About the personal effectiveness of the programmer, or How to focus on the most important, not forgetting everything else

Introduction

Up to a certain point in my life, I did not think about any self-organization. All a small number of student (graduate, junior-developer's) cases were placed in the head, it was recalled at the right time, and what was not remembered was unlucky. Marriage, repairs in the apartment, the birth of the first child, the change of three places of work - all this somehow managed to keep in memory. But, as they say, the farther to the store, the higher the rate on the loan. At some point, I had the feeling that I was constantly engaged in “extinguishing fires” at work, at home, in graduate school: I failed a term for a working task, did not recall a trip to the doctor with a child, reached the last one with booking tickets to hotels summer vacation ... About any hobbies and enjoyment of life out of the question and did not go.



The workflow also looked like juggling with burning kittens: I write code — an Outlook notification pops up — I immediately rush to read and study the incoming letter — the manager calls to remind you of the order — I put everything off, frantically searching for a letter among hundreds of similar ones in the Inbox. I found it - I did it, I returned to the code with the thought “Damn, what did I do here?!!?”. You can forget about deep immersion in tasks. And despite the fact that, due to the specifics of the company where I worked, I did not have access to the Internet in the workplace. Otherwise, I think, I would not return to the code.



Once the universe took pity on me, and visiting friends I stumbled upon the book "Time Drive" by Gleb Arkhangelsky. From the first pages stuck on it - these are the answers to my questions to myself from the series “Where to run and what to do?”. From that moment on, the era of self-organization began in my life (it sounds very pathetic, but it is).

I did not manage to build the system on the basis of “Time Drive”. In my opinion, because Arkhangelsky in this book overviews the topic of self-organization, without going into specifics: they say, there are to-do lists, here are motivational techniques, here are the rules of behavior. As a result, I could not isolate a single “do it once - do two” class system. After an intense search for materials, reading and trying to adapt what I read to my life, I liked David Allen's Getting Things Done (GTD) most of all.



I will not describe GTD; there are more than enough materials and reviews on this methodology. You can read:

• Wikipedia ;
• A good article about personal experience of the transition to GTD ;
• a brief description of the ideas of GTD in pictures ;
• but best of all is the original source in high-quality translation .

I will talk about my own experience of adapting the methodology to life, about the following stages of the organization after the introduction of the methodology and the results of its application.

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GTD Application Experience

To begin with, I’ll tell you what GTD stuck with me and in what form.

Inbox / Baskets

Making the right baskets makes your head feel great. My favorite feature is the Quick Entry window in Doit.im or MyLifeOrganized.





Quick Entry in MyLifeOrganized





Quick Entry in Doit.im



You should not hope that the idea that came to your mind while writing the code will live there longer than five minutes. Shortcut - quick recording - return to work. The state of the stream is broken minimally.



E-mail is decomposed into folders. I leave nothing in the Inbox by the end of the day. I made a simple hierarchy of folders for projects, plus folders for letters, which contain materials for the tasks, and letters that are waiting for an answer. Several times a day I check my mail, put everything in folders. No notifications and pop-ups.

Many services (Doit.im, Wunderlist, Evernote) have the ability to send emails to a specific email address, after which they appear in the Inbox. This is a great thing to include e-mails in your system. Sent a letter - and in the process of disassembling Inbox, you make a decision on it, for example, you convert it into a task, and the accompanying information is already transferred to the task from the letter. I’m tracking letters for which I’m waiting for an answer: when sending, I put my address in BCC, and then in the business system I mark the task for this letter as “Expected”.



I collect papers in a separate tray on the table, and for all receipts and bills I keep a separate folder. I went to the bank (or to the Internet bank) - and paid for everything with one batch.

The calendar

To add an appointment to the calendar is an alphabet. It is also good to write into the calendar the triggers for starting projects, for example, one week before the end of insurance for a car, to put an event for the whole day “Do insurance”.



When viewing the calendar for this day, the project “Insurance for a car” is started and some actions on it. General calendars with his wife help a lot: various family events, school trips, sports competitions, trips to doctors and all that are recorded there. When reviewing the calendar for a week or a month you can clearly see where there are free slots.



