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Tradecraft: Welcome to the chronicle of my journey to perfect academic detective productivity

15 May 2007

Brief Note: Welcome to “Tradecraft.” This is a weekly section of The Education Detective that deals with tips and tricks of the trade. In this case, the “trade” is academics or any kind of at-home or freelance “knowledge work,” including writing, programming, design, and, of course, blogging. The “craft” here is personal productivity and organization. In other words, it deals with how to “get things done.” I know this series will apply to college instructors, but I also hope some of the information in this section will be useful to K-12 teachers, whom I know have all kinds of particular organizational and productivity needs.

Why am I writing this? Not only do I want to pass on tips and tricks I pick up in my travels, I also want to chronicle my own journey to greater productivity in hopes that it will provide some small measure of assistance to others who may be adrift in boats that are similar to mine.

Right now I’m working from home as a post-doc. I’m on the academic job market, but I’m also looking at lots of other options like finding more freelance research work or starting my own educational venture. In the course of this existence, I’m trying to do a lot of organizational stuff and self-promo stuff to get my name out there and provide anyone who wants to know more about me with information that is rich and enlightening. I also want to publish on my web site as much as I can about my thoughts related to educational policy and educational research issues.

The problem is much of this is self-directed. I do it at home while I’m distracted by tons and tons of home-related chores and tasks and projects including errands, laundry and shopping and cooking. I also have two young children, who provide endless opportunities for me to spend my time on their activities.

I need to be focused, organized, efficient and effective. I have to define concrete goals and take steps every day that bring me closer to those goals. I’m probably not the only one of us in this situation.

At the beginning of this year, I discovered a book/method/paradigm/movement called “Getting Things Done.” The book has the same title. It’s by a management consultant named David Allen. Those of us in the club call it “GTD” for short.

Before I send you off to read about it from a slew of useful websites, I want to say why GTD has attracted me and why I felt the need for it in the first place. Then I’m going to talk about just one aspect of GTD. GTD is basically a large and comprehensive collection of organizational and productivity tips and tricks for anyone who feels the need to be more organized, or is plagued by a feeling of inadequate productivity. As such, it’s hard to briefly synthesize, though many have tried. Instead, I’m going to write a series of posts about how I’m getting things done and living the life of the “New Rich.” This first one will be about getting started, specifically, filing.

But first, why did I become a GTD devotee? At the end of his book, David Allen discusses the psychological basis of being organized and productive and he really nails it. When we think of tasks we want to do, or projects we want to complete, or goals we want to accomplish and we move from that first flicker of desire to something like an intention or plan to do something, we are basically making a promise to ourselves. We make commitments when we put something we want to do on a list or make mental notes that we’d really like to do something. These are commitments to ourselves. Every time we don’t accomplish something we’d like to do…every day that goes by with one of these tasks or projects or goals un-acted upon, we feel bad. We feel inadequate, as though we have betrayed ourselves. Bad thoughts fill our heads. From those thoughts come feelings of ennui, fatigue, even depression and a creeping sense of hopelessness, as well as ill-health and a desire to eat a whole cartoon of ice cream and watch eight episodes of “Sex in the City” in a row. Tell me you haven’t felt something like that when you’ve periodically caught a mental glimpse of the vast array of unaccomplished tasks before you.

What’s more, in this condition you can’t concentrate on the big stuff: your goals and dreams. You can’t jump off the hamster wheel or quit the rat race, or even slow down or speed up because you can’t get a grip on the enormity of the challenge: the infinite necessary tasks and chores, the disorganized drawers, the cluttered spaces in your house and office, the tangled weeds of files in thickets of thorny unpaid bills, unread subscriptions and unfulfilled obligations.

That’s why you need GTD. GTD is not a religion or a cultish practice that requires slavish devotion. Stop procrastinating by telling yourself you don’t have time to organize or that you’ve tried lots of different filing techniques and organizational methods and, like diets, they all fail. Allen is just a mature person who has worked with lots of people — particularly busy executives — and he’s figured out what works.

Like a diet, if you want it to work, it’s got to be easy, even fun. Allen understands this. That’s why I recommend his book.

Which brings me to my own implementation of GTD and how to get started.

