![\"Allen,](\"http:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/10\/allen-gtd.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nI’d heard David Allen’s book recommended by several friends — my supervisor, a businessman friend, and (most recently) a young InterVarsity colleague. Feeling the need for a bit more order in my working days, I decided to take a look. And it has had quite an impact in the Boyd household.<\/p>\n
I started reading the book with a desire to get my _work_ projects more organized, instead of responding to urgent, but sometimes unimportant, tasks. But I found that Allen’s system is really useful for getting our _household_ organized too. His basic rule of thumb is, “Write everything down.” He coaches his clients through piles of papers, magazines, messy drawers, and email in-boxes with these rules:<\/p>\n
# If anything takes two minutes or less to do, just do it, and
\n# Everything else goes into a trustworthy review system, with a review taking place every week.<\/p>\n
One of the most useful parts of the system is a “tickler file”:http:\/\/wiki.43folders.com\/index.php\/Tickler_file — sort of a cross between a file drawer and a calendar: 31 folders for each day in a month, 12 folders for each month in a year, and you rotate them every day. So it’s good for baby shower invitations and birthday reminders and concert tickets alike!<\/p>\n
So, now my desk is a lot cleaner, we are getting rid of piles and boxes that have accumulated around the house, and Jon is even feeling better about long-term projects that have been hanging over our heads.<\/p>\n
But however great this system is, the risk for me is that I can get so obsessed with efficiency that I have a hard time just sitting and being. I’m trying to be disciplined about using this new way of being organized to actually find more time to be peaceful with Lucy, be loving with Jon, and be kind with myself. Getting the externals in order helps life to run more smoothly, but I definitely need lots of grace to grow the fruits of the Spirit in my soul. <\/p>\n
\n
Considered in this review: “_Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity_”:http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0142000280\/octothorppres-20, by David Allen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You wouldn’t expect that a mom with a six-month-old baby would gobble up tips from an efficiency consultant. But that is exactly what has happened.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","category-st-lou"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}