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August 29, 2005

Got It Done!

How did an excellent time-management tool help me climb a 14,255 foot mountain? I'll tell you...

First, the background. One of the personal development issues I've been working on professionally at Return Path is my time and task management. I've made fantastic progress, most this quarter, using the "Getting Things Done" system.

For those not in the now, Getting Things Done is a method and support system for time and task management.

The basic premise is that everything you have to do, from business related tasks, to personal items - needs to be captured somewhere. That somewhere is referred to as your "Operating System".

Capture your tasks: get them off of sticky notes, get them out of piles of paper on your desk, and most importantly GET THEM OUT OF YOUR HEAD and get them INTO your operating system. For me, this along with the basic triage concept are probably the most important fundamentals of the system.

Once you have captured everything, it can be dealt with. Everything can typically be dealt with in three ways:

1) Do it.
2) Delegate it.
3) Delete it.

There are few exceptions.

GTD has not only provided me with an effect triage method for dealing with your day-to-day tasks, but it also has enabled me with tools. I purchased the GTD Outlook Plugin and it is worth its weight in gold. (Thanks to colleague Jack Sinclair for this tip!) Specifically it allows you to manage email easily - with some custom buttons I can convert an email into a task, archive the message, set an alarm, categorize the item, set a due date, etc... with basically 2 clicks. I highly recommend it if you adopt this system - and obviously I endorse the Getting Things Done system overall.

Now, one of the things I like about GTD, is it allows me to capture everything I need to get done. Of course the broad focus are day-to-day business items, but the system intentionally captures all personal items. This includes things like, "wash the dog", or "pick up the dry cleaning", or "get flowers for wife" (that one is still open... I'll do it next honey - promise!).

Along these lines you are encouraged to have a category for long term goals. Things like "learn how to fly a plane" or "take rhumba lessons".

While I get great satisfaction from working through several or even dozens of tasks per day, as well as managing dozens and probably hundreds of emails - there is something about knocking down one of the bigger "life goals". When I first setup GTD and inventoried all my tasks, one of the items in my "Someday" category was "Climb Longs Peak". This has been "on my mental list" since 2002.

So, what can a great time management tool do for you? Not only can it get your email inbox average count down from 800 or so to under 100 (on my way to the pinnacle "empty inbox"!) - but for me, it pushed me up a 14,255 foot mountain. 15 miles of round trip hiking and climbing. 4,875 feet of elevation gain. Six hours to the summit and three and a half back.

I'll post a full gallery soon, but for now here is the proof! Special thanks to the climbing party that adopted me - friends and neighbors Jim and Stephanie Busby and their clan the "Bice Descendants"! And thanks to Joie for letting me go!

So tomorrow I may be back to the daily grind, but today I had the pleasure of marking the task"Climb Longs Peak" complete. Cool! Good thing it was on my list!

Posted by gcrgcr at August 29, 2005 8:33 PM

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