How I learned to stop worrying and love my schedule

Personally, I had read and implemented much of David Allen's Getting Things Done principals, but found that the methods either weren't right for me, or I was "special" and had too many projects to manage using the GTD system.

I listed every task I needed to do, every "open loop" and noted my @nextactions. What I ended up with was a very long list! This list was and is a bit intimidating. Thoughts of "Where should I start?" and "This sure is taking a lot of time." Were common. My next actions number in the 20's - my total list around 160. It takes a long time just to read through them all. There seemed to be a missing link that made me abandon the system for my old system - Pick my 5-6 most important tasks of the day and do them.

With that said, Peter Flaschner from To-Done may have provided the GTD missing link I was looking for. Scheduling all those tasks! (That's a picture of his calendar). You may ask why I didn't schedule my tasks before. Well, I may have misread, but I thought Mr. Allen's book said not to schedule tasks that weren't meetings or something to that effect.

However, reading through the To-Done tip makes me want to give it the Getting Things Done system a try again. I had already gotten back to setting alarm reminders for my 5-6 tasks, but maybe the schedule would work better.

Link: How I learned to stop worrying and love my schedule.

I felt totally out of control. My next-action lists were long and my calendar was full, but I had no real idea where I was going.

Until I started using my calendar. REALLY using it. For some reason, I never made the leap from next-actions to SCHEDULING next-actions. As soon as I did that, calm returned, and productivity went through the roof.

I now schedule EVERYTHING. As a result, very little gets missed. I’m still using next-actions, but I’ve added the step of mapping them out on upcoming weeks. This way, I can relax, knowing that I’m going to get them done.

I don't really feel everything is out of control, but I do feel I have too much I want to do. So what do you think? Should I give the GTD system another go?