Day 8: Implementing GTD

I can't say this has been a wonderful week thus far; I am still processing that whole room “in-box” although I’m beginning to see a light at the end of the tunnel. Most discouraging is that a large percent of the “stuff” –and even the stuff I am keeping—is not needed. I have thousands of articles on topics I’m still writing about and I justified keeping many of them on this basis. But in fact, there is always new material coming out since I’m a scientist. So I’ll always be in the process of getting the latest in the literature, and the “older” news from four years ago I could let fly into the recycling bin. But I didn’t. And then there are piles of journals that no one wants anymore, “We’ve gone digital” is what I hear when I’ve asked “Would you like to have these journals?” I’ve gone digital too, and that just reminds me that I have a whole other life, my digital files. I’m going to have to go through this same process on my computer(s). A computer sweep, collection, seems absolutely daunting because it feels less physical; my computer files are not something I can touch, move around in real time and space, or place in real physical piles. What has been particularly difficult is that I have tried to maintain my regular schedule. I held my seminar, met with students and clients, exercised, and otherwise maintained all of the regular patterns of my ordinary life. Thus the amount of time I can spend is limited, as I sift through that giant in-box, organizing and putting all those pieces of paper in the “right place.” The process has not made me have a ‘mind like water” which is of course the promise of David Allen’s GTD. But I admit, in the past three days, I have also finished an article that I should have completed two years ago, and it going out later today. So there has to be something in this process, difficult as it may be, that is liberating my work energy to finally move ahead with a rather formidable list of projects and commitments.

To be continued…