Getting Things Done is a philosophy and methodology propagated by David Allen and his book of the same name.
Cal Newport from Study Hacks seems to be a pundit on this topic related to students already, but I felt there was some scope for expansion on how to implement GTD for students. The problem: How can we stay as close to GTD (as not to abandon it’s principles) while adopting it for students?
The challenge I faced was getting my coursework into GTD. A course lasts a whole semester, and keeping projects for each course defeats the point of having “best possible outcomes” as projects, since some courses are empty sometimes, while others are loaded with 4 different assignments.
My solution includes 3 major points of focus:
- Areas of Responsiblity
- Better Reviewing
- Converting Tasks to Agendas
Areas of Responsiblity
One thing that seems to cause trouble for students trying to implement GTD is the concept of projects. A course can’t really be classified as a project, as it doesn’t really define itself as an outcome. Nevertheless we’d like to tie those things together.
In fact, it’s one of the most forgotten principles David Allen has devised himself!
The solution to this are areas of responsiblity. Instead of grouping tasks into projects with outcomes, we can construct a new layer that sits atop projects, which are areas.
An area is some part of your life you need to take care of. My areas include Blogging, University (an area for each course), Family, Political Activites.
I now sort my projects and tasks into these areas. This is a huge help as I can see what’s uniersity work pretty quickly, especially using Things for Mac, a fairly new application that seems to fit my needs and actually supports areas of responsibility.
Weekly Assignments
In Newport’s version of GTD for students, he outlines a concept of putting weekly assignments into an own project. While a agree with that, we can take it further with areas. Newport argues that GTD only allows you to see your next actions, thus leaving out all the other tasks for an assignment.
I personally don’t practice GTD like that. I usually allow for 2 to 3 tasks to be visible at a time, so I have an idea of my roadmap.
Create assignments as projects, and sort those projects by areas.
But what about ‘just studying’
Another flaw I see with GTD in the academic field is it’s lack of support for habits. When you go through a semester, many courses probably won’t have direct assignments and just require you to study up the book, read and understand lecture material. I always wondered whether I should add a task like “study maths” to my actions.
Answer: No. The trick here is to break up study work into blocks. I usually have a lecture, a reading assignment and a lab session tied together as one learning unit per week. I usually enter this study “chunk” as a project and put in things like “Read pages 44-67″, “Solve exercises 4 and 5″ or “Memorize slides”. The word study really is very fuzzy. I should note that by “read” I don’t just mean normal reading, but that’s for a different post.
Better Reviewing
Another problem people face with GTD is reviewing regularly. They tend to not look at their lists regularly, or simply forget. 2 remedies:
Setup a calendar item to review coursework just the day after a course. Depending on the course, a weekly look at pending work will suffice. I usually look at each course once a week. I find it convenient to do so a day after I had the lecture of that course.
Use the review to organize as well: The problem with a lot of assignments are that they still require further breaking down. Taking 10 minutes after class or during the next-day review to simply organize a single assignment will give you a lot of peace of mind.
Break down coursework into manageable tasks. Then add them as actions to your projects (for assignments) and areas (for general studying and ‘keeping up’).
Converting Tasks to Agendas
The single most important lesson I could give anyone about GTD is to make as many tasks into agenda items as is possible.
If something isn’t scheduled, I don’t really do it. Thus, I usually spread an assignment out across my calendar as soon as I have it defined.
Note that I don’t do this for the rest of my daily tasks. I usually look at my lists in the morning, deciding what will get done today. Coursework is different. Often, the material needed to study is clear far ahead of time, so I just fill it into my calendar as soon as I can.
Big time helper.
Those are just a few of my practices relating to GTD. What are your favorite GTD hacks?
June 19th, 2008 at 11:50 am
To implement GTD as a student you might try out this web-based application:
Gtdagenda.com
You can use it to manage your goals, projects and tasks, set next actions and contexts, use checklists, schedules and a calendar. A mobile version is available too.
As with the last update, now you can add or invite Contacts, and share your Projects and Contexts with them.
Hope you like it.
June 19th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
Hey Dan, that’s a great site. I think it really doesn’t matter much what software you use, but it’s important to have one that adapts well and just suits your needs.
Then you should stick with it. I’ve seen my share of GTD apps, and Things is the only one which hasn’t shown me a missing feature or behaviour I don’t like. Let’s hope it sticks…
June 20th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
I’ve discovered that one big change that academic types have to make to the off-the-rack GTD setup is to the idea of Contexts. Allen tends to tie each context to some kind of physical location — “phone”, “online”, etc. But I’ve found as a prof, and I think this is true for students as well, that academics have contexts that are not physical locations but more like states of mind. “Grading”, for example, is one of my contexts in my GTD. I can do grading basically anywhere, but I do have to get myself into a certain “zone” in order to do it.
I would think that “Studying” might be a context, rather than a project or action, for students, because the physical environment doesn’t matter so much as the psychological environment.
June 20th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
Robert,
I very much agree with that. Personally, I’m not a huge user of contexts, I prefer Areas.
I use contexts sparingly, and studying isn’t one of them - I have a “reading” context, and a “study” context which does refer to my actual study, which might be in the library, my own study or my room at my parents’ place.
I will refine my own system for the next semester and see how the course is structured. Depending on that, tasks such as “by-heart” or “solve exercises” emerge. Studying needs to be broken down at least one further level.