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The difference between GTD at home and at work

19 10 05 - 23:54 - Bookmark this post

*Preface:* This article was intended as a question for the GTDgroup@Yahoo. But it turned out to be some sort of therapeutic writing session for my own self. I decided to share it with you. Maybe it can be of any help, maybe you have tips, pointers or similar experiences. Please, feel free to respond!

This evening, I was flipping some pages in Ready for anything when one sentence hit me. It’s on page 27:
*Trust that you’ll see the option again whenever you need to reassess*
The chapter talks about putting stuff into In and review it on the Weekly Review.
Now, what hit me was this…

I try to use GTD both at work and at home. At work, slowly but surely, things start to run more smoother and the system starts to work. Still have troubles with Weekly reviews and really do some tasks from my NA list instead of jumping from one loose end to another but I’m trying.

But…I don’t have a trusted system at home! I do have my own Inbox next to my desk. I put all mail, bills and other papers in it during the week. And every monday, I go through them, file it, decide some NA’s (call someone, make a note, send some mail) or pay the bills. I have a sort of tickler-file but I don’t look at it every day. Simply because I am not at my desk at home every day. The best place to put the ticklerfile is at my desk because most of the stuff in it requires me to be at my desk, with PC, telephone, other administration at hand. I also don’t have a filecabinet. Very simple: Don’t have room for it. I do have a lot of D-Ring Binders with old correspondence and other reference material.
Now, the biggest issue is this: At home, in no place, there is something that keeps my Next Actions. I have absolutely no trusted system.

Why? I don’t know. But all I have is a lot of places where I think of things (in the shower, on my bike, while shopping, in the toilet) but at that moment, I don’t have the means to put it somewhere in “In” (OK, I could keep a notebook in the toilet) so I try to remember it. Or write it down in my Moleskine. But….I don’t look in my Moleskine often enough to trust it as a part of the system.
Same with my Ticklerfile: Because I don’t look at it every day, unconsciously I don’t trust it as a system.
Because of that, I don’t trust anything in my house to keep my Next Actions. Because I am afraid that it will go stale and those NA’s will not get done in time.

Why will they not get done in time? Beause I don’t have a trusted calendar and list of items to look at every day. I do have that at work, in Outlook. But at home, in the morning, I don’t sit behind my PC to check the calendar. I also don’t have Outlook. We do have multiple PC’s and a Powerbook. On the Powerbook we keep a calendar, but again, I don’t look at it every day. Since it’s my girlfriend’s Powerbook, I also don’t feel like I should use it for my NA’s…
Now, because I don’t have these trusted systems in my house, I don’t do a Weekly Review. I mean, why should I? What’s there to review? You could call my monday-evening the Weekly Review but basically that is just going through the mail, paying bills etc.

Bottomline how I feel about it is this: I have two “spaces” that need a system: Private and Professional. These two are mixed with eachother. I think about personal stuff at work and vice versa. But I don’t want a system that deals with both those spaces. So I need seperate systems. But that sucks. Because, if you want it to work as efficient as possible, these systems should be identical. But at work, most NA’s come from email, phone and reminders (I am a strategic consultant at an internetadvertising agency). So Outlook is a good option to work with.
At home, most NA’s come from conversation, things that need to be done in and around the house, actually not from email. So Outlook is not really necessary. Because there are no real NA’s at home for me to look at, at night, after dinner, I think to myself “hmmm….I could do something here like read a book, clean a room…but what should I do first?” Because of that thinking nothing gets done…

Should I start the habit to open up the PC every morning to check my NA’s at home? Should I also do that at night? What about an online list of NA’s? Maybe MyTicklerFile.com is perfect after all for use at home? Maybe I should start over with GTD and really focus on implementation at home?

Damn, this thinking has again opened up a closet full of surprises for me…

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I think this comes down to each person’s unique situation.

Since I live my professional life on a laptop, and Outlook lives on that laptop, it is my professional trusted system. Nothing else made better sense for my personal life and I prefer to feel like one person not two, so my personal NA’s go into the same system. Categories for work and home are seperated in most cases but Online is the same for both and so are Calls.
Michael Koehler - 20 10 05 - 04:59

I was struggling with the same issue until I dug out my rather old Palm III. At work it lives in my shirt top pocket, at home it lives in my work bag or my my computer.