It is useful to record in the calendar all kinds of maintenance activities. For example, if admins send a letter that remote access or version control servers will not be available in such a period, it’s worth noting that at this time you don’t have to rely on work from home.

Projects and Next Actions

I managed to build a system for myself only after the second (or third) thoughtful reading of the book on GTD and the realization of what Allen means by project and why you need a list of projects. After that, things went much easier.



The list of projects and the list of actions on them are excellent tools for controlling the turnover and its execution. I often experienced a slight surprise when, in the rhythm of ordinary life, I looked at the list of projects and found there things that had already fallen out of my head, but nevertheless required attention. A list of actions allows you to work, as they say, on the machine: opened and went to click puzzles one after another.



I like to bring multi-way development tasks into projects. Sit with a pencil and paper, work through the task and create a mindmap, and then convert it into a chain of specific actions (set up a stand, modify such a functional, make changes to the database, etc.).

Someday / maybe

The very existence of such a list is an excellent antidepressant. If you need to do something, but you don’t want to - then there (to this list) is his way. The main rule is to view it at least once a month. Somehow it turns out that some of the points are fulfilled, and more often, they are already irrelevant.

I have a separate section in this list - all sorts of postponed ideas on refactoring, optimization, refinement of projects in which I participate. If a miracle happens and sparseness is formed in a usually tight schedule, it can always be filled with works from such a list.

Additional listings

Allen recommends making lists for any convenient (and even better inconvenient) occasion. And it’s not for nothing that it can even translate creative tasks into quite a routine work. I will list some of the lists that I keep for myself.

• Movies, music, books. I read the review of the film, if they recommend it - I put it on the list. Before the weekend I looked into it, chose, downloaded - family leisure is provided. Similarly with music and books.
• For departure to the hacienda is actively used list "Take to the country . " It acquires special relevance in the summer, when the family moves to the country and throughout the week there are requests like “bring a blue jacket”, “when you go, grab a green typewriter” or “buy us hundreds of things for the weekend”.
• Non-urgent purchases. If we spend the day off at Auchan / IKEA / OBI, then with maximum benefit.
• Regular payments: rent, telephone, courses and sections for children, sending meter readings, etc. - are designed as regularly recurring tasks. You remember about them only when you need to pay.
• Lists to collect items. During this year, I visited corporate trainings several times, and the list that I made in advance (which was replenished during the first trip) helped me not to recall feverishly what else should be taken. A similar situation with the lists of things for the holidays.

Regular review

I managed to spend a full regular review of everything accumulated over the week (text and dictation records, photos, notes in a notebook, papers in a tray) two times during the whole period of GTD practice. It is very long and tiring. Therefore, I understand everything step by step. Once a week (Monday morning), I sit down for half an hour and clean up the current tasks, making a plan for the week. Even such a brief overview allows you to keep in mind the general picture of current life and balance efforts. Everything else understands, frankly, from time to time.

Areas of focus

At the moment this is the most useful tool for me. When you make a list of what you want to pay attention to during the year, and regularly look at it, it is a great push to get to do these things.



At the same time, it is not necessary for the wording to be effective, just to mark something like “exercise twice a week”, “calling parents more often” may be quite enough. Compiling such a list of New Year Resolutions is a great lesson for the New Year holidays!

Implementation Results

Immediately I will note this point (and, as I recall, Allen mentions it in his book): one of the main bonuses (if not the most important) from the introduction of the system is that you stop worrying about the unfinished business, because you are not trying frantically to remember what you need to do. All that I can do, but I don’t do, is externalized, and this can be returned at any time - this awareness calms and gives confidence. The fact that things may not be done at the same time is another song (they have not been done before, and no one died of it).



It is very useful from time to time to look at the whole picture of your life, your affairs. First, it gives confidence that nothing is missing. Secondly, it motivates to redistribute efforts between different areas (work, sports, family). In the working race, the focus from other areas may get off: with intensive work, I repeatedly began to skip workouts, spend less time with my family, and as a result, after a month or two, a slight depression began. This regular review allows you to come to your senses and distract from the madness of everyday work.

What not to do

At the end of the description of my GTD experience, I’ll share how-NOT-to recipes for those who decide to implement the methodology.

