{"id":3096,"date":"2010-01-15T09:49:31","date_gmt":"2010-01-15T17:49:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gtdtimes.com\/?p=3096"},"modified":"2014-02-03T14:32:49","modified_gmt":"2014-02-03T22:32:49","slug":"gtd-for-academics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gettingthingsdone.com\/2010\/01\/gtd-for-academics\/","title":{"rendered":"GTD for Academics"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Community Contribution by Aeon J. Skoble, PhD. He’s a Professor of Philosophy at Bridgewater State College.<\/em><\/p>\n

I know that David Allen is interested in seeing how people in different sorts of professions use GTD, so I offered to share my experiences applying the methodology in a world that\u2019s generally regarded as a different one: academia.\u00a0 I have found that GTD is highly applicable to the academic profession.<\/p>\n

I was actually managing adequately before I discovered GTD, but my productivity, while pretty good by institutional standards, was sub-optimal with respect to my own expectations.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t well-organized, I often had \u201cnear misses\u201d with deadlines, and I had a good deal of stress-producing clutter.\u00a0 I literally had 6000+ messages in my Outlook inbox.\u00a0 As the cover of the book hinted, I wanted not only to increase productivity, but to reduce stress.\u00a0 GTD has indeed helped in both aspects: productivity is up, stress is down. <\/strong> Some of the most useful parts have been among the simpler ones, chiefly \u201ccapture everything rather than try to keep it in your head\u201d and \u201cdon\u2019t confuse your calendar with your to-do list.\u201d \u00a0I used to drive myself crazy repeatedly by playing this game: I\u2019d realize I hadn\u2019t worked much lately on a particular essay I needed to write, so I\u2019d put \u201cwork on that essay\u201d on my calendar for Tuesday morning, then I\u2019d spend Tuesday morning prepping for a class or putting out a fire, and then I\u2019d feel anxious because I didn\u2019t write the essay.\u00a0 If nothing else, I have learned to distinguish calendar from to-do list, and projects from next-actions.\u00a0 That\u2019s as vital for academics as it is for any business executive.A college professor\u2019s job has at least three distinct components, each of which in its own way can benefit from a GTD approach.\u00a0 First of all, there is teaching classes.<\/strong> This involves the actual instruction time, as well as time beforehand to prepare and time afterwards for grading.\u00a0 The class time, along with office hours, are \u201chard landscape\u201d calendar items which need to be done at a particular time, but the prep time and grading have a little more flexibility.\u00a0 There are still deadlines, though: mid-term assignments must be graded in a timely fashion, and final grades must be submitted by a deadline also.\u00a0 And the prep for any particular class must obviously be done before that class.\u00a0 So these can be seen as non-calendar \u201cnext actions,\u201d although for some people it works better to schedule time blocks devoted to these tasks.\u00a0 The class itself can be seen as a project with a successful outcome: the students complete the course and have learned a lot; I\u2019ve turned in final grades.<\/p>\n

Second, there is research and other scholarship activities. <\/strong> At a bare minimum, we are expected to stay current in our fields, which requires reading time.\u00a0 Is it at the library?\u00a0 At home?\u00a0 At the office?\u00a0 In print, or on-line?\u00a0 These can be context-sensitive next-actions.\u00a0 But beyond that, there is the expectation of productivity.\u00a0 \u201cProductivity\u201d in the academic sense can be a paper for publication, a conference presentation, participation in a symposium, editing a collection, refereeing for a peer-reviewed journal, data collection, experimentation, and so on.\u00a0 Each of these can easily be seen as a \u201cproject\u201d in the GTD sense \u2013 and that means that one can avoid being overwhelmed by them by breaking them down into next actions.\u00a0 Before I encountered GTD, I used to have to-do lists with entries like \u201cwrite book.\u201d\u00a0 Turns out that\u2019s not very helpful!\u00a0 David Allen\u2019s observation that one can\u2019t actually \u201cdo\u201d a project is certainly applicable here: the only way to write a book is to break it down into bits, and then write and organize the bits.\u00a0 It\u2019s much more effective to think about what discrete steps are required to organize the book and formulate each section.\u00a0\u00a0 Next-action thinking therefore translates very well to scholarly writing.\u00a0 Also, there are many other tasks involved in getting research done (and published) \u2013 paperwork as well as logistical \u2013 each of which needs to be identified and clarified.<\/p>\n

