Start with Getting Things Done; Finish with Master Your Workday

Back in the early aughts, Getting Things Done was all the rage. If you’re not familiar, it was a productivity hack to sort your tasks into their essence so that all phone call tasks were gathered together, and all paper-work was together, and all stuff at a computer, etc. In theory, you would gain momentum by knocking off things of a particular essence in bunches.

For me, it really became fun when someone used the TiddlyWiki technology to create an easy-to-maintain GTD organizer, making it like a game to bunch up the todo items by their essence. All too often, the tool comes first for me when I finally try to advance a project.

But the initial excitement gave way to a slow slog spent grouping things rather than doing things. I didn’t get as much done as I hoped.

I’d read the book on GTD and was pretty sure I used the correct techniques to organize. I simply didn’t do a significant amount of work for me to think GTD was making me productive.

I did what I had to do at my job, and didn’t do much at home except play around with my TiddlyWiki.

I came across a book called Master Your Workday which helped me get stuff done that mattered. Not more stuff. Most of us do plenty of stuff. It didn’t make me more productive. The question it answered was: are you doing the right stuff?

It helped me target stuff to get done so that my day job and home life was easier.

The main principle of Master Your Workday was to recognize that of all the things on your todo list, focus on those your boss/client/spouse want to see done today, tomorrow, or later this week.

The secondary principle is to not worry a whole lot about what’s due next week because priorities might switch.

That allowed me to relax, and not worry about the number of items on my list. I felt more in control, I provided better results to my boss, and the job seemed easier. Even around the house, I focused on what mattered today, tomorrow, and later this week, and I gave more and better attention to those things.

There are some projects that loom large in the distance, or are so complex that you can’t finish them “this week,” but neither can you wait until it’s due. They’re like semester projects in college, and you have to work on them intermittently to get them done. For those, you have to break up the work and add manageable chunks of the work to your weekly list.

Taking the Master Your Workday approach, you promote yourself to become boss of your world. Once you embrace that—like you’re the CEO of you—and take responsibility for managing your daily and weekly todo list, you’ll find you get more done and the work is a little easier.

Obviously, this won’t work for every profession. A neurosurgeon deals with the cases that walk through his door, and he can’t just hope a brain tumor will wait. This approach is useful for most office work settings, when you’re part of an organizational team getting things done.

It’s also useful for a side-hustle or a solopreneurship career, where you are launching a product or business.

I’ll wager a thousand dollars against a box of donuts that you probably keep a todo list, so you’re off to a good start. I recommend you read Master Your Workday (or one of the updated versions) but you can skip ahead by simply asking yourself what has to be done today, what has to be done tomorrow, and what has to be done this week. Put those at the top of your list.

Look for large projects looming on the horizon of your list, the sort of thing that if you wait too long you’re going to ruin three weekends in a row trying to catch up. Break those down and treat a few of the steps as things you need to get done this week, and every week until it’s all complete.

Finally, review that list every day and once a week like you’re the boss, and you get to decide what you work on. (Just don’t let your spouse find out!)