The Abbott Family Blog

In any good story, the protagonist will eventually enter a period of challenge where his conviction and steadfastness is tested. In my new system for Getting Things Done, which I introduced in an earlier post (and digressed upon later) the challenge was more like a full-body slamdown.

I call this period The Collapse. What happened?

First, let me briefly explain the nuts and bolts of my system. All of my projects, and the “next actions” associated with them, were kept on separate 3×5 index cards. These were sorted by category or “context” (based on when and where the action could be taken). New tasks and responsibilities were jotted down on a card, which also carried metadata such as date-of-recording and other ‘tags’. It was all based on this system illustrated with photos I saw on Flickr, which has much more detail than I’m going to go into here. Suffice it to say, it was slightly involved but actually pretty simple in theory. Cards for actions, a stack of cards for notes and ideas, and more cards (later envelopes) for projects (sets of actions). I even had this little contraption set up:

It’s called a tickler file; a perpetually-rotating three-dimensional calendar where I could “mail my future self a note” by sticking it behind the appropriate tab. I thought it was the coolest concept, and I still do.

And yet, in the face of all this coolness, my system began to show its cracks. I think this is epitomized in this gem of irony: I requested the Getting Things Done book from the library (I’d already read most of it online; sorry Penguin) but I neglected to write down a note when I got the notice to pick it up from the library—figuring I wouldn’t need to track it, a big no-no in Getting Things Done. The result? I forgot and missed the seven-day holding period for picking up the book. Like I said, a gem of irony.

So why the collapse? Well, they say a picture’s worth a thousand words:

I guess you could say I was a victim of my own success. At first, it felt great to have everything I was tracking mentally written down. But as I offloaded more and more of my thoughts and projects onto cards, I started getting overwhelmed. In other words, I lost track of the very things I was using to keep track of things.

I used a few different strategies to cope with this onslaught of data. I tried tabs (very cute), I tried envelopes, different tagging systems, sorting schemas… The problem was, the external representation never matched what was in my head. That is, the tasks and projects I was tracking varied widely in scope, importance, and topic, and they changed fluidly—which was part of the reason I chose the index-card system to begin with, as I felt I could move cards from one “pile” to another as needed. And yet…it all seemed like too much work, so my system silently fell into complete disuse. *Sigh*. It was fun while it lasted. That is to say, it lasted until it stopped being fun.

(Now, the adventure didn’t end there. After a couple weeks’ hiatus, I overhauled my system and tried again. I’ll give it a few weeks and let you know how it goes…this system’s not as “cool”, though. But it just might last. We’ll see…)