The GTD weekly review is a great habit. Almost everywhere I read about the importance and effects of regular reviews. In my everyday activities I notice the effects too -  amidst the chaos  of everyday life, the payoff of  committing myself to conducting regular reviews results in having the appropriate  response to whatever comes up.

I also read about the struggles we (can) have. A recent lecture at my children’s school helped me understand why I struggle and how I learn new habits.

Learning new habits

A habit is something we all have plenty of. Learning a new one takes time. Whatever it is. Yes even “bad” habits take time to learn.

Children are quick to learn. And like me need time to make what they have learned really their own.

It takes something like 4 weeks to acquire a habit.

Every day or week, diligent repetition of a task helps make that task a habit. And the learning continues. It takes something like a year to make a habit a part of me. A skill. Good reason to continue until that habit reaches a level of perfection.

Music lessons and the music of GTD

My children each play their own instrument. Charlotte the violin, Judit cello and Thomas piano. The daily rhythm of playing is important to establish. Weekly lessons support the practicing habit.

Orchestra and ensemble rehearsals, regular concerts and just playing bring joy to music. That moment of concentration. Those nervous moments waiting. Deep breath… One. Two. Three. Four. Pure music to the ear. And the applause! Wow what a feeling.

And that is just me as father listening! The hardest thing I love to do, is watch the children growing up.

We now have summer concerts at the end of the school year. Later in the year Christmas street concerts are not only great fun, but raise extra pocket money too.

Goals and projects making music

“Papa! I want to play every weekend at the Market!”

I ask: What do you need to do to get there? When can you play? Who do you want to play with? Which instrument? How many songs do you know? Which songs are fitting for Christmas or just fun to listen to? Which piece are youM going to learn next?

Focusing on goals like these means we often forget that we are learning about habits. And suddenly habits become something else. Its just about having fun!

GTD is like making music.

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Editor’s Note:  One of our new contributing cognitive scientists Jennifer George weighs in with a short post on procrastination and attachment.  Can anyone beside me relate to what she’s saying here?

 My fellow procrastinators and I are well acquainted with the mental drama that goes on as we torture ourselves about that important task left undone. If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that the thing we’re not doing signifies all sorts of icky emotions and unconscious ideas about ourselves and our lives.

In our more lucid moments, we can see that there really is nothing fundamentally different about playing GTA IV versus writing that paper that’s due tomorrow. Both activities involve synthesizing information, making decisions, and moving our hands and eyes to make the right things happen on our computer screen.

The real difference between the two is what Buddhists call “attachment” — the clinging, coveting emotions and beliefs we have about ourselves and the world, including pride, fear, and desire. In more modern terms, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy describes our habitual maladaptive thoughts as “cognitive distortions.” Both schools argue that examining our existing thought patterns and developing new, productive ones can help us reduce suffering and build more useful behaviors.

It may not be enlightenment, but next time you’re not doing something you’re supposed to, think about the attachments, emotions, and thoughts that are getting in your way. Remember that they are illusory and temporary, and try to squirm out of their grasp for a while

*cartoon from CoddledEgg Blog

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Kathryn Allen forwarded both of these videos to me and I thought they were wonderful. Thanks for sharing Kathryn!

Here’s a short clip from a brilliant little film called “Yellow Sticky Notes”:

If you want to see the entire short, please visit this site.

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Have you ever been getting ready for work in the morning and find that you have absolutely no idea if you’ve taken your vitamin (or washed your face, or some other repetitive task that you do every day)? It happens to me regularly, and it turns out there’s a reason.

According to Gary Marcus’s new book Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind, context is “one of the most powerful cues affecting our memory.” So, if you learn something in a classroom, you’re more likely to remember it in a classroom. If you smelled lavender while memorizing a list of words, lavender will help you recall them. (Study after study proves it.)

It turns out that the more contextual clues you have about something, the easier it is to remember. But that also means that the things we do most often, and have the most cues for, are strongest and tend blend into each other. That’s why I can’t remember to take my vitamin.

According to Marcus, “What we remember and what we forget are a function of context, frequency and recency…” Memory prioritizes. The things we’ve thought about recently are easiest to remember. This is the reasoning behind something like the Noguchi filing system, which organizes files according to how recently we’ve accessed them.

The brain works much like the Noguchi system. Says Marcus, “For our ancestors, who lived almost entirely in the here and now (as virtually all nonhuman life forms still do), quick access to contextually relevant memories of recent events or frequently occurring ones helped navigate the challenges of seeking food or avoiding danger.”
The solution is something pilots know: checklists help with repetitive tasks. Can you imagine flying every day for weeks at a time? Would you remember every step of the takeoff procedure?

When checklists aren’t practical, we need to arrange our lives to compensate for our weaknesses in memory. Take a look in my car’s glove compartment and my office desk drawer. You’ll find vitamins there.

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I’ve got a special treat for you this evening.  David recently presented GTD to the Hewlett Packard Corporation.  Following his presentation he took the time to sit down with Ian Griffin , an executive speech writer for the company.  Ian is also the author of the Professionally Speaking blog and that’s where this great podcast he’s done with David is hosted.

It’s Friday.  Take a break. Put your feet up, and indulge yourself for ten minutes while David talks about Getting Things Done…

By the way, great content like this - from more audio and video to articles, commentary, and even forums where you can get answers to your personal productivity questions - can be had with a GTD Connect membership.  In addition to the email newsletter subscription written personally be David Allen, there is an entire member’s only section of the DavidCo website that is reserved exclusively for GTD Connect subscribers.

As an extra bonus, here’s another podcast with David Allen - this one from the DonationCoder blog:  Part 1,  Part 2.

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Given the commentary of the past few days related to the expiration date issue experienced by users of Cultured Code’s “Things” application, I felt it was only fair to call attention to their post that allows them to fully express their side of the story.

The bottom line is that they’ve acknowledged the error and admitted that perhaps they  could have done a better job with the information that the expiration note provided (which is exactly what I suggested in my second post on the issue).

I’d call this one finished.  The software was repaired quickly, the company took responsibility for the problem and I think I’m the only one that’s any  worse for the wear in the general scheme of things.  That’s OK.  I’m reasonably tough and considering where I’ve worked in the past I’ve definitely  taken worse beatings…

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The Herding Cats Blog has a very interesting post on the difficulties of project management, even by people using GTD. Check it out and let us know if you have similar problems getting projects completed or if you’ve had rather more success avoiding invoking the “last minute rule” as a result of implementing a team-wide GTD strategy.

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A couple of the GTDtimes contributors sent this my way and thought that more people would find this amusing. The strip appears originally on the Comics.com site.

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A little bit of poking about today lead me to a curious discovery - what appears to be a very basic “To Do” list from Google - or at least from Google Mashups. While this is far from a GTD ready implementation of a task list, it nevertheless is interesting since it may be an indication that Google is finally starting to more towards launching a more fully featured task list or project management utility in the near future…

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Michael Sampson over at Effective Collaboration has a post that I found quite interesting.  Zen Habits is a very popular blog among the GTD community, however Michael, in a recent post, took exception to some statements that Leo made concerning GTD, its degree of complexity, and how he (Leo) has simplified the system.  What do you think?

The image is from a related post over at Zoomstart.com .

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