Getting Things Done - Time Management Schemes

Getting Things Done - Time Management Schemes
Inspired by the geek-friendly book by David Allen
Summary of book: Keep making lists and allocating time; continual reevaluation; make all your time useful.
"something that takes less than 5 minutes: just do it now"
Lots of reasons geeks might not be best time managers! Not process-oriented?
Many Training and other time management resources available at Stanford
Some time management approaches represented by people in the group:
use white boards with biweekly refresh,
Super Focus (less process-heavy than David Allen),
EverNote lists (to take advantage of synching),
buddy system (note this system was effective in the Stanford Tech Leadership Program)
Less conversation! Realize that everything is iterative: just do stuff, and see what happens!
Note Stanfordian John Perry's recent Ignobel Prize for "Structured Procrastination"
Break down meetings into 3 groups: weekly with whole team, another less frequent with just mgmt team, a third (also less frequent) with stakeholders
No matter what method used, important to revisit / do reality checks
Pomodoro technique: timers, 25-minute blocks of focused activity
But what metrics are really reliable?
Avoid tyranny of the immediate at the expense of the important!
Random thoughts on meetings:
take notes, make them visible in real time with specific
Have all meetings standing up! You can't fake it as much
What to do with multitaskears? Public humiliation? Require laptops put away? Are iPads better than laptops?
10 minute super-focused meetings?
Parking lot for long or off-topic topics
"small group after meeting" proposal
Other team work / time management ideas:
"Work Lean" idea? Note recent Stanford Continuing Studies course
Kanban - visual board to compose ideas, keep team tasks visible to all. From Toyota.
SeeNowDo website, wit time estimates "digital task board for agile teams"
Paper! Index cards! Post-it notes! All very popular and effective
Jira
Facilitator shouldn't also be note taker, etc.
Agile (of course) -- much better than "waterfall" with each person on too many projects
Note move away from personal time mgmt toward team/meeting management
Calendaring is often more of a problem than it should be! Too many tools don't talk to each other.
Buddy system very effective, but often first to fall victim to budget cuts, etc.