Getting Things Done

My life for the past week or so has consisted of implementing Getting
Things Done to keep track of stuff in my life (again), worrying
about/ preparing for the first day of school, and trying to actually
follow through on a "New Year's Resolution" - to work out at the gym
at least 29 times this semester.

First I should explain why I'm trying to implement Getting Things
Done. I have grown tired, as a student, of losing syllabi, forgetting
about commitments, and then suddenly having everything come rushing
back to bite me during finals week (or on a break). It seems to me
that once school starts, every extracurricular or 'Important Thing'
that doesn't involve homework or a quiz is completely forgotten.
Chinese gets rustier. Exercise and eating habits both go in the wrong
directions. Communication with family and friends dries up. Preparing
for life in the real world gets ignored. The end result, of course,
is not what you'd expect: If only all that time went to studying!
Rather, I find myself entering a boom-and-bust cycle of productivity,
where down time gets occupied by surfing the web or watching movies.

I got sufficiently fed up with this last semester to consider a
couple of radical ideas: Training myself to operate on minimal
amounts of sleep, for example, or completely forgoing all leisure and
social time. However, reality eventually set in and I realized that
the problem was not how much time I had, but what I was choosing to
do with that time. I was being reactive, and not proactive. So I got
my hands on things to help me achieve my goals of turning myself
around: David Allen's Getting Things Done, Stephen Covey's 7 Habits
of Highly Effective People. I realized what my problem is: I am not
consistently taking the steps needed to meet my long term goals. This
stems from two causes: I imagine things to be impossibly hard, and
get paralyzed by a fear of failure. Even when I am not paralyzed, I
am not sure of what steps I can take. So, as a result, nothing happens.

I find Covey's work inspirational, but for me the bigger problem
seems to be to keep my eyes on my goal and 'not looking down.' The
way I've chosen to handle that is by implementing the Getting Things
Done methodology, and slavishly following it for the next 7 weeks. I
realized all of this on Saturday, during the long drive back to
Boston. Sunday, I had friends in town, but Monday was dedicated
entirely to getting things set up for a GTD semester. I was worried
that I wouldn't have the time, energy, or ability to implement the
whole process in one day, but I got through it all just fine. Now I
have a small mountain of To-Dos to fill up any free time that I may
have.