GTD for Students is a mysterious thing: It works very well on it’s own, but hits it’s boundaries hard in the academic world. In fact, it works so well that it’s worth keeping for students.
In this post I’ll try to show you how you can implement GTD around a term paper assignment. While adapting GTD for students is admittedly a long process, it requires some special attention when you try to crank in a term paper into your next actions list.
As I’ve told you before, assignments need a lot of breaking down and thinking on your part before you can dig in.
That’s why I recommend breaking down a term paper into the following sub-tasks:
- Read Up on the topic
- Gather first sources.
- Read, copy, take notes.
- Draft arguments, ideas and think about the problem to be solved.
- Gather lots more sources supporting and contradicting your ideas.
- Create a rough outline.
- Fill out the outline by bulleting the arguments you wish to present.
- Write up on the arguments.
- Edit, rearrange, edit, edit…
That’s one route that was shown us at university. It’s material for a different post, so I won’t go into whether it’s a good way to write a paper. You get the general idea.
It now seems you have the subtasks of your project (e.g. “Write a killer paper”). Alas, I’m sure you might have tried this before, and failed.
My personal failure even after having outlined the route to my paper came up by unexpected turns while writing. Often, I’d think one way was the right way, until I had to stop and start over.
So what do you do to remedy this?
Set Ambiguous Steps: One real help for me was to setting ambiguous steps for my paper. What I knew was that my paper needed sources, an outline, arguments pro and contra, etc… A bad example would be if a step were defined as “Lookup Bohemian History” when my paper could turn out to be about Baltic history. Keeping the steps as open to the content as possible will keep you on track and creative at the same time. This probably contradicts the specific nature tasks in GTD should have, so keep it as specific as you can, given the topic, but open to changes.
Set Deadlines: Every step should now receive a deadline, hard-coded into your calendar. Set them while respecting a buffer in case things go awry, and you’ve just assigned due dates for your tasks.
Make longer papers an area of responsibility: I’m a fan of areas, so if your paper will take up 6 months of your life, consider it an area of responsibility. This allows you to create projects instead of tasks, for each step of the route. Your area might be My term paper while the projects are Find sources, Draft arguments and so on. The projects itself can contain content-specific tasks, e.g. Lookup Czech culture on Wikipedia or Borrow David Aaker’s Book on Marketing from Library.
Review very regularly: Sometimes a paper’s route gets lost down the road, and you start asking yourself what exactly you’re trying to write about. Keeping the goal of the paper well stated (in a mission statement, for example, that should find itself at the beginning of the final piece) in front of your eyes at all times is key. Review your tasks and roadmap every few days, making sure you’re on the right track.
Organize Information GTD-Style
Filing: When collecting sources for a paper, I usually allow them to flow through my normal Inbox system. I then file them into a file folder labeled with the paper’s working title. Within that folder, I usually place some separator pages to keep sources, my own notes and other items sorted neatly.
If I work on the paper, I pull up this folder. I have a corresponding folder on my computer.
So, in a nutshell,
- Keep your routine well layed-out and review it regularly so it stays functional.
- Make term papers areas of responsibility with projects for each step of the road.
- File information the way GTD, through an in-basket into your folder for the term paper.
What troubles you most about staying on top of a writing assignment?
September 23rd, 2008 at 1:49 pm
I am doing post graduate diploma in journalism.I am an aspiring writer and want to achieve every possible or impossible success in this field. Hence, above tips are extemely helpful for me. I am motivated now.