Asked to pick something up from the shops the next day? Dash through and grab the PDA from the desk, and add the item under the “Errands” category.

Need to add a load of different home jobs all at once? Power up the PC, add them to the Palm Desktop app under the ‘Home’ category and then sync.

Need to check your calendar? Just push the Date Book button.

It’s really working for me as I can just jot something down without waiting for my PC to load, and settle down to start adding items. It’s the first time I’ve really used by Palm III and I’ve had it since 1999!
Andrew Beacock - 20 10 05 - 11:12

This is one of the reasons I keep my GTD for work/not-work unified. I have separate contexts for work, home, home-computer, internet, etc. My hard calendar for everything is kept in one calendar (not the office outlook one).

Why exactly do you want them separate? And thanks for the MTF link.

Also, you could have a automated task set up that shows you the home calendar for the next few days that pop’s up at the end of the day. I’m not sure Outlook supports multiple calendars, but most of those programs do.

—Michael

—Michael
Michael Langford - 20 10 05 - 15:33

I think the reasons you’ve described for why you haven’t implemented GTD at home are the same reasons why I like my paper system – most of what I have to do does not involve a computer and thus I have no desire to run downstairs and turn on the computer when I need to decide what to do next.

Based on that “insight” I had while reading your post, I would recommend that you try a paper system for at home. You could use just a simple notebook as David Allen recommends, or you could invest in a planner (if you decide paper is indeed working for you at home).
Tana - 20 10 05 - 15:37

You say it yourself:

These two are mixed with eachother. I think about personal stuff at work and vice versa.

So why do you say this?

But I don’t want a system that deals with both those spaces.

If the two spaces overlap, in your life and in your head, why keep them artificially separate?

It sounds like you need something portable. That might mean paper, a PDA, or something else, but the key would be that your system wouldn’t be tied to a particular place, at home or at work. Home and work would be separate contexts within that system, and you could carry on.
Robert - 20 10 05 - 17:53

FYI: some bug in your template is causing most of your web page content (all posts from midway in the second post) to disappear. I’m running IE 6 on Win NT, for what it’s worth.
The Barrister - 20 10 05 - 19:50

First, I want to say thanks for the “link” love. But your post hits the dilemma square in the nose. No matter what, you have to check your trusted system everyday whether it’s for home or for work, paper or electronic. We have thought a lot about this as it seems this is the area where most people fall off (following up and staying current). Today we released a feature we believe helps. Users of My Tickler File can now subscribe to a Weekly Tickler List. This feature send a list of your events, to-do’s, etc in an email to you on Sunday at Midnight (GMT). That way you can curb some of the suprises that you might encounter otherwise. We can see extending this feature so that it’s more “interactive”. For example, perhaps you want to know what is on your calendar for Dec 12th but you are not in front of your computer. If you have an email enabled device, ask MTF and it will email what you have for that day instantly. These are just some thoughts. We would love to hear any thoughts and/or suggestions you may have in this arena (GTD).

Solomon Folks
My Tickler File Team
http://www.myticklerfile.com
Solomon Folks - 20 10 05 - 23:08

The Barrister: Thanks for the tip! I fixed it now. I always look in Firefox so I wasn't aware of the link
Solomon: Interesting new feature. I have some time planned this weekend to check out some services, I will definitely check your service alongside others like tadalist and backpack. Thanks for the information and you will hear from me!
Frank Meeuwsen - 20 10 05 - 23:15

Why would someone want a different system for work and for home? It make sense for me to keep my work information in my work laptop. It’s where the email comes in, and has most of the info I need to act on things.

But it doesn’t make sense to keep home stuff there. Home email goes to a different place, because I have a separate set of computers at home and get 700 messages a day. I don’t necessarily want my company to be able to know what my home email is about (as they would if it went through work servers) or know what I’m doing in my off-hours. It’s against corporate policy to use this laptop for personal use.

Even if that were acceptable, I could be fired and lose my work laptop with no notice. Jobs come and go, but my responsibilities in my personal life do not. How could I trust my personal information to a system I can’t ultimately control?
Alan Shutko - 21 10 05 - 18:58

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