Gotta-Gotta Get that GTD

There is a truism which states that you will invariably have most of your best ideas when you least expect them: in the shower, walking your dog in the park, you know the type of scenarios. Basically everywhere except the time and the place that would be optimally convenient. As I spend my time thinking about, and generating ideas for, my client’s branding and design requirements, I have found this truism particularly apt. My friends who work in other creative disciplines would no doubt agree.

That I now find myself increasingly having to address this is one of the unforeseen consequences I have to live with since the arrival of ‘The Boy’ (to borrow a phrase from Homer J. Simpson). It has only now become truly apparent to me how much of my project and career-related thinking I have always been processing offline in my free time. Issues and challenges that were utterly defeating me on, say Tuesday afternoon, I would often efficiently resolve on Wednesday morning after more-or-less unconsciously working them through the previous evening. Alas no more, my evenings are now completely consumed by Ethan-related activities (and no complaints about that).

Consequently, I find myself now having to address means of maximising the hours I can assign to my career and of making every minute count. Given that I believe that I already have some of the accepted personal productivity basics in place after working for fifteen. What I need is something that will help me to move everything up to the next level. Researching this online, it seems that there is a lot of renewed talk in the blogosphere about ‘Getting Things Done’ or GTD – the personal productivity system du-jour for today’s time-poor knowledge worker. It is also obvious, from looking at Lifehacker, 43Folders and their ilk, that I am not quite as organised as I like to think I am.

The Guardian also seems to be on a definite mini-GTD trip at the moment, with Ben Hammersy’s recent interview with David Allen and last week’s Tech piece on successfully implementing the system.

GTD seems well-worth a try, so I have bought the book. I am only as far as chapter two so far (those busy evenings, remember), and I have not fully re-organised myself yet. But let’s see how it goes. Maybe I will be a super-optimised individual, with a ‘mind-like-water’ before I know it.

One niggling aspect is that GTD (online at least) seems to be at risk of evolving into a ‘Cult Of GTD’, along the lines of the ‘Cult Of Mac’. I do not have an intention of becoming a GTD Evangelist, hassling all of my friends to get with the programme.

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Lecturing on Corporate Identity 2005

I had a blast spending a very enjoyable half-day lecturing on Corporate Identity to the third year students in IADT on the twenty-seventh of October. This was a first for me*. I was a tad sleep-deprived and strung-out on the day due to Val being in hospital and all of the issues related to that. (She is doing fine.) My lack of sleep probably caused me to be a bit more wired than usual. Hopefully the students were able to keep up whenever I started talking extra-extra-fast.

I presented comprehensive case studies on four corporate identity projects; a mix of large scale and small scale, state and private sector. My intention being that sharing what an actual identity project entails will benefit some of the class. While I do not think any of the students will be off writing me up on ratemyvisitingdesignlecturer.com, or whatever. It was definitely disconcerting when I started into my talk and twenty-five note-pads were opened and twenty-five biros came out.

The process of assembling my presentation was an interesting journey for me. As I rarely, if ever, get to delve back and review the early creative stages of a project after the fact. The other surprising thing is how much of the background thinking and discussions around this old work I still carry around in the filing cabinets in my head. Which must be a function of the investment of so much effort in thinking them through rigorously in the first place.

Showing my inexperience as a lecturer, I pretty much totally overdid it with regards to the quantity of work I brought along to discuss. Realistically I had enough with me to talk for another two hours. I went over by about an hour anyway, and I had to drop one whole section near the end. To think I was originally going to show another fifth case study...

*I actually ended up writing a quick brief for (an admittedly small) part of a project and sending it as a text message to the studio that morning over my coffee. Which was another first for me, so that was two firsts in one day. (At least it was a three-part text message, before I get grief for being a Tech-Wannabe Creative Director.)

Technorati Tags: Corporate Identity