I have been using the GTD, Getting Things Done methodology for many years to be as productive as possible. And it has been very successful for me. I have become very productive as a blogger, youtuber and as a social network user.
My life has circulated around tech for many years now and it has been fun, but it has also been a lot of hard work. I have been busy all the time.
The GTD methodology has helped me get more time that I've spent on more tech, work, blogging and youtubing.
But I have now finally decided to change that. I will use GTD to create more time to live life.
So I will do some changes on how and what I do in my time.
Podcasts
I have already stopped making my own podcasts awhile ago. Now I have decided to stop listening to podcasts too. I listened to tech podcasts only and they didn't give me much because I already knew everything they were talking about. And I prefer reading tech news over listening to podcasts to get them.
So instead of listening to podcasts I would like to listening to ebooks instead. I use the excellent app Voice Dream reader1 to do that and I also use VoiceOver in iBooks2.
I enjoy reading books so much. It's one of my biggest interests. It's life for me. It's way more important than tech to me.
YouTube
As I YouTuber, I have decided to step down and only do one video a week instead of almost one video a day. Recording, editing and publishing videos takes a lot of time. I usually don't have time for anything else I would like to do. It takes up all my time. And videos are quite long lived so I don't think I will see a big difference in views in total when I only do one video a week.
So with only one video a week I can finally live life and do everything that I want instead. I can read books, be with my family, do adventures and traveling and a lot more!
Blogging
As you probably have noticed I'm back blogging again. I love to express my opinions and thoughts in text. And I have seen that a lot more people prefer reading over watching videos. I think my love for writing comes from my love reading books. It goes hand in hand. And since I went back to the Mac after being Post-pc for two whole years, I absolutely love writing on my 11-inch Macbook Air from 2012 again. And thanks to the excellent writing environment Ulysses I can do that in perfect sync with my iOS devices, my iPhone 6s plus and iPad Air 2. I even use my Apple Watch to add to my articles, by dictating directly into the excellent Drafts app. And then later I send the text from Drafts to Ulysses using a Drafts Action. And I also really like to write anywhere I am and anytime I can, directly on my iPhone 6s plus, my pocket computer, my mini iPad.
So by doing less videos in the week, I can write more, and by being a mobile writer, I can write anywhere, I can write while waiting in line, I can write on the toilet, I can write as soon as I get the chance to do so. That also means that I get more time over to do what I want later in the evening. Being a mobile writer gives me more time to live life.
Getting the latest news
A lot of my time I have also spent on reading news to get all the latest news, the right ”hot news” to blog and making videos about. It has been taking a lot of time to be at the top when it comes to be ”knowledgable” as a Tech blogger and YouTuber. I don’t want that anymore. I will write and talk about my opinions and thoughts about different things. That’s it. It doesn’t have to be the hottest and freshest news and rumors.
So I will scroll through my Twitter stream from time to time, I will read my newsletters I get from Nuzzel, and I will browse my Apple Community. And I will do that when I want. It will not be a must. So I will try to read and find news the less of my time. I don’t see that as necessary anymore. This change will be a huge time saver for me.
Procrastination
The hardest part will be to stop procrastinate. I didn’t think it would be but it really is hard to stop. And it’s actually the notifications fault. All the notifications I get of new comments, new messages and emails makes me glance at them and that makes me so very tempted to stop everything I do and go reading them and replying to comments and messages. It need to stop. It takes too much time. Of course I will continue to read and reply on comments and so on, but I don’t have to do it immediately. It can really wait until I feel for it later. And maybe when I have got a few comments so that I can reply to them in one go instead of every time I get one.
One thing that has helped a lot is to use my smartphone as a GTD ”Inbox”3. I have put all the apps that I go through to see comments, messages, emails, task management, Todos, calendars and everything else I need to come back to, into one folder on my iPhone. That means that I get a number of the total notifications I have on the folder itself instead of on every single app. So when I got the time to do so, I go into that folder and start going through all the notifications. I organize the stuff that needs to be organized, I defer, mark as done, delete and replying to comments. If I have a really busy day, I maybe only doing this two times during the day. Once in the morning and once in the evening. But that is actually enough. By doing so I do a so called ”Review” in GTD terms. This for sure helps, but it still is very hard to not procrastinate. But I am sure I will get better over time.
Gadgets and Devices
I have always bought the latest devices and gadgets as soon as possible here in Sweden. The reason for that is that I have believed that it has been necessary to have the latest products as a tech blogger/youtuber, but I have been thinking about that a lot lately. In all seriousness, I don’t think that has helped me much at all really. It definitely has not earn me more revenue to have the latest stuff as fast as possible. When for example the latest iPhone is available here in Sweden, it has already been out quite awhile in the US, and I blog and do videos in English, so my audience has already seen and read everything about these devices long before I post about them. I mean, how fun is it to watch an unboxing in English of something that thousands of other people already has unboxed? Not much.
So I have decided to really think everything through before upgrading my devices. Do I really need to upgrade every time? Does the latest model really have some features and functions that I really need to have? Are my devices starting to be too slow or having a terrible battery life? These are questions that I will ask myself before buying from now on. I mean, my iPhone 6s plus is still totally awesome, fast and powerful. There is actually no need for a new one. The next iPhone definitely need something new and cool to having me upgrade. And the same thing with my 11-inch Macbook Air from 2012, it still is powerful and fast enough to do some serious work on. The only problem I have with that one is battery life. It has too bad battery life to replace my iPad Air 24.
So it’s not sure that I will always buy the latest iPhone, Apple Watch, Mac’s, iPads and more anymore. My devices will have a longer lifecycle from now on. There is no point in having the latest as long as the old works perfectly fine.
Getting Things Done
I will continue doing GTD in the exact same way as I’ve been doing for a while now. The only difference will be that the time that the method saves me, I will spend on living life instead of on more tech.
So as you can see, I will do quite big and drastic changes to my life and with tech. But I am sure most of you will hardly notice anything, and to me life is more important than being big on the Internet.
Here is a video where I talk about ”Stepping Down”:
- Voice Dream Reader is a Text To Speech app that makes any text into "audiobooks". You can even buy and install different professional voices directly into the app. So you can listen to any DRM free epub book, PDF files, DOCX, txt and many more text formats. And you can also connect your Instapaper and Pocket accounts to Voice Dream. I love it. ↩︎
- It works quite good but you don't have so many different voices to chose from as with Voice Dream. ↩︎
- Also see this old post about my method of using my smartphone as a GTD Inbox. It’s incredibly effective. ↩︎
- That’s why I am waiting for the next generation of the awesome 12-inch Macbook. I am sure it will have the same battery life or even better than my iPad Air 2 and the new iPad Pro. It means that I finally can replace my iPad with a Macbook. ↩︎