Changing up contexts

While completing my weekly review last week I made a fairly radical change (for me) to the way my lists are managed.  As I reviewed my @office list, which had extended to over four pages and was not pleasant to work from, I made the decision to change things up and split the contexts.  It's not something I would normally do.  The @office has been working well for me for a couple of years so this was a pretty big step, but it was worth it.  My workload has been steadily increasing over the past 6 months and one office list just isn't quite cutting it anymore.  So I now have 3:

- @office

- @websites

- @minutes

These are the contexts that make the most sense given what I have on my plate right now, but I am giving myself the freedom to change them up as things shift around, and return to just one list if things calm down.  I already feel much more comfortable and more engaged with my lists and managed to get an action done yesterday afternoon that had been on the list for rather too long!

 

It took my review to get me thinking at that higher level for long enough to realise that I needed to make the change. The review is such an important part of my GTD journey; it gives me the chance to hold back the world for an hour every week and check that everything is on track.  I often find I am my most productive in the hours after the review, secure in the knowledge that what I am doing is what I should be doing, and what I am not doing can wait.

Working on Areas of Focus

The 20,000 ft level, which David Allen terms Areas of Focus, is a really interesting and useful area to engage with for many reasons.  I was working with GTD for about 6 months before I turned my attention to this area, but I have maintained it fairly well ever since and try to review both my professional and personal Areas of Focus once a month.  I keep them in a mindmap (using a free software called Freemind) and find that they are much more comfortable to review and work with in this format.  My Areas of Focus give me an overview of areas I want to maintain and reviewing them regularly allows me to keep a good balance of projects within my system and check that no area I deem important is neglected.  This doesn't mean that I have a project for every area all of the time, but it does remind me to check in and make sure the area is reviewed for any projects or actions that I might need to add to the system. 

I recently embarked upon a project to write a statement about each of my Areas of Focus, personal and professional, following a piece on the David Allen Company Forums by one of the coaches, Julie Ireland.  The idea is to envision success and write about how it would look and feel.  I thought it would be good to share my first statement here.  This is for one of my professional areas and it was great to go for wild success without any inhibitions:

I am working efficiently and proactively for the department making my scientists' lives easier. They feel confident that they can give me tasks and know these will be completed without fuss. My office is tidy but comfortable and an excellent workspace to complement my GTD system. The office is welcoming and my colleagues feel comfortable in asking for my help. The stationery area is tidy and items are well arranged and easy to find. I enjoy my work and manage my hours and workload to ensure that my health remains good and I have a good work/life balance.  

I felt really good after writing this and it has given me a feeling of greater purpose in my work.  I am looking forward to taking the process forward with my other areas over the coming weeks and months.

Organising my personal life

I just read a really great article by Augusto Pinaud on GTD Times, entitled "When you feel like you are losing control & lacking perspective."

It resonated with me particularly as I have really struggled with implementing my GTD system at home. At work I have found implementation has fitted well into my professional life and made an enormous difference to the way I organise myself and keep track of my commitments. However, I have found rather a barrier in my home implementation. I have tried to bring my ideas home and in some areas it has worked (for example, I no longer have an large pile of paperwork cascading across the dining table), but the sense of ease that I have with my professional work (most of the time) has been hard to come by at home.

The fact that Augusto also found it difficult to bring GTD into his personal life has allowed me to be less hard on myself and given me a spur to work at it more. Let the journey continue!