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GTD Cafe: A School for Getting Things Done
April 30th, 2008 by thedailysaintPosted in GTD, Goal Setting |
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Today’s post is from Mike St. Pierre of The Daily Saint.
Imagine a school that allowed every student to grow, learn and prosper. That was the initial desire behind the No Child Left Behind act of 2002 and while NCLB is controversial, it has proven successful in at least one area- keeping schools accountable.
Now imagine a school in which Getting Things Done was implemented.
Course units might include:
- Time management
- The weekly review
- Setting up a tickler file
- How to close open loops
- Capturing ideas, then integrating them into your system
- Mastering the projects list
- Life goals from 10,000-40,000 feet
Is this vision that far from reality? My colleagues in education would laugh at the sight of such courses and yet I wonder how Algebra I prepares one for life any better than a course in life goals or time management.
The secret of course lies in integration. It’s not that we need a school for GTD. Rather, we need people who can integrate GTD into what they’re already doing. Teachers and parents who see the value of putting ideas onto paper and out of the mind. Administrators who actually maintain a healthy set of lists and projects. Students who can actually remember a deadline because they wrote it down.
I recently had a friend ask how I got so much done in a week. Surprised, I had to scratch my head and wonder if GTD had something to do with it after years of practice. Would your colleagues wonder about your secret to productivity? As in any classroom, the moment when someone asks is of course the moment in which you know you’ve set an example. Now that’s GTD!
If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/5has3b. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen
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April 30th, 2008 at 11:55 am
I would love to see a more “practical” focus in schools, especially if it teaches kids to organize their various tasks without incessant parental nagging. Of course, parents need to cope with the various demands on their time, at least until the kids (or their siblings) can drive themselves.
If we’re talking about solutions to help families (& schools) get organized, we use an online calendar and task manager called Famundo. We put everything in there, so we all know what’s going on at all times. It sure makes our lives easier. And it proves how much we really DO “get done” in a day (or a week, or a month)…
http://www.famundo.com
Even better, Famundo also has a version for schools (or other groups like scouts, clubs, church, sports teams, etc.), so we can view the relevant calendar activities in our family Famundo, rather than entering them ourselves. It works great! Schools could go a long way toward helping kids (and their families) to “get things done” by using Famundo!
Dorie
May 8th, 2008 at 2:31 am
[…] A School for Getting Things Done […]