How To Get Things Done

Somehow finding time in his schedule to bring us a Sunday post, Damon Blake brings us up to date on the productivity system that is taking the bespectacled and tie-wearing world by storm.

Guys, you know how busy I am at the moment. If I’m not dropping someone’s kids off at school, or getting someone pregnant, or demanding a DNA test and then tampering with evidence that proves I’m the father, then I’m surfing the internet. It takes up a lot of time.

So to manage everything I’ve been reading Getting Things Done by David Allen:

I’m four chapters into the book and my mind has completely wandered, I really want to get this finished because I know how useful it’ll be. I have so many fucking to-do lists that never get done. I have a tendency to overbook my time (see: my scale model of Paris that I’m making out of half-chewed baguettes) so I need to find a system that’ll help me stop procrastinating finishing all my projects until the 13th Hour.

That’s right, most of my problems are caused by trying to introduce the Damon Blake System of Time Measurement™ into society. An extra hour of sleep every day! Who doesn’t want that?

This guy.

Getting Things Done is all about getting the stuff that’s clogging up your head and feeding on your emotional energy OUT of your head and onto an external catching device. For example, paper:

I read through Tim Ferris’ 4-Hour Work Week as well, which really helped me to commit to hiring foreigners to do my work for me. I was going to read The Secret but I’ve already got enough estrogen stimulating my mammary glands.

(I eat a lot of soy).

To streamline your life you’ve got to get rid of things. Boxes full of hangars, childhood toys, emotions, these are the things you need to stop carrying around with you for the rest of your life. Shitty movies are a thing you can save time on. Just read the Wikipedia entry and that’s an hour and a half of your life you won’t have to waste finding out what the twist of The Forgotten is.

Aliens.

Although the amount of time I spend clicking on pages I find on Wikipedia, I guess I’ve wasted about three times the amount of hours that I save.

Shit.

No interest in the show, have read through every page to do with it.

I’ve started putting the daily sort of things I’ve to get done on a whiteboard and have surprisingly got a few things ticked off. Bins are a motherfucker to get sorted, one of those “oh shit, I’m an adult” things that you wish were organised in advance for you by a landlord or a particularly assertive Good Samaritan.

 When Giles Brody saw this he said “Kill a bishop? Good stuff, let’s maim a cardinal as well”.

Things seem to be working out alright so far though. Getting my boxes ticked, which is a phrase I always assumed was dirty, although nobody ever giggled along with me at it. My to-do list is still pretty long though. I just need to finish this fucking book and I can move on with the other things I need to get done.

Maybe I’ll just read the Wikipedia entry on it.