It’s been a while since I’ve posted here. I’ve been so busy trying to get stuff up at UMSource that I haven’t posted here. At first, I just thought I had too much to do, but now I think there is another reason. Basically I keep getting confused on the purpose of the two sites. This one, I believe, is more of a ‘personal’ site while UMSource is more of a commentary, thoughts about the UMC. Then my Doctoral blog is for thoughts/quotes, learnings, etc. from my doctoral program and the process there.

With that in mind I wanted to post on what has been keeping me ‘busy’ over the past week or so. Through a series of ‘odd’ happenings, I discovered David Allen’s concept of GTD (Getting Things Done) which has given me an odd type of hope. I can’t remember where I first saw the reference (perhaps 43Folders.com) but it has changed how I’ve been doing things.

GTD is a productivity system. I was a bit skeptical at first. The one thing that ‘hooked’ me is how GTD believes that all the ‘stuff’ rolling around in your head all the time steals mental energy from what you are presently doing. I could relate to that. I know that even when I’ve mentally placed something on the back burner it ends up taking energy from my current activities. I keep thinking about things that I should be doing, but I think about them when there is no way I can do it. I head out of town and of course remember that person I was going to visit…but now I cannot.

One of the activities of GTD is getting everything ‘out’ of your head and deciding what needs to be done with it. So basically you don’t have to keep thinking about all the ‘stuff.’ Once you write it down you can concentrate on the activity at hand because you know you can deal with what you wrote down later. The rest of the GTD is the process of making _sure_ that none of the stuff you wrote down falls through the crack.

Anyway….as of today I’m much more organized than I have ever been. For the first time…ever (I guess) I feel fairly good about what I did this past week. I wrote things down, put things on the calendar, filed things away where I could find them and actually did the things I was suppose to do! My INBox is at Zero and I’ve gone through all my mail. This is not the way I usually operate.

It has only been two weeks…and I keep figuring that at somepoint I will ‘fall off the wagon’ but I don’t want to. We will see. I’m posting here…in a way…to keep me accountable. Perhaps in the future I can post updates and also some of the tools I’ve found helpful.