Getting Things Done

Getting Things Done is the title of the book by David Allen. As product managers with scads of projects and activities, figuring out how to organize, prioritize, and complete those things can be daunting. Consequently, my employer decided that all product managers, managers, and executives should undergo training based on Mr. Allen’s work.

As with most professional training, the key is to find the tools which you can take from it, deploy in your work place, and generate results – hopefully good ones. You don’t have to replicate in detail the framework provided. However, many training professionals won’t tell you this.

There’s an unspoken expectation, it seems, that whatever the trainer pontificates upon should be put into practice directly and completely. Fortunately, the trainer in our case was more realistic in explaining that we should take from the training the things which fit us rather than scrapping our current systems and completely revamping them. What a relief!

Based on what I’ve learned thus far – still have to finish reading the book – I think I’ll try the master list divided into buckets or categories which Mr. Allen suggests. This, hopefully, will allow me to better organize, prioritize, and focus upon the most critical or valuable tasks first while relegating less important activities for later dates.

Currently, I have mini-lists, partial lists, sticky notes, and white board scribbling scattered about. This provides plenty of opportunity for things to fall through the cracks or inadvertently allows me to spend time on lesser things at the expense of greater.

In theory this bucket brigade methodology sounds like a fine idea. I’m sure there are people out there who use it to great advantage. Whether or not it works for me remains to be seen. However, I do know it takes 2-3 months of repetition with something before it becomes habitual. That being the case, I guess I’m my own test subject in this little experiment until mid-May or so.

If you can’t test on yourself, who CAN you test on, right? Who knows, maybe in the end I’ll get things done – more so than I already am, and in less time. That’s goodness in my book!