My New Method for GTD Should Appeal to Inbox Zero Geeks

I get distracted when I get home from work. I’m easily amused and have the “Ooooooooooooooooooooohhh Shiny” mentality type of distraction. I don’t deny it. I don’t exactly revel in it either. By the time I actually get around to doing some of the things I need to get done, it’s late, I’m tired and cranky. If I put things off until the weekend we end up doing stuff and getting involved (”Is that a shiny over there?”) and so things once again get overlooked. I’m not sure I would actually sleep if I didn’t know for certainty that it helps save my job and my marriage. So what can I do about it?

Things I have tried with little or no success:
- Wall Calenders
- Sticky Notes
- Todo Tasks in Outlook
- Todo Tasks on Google
- GTD sites
- Web Calenders
Nothing so far seems to work for me - I’m mundane blind. When there is a shiny I don’t even notice the mundane.
Like many geeks, corporate types, etc. I live and die by e-mail. This is something I greatly increased in focus when I was a consultant. Now I can handle literally hundreds of e-mails a day, and I can’t stand a cluttered mail box. I normally use Gmail’s interface just through a browser, but I’ve been known to dabble in POP3 and IMAP access (the insanity!!). Mostly though I just use the web browser. It’s the same at work, home, and on the go. The one thing I hate most about my mail box, is when it get’s full. I hate a cluttered inbox, I hate coming back and seeing more then one page of e-mail waiting for me (which does happen if there is some strange reason I don’t check my email for two days).

So I stumble on the idea of combining these two things, hatred of e-mail clutter and a need to get motivated and GTD, so now I’m email my tasks to myself (and now Xie has joined into the game). The first thing when I went down this road is to send myself a daily list of tasks to do, well I tried that once in the past and that doesn’t seem to help. Neither do reminder services, since I easily dismiss them.
The format I use when I mail myself is TODO (task) - this forces me to stare at it every time I look at my e-mail. I’m hoping it will succesfully burn the task into my brain. When I actually complete the task it get’s archived, thereby saving me space in my inbox. Too many tasks and it will roll over to a second page, I would be highly annoyed if that happened. So essentially I’m going to be GTD by annoying myself.
Meh.
But it may work.
Related posts
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.


Add New Comment
Viewing 2 Comments
Thanks. Your comment is awaiting approval by a moderator.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Add New Comment
Trackbacks
(Trackback URL)
August 8, 2008 at 10:40 pm
[...] But it may work. Original From: My New Method for GTD Should Appeal to Inbox Zero Geeks [...]