Stefan Chirila's Blog

Time is precious. Especially these days when change seems to be occurring everywhere. That's why there are so many time scheduling techniques around now more than ever. Wasting time becomes a luxury and using it well becomes a skill. There is a concept of "interstitial time". This is the time between scheduled tasks, like writing a blog, weeding the garden, sleeping or being in a conference. Interstitial time is bonus time, because most of us don't ever think of using it, so this is a good resource. Use it well and it's a very valuable resource. When you are waiting at the dentist, when you wait for tea to be ready in the morning, when you drink your tee (coffee), when you are going with the bus, you have interstitial time, time that can be used for greater good. And one way of using it is to read something useful in these small periods of time. I always carry around reading material that helps me improve my skills in some area that I think it needs improvement. T...

Knowledge thirst. There's always a need to learn more, to know more, to do more, and now. Being so absorbed in the process of trying to find out more, people might shift from their main goal, which is getting things done. One such big absorber is the internet. So much information, so much diversity, so much availability. Reading about the bird flu is two clicks away from finding out that some celebrity starred in the latest most expensive movie ever made. There's something strange about using a browser with tabs capability (Firefox, opera, etc.). When you read some resource that provides links, there's a tendency of opening them in background tabs for further reading, and than in the next tab you find out more information and more links that are open also in background and the process continues. Sometime when you think you have enough tabs open to keep you busy for a long time, you stop opening new tabs, and set a goal of closing every and each one of them (after reading th...

For GTD to work, you must find a way to implement your own organizing system that you can trust. You must trust your system for it to work. If you think that your system might not be good enough for capturing all the stuff that gets your attention, it won’t be successful. You must free your mind from the task of remembering everything that you need to do, and focus on actually doing those things. So I have built myself my own PDA, Hipster PDA that is. Even if it sounds like something highly technologic and expensive, it isn’t. It’s just a bunch of index cards and a binder clip to hold them together. Maintaining lists on these index cards it’s all you have to do. You can have an index card for each context. For example I have the following cards: @ Work – list of next action items that revolve around the “work” context @Home – self explanatory @Calls and Emails – list with calls I have to make and emails I have to write @Agenda – actions that depend on other people (meetings, @Some...

This must be the millionth blog touching the subject of GTD so here goes my attempt. GTD is the short from “Getting Things Done”, a time management method and the title of a book by David Allen. It’s a very good book, that I would advise everyone to read it. The reason I don’t (advise everyone to read it) is because everyone who reads it shouldn’t feel constrained in reading it. People become defensive when someone tries to impose some point of view. The book was subtly recommended by my brother and I postponed reading it because of my defensive system. After I’ve found more people that praise this book I gave it a try, and I’m glad I did. A very good definition for what GTD can be found on Wikipedia . Why is it better than other time management methods? It’s simple; it revolves around maintaining lists and more important: getting stuff out of your head into a system that you can trust and reviewing it periodically. The system can be a PDA, a notebook, a software tool, anything you ca...

Yesterday evening my wife and I finished putting together the 1000 piece puzzle. It is a wonderful feeling to finish something you started. A puzzle, a book, a task. You feel you did something till the end, and that gives you background in order to do it again and again. Getting something done it's a learning habit. After finishing the puzzle I continued reading "Mythical Man Month" and I came across a sentence that I particularly liked: " Thinkers are rare; doers are rarer; and thinker-doers are rarest. " It was about the separation between the "producer" ( the one in charge of assembling the team, dividing work, making the schedule) and the "technical director" ( the one in charge of making the design to be built, and inventing solutions for technical issues). On small teams the thinker (technical director) and the doer (producer) can be one person, but for big teams the pressure it’s too much for it to work. This book is written with m...

So, this is kind of my first blog post. It's a start, and I hope a good one, knowing today is Friday 13. Now let's get back to work, it's almost weekend and maybe I will finish what I started in the morning.