It’s been a while since I read this, I decided to give the audiobook ago. I apologize in advance for what will likely be a lot of GTD related posts.

This is kind of in relation to the brain dump post I made a little while ago. One of the things David Allen talks about is that it’s not enough to simply get things out of your head and into another trusted source.

A lot of people waste time re-organizing todo lists, because their lists contain abstracted items, or projects. And you can’t actually do a project, you can only do actions that are part of that project that ultimately get you to that goal.

For example, I had my van break down almost a year ago, I had already made a down payment on another vehicle, so I wasn’t interested in paying the $600 to repair it (especially since I couldn’t afford it while about to get a new vehicle). So it’s been sitting in my garage and on my weekend to do list for about, well, at this point almost 50 weeks.

Out of sight out of mind I guess. Anyway, the point is, ‘Take care of van’ is specifically what has been left on my list unchanged. I can’t ‘take care of the van’, so last night I decided that ‘taking care of the van’ is actually a project with it’s own set of actions I need to figure out. So ‘take care of van’ became ‘look up ga state vehicle donation options’, the first item I could actually move on.

As soon as I made that simple syntax change, I realized ‘duh, this will only take a minute’, and, literally about 60 seconds later I learned Habitat for Humanity takes used vehicles, working or not, free pickup. Right on their site they state it has to have a ga title, and then you can schedule a pickup.

Crossed ‘look up ga state vehicle donation options’ off, and added ‘go to tax commissioners office to transfer title from ny to ga’.

Maybe this sounds obvious or it sounds like I’m lazy, or stupid for that matter, but for me it works. Breaking down goals or projects into items I can act on is helpful for me, and crossing stuff off of a list that has been bugging me for a while is a really good feeling.