Allen says you start by collecting lots of “stuff.” First do a brain dump and write down everything that’s bugging you. I recommend getting a small pad with rip-off sheets (I used stickies) and writing each “thing” down on it’s own sheet and tossing all the sheets in a shoe box. This is a dump of EVERYTHING. So, you have to check out when soccer signups are? Write that down. You want to redo the bathroom? Write that down. Get an academic job? Write it down. Everything. Everything. Everything. Of course, making a phone call and getting a job are tasks of two vastly different scales. But I’ll get to that in a minute.

Now, collect all your stuff in piles around you. That includes things to read and review, things to file, things to act on. I bet they’re in piles around your home or office. They were for me. I brought them all together.

Then, for the reference items to file, file them. This was one of the great insights for me. Allen recommends getting a labeler. I totally agree. I bought a $30 Brother labeler and went to work. Actually I had so many labels to start with, I did use Microsoft Word and printed sheets of labels, but as you proceed, you’ll need a quick and dirty way to make file folders. Here’s the great trick: lose the hanging folders. Make lots of individual folders with specific labels. Instead of a hanging folder labeled “household appliances” or “manuals,” make a folder for the dishwasher and one or the stereo receiver. Instead of a hanging folder for “retirement,” make one for “Fidelity” or “IRA at TCW.” Don’t have a hanging file for your each of your kids, make an individual folder with “Isabel’s Birth Certificate,” and “Isabel’s braces.”

If this offends your sense of organization, swallow it. Remember, it’s got to be fast and easy. Quick access is the key and you only get quick access if its filed. Hanging folders are hard to create and if you don’t have the right one for a single item, it often goes unfiled. Individual folders! I can’t stress that one enough. Allen justifies it eloquently in his book. If you still doubt me, read his section on it. You also don’t need a fancy filing system, just labels and file folders. I spent a little bit more money and got the ones with reinforced tabs.

It’s great. Just do this one thing and you’ll be able instantly to put your fingers on stuff that you could never even think of finding before. Remember when someone said, “How do you use the delay feature on the stove?” And you said, Oh man, you have no idea where the manual is; it’s in the file drawer somewhere, or it’s in a pile somewhere. Now you’ll be able to access that information immediately. Start saying goodbye to organization-related stress.

Don’t worry too much at this point about purging or organizing within folders. Just do the obvious housecleaning like throwing away ATM receipts from 1990 from an account that’s defunct. You’ll probably find that with practically no mental effort, you’ll have gotten rid of piles and piles of paper. Shred anything with your personal info on it. Once you have the file system in place, you can organize and purge one topic at a time.

Now, some of the stuff from your brain dump was not reference material to file. Instead, it was actionable tasks or projects. A lot of it was stuff to keep for future reference. That’s the stuff you filed. Now you have a lot of stuff you have to do. You will get to work making lists. Lists are made up of tasks, projects and contexts. I’ll explain that more in the next post.

For now, you have some reading and browsing to do.

Dave Allen’s website (DavidCo)
GTD the book
43 Folders — “is Merlin Mann’s site about personal productivity, life hacks, and simple ways to make your life a little better.” It’s named after the idea of the “tickler” file in GTD. It’s not updated very often, but it has the essential GTD links in it. Start with this entry: “Getting Started with GTD.” Click through all the links at the bottom of the article, especially 43Folder Wiki, and you’ll thank me that you did.

Now, you might start to notice a trend towards geekiness here and you’ll start to realize who my peeps are, but there’s a “lifehack” personal productivity movement out there in the technosphere and here are two of its nodes:

Lifehack.org — This one tends to be Mac-centric

Lifehacker — this one is ecumenical, or even slightly more PC oriented.

There are a ton of personal productivity sites. The following are not as good, in my opinion, as the ones I’ve just listed, but they have nuggets:
lifedev
zenhabits — Every Tuesday is GTD tip day at Zen Habits
unclutterer
Ririan Project

And here’s a list from Zen Habits of 50(!) productivity blogs. (And not one of them is especially for teachers, instructors or academics.) I’m just passing them on to you. I don’t necessarily recommend any of them.

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Tradecraft: Welcome to the chronicle of my journey to perfect academic detective productivity

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