• No need to grab powerful tools (like OmniFocus or MyLifeOrganized). The best tool for a beginner is the one he has at hand. And the simpler, the better. Only by testing the method with simple tools, you can understand what you need and what is best for you, and then consciously choose a more complex tool. I spent a lot of time choosing tools and migrating data between them. At some point, I even began to think that I would rather have done some work in the old system than I spent the time on transferring them to the new one.
• No need to scrupulously follow the procedure. Do not push yourself into the Procrustean bed of the procedures described. GTD is not a dogma, it is a specification, a set of basic principles. Implementation is determined individually. It seems to sound like a replica of Captain Obvious, but several times I drove myself into the trap of the detailed procedure to the detriment of common sense. Performing a full regular review before two in the morning clearly should give way to healthy sleep priority 
• Less perfectionism. No need to try to build a single coherent system, all parts of which would be transparently interconnected (for example, to keep all lists in one application that would integrate with the calendar, etc.). I also spent a lot of time and effort on this. As a result, the whole thing ended with the fact that part of the lists is maintained in one application, part in the other and something else exists on paper. The main thing that should be done is that these lists should not overlap; each entry should have a clearly defined place.

What's next

As I wrote above, after installing the system "on the rails", a fairly calm (sometimes relaxed) state came. It led to the fact that I did only those tasks from the list of Next Actions that were suitable for the deadline or that I liked more at the moment. All other tasks and hung on this list for weeks.

Autofocus

I can dig up such debris with the help of the Mark Forster Autofocus system. Forster has released several versions of these systems, I most liked (as the simplest) the latest version, which is called - Final Version. The algorithm is as follows:

1. mark the topmost task in the list;
2. scan the list and find the task that you would like to perform in front of the marked one; celebrate it;
3. scan the list again for the task you want to do before the last flagged one; repeat this step until you find such tasks;
4. perform selected tasks, starting with the last marked.

For several such passes, attention is given to all tasks on the list, and as a result, the list is cleaned.

Focus and flow

At some point, I realized that, despite all my notes and well-functioning baskets, I could not concentrate on my work. In addition to internal distractions (ideas, memories, desires to check email, Facebook, news, etc.), constantly something from the outside tears away from work - questions from colleagues, phone calls, new letters. After a distraction, it is quite difficult to restore the context of what you were doing in your head.



The way out was found in the use of Pomodoro Technique (this technique got its name thanks to the kitchen timer in the form of a tomato). This is a fairly simple way to organize work at intervals: 25 minutes of continuous work, 5 minutes break. After four such cycles, a break of 15 minutes is made. During the execution of the "tomato" can not be distracted by extraneous, otherwise the "tomato" is interrupted and not counted.



That one really rocks. I have been working on this scheme for about four years now, and it has become a daily tool. The positive effects are obvious.

• During one interval, you are drawn into the task and find yourself in that cherished state of “flow”: you are fully focused on the work you are doing, everything else fades into the background, time flies by. I noticed such a thing: even if bedlam (calls, conversations) are going around, all the same, with proper effort, the focus appears and all external noise is filtered out.
• The scheme successfully combines work and rest. During short breaks, you can warm up, and the context of the task to be performed is still in your head. During a long break, you can do some non-working task (find something on the Internet, call), or just chat.
• A sensible attitude appears to the external “inbound”: mail is checked at your free time, notifications are disabled; Calls and questions are answered with a counter-proposal “let's discuss this in ... minutes, if it is not urgent." The main thing - do not forget to return to this.
• Some assessment of the day appears (how many “tomatoes” have been accumulated), and this also motivates you to focus on work tasks, the competitive moment works.

Separately, it is worth saying about the moments when you absolutely do not want to work. For me, this is perfectly normal at times. Maintaining an intensive working regime for a long time is worth a lot. There are such activities and activities, after which all that I want is to fall and forget. And, quite possibly, you need to really give yourself a breath. But often it is just bouts of laziness.



In both cases, a good way to get yourself back to work is to do some small things: take out the papers on the table, clear the files in folders, find something you need on the Internet (not at work), etc. After two or three such tasks you enter into working condition and you can take on something more serious.

Instruments

I divide the tools for the organization into two types: for operational information and for archival. Accordingly, the requirements for them are different: the operational tool must be fast, easy, synchronize with the phone and work like a clock. The archive tool can be forgiven for the brakes, slow synchronization and inconvenient interface - the main thing is that the data is not lost and the search works.

