I found "Getting things done" (GTD) in the Time Magazine recently and have been studying and implementing it for the last two weeks. In fact, GTD has been keeping me away from this blog…
David Allen explains GTD in his book and this has really taken off as a great methodology to improve personal productivity-without stress. Consider that there is an aggregator GTD index website and numerous tagged sites. David Allen and his many "followers" are onto something interesting that’s probably looks appropriate for the emerging global knowledge economy.
GTD has simple principles and yet I find them profound for the knowledge economy and its workers -a tiny section of whom are also known as "Geeks". The point I am trying to make that in the knowledge economy you may not be a "hard core" geek writing code but you have to be somewhat geeky to even do the old world stuff. And what makes GTD remarkable is that it reduces mission and vision at the individual level to individual do-able action items. It also aggregates the new world view that you are "one person" at the individual level and "one organization" at the organizational level ( I owe this idea to a talk I heard at the GNHCC from Joel Podolny ) and might work from anywhere using cell phones,PDA’s, the Internet or by actual physical presence.
But most importantly, knowledge work is essentially unstructured particularly at the early stages and GTD lets you get your arms around it. Once you actually write down and classify everything you have to do then life can really become less stressful and much more productive… I have a long way to go- but have made a start.