GTD by John Sonmeza

I’ve almost finished reading a book written by John Sonmez (a well-known blogger, software developer, and author of many Pluralsight courses ) - "Soft Skills: The software developer's life manual . " I must say that the book is very easy to read, it is full of valuable advice and is very practical. And from time to time she is funny. The book has many interesting sections, but today I would like to squeeze the most interesting thoughts from the section on productivity.



I tried to set up my time management system, but I failed. Not that I just completely failed, but at one point, I began to neglect the rules that I had to follow. Neglecting one’s own rules leads to unproductive use of time. In my opinion, there are two main reasons why everything ends this way. First of all, practically nowhere are presented complex time management systems, by anyone actually tested and whose performance has been proven. For the most part, time management books talk about fundamental things and give practical advice, but no one shares a complete integrated system. As a result, you must customize your own system. John proposes a system that can be used by anyone, possibly with a few modifications. The second reason is that we do not understand or accept the truth about the need for hard work. It is very important. Without labor, do not pull the fish out of the pond. This is a basic statement that must always circulate in our brain. Let's get a little deeper into what John is proposing.

Quarterly planning

Divide the year into four parts. Each part consists of three months. Then think about the large projects that you would like to complete this year and assign one project to each quarter. For this task, John uses Evernote. Personally, I prefer the old faithful Microsoft Excel, where I create a tablet, write down big goals and can see them by year. Generally speaking, I have a plan for life. This plan is flexible, of course. You can shift your goals, because it is impossible to predict the results of your work for a very long time. But this fact does not mean that you should not have a sketch of what you want to achieve in your life. John also assigns a couple of small tasks to the quarters. Quarterly plan will help to concentrate on the current project. Here is an example of how a plan for life in excel might look like:





')

Monthly planning

If you do not know how much time you can spend on work for yourself, then you need to measure the time used. It is very important to know how much time you can spend on your work per week. To make measurements, it is enough to start working whenever you have free time and record the amount of time you have been able to work. After that, you will get a fairly accurate estimate of how long you can work on your projects per week and per month. Now you can plan the first month of the quarter. Divide the big quarterly goal into small tasks and make up the current month.

Weekly planning

For weekly planning, John uses a Kanban board. Currently, he uses kanbanflow.com . I also tried this service and I liked it. So now I use it too, it is convenient and simple. And yes, there is a pomodoro-timer! If you have not heard about the Pomodoro technique, then go and read about it . I will not delve into the technique that John uses to manage his weekly plans. To do this, you can listen to John on youtube , or buy his book. I’ll just say that John tries to make 9 to 14 tomatoes per day. Although, in my opinion, 14 tomatoes per day is difficult to achieve. Personally, I can make 10 tomatoes a day and I consider these results to be quite high productivity. Plan the whole week from small tasks that require no more than 2 hours each.

When making tomatoes, you need to get rid of interruptions: turn off mailer notifications, instant messengers, exit social networks. As John says: “Focusing is a magic pill for productivity.”

When you start your day, in order to immerse yourself in the workflow, you need to try to focus on the first task for 5-10 minutes. It will be easier to continue. You need to catch the "impulse", after which it will be difficult to interrupt. The Pomodoro technique also allows you not to feel guilty in that you could do more, but you do not. Using Pomodoro, you can track the amount of time effectively used for your projects. This will help not to feel guilty, because you will know that you have worked well enough (if this is indeed the case).

Quota system

The quota system is a very important part of the John system. If you focus on one important project, it may happen that you spend all your time on this project. In this case, progress on other important tasks, such as learning a foreign language, will degrade over time. Therefore, you need to allocate quotas for their occupations. You can formulate them, for example: “every day I have to learn 5 new words”, “every 3 days I have to go to the gym”, “every day I have to read 25 pages of the book”, “every month I have to lose 2 pounds of weight ".

Self-responsibility

Responsibility to oneself is an interesting topic and at the same time unclear. The general idea is that you should trust yourself in what you are doing. And in order to trust yourself (to be responsible to yourself), you must introduce some general rules that you will follow all your life.

Multitasking

Generally speaking, doing several things at once is a bad practice. This is due to the fact that switching between tasks has its price. This is also because it is almost impossible to stay focused on two or more things at the same time. This is why multitasking is bad. However, there is a case when you can still do several things at once. This is possible when one of the tasks does not require brain activity. For example, you can cook and listen to an audio book.

Burnout

John says that when you feel depressed, then most likely you are beating against the wall. This means that you are tired of doing the same thing, you are not enjoying what you are doing. And the remedy for this state is to break through the wall, because behind the wall a great reward awaits you. Most people give up. Wall wins. The only thing that can help you in this situation is ... hard work. I can’t talk about hard work better than John, so the next paragraph will consist of several quotes.

Great hard work phrases

• Everyone who promises great results with less effort is trying to sell you something, or they have forgotten how much they had to work to achieve what they achieved.
• The problem is that your colleagues, who for a long time are engaged in one task, will bypass you with time.
• You get back what you invest. In one season you plant, in another you reap. You can not harvest if you have not planted anything.
• You need to realize that the only way you can achieve your goals, to unleash your full potential is to bite the bullet and get to work.

There is no silver bullet or magic that will help you move forward. By the way, do not forget that productivity! = Efficiency. Do the right things to be effective. This is a very brief description of John’s system, which he describes in his book. So, if you are interested, you can either buy a book, or study Jogh Sonmez's blog . As a bonus, I will give an example of a “calendar-pinarik” (not from the book).

What it is and how to use it

You fill your birthday and get a date when you are 40, 50 and 60 years old. Now you can see how many days are already in the past, how many days are left until your forty, fifty and sixty years. Every day you have to open the tablet and fill the current day in green. At the end of the day, you fill the current day in red. This exercise is not for the faint of heart. The purpose of this tablet is to make aware of the fact that our lives are extremely limited in time. You can download xls from the following link .