Implementing the full capturing process can take up to six hours or more.David Allen
In his book, David Allen mentioned that it took an entire twenty hours with one person
; it took me more than a year to “complete” this initial capturing process. And when I say “complete”, it’s an overstatement, but It’s time to call it done and ship it out.
My piles of “stuff” are beyond reasonable – I cannot move around anymore – and I am not getting anything done1. Worse even, I cannot find things in this pileup of stuff and I am wasting so much time digging here and there to find the document I am looking for. As far as my productivity is concerned, this is a disaster indeed. That is probably why David Allen recommends create a [two whole days, back to back] block of time to initialize this process
. First, you capture everything, and immediately after, you process them… This is a good enough reason to call it done and move to the next step.
Another reason to stop pilling my stuff in my IN – beyond the lack of space in the latter2 – is that I need to move forward with my doing things. Since that fateful summer, CogitActive has been placed on hold. I have done absolutely nothing podcast-related (the whole point of this adventure; see The CogitActive Saga); I have barely managed to keep up with this blog. Barely indeed! I didn’t keep up with WordPress and the nine main releases that were released since. Not to mention the three new themes that came with them. Are they any good? How do they compare to Twenty Seventeen?
During the past three years – oh my god, three years! – I could not be on the top of things. The hike in my hosting provider prices came out of the blue (see Is the hike in SiteGround prices justified?). At the time I was wondering Is SiteGround still the best option in terms of shared hosting?
Two years (and two automatic renewals) have passed and I did not answer – or even take the time to inquire about – this question. Fortunately, their price has been stable since. That cannot be said about my registrar. The recent upset with the latter (see gandi.net – disappointing and untrustworthy!) had the effect of an electric shock. I can no longer afford – both literally and figuratively – to let things happen; I need to get back in complete control.
That is why, I am calling it done. I know that the next two steps, namely clarifying and organizing, will probably take as much time; still, I am optimistic and I hope that by the end of the year, I will have CogitActive back on track. In the meantime, I will share with you my implementation and personalization of the GTD method.
The beauty of GTD – in addition to helping you accomplish more – is that nobody is stopping you from hacking it to suit your own needs and applying it to your life in your unique ways. As you may have probably guessed, my contexts are not @computer, etc., but my time blocks!CogitActive
1 As alluded to in Cleaning the Augean stables, I have already started to process my my job-related stuff. On that front, things are getting done! Unfortunately, the same cannot be said with respect to CogitActive. ^
2 I am not talking about an in-tray on my desk, but of my whole apartment. The correct word to describe this mess would be heap: an untidy collection of objects placed haphazardly on top of each other. ^
