What’s it like to do GTD when you are an bioinformaticist? Here’s a community contribution from Fred, sharing about his recent week:
After a monstrous review today, I felt compelled to sit down and write this:
I started a new job a week ago squeaky clean. A review the Friday before got everything squared away. No loose ends.
It’s 14h20. I just finished processing my in baskets. I started three hours ago. The end isn’t in sight. Only the two minute rule has kept my head above water. My projects list has multiplied and multiplied again. 16h00. At last, the projects list is triaged. There are next actions in place for everything, and I’ve got everything out of my head. And now the light breaks through the end of the tunnel. My next action lists require a little more time than usual to prune back into form: ten minutes instead of five. That discipline held.
I snort as I scroll through my someday/maybe list. Even if something caught my eye, it would go straight back into someday/maybe. There’s only a finite amount of me. A quick flip through my project folders, both electronic and paper, rename one that has changed a bit, and it’s done.
A new job, a new project. A week of designing a new, rather large piece of software which will be implemented by me and me alone. Plus part of my new job description is to be a mathematical consultant for the life sciences department here. Folks used me for that when I was in another position here, when it wasn’t part of my job. Now the vultures are circling.
And there’s almost no stress. Everything that built up over the week got shoved into an in basket. Notes from my stream of consciousness as I designed and redesigned data structures in my head, new accounts on clusters and database servers, the Christmas present for my little sister, everything got tossed in a bin. Friday it would be reviewed, I knew, and it vanished from my mind without a trace.
And Friday came, and it was time to pay the piper, but even then, no stress. It’s a review, one of a string stretching through every week for six or seven years. The pile I pulled things off of was larger. The project list was longer. But it was just a review, taken one step at a time.
For another look inside Fred’s brain, read his respond to Toning Up Your Thinking Muscles.