Archive for the 'GTD' Category


That Fresh Smell When You Travel

Thursday, August 7th, 2008

As a LifeHackDad, I get to travel a lot for work and the one thing that no one wants are stinky cloths when you get to your destination. This little trick I have been using for years and to me it really works.

In your suitcase put a new dryer sheet (of your preferred fragrance) to help keep your cloths smelling clean on the ride and hide the “used” smelling cloths on the way back home. I change out the dryer sheet about every month or so.

As a bonus to make it a little easier when I get home, I keep all the dirty cloths in a laundry bag, then its just one bag to take out of the suitcase for washing.

Hope this helps someone out!

Doing GTD to 2 minute music

Thursday, April 24th, 2008

One of David Allen’s key components of the GTD process is his 2 minute Rule, which basically states that if you pick up an item from your inbox, and you can do it’s next action in 2 minutes or under, do it right away.

Do it even if it’s not a real high priority because then it will be done and gone and not cluttering up your head.

This is a great rule, and very important to the success of doing GTD. My problem is that I’ve somehow started to stretch out this rule to 15 minutes. I think, “well, I can’t do it in 2 minutes, but I can do it in 15 minutes, so I might as well do it and get it done with.” The problem arises when I have too many of these “short” tasks, and they eat up my entire morning. Then I didn’t do the really important Next Actions and I feel horribly guilty and unproductive.

To remind me of how long 2 minutes really is, I googled “GTD 2 minutes” and ran across Christopher Schmitt’s blog article Two Minute Playlists for Getting Things Done. He plays songs that are under 2 minutes each while he’s working on his short actions to get rid of the need for a 2 minute timer.

There are quite a few songs that are under 2 minutes. I checked my current ITunes inventory of MP3s, sorted by time, and found the following gems:

  • Owen Wilson (from the Starsky and Hutch soundtrack) - Don’t Give Up on Us - 1:09
  • Beethoven - Symphony No. 9 (scherzo) - 1:16
  • Stone Temple Pilots - No Memory - 1:20
  • Green Day - Coming Clean - 1:35
  • Simon & Garfunkel - Feelin’ Groovy- 1:50
  • Nirvana - Molly’s Lips -1:53
  • Red Hot Chili Peppers - Right On Time - 1:55
  • Pixies - Tame - 1:56
  • Blind Melon - Skinned - 1:58
  • Third Eye Blind - Anything - 2:01 (close enough!)

Tomorrow I’m going to make a playlist and get motivated to the music to get through my short actions sooner.

Looking forward to hearing suggestions of more 2 minute or under songs!

Getting Things Done Cheatsheet: The Workflow

Saturday, March 3rd, 2007

Lifedev.net has a great refresher on GTD — for those who have not bought David Allen’s book yet.

“Getting Things Done (or GTD) is a system to free your mind of it’s resources and become more organized in the process. In short: it’s a way to become more productive and stress free, in one fell swoop. It’s a beautiful thing, really.”

http://lifedev.net/2007/02/gtd-cheatsheet-the-workflow/

read more | digg story