Alicia Dattner - Getting S**t Done: The Art of Feeling Good about Doing Nothing, Faster

Getting Shit Done:

Productivity for the

Un-Professional

by

Alicia Dattner

www.aliciadattner.com

Getting Shit DoneProductivity for the Un-professional. Copyright 2012 by Alicia Dattner. All rights reserved. Without prior permission from the publisher, no part of this work may be copied, sold, reproduced, or transmitted in any form or format.

ISBN 978-0-9842988-0-8
Published by Unlimited, Ltd.

San Francisco

For information about permissions, updates, sales, or other questions, please contact aliciadattner.com by email at:

alicia@aliciadattner.com

Or, visit us on the web:

www.aliciadattner.com

The books companion blog contains links to more work by the author.

You are not the Shah of time.

-Arnold Bennett

Dedicated to R. M.

Preface

Today a shelf, tomorrow the world.

Days seem to pass by, and we dont get done what we meant to. Boy, do we have to remember to enjoy the moment. Sometimes it can take a whole day to put up a fucking shelf. With this shelf, you can move all the crap off your desk so you can finally write that script [novel/joke/song/haiku/or long overdue moral inventory]. But you dont have the right screws. You cant find the drill. Someone borrowed the drill. You meet them for coffee. You eat a brownie and you need a nap.

The drill battery needs charging, so you check your email. Deleting spam. Signing another NPR petition. Facebook birthday emails. Tweets. IMs, SMS, Skype, GChat, and Facetime. Miscellaneous emails from crushes and exes about new bands and old albums (respectively). The accountant emailed you about the tax extension and you have to find a receipt from 1990. You realize youve met people born in 1990 who already play guitar better than you.

Get to the gym, pick up the organic veggie box, squeeze in a set at the comedy club. The sun has set behind Clayton Street and the shelf is sitting, waiting for your precious time. But, shit, its too late. Sleeping roommates dont like the loud purr of an electric drill. Tomorrow a shelf. The day after, the world.

Anyway, the gist is that there are things that need doing. Receipts need filing. Resumes need writing. Clothes need folding. Things need doing.

A year ago, while reading the infamous Getting Things Done, I was fucking inspired. I was at Office Max like every other day. And Office Depot on the odd days. Three by five cards. File folders. Inboxes. Outboxes. I tacked workflow diagrams to my wall. And this system, like every other system that works, takes doing. You have to write the shit down that youre thinking. You have to look at the list and check shit off. You have to write your next next action every time you complete your last next action. My friend Joe says that the beauty of the system is that once you get everything collected, you can choose what not to do. Its not about getting more done but choosing whats really important. But what if its all really important shit? Or what if none of it is?

From Getting Things Done to Getting Shit Done

Several weeks or months later, Getting Things Done devolved. It went the way of piano lessons, the wheat-free diet, and salsa dancing. It mutated into something hideous yet brilliant. It became an entirely new system: Getting Shit Done.

GSD takes less office supplies. GSD doesnt involve a PDA (or the infamous hipster PDA (the paraleptical hipster rule of law requires that one must never declare oneself a hipster. So I dont have a hipster PDA; I have a bunch of 3 by 5 cards held together with a clip.)

Anyway, today I didnt get all the shit done. I did other things instead. Really good things. I went with a friend to re-pierce her ears. Turned out they just needed to be stretched. We ate a really great Vietnamese fresh chicken roll on 16th street in San Francisco. Then we bought matching pairs of rainbow socks that were free because she found a credit from the store from 2003. I also sat in the sun for a while and smelled a delicious yet delicate rose growing on the sidewalk next to my house.

Getting Shit Done: The Art of Feeling Good about Doing Nothing, Faster.

THE PHILOSOPHY

Effective use of the Mind Zen-Like Paralysis

Getting Things Done vs. Getting Shit Done

CHAPTER ONE: AMASSING

The Mindsweep The Brainburn

CHAPTER TWO: HEAPING

Your Shit Other Peoples Shit

Sorting Heaping

GTD Processing Supplies GSD Processing Supplies

O.H.I.O. N.E.W. J.E.R.S.E.Y.

(Only Handle It Once)

CHAPTER THREE: PRETENDING TO ORGANIZE

Organize Read Books on Organization

Actual Organizing Fake Organizing

Brainstorming Braintrapping

PDA Hipster PDA

Filing System Fuckit Files (Trash-Based)

Organized Email System Trash Can

File-Folder Setup Where Itll Really Go

@ Lists Dumb @ Lists

CHAPTER FOUR: THE CONTINUING HEADACHE

Mindmapping Synapping

Weekly Review Sleepsorting

Freeing Higher Thought Cultivate Cerebral Hypo-efficiency

Daily Review Paradoxical Efficiency of Indecision

Concrete Goals Abstract Goals

CHAPTER FIVE: TAKING (NON)ACTION

Hyper-Productivity Rationalization: The Leatherman of Procrastination Two-minute Action Twenty-minute Action

Do It Now Procrastination

Freeing Higher Thought Shock Value

Incremental Progression Incremental Regression

One Thing at a Time GSD During Work

Multi-tasking Ultra-tasking

Delegate Relegate

THE REAL VALUE OF GSD
Greater Productivity Posterity

Ultra-efficiency Value of Emptiness

GSD Personality Typing

Clear your mind and without thinking, return to the last page. Look at both left and right columns, and put a check next to the activity that feels preferable to your genuine self.

Add one point for each check in the right-hand column.

Total in this column: _______

If you scored:

0-9: Go ahead, keep your tie on! A fun thing you could do so as not alarm your colleagues is take the cover of Getting Things Done and put it on this book, kind of like in school when putting Mad Magazine inside the Biology textbook. Drinking in this book will likely produce in the back of your throat a smug sensation of superiority over the weak-minded. Wash it down with a bit of Nietzsche.

10-19: Loosen the tie! I sense some ambivalence. Ok, I cant actually sense what youre feeling, but Im imagining you, dear reader, holding this book in your hands, having , wondering, Can I really let go of Being Organized? I need to be in control. I cant just magically not have receipts or mail any more. Come on, I cant just dive into some oblivion where I stop thinking and worrying about how everything will get done. Or could I? Perhaps reading this book will lend you the confidence to take that leap.

20-29: Do you even own a tie? (I dont. Ok, at one point in high school I was trying this Diane Keaton woman-tie-thing, but I ended up looking more like Buster Keaton.) Anyway, I think you and I are on the same page (which would make sense, because Ive just written this book about the answers you chose and also because Im writing this page right now and youre also reading it right now, which is a kind of incredible time-space conundrum!). We are going to share some more very interesting co-incidences.