I am a husband, writer, and teacher exploring what it means to cultivate mental silence.

Getting Things Done revisited

Getting Things Done...revisitedI have been binging on my favorite podcast, Hello Internet (http://www.hellointernet.fm)...in an effort to catch up...chronologically...on all of the episodes. One of their favorite topics comes from a book I read several years ago, Getting Things Done (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done). One of the first times this topic came up was episode #39 (http://www.hellointernet.fm/podcast/39) and since then...it has bled through...seamlessly I might add...in many of the subsequent episodes...including the most recent, episode #66 (https://static1.squarespace.com/static/52d66949e4b0a8cec3bcdd46/t/578ccd2403596ee71370b59d/1468845390905/IMG_3690.jpg?format=1500w) where a fellow listener did something very cool for Brady Haran (http://bradyharan.com/), one of the podcast's co-hosts (or dudes). All of this talk about the book has prompted me to "give it another try." So...for the next few posts, I am going to randomly open the book, find a quote that I underlined, re-read it, and comment on it.From the paperback copy (copyright 2001), page 131..."If the next action can be done in two minutes or less, do it when you first pick the item up."I have adopted this across many platforms...mainly with email...I try not to open email up more than 2x a day. I have decided that the task should be narrowed down to 3 distinct moves...read, delete, and or archive. When I say read, I really mean skim. I only slow down if I get the sense that acting on "it" will take more than 2 minutes. That doesn't happen often. Depending on the sender...I may not even read the email and go directly to delete or archive. Doing so gets me "in" and "out" of the Inbox in a short amount of time so I can move on to other things. Deciding that this is the way to "get email done" has produced significant amounts of mental silence in my life. Stay tuned for the next quote from the book and my thoughts on it, in my next post.

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