The calendar

Since I am sitting tight on an iPhone, I use Apple iCloud and a calendar in it. Everything suits me, especially the opportunity to share the calendar. As I already mentioned, it helps a lot with family planning. For a while, used the Google Calendar - also good. In the amount of functionality that I need from the calendar, these two services are identical.

Task Management Services

For a while, I rather successfully used the same Apple iCloud Reminders. Just lists and nothing else. But appetite comes with eating, and with experience, there is a need for different groupings of tasks, creating their hierarchy, indicating dependencies, etc.



I liked the two services the most: Doit.im and MyLifeOrganized. Doit.im is a Chinese copy of the excellent program Things, which unfortunately exists only for Mac and iOS. It has a fairly straightforward GTD implemented (reflects all artifacts: inbox, projects, list of next actions, deferred tasks) and added everything that was missing Things: linking tasks to time, subtasks, clients for various platforms and a web interface.





Doit.im web interface



I'm currently using MyLifeOrganized. This is a very advanced outliner. Tasks can be built into a hierarchy with a virtually infinite level of nesting, there is support for projects, contexts, folders. Context support has one very cool feature: contexts can be included in each other. For example, I have a “Computer” context (for tasks that do not care what computer to do) and various contexts “DomComputer” and “OfficeComputer”. The “Computer” context is included in both of these contexts, and I see tasks from it both at home and in the office.



Tasks can be grouped into folders, and I grouped them into annual areas of focus. This is very convenient for the review: you fall into the folder and you can immediately see what is going on in this direction as a whole.





Desktop client MyLifeOrganized



Both in that and in the other service, as I wrote above, there is an excellent means of maintaining focus at work — a window for quickly entering a task and placing it in the Inbox section.

reference system

I carry materials on current projects with me on a flash drive that can distribute itself over Wi-Fi (Kingston Wi-Drive, this choice is due to the use of the iPad).



As an archive system, I use Evernote. Several times I tried to equip it as a system for operational information (and the creators of Evernote position it), but every time after a couple of days I returned to the proven Doit.im. Brakes, slow synchronization, not too convenient interface. This is an excellent tool for archival storage of information, but not an operational tool.

Work with Pomodoro Technique

In the workplace on a Windows machine, I use Focus Booster - beautiful and with minimally necessary functionality.





Mini Timer Focus Booster



The latest version of Focus Booster appeared for MacOS.

For some time I used an interesting tool TeamViz - you can enter separate tasks in it and measure the "tomatoes" for each of them, but for me it turned out to be too cumbersome. But it is worth looking, definitely.

Plan of the day

Another great tool for maintaining the focus and reviewing the whole picture of the day for me is the daily plan. Compiling it in the morning is already a ritual: pour some coffee and write tasks for the day in silence. Sets the working mood very well.



I have been looking for a tool for a long time that would allow me to integrate my tasks and calendar, put everything on one screen and still give room for notes during the day. I couldn’t find such a miracle, and I made it myself from ordinary Excel, having conjured a little over conditional formatting of cells. Data is transferred to it by hand (somehow not programmerly), but Ctrl + C - Ctrl + V works quickly and this is not annoying.





Daily planning table at the beginning of the day





Daily planning table at the end of the day



The plan for each day is drawn up on a separate Excel sheet with its date. This allows you to look at yesterday's plan at the beginning of a new day and move some tasks to today or cross them out altogether. I also look at the plans for the days over the past week, conducting a kind of retrospective. As a result, first of all, new tasks appear, something from the unfinished is remembered, and secondly, a certain feeling of completion appears. It turns out a sort of ritual for the end of the working week, after which you go home with a clear conscience.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I want to say that GTD is not a “silver bullet” and you should not expect that, having introduced the technique, you can find 48 hours a day or work 100 hours a week without emptying the refrigerator with power engineers. This is a tool, the effectiveness of which is the work of the drowning people themselves. The described techniques and techniques are just steps for reaching a different level of attitude for each day of your life. Having decided with GTD one range of issues, I immediately encountered many new, higher orders and much more interesting ones. What I wish, and all who read the post to the end.