Third, there is generally a service expectation: advising students, serving on departmental or college-wide committees, participating in various events. <\/strong> There are meetings, which need to be calendared, and the other work can easily been seen as projects (e.g., produce report) with next actions (e.g., call the dean\u2019s office to request that file).\u00a0\u00a0 If one becomes department chair, as I am, then there are many more administrative responsibilities one acquires: working with a budget, producing the schedule for the year, hiring support staff and adjunct faculty, meetings with administrators and other chairs.\u00a0 It\u2019s easy to see why younger faculty can be overwhelmed and why senior faculty can suffer burn-out.\u00a0 Many people outside academia don\u2019t realize the amount of juggling that goes on, assuming that a \u201c12-hour load\u201d means a 12-hour work week.\u00a0 It\u2019s more like 50, believe me.\u00a0 I don\u2019t say that as a complaint; I love the job \u2013 but if it were really only 12 hours worth of work, I wouldn\u2019t need GTD!<\/p>\n

One thing that really resonated with me as I read the book was just how applicable it was to a non-business context.\u00a0\u00a0 Every example, even the business-specific, was one I could transfer to my world: identify goal, clarify successful outcome, figure out the next action.\u00a0 I keep my inbox at or close to empty \u2013 both paper and email.\u00a0 I mentioned that I used to be one of those people with 6000+ messages in my Outlook inbox.\u00a0 Now it\u2019s rarely got more than a dozen.\u00a0 All emails fit into one of the workflow categories \u2013 some are trash, some are reference info to be filed, some are waiting-for trackers, and some are actionable.\u00a0 So I have reduced stress and improved efficiency simply by learning to keep my email under control. \u00a0\u00a0On a more mundane level, it\u2019s also helped to get a label maker for file folders!\u00a0 I am no longer the absent-minded professor of stereotype who can\u2019t find anything in the messy office.\u00a0 The fictional professors who live that way manage to produce ground-breaking scholarship, but in reality, living like that is an impediment to scholarly productivity or efficiency in teaching.\u00a0 If you wouldn\u2019t expect an executive to be productive under those conditions, there\u2019s no reason to expect a scholar to be either.\u00a0 Sadly, these caricatures are present even among academics.\u00a0 I have been trying to \u201cget the word out\u201d to a number of my colleagues here and elsewhere.\u00a0 As David noted in the book, if others become more efficient and productive, it helps everyone.\u00a0 I have used GTD to make committee work go more smoothly, even if the other members of the committee don\u2019t always realize that\u2019s what is happening, but I also talk to colleagues about it, recommend the book (in some cases, I buy copies for people), explain the virtues of the methodology.\u00a0 After attending one of David\u2019s \u201cRoadmap\u201d seminars, I gave a presentation to my fellow chairs at a workshop, and I received a lot of positive feedback.\u00a0 Just as David has expressed hopes that GTD would become \u201cstandard stuff\u201d in the corporate world, I would love to see GTD more widely adopted in academia.\u00a0 Our students would benefit, and we\u2019d get a lot more research accomplished with less burn-out.<\/p>\n

If anyone reading this is an academic and wants to hear more specifically about how I have brought GTD to bear on my teaching, scholarship, service, and chairmanship, please feel free to get in touch. And of course I\u2019d be happy to discuss these matters with non-academics as well.\u00a0 You can message me via GTD Connect<\/a>, or the GTD LinkedIn network<\/a>, or drop me an email<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Community Contribution by Aeon J. Skoble, PhD. He’s a Professor of Philosophy at Bridgewater State College. I know that David Allen is interested in seeing how people in different sorts of professions use GTD, so I offered to share my experiences applying the methodology in a world that\u2019s generally regarded as a different one: … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “GTD for Academics”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[22,44,69,46,83,107,114],"class_list":["post-3096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-productivity-tips","tag-getting-things-done","tag-gtd-connect","tag-implementing-gtd","tag-implementation","tag-community-contributions","tag-outlook","tag-next-actions","entry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nGTD for academics<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A professor shares how he does GTD.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link 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