Getting things done

I've been getting things done 'Getting Things Done' style this week. I've bought the book (by David Allen) and everything. As always, these things seem revolutionary in the first week you try them, just because they are new. Whether any of the new system remains at the end of a month will be the real test.

I suspect I'm similar to most people who have organisational frustration in their life in that part of the problem is genuinely organisation, but the other part has to do with procrastination and lack of motivation. 'Getting things done' kind of books are normally great with organising tips, but they don't really help with the procrastination/motivation side of things which tend to have much deeper roots in patience, perseverance, boldness and other issues of godliness.

There has, however been one helpful tip on the procrastination front in Getting Things Done: break stuff down into concrete physically doable tasks. So for example writing a bible talk might involve reading the passage, summarizing the passage, working out a big idea, etc etc. This is so helpful because being confronted with a task 'write bible talk' seems like a very big mountain to climb that stretches all the way to Sunday morning and hardly seems worth starting. Being confronted with a task like 'read bible passage' however is something I can sit down and do right now in the next hour, making it much easier to get started. Again, it will be interesting to see if this is still helpful at the end of the month, or whether it has just become annoying - do I really need my Bible talk writing broken into 10 different tasks every week!