Trying to be productive

Some time ago, someone recommended the book Getting Things Done to me. They had noticed my fondness for running a tight ship in terms of detailed task tracking and realised I may be a candidate to take it to a new level. When I am leading a development team, I always end up employing XPlanner, which I will openly admit is not perfect. But it is simple enough that it fits my methodology quite well. In my system, its key job is to track what is and isn't done such that when Bob is sick, Jane can pick up where he left off, and don't have to walk the beat to find out where things are at.

Early in my XP journey (some four years ago), I worked under a regime where no work was done unless there was a task listed for it, with estimate, on the wiki. I liked this system, as the tasks were small enough to guarantee completion within a day and you could go home at the end of the day not having to remember any 'todos' for the next day. The following morning you came into work, had Stand Up, looked at the roster to see who you were pairing with and the went to the wiki to select a new task. It was such a mental freedom to not have to remember (and thus forget) all kinds of little tidbits. I actually believe that this created a more creative state, making it easier to solve difficult problems.

This brings me back to GTD. The key concept the resonated with me was capturing tasks in a logical trusted repository outside of your head. It sounded a lot like what I had experienced before, and was certainly the hook that got me in. Now, the book is quite detailed and at the time I was involved with a project that was not moving particularly quickly so, after reading the first section, I put it on the back burner.

At moment, though a lot of projects of various size and shape are coming up and I believe that it is time for me to delve further. I figure that having experience with such system will hold me in good stead for when I get really busy.