Getting Things Done for Fathers

My life sometimes feels a lot like a merry go round. I enjoy many aspects of my life, including family, work, hobbies and personal spirituality, but often feel like life spins by at an ever increasing speed. I seem to have to concentrate more and more to make sure I focus on the things that matter most and not miss the important events in life.

Early in my life, I read and embraced Dr. Stephen Covey's book ]The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, which really helped me determine my personal mission, organize around objectives and get priorities in my life straight. Concepts like "Begin with the End in Mind" and "Put First Things First" have become personal rallying cries. The Seven Habits literally revolutionized my life years ago.

But a couple of years ago, despite my best efforts, I found myself buried in a multiple-page to-do list that never seemed to get any shorter. In retrospect, I suspect it may have been the result of technology that now allowed me to have a work focus 24/7. Between family commitments and priorities, work demands, volunteer service and other issues, I had less time to be physically active and almost no time for my own mental and emotional fitness. I was drowning and I knew it, but I wasn't sure what to do about it.

About that time, a colleague at work recommended a book which, for me, like The Seven Habits, created a basic, fundamental change in the way I work and live. The book was Getting Things Done by David Allen. It has so impacted my life as a father, a husband, an executive, a manager, and a person who is trying to live healthier, that I felt a need to share what I learned with other fathers living in a hectic and demanding world.

The Basics of Getting Things Done

The underlying premise of Getting Things Done is to create a system where every task a person has to accomplish gets recorded systematically outside that person's brain so that his brain is freed up to think creatively and engage in things that are more important.

David Allen's GTD system focuses around five stages of workflow processing. These include:

Collecting. In this stage, every input that comes along - ideas, email, mail, messages, assignments, articles, etc. - is collected into one of several "buckets" that you identify. These might include a physical in box, voice mailbox, notepad, PDA or other device, and they must be emptied regularly. A big part of collecting is having effective tools for capturing all of these inputs, and that is where organizers, digital calendars and note takers and the like become even more important. Some GTD practitioners I know carry a small notebook or index cards in a pocket so that everything during the day gets captures, and that notebook or card stack becomes their most important "bucket."

Processing. In this phase, we take all of the inputs we collect and decide what to do with them. The GTD model suggests a few key questions and decision points. Allen's flowchart in Getting Things Done can be represented as:

• What is it? Is it actionable?
• If not, trash it, put it in a tickler file or put it in a reference file.
• If so, what's the next action? The next action is defined as the next physical, visible activity that needs to be engaged in, in order to move the current reality toward completion.
• Will next action take less than 2 minutes?
• If yes, do it.
• If no, delegate it or defer it.
• If it will take longer than 2 minutes, consider it a project (defined as requiring more than one action step) and put it in your project plans which will be reviewed for actions.

Organizing. After processing, the GGD model outlines a process for organizing to get the tasks accomplished. Allen suggests having a number of lists including

• A Project List where things that involve multiple actions are kept
• A Next Actions List(more like the traditional to do list) that is broken down by location (work, home, car, computer, phone) to help you structure your time
• A Someday/Maybe List for items that you may want to look at in the future but are not immediately relevant
• A Waiting For List for items that have been delegated to others or items on which you are waiting for someone else to take the next action
• An Agenda List for each person with whom you interact so that when you meet, you have an automatic agenda for the meeting

Reviewing. Finally, Allen suggests that all lists need to be reviewed weekly to ensure that tasks and projects are moving forward and to allow you to build tasks into your calendar and to prioritize.

Read more about Getting Things Done and how to apply these principles and practices in your family.