Come, hear me!

Yesterday I came across this website: Zen Habits. One of the main features of this very good website is description of a new personal time/work management system called ZTD. This system is based loosely on the very famous GTD.

I was quite surprised to find that the system, which I follow for my work, is very similar to one described here. I too had read the GTD book some six months back after I found that my projects were becoming unbearably unfollowable and my follow-up had started lagging behind. However, GTD in its true form seemed too complex for my work, and I had tried to extract out the gist and implement it.

Some features of my system are:

1. As also suggested by ZTD, I keep a simple notepad in my pocket all the time, which serves as my inbox for tasks, observation chart, brainstorming tool etc. Now I feel handicapped without it.
2. There are daily time bound tasks, when I want to visit a particular class, carry out some monitoring process, talk to a particular student or teacher. I just can’t change the time for these events.
3. Then there are several planning type tasks for upcoming events, as we try to do each event in slightly or at times, in a major way different from last year. These I try to fit in my time bound school tasks. These are based more on “Next Action” as described by GTD.
4. There are several projects going on in the school, eg. for the upcoming events, Excel Clubs, On-the-job continuous teachers’ training, Class 11 Tutorial classes etc. Then CRS Modules, Reading projects and so on. I have undertaken MIS project too now. These projects usually either again fill in school time or take up after school time.
5. As also described in ZTD, I try to figure out major tasks for the week as well as for the day.
6. I have a daily review of all observations and planning for next day. This takes anywhere between 15 and 30 minutes.
7. I have weekly reviews, where I thoroughly check the progress of my projects. This takes 30 min.

I am still slightly uncertain about my long term goals. I need to start certain monthly/ yearly long term goal reviews too. In very long term, maybe I want to evolve a system which other schools can replicate. Though of course, school is very different from a manufacturing firm, in the sense that each child is unique. A school can be compared with a customized design and manufacturing shop maybe.