Week 12: GTD

In week 11, Humbo took us through the ins and outs of reclaiming our time from our devices. The main thing that stuck with me was him calling technology/the internet "one big social experiment". It is essentially a giant, very accessible, friendly-seeming collection of tricks and gimmicks designed to keep us using whatever technology we are using, and no restrictions have been placed on these creators even when there is now research on its effect on our health.

Scary! Even as someone brought up not to be dependent on technology, there are still days I find myself scrolling through something or actively looking for another bit of procrastination, resurfacing hours later feeling awful and out of control. The worst thing is this usually happens on the tail-end of trying to do something actually useful on technology! How can I manage my time on a resource that is both useful and superbly not useful?

Enter: GTD (aka, Getting Things Done).

One of the resources that Humbo showed us that class was the app "Wunderlist". I'm writing this blog post about a month after his presentation, and I have to give Wunderlist a HUGE thumbs up because I feel more clear-headed about my many strands of projects than I have probably the whole year. One of the things Humbo mentioned about using GTD apps was that the ability to clear your daily to-do list in a visible way helped you sleep better. I thought it sounded silly - looks like I was silly to be skeptical! I am definitely a person that stresses myself to sleep with all the things that I forgot to do that day, so having a to-do list and the ability to postpone things whilst knowing they won't be forgotten in the process is extremely calming and helps me feel more confident in pursuing multiple goals without leaving one behind.

Today's to-do list, feat. the task I am working on this second: this blog!

The other thing I've installed since this lecture is "StayFocusd", a Chrome extension that sets a limit on websites and blocks them after you've reached the daily limit. I had held off on using this earlier because the thing that I found most vacuumed up my time was Facebook (the newsfeed), but some of the FB messenger groups I am in are actually discussing useful things, and my quartet's official working space, for example, is a Facebook group so I couldn't just delete my Facebook and keep Messenger, like many people do. However, my new tech-savvy self realised that I could in fact make this distinction for StayFocusd, because FB messages can be opened in their own window:

TADA!

The result: I can access my contacts and messages where necessary and still monitor my notifications for important groups as they come up, but the evil newsfeed is now kept away :D