Using two systems for GTD

Posted by Rafal | Filed under Productivity, gtd

Most people lives have two main facets. First is the home area and second is the workplace area.
When implementing GTD one of the first elements I stumbled upon was making a decision whether to keep two separate systems or just one.

This may appear a non issue for some people but for others including me it was not such clear cut.

General recommendation is that single system is the way to go. This was the route I’ve taken first so a had all my work and home projects in one place, all the actions were with me etc. Although this worked reasonably ok after the initial period I’ve decided to abandon this approach.

Why

There were couple elements that influenced that.

  • I would need to carry all my stuff everywhere even though I would not be able to do it.I do realise that having next action all the time gives opportunity to knock off couple items while waiting in the queue or before appointment. Yet I really prefer not to mix work and personal stuff and keep a firm separation between both.
  • Everything in my system would have to be in paper. My workplace would not allow to sync company info to non-company equipment. This would be quite a burden as electronic organising is a better approach for my work tasks. Sometimes i find this lockdown a pain but mostly I like it. There  are no regrets that I might be doing something for my work when I’m at home.
  • I could go in the direction where all my stuff would live on my work computer but again this would not be best. First of all I’m not be able to access my stuff after the work hours. Also we are constantly reminded that work equipment including email etc is for business purpose. Then I would not be comfortable keeping my personal stuff there as it would be backed up to company servers and would be available for other people to access. Personal stuff is personal and it should stay this way.
  • At the time of single system I still used a top level divider to separate home items from the work items. So regardless of the approach you take for your GTD system the tendency for separate home/personal stuff from work. This is mostly achieved by using sub contexts or splitting master lists into two.  I think unless you work for your self there is no way  you will avoid having some sort of separation between what needs to get done at home versus at work.

Strategies

With two systems there is some additional work needed to maintain both. It’s important to develop some strategies which would allow you to make both systems work appropriately.

  • To make sure things are moving as desired so need to accept that weekly and daily reviews are duplicated as I have to review both systems. Fortunately it doesn’t take all that long for my personal stuff. 
  • Proper use of inboxes and ubiquitous capture allows me to dump any relevant ideas and then pass them into my work or home systems for further processing and organisation. This way I’m not worried that I’m missing on things. Because my personal system is always with me I jot down any ideas straight into it. When I have some work items to note I just email them to my work address.
  • A good reminder system. It’s not unusual that I need to call someone or go somewhere during the work hours. To make sure that I don’t miss that I use a dual approach. I make a note in my filofax and also I add it into my Google calendar. This way each morning when reviewing calendar I will make a mental note about the task. Also Google will send me a sms (text) reminder once the action is due.
  • Train yourself to focus on a location/context you’re in. If at work don’t focus on home stuff and vice versa. Although in some cases a change of environment can have very beneficial effect.

Setting up two systems my not be the best option for everyone. As usual it’s a matter of personal preference and situation. In my case it appears to work reasonably well.

Permalink | Comments (View Comments) | Apr 21, 2010

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