This is a part 2 of the book “The Get Things Done Book”, if you haven’t read the part 1. Please read part 1.

In this Part, the author discusses the good practices that need to be done in the planning phase of the project and the discipline to complete one

In this section, the author asks us to prioritize the following points

Getting a project done

What is certain regardless of your job sooner or later you’ll have to carry out a project of some kind. Every project is different but the fundamentals remain the same, they are governed by resources (money, knowledge, people), time, and quality. 

The author proposes 7 steps for effective project management

1. What do you want to do? – You should never start the process right away, brainstorm over the idea, discuss and answer this question
2. What exactly you wanna do? and why? – The idea is not the same as the goal here you define the goal and answer the why part, which allows you to move forward.
3. How do you want to achieve your goal? – To be a good project manager one of the critical things is to answer this question, for this you may ask the following questions to yourself, how much time do you have at your disposal? how much money? who should be involved? who shouldn’t? what information is missing? can you do it by yourself? then list down necessary action items then align them in the right order
4. Get started – The planning phase is done time to do some action
5. Kick yourself up the arse – It’s important to keep up the morale when working on big projects, if at any point in time, you feel you lack motivation, time to kick yourself, the 5-sec rule or Pomodoro technique can help you here
6. Get ready to sprint – Parkinson’s Law states that “Work expands to fill the available for its completion”, meaning that the more time you have, the longer everything takes. So gear up early for the final push
7. Look Back – Regardless you achieve your goal or not, all endings even the unhappy ones, are worth toasting.

Budgeting

One of the important aspects of project planning is budgeting, here the authors suggest the following approach to estimate the cost accurately.

1. Top – Down estimate – If the estimate needs to be given on priority or there is a time constraint. Do a rough estimation then drill down
2. Estimate based on experience – If your project is similar to one you’ve delivered, then you take the old project as a reference and give an estimation
3. Approximation – If your estimation needs to be reasonably accurate go for the mean of every element in the project
4. Bottom-up estimation – Go to the details of each element for estimation.

Batching

Here bundling means doing things in a bundle, we can divide a problem into 3 categories.

1. Problems that can be delayed and later perform as a bundle
2. Problems that should be solved right away
3. Problems that will get resolved automatically with no action required.

Identifying the type of problem allows us to execute the task as a bundle

The DELPHI Method

The Delphi method suggests when seeking the advice of an expert is always better to consider the advice of multiple experts and put their points of view across from other experts to get accurate feedback.

The TO-DO List

One of the effective productivity materials is to maintain a To-do list, this is because of two psychological effects. 1. Zeigarnik effect, “We remember uncompleted tasks better than completed ones”, another effect is the Ovsianka effect, “The interrupted tasks create in us a strong urge to act”. Taken together these two effect tell us why the to-do list work so well, If you write something down you don’t need to remember it, which leaves your mind free to concentrate on the task at hand (Zeigarnik effect). At the same time, the list itself is an unfinished task, which is why your brain feels the urge to complete everything on it.

Motivation

In this section, the author describes how much should you challenge yourself. to keep the motivation high. In this context, the authors describe that there are two types of people, 1. Who doesn’t want to fail? 2, The people who have the desire to have success. (These people are motivated by success)

Deep work

This idea is popularised by computer science professor Cal Newport If you remember there was some point in your life where you just totally emerged into the tasks that you are doing, generally, we call it a flow or we can call it Deep work. These types of work are not too boring or too difficult they are just right.

Focusing on one thing for a decent length of time without any interruptions (deep work) makes us more efficient and gives us a strong sense of satisfaction. Switching between tasks leads to being less effective and can affect the concentration capacity oneself.

There are 4 techniques to achieve the state of deep work.

1. Take your time: Block out a chunk of time in your calendar when you’ll be immersing yourself properly in a task.
2. Learn to be bored – In situations when you should normally reach for your smartphones, resist the urges.
3. Look at your social media; Which platform do you use? why do you use it? is this required?
4. Devise rituals for concentration: You can have your rituals to train your brain that now is the time to concentrate.

Tactics versus Strategies

This is the same as having a goal is different from having a plan, No matter whatever path of life you are in, without strategy our life has no direction, and no sense of purpose, we understand why we fail, nor why we succeed. If you don’t have a plan you become part of someone else’s plan.

Tactics are the small steps that you implement to fulfill your strategy.

New Work: To be Agile

Understand when working on a project different processes can be adapted, one of the effective processes is Agile, where we intermediate feedback loops and implementation.

Routines

The routines, rituals, and traditions are good for our physical and psychological well-being. They provide the predictability and consistency for which we all yearn.

Daily routines reduce the need to make everyday decisions but they are hard to keep up. Doing the same thing day in, and day out requires strength, courage, and concentration.

Thank you for completing this section, Part 3 will be published soon