Those of you who have been following DevYou know that I’m a huge fan of the Zen Habits blog. Leo consistently comes through with terrific, useful posts. Today he posted what he describes as: “the list to surpass all lists. The productivity guide you’ve been waiting for your entire life. The only resource you’ll ever need.” He’s kidding of course, but, seriously, this is a tremendously useful list.
Lately, I’ve been gathering new GTD “next actions” faster than I can complete them. This is a problem. As my next actions list grows, I’m experiencing that annoying feeling that not enough is getting done.
In the past, I’ve tried to alleviate this problem by being aggressive about moving non-critical stuff to my “someday/maybe” list. This helps because it keeps my list of stuff that really, truly needs to be done down to a minimum. However, for a variety of reasons, being aggressive about moving stuff to someday/maybe isn’t alleviating the problem well enough lately.
For the next week or so, I’m going to try attacking the problem from the other end. Specifically, I’m going to be more aggressive about limiting my inputs. Toward this end, I’m following the GTD flowchart with the “Is It a Want?” decision box (as opposed to the simpler version without the “Is It a Want?” decision box.
Wish me luck!
