. I always find myself writing very vague notes to remind myself to do something. But when I review the notes, I can't remember what I need to do. E.g. "Chemical", "Meeting with boss"... Now when I define my next action "Review the chemical master list and see any obsolete or new chemical to add/remove from the list", then with the "Two minute rule", I can decide whether to do it now or defer it.

The previous practice of holding the things in my mind so that I can remember in the future feels like holding a dumbbell with my pinky. Now I have utilized Google task (personal) and microsoft to do (work) to list down the things that need to do, I feel at ease and empowered. I also felt the sense of accomplishment whenever I am able to check off my things to do.

It also gave me the vision of defining different altitude of life so that I can decide what should I been doing and what is not. Agreeing to do things without defining own capacity and necessity is like using my credit card without knowing the total amount accrued. Now that I have know how big is my plate, I can decide which things should be done so that it enhance my quality of life and align with my values. I also feel good about the things that I decided not to do because I have a concrete reason that it doesn't worth/not align with my values/not improving my quality of life.

To conclude, this is a must read for everyone. To free yourself from your own mental baggage. To mend all the seams in the ship that you are sailing. If you are too busy throwing water out of your leaking ship, you have no time to see what's coming ahead on your journey.